518 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



thousands of miles of navigable rivers and many more thousands that 

 are drivable. Ocean steamers ply up to rivers over 2,500 miles from the 

 coast. Moreover, little of the area is over 1,000 feet in altitude. The 

 climatic conditions are not so bad as non-dwellers of the .tropics make 

 them out to be. Besides Para, a city of 200,000 people, at the mouth of 

 the Amazon, there are Manaos, a city of 80,000 people, nearly 1,000 

 miles inland, and Iquitos, Peru, with about 20,000 inhabitants, about 

 2,500 miles inland. These cities now all have modern sanitary condi- 

 tions and are otherwise modern. Yellow fever is practically a thing 

 of the past. So far, a single forest product, rubber, has been the princi- 

 pal source of revenue for the region. Next to coffee it leads all others 

 in the value of the exports of Brazil. The lumber industry is practi- 

 cally undeveloped. Only a small amount of lumber for local use and 

 export is cut and some is imported. 



Due to competition of planted rubber from the eastern tropics, the 

 production of rubber of late years has not increased, though it has not 

 diminished. The Brazilian Government realizes the situation and is 

 encouraging the agricultural possibilities. The region at present de- 

 pends almost entirely on outside produce to keep the rubber industry 

 going. The development of the lumber industry will be slower than 

 that of southern Brazil, mainly because labor is scarce. However, as 

 this industry develops in the settled part of the country it cannot but 

 help give a decided impetus to that of the Amazon region. 



There remains to be discussed another forest region in South Amer- 

 ica of great extent, namely, northern South America. It comprises the 

 Guianas, Venezuela, and that portion of Colombia that does not lie 

 east of the base of the Andes. Rough estimates show that this region 

 includes no less than 200 million acres. Cut this area one-half, to 100 

 million acres, and using the conservative figure of 5.000 board feet per 

 acre, we have a stand of 500 billion board feet. The republics of 

 Colombia and Venezuela, that contain the largest part of the timber, are 

 still very backward in development, both commercially and politically ; 

 hence their lumber industry is little developed. Crude methods of 

 logging still prevail ; yet some of the forests, especially parts of the 

 Magdalena, Cauca, and Atrato valleys, contain heavy stands of timber 

 and are adapted to modern logging methods. Geographically this region 

 is well situated to supply timbers to Panama and the West Indies, 

 which at present draw on the United States for large quantities of 

 timber. So far as the forests are concerned, they contain timbers that 

 could be employed for many uses in the United States. 



With the possible exception of the tropical forests of Central Amer- 



