disadvantageous situation, however, is not a permanent one and 
may be remedied. 
We shall leave for a special chapter the explanation of the 
means recently adopted for bettering the condition of the serin- 
gueiros, augmenting their productive capacity and recompensing 
them more justly for their work. 
TRANSPORTS AND FREIGHTS 
The problem of transports and freight continues to be one of 
the most palpitating questions in Brazil, notwithstanding the 
great progress in this particular made during the last 10 years. 
The considerable increase in the mercantile marine. and the 
incessant construction of the numerous railroads of penetration, 
have not been able to,keep pace with the extraordinary develop- 
ment of the country and its notable economic expansion, the 
national commerce continuing to feel the want of further means 
of transport and to suffer from the very high rates of freights. 
In Amazonia, the difficulty of communication has become 
still more felt because. of the, vast region and territories em- 
braced in this great State, sparingly peopled and whose centres 
of production are located so far distant from the exporting mar- 
kets of Manaos and. Belém de Para. 
.Watered in eyery direction by innumerable great. rivers, 
tributaries of. the great river—the Amazon—the greatest in the 
world, the Amazonic region still remains to a very great part 
unexplored, inestimable riches susceptible of being extracted, 
lying unutilized, in virtue of the deficiency in navigation; in fact, 
if the principal rivers are navigated regularly to some extent, 
even though sparingly, others leading to immensely rich regions 
are very rarely navigated by either ship or boats, which might 
assure the transport of the products gathered. | 
Many and divers are the circumstances which concur towards 
bringing about this state of affairs, but the most important in 
resumé is that of the want of capital for the construction of 
ships and the establishment of regular lines of fluvial navigation 
as also the obstacles offered either by the irregular courses of 
some rivers obstructed by waterfalls, shoots and rapids, or simply 
obstructed by the trunks of trees, and other materials or by the 
diminutive volume of water during the dry seasons which makes 
impossible navigation of even ordinary draught. | 
One of the most interesting phases of the Amazonian problem 
is, however, in the regulating and increasing of the navigation 
of the rivers, with the object of assuring ample transport facilities 
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