CHAPTER XV 



VEGETATION OF THE AMAZON VALLEY. 



Perhaps no country in the world contains such an amount of 

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

 Its entire extent, with the exception of some very small 

 portions, 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 serras of the interior. Here we 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. 



A line from the mouth of the river Parnaiba, in long. 41 

 30' W., drawn due west towards Guayaquil, will cut the boundary 

 of the great forest in long. 7 8° 30', and, for the whole distance 

 of about 2,600 miles, will have passed through the centre of it, 

 dividing it into two nearly equal portions. 



For the first thousand miles, or as far as long. 56 W., the 

 width of the forest from north to south is about four hundred 

 miles ; it then stretches out both to the north and south, so 

 that in long. 67 W. it extends from 7 N., on the banks of the 

 Orinoko, to 18 S., on the northern slope of the Andes of 

 Bolivia, a distance of more than seventeen hundred miles. 

 From a point about sixty miles south-east of Tabatinga, a circle 

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

 which will be virgin forest. 



