Jules Verne by Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon Read Free Book Online Page A

rejected.
    At its departure from Lake Lauricocha the youthful river starts toward
the northeast for a distance of five hundred and sixty miles, and does
not strike to the west until it has received an important tributary—the
Panta. It is called the Marañon in its journey through Colombia and Peru
up to the Brazilian frontier—or, rather, the Maranhao, for Marañon is
only the French rendering of the Portuguese name.
    From the frontier of Brazil to Manaos, where the superb Rio Negro joins
it, it takes the name of the Solimaës, or Solimoens, from the name of
the Indian tribe Solimao, of which survivors are still found in the
neighboring provinces. And, finally, from Manaos to the sea it is the
Amasenas, or river of the Amazons, a name given it by the old
Spaniards, the descendants of the adventurous Orellana, whose vague but
enthusiastic stories went to show that there existed a tribe of female
warriors on the Rio Nhamunda, one of the middle-sized affluents of the
great river.
    From its commencement the Amazon is recognizable as destined to become
a magnificent stream. There are neither rapids nor obstacles of any sort
until it reaches a defile where its course is slightly narrowed between
two picturesque and unequal precipices. No falls are met with until this
point is reached, where it curves to the eastward, and passes through
the intermediary chain of the Andes. Hereabouts are a few waterfalls,
were it not for which the river would be navigable from its mouth to its
source. As it is, however, according the Humboldt, the Amazon is free
for five-sixths of its length.
    And from its first starting there is no lack of tributaries, which are
themselves fed by subsidiary streams. There is the Chinchipa, coming
from the northeast, on its left. On its right it is joined by the
Chachapoyas, coming from the northeast. On the left we have the Marona
and the Pastuca; and the Guallaga comes in from the right near the
mission station of Laguna. On the left there comes the Chambyra and the
Tigré, flowing from the northeast; and on the right the Huallaga, which
joins the main stream twenty-eight hundred miles from the Atlantic, and
can be ascended by steamboats for over two hundred miles into the very
heart of Peru. To the right, again, near the mission of San Joachim
d'Omaguas, just where the upper basin terminates, and after flowing
majestically across the pampas of Sacramento, it receives the
magnificent Ucayali, the great artery which, fed by numerous affluents,
descends from Lake Chucuito, in the northeast of Arica.
    Such are the principal branches above the village of Iquitos. Down the
stream the tributaries become so considerable that the beds of most
European rivers would fail to contain them. But the mouths of these
auxiliary waters Joam Garral and his people will pass as they journey
down the Amazon.
    To the beauties of this unrivaled river, which waters the finest country
in the world, and keeps along its whole course at a few degrees to the
south of the equator, there is to be added another quality, possessed
by neither the Nile, the Mississippi, nor the Livingstone—or, in
other words, the old Congo-Zaira-Lualaba—and that is (although some
ill-informed travelers have stated to the contrary) that the Amazon
crosses a most healthy part of South America. Its basin is constantly
swept by westerly winds. It is not a narrow valley surrounded by high
mountains which border its banks, but a huge plain, measuring three
hundred and fifty leagues from north to south, scarcely varied with a
few knolls, whose whole extent the atmospheric currents can traverse
unchecked.
    Professor Agassiz very properly protested against the pretended
unhealthiness o the climate of a country which is destined to become one
of the most active of the world's producers. According to him, "a soft
and gentle breeze is constantly observable, and produces an evaporation,
thanks to which the temperature is kept down, and the sun does not give
out heat