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BENIN, a republic on the southern coast of West Africa, was formerly called Dahomey after the African kingdom, which dominated the region between the 17th and 19th centuries. In the south, it has a very short coastline on the Bight of Benin, and the coastal region is sandy with many lagoons. Inland, the ground rises to a fertile plain and then to a plateau. In the far northwest, the Atakora Mountains rise from the plateau in the region of the Niger/Nigeria border.
BERMUDA consists of a group of 150 small islands in the western Atlantic Ocean. It lies about 920 kilometers or 572 miles east of Cape Hatteras on the coast of the USA. The hilly limestone islands are the caps of ancient volcanoes rising from the sea bed. The main island, Great Bermuda, is linked to the other islands by bridges and causeways.
India surrounds BHUTAN to the south and China to the north. It rises from foothills overlooking the Brahmaputra river to the southern slopes of the Himalayas. The Himalayas, which rise to over 7,500 meters or 24,608 feet in Bhutan, make up most countries. Bhutan can be divided into three topographical regions: the high Himalayas; the middle Himalayas, where the mountains are lower and are dissected by fertile valleys occupied by rivers which are main tributaries of India’s Brahmaputra river; and the foothills and plains of a region called the Duars, the southern part of which is used for agriculture.
BOLIVIA is one of only two South American countries surrounded by land on all sides, having lost its Pacific coastline to Peru and Chile in the late 1800s. The dominant topographical feature is the Andes mountain chain. This forms two main ranges, the Cordillera Occidental and the Cordillera Oriental running from north to south in the southwestern third of the country. Lying in between them is a high, fairly barren, treeless plateau called the Altiplano, where most Bolivians live. Lake Titicaca, which straddles the border with Peru, is in the northern part of the Altiplano. The country’s administrative capital and largest city, La Paz, lies just to the south and the east of Lake Titicaca and is the highest capital city in the world, built 3,612 meters or 11,850 feet above sea level.
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, more commonly known as Bosnia, declared its independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1992 and became the scene of bitter ethnic fighting in the years that followed. Densely forested and deeply cut by rivers flowing northwards to join the River Sava, the Dinaric Alps are the principal topographical feature in the west and south.
The limestone plateau further to the east and the north is a second prominent feature, while the northern strip of the country is lower-lying and densely forested and includes part of the Dinaric Alps. Half the country is forested, and timber is an important product of the northern areas. One-quarter of the land cultivated, corn, wheat, and flax are the north’s principal products.
BOTSWANA is a landlocked republic in southern Africa which straddles the Tropic of Capricorn. South Africa surrounds Botswana to the south and east, Namibia to the west, Zimbabwe to the northeast, and meet at Zambia west of the Victoria Falls. Much of the west and southwest of the country forms part of the Kalahari Desert. There is a huge area of marshland around the Okavango Delta in the north, which is home to a wide variety of wildlife. East and south of the delta are the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans.
BRAZIL is a huge South American country bounded to the north, south, and east by the Atlantic Ocean. It is the fifth-largest country in the world and covers nearly half of South America. There are two dominant topographical features – the great Amazon river basin and the ancient plateau region of crystalline rocks called the Brazilian Highlands. The Amazon river basin occupies a huge land area, over one-third of the country’s area, and much of this covered with tropical rainforests.
VIRGIN ISLANDS (British) lies at the northwestern end of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. They are a British overseas territory and comprise four large islands and 36 islets and cays.
BRUNEI is a sultanate located on the northwest coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. It is bounded on all sides by the Malaysian state of Sarawak, which splits the country into two separate parts. Broad tidal swamplands cover the coastal plains, and inland Brunei is hilly and covered with tropical rainforests.
BULGARIA is a southeast European republic located on the east of the Balkan Peninsula with a coast on the Black Sea to the east. It is bounded to the north by Romania, to the west by Serbia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and the south by Greece and Turkey.
Hills or mountains cover about half of Bulgaria’s land area. The center of Bulgaria is crossed from west to east by the Balkan Mountains. In the south, the Rhodopi Mountains straddle the border with Greece, and, in the western central region of the country, the Rila mountain chain contains the country’s highest peak, Musala (2,925 meters or 9,597 feet).