If the freight rates on the sections served by the subsidized lines are high, greater still are these on the less favored sections where the rapids of the rivers flowing among the seringaes, make navigation difficult, because in these latter there being no freight tables, they make the price according to their judgment, such prices of transport being contracted directly according to the circumstances of the occasion with the shipper, who has to pay the price as the masters of the steamers are pleased or resolved to charge. The owners of seringaes subject themselves to the heavy burdens which they are bound to put up with, in the hope of escaping the damage that the retention of their produce for want of transport would cause them. It is not only the fluvial navigation freights that are much too burdensome, for the freights for ocean navigation are also burdened with this grave defect and thus it is that despite the fact of the distance which separate Brazil from New York and from London, is only half that between the consuming markets and the east, the freights for the latter are incomparably less. It behooves the Governments of countries producing rubber in South America to come to an arrangement so as to confer adequate premiums on the navigation companies to Europe and to the United States, who cheapen their freights and cut down in a satisfactory manner the duration of the voyage. INTERNAL MARKETS FOR RUBBER—ORGANIZATION AND WORKING—TYPES AND QUOTATIONS Located in the centre of the most important rubber producing region of the world, Belém and Manáos, the capitals of the two great states of the north, are, in Brazil, the principal markets of that product. Nearly 90 per cent of the Brazilian exportation proceeds from there, the 16,000 tons of rubber which each of these markets export annually gives place to a considerable mass of business. If it be true that the commercial transactions gyrate around equal quantities of rubber, Belém has the advantage over Manáos, because it is the seat of a great part of the large exporting houses that operate in the two capitals. Its geographical situation which permits of more rapid communication with the markets of the south, and with foreign ports, contributes also towards its greater commercial importance.