DESCRIPTION
Cabral's discovery bequeathed to the Portuguese race one of the largest,
most productive, and valuable political divisions of the globe. The area
is 3,150,000 square miles--larger than the United States without Alaska,
and surpassed only by the British, Russian, Chinese, and American
empires. From north to south it extends 2600 miles, and east and west
2700. Lying across the equator and traversed by no very high mountain
ranges, its climate is more uniform than any other equally large
inhabited region, but its extent is so immense that there are very
considerable variations.
Compact in form, with a continuous seacoast, unsurpassable harbours, and
a great extension of navigable rivers, water communication between the
different parts is easy and the danger of dismemberment by external
attack a minimum. Occupying the central portion of South America it
touches all the other countries of the continent except Chile, uniting
them geographically, and to a large extent controlling land
communication among them. It is nearer Europe and Africa than any other
South American country, and is also on the direct route between the
North Atlantic and both coasts of South America. Situated in latitudes
where evaporation and precipitation are largest, where the trade-winds
unfailingly bring moisture from the Atlantic, and on the eastern and
windward slope of the narrowest of the continents, Brazil has the
steadiest and most uniformly distributed rainfall of any large part of
the globe.
The exuberance of life in Brazil must be seen to be realised. The early
voyagers related the wonder and admiration which they felt. Amerigo
Vespucci said that if Paradise did exist on this planet it could not be
far from the Brazilian coast. Agassiz believed that the future centre of
the civilisation of the world would be in the Amazon valley. The plants
useful for food, and in industry, commerce, and medicine, are
innumerable. Nowhere except in Ceylon does the palm flourish so. There
are more plants indigenous to Brazil than to any other country, and many
species, like coffee, transplanted there have doubled in productiveness.
Indian corn and mandioc were already cultivated by the Indians when
Cabral landed, and both upland and lowland rice grew wild. The soil
lends itself kindly to any kind of culture, and in most cases two crops
may be reaped annually. In a word the subsoil, the soil, the atmosphere,
the forests, and the waters of Brazil are teeming with life and full of
potential wealth--too much so, perhaps, for the most wholesome
development of the human race.
[Illustration: A GARDEN IN PETROPOLIS.]
The most extensive and the least-developed part of Brazil is the Amazon
valley. The Brazilian portion of the Amazon basin comprises forty-five
per cent. of the whole territory of the republic. The northern and
south-eastern borders slope up to the surrounding mountains, but the
rest is an early level plain, little elevated above the sea. The plains
are covered with dense forests, much of the country is frequently
flooded, and communication is only possible by the streams. In their
neighbourhood the climate is in many localities unhealthful, and is
everywhere tropical and rainy. Back from the rivers is an unexplored and
unknown wilderness. The Amazon with its tributaries forms the greatest
of all navigable fluvial systems. Ten thousand seven hundred miles are
already known to be suitable for navigation by steamboats, and four
thousand eight hundred more for smaller boats.
It is in the narrow coast-plain on the Atlantic, and in the high regions
lying to the east and south of the great central depression, that the
Brazilian people live.
The main orographical feature of non-Amazonian Brazil is the great
mountain system which extends uninterruptedly from the northern coast
through the whole country. This continental uplift corresponds to the
Andes on the west coast, just as the Apalachians do to the Rockies in
North America. Its relative importance is many times greater on account
of its great width, and because a broad plateau nearly connects it with
the Andes between the headwaters of the Amazon and Plate river systems.
The joint result is that two-thirds of Brazil is high enough to have a
moderate and healthful climate, but the cataracts in the rivers and the
steep escarpments of the mountains make it difficult of access.
The promontory of South America which reaches out to the north-east,
looking in a direct line to the western extremity of Africa, is a region
of gentle slopes, of wide, sparsely wooded plateaux, and of
brush-covered hills. At long intervals, the interior is subject to
severe drouths. The soil is fertile as a rule and the rainfall generally
sufficient for cereal crops. Nearing the sea precipitation increases,
and cotton and sugar thrive. The mountain ranges rarely exceed three
thousand feet in height, and lie far back from the coast, from which the
country slopes up gradually. This region was the first in Brazil to
contain a large population, and the Dutch fought hard for it during the
seventeenth century. In its area of 430,000 square miles seven of the
Brazilian states are included--Maranhao, Piauhy, Ceara, Rio Grande do
Norte, Parahyba, Pernambuco, and Alagoas. The promontory of St. Roque,
where the coast turns from an east-and-west direction to a
north-and-south, marks a commercial division. Sailing vessels found it
difficult to round this cape from the north, and consequently the
commercial relations of Maranhao, Piauhy, and Ceara have been rather
with the Amazon than southern Brazil. South of St. Roque the region is
most easily accessible from Europe and is on the direct line of
communication between both sides of the North Atlantic and the coasts to
the south.
The region drained by the Tocantins and Araguaya very nearly corresponds
with the state of Goyaz. It is the western slope of the Brazilian
Cordillera, and differs radically from the Amazonian plain, which it
adjoins. As one ascends the Tocantins and Araguaya from their mouths in
the Amazon estuary the altitude rapidly rises and navigation is quickly
interrupted by cataracts. In the south the level rises to over four
thousand feet, and the climate shows a considerable range of
temperature, with the thermometer sometimes falling below freezing in
the higher mountains. Though the area is 350,000 square miles, the
population hardly reaches a quarter of a million, and has not been
increasing rapidly since the exhaustion of the alluvial gold deposits.
Roughly speaking, it may be described as a region well adapted to cattle
and agriculture, and composed of high, open, rolling plateaux traversed
by low mountain ranges and well-wooded river valleys.
The next natural division comprises the oval depression lying between
the great central watershed and the high range which runs straight north
from Rio within a few hundred miles of the coast. This is the Sao
Francisco valley. Politically and commercially connected is the adjacent
coast-plain. Valley and plain are divided into the four states of Minas,
Bahia, Sergipe, and Espirito Santo, with 430,000 square miles and
6,000,000 inhabitants. In the coast-plain the rainfall is greater than
farther north, and the soil is very fertile, producing not only cotton,
sugar, and tobacco, but coffee, maize, and mandioc. The slopes are more
abrupt and the mountains begin closer to the sea. The interior is a
great plateau traversed by high mountain ranges and the tributaries of
the Sao Francisco River. Most of this plateau is included in the great
state of Minas, the most populous member of the Brazilian union, which
is agriculturally self-sufficing, and one of the great mineral regions
of the world. The rainfall is abundant, the climate is healthful and
bracing, the birth-rate is large, and the region is admirably adapted to
the white races. Its general character is a rolling plateau, three to
four thousand feet above the ocean, forming extensive, treeless plains,
which are interspersed with wooded mountain chains, river valleys, and
extensive tracts of brush-land. The European who visits the Sao
Francisco valley is astonished to find a country where the climate is
temperate and the soil fitted to the production of all sorts of food
crops including the cereals, and where, nevertheless, proximity to the
equator makes practicable a multiplicity of crops in a single year. The
coast-plain, which forms the greatest part of Bahia, Sergipe, and
Espirito Santo, is fertile, but the climate is enervating to Europeans,
and the proportion of black blood there is the largest in Brazil.
About the twentieth degree the mountains approach close to the coast,
and from Victoria south to the thirtieth degree the Atlantic border of
Brazil is steep and mountainous, often rising directly from the sea to a
height of two thousand to six thousand feet. It is a coast of splendid
harbours and magnificent scenery. The drainage is mostly inland into the
Plate system, and water falling within a dozen miles of the ocean flows
2500 miles before reaching the sea.
To this rule there is but one important exception--the Parahyba River,
the basin of which is practically coterminous with the state of Rio de
Janeiro and the federal district. This state is commercially and
politically very important, although its area is small. The surface is
very mountainous and the soil mostly inferior to that of the divisions
to the north and south. However, it is still an immense producer of
coffee and sugar. Its geographical situation and great harbour have made
it the most thickly settled part of the country. The rainfall is very
large, especially on the mountains nearest the sea, which are covered
with magnificent forests. The coast-plain is warm though not
unhealthful, save in the vicinity of the infected city of Rio, and in
the higher regions the climate is delightful and in temperature almost
European. The northern boundary is the Mantiqueira range which divides
the Parahyba basin from the valleys of the Parana and Sao Francisco.
This range is the highest in Brazil, and its culminating
peak--Itatiaya--is ten thousand feet high, though it is only seventy
miles from the sea. Slightly lower ranges lie between the Mantiqueira
and the ocean, and of these the highest is Pedro d'Assu--7365
feet--which overlooks Rio harbour, only twenty miles away.
The Brazilian portion of the great Parana valley presents a remarkable
uniformity of general characteristics. Bordering the sea is a range of
mountains, or rather the abrupt escarpment of the plateau, some three
thousand feet high. From its summit the surface slopes gently to the
west, draining into the Parana by a hundred streams, many of which are
navigable in their middle courses. This great plateau--with its area of
about 250,000 square miles--is mostly treeless toward the north, but in
the south is covered with pine forests. It lies in the temperate zone
and snow sometimes falls on the higher peaks and _chapadas_ of Sao
Paulo. The soil is remarkably fertile, and this is the coffee region
_par excellence_ of the world. A coffee tree in Sao Paulo produces two
to four times as much as in other parts of the globe. Food crops grow
well, and the country might be economically independent of the rest of
the world. The contour of the country is favourable to railroad-building
and the region is easily penetrable. From their settlements on the
seaward border of this plateau the Paulistas of the seventeenth century
roamed over the whole interior of South America, enslaving the Indians
and driving out the Spanish Jesuits. The rainfall diminishes toward the
interior, and there is an ill-defined limit where it ceases to be
sufficient for coffee. The coffee district is also limited by the
lowering of average temperature with increasing latitude. The three
states of Sao Paulo, Parana, and Santa Catharina contain most of the
region under description, but south-western Minas and extreme southern
Goyaz also belong to it.
The great plateau gradually dies away to the south ending with a low
escarpment across the state of Rio Grand do Sul. Physically and
geographically, this State is different from the rest of Brazil. Most
of its area is drained by the Uruguay River, and its natural relations
and affinities are with the republic of that name. Rio Grande's
ninety-five thousand square miles contain over a million inhabitants,
and the open, rolling plains, nowhere much elevated above the sea, are
excellently adapted to cattle. The northern portion is higher, more
broken, and more wooded than the southern, and agriculture has made
greater progress. The climate is distinctly that of the temperate
zone--hot in summer, cold in winter, and subject to sudden variations on
account of the winds which sweep up from the vast Argentine pampas. The
inhabitants are big, vigorous, and hardy, and great riders. All the
products of the temperate zone, including the cereals, flourish, and
this part of Brazil seems destined to great things in the near future.
From Bolivia around to Uruguay sweeps in a great semicircle, convex to
the north, a plateau that nearly unites the Andes with the Eastern
Cordillera, and forms the watershed between the Amazon and the Plate.
Its eastern horn has already been described as forming the states of Sao
Paulo, Parana, and Santa Catharina; its western and central portions
form the great interior state of Matto Grosso. Here the headwaters of
the Madeira, Tapajos, and Xingu, tributaries of the Amazon, intertwine
with those of the Paraguay and Parana. The narrow depression which the
Upper Paraguay forms across it is the only portion that has yet been
described. The rest of the 410,000 square miles of Matto Grosso is
abandoned to Indians and wild beasts. Only enough is known of these
solitudes to prove that in the centre of the continent exists a
well-watered, fertile, and healthful region, capable of sustaining an
immense population, but which is shut off from development by lack of
means of communication. The northwestern part could be reached from the
Amazon if the Falls of the Madeira could be overcome, a route which
would also open up a great and now inaccessible portion of Bolivia.