During the last few years the State of São Paulo has attained amazing prosperity, principally from the export of coffee—perhaps the most delicious coffee in the world. Although nearly all the rivers of the State of São Paulo are absolutely useless for navigation, owing to dangerous rapids, the State is intersected by innumerable streams, large and small—of great importance for purposes of irrigation and for the generation of electric power. The most important harbour in the State is Santos. Ubatuba, São Sebastião, Iguape and Carranca are ports of less consequence. It is principally from Santos that the exportation of coffee takes place.
The Municipal Theatre, Rio de Janeiro.
The State extends roughly in a parallelogram from the ocean, south-east, to the Parana River, north-west; between the Rio Grande, to the north, and the Rio Paranapanema, to the south, the latter being two tributaries of the Parana River. The State can be divided into two distinct zones, one comprising the low-lying lands of the littoral, the second the tablelands of the interior north-west of the Serra Cadias, Serra do Paranapiacaba and Serra do Mar—along or near the sea-coasts. The first zone 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 São Paulo—showing an increase of 548,854 sacks on eleven months of the previous year. That means a sum of £40,516,006 sterling, or £5,218,564 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, £3 17s. 5½d. a sack—an increase in price of 4,628 reis = 6s. 2d. per sack, on the sales of 1911.
The other exports from the State of São Paulo are flour, mandioca, cassava, bran, tanned hides, horns, fruit (pineapples, bananas, cocoanuts, abacates (alligator pears), oranges, tangerines, etc.), wax, timber (chiefly jacarandà 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 São 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.