Note 1423 — Chapter XVII · —The Influence Of Climate

Tropical regions, however, may profit by the fact that their mountains and plateaus permit the cultivation of temperate crops. India during the last century has introduced tea culture extensively on the Assam and Nilgiri Hills, and in the Himalayan valleys up to an altitude of 7000 feet.1423 Besides this temperate product, it has put large areas into cotton, chiefly in the peninsular plateau of the Deccan, and by means of these two crops has caused a considerable readjustment in world commerce.1424 Nevertheless, here the infringement of the principle of tropical production in the torrid zone is after all slight. In tropical America, on the other hand, the case is quite different; this region presents an interesting paradox in relation to its foreign commerce. Here the highlands are the chief seats of population. They contain, moreover, the most industrious and intelligent native stock, due to geographical and historical causes running back into the ancient civilizations, as well as the largest proportions of immigrant Europeans. This is true not only of the Cordilleran states from northern Mexico to the borders of Chile, but also of Brazil, whose center of population falls on the plateau behind Rio de Janeiro and Santos. The isolation of these high plateaus excludes them to a serious extent from foreign trade, while their great altitude permits only temperate products, with the exception of sub-tropical coffee, which is their only crop meeting a great demand. The world wants, on the other hand, the long list of lowland tropical exports which torrid America furnishes as yet in inadequate amounts, owing to the lack of an industrious and abundant lowland population. Commerce will eventually experience a readjustment in these localities to the natural basis of tropical production; but how soon or how effectively this change will take place depends upon the question of immigration of foreign tropical peoples, or the more difficult problem of white acclimatization.1425