276 The Andes and the Amazon, 



and railroads will be out of the question for ages lience in 

 this aquatic basin. No other river runs in so deep a chan- 

 nel to so great a distance. For two thousand miles fi'om 

 its mouth there are not less than seven fathoms of water. 

 Not a fall interrupts navigation on the main stream for 

 two thousand five hundred miles ; and it so happens that 

 while the current is ever east (for even the ocean can not 

 send up its tide against it), there is a constant trade-wind 

 westward, so that navigation up or down has always some- 

 thing in its favor. As a general rule, the breeze is not so 

 strong during the rise of the river. There are at least six 

 thousand miles of navigation for large vessels. It was 

 lately said that the Mississippi carries more vessels in a 

 month, and the Yang-tse-Kiang in a day, than the Amazon 

 all the year round. But this is no longer true. Steamers 

 already ascend regularly to the port of Moyabamba, which 

 is less than twenty days' travel from the Pacific coast. The 

 Amazon was opened to the world September 7, 1867 ; and 

 the time can not be far distant when the exhaustless wealth 

 of the great valley — its timber, fruit, medicinal plants, 

 gums, and dye-stuffs — will be emptied by this great high- 

 way into the commercial lap of the Atlantic ; when crowd- 

 ed steamers will plow all these waters — yellow, black, and 

 blue — and the sloths and alligators, monkeys and jaguars, 

 toucans and turtles, will have a bad time of it. 



Officially free to the world, the great river is, however, 

 for the present practically closed to foreign shipping, as it 

 is difficult to compete with the Brazilian steamers. For, by 

 the contract which lasts till 1877, the company is allowed 

 an annual subsidy of $4,000,000, which has since been in- 

 creased by 250 milreys per voyage. In 1867 the steamers 

 and sailing vessels on the Amazon were divided as follows, 

 though it must be remembered that few of the foreign 

 ships, excepting Portuguese, ascended beyond Para : 



