To this rule there is but one important exception--the Parahyba River, the basin of which is practically coterminous with the state of Rio de Janeiro and the federal district. This state is commercially and politically very important, although its area is small. The surface is very mountainous and the soil mostly inferior to that of the divisions to the north and south. However, it is still an immense producer of coffee and sugar. Its geographical situation and great harbour have made it the most thickly settled part of the country. The rainfall is very large, especially on the mountains nearest the sea, which are covered with magnificent forests. The coast-plain is warm though not unhealthful, save in the vicinity of the infected city of Rio, and in the higher regions the climate is delightful and in temperature almost European. The northern boundary is the Mantiqueira range which divides the Parahyba basin from the valleys of the Parana and Sao Francisco. This range is the highest in Brazil, and its culminating peak--Itatiaya--is ten thousand feet high, though it is only seventy miles from the sea. Slightly lower ranges lie between the Mantiqueira and the ocean, and of these the highest is Pedro d'Assu--7365 feet--which overlooks Rio harbour, only twenty miles away. The Brazilian portion of the great Parana valley presents a remarkable uniformity of general characteristics. Bordering the sea is a range of mountains, or rather the abrupt escarpment of the plateau, some three thousand feet high. From its summit the surface slopes gently to the west, draining into the Parana by a hundred streams, many of which are navigable in their middle courses. This great plateau--with its area of about 250,000 square miles--is mostly treeless toward the north, but in the south is covered with pine forests. It lies in the temperate zone and snow sometimes falls on the higher peaks and _chapadas_ of Sao Paulo. The soil is remarkably fertile, and this is the coffee region _par excellence_ of the world. A coffee tree in Sao Paulo produces two to four times as much as in other parts of the globe. Food crops grow well, and the country might be economically independent of the rest of the world. The contour of the country is favourable to railroad-building and the region is easily penetrable. From their settlements on the seaward border of this plateau the Paulistas of the seventeenth century roamed over the whole interior of South America, enslaving the Indians and driving out the Spanish Jesuits. The rainfall diminishes toward the interior, and there is an ill-defined limit where it ceases to be sufficient for coffee. The coffee district is also limited by the lowering of average temperature with increasing latitude. The three states of Sao Paulo, Parana, and Santa Catharina contain most of the region under description, but south-western Minas and extreme southern Goyaz also belong to it.