56 ASPECTS OF TROPICAL NATURE 



vast territory drained by the river. The mountains, where it 

 rises, teem with mineral treasures, and the very ideal of fer- 

 tility is realised in those well-watered plains, where the equa- 

 torial sun developes life in boundless luxuriance. The most 

 useful and costly productions of the tropical world, — sugar, 

 cotton, coffee, indigo, tobacco, maize, rice; quinquina in the 

 higher regions of the Maranon, where wheat and the vine find 

 a congenial climate ; cacao and vanille, sarsaparilla and caout- 

 chouc, various palms of the most manifold uses ; trees and 

 shrubs, some rivalling our oaks in the solidity of their timber, 

 others fit by the beauty of their grain to adorn palaces ; dyes, 

 resins, gums, spices, drugs, — all, in one word, that is capable 

 of satisfying the wants of the frugal or the fancies of the rich, 

 might there be raised in profusion over a space surpassing 

 England at least forty times in extent. The whole actual 

 population of the globe could easily live in content and plenty 

 in the almost uninhabited valleys of the Maranon and its 

 tributary streams. 



And where has Nature better provided for the facility of 

 communications so necessary for unsealing and multiplying 

 the resources of a country? For the Amazon and its great 

 tributaries are not only all of them navigable for hundreds of 

 miles by larger vessels to the very foot of the mountains, 

 where they rise, but to the north we find the Eio Negro com- 

 municating, through the Cassiquiare, with the Orinoco, and 

 through the Eio Branco and the Parima with the Essequibo ; 

 while to the south it would but require an insignificant canal 

 to unite the Guapore and the Paraguay, both navigable for ; 

 smaller ships nearly up to their sources, which are only fifteen i 

 miles distant from each other. What a magnificent prospect ; 

 for future steam-boat intercourse ! where, without unloading, ■ 

 the same ship will be able to traverse the Eio Negro, the Ma- 

 ranon, and, far to the south, the La Plata. , 



With these splendid prospects the present forms a melan- ' 

 choly contrast. Here and there some small town or wretched i 

 village rises on the banks of the mighty stream; and a few ' 

 Indians roam over the forests, through which it rolls along, or i 

 enjoy the produce of its prolific waters. The vast province of ! 

 Para, the garden of Brazil, the paradise of unborn millions, has ' 

 scarcely fuur inhabitants on a geographical square mile ; while ' 



