811. The begin nings of settlement. —In 1800, Indians and wild animals roamed over Kan sas, Iowa, and the plains and moun tains beyond. There , were only a few set tlements along the Mississippi River. To-day, the interior grassland plain of South America is in almost the same condition. The white man with his railroads, his steamboats, and his trade is at work only on the edges of this district. The solitary rancher is very likely to be half Portuguese and half Indian. He lives in a one-story house with walls of sun dried brick and roof of grass. As soon as a baby boy can stand up, he wants to ride a horse, for he sees his father galloping about on horseback after the cattle that pasture on this great, unfenced plain, which has only grass and scattered trees as far as one can see.
One of the few built-up places of the grass lands is at the foot of the mountains in Bolivia, where needed food is grown for the miners at La Paz and other towns on the Andean plateau, and carried up to market on muleback.
The Brazilians have built a few railroads to reach the cattle ranches in the southeastern edge of their grasslands, but only in that part of Paraguay between the Parana and the Paraguay rivers may. this region be said to be settled. Even then, Paraguay has only fifteen people per square mile.
812. Paraguay.—Because there are steam boats on the Parana River, the people of Paraguay have a better chance to trade than the people of any other part of this interior region. Most of Paraguay's million people are Indians, negroes, or of mixed blood, chiefly Indian. There are a few Spaniards, and Spanish is the language of the govern ment. Most of the people can neither read nor write, and so their republic does not have a very good government.
Since Paraguay is about the same distance from the equator as Florida and Cuba, oranges and early vegetables can be grown there. These go in oxcarts to the boat land ings, for shipment to the cities on the River Plata, just as Florida sends similar products by train to the colder parts of North America.
Another Paraguayan export is mate, the dried leaf of a. low tree of the holly family. Forests of it grow wild in Paraguay and in the neighboring parts of Brazil, where it may often be seen drying on the grass near a thatched house. The people of this region have long used this leaf for tea, and it is now being shipped from both Paraguay and southern Brazil to Argentina, Uruguay, and even to southern Europe. A little comes
to New York. To prepare mate for market is less work than to prepare tea, so mate is not a costly drink. In the cooler parts of South America, groups of people may often be seen gathered comfortably around a gourd of hot or cold mate.
Most of the money that the people of Paraguay receive is from hides, meat, mate, and the fruit and vegetables they send to the cities on the lower Plata. The Paraguayan storekeeper gets his drugs, knives, clothes, and other wares from the wholesale stores of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Where does the wholesale merchant get his wares? 813. The new cattle industry.—The price of meat in Europe has been going up steadily since the year 1900, and when the people of Argentina and Uruguay began to ship fresh meat to Europe, the price of cattle rose so high that makers of tasajo, or jerked beef (dried and salted), had to leave Argentina and Uru guay and move their plants to the tropic grasslands in Paraguay, and to the Brazilian states of Matto Grosso, Goyaz, and Minas Geraes, where cattle are cheap. Jerked beef will keep in all weathers and climates, and has long been shipped from the ports of the River Plata to Cuba and many tropic countries.
During the World War, there was a great meat-packing plant built in Paraguay. Sheet tin was sent from Pittsburgh to this packing plant, to be made into cans to carry meat back to France. Americans have built meat-packing plants at Rio de Janeiro and Santos, and Brazil has built a railroad to Goyaz in the savannah country where the herds are increasing.
814. A future meat supply.—This vast land of the savannahs, or tropic grasslands, more than half as large as the United States, is one of the few places where the world's market may possibly get a new supply of cheap beef and hides. It is unlike the African grasslands in not having a strong native people, but there are some Indians there, and immigrants are going into the Brazilian section. Among the immigrants are some Japanese. There is every reason to expect that energetic men from somewhere will push their cattle ranches into these grass lands during this century, just as ranches were pushed into the grassy plains of the middle of North America in the last century.