IN all South America Brazil has no rival in size, population, prosperity, and social relations. It lies almost entirely within the tropics, a comparatively small portion reaching southward into the temperate zone.
Its immense territory embraces a great diversity of climate and scenery. In parts it is overgrown with virgin forests, in other parts spread out in grassy plains. Forest and plain abound with many species of animals, and the woods ring with the songs of beautiful birds.
Many streams pour down the mountains, and wind their way to the great deep. Through the northern part of Brazil rolls the mighty Amazon, forcing its fresh waters five hundred miles out into the salt sea. Marked improvements have been made in the last twenty years in the means of travel up and down this river. So far as I know, there is but one mission station on the Amazon, and that is located about a thousand miles from the mouth. The climate in the Amazon Valley is unhealthy. This section of Brazil is not very thickly populated, however, being rather low, swampy, and largely covered with forest.
Two-thirds of the country is to a great extent mountainous, or at least much elevated and broken. There are some hot lowlands bordering the ocean, and many highlands, partly prairie, three thousand feet above the sea-level, with a good climate.
Brazil is often called the land of fruit and flowers, and properly so too. Oranges, bananas, pineapples, figs, grapes, breadfruit, mangoes, guavas, cajans, and abacatas grow there, with many other fruits too numerous to mention; and flowers and plants of all descriptions are found in traveling from place to place.
In northern and central Brazil it is warm, yes hot, from October to April; but the remainder of the year the climate is delightful. Southern Brazil and the table-lands are more or less agreeable the whole year. It does not get extremely warm in the summer, and in June and July—the winter months—white frosts are often seen.
The foliage is always green, and some kinds of produce grow the year round, altho seed-time and harvest come regularly. Vegetables of all kinds do well, and are always on the market. Corn, beans, rice, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, and manioc (from which tapioca is made, and which is much used in place of potatoes) do well everywhere.
Facilities for traveling are not as numerous and rapid as in some countries; but mules are plentiful, and they are faithful beasts of burden. Brazil has the American railroad system; but only three or four states out of the twenty are connected by rail. Railroads are being extended farther into the interior every year, and the country is being settled by different nationalities. German colonists are taking up large tracts of land in different states, and are making themselves good homes. The sanitary condition of the cities is being improved from year to year, and immigration is increasing.
In some respects there is a brightening future before Brazil, with her vast resources capable of development. The religious conditions, however, have not been favorable to healthy growth among its people, and their condition calls loudly for the evangelization of this great country.
