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Show A REMINDER OF EARLY DAYS. Ask the first man you meet as to the location and size of Para and he will confess ignorance, unless he is a close student of late geographies. Para is at the mouth of the Para River, one of the large streams of the northern part of South America and not a great distance cast of the mouth of that mighty river, the Amazon. Para is a city of five, clean, well-paved streets, with a good water supply, excellent trolley service and beautiful parks, where the, women buy picture hats costing $100 to $300, and where a commercial traveler must figure fig-ure on an expense account of not less than $12 a day. This city is the entrepot for all that vast country drained by the Amazon, and that means an empire of greater proportions than any country of Europe, with the single exception of Russia. Our commercial agent at Para has been writing home of the great trade opportunities, but he adds that the high cost of living in the United States is cheapness itself when compared with prices in this Brazilian city, and at points up the Amazon, and he gives a few items. Flour costs $20 a barrel at towns on the river. Shoes of ordinary quality cost $15 a pair and beer $1.25 a bottle at Manaos, 1,000 miles from Para, while something is added to the cost of each article for the next 1,000 miles. Every stick of timber, every nail, the tiles for roofing, cement, paving stones and curbing for the streets, hardware for buildings, glass, paint and putty, and all articles of human requirement had to be shipped in, and are still required, because nothing originates or can be supplied along the Amazon river or its tributaries, except rubber. Food of all kinds, liquors and all fluids, except the river water come from a distance. The course up 3,000 miles of any of these rivers show only banks of impenetrable jungle running indefinite distances back from the river. riv-er. In this jungle are the rubber trees and the people gathering the gum. The supplies for them must come vast distances, be transported on the backs of men, in many cases after long canot hauls, and consumed con-sumed as sparingly as possible. Hotel service in Para is $6 a day, and ginger ale sells two drinks for $1.25. Linen-coated paper collars cost $125 per dozen and linen collars, old style, ordinary 3-ply English make, cost $6 per dozen, Money commands 12 per cent. But these high figures simply add to the attractiveness of the field for American dealers. Business is not done on a small scale either. For instance, the representative of an American overalls factory, on landing at Para, received as an introduction an order from one house for 10,000 dozen men's overalls. They buy anything in Para, from toys to the highest priced automobiles. These trade conditions and high prices are reminders of early days in western mining camps, when just such prices prevailed and j ' business was brisk, with fortunes being made in a season or two. ; There are cities in South America that are growing with wonder- full rapidity, where the hand of Fortune is beckoning young Ameri- : cans who, with half the courageous and venturesome spirit of the j men 'who came west in '47 and '49 and even later in the period of j the silver mining excitements, can win for themselves wealth and j affluence. |