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ARUBA is one of the islands in the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, and it has been a self-governing Dutch territory since 1986. The island rises to 189 meters or 620 feet at Jamanota in the southeast of the island.
AUSTRALIA, the world’s smallest continental landmass, is a vast and sparsely populated country in the southern hemisphere, whose head of state is the British Sovereign. It consists of seven self-governing states: New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia. The capital, Canberra, is situated in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).
AUSTRIA is a landlocked country in central Europe surrounded by seven nations: Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Hungary, and Slovenia. The wall of mountains that runs across the center of the country dominates the scenery. With their intervening valleys, the mountain chains run in a generally west-east direction, and the highest peak, Grossglockner (3,798 meters or 12,457 feet), is located centrally in the Tauern range. The mountains’ presence means that the average height of land in Austria is 914 meters or 3,000 feet above sea level.
AZERBAIJAN, a republic of the former USSR, declared itself independent in 1991. The country was plagued by political uncertainty and conflict with Armenia. It is situated on the southwest coast of the Caspian Sea and shares borders with Iran, Armenia, Georgia, and Russia. The River Araks separates Azerbaijan from the region known as Azerbaijan in northern Iran. Azerbaijan’s territory also includes the autonomous republic of Naxcivan, cut off from the rest of the country by southern Armenia, and the disputed Armenian enclave Nagorno-Karabakh. A mountainous, oil-rich country is bounded by the southeastern ranges of the Great Caucasus Mountains in the north and the Lesser Caucasus Mountains in the west, with the Talish Mountains in the extreme south. Rivers descend from the mountains and flow through lower-lying valleys to empty into the Caspian Sea.
BAHRAIN, a small, oil-rich Emirate comprising 33 low-lying islands situated between the Qatar Peninsula and the mainland of Saudi Arabia, is a hereditary monarchy. The largest island is Bahrain Island, on which the capital, Manama (Al Manamah), is located. The King Fahd Causeway opened in 1986, links Bahrain Island to the mainland of Saudi Arabia. The highest point in the state is only 122 meters or 402 feet above sea level.
BANGLADESH, the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, was formerly the Eastern Province of Pakistan and is the world’s eighth-most populated country. It is an extremely low-lying country in southeast Asia, surrounded in the west, north, and east by India. It has a border with Myanmar (Burma) in the extreme southeast, and it has a stretch of coastline along the Bay of Bengal in the south. Only about 20 percent of its people inhabit the cities and urban areas, with the vast majority living in rural villages.
BARBADOS is the most easterly island of the West Indies and lies well outside the islands that make up the Lesser Antilles. Mainly surrounded by coral reefs, most of the island is low-lying, and only in the north does it rise to 336 meters or 1,104 feet at Mount 4 Hillaby.
BELARUS (Belorussia, Byelorussia), a republic of the former USSR, declared itself independent in 1991. It borders Poland to the west, Ukraine to the south, Latvia and Lithuania to the north, and Russia to the east. The country consists mainly of a low-lying plain, and forests cover approximately one-third of the country.
BELGIUM is a highly industrialized, relatively small country in northwest Europe with a short coastline on the North Sea. It has three topographical regions: the elevated and forested Ardennes plateau, situated in the southeast near the border with France, Luxembourg, and Germany; the rolling, central fertile plains; and the North Sea coastal plain. The Ardennes plateau is an area of moorland, woodlands, and forests, valued for recreational purposes and forestry. The central plains are a fertile agricultural region crossed by Belgium’s principal rivers, the Schelde and Meuse. The coastal plain is low-lying, reaching only about 20 meters or 65 feet above sea level at its highest point.
BELIZE is a small Central American country on the southeast of the Yucatan Peninsula in the Caribbean Sea. Its coastline on the Gulf of Honduras approached through some 550 kilometers or 342 miles of coral reefs and keys (cayo). The coastal area and north of the country are low-lying and swampy with dense forests inland. In the south, the Maya Mountains rise to 1,100 meters or 3,609 feet.