1. TOPOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE. — The country extends between lat. 4° 22' N. and 33° 45' S. and long. 40' and 73° 15' W. and the total area is 3,292,000 square miles. Nearly the entire population of the republic is still found on a comparatively narrow strip of land extending southward along the Atlantic coast from Para, below the mouth of the Amazon, to the line of Uruguay, or on the banks of the Amazon and its chief northern and southern affluents. The white people have clung to the fringe of the continent which their ancestors took possession of in the 16th century; and (except on the southeastern plateau and along the main water-courses) no civilizing conquest and occupation of the interior, such as occurred in North America, have been effectively undertaken. The two largest Brazilian states have less than one in habitant per square mile.
A vast table-land of irregular structure lies behind the seaboard of the south Atlantic, running from Cape S. Roque to the neighbor hood of the Rio de la Plata, and covering the eastern half of the republic. Beyond this, toward the interior, across immense plains of sandy soil lies the central depression of South America. Toward the north, from a low, and very ancient, nearly effaced continental divide or watershed, extends the basin of the Amazon; and toward the south that of the Parana. In the north the Amazon basin be longs tO Brazil: in the south the Parana and Paraguay rivers are Brazilian only in their upper reaches. South Brazil is limited to the belt of table-land. In the north the Amazon, both at its mouths and along the greater part of its basin, is a Brazilian river while to the south Brazil does not even reach the Rio de la Plata, the common estuary of the Uruguay, the Parana and the Paraguay. The high plains of the interior have never been of economic importance, for the valley of the Amazon has been developed, of late years, to a very slight extent, and its population is as yet small. It is therefore the table-land of the Atlantic sea board, from Ceara to Uruguay, that consti tutes the soil of historic Brazil. Through its length of from 1,800 to 2,200 miles this table land presents the greatest variety of aspect and has no hydrographic unity. Its height is greater
in the south, where it readies 3,200 feet; and this general slope from south to north is re vealed by the course of the Sao Francisco. In Brazil the name Borburema is employed to de note the northern portion of the plateau. The dry season there is long and the Borburema gives a scant supply of water to the small sea board rivers that flow, fan-wise, into the Atlan tic over a plateau sloping gently to the ocean. In southern Brazil, on the contrary, the seaward face of the plateau is a huge bank 2,500 to 3,000 feet in height, separating a narrow strip of coast from the inland regions. This long bank or watershed, the Serra do Mar and Serra Geral, is a barrier which, for a great distance below Sao Paulo, no river pierces. The streams which rise upon its landward side, almost within sight of the Atlantic Ocean, cross the whole width of the plateau before they join the Parana or the Uruguay. The Serra do Mar is not properly a mountain range, al though from the ocean it has the appearance of one. Beyond the serra is Minas, a confused mass of mountain groups. The Mantequeira, a colossal backbone of granite, crosses southern Minas. Across the Sao Paulo frontier there is no more granite, and the landscape grows tamer. Primitive measures of gneiss and granite, out of which the Serra do Mar is carved, are hidden under a bed of sedimentary rocks. The topography of the country changes with the geologic structure. The outcrops of sandstone crossed in traveling westward cut the table-land into successive flats. Irregular ranges turn their abrupter slopes toward the east; and these cliffs of sandstone are locally known as the serrinhas. In Santa Catharina and Rio Grande do Sul great eruptions of basaltic rocks cover a portion of the plateau; the basalt has even reached the seaboard, and south of the island on which Desterrq, or Florianopolis, is built, it overlies the granite of the Serra do Mar. The southern flank of the plateau overlooking the prairies of Rio Grande, where the Pampas of Argentina and Uruguay commence, is also basaltic.