Nor is there less contrast in the different industries resulting from the different products of the widely diversified regions, and the population inhabiting them. The extreme north exists largely upon the rubber business, where independent individuals extract gum from wild trees in regions that are sometimes scarcely charted; in the south an imported Italian population performs routine tasks on the highly organized coffee plantations. [Illustration: _Entrance of Rio de Janeiro Harbour_ (Bahia de Guanabara). Showing the farther shore, the forts, the Pão d’Assucar, and the loop of Botafogo Bay. ] In between these two sharply marked divisions there are many industries and many grades of labour, from the _caboclo_ half-Indian of the north to the negro of the centre and the Japanese, Syrian and Pole of the southerly colonies, as well as the descendant of the Portuguese. There is in some parts of Brazil such a mixture of races and tongues that it seems as if the Jesuits were needed again to invent a new _lingua geral_. Contrasts in personality, as well as in soil and climate in Brazil, and the difference in accessibility between an open seaboard and a deep and roadless interior, have all aided to bring about the marked diversity of interests which have more than once proved the salvation of the country. Publicists in Brazil sometimes sound a note of warning against the decentralization that has grown more emphatic since the erection of the Republican system gave autonomous powers to the States; there have been suggestions of separation of north from south on account of their distinct interests; but it is impossible to doubt that a country with a score of industries and of products to offer to world markets is in a better economic position than lands depending upon two or three main sources of income.