t is of finer quality than at Trinidad, but it
is hard to reach. Some believe that the two deposits are connected by a
subterranean passage and supplied from the same source. It was from this
inland lake of asphalt that the material was procured to protect the New
York subway tunnels from moisture, so it is said.

In the central part of Venezuela are the llanos which are said to be
about the best pasture lands in the world. The chief industry here is
cattle raising. More than two million head of cattle feed, upon these
llanos, but they are capable of feeding many times that number.

One reason why the people of this country have no ambition to lay up for
the future or even get large herds of cattle has been because of the
numerous revolutions of the past. Every time they have succeeded in
getting large herds of cattle or stores of grain a revolution would come
and their property be seized and often destroyed.

No people can be prosperous and happy without a stable government,
schools and colleges and the influences that are uplifting. This is the
great need of many of the countries of South America today. Just here it
is well for the farmers of this country to congratulate themselves. The
writer of these lines has traveled nearly all over the world and having
been a farmer all his early life it is only natural that he would try
to study the problems of the farmers in all lands.

It is therefore with pride that one can say that considering all the
complex problems with which the American farmer has to grapple, he is a
hundred times better off than his brother farmers in any country in the
world. He is more independent, has more privileges, more opportunities
for making the most of life, has higher ideals, and lives better than
the tillers of the soil in any other country on earth.

CHAPTER XX

A LAND OF GREAT INDUSTRIES--BRAZIL

You could take a map of the whole United States, lay it down on Brazil
and still have room for England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Denmark and
Switzerland left. Walk around Brazil and you have traveled a distance
equal to two-thirds of a journey around the globe. If every man, woman
and child in the United States were placed in Matto Grasso, the state in
Brazil where Roosevelt discovered the "River of Doubt," in 1914, that
state would not have as many people to the square mile as England has at
this moment. If all the people on earth were placed in Brazil the
population of that coun