AREA AND POPULATION.
351
Area and Population.
Portugal is divided into six provinces, the area of which and population, according to the census of 1865, is given in the sub- joined table : —
Provinces
Area sq. miles
Population
Tras-os-Montes .....
Beira
E.stremadura .....
Total
2,671
4,065 8.586 8,834 10,255 2,099
951,770 385,896 1,286,637 835,880 348,155 179,523
36,510
3,987,867
To the kingdom belong likewise the Azores, or Western Islands, containing an area of 715 square miles, with a population, in 1865, of 251,894 inhabitants ; Madeira, with 317 square miles and 111,76-1 inhabitants; and Porto Santo, with a population of about 1,500.
Portugal has few large towns. There were in 1865 but two with a population of above 20,000, namely, Oporto, with 89,321 ; and Lisbon, with 275,286 inhabitants. The number of aliens residing in the kingdom is reported to amount to not quite twelve thousand, one-fourth of them natives of Great Britain.
In the fifteenth century, Portugal is stated to have had about five millions of inhabitants. According to a calculation of 1732, the number was 1,850,000 at that period. An enumeration taken in 1841 — the first which counted ' heads,' instead of as before ' fire- places ' — gave the total number of inhabitants as 3,412,500. Since then the population has been slowly increasing, the addition in the quarter of a century being 575,367, or at the rate of 23,000 a year.
Trade and Industry.
The commercial relations of Portugal are chiefly with Great Britain, and there is very little trade, either by land or sea, with other countries. Next to Great Britain, but far below, stand Brazil and France. The subjoined table gives the total value of the exports from Portugal to Great Britain and Ireland, and of the imports of British and Irish produce into Portugal in the ten years 1860 to 1869:—
