286 The Andes- and the Amazon. 



though the trades are feebly felt there, and the air is stag 

 nant and sultry. According to Bates, swampy and weedy 

 places on the Amazon are generally more healthy than dry 

 ones. Whatever exceptions be taken to the branches, the 

 main river is certainly as healthy as the Mississippi : the 

 rapid current of the water and the continual movement of 

 the air maintaining its salubrity. The few English resi- 

 dents (Messrs. Hislop, Jeffreys, and Hauxwell), who have 

 lived here thirty or forty years, are as fresh and florid as if 

 they had never left their native country. The native wom- 

 en preserve their beauty until late in life. Great is the con- 

 trast between the gloomy winters and dusty summers, the 

 chilly springs and frosty autumns of the temperate zone, 

 and the perennial beauty of the equator ! ISTo traveler on 

 the Amazon would exchange what Wallace calls ''the 

 magic halt-hour after sunset " for the long gray twilight of 

 the north. " The man accustomed to this climate (wrote 

 Herndon) is ever unwilling to give it up for a more brac- 

 ing one." 



The mineral kingdom is represented only by sand, clay, and 

 loam. The solid rock (except the sandstone already men- 

 tioned) begins above the falls on the tributaries. The pre- 

 cious gems and metals are confined to the still higher lands 

 of Goyaz, Matto Grosso, and the slopes of the Andes. The 

 soil on the Lower Amazon is sandy ; on the Solimoens and 

 Maranon it is a stiff loam or vegetable mould, in many 

 places twenty feet deep. 



Both in botany and zoology. South America is a natural 

 and strongly-marked division, quite as distinct fi'om North 

 America as from the Old World ; and as there are no trans- 

 verse barriers, there is a remarkable unity in the character 

 of the vegetation. No spot on the globe contains so much 

 vegetable matter as the Yalley of the Amazon. From the 

 grassy steppes of Venezuela to the treeless Pampas of Buenos 



