BRAZIL, UNITED STA',.ES OF, a former empire, but, since 1889, a Re public of South America; bounded on the E. by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the N., W., and S. by all the other South American Republics except Chile and Ecuador; length, from N. to S., over 2,G00 miles; extreme breadth, about 2,700 miles; capital, Rio de Janeiro.
-- TT..1 Area and Population.—The total area of Brazil is 3,280,900 square miles, ex ceeding by 250,000 square miles the area of the United States, excluding Alaska. There are 20 states, one terri tory and one federal district. In 1900 the census gave Brazil a population of 17,371,069. The estimated population in 1917 was 27,473,579. This includes about 600,000 Indians in the Amazon re gion. The largest cities are: Rio de Janeiro, 975,818; Sao Paulo, 450,000; Bahia, 348,130; Belem, 275,167, and Pernambuco, 216,484. The number of immigrants in 1918 was 20,501. Excep tional advantages are offered by the government to immigrants in order to develop the potential wealth of the country.
Topography.—Its seaboard, about 4, 500 miles long, beginning about 200 miles to the N. of the mouth of the Amazon, reaches to within the same dis tance of the mouth of the Plata and projects into the Atlantic fully 1,000 miles to the E. of the direct line be tween its two extremes. Among the chief physical features are the enor mous valleys of the Amazon, the Sal) Francisco, and the Plata. Brazil hag practically no mountain ranges. The so-called ranges of Serra do Mar and Serra da Mantiqueira are merely par allel steps leading from the seaboard to the interior plateau, which occupies nearly one-half of the area of the coun try S. of the Amazon and E. of the Plata. The highest point in the country is the Itatiaia peak, in the Mantiqueira system, 8,900 feet. There are no large interior lakes. The Lagoa dos Patos and Lagoa Mirim, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, lie along the coast and measure respectively over 200 and 150 miles in length and 80 and 40 miles in breadth. They are navigable by small seagoing steamers. The chief water ways are the mighty AMAZON (q. v.)
with its numerous tributaries, the Sao Francisco, the Uruguay, the Parana, and the Paraguay, the union of these three constituting the Plata proper, which runs through Argentine and Uruguayan territory to the Atlantic. On the S. E. coast there are many ex cellent landlocked harbors, but the en tire N. E. coast has very few, most of the ports being at the mouths of the rivers. Besides numerous islands close to the land, among which are conspicu ous Marajo in tile mouth of the Amazon, an island nearly as large as Great Britain, Itamaraca in the state of Bahia, Ilha Grande in that of Rio de Janeiro, and Santa Catharina in the state of the same name, Brazil has only two outlying islands: Trinidad and Fernando de Noronha, both of volcanic formation and practically not yet settled.
Production and Commerce.—Among the mineral treasures, besides gold and diamonds, iron of superior quality is abundant; salt, also, is extensively pro duced in saline marshes by the alternate processes, according to the season, of inundation and evaporation. The ex ports are coffee, cotton, cocoa, sugar, to bacco, hides, tallow, horns, drugs, pre cious stones, chiefly diamonds, gold, dyes, rice, manioc, tapioca, spirits, rosewood, etc. The value of exports varies con siderably according to the price of cof fee, which represents more than three fourths of the total. The chief articles of commerce are coffee, rubber, cacao, tobacco, and cotton. In the two former, Brazil leads the world. The yield of coffee was 846,480 tons in 1917 and the rubber crop was 41,500 tons. The aver age annual production of tobacco is 50, 000,000 kilos, sugar 300,000 tons, cotton 90,000 tons, wheat 2,421,031 tons, rice 371,989 tons, and beans 326,826 tons. The live-stock in 1917 comprised 17,321, 210 hogs, 8,443,400 cattle, 1,407,600 horses, 4,604,000 sheep, 351,900 mules, and 138,900 goats. The chief centers of foreign trade, and, with Sio Paulo, in the interior, the principal cities of the Republic, are Para, Pernambuco, Bahia, Porto Alegre, and Rio de Janeiro. The last named is the chief port.