Total exportation of Brazil in 1906, £52,000,000 Exportation of coffee " " £26,500,000 Exportation of rubber " " £13,300,000 [22] _Brazil_, Pierre Denis, South American Series. CHAPTER XII BRAZIL When, in the year 1502, the early Portuguese navigators entered the Bay of Rio de Janeiro--it was the first of January, hence the name they gave to what they believed to be the estuary of a great river--they little dreamed of that superb city which, as the centuries rolled on, should arise on the edge of the sparkling waters, with their background of picturesque mountains, with a harbour perhaps the finest in the New World. But such is the capital of Brazil to-day, and the traveller approaching Rio de Janeiro revels--if the weather be propitious--in the sunlit sea, the emerald islets that stud its bosom, the palm-fringed shores and colour of the vegetation upon the mountain slopes, fit setting for the handsome buildings, esplanades and avenues which unfold to the view. Here the beauty of the Tropics, shorn by modern science of much of its lurking dangers, combines with the handiwork of man to form a metropolis which South America may contemplate with pardonable pride as an instance of its civilization. In this vast oval bay, which stretches inland for twenty-five miles, the navies of the world might lie at anchor, and indeed the flags of all maritime nations unfurl their colours near the quays of this vast mercantile seaport below the Equator. It is a vast land which we thus approach. Brazil spreads like a giant across its continent. Its arms are flung westwards over South America for over two thousand miles to the base of the Andes, and from above the Equator to beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, crowding its smaller neighbours--if crowding be possible here--into the extremities of the continent, an area in which the countries of Europe might be more than contained, and which is larger than the vast Anglo-American Republic, the United States. Still almost unknown are great portions of this great territory, still inhabited by tribes as savage as when first the white man set foot upon it, or as when the faithless Orellana, Pizarro's lieutenant, abandoning his companions in the heart of the dreadful forests of the Amazon, floated down the mighty waters of that river from the source to the sea.