303. hot, humid places suit the cacao tree. The ch6colate that we all like is made by grinding up the seeds of the cacao. Every girl and boy who eats chocolate candy has probably had some thing from Ecuador. These seeds, called beans, grow in a big pod somewhat like a cantaloup.
For a long time, Ecuador exported more cacao beans than any other country, but there is much cacao land in the rainy zone along the equator, and now there is more cacao grown in Brazil (Amazon Valley) than in Ecuador. The greatest cacao region in the world is the coast of Guinea in West Africa, where negro slaves still work on the chocolate plantations.
The cacao beans go to many chocolate factories in England, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, and Spain, for the people in all those countries are as fond of chocolate as we in America are.
The plain along the west coast of South America has many kinds of climate. In Ecuador, it is covered by the jungle, in which the cacao trees grow if men will cut the other trees away. In Peru and north Chile, the wind blows away from the coast so that no moisture comes from the ocean; and the mountains are so high that very little moisture can get over them from the east. This makes the coast a glaring white desert, as we have seen. (Sec. 297.) (Fig. 303.) In the south of Chile the wind blows from the ocean over the high Andes, so the mountain sides are dripping wet, green with forests below, and white with snow above, very much as on the coast of Alaska.
304. Peru central Peru some streams come down from the Andes, and the people use the water for irrigation. Some of it is led into sugar plantations, and the sugar is sent to the United States and to England. In some places in north Chile, it is so dry that drinking water is hard to get. Here, where Chico and the nitrate workers live, are copper mines. Copper is the second export of Chile, but nitrate of soda is much more important.
At Santiago we come to.the good farm ing country, which is like central California. Here the west winds bring rain from the sea; therefore it is dry on the eastern side of the mountains. In the southern third of Chile, the shores and is lands, like those of South Alaska, are so rocky that there is little space for men to live.
Chile is a very narrow country, lying between the top of the Andes and the ocean. How far would it reach if we laid it east and west with one end at New York City? How far north would it reach if one end were placed at the lower end of Lower California? Of Florida? Chile is about as large as California and Oregon together. Most of its people are of the Spanish race. They are industrious, and call themselves the Yankees of South America. Santiago, the capital, is a larger city than Washington, D. C., and is con nected with Buenos Aires by the only railroad that crosses the Andes.
On the Strait of Magellan is Punta Are nas, the most southerly town in the world.