COilMEECE OF BEAZIL. 319 



up on tlie Amazons and its tributaries ; all tlie immense 

 resources of that tropic valley will, when developed, form 

 the material from which will be built up here one of the 

 largest ports of the New World. Almost all the trade 

 of the city is carried on with European powers. We 

 have been strangely indifterent respecting the commerce 

 of Brazil and the Amazons. Although her next-door 

 neighbor, we have scarcely any trade with that empire 

 — Portugal's is larger than our own. According to a 

 recent estimate, we purchase more than twenty-five mil- 

 lion dollars' worth of Brazilian products annually, tlie 

 greater part of which come to us by the way of Europe, 

 This state of non-intercourse between us and Brazil is un- 

 natural ; the valleys of the Amazons and Mississippi are 

 the complements of each other; the products of our 

 Western States are just such as are demanded by tropical 

 Brazil, while Brazilian products must find their way, 

 either by direct or indirect trade, into the Mississippi 

 Valley. Here, at our very door, lies a country of immense 

 extent, whose important products arc numberless, and such 

 as we must have ; still, we allow the trade of these regions 

 to be monopolized by countries across the Atlantic. This 

 anomalous course of trade is the result of a strange in- 

 difference and misapprehension, on our part, respecting the 

 importance to us of Brazilian commerce. Yet even the 

 trade carried on with Europe is small ; and for this fact 

 we find explanation in the unwise imposition of heavy 

 tariffs upon exports by the Brazilian Government. Blind 

 to the immense advantage that would result from unre- 

 stricted commercial relations with other countries, Brazil 

 has imposed heavy duties upon the most important exports 

 of the Amazonian Valley, as coffee, cotton, and wood, pre- 

 venting free exportation of these great staples, and their 

 conversion into gold. For illustration, there is a tariff 

 upon exported wood of fourteen per cent., and, as a result. 



