At the northern end of the lagoon is the principal city of Southern Brazil, Porto Alegre. It is a neat and prosperous city, in which nearly all the foreign banks and business houses doing business in Brazil have branches. The view in travelling up the lagoon is not especially attractive, for it consists mostly of flat fields along which are miles of racks, on which the jerked beef is laid out to dry. The city itself is built on a promontory which juts out into the river. The commercial prosperity of this city began with the colonizing of a lot of Germans soon after the revolution of the middle of the last century in Germany. The Teutonic element is very marked in Porto Alegre, as well as in other cities of the state, such as Novo Friburgo and São Leopoldo, which are still more distinctly German. There is a large municipal theatre, city hall, cathedral and other public buildings. In fact, commercially as well as in every other way, Porto Alegre is the leading city south of São Paulo. Rio Grande do Sul has a population of about a million and a quarter, thus making it fifth in population in the republic. Its climate is temperate, and the winter season sometimes becomes quite cool. Snow occasionally falls, and, when the cold winds blow in from the west, the still waters freeze over. It resembles very much the plains of Uruguay, on which also immense herds of cattle feed. A number of minerals are found, and it contains about the only profitable coal mines that have yet been discovered in Brazil. Near Porto Alegre are some coal mines that have been worked for years; but they are not worked near to their full capacity, because the freight rates are so high that the coal cannot be shipped profitably to the other Brazilian states. A little gold is mined as well as some silver, lead and copper. A number of precious stones such as amethysts, topaz, tourmalines, aquamarines and moonstones are found in certain sections.