462 The Andes and the Amazons. 



and precise. Paz Soldan calls it " as sonorous as the 

 Spanish and enei'getic and laconic as the English." 



The valley of the Amazons is probably the most thinly- 

 peopled region on the globe, save the great deserts and the 

 polar zones. There are not 40,000 souls along the banks 

 of the rivers in the whole province of Amazonas and the 

 Lower Maranon. Many of the towns marked on the maps 

 do not exist, or are represented by a solitary palm-hut. The 

 visible population is almost confined to the circumference 

 of the valley ; as at Para, near the mouth of the river; at 

 Moyobamba and Tarapoto, on the oriental side of the An- 

 des ; and at Trinidad, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, and La 

 Paz, on the head-waters of the Madeira. The great basin 

 is filled with a continuous, dark, primeval forest, rarely 

 disturbed by the hand of man, and into which daylight 

 seldom enters. Yet imagination peoples this pathless wil- 

 derness with uncounted swarms of savages. There are, it 

 is true, numerous clans (we can hardly call them tribes) of 

 Indians, distinct in language, and often hostile toward each 

 other. But many of these so-called tribes, though digni- 

 fied with separate names, are insignificant in numbers, 

 barely mustering a hiTudred ; while the Mundurucu, the 

 largest known tribe in the valley, does not exceed 8000 — 

 men, women, and children.* Nor are there any remains 

 of ancient Myalls to indicate a by-gone civilization, or even 

 shell-heaps in memory of a more primitive race.t 



* Eaimondi, an excellent authority, puts down the number of all the wild 

 Indians on the Maranon — that is, in the whole province of Loreto, which 

 stretches from Ecuador to Cuzco, and from the top of the ^ndes to Brazil— 

 as from 30,000 to 40,000. To this may be added, perhaps, another 30,000 

 to include the civilized tribes, half-breeds, and whites. 



t The pottery of Marajd and Taperinha, and the rude daubs and scratch- 

 es on Erere, exhibit nothing more than savage talent, and are evidently too 

 recent to be numbered with "antiquities." There is a remarkable family 

 likeness between the drawings found by Dr. Seemann at Veraguas, Central 



