To realize something of this it is only necessary to think of the dominance of the northern promontory, in colonial days, when sugar was the great Brazilian staple together with dyewood, and of the total disappearance of the latter—until the last year—from consideration; of the once-feverish gold industry, which shipped over a thousand tons of the refined metal in its hey-day, employing an army of people, and which has now vanished, with the exception of the operations of two British-owned companies; of the obliteration of Brazil’s fame as a diamond producer after the discovery of the blue-clay deposits of Kimberley; of the rise of the once-neglected and uncolonized south to the position of “leader” section of the country with its enormous coffee production, built up during the last forty years; of the phenomena of the rubber export of the extreme north, as well as the new developments in Brazilian business appearing on the horizon, great in potentiality, during the war period, and which may bring Brazil into the front rank of countries exporting chilled beef and producing manganese ore. Few countries on the active list have seen such revolutions in industry; they have been largely due to the variety of Brazilian regions, and they will in all probability be repeated while Brazil opens her great expanses of virgin prairies, forests, and mineral-saturated hills. The following figures show that between 1915 and 1920, Brazil’s exterior commerce was nearly equal in value to that of the previous ten years: _Ten-year _Total _Total _Relation _Average Period_ Importation Exportation of Imports Value of Values_ Values_ to Milreis Exports_ in Pence_ 1846–1855 737,720 contos 691,740 contos 106.6% 27 ¹⁄₁₆ 1856–1865 1,228,171 „ 1,225,563 „ 100.2% 26 ⁹⁄₃₂ 1866–1875 1,551,630 „ 1,902,331 „ 81.5% 21 ⁹⁄₁₆ 1876–1885 1,768,564 „ 1,969,515 „ 89.8% 19 ³¹⁄₃₂ 1886–1895 3,267,650 „ 4,073,764 „ 80.2% 18 ³⁄₁₆ 1896–1905 4,856,634 „ 7,324,009 „ 66.3% 11 ³⁵⁄₆₄ 1906–1915 6,331,487 „ 8,115,492 „ 78 % 14 ³⁹⁄₆₄ 1916–1920[21] 6,063,000 „ 7,397,300 „ 81.5% 13 ¹¹⁄₂₅