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The National Geographic Magazine 



Natives Living on the Tambopata River, a Tributary of the Amazon 



little known. The Tambopata is a 

 tributary of the Madre de Dios, which 

 joins its waters with those of the Beni 

 and other rivers to form the Madeira. 

 The Madeira is one of the great rivers 

 of the world, and yet it is only one of 

 the sources of the mighty Amazon. 



Until our embarkation we had been 

 continually in deep, densely wooded 

 valleys, our view always shut in by 

 their lofty sides. On the second day 

 down the Tavora, however, as we 

 swept out into the broader waters of 

 the Tambopata, the hills fell away sud- 

 denly, leaving before us only the level 

 Amazonian plain — one vast forest, ex- 

 tending unbroken, save for the river 

 courses, for hundreds, even thousands, 

 of miles. At rare intervals the banks 



rise in bluffs fifty or a hundred feet 

 above the general level, but usually 

 it is an unbroken, forest-covered 

 plain, rising only a few feet above 

 the level of the river, and in time 

 of flood covered for great distances by 

 the swollen waters. It is a forest, so 

 far as I saw, without a single natural 

 opening or glade, except along the 

 banks of the rivers. For days we had 

 longed to see the hills melt away and 

 the plain appear ; a month later, while 

 working our slow way up the river, we 

 -watched with even greater eagerness to 

 catch again a glimpse of the blue hills 

 outlined against the sky. 



THE C.HUNCHOS 



In the shade of this ever-present 



