600 The Andes and the Amazons. 



The villages of the Maranon, of which Iquitos is the 

 largest and most advanced, are situated immediately on 

 the river, above the limit of high water — at Iquitos the 

 rise of the river is about thirty feet at most — and here the 

 woods are cleared away, merely far enough to enable one 

 to put up his cane-sided and thatched-roof houses, while 

 the thick-growing vegetation dispntes every inch of ground 

 with the colonist. The so-called streets generally, and 

 more especially at the high-water season, enjoy all the 

 dirty appearance of marshy positions, out of which hun- 

 dreds of frogs make night hideous with their solemn noise, 

 while an occasional small alligator or water-snake looms 

 above the grassy pool. Yet, notwithstanding this, the 

 people sit out in the open air at all times of night to flee 

 from that pest of the Maranon, the mosquito, which will 

 not let them read, write, or hardly live by a candle-light. 

 The little babies and their mothers squat on the ground 

 on mats or in the dirt, and entertain the passer-by; and 

 not an ague after all this. 



To this general history of the Maranon fevers, there 

 has this year [1872] occurred a notable exception, the first 

 in the memory of the " oldest inhabitant." In June, re- 

 port reached Iquitos that an epidemic of a " strange fe- 

 ver" had appeared at a village of some two hundred In- 

 dians, called Paranari, located some two hundred miles 

 above Iquitos. The place is located immediately on the 

 river, the elevation above high water just sufficient to avoid 

 flooding ; and it has a very porous soil, which allows very 

 rapid drying after even hard rains, and immediately sur- 

 rounded by forest-growth, in all respects, as regards that, 

 like Iquitos. 



which from want of labor and money, had been allowed to grow over with 

 grass which half hid pools of stagnant water filled with eveiy species of filth 

 imaginable. To this cause was added an unusual modification of the sea- 

 sons as to fall and rise of the river. 



