or to Villa Church. CHAPTER XLIX BRAZIL: RESOURCES AND INDUSTRIES Brazilian industries as we have already seen have the variety befitting a country of its enormous area. The States of Minas, Pernambuco, and São Paulo can produce almost anything, but even these have specialties. Of the various products of Brazil, as in the other South American countries except Bolivia, the vegetable are the most important, with coffee far in the lead. Stock raising comes next; minerals of prodigious variety and richness are third. Manufactures, developing later, may in time largely satisfy the requirements of the inhabitants. AGRICULTURE =Coffee=, we all know, is in value the most important crop of the country, growing over vast areas, chiefly in what we may call the northern part of South Brazil, the States on or near the edge of the tropics, São Paulo, Rio, Minas, and Espirito Santo. North and south of these States coffee grows and flourishes more or less according to local conditions. There are said to be 1,400,000,000 coffee trees in Brazil, which produce perhaps three-fourths of the world supply, more than half of them in the State of São Paulo. The State contains about 60,000 plantations. Probably more than 1¹⁄₂ billions are invested in the industry, $900,000,000 in São Paulo. The larger part of the crop moves over the wonderful railway between São Paulo and Santos and goes out from that port, some from adjoining States as well as from São Paulo. For ten years the average value of the coffee exported was $120,000,000. Great fortunes were made by some who embarked many years ago in the business; the coffee king, Colonel Schmidt, who has 8,000,000 trees and produces 11,000 or 12,000 tons of coffee yearly, was himself a poor immigrant. But the best lands were taken up long since; production is increasing in other countries, as well as consumption, and there is not now the opportunity of earlier days. São Paulo especially has the rich red soil that the plant loves, the sloping ground, the right climate, and the water supply, over a greater extent of accessible territory, probably, than any other land in the world; though districts in other countries produce coffee of equal excellence. Here of course there are different varieties and grades, the original plants having been imported from Arabia and Java and preserving their characteristics. Life on the _faezendas_, as the farms are called, is agreeable both for the rich proprietor and for the Italian and other laborer, who has his own garden and whose wife and children help in the picking season. The rows of trees extend for miles in even lines; there are great cement drying grounds in the sun, pulping machinery, and store-houses. The business generally is in the hands of Brazilians, though there are foreign stock companies, paying large dividends. Coffee is about 40 per cent of the Brazil exports and 97 per cent of São Paulo’s.