Note 62 — Chapter X · THE AMAZON.

Mr. Edwards, in his ‘Voyage up the Amazon,’ before alluded to, says, that Pará contains an area of 950,000 square miles, nearly half the area of the United States, and all its territories. Its soil is everywhere of exhaustless fertility, and but an exceedingly small portion of it is unfitted for cultivation. The noblest rivers of the world open communication with its remotest parts, and lie spread like a net-work over its surface.… There is scarcely a product raised in the two countries in which Brazil could not undersell the United States in every market of the world were it not for the export-tax. Its cotton and rice, even during the past year, have been shipped from Pará to New York; its tobacco is preferable to the best Virginian, and can be raised in inexhaustible quantities.… Sooner or later, the Amazon must be the channel of a vast commerce, and Pará must be, from the advantages of its situation, one of the largest cities in the world.—Edwards’s Voyage up the Amazon.

The value of the exports from Pará in 1848 was about £148,720, of which one-fourth was taken by the United States, a like quantity by Portugal, one-fifth by France, one-sixth by Great Britain, and the remainder by the Hanseatic towns, Belgium, Genoa, and Denmark. The value of foreign goods imported in the same year was about £147,322, principally from the United States, Great Britain, Portugal, and France. The increase in the trade of this port will be seen by comparing the preceding statement with the exports and imports of 1851. In that year the value of the former was about £356,200, and that of the latter about £273,067. Proportionately with the aggregate increase, the American and British shares of the trade had slightly advanced; while the French share had declined to one-eighth, and the Portuguese had diminished more than one-half. The trade with Genoa had ceased; but that with Sweden, which had declined since 1846, showed very promising signs of a revival. The principal articles of export from Pará are caoutchouc and cocoa, the mean yearly value of the trade in the former being about £138,000, and of the latter, £67,725. Among the articles of export in which a lesser trade is carried on may be enumerated rice, piasaba rope, annatto, sarsaparilla, hides, nuts, sugar, isinglass, and cotton.