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provided.‘ the United States should soon rank first of all countries in the volume of goods exported to this part of Brazil.
If the plans of one man of master mind. and that particular man an American. can be worked out. the future traffic and in- dustrial possibilities for the Amazon Val- ley are marvelous. With a soil as fertile as the Mississippi Valley. a climate quite as good as the lower portion of that valley. there remain but two important questions to be solved. Immigration first. and the contribution must be of a class who are used to work in a warm. damp climate.
Plans are now perfected to give to Amazonas cheaper internal transportation than has ever prevailed. A pow- erful steamboat company. that has long controlled rates. has been purchased. New and larger steamers. better adapted to handle freight. have been ordered in Holland and are now being delivered at Para. coming across the ocean under their own steam. From the States have come seventeen light—draft boats that will carry far into the interior and make possible a sweeping reduction of transportation cost.
The Madeira-Mamoré Railroad has been built around the Falls of the Rio Madeira. giving to Bolivia the first easy. direct and safe route that country has ever had to and from the markets of the world.
The port works of Para have been com- pleted and every device for the quick. safe and economical transfer of freight from docks and deep sea ships to river steamers has been installed. As a matter of fact. the docks at Para have few equals and no superior along the entire seaboard of North America. All this has been done. not alone to exploit the present resources of the valley. but to help its present and future inhabitants to increase its natural wealth.
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The prediction is made that the future traffic of the Amazon Valley will justify all energy and money that Percival Farquhar has so freely given to it. and the date is not far distant when there will be carried on the world's greatest river a commerce that will tax to the utmost a vastly larger commercial fieet than the present one. for the time when this part of Brazil will have railroads to compete with and throttle water transportation is too far in the future for the eye of mortal man to see. or the mind of men of the present generation to conceive. If a personal word be allowed. let me say. in concluding. that after fighting so many years for river improvements. it is rather a pleasant sensation to be connected with a river transportation proposition that does not require government appropriations.
