SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART II 97 



past two years wheu travel was a bit uncertain and sul)marine boats 

 likely to make tlieir appearance, you travel very far eastward out of the 

 ordinary course. The boats don't always follow the same route, and in 

 our trip south we found ourselves at one time nearer the coast of Africa 

 than South America and then coming back to the southern part of South 

 America. In traveling south in making a trip to South America, the 

 first agriculture that you see is naturally the agriculture of the tropics. 

 In fact, it is not very much of what we would call agriculture; They 

 naturally have very mild weather the year around, and the growing sea- 

 son is twelve months, which, together with the abundant rainfall, re- 

 sults in very luxuriant vegetation. One of the first things to strike the 

 eye is that the high mountains are covered almost to the topmost point 

 with a tree and vegetable growth so dense that you couldn't go thru it 

 without chopping your way. You might think that such luxuriance would 

 prevail only in places, but the conditions are such that this luxuriant 

 growth is every place. It seems that Nature has done so much for that 

 country that there would be every advantage for the inhabitants, but on 

 the other hand there are many disadvantages that don't appear to the 

 casual observer. 



As a rule, plant diseases and insects are equal in their destruction, 

 and then, further, conditions are not adapted to the ordinary grain crops 

 as grown in the temperate zones, nor to the same kinds of animals. The 

 domestic animals we are raising here are much the same as may be found 

 in temperate zones elsewhere, but they do not thrive well in the tropics. 

 The production is fruit principally — bananas and other tropical fruits — 

 and the production has reached such proportions that one of our steamship 

 companies has over $100,000,000 invested along the South and Central 

 American coast in this industry. The tobacco industry is also one of the 

 great developments, and is carried on on a great scale in the tropics. 

 The tropics are intensely interesting to us and I think have a fascination 

 to most people. People who go down there to live, after they have lived 

 there a few years, are not content to live anywhere else. 



In going to the Argentine, the first landing is usually off the east coast. 

 Our first landing at this time was Baliia (or San Salvador), from which 

 the great tobacco section of South America is reached. There is not 

 very much agriculture there, and they have very little of anything ex- 

 cept the native tropical growths and fruits. Further toward the interior 

 we find the development of the sugar industry, and still further in the 

 tobacco industry. When you get to Rio do Janeiro you will notice the 

 varieties of agriculture are changing somewhat, but they are still dif- 

 ferent from what we find in the temperate zones. 



In the first place, there are very few white people living in tropical 

 regions. You are sure to notice that. The tropics are the black man's 

 country. The Negro races, or the dark-skinned races, have to be de- 

 pended upon almost entirely for the manual labor in that country, and 

 it is probable that that will always be the case. While the white people 

 will go in and have charge of the large enterprises, the actual labor in 

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