CHAPTER XV. 
VEGETATION OE THE AMAZON VALLEY. 
Perhaps no country in tlie world contains such an 
amount of vegetable matter on its surface as the valley 
of the Amazon. Its entire extent, with the exception of 
some very small portions, is covered with one dense and 
lofty primeval forest, the most extensive and unbroken 
which exists upon the earth. It is the great feature 
of the country,— that which at once stamps it as a 
unique and peculiar region. It is not here as on the 
coasts of southern Brazil, or on the shores of the Pacific, 
where a few days' journey suffices to carry us beyond the 
forest district, and into the parched plains and rocky 
serras of the interior. Here we may travel for weeks 
and months inland, in any direction, and find scarcely 
an acre of ground unoccupied by trees. It is far up 
in the interior, where the great mass of this mighty 
forest is found ; not on the lower part of the river, near 
the coast, as is generally supposed. 
A line from the mouth of the river Parnaiba, in long. 
