Peru.—Peru has great resources, both agricultural and mineral. Cotton is one of the chief products. The ordinary fibre is excelled only by the sea-island cotton of the United States; the long-staple fibre of the Piura is the best grown. The former is generally employed for mixing with wool in the manufacture of underwear, and is sold in the United States and Europe; the latter, used in the manufacture of thread and the web of pneumatic tires, goes mainly to Great Britain.
Cane-sugar is a very large export crop, Great Britain, the United States, and Chile being the principal customers. The area of coffee production is growing rapidly. Coca-growing has become an important industry, and the plantations aggregate about three million trees;[60] a large part of the product is sent to the chemical laboratories of the United States. A small crop of rice for export is grown on the coast.
The Amazon forest products yield a considerable revenue. Rubber and vegetable ivory are the most valuable. Cinchona, or Peruvian bark, however, is the one for which the state is best known; and there is probably not a drug-shop in the civilized world that does not carry it in stock.[61]
Cattle are grown for their hides, and of these the United States is the chief purchaser. The wool of the llama, alpaca, and vicuña is used in manufacture of the cloth known as alpaca, and the value of the shipments to Great Britain usually exceeds one million dollars a year. In the mining regions the llama is used as a pack-animal, and a large part of the mine products reach the markets by this means of transportation. The mines yield silver and copper; in the main the ores are exported to Great Britain to be smelted.
The products already named are the chief exports; the imports are cotton textiles, machinery, steel wares, and coal-oil. Great Britain has about one-half the foreign trade; the United States controls about one-fourth. Callao, the port of Lima, is the market through which most of the foreign trade is carried on. Steamship lines connect it with San Francisco and with British ports. Mollendo is the outlet of Bolivian trade. The railways are short lines extending from the coast.
Ecuador.—This state has but little commercial importance. The only cultivated products for export are cacao, coffee, and sugar. The first-named constitutes three-fourths of the exports, and most of it goes to France. The land is held in large estates, and most of the laboring people are in a condition of practical slavery. The bread-stuffs consumed by the foreign population and the land proprietors are imported. Animals are grown for their hides and these are sold to the United States.
Another manufacture that connects Ecuador with the rest of the world is the so-called "Panama" hat. The material used is toquilla straw, the mid-rib of the screw-pine (Carlodovica palmata). The prepared straw can be plaited only when the atmosphere is very moist, and much of the work is done at night. The hats are made by Indians, who are governed by their own ideas regarding style and shape. They bring from twenty-five to fifty dollars apiece in the American markets, where nearly all the product is sold.[62]
Mule-paths are the only means of inland communication. There is a considerable local traffic on the estuaries of the rivers, but this is confined to the rainy seasons. A railway built by an American company is in operation from Guayaquil, a short distance inland. This city is the chief market for foreign goods, and it is the only foreign port of the Pacific coast of South America in which the volume of trade of the United States approximates that of Germany and Great Britain.