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—Maranhão, Piauhy, Ceará, 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 Maranhão, Piauhy, and Ceará 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 São 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 São 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 São 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 Paraná and São 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 Paraná 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 Paraná 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 São Paulo. The soil is remarkably fertile, and this is the coffee region par excellence of the world. A coffee tree in São 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 São Paulo, Paraná, 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.