Where
Cultivated, Coffee, Tobacco, Rubber, Sugar, Cocoa, Rice, Beans, Etc.,
Freely Grow, And The Farmer Gets From 500 To 800-Fold For Every
Bushel Of Corn He Plants.
Humboldt estimated that 4,000 pounds of
bananas can be produced in the same area as 33 pounds of wheat or 99
pounds of potatoes.
The natural wealth of the country is almost fabulous. Its mountain
chains contain coal, gold, silver, tin, zinc, mercury and whole
mountains of the very best iron ore, while in forty years five
million carats of diamonds have been sent to Europe. In 1907 Brazil
exported ten million dollars' worth of cocoa, seventy million
dollars' worth of rubber; and from the splendid stone docks of
Santos, which put to shame anything seen on this northern continent,
either in New York or Boston, there was shipped one hundred and
forty-two million dollars' worth of coffee. Around Rio Janeiro alone
there are a hundred million coffee trees, and the grower gets two
crops a year.
Yet this great republic has only had its borders touched. It is
estimated that there are over a million Indians in the interior, who
hold undisputed possession of four-fifths of the country. Three and a
quarter million square miles of the republic thus remains to a great
extent an unknown, unexplored wilderness. In this area there are over
a million square miles of virgin forest, "the largest and densest on
earth." The forest region of the Amazon is twelve hundred miles east
to west, and eight hundred miles north to south, and this sombre,
primeval woodland has not yet been crossed.
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