be constantly shoveled (“trimmed” is the technical term), back 
and forth and up into ridges, to keep them from sweating, heat- 
ing, and spoiling. So, all day long, during the ocean voyage to 
Liverpool or New York, you hear the shovels plying in the nut 
bins far down in the hot and dusty holds. Sometimes it becomes 
necessary for even the officers to take a shoveling spell. 
In this way, the 16,800 tons of Brazil nuts that I was told 
constituted this year’s crop were gathered and shipped. And 
where do they go, you well may ask, for 16,800 tons are a lot of 
nuts. Who eats them ? Not many of them are used in their home 
country, but most of them go to the United States or to England. 
From England they are shipped to various European countries, but 
in most years, the Americans eat about twice the tonnage that 
goes to Europe. This year, the bulk of them are said to have 
gone to England. On the river boat Tupy, in which we came 
down the Madeira River to Manaos, were over 116 tons of Brazil 
nuts, and our ocean steamer from Manaos to New York carried 
about 1500 tons. 
And now that the “black gold” industry of South America, 
otherwise known as “ rubber collecting,” has been overshadowed 
by the development of rubber plantations in the Orient, the Brazil 
nut harvest is one of the main interests of this part of the world. 
One hears Brazil nuts discussed from every possible angle among 
the passenger groups on the steamers that nose their way up and 
down the forest clad Amazon basin. On the docks at Manaos, it 
is the same story— in the banks and steamship offices also—” How 
is the harvest ? ” “ What is the price?” Castahnas in this part 
of Brazil hold the same importance as a topic of conversation as 
corn in Illinois, cattle in eastern Montana, or wheat in North 
Dakota. Outside the great valley drained by the streams of water 
that we know as the Amazon river system— that mighty yellow 
flood that courses through the densest forests on the globe— the 
Brazil nut is unknown. And yet even here the trees are rarely 
planted. Slow-growing, hard-wooded, a lover of the hot, moist, 
low lands,— lands subject to such annual overflows that miles and 
miles of flooded forest appear during the period of the great rains — 
there it is that the brazil nut tree rears its giant dome of foliage, 
flowers, brings forth its great fruit and lives its life span. Through 
the forest tangles, here and there, you see its rough-barked bole, 
so strange amid the hundreds of smooth barked trees. And to 
this tree the Indians, to whom of old these woods were home, 
came, and from its tough, soft, inner bark, pounded out a suit of 
clothes— a one piece suit of cloth which reminded one of the tapa 
cloth made from the paper mulberry by the South Sea Islanders. 
To some extent they still make use of it, but mostly they wear the 
cloth of white man’s cotton. And now the bark is used for caulking 
boats — estope , they call it. 
One must not get the idea that Brazil nuts grow in pure forests 
of their kind, as often do the pines, spruces and hardwoods of 
our own land. A tropical forest is more heterogeneous in its 
makeup than a large Woolworth store, or of more varied composi- 
