NATIONAL EXPOSITION AT RIO DE JANEIRO 117 



Brazilian, he took enthusiastic and wliolly justifiable pride in pointing 

 out the variety of the products and the excellence of the workmanship 

 exhibited in the collection of articles sent by his state. These include 

 articles of clothing of all kinds, of silk, cotton, woolen, linen and 

 leather; straw and felt hats; furniture; leather and canned goods; 

 soaps, perfumery and drugs; glassware; pianos and musical instru- 

 ments; preserves and pickles; cigars and tobacco; articles of horn; 

 books; artificial flowers; furniture; papers; brushes; beer and wine; 

 flour; crackers of all sorts. It is clear enough that European manu- 

 facturers will soon have to meet strong competition here in Brazil. 

 As the writer's guide proudly said : " We make Just as good biscuit, 

 and just as many varieties, as the English do." The state of San 

 Paulo, next south of Eio de Janeiro, makes an exhibit which is fully as 

 complete and as varied as that of Eio Grande do Sul. On the other 

 hand, we have the exhibit of that great northern state, Amazonas, whose 

 name at once brings up vistas of immense tropical forests, with their 

 precious woods of all kinds, and especially with their most precious 

 rubber — the rubber which is causing so much jealousy about national 

 boundaries in South America; the rubber to secure which men are 

 Ijeing held in slavery as harsh and cruel, probahly, as any slavery ever 

 was in the world. An " Inferno Verde " the life of these rubber- 

 collectors doubtless is. Such is the title of a recent book on this sub- 

 ject which is attracting attention here in Eio. Its cover-design is the 

 figure of a naked Indian woman, bound hand and foot to a rubber- 

 tree, her blood dropping out, from many wounds, into the little tin 

 cups used in collecting the precious sap of the rubber-tree. The 

 Amazonas exhibit gives a good opportunity to see how this famous — 

 or infamous — rubber is collected and prepared for shipment. A 

 rubber-tree, with a gash, and the little tin cup shows the first stage. 

 Bottles of the milky sap, " rubber-milk " they call it, show the rubber 

 as it came from the tree. This liquid is then carried to be smoked and 

 dried; and is rolled up into great bales for shipment. One of these 

 huge oval masses of rubber, weighing 800 kilograms, forms part of 

 the Amazonas exhibit. All these steps are well illustrated by photo- 

 graphs. Amazonas is typical of the non-industrial states. It is rich in 

 woods. The present exposition includes 200 specimens of these woods, 

 ranging from those Avhich are soft and light and porous, to the very 

 dense and very heavy pao ferro (iron-wood). The brilliant feathers 

 from the Amazon forests, wonderfully colored, would arouse the anger 

 of our Audubon Society members, especially if they were told that 

 many of these feathers go to the United States. Even Amazonas is 

 not wholly destitute of manufactured articles, although they are few 

 in number and mostly of a primitive kind. As one runs over the 

 exhibits from the states situated successively farther and farther south. 



