e by the sea is extremely hot and damp, with swampy and sandy soil
often broken up by spurs from the neighbouring hill ranges. It is well
suited for the cultivation of rice. The second zone, which covers
practically all the elevated country between the coast ranges and the
Parana River, is extraordinarily fertile, with a fairly mild climate and
abundant rains during the summer months. During the winter the days are
generally clear and dry.

It is in that second zone that immense coffee plantations are to be
found, the red soil typical of that tableland being particularly suitable
for the cultivation of the coffee trees.

It is hardly necessary here to go into detailed statistics, but it may be
sufficient to state, on the authority of the Directoria de Estatistica
Commercial of Rio de Janeiro, that during the first eleven months of the
year 1912, 10,465,435 sacks of coffee were exported from Brazil--mostly
from Sao Paulo--showing an increase of 548,854 sacks on eleven months of
the previous year. That means a sum of L40,516,006 sterling, or
L5,218,564 more than the previous year; the average value of the coffee
being, in 1912, 58,071 milreis, or, taking the pound sterling at 15
milreis, L3 17_s._ 51/2_d._ a sack--an increase in price of 4,628 reis =
6_s._ 2_d._ per sack, on the sales of 1911.

The other exports from the State of Sao Paulo are flour, mandioca,
cassava, bran, tanned hides, horns, fruit (pineapples, bananas,
cocoanuts, abacates (alligator pears), oranges, tangerines, etc.), wax,
timber (chiefly jacaranda or rosewood), a yearly decreasing quantity of
cotton, steel and iron, mica, goldsmith's dust, dried and preserved fish,
scrap sole leather, salted and dry hides, wool, castor seed or bean,
crystal, _mate_, rice, sugar, rum (_aguardente_) and other articles of
minor importance.

The area of the State of Sao Paulo has been put down at 290,876 sq. kil.

Its population in 1908 was calculated at 3,397,000, and it had then more
inhabitants to the square kilometre than any other part of Brazil. It is
useless to give actual figures of the population, for none are reliable.
Although this State is the most civilized in Brazil, yet a good portion
of its western territory is still practically a _terra incognita_, so
that even the best official figures are mere guess-work.

Owing to the wonderful foresight of that great man, Antonio Prado--to my
mind the greatest man in Brazil--a new industry has been started in th