Wide Extent of the Interior Plain. 7 



found in the world extends through the center of South America. 

 A boat starting from the Caribbean sea could sail up the 

 Orinoco over a thousand miles, then down the Casquiare, which 

 runs from the Orinoco into the Rio Negro, down that river to 

 the Amazon, ui3 the Amazon to the Madeira, then up that river 

 and one of its branches through Brazil and Bolivia, and with 

 a short portage of six and a half miles to one of the branches 

 of the Paraguay, down the Paraguay and La Plata to the ocean. 



The level land ci'osses the La Plata and continues southward 

 through the Argentine Republic and Patagonia to the Straits 

 of Magellan. Within this plain lie all the interior of Venezuela 

 and Brazil, a part of Bolivia, all Paraguay, LTruguay, and the 

 Argentine Republic. The pampas resemble our prairies, but 

 run from north to south, while the prairies run from east to west. 



The streams in the plain south of the valley of the La Plata 

 rise in the Andes and flow southeastward to the Atlantic. 



The Aborigines. 



The aborigines of America, except the Esquimaux, are unlike 

 the natives of other countries ; the most marked difference is 

 in their language. They are divided into a number of tribes 

 differing from each other in some respects, yet with manners, 

 customs and religious beliefs generally similar. 



In South America there are more than one hundred distinct 

 languages, and two thousand dialects. About five or six million 

 Lidians have as many dialects as are found among the 800,000,000 

 inhabitants of Europe and Asia. Their languages are polysyn- 

 thetic, being of a higher type than the agglutinative languages. 

 In the polysynthetic tongue the substantive, adjective and verb 

 are joined or combined, and oftentimes a whole sentence will be 

 comprised in a single word. 



The natives in the valleys of the Orinoco and Amazon are 

 forced to cultivate a little ground on the flood-plains, as the 

 forests are thick and impenetrable. They live principally on the 

 fruit of the palm (of which there are five hundred varieties), 

 cocoa and bananas, fish and turtles. There are no roads or paths 

 through the forests except the numerous channels of the rivers, 

 called igarapes or furos. The tribes on the pampas live prin- 

 cipally on game and wild cattle. 



Humboldt tells us that the navigator on the Orinoco sees with 

 surprise at night the palm trees illuminated by large fires. From 



