4G6 



DELTA OF THE AMAZONS: 



[Ch. XIX. 



wilderness to be replaced by towns, orchards, and gardens. 



steam-boats, like movm 



■ce 



of the current, or shoot rapidly down the descending stream, 

 through the solitudes of the forests and prairies. Already 

 does the flourishing population of the great valley far exceed 

 that of the thirteen United States when first they declared 

 their independence. Such is the state of a continent where 

 trees and stones are hurried annually, by a thousand torrents, 



mountains 



matter 



When these materials 



with the wreck of countless forests and the bones of animals 

 which perish in the inundations, 

 the gulf, they do not render the waters unfit for aquatic 

 animals ; but, on the contrary, the sea here swarms with life, 

 as it generally does where the influx of a great river furnishes 

 a copious supply of organic and mineral matter. Yet some 

 geologists, when they behold the spoils of the land heaped m 

 successive strata, and blended confusedly with the remains 

 of fishes, broken shells and corals ; when they see portions 

 of erect trunks of trees with their roots still retaining their 

 natural position, and one tier of them preserved above another, 

 are apt to imagine that they are viewing the signs of a tur- 

 bulent instead of a tranquil and settled state of the planet. 

 They read in such phenomena the proof of chaotic disorder 

 and reiterated catastrophes, instead of indications of a surface 

 as habitable as the most delicious and fertile districts now 

 tenanted by man. 



i 



What 



delta of the Amazons forms, according to Mr. Bates, an 

 irregular triangle, of which each side measures about 180 

 miles, but the island of Marajo, which is as large as^ Sicily, 

 occupies a great portion of this space, and inside of this there 



Mar 



by different arms of the Amazons, and of the Para, tne 

 waters of which are blended in a common estuary. ^ These 

 islands have been lately examined by Professor Agassiz, who 



formation 



considers to be of Post-tertiary date, and to have been de- 



* Henry Walter Bates, Delta of the Amazons, Brit. Assoc. Report, 1864, p. 



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