South America has more people than the United States, by about 20 percent.
As of 1995, there were 319.6 million South Americans compared to 265.1 million people in the United States.
Spanning 6.9 million square miles, South America is about twice as big in land area as the United States. Most of its people are clustered along its edges; much of the interior is sparsely populated.
The terrain of South America includes everything from the snowcapped peaks of the Andes Mountains to the tropical jungles of the Amazon River Valley, from the bone-dry Atacama Desert of Chile to the pampas, or prairies, of Argentina.
