"As a result of the difficulty of communications, and also, perhaps, of the defective organization of trade, Brazil is far from forming a national market. Her territory may be decomposed into a host of little isolated markets, each independent of the other, each sufficing to itself. If the prices vary, neither rise nor fall affects the outer world. In Rio I find the sugar-planters in a state of joyful excitement: in a few months the price of sugar has risen by 100 per cent. Two days later I land in Paraná; there, in the narrow tropical belt of seaboard, are a few sugar-plantations, whose crop is sold on the plateau; not in the shape of sugar, but as 'brandy,' _aguardiente_, or, strictly speaking, rum. The local crop of cane is abundant, the owners of the sugar-mills at the foot of the _serra_ are grumbling at having to sell their spirit at far below its usual price.[27] Similarly the price of coffee will fall in San Paolo and in Santos, until the Paulist coffee industry appears in actual danger, and the State undertakes the perilous business of running up the prices to save the planters. Yet in Ceará there are only a few growers, who can barely supply the consumers of the State, who are selling an inferior coffee at double the usual prices, and know no other anxiety than the fear that the drought may threaten their crops. Such contrasts are frequent. If such is the case with luxuries like sugar and coffee, what of the heavier products, whose transport is still more costly?