The trouble with Pará is that the people think of nothing, deal in nothing and dream of nothing but rubber. To quote the American Consul: “Last year the United States took twenty thousand tons of crude rubber at a cost of $64,000,000, and we are still howling for more. The other things we took are small, although Brazil nuts, balsams, deerskins and a few other items amounted to something. What did we send them? Practically nothing that they could buy elsewhere. Some flour, petroleum, hardware and such other things as they themselves have looked up and found good.” And yet the city of Pará is a thousand miles nearer to New York than it is to London or Hamburg, where the principal buying is done. The federal government receives twenty per cent. of the market value of every ton of rubber shipped, and in return promises, at some time in the future, to give the people good roads and other improvements. That happy day has not yet arrived, but rubber seems to be becoming higher each year and more difficult to procure. This perhaps accounts for the lack of improvement in some directions, that neither government nor people take time to think of anything except the one staple of rubber. The city of Santa Maria de Belem do Pará is the principal port of the Amazon basin, and the greatest rubber shipping port in the world. It lies nearly a hundred miles from the Atlantic, but is as much on the Atlantic as New Orleans is on the Gulf, and is usually called an Atlantic port. It is only a few miles from the equator, and consequently is quite hot, for its elevation is only a few feet above sea level. And yet right here, almost on the “line,” has grown up a beautiful city of over one hundred thousand people, who enjoy life and live almost as many years as those in more favourable locations. This city with the long name is generally known as Pará, although Belem, meaning Bethlehem, is the proper name. It is perhaps the prettiest city in Brazil, except Rio de Janeiro, and has many parks and plazas filled with the luxuriant vegetation and noble palms which grow so luxuriantly here. Statues ornament nearly all of their public squares and parks, and many of them are well done. The public buildings are numerous and tasty, as is most of the architecture of the country. The sanitary conditions of the city have been greatly improved in the past few years, and a new sewer system to be worked by pumps something like the New Orleans method has just been begun. It is as a shipping port that the city is best known. To quote again from the American Consul: “Eight hundred and fifty-three steamers entered the port of Pará in 1908, having a tonnage of nine hundred and fifty thousand tons, but it was mainly remarkable for the fact that we did not fly the flag on even one cargo boat.” It is only in the last few decades that this city has become very important, for no longer ago than the Civil War Pará was only a tropical trading port.