580 The Andes akd the Amazons. 



CHAPTER XLiy. 



Medical Notes on the Upper Amazons.* 



The Amazons River, in its course eastward, reaches Ta- 

 batinga, the Brazilian frontier post, which 'is 2000 miles 

 from the Atlantic Ocean. From this frontier westward 

 the Amazons is in Peruvian territory, and is known as the 

 Maranon by those through whose country it passes, and 

 keeps this name to its head-waters in the Andes. Some 

 five hundred miles west of the above-named frontier, the 

 Maranon receives its largest tributary, whose quantity of 

 water, its navigability, and its running through the same 

 lowlands as the Lower Maranon, seem to entitle it to be 

 considered a continuation of the Maranon itself, but which 

 is known locally, and on the maps, as the Ucayali. At 

 some two hundred miles west of this river the Maranon 

 reaches the spurs of the Andes at or near Borja, through 

 which it rushes with great rapidity, and above which there 

 is no navigation but for canoes. On the Ucayali, how- 

 ever, the steamers have gone as far as the j unction of the 

 Tambo and Urubamba rivers, some nine hundred miles 

 from the Maranon. A few miles up either of the streams 

 mentioned, the hills again make navigation impossible, and 

 the rivers degenerate into mere mountain torrents. It is 

 of the valleys of these two large water-courses, the Mara- 

 non and Ucayali, that the following notes are designed to 

 treat. 



The basin of the Ucayali extends to the west at varying 



* By F. L. Galt, M.D. Republished from the Medical Journal, Philadel- 

 phia, with additional notes by the author. 



