Among the republics, the United States of Brazil stand in a class apart, by virtue of the Portuguese origin and character of that country, its very distinct history and its immense size, occupying, as it does, more than half the continent. As to the republics of Spanish origin, no single classification suffices. The most obvious division is that which groups them into tropical and temperate countries. The five republics of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, which lie wholly within the tropics, form a group of states which were closely connected in the early history of emancipation and which are still marked by a general though not very close similarity in respect of geography and ethnological conditions. Chile and Argentina lie mainly in the temperate zone; Uruguay wholly so; and these, with the southern parts of Brazil, are the regions most obviously suitable for white settlement. These three southern republics may also be described as the most European part of the continent, whereas the five tropical republics have a large admixture of indigenous, and, in parts, also of negro, blood. The small sub-tropical republic of Paraguay, secluded in the interior of the continent, does not quite fall into either group, but belongs to the system of River Plate countries. For the three Atlantic republics of the southern hemisphere, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, form a distinct group or sub-continent known as the "River Plate" and thus suggest a second classification into the Rio-Platense and the Andine states. Lastly, a glance at the map shows that Colombia and Venezuela differ from all their southern neighbours in that they border upon the Caribbean Sea, that Mediterranean Sea of the New World which stretches between the two continents. Thus these two republics complete the circle of that Mediterranean system of lands--the Antilles, Mexico, Central America, Panamá--in which the United States are the dominant Power and in which Great Britain, France and Holland are also members--one may perhaps say subsidiary members. Thus each of these republics of the Spanish Main has a dual character. They are on the one hand South American continental states; but their coasts also face the coasts of the United States, and their borders, to east and west, touch lands which are not purely Latin-American in character. Venezuela, both historically and actually, faces both ways. On the one hand she is the country of the Orinoco, of a vast continental interior: on the other hand she belongs also to the Antillean system: her eastern neighbour is British Guiana, and her territory almost locks fingers with the British island of Trinidad, which is in some sort the distributing commercial centre for all the Spanish Main. Thus Venezuela completes that long Antillean chain which curves from Florida to the Spanish Main, a chain whereof several links are in the possession of the United States. This dual character stands out in the early history of the country.