48 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



undermined by the floods, have been cast into the river. The 

 boat is almost unavoidably lost when carried by the current 

 among the branches of the trees, which, though submerged, still 

 remain attached to the ground, and sweep furiously through 

 the eddy, overturning or smashing all that comes within their 

 reach. 



Perhaps no country in the world contains such an amount 

 of vegetable matter on its surface as the valley of the Amazons. 

 Its entire extent, with the exception of some very small por- 

 tions, is covered with one dense and lofty primeval forest, the 

 most extensive and unbroken which exists upon the earth. It 

 is the great feature of the country, that which at once 

 stamps it as a unique and peculiar region. It is not here, as 

 on the coasts of southern Brazil, or on the shores of the Pacific, 

 where a few days' journey suffices to carry us beyond the forest 

 district, and into the parched plains and rocky sierras of the 

 interior. Here one may travel for weeks and months inland 

 in any direction, and find scarcely an acre of ground unoccupied 

 by trees. 



It is far up in the interior where the great mass of this 

 mighty forest is found ; not on the lower part of the river, 

 near the coast as is generally supposed. Bounded on one side 

 by the Andes, on the other by the Atlantic, it extends from 

 east to west for a distance of 2,600 miles ; and from 7 N. 

 latitude on the banks of the Orinoco, to 1 8 S. latitude on the 

 northern slope of the great mountain chain of Bolivia, a dis- 

 tance of more than 1,700 miles. From a point about sixty miles 

 south-east of Tabatinga, on the Upper Amazons, a circle may 

 be drawn of 1,100 miles in diameter, the whole area of which 

 will be virgin forest. Such are the magnificent proportions 

 of these wonderful woods, which speak to the imagination as 

 forcibly as the ocean or the Grreat Sahara. 



The forests of no other part of the world, not even the im- 

 mense fir-woods of Siberia or of North America, are so exten- 

 sive and unbroken as this. Those of Central Europe are trifling 

 in comparison, nor in India are they very continuous or ex- 

 tensive. Africa contains some large forests situated on the 

 east and west coasts, and in the interior south of the Equator, 

 but the whole of them would bear but a small proportion to 

 that of the Amazons. In a general survey of the tropical 



