Brazil

.
             The population is growing rapidly and half of all Brazilians are under the age of twenty. By the end of the century, it is estimated that Brazil's population will have reached one hundred and eighty million. Brazil borders on ten other Latin American countries. Most of the northern part of Brazil is low-lying and veined by the mighty Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon is the largest river in the world. The native people of Brazil lived in the forests and along the rivers, hunting, fishing, and gathering fruits and nuts. When the Portuguese arrived early in the sixth-tenth century, it is estimated that there were between one and two million native Amerindian people. They were used as slaves, and many thousands died from diseases brought by the Europeans. It is said to be less than one hundred and fifty thousand Indians now.
             Portuguese settlers developed vast sugarcane estates in the Bahia region, and for one hundred and fifty years these estates were in the world's main source of sugar. To work the estates, the owners used slaves from Africa. Today there is still an African tradition in Brazil.
             Modern immigration began early in the ninth-tenth century. Most were Italians and Portuguese, but there were also Spaniards and Germans, and later Slaves from Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine, and Arabs from the Middle East. In this century the most significant immigrants have been Japanese. They have become the most prosperous ethnic group in Brazil, growing a fifth of the coffee, a third of the cotton, and all the tea. Brazil occupies almost one-half of the entire South America continent, and is the fifth largest country in the world. It borders all Latin American countries except Chile and Ecuador. Brazil's terrain is relatively flat. Forty percent of the land is under the Amazon Rain Forest. Most of the fertile land is found in the South, but the .
             process of land development for agriculture is pushing into the Central-West and the North as well.