The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-30
ON THE MIGHTY PARMA RIVER

the \Parana and Paraguay to where am now, the country is one vast plain. Until reached the Paraguay river saw no woods to speak of. and I was told that the plains extended back on both sides for hundreds of miles. With the exception of Uruguay, the plains are the only parts of the basin that have been developed. and they still are on the edge of their beginning. Nevertheless. they raise tens of millions of cattle, scores of millions of sheep and they are now ex- porting more wheat and corn than any other part of the globe.
 This vast basin Is in the shape of horseshoe. with the Parana flowing from the toe down through the center. The Andes and the strip of highlands that crosses Brazil form the back and upper end of the shoe, while 1t is bound on the south by the plains of Patagonla. The most of the basin has been built up by the rivers, and their silt has made 1t one of the most fertile lands or the globe.
 Moreover the climate is fit for white men. The greater part of the basin IS as healthy as any part of the Mlsslsslpp' valley, the seasons being those ot ihe Mississippi reversed. We go south in the winter to get warm. These people go north. A greater part of the country is in the temperate zone, and il may be com pared with the United States. Paraguay is like Louisiana or Florida ana the northern part of Argentina has sugar anu cotton plantations. Further south the climate is temperate as that or our middle states, and in the far south the winters compare with our semi-desert northwest Three-fourths of Paraguay, through which I am now steamng, IS In the temperate zone. The climate IS ike that of southern California and the or ange orchards are to be seen everywhere.
 I wish I could give you some moving pictures of my ride up the Parana river. The stream is like an island-studded sea moving on slowly down toward the ocean, The channels are so wide that they nave waves like the waters of lake, and the sun dances over a golden expanse or rising and falling pillows.
 The channel winds this way and that Now it runs straight north and south, and now almost east and west, Within the last few years the river has been carefully surveyed and there are now light buoys which mark the route or the steamers. The channel is about l2 feet deep all the way from Buenos Aires to Paraguay, and the volume of the river is next to that of the Amazon among the great streams of the globe. pr. Elmer Corthell, the well known American en- gineer, who assisted Capt James B. Eads in making the Mississippi jetties and who was engaged on the port works at Buenos Aires, estimates that the annual flow of the Parana is double that Of the Ganges, four times that of the Danube and five times that of the Nile. It is S0 per cent larger than the flow of the Mis- sissippi, and three times as great as the volume of the St. Lawrence. In other words all the water that annually pours down over Niagara Falls through the downspout of the great lakes and out to the ocean is only one-third as large as that which flows through the Parana system. this great downspout of the An des This system also has greater falls
 than Niagara. in those of Iguazu on tht Alto-Parana. The 1guazu Falls are higher than Niagara, and they are twice as wide
 I shall write again of them.
 The transportation of the Parana is
 at it's beginning. So far it has bee' controlled by one man and his family
 This is the Mihanovtches, an organi
 ga ton or company which has 300 yes
 sels and employs something like 6o0
 hands. It has a capital of $13 ooo,000 ant 1t carries more than four-fifths of th' traffic of this great river system IL ha , vessels not only upon the Rio de la Platf and the Parana. but also upon the Alto Parana and the Paraguay, as far al Asuncion.
 The story of Mihanovitch shows som of the possibilities of fortune-making II South America. The elder Mihanovitch Nicholas, started life cabin boy. H. was born in Austria and when, at th age of IS, he landed in Montevideo h.
 bod mn a employment on the vessels of the har bor and after a time was commanding small river boat sailing from Bueno Aires Later on he began to transpor goods from ship to ship in the harbor and to the ports, and gradually built u