erful river. It is the largest,
though not quite the longest, in the world. Taking its rise among the
rocky solitudes of the great mountain range of the Andes, it flows
through nearly four thousand miles of the continent in an easterly
direction, trending northward towards its mouth, and entering the
Atlantic Ocean on the northern coast of South America, directly under
the Equator. In its course it receives the waters of nearly all the
great rivers of central South America, and thousands of smaller
tributaries; so that when it reaches the ocean its volume of water is
enormous. Some idea may be formed of its majestic size, from the fact
that one of its tributaries--the Rio Negro--is fifteen hundred miles
long, and varying in breadth; being a mile wide not far from its mouth,
while higher up it spreads out in some places into sheets of ten miles
in width. The Madeira, another tributary, is also a river of the
largest size. The Amazon is divided into two branches at its mouth by
the island of Marajo, the larger branch being ninety-six miles in width.
About two thousand miles from its mouth it is upwards of a mile wide.
So great is the force of this flood of water, that it flows into the sea
unmixed for nearly two hundred miles. The tide affects the river to a
distance of about four hundred miles inland; and it is navigable from
the sea for a distance of three thousand miles inland.

On the north bank of the Amazon there are ranges of low hills, partly
bare and partly covered with thickets. These hills vary from three
hundred to a thousand feet high, and extend about two hundred miles
inland. Beyond them the shores of the river are low and flat, for more
than two thousand miles, till the spurs of the Andes are reached.

During the rainy season the Amazon overflows all its banks, like the
Nile, for many hundreds of miles; during which season, as Martin Rattler
truly remarked, the natives may be appropriately called aquatic animals.
Towns and villages, and plantations belonging to Brazilians, foreign
settlers, and half-civilised Indians, occur at intervals throughout the
whole course of the river; and a little trade in dye-woods,
India-rubber, medicinal drugs, Brazil nuts, coffee, etcetera, is done;
but nothing to what might and ought to be, and perhaps would be, were
this splendid country in the hands of an enterprising people. But the
Amazonians are lazy, and the greater part of the resources of one of the
riches