SSo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE CAUCASIAN IN BRAZIL. 



By THOMAS C. DAWSON, 



SECEETARY OF THE U. S. LEGATION, BRAZIL. 



/^ONTEOL of trade routes and mineral supplies have been the two 

 ^^ chief factors in determining the industrial and political su- 

 premacy of races and nations. It is evident that a third — the control 

 of the food supplies from the tropics — will soon be equally vital to 

 civilized man. The tropical zone is a great laboratory where nature's 

 forces are manufacturing food on a tremendous scale. There the sun's 

 vivifying rays fall in the greatest abundance, building up with a rapid- 

 ity impossible in the temperate parts of the globe the elements of the 

 air, water and soil in those complex compounds which are the essential 

 basis of life. Leaving out of consideration the dream that inventive 

 genius may some day devise artificial methods of employing the sun's 

 chemical forces in directly producing food, it is certain that if he 

 continues to multiply in his present geometrical ratio, the European 

 must utilize the tropics. 



India and the east already contain a dense population; but the 

 negroes who inhabit tropical Africa do not begin to exhaust its poten- 

 tial resources, and South America, the queen of the continents from 

 an economic standpoint, is virtually untouched. How and by whom 

 shall these regions be occupied and developed? Three solutions are 

 possible : 



1. Races predominantly black or yellow, who shall have developed 

 among themselves or acquired from the whites economic and political 

 efficiency, may be the future masters of the now unoccupied parts of 

 the tropical zone. Southern China is a proof that such an outcome is 

 possible. 



2. Colored people under the direction and government of northern 

 nations may cultivate the soil and export the surplus. This would be 

 something parallel to the present condition of India. 



3. The whites of European descent may themselves emigrate to 

 the tropics, crowd out or absorb the colored races, and either pure, or 

 predominating in the resulting mixture, constitute the bulk of the 

 population. 



The last alternative is rarely taken into consideration, because it is 

 an accepted commonplace of popular belief and scientific discussion 

 that the white man is not fitted to the tropics — that the European 



