This gallant and pugnacious little people will continue to play a role in South American affairs out of all proportion to the size of their country. Uruguay seems certain to continue to be the political storm-centre of the Atlantic coast. Climate, soil, and geographical position insure a rapid increase in population and wealth, while its political independence must continue to be an object of constant solicitude on the part of its gigantic neighbours, Argentina and Brazil. Montevideo is a formidable trade rival to Buenos Aires, and must always be, as it has so often been in the past, the base for any attach at the heart of the Argentine Republic. To the north nothing but an artificial boundary separates Uruguay from Rio Grande do Sul, and the two regions are alike in everything except language. Should the Portuguese-Americans again evince those tendencies toward expansion which distinguished them in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Uruguay would be the natural point of attack, and if Brazil should ever divide into its component parts, as it came so near doing in 1822 and again in 1837, Rio Grande and Uruguay might find it necessary to coalesce, or possibly wars might ensue between them which would change the face of South America. A not improbable alternative would be the establishment of a power on the north bank of the Plate strong enough to hold its own, and which might play the same role in the interaction of Spanish and Portuguese Americans as did Flanders between the Teutons and Latins in Europe. BRAZIL CHAPTER I PORTUGAL The motherland of Brazil is Portugal. Profound as were the changes incident to transplanting a people to a virgin continent; notwithstanding Spanish dominion and Dutch conquests; large as were the admixtures of negro, Indian, and alien blood; in spite of independence and Republicanism; the language, customs, religion, and laws of Brazil are to-day substantially like those of Portugal.