It is the case that in the tropics, particularly in the equable equatorial belt, many evils of the temperate zone are avoided, chiefly those due to cold and to sudden changes of temperature. It is this equatorial belt of equable temperature and heavy rainfall that I chiefly have in mind, for it comprises those vast regions of prolific vegetation which appear capable of supporting so large a population. The white man already rules, or has marked off for rule, the whole of the equatorial belt, but who is to be the peasant cultivating this belt? In those parts of tropical Asia already peopled by industrious Orientals there can never be a white peasantry. Equatorial Africa presents great differences in different parts with respect to native population, and the question of a possible future for white peasantry is there a complicated one. In South America, however, there are vast equatorial regions either wholly unpeopled, or sparsely inhabited by tribes of that Indian stock which has elsewhere proved so slight an impediment to the establishment of the white labourer. Served by a system of rivers unrivalled elsewhere in equatorial regions, already partitioned among Christian Governments, and for the most part uninhabited, the forests and savannahs of Equatorial South America offer the readiest field for the establishment on a vast scale of a white peasantry under the equator. By clearing the scrub within one or two hundred yards of his cottage, and by employing wire screens, the cultivator can protect himself against malaria, and his crops come not once, but several times a year. If the Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian peasant were to turn his attention to this field, instead of, or in addition to, that of navvy work, great things might come of it. The circumstance that South America is a Roman Catholic continent, where the Latin races are dominant, would enormously favour the experiment. On the Zone, the Spanish labourer works in order to save and to depart, the _milieu_ being foreign to him and unattractive. In a Latin State it would be different. In writing of the possibilities of the white race in the equatorial zone it is understood that the problem relates to the lowlands. There are, of course, favoured highlands, such as those of Colombia, where the temperature is at the same time moderate and equable and the climate appears admirably adapted to white men. A healthy city life in the tropics would be easily attainable in a new country settled wholly by white people and under a medical despotism.