Guaraná (Paullinia sorbilis, Mart.) is a tonic widely used in Brazil and Peru, which has recently been making its way into favour in Europe, France taking the drug readily. It is obtained from seeds, and a paste made which hardens into such a consistency that it can only be powdered by a grater; this powder is dissolved in cold water and taken as a tonic and digestive. One of Brazil’s bottled mineral waters is also made with Guaraná added, and the pink-tinted, rather acrid drink is quite agreeable.

The Brazilian interior, and particularly Amazonas, is so rich in medicinal herbs, seeds and roots, that it would take pages to give their names, and as they are not popularly known, the reader would not be greatly enlightened, but the Quassia (Quassia amara, Linn.) has international fame; Jalap (Piptostegia Pisonis) is an old acquaintance. Many drugs have local names as the Lagryma da Nossa Senhora (Tear of Our Lady), a diuretic; the Melão de São Caetano (S. Caetano’s Melon), whose little fruit of the cucumber class is a medicine, whose stalks furnish a fine fibre, and whose leaves contain potash. There is at least one remarkable astringent, the Cipó Caboclo (Davallia rugosa); Cambará is a much-used base for pectoral syrups; the Batata de Purga and the Purga do Pastor are used all over Brazil; many of the Rubiaceae are used as febrifuges; there are numbers of tonics, as the Laranjeira do Matto (Forest Orange) and the Páo Parahyba and Páo Pereira. Andiroba oil is used to make a skin soap, and also to light the family lamp in northerly states; the Sapucainha (Carpotroche brasiliensis) tree yields a nut containing fifty per cent of oil used locally for rheumatism in Minas, Rio and Espirito Santo; and the Pinhão de Purga’s seeds furnish an oil said to be convertible into gas.

Besides the well-known Vanilla, there is known one fine flavouring and scenting plant, the Páo precioso, one of the Lauraceae; its bark and seeds are sweetly perfumed and it is much used by local chemists.

Brazil could if necessary ship excellent mineral waters abroad. There is an import of bottled waters into Brazil, but they have rivals in the national waters, chiefly found in Minas Geraes and there bottled by Brazilian companies. Perhaps the most popular are Caxambú and Salutaris, but there are others. The chief points of origin are at Aguas Virtuosas, Caxambú, Lambary, Cambuquira, São Lourenço, and the recently opened wells at Araxá.

Altogether the natural gifts of Brazil in minerals and plants are such that not only does she supply the basis for many home-made remedies but also ships drugs abroad; were her resources better investigated and quantities developed she could greatly increase her position as a supplier of medicines to international markets.

CHAPTER VIII
BRAZIL’S EXTERIOR COMMERCE

Studying the commerce of Brazil with the rest of the world, following the remarkable variations in amount of export of certain articles, and the no less remarkable fluctuation in price of others, one comes at last to the conclusion that Brazilian trade has never had a normal year. Almost every twelve months has seen changes taking place which are not the result, in most cases, of the growth, to be expected, along definite lines; influences unforeseen have more than once knocked the bottom out of certain prosperous businesses, production has been affected by remote causes, or stimulated by others as little to be normally reckoned upon. The history of Brazilian exterior commerce, which is largely the history of her exports since purchases depend upon income, shows some of the most sensational transferences of prosperity from one region and industry to another, oddest appearances and disappearances of industries, falls and rises of prices, in commercial records.

To realize something of this it is only necessary to think of the dominance of the northern promontory, in colonial days, when sugar was the great Brazilian staple together with dyewood, and of the total disappearance of the latter—until the last year—from consideration; of the once-feverish gold industry, which shipped over a thousand tons of the refined metal in its hey-day, employing an army of people, and which has now vanished, with the exception of the operations of two British-owned companies; of the obliteration of Brazil’s fame as a diamond producer after the discovery of the blue-clay deposits of Kimberley; of the rise of the once-neglected and uncolonized south to the position of “leader” section of the country with its enormous coffee production, built up during the last forty years; of the phenomena of the rubber export of the extreme north, as well as the new developments in Brazilian business appearing on the horizon, great in potentiality, during the war period, and which may bring Brazil into the front rank of countries exporting chilled beef and producing manganese ore. Few countries on the active list have seen such revolutions in industry; they have been largely due to the variety of Brazilian regions, and they will in all probability be repeated while Brazil opens her great expanses of virgin prairies, forests, and mineral-saturated hills.

The following figures show that between 1915 and 1920, Brazil’s exterior commerce was nearly equal in value to that of the previous ten years:

Ten-year Period Total Importation Values Total Exportation Values Relation of Imports to Exports Average Value of Milreis in Pence
1846–1855 737,720 contos 691,740 contos 106.6% 27 ¹⁄₁₆
1856–1865 1,228,171 „ 1,225,563 „ 100.2% 26 ⁹⁄₃₂
1866–1875 1,551,630 „ 1,902,331 „ 81.5% 21 ⁹⁄₁₆
1876–1885 1,768,564 „ 1,969,515 „ 89.8% 19 ³¹⁄₃₂
1886–1895 3,267,650 „ 4,073,764 „ 80.2% 18 ³⁄₁₆
1896–1905 4,856,634 „ 7,324,009 „ 66.3% 11 ³⁵⁄₆₄
1906–1915 6,331,487 „ 8,115,492 „ 78 % 14 ³⁹⁄₆₄
1916–1920[[21]] 6,063,000 „ 7,397,300 „ 81.5% 13 ¹¹⁄₂₅