“And along its whole extent,” continued Manoel, “like the thousand
tentacles of some gigantic polyp, two hundred tributaries, flowing
from north or south, themselves fed by smaller affluents without
number, by the side of which the large rivers of Europe are but petty
streamlets.”
“And in its course five hundred and sixty islands, without counting
islets, drifting or stationary, forming a kind of archipelago, and
yielding of themselves the wealth of a kingdom!”
“And along its flanks canals, lagoons, and lakes, such as cannot be
met with even in Switzerland, Lombardy, Scotland, or Canada.”
“A river which, fed by its myriad tributaries, discharges into the
Atlantic over two hundred and fifty millions of cubic meters of water
every hour.”
“A river whose course serves as the boundary of two republics, and
sweeps majestically across the largest empire of South America, as if
it were, in very truth, the Pacific Ocean itself flowing out along
its own canal into the Atlantic.”
“And what a mouth! An arm of the sea in which one island, Marajo, has
a circumference of more than five hundred leagues!”
“And whose waters the ocean does not pond back without raising in a
strife which is phenomenal, a tide-race, or _’pororoca,’_ to which
the ebbs, the bores, and the eddies of other rivers are but tiny
ripples fanned up by the breeze.”
“A river which three names are scarcely enough to distinguish, and
which ships of heavy tonnage, without any change in their cargoes,
can ascend for more than three thousand miles from its mouth.”
“A river which, by itself, its affluents, and subsidiary streams,
opens a navigable commercial route across the whole of the south of
the continent, passing from the Magdalena to the Ortequazza, from the
Ortequazza to the Caqueta, from the Caqueta to the Putumayo, from the
Putumayo to the Amazon! Four thousand miles of waterway, which only
require a few canals to make the network of navigation complete!”
“In short, the biggest and most admirable river system which we have
in the world.”
The two young men were speaking in a kind of frenzy of their
incomparable river. They were themselves children of this great
Amazon, whose affluents, well worthy of itself, from the highways
which penetrate Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, New Grenada, Venezuela, and
the four Guianas–English, French, Dutch and Brazilian.
What nations, what races, has it seen whose origin is lost in the
far-distant past! It is one of the largest rivers of the globe. Its
true source still baffles our explorers. Numbers of States still
claim the honor of giving it birth. The Amazon was not likely to
escape the inevitable fate, and Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia have for
years disputed as to the honor of its glorious paternity.
To-day, however, there seems to be little doubt but that the Amazon
rises in Peru, in the district of Huaraco, in the department of
Tarma, and that it starts from the Lake of Lauricocha, which is
situated between the eleventh and twelfth degree of south latitude.
Those who make the river rise in Bolivia, and descend form the
mountains of Titicaca, have to prove that the true Amazon is the
Ucayali, which is formed by the junction of the Paro and the
Apurimac–an assertion which is now generally rejected.
At its departure from Lake Lauricocha the youthful river starts
toward the northeast for a distance of five hundred and sixty miles,
and does not strike to the west until it has received an important
tributary–the Panta. It is called the Marañon in its journey through
Colombia and Peru up to the Brazilian frontier–or, rather, the
Maranhao, for Marañon is only the French rendering of the Portuguese
name.
From the frontier of Brazil to Manaos, where the superb Rio Negro
joins it, it takes the name of the Solimaës, or Solimoens, from the
name of the Indian tribe Solimao, of which survivors are still found
in the neighboring provinces. And, finally, from Manaos to the sea it
is the Amasenas, or river of the Amazons, a name given it by the old
Spaniards, the descendants of the adventurous Orellana, whose vague
but enthusiastic stories went to show that there existed a tribe of
female warriors on the Rio Nhamunda, one of the middle-sized