76 EXPLOITATION OF PLANTS 
locally. But against progress in this direction must 
be set the fact that if the river steamers do not carry food, 
they have almost nothing to carry up stream, and so 
must charge higher freights for bringing the rubber 
down, so that the one thing works against the other. 
But transport is not the only factor whose proper 
working is not as yet ensured in the valley of the Amazon. 
For the cultivation of large areas of land labour is neces- 
sary. Now the population of Brazil is as yet small, 
and the country is larger than the whole continent of 
Australia, while the coastal lands are by far the most 
healthy in the tropics. It is from these healthy north- 
eastern states that the labour of the Amazon valley has 
hitherto come, and especially in the years when the 
cotton crop, upon which they chiefly depend, has been 
bad. But now the Brazilian Government is taking the 
wise step of pushing cotton cultivation in the north- 
east, under charge of one of the first American special- 
ists, and as Brazil is the native land of most of the 
cottons, and has about a million square miles of mag- 
nificent cotton land, the result will inevitably be to 
diminish the supply of labour for the Amazon. The 
obvious remedy, many capitalists will say, is to import 
Chinese or Japanese, who can stand the climate. No 
doubt this would in a way solve the problem, as slavery 
would solve it, but the Brazilian stands out for a 
Brazilian Brazil, and does not desire to be flooded 
with Orientals any more than does Australia, For the 
present, therefore, labour supply is even a greater diffi- 
culty in the path of those who wish to open up the valley 
of the Amazon than is transport. After all, the latter 
can be largely avoided by opening up at first only the 
