ed all the provisions they could obtain. The Indians spoke of a
great water in the south which could be reached in ten days.

The fifty Spaniards were now in excellent spirits, and set to work
eagerly to construct another smaller sailing vessel. When this was done,
Orellana filled both his boats with provisions, manned the larger with
thirty and the smaller with twenty men, and continued his wonderful
journey, which was to furnish the explanation of the great river system
of tropical America. Around him stretched the greatest tropical lowland
of the world, before him ran the most voluminous river of the earth. He
saw nothing but forest and water, a bewitched country. He had no
equipment beyond that which was afforded by the Napo's banks, and his
men grumbled daily at the long, dangerous voyage.

[Illustration: PLATE XXXVI. INDIAN HUTS ON THE AMAZONS RIVER.]

After ten days the two boats came to the "great water," where the Napo
yields its tribute to the Amazons River. The latter was then rising
fast, and when it is at its height, in June and July, the water lies
forty feet above its low water-level. Farther down the difference tends
to disappear, for the northern tributaries come from the equator, where
it rains at all seasons, while the southern rise at different times
according to the widely separated regions where their sources lie. To
travel from the foot of the _cordilleras_ to the mouth the high water of
the main river takes two months.

The Spaniards felt as if they were carried over a boundless lake. Where
the banks are low the forests are flooded for miles, and the trees stand
up out of the water. Then the wild animals fly to safer districts, and
only water birds and forest birds remain, with such four-footed animals
as spend all their lives in trees. The fifty men noticed that certain
stretches on the banks were never reached by the high water, and it was
only at these places that the Indians built their huts, just as the
indiarubber gatherers do at the present day (Plate XXXIV.).

When the high water retired, large patches of the loose, sodden banks
were undermined, and fell into the river, weighed down by the huge trees
they supported. Islands of timber, roots, earth, and lianas were carried
away by the current. Some stranded on shallows in the middle of the
river, others grounded at projections of the bank, and other rubbish was
piled up against them till the whole mass broke away and danced down the
ri