The exuberance of life in Brazil must be seen to be realised. The early voyagers related the wonder and admiration which they felt. Amerigo Vespucci said that if Paradise did exist on this planet it could not be far from the Brazilian coast. Agassiz believed that the future centre of the civilisation of the world would be in the Amazon valley. The plants useful for food, and in industry, commerce, and medicine, are innumerable. Nowhere except in Ceylon does the palm flourish so. There are more plants indigenous to Brazil than to any other country, and many species, like coffee, transplanted there have doubled in productiveness. Indian corn and mandioc were already cultivated by the Indians when Cabral landed, and both upland and lowland rice grew wild. The soil lends itself kindly to any kind of culture, and in most cases two crops may be reaped annually. In a word the subsoil, the soil, the atmosphere, the forests, and the waters of Brazil are teeming with life and full of potential wealth--too much so, perhaps, for the most wholesome development of the human race. [Illustration: A GARDEN IN PETROPOLIS.] The most extensive and the least-developed part of Brazil is the Amazon valley. The Brazilian portion of the Amazon basin comprises forty-five per cent. of the whole territory of the republic. The northern and south-eastern borders slope up to the surrounding mountains, but the rest is an early level plain, little elevated above the sea. The plains are covered with dense forests, much of the country is frequently flooded, and communication is only possible by the streams. In their neighbourhood the climate is in many localities unhealthful, and is everywhere tropical and rainy. Back from the rivers is an unexplored and unknown wilderness. The Amazon with its tributaries forms the greatest of all navigable fluvial systems. Ten thousand seven hundred miles are already known to be suitable for navigation by steamboats, and four thousand eight hundred more for smaller boats. It is in the narrow coast-plain on the Atlantic, and in the high regions lying to the east and south of the great central depression, that the Brazilian people live. The main orographical feature of non-Amazonian Brazil is the great mountain system which extends uninterruptedly from the northern coast through the whole country. This continental uplift corresponds to the Andes on the west coast, just as the Apalachians do to the Rockies in North America. Its relative importance is many times greater on account of its great width, and because a broad plateau nearly connects it with the Andes between the headwaters of the Amazon and Plate river systems. The joint result is that two-thirds of Brazil is high enough to have a moderate and healthful climate, but the cataracts in the rivers and the steep escarpments of the mountains make it difficult of access.