264 The Ajtoes and the Amazon. 



CHAPTEK XYIII. 



The River Amazon. — Its Source and Magnitude. — Tributaries and Tints.— 

 Volume and Current. — Rise and Fall. — Navigation. — Expeditions on the 

 Great River. 



Near the silver mines of Cerro Pasco, in the little Lake 

 of Lauricocha, just below the limit of perpetual winter, 

 rises the "King of Waters."* For the first five hundred 

 miles it flows northerly, in a continuous series of cataracts 

 and rapids, through a deep valley between the parallel 

 Cordilleras of Peru. Upon reaching the frontier of Ecua- 

 dor, it turns to the right, and runs easterly two thousand 

 five hundred miles across the great equatorial plain of the 

 continent.! No other river flows in the same latitude, and 

 retains, therefore, the same climatic conditions for so great 

 a distance. The breadth of the Amazon, also, is well pro- 

 portioned to its extraordinary length. At Tabatinga, two 

 thousand miles above its mouth, it is a mile and a half 

 wide ; at the entrance of the Madeira, it is three miles ; 

 below Santarem, it is ten ; and if the Para be considered a 

 part of the great river, it fronts the Atlantic one hundred 

 ■and eighty miles. Brazilians proudly call it the Mediter- 

 ranean of the New World. Its vast expanse, presenting 



* Hemdon gives, for the altitude of Cerro Pasco, 13,802 feet; Rivero, 

 11,279. The lieutenant thus describes his first view from the rough hills 

 surrounding this birthplace of the greatest of rivers : "I can comi^are it to 

 nothing so fitly as looking from the broken and ragged edges of a volcano 

 into the crater beneath." 



t From Lauricocha to its mouth, the Amazon, following the main curves, 

 is 2740 miles long, as estimated by Bates ; in a straight line, 20.50 ; from 

 Para to the head of the Ucayali, 3000. From north to south the tributaries 

 stretch 1 720 miles. 



