Tkebutaeies. 267 



up, or actually flow back. Its extreme length is twelve 

 hundred miles, and its greatest breadth is at Barcellos, where 

 it is twelve or fifteen miles. Excepting this middle sec- 

 tion, the usual breadth of the Negro below the equatorial 

 line is about one mile. It is joined to the Orinoco by the 

 navigable Cassiquiari,* a natural canal three fourths of a 

 mile wide, and a portage of only two hours divides the 

 head of its tributary, the Branco, from the Essequibo of 

 Guiana. The Negro yields to commerce coffee, cacao, fa- 

 rina, sarsaparilla, Brazil nuts, pitch, piassaba, and valuable 

 woods. The commerce of Brazil with Venezuela by the 

 Eio Negro amounted in 1867 to $22,000, of which $9000 

 was the value of imports. The principal villages above 

 Manaos are San Miguel and Moroa (which contain about 

 fifty dwellings each), Tireguin, Barcellos, Toma, San Carlos, 

 Coana, San Gabriel, and Santa Isabel. 



The next great affluent is the Japura. It rises in the 

 mountains of New Granada, and, flowing southeasterly a 

 thousand miles, enters the Amazon opposite Ega, five hun- 

 dred miles above Manaos. Its principal mouth is three 

 hundred feet wide, but it has a host of distributing chan- 

 nels, the extremes of which are two hundred miles apart. 

 Its current is only three quarters of a mile an hour, and it 

 has been ascended by canoes five hundred miles. A natu- 

 ral canal like the Cassiquiari is said to connect it with the 

 Orinoco. The products of the Japura are sarsaparilla, co- 

 paiba, rubber, cacao, farina, Brazil nuts, moira-piranga — a 

 hard, fine-grained wood of a rich, cherry-red color — and 

 carajurii, a brilliant scarlet dye. 



Parallel to the Japura is the Putumayo or Issa. Its 

 source is the Lake of San Pablo, at the foot of the volcano 



* The Cassiquiari belongs indifTerently to both river systems, the level being 

 so complete at one point between them as to obliterate the line of water-shed. 

 — Herschel. 



