Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-07-27
JUNGLE PROVIDES
LIVING FOR PARA
Greatest City on Amazon
Grew FabIuIousIy Rich
on "BIack Gold"

From the air we saw how close
primeval forests crowd Para. It's streets
end in the jungle"
Flying from Washington to Buenos
Aires, the National Geographic So
ciety's aerial survey party stopped at
Para five days to overhaul the plane.
Frederick Simpich writes of the greatest
city on the Amazon as follows: when
we got ashore we felt how utterly the
vast forests of Brazil dominate the life
Of this greatest city on the Amazon.
yet Para lives on the jungle. The
big woods give it Brazil nuts, rubber,
hardwoods, fruits, wakes, oils and jun
gle-bred animals, on which its sea
trade is based.
Animals Forage in Picnic Grounds.
In equatorial dawn and dusk Para
smells of jungle. Its beautiful Bosque
Park is but bit of natural jungle, cut
with paths and set with mans kiosks,
swings, benches and bandstands-where
after nightfall big jungle bats dart
about and smaller jungle animals forage
for food in the wake of daytime picnicS.
Giant mango trees, pelted with rocks
by small boys when in fruit shade the
wide, cobblestoned streets of it's better
quarters. On its water front streets you
smell smoked crude rubber, the half
tanned skins OF JaguarS and snakes, pine
apples, piles of Brazil nuts ready for
ships to New York and Liverpool-for
British Isle coal miners MUNICH them
while at work--bags of cacao, piles of
squared logs with their ends painted,
and you smell the fresh-cut firewood
halfbreed Indians are stacking for use
of woodworking river boats.
You smell also the shop of the wild
animal dealer jtS front na1Idflxy IN iY1foI
with Noah's Ark group of jungle crea-
lures. He shows you bright, shrill ma
eawS, grotesque monkeys, and snarling
jaguars, Then there are anteaters, liv-
ing now, not on ants, but on fresh eggs
broken in a dish; and cunning little
capivaris, or river pigs and the pink
ibis, the stork, white owl in a black
mask. rare parrots, multicolored wild
ducks; also an electric eel which gives
you a distinct shock, allegedly 40 volts
or more, when you stick a wire into
his water barrel and touch him.
Grew Rich on BLACK Gold"
Para is no mean city. 1t is the cap
ital of state that runs into Is degrees
of latitude-huge enough to hold a
dozen small European countries At the
zenith of Brazils historic rubber boom,
before the Far East ruined her monop-
oily Para grew fabulously rich on black
gold Abundant survivals of the wild,
oil-fleld-like extravaganza of the rub
Der boom period are seen in SumptuouS
government palaces and paintings, lux
urtous clubs and rows of private man
sions built generation ago. Now Para
watches keenly the work of Heny Ford
at Boa Vista, on the Tapajos, in the
broad Amazon Valley. 'Fordlandia,' To-
cal papers have renamed the spot where
American engineers have built model
camp and are clearing jungle to grow
plantation rubber.
Meantime, 300-year-old Portuguese
Para sits by the Tocantins and lives on
the jungle. Long-horned OK teams haul
Grated automobiles from the docks
docks with their cranes, chains, anchors.
tankers naked men shoveling Brazil
nuts and big wharf rats nimbly crawl
ing up dripping hawsers-while a mail
plane takes OF for Rio. You sense
progress here when you recall that
slavery was not abolished until 1888,
and that the Amazon itself like the