Printed in the United States of America
FOREWORD
“Industrial and Commercial South America” has been prepared, as was the descriptive guide, “The South American Tour,” with the desire to aid in promoting acquaintance with South America and, as a natural sequence, friendship and trade.
As far as possible the facts have been gleaned from publications of the various Governments, in a few cases from those of our own, from high officials of many large companies, and from a few authoritative works. While I can hardly hope that despite all care and effort I have made no slip anywhere, I devoutly trust that no errors will be discovered of such magnitude as I have often noted in my reading of important publications and that any here detected will receive lenient criticism.
The vast amount of labor involved in the collection of data and the effort made to attain accuracy has been such that no time remained for rhetorical embellishment unless with delayed publication.
Great pains have been taken with spelling and accents, the correct use of the latter discovered with difficulty, as they are altogether omitted in many works and in others by no means to be depended upon. Yet they are most important for correct pronunciation.
In this text the spelling of some names varies by intention because the two spellings are frequent and authorized, and should therefore be familiar. Thus Marowijne is the Dutch and Maroni the English name for the same river. So Suriname is spelled with and without the e.
South American names ending in either s or z are found, the z common in older publications. The s is a more recent style, taking the place of z even in the middle of a word. Thus Huaráz is also written Huarás and even Cuzco, Cusco. But I drew the line there, as Cuzco is too well established in English to make the new and uglier form desirable.
My spelling of Chilian is consistent throughout. Formerly so spelled by all, Chile being earlier written Chili, when the Spanish form of the name was here adopted many imagined that the adjective should be changed also. For this no reason appears, but the contrary. The accepted ending for adjectives of this nature is ian, unless euphony demands a different, as Venezuelan. Where the ending ean is correctly employed as in Andean and European, also Caribbean, which unhappily is often mispronounced, the e is long and receives the accent. This would be proper in Chilean as the e in Chileno receives the accent; but as a change in our pronunciation is unlikely, it is better to drop the final vowel and add the suffix ian as is done in many other cases; thus Italy, Italian.
The frequent writing of maté in English is absolutely wrong. It is never so printed in Spanish, though naturally in French; but to copy their form for a Spanish word is absurd. The word of course has two syllables, but is accented on the first; not on the last as the written accent would imply.