THE TREASURE-HOUSES OF THE WORLD.
BECATJSE we in England feel a momentary pressure of population, or because it is possible to calculate the time at which our own coal, iron, lead, and copper will be exhausted, or, again, because the over-imaginativeness of the English in the United States has made them talk as if a country with an average of twenty persons to the square mile were getting crowded, it is assumed that the resources of our planet are well-nigh exhausted, and that the time is not far distant when it will be as completely worked out as a deserted mine. There are plenty of people who, just because they have been accustomed since their childhood to look at very small maps of the world, entertain a feeling of contempt for the " little " earth they live on. Such persons theoretically, no doubt, are perfectly well aware that the continents of North and South America are not depicted on the same scale as England. As a matter of fact, however, they are absolutely incapable of applying this knowledge. Try as they will, they cannot persuade themselves into realising what vast stretches -of country lie under each square eighth of an inch of coloured cartridge-paper. The amateur astronomer who observed with alarm that he had seen the tail of the comet "within two feet, or perhaps eighteen inches, of Mars," has his exact counterpart in hundreds of ordinary men and women, though in most instances the latter manage to conceal their true feelings some- what better. To those prepossessed of the notion that the world is practically played out, it is the easiest thing possible to run through an atlas and dismiss each continent and the countries it contains as if they were incapable of making any fresh addi- tions to the resources of the world. Europe is, of course, effete. Asia is either barren or else over-populated,—China and India being written-off as full of people, Siberia thought of merely as waterless steppe, and Central Asia regarded as incapable of producing anything better than brigands and nomads. North America, no doubt, can hold a few more people, but its stores of natural wealth have been discounted ; while South America is either all Andes or half-submerged tropical forest and burnt-up pampas. Australasia, again, is accounted for by the fringe of settlers on the coast ; and as for Africa, that is either full to overflowing with Negroes, or else held by the demons of marsh-fever and malaria. In truth, there is no exaggeration in saying that persons who call themselves educated, often assume towards the world an attitude of pitying contempt, such as business men take up in the case of some old firm which, though once prosperous, has at last got to the end of all its capital.
Yet, in spite of the shock which it may occasion those who hold such views, it is necessary to declare that so far from the world being played out, it has hardly begun to be worked. It is, indeed, not too much to say that if all the gold, the silver, the diamonds, the emeralds, and the rabies, the iron, the lead, and the copper, that have been got out of the earth since man first learnt to appreciate the uses of the metals and the beauty of precious stones, could be heaped together and their value reckoned, they would prove but a mere handful when compared with what remains to be won in the now unknown portions of the globe. That this is no dream, but the soberest truth, is constantly being shown to us. Some adventurous traveller dives into an untrodden corner of this or that continent almost at random, takes what hurried survey he can of the land and of what it is capable of yielding, and reveals that some dark place of earth is rich in material resources almost beyond the possibility of calculation. Only last year two Spanish Americans—an account of their wanderings was given in a paper read on Monday before the British Association— pounced, as it were, for a moment on those portions of Peruvian and Bolivian territory which lie east of the Andes—a land of almost incredible fascination, healthy, fruitful, and unoccupied, through which flow the countless affluents of the Amazon— rivers often far larger than the Thames, though more than two thousand miles from the ocean to which they are hurrying. From one portion of this region, which covers about four thousand square miles, or a little more than half Wales, gold can be produced in almost unlimited amount. The quantity of auriferous land already known is 11,021 million cubic metres, and the calculated value of the precious metal it contains is no less than E300,000,000. In other words, as much as fifteen times the amOunt of gold raised annually during the last few years, and thirty times as much as the Bank Reserve, is lying waiting to be won in the Province of Sandia. How much more could be found in the country to the north, which is now" unexplored and occupied by the savages," cannot, of course, be calculated, but this at least is certain. The Spaniards and their American descendants have hardly scratched the surface of a hundredth-part of the great mountain rampart which runs down the coast-line of South America. When these highlands are once properly explored, it will in all probability be found that their mineral wealth exceeds the wildest expectations that have ever been formed of them. Let the population of the world increase as it may, and the uses of the various metals be doubled or quadrupled, the Andes and the Cordilleras will not fail in affording enough to supply every possible human need. For not only are gold and silver to be found, but coal, copper, and lead, and, in addition, marble and jasper are present in the greatest abundance. Nor, again, are the mineral deposits of Northern Bolivia and Eastern Peru made almost worthless, as sometimes happens, by being situated in a country unfit for human habitation. These regions can prove their fitness for occapation by the fact that in former times they were occupied by a very large population. As to the former ocupants of these and of the neighbouring regions of Peru, some very curious information is contained in the account of another series of explorations which is like- wise given in the paper read before the British Association. Senor Carlos Fry lately followed the course of the Urubamba —a stream which may be described as the main artery of the interior of Peru—to its junction with the Amazon. On either side of the deep and fertile valleys through which it runs extend artificial terraces constructed on the hillsides, and stretching for hundreds of miles. Along the course of this river which flows from Lake Titicaca.into the Amazon are to be found the gigantic ruins of many ancient Peruvian cities, temples, and fortresses, and of works for irrigating the country. Indeed, the remains of human ocwation show that the land was once made use of, as at the present day it is utilised in China and Japan alone. The highly civilised population which occupied these regions in the days when Cuzco was the capital of Peru, cannot, it is reckoned, have fallen far short of one hundred millions. No doubt many people who read these figures will entirely refuse to believe such an estimate. A hundred millions, they will argue, is about the population of Germany, Austria, and France taken together. Hence it is inconceivable that a corner of Peru can even have held such a vast concourse of people. To reason so, however, is to forget that the valley of the Urubamba, from its source in the Lake Titicaca to the Amazon, is over eighteen hundred miles long, and that if peopled as thickly as the Delta, it could easily hold the estimated numbers. In all human probability, of course, it will never hold such a population again ; still, even if this portion of by no means the largest of the Republics of South America has so much spare room in it, there is no need to despair of people finding standing-places in the world. The whole population of Europe could stream up the valley of the Amazon, and hardly make a noticeable impression upon the vast solitudes that surround the mighty river's thousand affluents. As yet, the interior of Brazil has not been touched by immigration, but when the pressure once becomes strong enough, it will be discovered that the land that has been left to the last is some of the best. In many ways colonisation will be immensely easier than in Canada, Australia, or Africa, for the Amazon is unsurpassed as a natural highway. At Iquitos, a port on the river belonging to Peru, and some two thousand miles as the crow flies from its mouth, the stream has thirty-five fathoms or two hundred and ten feet of water, and hence there is at least one road open all the year round to immigrants which is far more suitable to heavy traffic than -even the best railway line in the world.
It seems, however, somewhat absurd to talk of the yet un- touched resources of the globe, and to confine our remarks to South America. In reality she has no monopoly either of virgin mines or healthy lands waiting to be tilled and occupied. In Siberia, in spite of the steady drift of Russian peasantry to its southern provinces, where the grape ripens in the open air, and where many of the unpeopled districts resemble, it is said, -nothing so much as an English park—rich grass-lands studded with splendid timber—there is room for three generations of the over-spill of Europe; while if the gold of Asiatic Muscovy were once properly worked, the question of the shrinkage of the -circulating medium would be at end for ever. As was -shown by Captain Wiggin's expedition to the Kara Sea, the difficulty of transporting the necessary machinery alone pre- vents the immediate establishment of an .immense quartz- -crushing industry. In Australia, again, there is every reason to believe that fresh explorations will add immensely to the -value of the island-continent. We know no more of it at present than a man knows of England who has crossed it on foot on one thin line, and who, if he happened to walk from Essex to Devonshire, might fancy that there were no minerals in the island. Since, then, our knowledge is of such a kind, it is quite possible that the interior of Australia may be as rich in precious ores as one tiny piece of the coast-fringe proved thirty years ago. There are plenty of tracts there as big as England which practically are entirely unknown, and there is no reason why one of them should not be sown with nuggets as large as ever rewarded the toil of the luckiest digger of the last generation. But if South America, Siberia, and Australia are still more than half terra incognitz, the interior of Africa may claim to be virtually undiscovered. The geographers fancy that they know the general run of the mountains and inland waters, but not one of them would venture to declare it impossible or even unlikely that a range -of mountains higher than the Alps, or an inland sea as big as the Caspian, may not be one of the jealously guarded secrets of the Dark Continent. One thing, however, is certain about Africa. The country north of the Transvaal and of Bechuana- land is full of auriferous quartz, while the valleys of the rivers that flow down to the Gold Coast offer a splendid field for the operations of gold-washing. In truth, the resources of the world will last not only our time, but for countless centuries -to come; and man is as likely to abandon the use of gold, iron, and stone altogether, as to exhaust the deposits that are stored in the earth and awaiting his commands.
Previous page
