ploited by the natives, whose number is but small, and by the 
immigrants from the eastern States who, fleeing from the 
droughts which periodically befall those States and attracted by 
the liberal profits offered by the extraction of rubber, go there 
in thousands every year. This current of immigration is, how- 
ever, insufficient; a proper remedy for. such a state of things 
would perhaps be foreign labour which still keeps back from the 
North because it only knows it through garbled information. 
The bad food and the indifference for all that concerns health 
conditions, contribute every year to the invaliding of a con- 
siderable number of men. 
The extraction of India rubber being the occupation which 
pays best in the Amazon Valley, the pastoral industry, cattle- 
breeding and farming are altogether despised, so that all the arti- 
cles of subsistence needed by the population, either come from the 
South of Brazil, burdened by cost of a long transport, or from 
abroad overloaded with high Brazilian Customs duties. 
The heavy transport tariffs are due to the numerous difficulties 
of all sorts that thwart navigation in the affluents and sub-afflu- 
ents of the Amazon river and to the greediness of ship-owners, 
encouraged by the absence of competition. On the other hand, 
the existence of a complete river system has made the Brazilian 
Governments disregard the necessity of establishing railways 
which, by shortening distances, might bind the different affluents 
of the great river to each other. 
Finally, the excessive taxation imposed by the States of Ama- 
zonas and Para on its almost only product of exportation is a 
consequence of the special conditions of life in that Brazilian re- 
gion, which conditions we have just described. The Governmen- 
tal and administrative system requires large sums for its main- 
tenance, is unable to avail itself of any other sources of income 
because they hardly exist. The legislator has had to go on tax- 
ing the great product more and more. 
In order to cheapen the product, besides removing the causes 
which have just been shown, two other far-reaching measures 
have been suggested; the adoption of a process for coagulation 
of the latex which might decrease the production of inferior rub- 
bers, and planting on a big scale. : 
At the present moment the exportation of rubber from the 
Amazon is composed of 50 per cent of rubber “fina,” 10 per cent 
of “entre-fine,” 25 ‘per cent of “sernamby,” and 15 per cent of 
“caucho.” Now, any process that can do away with or might 
at least diminish the percentage of entrefina and sernamby would 
be a means of cheapening the rubber of finer quality (fina). es 
apply the same activity to produce 70 or 75 Kilos of “fina” ‘in- 
stead of 50 fina, 10 entrefina and 15 sernamby, is the | sau in 
45 
