Both Spain and Portugal are poorly equipped with means for transportation. The railways lack organization, and freight rates are excessive. Not a little of the transportation still depends on the ox-cart and the pack-train. The merchant marine has scarcely more than a name; the foreign commerce is carried almost wholly in British or French bottoms. The imports are mainly cotton, coal, lumber, and food-stuffs—these in spite of the fact that every one save lumber might be produced at home.
Wine and fruit products, iron ore, and quicksilver are leading exports. Of these the United States purchases wine and raisins for home consumption and lace and filigree work for the trade with Mexico. Spain has a considerable trade in cotton goods with her colonies, the Canary Islands, and the African provinces of Rio de Oro and Adrar.
Portugal likewise supplies her foreign possessions—Goa (India), Macao (China), and the Cape Verde and Azores Islands—with home products. The chief Portuguese trade, however, is with Great Britain and Brazil.
Madrid is the capital of Spain. Barcelona is the chief commercial centre. Valencia, Alicante, Cartagena, and Malaga, are all ports of fruit and wine trade. Oporto has been made famous for the port wine that bears its name. Probably not one per cent. of the port now used, however, comes from Oporto, and not many Malaga raisins come from Malaga.
Switzerland.—This state is situated in the heart of the highest Alps. The southeastern half is above the altitude in which food-stuffs can be produced, and probably no other inhabited country has a greater proportion of its area above the limits of perpetual snow. A considerable area of the mountain-slopes affords grazing. The valley-lands of the lake-region produce a limited amount of food-stuffs, but not enough for the sparse population.
Politically, Switzerland is a republic, having the position of a "buffer" state between Germany, Italy, France, and Austria-Hungary. Racially, the state is divided among Italians, French, and Germans; as a matter of fact, however, the old Helvetian spirit, which not even Cæsar could destroy, is still a great factor in dominating the people; this, with their montane environment, gives the Swiss a very positive nationality.
The agricultural interests of the state are developed to their utmost; two-thirds of the bread-stuffs, however, are purchased from the United States, the plains of Bohemia, and Russia. Cherries, apples, grapes, and other fruit are cultivated in every possible place, and as these can be delivered to any part of western and central Europe within a day, the fruit industry is a profitable one.
Cattle are bred for dairy purposes, but those for beef must be very largely imported, Austria-Hungary and Italy selling the needed supply. Goats are raised for their hides, and the latter are converted into Morocco leather. Of the dairy products, cheese is in many respects the most important; Gruyère cheese is exported to nearly every country. On account of the long distance from populous centres milk cannot be transported; much of it is, therefore, condensed, and in that form exported.
A peculiar feature of the dairy industry is the fact that it is constantly moving. The dairy herds begin to pasture in the lowlands as soon as the snow melts, and as fast as the snow line recedes up the mountains the cattle follow. The milk is converted into butter and cheese wherever the herds may be, and the second crop of grass below them is cut and cured for winter forage.