REFLECTIONS. 



59 



had already converted it into a skiff manned by fairies, and bound upon 

 a mission of hiffh import, bearing messages of peace and good-will, 

 telling of commerce and navigation, of settlement and civilization, 

 of religious and political liberty, from the "King of Rivers" to the 

 " Father of Waters and, possibly, meeting in the Florida pass, and 

 "speaking," through a trumpet louder than the tempest, spirits sent 

 down by the Naiads of Lake Itaska, with greetings to Morococha. 



I was now, for the first time, fairly in the field of my operations. I 

 had been sent to explore the Valley of the Amazon, to sound its 

 streams, and to report as to their navigability. I was commanded to 

 examine its fields, its forests, and its rivers, that I might gauge their 

 capabilities, active and dormant, for trade and commerce with the 

 States of Christendom, and make known to the spirit and enterprise of 

 the age the resources which lie in concealment there, waiting for the 

 touch of civilization and the breath of the steam-engine to give them 

 animation, life, and palpable existence. 



Before us lay this immense field, dressed in the robes of everlasting 

 summer, and embracing an area of thousands upon thousands of square 

 miles on which the footfall of civilized man had never been heard. 

 Behind us towered, in forbidding grandeur, the crests and peaked 

 summits of the Andes, clad in the garb of eternal winter. The 

 contrast was striking, and the field inviting. But who were the 

 laborers? Gibbon and I. We were all. The rest were not even 

 gleaners. But it was well. The expedition had been planned and 

 arranged at home with admirable judgment and consummate sagacity; 

 for, had it been on a grand scale, commensurate with its importance, or 

 even larger than it was, it would have broken down with its own 

 weight. 



Though the waters where I stood were bound on their way to meet 

 the streams of our Northern Hemisphere, and to bring, for all the 

 practical purposes of commerce and navigation, the mouth of the 

 Amazon and the mouth of the Mississippi into one, and place it before 

 our own doors; yet, from the head of navigation on one stream to the 

 head of navigation on the other, the distance to be sailed could not be 

 less than ten thousand miles. Vast, many, and great, doubtless, are 

 the varieties of' climates, soils, and productions within such a range. 

 The importance to the world of settlement, cultivation, and commerce 

 in the Valley of the Amazon cannot be over-estimated. With the 

 climates of India, and of all the habitable portions of the earth, piled 

 one above the other in quick succession, tillage and good husbandry 

 here would transfer the productions of the East to this magnificent 



