39 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



Some of the mighty rivers to the east of the Andes form excel- 

 lent water-ways. The Orinoco, in the north of the continent, is 

 navigable for steamers continuously for nearly a thousand miles. 

 The Amazon is navigable without interruption to the base of the 

 Andes, a distance of twenty-six hundred miles from its mouth, 

 and six thousand miles of navigation are afforded by the main 

 stream and its tributaries. Many of these tributaries, however, 

 have their navigable course greatly obstructed by falls and rap- 

 ids. The value of the navigation of the Amazon is diminished 

 by the paucity of population and products in the region through 

 which it flows and by the similarity of the products in nearly the 

 whole of its navigable course. The inland water-way, which is 

 already of most importance, and likely to remain most useful to 

 commerce in the future, is that from north to south formed by 

 the upper Paraguay and the lower Parana, a water-way which 

 is uninterrupted from near the source of the former river, and 

 which, like the Mississippi, brings hot and temperate climates 

 into direct communication. Its chief drawback is the extreme 

 shallowness of its estuary, the Rio de la Plata, or River Plate. 



The population is still very scanty, probably not more than 

 thirty millions. Whites of pure blood form only from two to 

 three tenths of the whole, negroes about one tenth, and the re- 

 mainder either native Indians or people of mixed race ; so that on 

 the whole the Indian element still largely predominates. The 

 white population in Brazil is of Portuguese origin, and Portu- 

 guese is there the official language ; but elsewhere, except in Gui- 

 ana, the whites are mainly of Spanish descent, and Spanish is the 

 official language. 



Brazil is an empire * which secured its independence of Portugal 

 in 1822. In size it is the rival of the United States and Canada. 

 Only a limited area has been turned to account for agriculture. 

 Even the area which travelers in Brazil deem it possible to bring 

 under cultivation at some future time is but a small fraction of 

 the whole. The equatorial valley of the Amazon is filled with 

 dense forests. Close to the coast, that trends in a southeasterly 

 direction, stretch ranges of mountains which cut off the Atlantic 

 moisture from the region behind. This region is made up mainly 

 of low table-lands (campos) with a sterile soil. North of about 

 20° south — that is, throughout the broader part of the country 

 south of the forests — these campos are considered fit for nothing 

 but pasture. There remains nevertheless an area in the south — 

 small, indeed, compared with the extent of the empire, but yet 

 between four and five times the size of Great Britain — in which 

 there are many fertile districts still unsettled, and a considerable 



[These pages were written before Brazil became a republic. — Editor.] 



