300 VALLEY OF THE AMAZON. 



opposite side ; while if the River Para is properly considered 

 one of its branches, its measurement from shore to shore, 

 across a countless number of islands, is one hundred and 

 eighty miles — equal to the breadth of the widest part of 

 tlie Baltic. 



After receiving the waters of numerous streams, many of 

 \\diich flow for considerable distances parallel with its shores, 

 and are united by a network of channels, it is joined hy its 

 most considerable northern tributary — the Rio Negro. This 

 stream, rising in the mountains of Venezuela, and passing 

 amidst the Llanos, robbing the Orinoco of part of its waters, 

 has already, before it reaches the Amazon, flowed for a course 

 of one thousand five hundred miles. It is called the NeoTO 

 from its black colour. It is here not less than nineteen 

 fathoms deep, and three thousand six hundi^ed paces broad. 

 The next gi^eat affluent is the Yapura, which, rising in the 

 mountains of New Granada, takes a south-easterly course for 

 one thousand miles, its principal mouth entering the Ama- 

 zon opposite the town of Ega ; but it has numberless small 

 channels, the streams of which, two hundred miles apart, flow 

 into the great river. The upper part of the Amazon is fre- 

 C[uently called the Solimoens, which name it retains as far 

 south as the mouth of the River Negro. 



About sixty miles further east, its largest southern affluent 

 — the gigantic Madeira — unites its milky waters with the 

 turbid stream of the main river. One branch, the Beni, 

 rises in the neighbourhood of the ancient Cuzco in Peru, near 

 Lake Titicaca, its whole extent from the centre of the pi'o- 

 vince of Bolivia being nearly the length of the Amazon itself 

 At its mouth it is two miles wide and sixty-six feet deep ; 

 and five hundred miles up it is a mile wide. Numerous islands 



