Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/269

Rh Cagapava, there are the richest copper mines of Brazil, the mineral from, which yields GO per cent, of pure metal.

Manganese exists in abundance in the vicinity of Nazareth, at the head of the estuary of the Jaguaripe, adjoining the bay of Bahia. Galena mines are in operation in many parts of the empire ; the chief are those of Iporauga, Sorocaba, Iguape in the province of Sao Paulo, and those of the Rio Abaetd and Sete Lagoas, the most productive of all, in the province of Miuas. Lead mines also exist along the whole coastal region from Santa Catharina to Maran- liao, those of the hill chain of Ibiapaba on the borders of Ceara and Piauhy being important.

Every part of Brazil contains iron, in ore or in other forms, and an almost unlimited quantity appears to exist in the mountains of Minas Geraes. At Sao Joao de Ipanema, in S. Paulo, there are heavy deposits of magnetic iron, which are mined and smelted almost on the spot ; and other seams of like character appear in the provinces of Alagoas, Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte, and Parahyba. Some of the Brazilian mines are quite free from pyrites. In 1810 a company of Swedish miners and founders settled at Ipa nema, and erected two small refining furnaces. In 1817 they produced nearly 4000 arrobas of iron, which was manufactured on the spot into horses shoes, nails, locks, and other articles. There is now a very considerable estab lishment, at which moulding and refining is carried on, the woods of the neighbourhood furnishing an abundant supply of charcoal. A railway is projected to unite the works with S. Paulo and its port. Not far from these mines there are extensive quarries of marble of valuable sorts.

A country so extensive as Brazil, and so diversified in its surface, necessarily exhibits a considerable variety of climate. The great northern lowland lying entirely within the tropics has great heat, and its year is divided between the simple wet and dry seasons. The elevation of the central and southern highland of Brazil introduces great variety in the seasons and climates of the intertropical portion of that region ; and towards the south beyond the tropic a tem perate zone is reached in which four seasons are marked, though not so distinctly as in central Europe. The whole wide plain of the Amazon basin has its rainy season from January or December till May or June, the remaining half of the year being dry, though intervals of fine weather may occur within the wet period, and of showers in the dry season. The fall during the rainy months is excessive, raising the level of the great river full 40 feet, and much thunder and lightning always accompanies the heavy rain. This belt of single rainy and dry season appears to terminate about the line of the River Paranahyba, between the pro vinces of Maranhao and Piauhy ; at the town of Maranhao the annual fall has been found to be on sm average 280 inches. Inland, across the higher southern watershed of the Amazon, from the interior of the provinces of Maranhao and Piauhy, over Goyaz and northern Matto Grosso as far as the falls of the Madeira, the rainy seasons follow the passage of the sun towards and away from the southern tropic, and occur from October or November to March or April, with more or less marked intervals of drier weather. In lower Maranhao showers also occur in October, and are called the Cashew rains. On the north-east coast slope, in the provinces of Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte, and northern Bahia, the rains appear to be governed by the prevalence of the north-east winds from the Atlantic, and occur from March or April to June, July, or August. The coastal region from southern Bahia to Sao Paulo and the Sao Francisco valley have again a more or less marked double rainy season between October and April or May; the heaviest rains occur in the Sao Francisco valley from January to May, the highest freshets of the river being in March ; the coast rivers, such as the Rio Doce, rise first in December, and again to an almost equal swelling in March. At Pernambuco the amount of the annual rainfall is up wards of 100 inches; at Rio de Janeiro it has decreased to 59 inches, and a gradual diminution of the quantity is observed from the Amazon southward. In Sao Paulo the rainy season is, in summer, from November till April, the greatest quantity of rain falling in January. In Sta. Catharina the rains begin to be irregular, and from this to the southward over Rio Grande do Sul the four seasons of the temperate zone begin to be distinguishable. The whole country is, as a rule, abundantly watered, the only portion which may suffer from drought being that of the interior between the Sao Francisco and the Paranahyba, where extraordinary dryness has sometimes prevailed.

In temperature the vast Amazon basin is remarkable for the small seasonal variation of heat, accounted for by its equatorial position and immense surface of water and forest ; within its limits the thermometer at its highest readings averages 90 and the lowest 75. At Para the register kept by Costa Azevedo between 1801 and 1867 gave a mean temperature of 80, a maximum of 95, and a minimum of 68. Observations are very deficient for the greater portion of the empire. About the Falls of the Madeira, Keller estimates the mean annual temperature at 77, with but small variation in the seasons. In the latitude of Rio de Janeiro the summer or January tempera ture near the sea-level has an average of about 75, that of July descending to about 65 ; and in the extreme southern provinces the corresponding figures may fall to 70 and 50 Fahr. in summer and winter. But an immense variety of temperature and climatic condition are found on the central and southern table-lands and mountain ranges of Brazil, from the hot and humid air of the coast to the mountains where in winter it frequently snows, and where lakes may be covered with a coating of ice. In the high plains of Rio Grande and Silo Paulo the thermometer may also fall to below the freezing point.

The prevalent winds of the greater portion of Brazil are the trade- winds from the east, which, gathering the vapours from the whole breadth of the equatorial Atlantic, give out their excessive moisture over the northern forest plains of the Amazon, reaching inland as far as the high wall of the Andes. The east winds are strongest in the Amazon valley from July till November, mitigating the heat of the dry season. On the maritime regions of central Brazil the north-east or south-east trades prevail according to season. In the far interior the general winds take a more north and south direction, blowing usually from the south when the sun is in the northern tropic and from the north during summer. Land and sea breezes are very constant along the coasts. At the mouth of the Sao Francisco, for example, the morning is still and calm ; about nine o clock a breeze steals over the water, rippling its surface and gradually increasing to a stiff wind about noon ; the breeze continues steadily till night-fall, when it again falls calm.

With the exception of the marshy banks of some of the rivers and the lowlands and swamps, where intermittent fevers are very prevalent, the country is generally healthy. On the sea-coast and inland in some of the maritime provinces, epidemics of yellow fever and cholera morbus have been experienced since 1850. The mortality in the most populous towns of Brazil is not, however, above but rather below that of the large cities of Europe.

The broadly-marked features given to the landscape by the vegetations of different characters in Brazil are distinguished by several names. Mattas or heavy forests cover the immense northern lowland which is watered by exces sive rains, and these occur also in belts of greater or less width over the lower portions of the central and southern 