CHAPTER III
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.
A GARDEN IN PETROPOLIS.