278 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



mules, took on an average one month on the road from Ouro Prcto to Rio de 

 Janeiro. An English company having proposed to construct a proper road along 

 this route, it was objected that good highways would throw open the country to 

 foreign conquest. 



Since the close of the colonial rule trade bas certainly 'increased tenfold. 

 Foreign goods are no doubt heavily taxed, but at least they are not interdicted 

 as they were previous to the year 1808. A Portuguese financial association long 

 enjoyed the monopoly of the trade with Brazil, to protect which it had to equip 

 a fleet of war-ships. At the beginning of the nineteenth century this monopoly 

 was said to represent about £6,000,000 a year. But towards 1850 the exchanges 

 rose to £20,000,000, and in 1880 they had exceeded £40,000,000. Since then they 

 have continued to increase despite revolutions, civil wars, heavy tariffs, reckless 

 speculation, gambling, and fraudulent transactions of all kinds. Companies have 

 been floated with nominal capitals, which within a fortnight have called up shares 

 to the value of £40,000,000, or even £80,000,000. In 1891 the various schemes 

 in operation represented eleven times the whole income of Brazil. 



Besides manufactured goods the imports include many articles which might 

 well be produced on the spot. Such are bread-stuffs, rice, charqui (jerked beef), 

 from Uruguay and Argentina, bricks, tiles, flags and the like. English biscuits 

 and pale ale, and sardines from Nantes may be procured in the humblest village 

 of the interior. The exports, which on an average exceed the imports, comprise 

 coffee, representing four-fifths or even more of the total value, rubber, sugar, 

 cotton, tobacco, cacao, Brazil nuts, maté, gold and diamonds. 



Thanks to special tariffs the United States takes the first place in the foreign 

 trade of Brazil. In 18')2 it imported over 2,400,000 bags of coffee from Rio, 

 while the rest of the world received less than 1,000,000 bags from the same 

 port. On the other hand Santos sends its coffees chiefly to Europe (Bremen, 

 Havre, Antwerp, Tiieste). Great Britain ranks next to the United States in 

 the movement of exchanges, and takes by far the first place in the carrying 

 trade. France, Germany and Italy follow in the order named, while the mother 

 country takes only the fifth place, although the majoritj' of the merchants are 

 Portuguese. Even in Rio the industrial and trading classes comprise four times more 

 natives of Portugal than Brazilians. The old colony, however, still continues to 

 be the best customer of the Lusitanian wine-growers. It is noteworthy that the 

 rapid development of foreign relations has had the effect of diminishing the local 

 coasting trade between the Brazilian seaports. This result is due to the ocean 

 steam navigation, which, by regularly calling at every inaportant harbour along 

 the seaboard, has rendered useless the large depots of goods formerly concentrated 

 in Rio Janeiro and distributed from that point to all the coast towns. 



Communications — Railways. 



In Brazil, as in the United States, the necessities of trade have caused the 

 construction of railways to precede that of carriage- ronds almost everywhere. When 



