Introduction. xvii 



world. This Professor Orton has done. His interesting 

 and valuable volume hardly needs any introduction or 

 commendation, for its intrinsic merit will exact the appro- 

 bation of every reader. Scientific men, and tourists who 

 seek for new routes of travel, will appreciate it at once ; 

 and I trust that the time is near at hand when our mer- 

 cantile men, by the perusal of such a work, will see how 

 wide a field lies before them for future commercial enter- 

 prise. This portion of the tropics abounds in natural re- 

 sources which only need the stimulus of capital to draw 

 them forth to the light-; to create among the natives a de- 

 sire for articles of civilization in exchange for the crude 

 productions of the forest ; and to stimulate emigration to 

 a healthy region of perpetual summer. 



It seems as if Providence were opening the way for a 

 great change in the Yalley of the Amazon. That immense 

 region drained by the great river is as large as all the 

 United States east of the States of California and Oregon 

 and the Territory of Washington, and yet it has been so 

 secluded, mainly by the old monopolistic policy of Portu- 

 gal, that that vast space has not a population equal to the 

 single city of Eio de Janeiro or of Brookl^ai. Two mil- 

 lion five hundred thousand square miles are drained by 

 the Amazon. Three fourths of Brazil, one half of Bolivia, 

 two thirds of Peru, three fourths of Ecuador, and a por- 

 tion of Venezuela are watered by this river. Kiches, min- 

 eral and vegetable, of inexhaustible supply have been here 

 locked up for centuries. Brazil held the key, but it was 

 not until under the rule of their present constitutional 

 monarch, Don Pedro II., that the Brazilians awoke to the 

 necessity of opening this glorious region. Steamers were 



