Far more doubtful is the future of the third section, the Selvas, or forest-covered Amazonian plain. It includes nearly all the western half of Brazil, and the eastern parts of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. An estimate of its area at 2,300,000 square miles, including the basin of the Tocantins river, might not be extravagant. It is an almost absolute level 1200 miles long, from north to south, and 1500 wide. Those parts which lie along the great river and its larger tributaries are so low that these rivers when they rise in the rainy season spread out their waters for from sixty to eighty miles or more on each side, and immense stretches of country not actually flooded become impassable morasses. But away back from the rivers there are higher grounds, flat, but raised sufficiently to be above the inundations; and on its western margin the great plain is bordered by a stretch of undulating country before the foot of the Andes is reached. All the country, whether level or undulating, is covered with forest. The trees grow so close that there is no way of travelling except by boat along the streams. Intense heat and abundant moisture combine to make vegetation so profuse and rank that ground cleared of trees is, after three or four years, covered thick again.
In this vast area there are, except in a few trading stations along the river, only one of them a considerable town,[150] practically no inhabitants, perhaps not a human being to a square mile. The few and scattered inhabitants outside these stations are Indians, nearly all savages, most of them heathens. Some are warlike, and skilful in the use of their bows and of the long blow pipe from which they discharge poisoned darts, but the greater number are timid and feeble, an easy prey to the rubber gatherers, who have in some places shewn themselves more cruel than the wildest Indian.[151] Here and there in Peru and Bolivia there are a few cultivated districts in the undulating ground along the base of the Andes, where some sugar, coffee, and cocoa are raised. But the only product of any commercial importance is rubber, collected from several kinds of trees, and exported in vast quantities down the tributary rivers into the Amazon and thence to the sea. The whole region, however, appears to be of extreme fertility, and to this the size of the trees, as well as the profusion of the vegetation, bears witness. Most of it is covered with vegetable soil accumulated during many thousands of years, and has never been touched by human hand. As many of the woods are valuable, there might be a considerable trade in timber, but the cost of getting out great logs is practically prohibitive, for the trees are of so many different kinds that it is hard to obtain a large supply of the same kind on any given area, and there has hitherto been no means of transport, except by water.
Can these Amazonian Selvas, which form the largest unoccupied fertile space on the earth's surface, be reclaimed for the service of man?
This question is not a practical one for our generation, and I mention it only because it raises an interesting problem, the solution of which will one day be attempted, since so vast and so fertile an area cannot be left forever useless. Since men have begun to make railways through mountains and deserts, and to build bridges across arms of the sea like the Firth of Forth, and most of all since the cutting of the Panama Canal, it has become an accepted doctrine that every work is only a question of cost.
If ever, when the world is fuller than it is now, it becomes worth while to attempt the reclamation of this vast region, the process would probably begin by placing colonists on the more elevated grounds above the annual inundation and setting them to clear away the wood and cultivate the soil. Hard work would be needed to keep down the efforts of Nature to hold her own against man by her tremendous vegetative power, but those who know the country believe that this could be done, and that the difficulties of transport through the lower parts of the forest to the banks of navigable streams might also be overcome. Hundreds of thousands of square miles might be in this way rendered habitable and cultivable, assuming that capital and the proper kind of labour could be obtained. To reclaim the lower land along the banks of the rivers by constructing embankments or levees like those along the lower Mississippi would be a more arduous undertaking, and might involve an expenditure disproportionate to the results.
Whence would come the capital? If the country belonged to some great and wealthy nation, in which there were many enterprising men seeking employment for their wealth, the thing might be attempted on a great scale, perhaps even by the nation itself. Whether capitalists from other countries will embark on such an enterprise, which could hardly be carried out except by the aid of a government, is doubtful. If attempted at all, it must be on a large scale, for such gradual colonization by settlers coming in small groups, as would be the natural process in temperate regions, is scarcely possible in a country where man has so powerful a nature to overcome.
Supposing the capital provided, the question of labour would remain. Who would do the work? and when the work was done, who would inhabit and cultivate the lands reclaimed? Thirty years ago the fear of tropical diseases would have made these regions seem impossible for white men, even as foremen or overseers. To-day the discovery that insects are the chief poison carriers of disease has reduced our fears. But to-day it still remains doubtful whether the men of any European race can retain health and vigour in a climate so moist and so hot, and so far away from sea or mountain breezes, as are the central parts of the Selvas. It is at any rate unlikely that they could do continuous open-air work there. If white men cannot be employed, what other labour would be available? As the native Indians are too few and too feeble to be worth regarding, it would be necessary to bring in some race native to the tropics which had already formed habits of steady industry. If the world were to-day what it was a century ago, this would be a simple matter. Negroes would be kidnapped in Africa and taken up the rivers to work under white or mulatto overseers. Nowadays, compulsion being impossible, persuasion alone remains. Negroes abound on the east side of Brazil, but they have plenty of land there and are masters of the situation, seeing that the planters are more eager to get them than they are to work for the planters. Nowhere in South America is there a problem of the unemployed. Whether Chinese or Indian coolies could be brought into the Selvas, and whether if brought they would remain under the control of the white employers who had imported them, are questions which may one day arise. Nothing is being done now to exploit these regions except as sources of wild rubber supply. But it seems certain that coming generations will endeavour to turn to the service of man the largest unused piece of productive soil that remains anywhere on the earth's surface.
Leaving this forest wilderness out of account, and confining our view to the near future, can any estimate be made of the probable growth of population in South America generally, and of the total it may reach by the end of the present century?
As respects the temperate regions, there exist some data for a conjecture: Should the influx of immigrants belonging, as do the Italians, to a prolific stock be maintained, the countries south of the Tropic of Capricorn may in A.D. 2000 contain at least one hundred millions of people.
As respects the equatorial regions, which now receive hardly any immigrants and in which the natural growth of population is slow, no such data exist. Considering, however, the material development which is going on in some, and may be expected in all, of them, they also may probably increase in population which would bring them from twenty-eight up to at least forty millions.[152] Were this to happen, the continent would have by A.D. 2000 a population not far short of one hundred and fifty millions. At present, with only about forty-five millions, it has much less than half the population of North America, now about one hundred and twenty millions. The rapid growth of North America, likely to continue for two generations at least, may make the proportion between the two much the same in A.D. 2000 as it is to-day.