FOEESTS— COMMUNICATIONS. 7 



caste races in large numbers. The soil, with its excessive fertility, has clothed 

 itself with continuous woodlands, a tangled mass of vegetation overflowing with 

 sap, where whole generations will be unable to effect more that a few narrow 

 clearings. 



The Amazonian forest, which the Spaniards call the Selva in a pre-eminent 

 sense, and which is continued southwards by the Matto Grosso of the Portuguese, 

 covers a space estimated at 2,800,000 square miles. In this boundless expanse 

 travellers, and even the seekers for rubber, ipecacuanha and other medicinal or 

 economic products, have for the most part no knowledge of the Selva beyond the 

 winding avenues opened in its i>hade by the rivers and backvvateis. This densely 

 timbered and almost uninhabited region separates the low-lying Venezuelan plains 

 from those of Bolivia more effectually than if it were an absolute desert. 



Thus, despite its immense wastes of snow and ice, despite its tundras of mosses 

 and lichens, which occupy about one-third of its whole area, North America offers 

 at the present day a far more favourable territory for settlement than the southern 

 continent. Its chief advantage is that the temperate zone, which is best suited 

 for the development and prosperity of the white race, comprises its broader part, 

 where the United States have been constituted. In South America, on the con- 

 trary, the corresponding section begins where the land, already considerably con- 

 tracted between the two oceans, continues to taper rapidly in the direction of the 

 austral seas. Measured on Berghmann's map by the isothermal lines of 46° and 

 68° Fahr., this climatic zone comprises over 4,000,000 square miles in the northern, 

 and somewhat less than 2,000,000 in the southern continent. 



Communications. 



Another disadvantage of the South compared with the North as a region of 

 colonisation results from its more remote position from the other great divisions 

 of the globe. Apart from the Antarctic polar lands, South America is farther 

 removed than any other continental region from the great commercial marts, and 

 from the most densely-peopled countries — West Europe, India, and China — whose 

 central point about coincides with the middle of the Eastern Hemisphere. Never- 

 theless, steam has helped greatly to shorten the time formerly occupied in the 

 voyage from the European Atlantic ports to those of Colombia, Brazil, and 

 Argentina. With the resources supplied by the mechanical arts, it may even be 

 possible in the near future to bring the eastern ports of Brazil practically as near 

 to London and Paris as are New York and Montreal at present. 



The South American coastlands are already directly connected by regular lines 

 of steamships with those of Europe, but the construction of the projected north- 

 west African railways may even reduce by one-half the journey between these 

 points. In this respect the " Trans- Saharan" trunk line should be regarded 

 as of more importance for South America than for Europe. Some French specu- 

 lators, inspired more bj^ colonial patriotism than by economic interests, are at 

 present occupied with various schemes for connecting by rail the Mediterranean 

 seaboard with the Sahara, Sudan, and Senegal. 



