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Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon by Jules Verne
page 127 of 400 (31%)
_"brazil"_ stuck to them, and it has become that of the country,
which seems like an immense heap of embers lighted by the rays of the
tropical sun.

Brazil was from the first occupied by the Portuguese. About the
commencement of the sixteenth century, Alvarez Cabral, the pilot,
took possession of it, and although France and Holland partially
established themselves there, it has remained Portuguese, and
possesses all the qualities which distinguish that gallant little
nation. It is to-day the largest state of South America, and has at
its head the intelligent artist-king Dom Pedro.

"What is your privilege in the tribe?" asked Montaigne of an Indian
whom he met at Havre.

"The privilege of marching first to battle!" innocently answered the
Indian.

War, we know, was for a long time the surest and most rapid vehicle
of civilization. The Brazilians did what this Indian did: they
fought, they defended their conquests, they enlarged them, and we see
them marching in the first rank of the civilizing advance.

It was in 1824, sixteen years after the foundation of the
Portugo-Brazilian Empire, that Brazil proclaimed its independence by
the voice of Don Juan, whom the French armies had chased from
Portugal.

It remained only to define the frontier between the new empire and
that of its neighbor, Peru. This was no easy matter.
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