The Portuguese provinces were the only ones to continue the monarchical system. They too, however, declared themselves independent, and became known as the Empire of Brazil, until 1889, when the present republic was declared.
II
BRAZIL
I
The United States of Brazil, next to our own United States, form the largest of the American republics. Brazil has an area fifteen times greater than Germany’s, sixteen times as great as that of France, 250,000 square miles greater than ours, excluding Alaska and our island possessions. At its greatest width, the country extends inland more than 2000 miles and its coast line on the Atlantic is more than 3700 miles long, twice the distance from Portland, Maine, to Key West; yet the population, although it has doubled in the last forty years, is not quite a fourth as large as our own. It is estimated that if the whole country were as densely populated as France, the inhabitants would number 622,000,000, or, if as densely populated as Germany, 955,000,000. Some time it may be. Except in the regions near the large cities, only a small part is even sparsely settled now.
It argues well for the industry and enterprise of what inhabitants there are, however, that Brazil’s international commerce is relatively nearly as great in proportion to her population as ours. Some idea of the remarkable progress she has made is given in the following extract from a pamphlet recently published by the Commissão de Expansão Economica, entitled “Do you Know the Wealth of Brazil?”
“In the colonial days, the foreign trade of Brazil was done exclusively through Lisbon, under the protection of Portuguese men-of-war.... The colonial produce was distributed among the principal Portuguese commercial centers and the imports came exclusively from Portugal to the ports of Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco, Pará, and Maranhão. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the foreign trade of Brazil was continued more or less on this basis, but the exports were considerably more than the imports. By decree of January 28, 1808, the King of Portugal, Don João VI of Braganza, lately arrived at Bahia” (when he fled from the Peninsula as a result of Napoleon’s invasion), “resolved to open all the ports of Brazil to the commerce of foreign nations, until then closed for the benefit of Portugal. The first consequence of this decree was the establishment of commercial relations with England. English agencies were opened at Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and Pernambuco for the purpose of importing manufactured articles and exporting sugar, alcohol, gold, cotton, hides, coffee, cocoa, timber, and indigo. After the proclamation of independence in 1822, the trade developed enormously, France, the United States of America, Germany, Holland, and Sweden following the example of England.... From 1846 to 1875 the imports increased 110 per cent. and the exports 175 per cent. From 1876 to 1905 the imports increased 175 per cent. and the exports 272 per cent.... In 1909 its total value was £101,844,549 (over $500,000,000).”
In 1910 it was $545,581,275, in which we participated to the extent of $142,437,986, including $58,808,467 worth of coffee and $47,409,030 worth of rubber that were exported to us. For the principal industry is still, as it has always been, agriculture, though in the mountainous sections there are vast regions containing gold and precious stones and minerals of incalculable value, millions of square miles in the interior still covered with virgin forests; and yet even the relatively small sections that have been cultivated produce more than three-fourths of all the coffee consumed in the world and more than three-fifths of all the rubber, not to mention the other products. But within the last few years immigration has been encouraged and many conditions that were preventing development have been improved. Wonders have been accomplished in making the cities as healthful as any in the world. The railroads have been, and are still being, extended tremendously and facilities for commerce along the great inland waterways continually increased.
The first of the important seaports of Brazil that are accessible by steamer from New York is Belém, the capital of the State of Pará. It ranks only as the fifth in size, but to the tourist it is of surpassing interest because it is situated on the Pará River, the southern or commercial mouth of the Amazon, that mightiest and most majestic of all the rivers in the world.
Imagine!—a river more than 3400 miles in length, with its source in the Peruvian Andes, 16,000 feet above the level of the sea—a river which, with its vast tributaries, many of them themselves from a thousand to two thousand miles in length, drains a territory of 2,300,000 square miles, two-thirds as large as our United States, and so rich in indigenous resources, and so fertile, that many years ago, when it was wholly a wilderness, the great scientist Von Humboldt said of it that “it is here that one day, sooner or later, will concentrate the civilization of the globe”—a river that is a mile and a half wide at Tabatinga, the last Brazilian port to the west, and gradually broadens on its way to the sea until it attains a width of 150 miles at its northern mouth alone, and discharges into the Atlantic a volume of water more than four times as great as the outpour of the Mississippi—a river that is navigable, that is now actually being navigated by ocean liners, for 2000 miles, clear across Brazil to Iquitos in the frontier of Peru.