150 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



banks, and has a definite course, beyond which you cannot pass. 

 It is not so with the great South American river and its tributa- 

 ries. The whole slope of the valley is so slight, that from the 

 junction of the Rio Negro to Para, a distance of some fifteen 

 hundred miles, the slope is only two hundred and odd feet ; and 

 therefore the whole course of the Amazon is, properly speakings 

 an extensive plain, over which flows an immense sheet of* water, 

 which covers an extensive tract of ground. That water has an 

 annual rise and fall of from thirty to thirty-five, and even forty, 

 feet ; and on the southern and northern sides of the main river 

 the rise does not take place at the same season. It is in Sep- 

 tember and October that the southern tributaries of the Amazon 

 swell ; their nicrease of water pours into the Amazon in Novem- 

 ber and December ; so that there comes a flood from the south 

 side of the Amazon during the autumnal months, which spreads 

 over the whole of that part of the country, and presses the 

 waters«of the north side further north and encroaches upon them 

 regularly. In the early spring — in January and February, and 

 even in March — the northern tributaries swell, and press back 

 the waters towards the southern side of the valley ; so that the 

 whole is, as it were, like a sheet of water which, in the main, 

 flows eastward, but swinging to the north and to the south 

 •alternately, establishing cross communications between all the 

 watercourses to such an extent that it is possible to come down 

 from the Upper Amazon to the neighborhood of Para without 

 ever entering into the main course of the Amazon, on the south 

 side as well as the north side ; and these channels arc navigable 

 at all seasons. Therefore there is over this immense plain a net- 

 work of roads established by nature, which forever will be main- 

 tained in running order, without any expense whatever to the 

 country. All that is needed to get the advantage of that 

 immense fertility all over the country is to put on steam vessels 

 that may be adequate to the work to be done in the different 

 parts of the valley. 



Imagine what^facilities there must be ; and yet, in the whole 

 of that country, at this moment, there are not more than 250,- 

 000 inhabitants. It is a vast desert, unoccupied, the natural 

 products of which rot on the ground, from want of hands to 

 collect the crop. And that crop is of immense value, and is as 

 varied as you can well imagine. I have been told by gentle- 



