The River Amazon.--Its Source and Magnitude.--Tributaries and
Tints.--Volume and Current.--Rise and
Fall.--Navigation.--Expeditions on the Great River.
Near the silver mines of Cerro Pasco, in the little Lake of Lauricocha,
just below the limit of perpetual winter, rises the "King of
Waters."[148] For the first five hundred miles it flows northerly, in a
continuous series of cataracts and rapids, through a deep valley between
the parallel Cordilleras of Peru. Upon reaching the frontier of Ecuador,
it turns to the right, and runs easterly two thousand five hundred miles
across the great equatorial plain of the continent.[149] No other river
flows in the same latitude, and retains, therefore, the same climatic
conditions for so great a distance. The breadth of the Amazon, also, is
well proportioned to its extraordinary length. At Tabatinga, two
thousand miles above its mouth, it is a mile and a half wide; at the
entrance of the Madeira, it is three miles; below Santarem, it is ten;
and if the Pará be considered a part of the great river, it fronts the
Atlantic one hundred and eighty miles. Brazilians proudly call it the
Mediterranean of the New World. Its vast expanse, presenting below
Teffé magnificent reaches, with blank horizons, and forming a barrier
between different species of animals; its system of back channels,
joining the tributaries, and linking a series of lagunes too many ever
to be named; its network of navigable waters stretching over one third
of the continent; its oceanic fauna--porpoises and manatis, gulls and
frigate-birds--remind the traveler of a great inland sea, with endless
ramifications, rather than a river. The side-channels through the
forest, called by the Indians _igarapés_, or canoe-paths, are one of the
characteristic features of the Amazon.[150] They often run to a great
distance parallel to the great river, and intersecting the tributaries,
so that one can go from Santarem a thousand miles up the Amazon without
once entering it. These natural highways will be of immense advantage
for inter-communication.
[Illustration: Igarapé, or Canoe-path.]
[Footnote 148: Herndon gives, for the altitude of Cerro Pasco, 13,802
feet; Rivero, 14,279. The lieutenant thus describes his first view from
the rough hills surrounding this birthplace of the greatest of rivers:
"I can compare it to nothing so fitly as looking from the broken and
ragged edges of a volcano into the crater beneath."]
[Footnote 149: From Lauricocha to its mouth, the Amazon, following the
main curves, is 2740 miles long, as estimated by Bates; in a straight
line, 2050; from Pará to the head of the Ucayali, 3000. From north to
south the tributaries stretch 1720 miles.]
[Footnote 150: _Igarapé_ is sometimes limited to a creek filled with
back-water; _paranamirim_ is the proper term for a narrow arm of the
main river; and _furos_ are the diminutive mouths of the tributaries.]
But extraordinary as is this network of natural canals, the tributaries
of the Amazon are still more wonderful. They are so numerous they appear
on the map like a thousand ribbons streaming from a main mast, and many
of the obscure affluents, though large as the Hudson, are unknown to
geography. From three degrees north to twenty degrees south, every river
that flows down the eastern slope of the Andes is a contributor--as
though all the rivers between Mexico and Mount Hooker united their
waters in the Mississippi. While the great river of the northern
continent drains an area of one million two hundred thousand square
miles, the Amazon (not including the Tocantíns) is spread over a million
more, or over a surface equal to two thirds of all Europe. Let us
journey around the grand trunk and take a glimpse of the main branches.
The first we meet in going up the left bank is the Rio Negro. It rises
in the Sierra Tunuhy, an isolated mountain group in the llanos of
Colombia, and enters the Amazon at Manáos, a thousand miles from the
sea. The upper part, down to the parallel of one degree north, has a
very rapid current; at San Gabriel are the first rapids in ascending;
between San Gabriel and Barcellos the rate is not over two or three
miles per hour; between Barcellos and Manáos it is a deep but sluggish
river, and in the annual rise of the Amazon its waters are stagnant for
several hundred miles up, or actually flow back. Its extreme length is
twelve hundred miles, and its greatest breadth is at Barcellos, where it
is twelve or fifteen miles. Excepting this middle section, the usual
breadth of the Negro below the equatorial line is about one mile. It is
joined to the Orinoco by the navigable Cassiquiari,[151] a natural canal
three fourths of a mile wide, and a portage of only two hours divides
the head of its tributary, the Branco, from the Essequibo of Guiana. The
Negro yields to commerce coffee, cacao, farina, sarsaparilla, Brazil
nuts, pitch, piassaba, and valuable woods. The commerce of Brazil with
Venezuela by the Rio Negro amounted in 1867 to $22,000, of which $9000
was the value of imports. The principal villages above Manáos are San
Miguel and Moroa (which contain about fifty dwellings each), Tireguin,
Barcellos, Toma, San Carlos, Coana, San Gabriel, and Santa Isabel.
[Footnote 151: The Cassiquiari belongs indifferently to both river
systems, the level being so complete at one point between them as to
obliterate the line of water-shed.--_Herschel_.]
The next great affluent is the Japurá. It rises in the mountains of New
Granada, and, flowing southeasterly a thousand miles, enters the Amazon
opposite Ega, five hundred miles above Manáos. Its principal mouth is
three hundred feet wide, but it has a host of distributing channels, the
extremes of which are two hundred miles apart. Its current is only three
quarters of a mile an hour, and it has been ascended by canoes five
hundred miles. A natural canal like the Cassiquiari is said to connect
it with the Orinoco. The products of the Japurá are sarsaparilla,
copaiba, rubber, cacao, farina, Brazil nuts, moira-piránga--a hard,
fine-grained wood of a rich, cherry-red color--and carajurú, a brilliant
scarlet dye.
Parallel to the Japurá is the Putumayo or Issá. Its source is the Lake
of San Pablo, at the foot of the volcano of Pasto; its mouth, as given
by Herndon, is half a mile broad, and its current two and three fourths
miles an hour.
Farther west are the Napo and Pastassa, starting from the volcanoes of
Quito. The former is nearly seven hundred miles long, navigable five
hundred. The latter is an unnavigable torrent. One of its branches, the
Topo, is one continued rapid; "of those who have fallen into it, only
one has come out alive." Another, the Patate, rises near Iliniza, runs
through the plain to a little south of Cotopaxi, receives all streams
flowing from the eastern side of the western Cordillera from Iliniza to
Chimborazo, and unites near Tunguragua with the Chambo, which rises near
Sangaí. Castelnau and Bates saw pumice floating on the Amazon; it was
probably brought from Cotopaxi by the Pastassa.
Crossing the Marañon, and going eastward, we first pass the Huallaga, a
rapid river of the size of the Cumberland, coming down the Peruvian
Andes from an altitude of eight thousand six hundred feet, and entering
the great river nearly opposite the Pastassa. Its mouth is a mile wide,
and for a hundred miles up its average depth is three fathoms. In July,
August, and September the steamers are not able to ascend to Yurimaguas.
Canoe navigation begins at Tinga Maria, three hundred miles from Lima.
The fertile plain through which the river flows is very attractive to an
agriculturist. Cotton is gathered six months after sowing, and rice in
five months. At Tarapoto a large amount of cotton-cloth is woven for
export.
The next great tributary from the south is the Ucayali. This magnificent
stream originates near ancient Cuzco, and has a fall of .87 of a foot
per mile, and a length nearly equal to that of the Negro. For two
hundred and fifty miles above its mouth it averages half a mile in
width, and has a current of three miles an hour. At Sarayacu it is
twenty feet deep. The Ucayali is navigable for at least seven hundred
miles. The "Morona," a steamer of five hundred tons, has been up to the
entrance of the Pachitéa in the dry season, a distance of six hundred
miles, and in the wet season ascended that branch to Mayro. A small
Peruvian steamer has recently ascended the Tambo to within sixty miles
of Fort Ramon, or seven hundred and seventy-three miles from Nauta.
Leaving the Ucayali, we pass by six rivers rising in the unknown lands
of Northern Bolivia: the Javarí, navigable by steam for two hundred and
fifty miles; the sluggish Jutahí, half a mile broad and four hundred
miles long; the Juruá, four times the size of our Connecticut, and
navigable nearly its entire length; the unhealthy, little-known Teffé
and Coary; and the Purus, a deep, slow river, over a thousand miles
long, and open to navigation half way to its source. Soldan and Pinto
claim to have ascended the Javarí, in a steamer, about one thousand
miles, and it is said Chandlers went up the Purus one thousand eight
hundred miles. The Teffé is narrow, with a strong current. Of all these
six rivers, the Purus is the most important. It is probably the
Amaru-mayu, or "serpent-river," of the Incas, and its affluents enjoy
the privilege of draining the waters of those beautiful Andes which
formed the eastern boundary of the empire of Manco Capac, and
fertilizing the romantic valley of Paucar-tambo, or "Inn of the Flowery
Meadow." The banks of this noble stream are now held by the untamable
Chunchos; but the steam-whistle will accomplish what the rifle can not.
The Purus communicates with the Madeira, proving the absence of rapids
and of intervening mountains.
Sixty miles below the confluence of the Negro, the mighty Madeira, the
largest tributary of the Amazon, blends its milky waters with the turbid
king of rivers. It is about two thousand miles in length; one branch,
the Beni, rising near Lake Titicaca, drains the fertile valleys of
Yungus and Apollo, rich in cinchona, chocolate, and gold; the Marmoré
springs from the vicinity of Chuquisaca, within fifteen miles of a
source of the Paraguay, traversing the territory of the brave and
intelligent Moxos; while the Itinez washes down the gold and diamonds of
Matto Grosso. Were it not for the cascade four hundred and eighty miles
from its mouth, large vessels might sail from the Amazon into the very
heart of Bolivia. When full, it has a three-mile current, and at its
junction with the Amazon it is two miles wide and sixty-six feet deep.
Five hundred miles from its mouth it is a mile wide and one hundred feet
deep. It contains numerous islands, and runs in a comparatively straight
course. It received its name from the vast quantity of drift-wood often
seen floating down. The value of Brazilian commerce with Bolivia by the
Madeira was, in 1867, $43,000.[152]
[Footnote 152: In the map of Friar Fritz, published in 1707, the Madeira
is one of the most insignificant of the tributaries, and the Ucayali and
Putumayo are the largest.]
At Santarem the Amazon receives another great tributary, the Tapajos (or
Rio Preto, as the Portuguese call it), a thousand miles long, and, for
the last eighty miles, from four to twelve miles in breadth. It rises
amid the glittering mines of Matto Grosso, only twenty miles from the
headwaters of the Rio Plata, and flows rapidly down through a
magnificent hilly country to the last cataract, which is one hundred and
sixty miles above Santarem, and is the end of navigation to sailing
vessels. Thence to the Amazon it has little current and no great depth.
From Santarem to Diamantino it is about twenty-six days' travel. Large
quantities of sarsaparilla, rubber, tonka beans, mandioca, and guarana
are brought down this river.
Parallel to the Tapajos, and about two hundred miles distant, flows the
Xingú. It rises in the heart of the empire, has the length of the Ohio
and Monongahela, and can be navigated one hundred and fifty miles. This
is the last great tributary of the Amazon proper; if, however, we
consider the Pará as only one of the outlets of the great river, we may
then add to the list the grand Tocantíns.[153] This splendid river has
its source in the rich province of Minas (the source, also, of the San
Francisco and Uruguay), not six hundred miles from Rio Janeiro--a region
possessing the finest climate in Brazil, and yielding diamonds and
rubies, the sapphire, topaz and opal, gold, silver, and petroleum. The
Tocantíns is sixteen hundred miles long, and ten miles broad at its
mouth; but, unfortunately, rapids commence one hundred and twenty miles
above Cametá. The Araguaia, its main branch, is, according to Castelnau,
one mile wide, with a current of three fourths of a mile an hour.
[Footnote 153: We are inclined to hold, with Bates and others, that the
Pará River is not, strictly speaking, one of the mouths of the Amazon.
"It is made to appear so on many of the maps in common use, because the
channels which connect it with the main river are there given much
broader than they are in reality, conveying the impression that a large
body of water finds an outlet from the main river into the Pará. It is
doubtful, however, if there be any considerable stream of water flowing
constantly downward through these channels. There is a great contrast in
general appearance between the Pará and the main Amazon. In the former
the flow of the tide always creates a strong current upward, while in
the Amazon the turbid flow of the mighty stream overpowers all tides,
and produces a constant downward current. The color of the water is
different; that of the Pará being of a dingy orange-brown, while the
Amazon has an ochreous or yellowish-clay tint. The forests on their
banks have a different aspect. On the Pará, the infinitely diversified
trees seem to rise directly out of the water, the forest-frontage is
covered with greenery, and wears a placid aspect; while the shores of
the main Amazon are encumbered with fallen trunks, and are fringed with
a belt of broad-leaved grasses."--_Naturalist on the Amazon_, i., p.
3-5.]
Here are six tributaries, all of them superior to any river in Europe,
outside of Russia, save the Danube, and ten times greater than any
stream on the west slope of the Andes. While the Arkansas joins the
Mississippi four hundred miles above New Orleans, the Madeira, of equal
length, enters the Amazon nine hundred miles from Pará. But, vast as are
these tributary streams, they seem to make no impression on the Amazon;
they are lost like brooks in the ocean. Our ideas of the magnitude of
the great river are wonderfully increased when we see the Madeira coming
down two thousand miles, yet its enormous contribution imperceptible
half way across the giant river; or the dark waters of the Negro
creeping along the shore, and becoming undistinguishable five miles from
its mouth. Though the Amazon carries a larger amount of sediment than
any other river, it has no true delta, the archipelago in its mouth
(for, like our own St. Lawrence, it has its Bay of a Thousand Isles) not
being an alluvial formation, but having a rocky base. The great island
of Marajó, in physical configuration, resembles the mainland of Guiana.
The deltoid outlet is confined to the tributaries, nearly all of them,
like "the disembogning Nile," emptying themselves by innumerable
embouchures. To several tributaries the Amazon gives water before it
receives their tribute. Thus, by ascending the Negro sixty miles, we
have the singular spectacle of water pouring in from the Amazon through
the Guariba Channel.
The waters of this great river system are of divers tints. The Amazon,
as it leaps from the Andes, and as far down as the Ucayali, is blue,
passing into a clear olive-green; likewise the Pastassa, Huallaga,
Tapajos, Xingú, and Tocantíns. Below the Ucayali it is of a pale,
yellowish olive; the Madeira,[154] Purus, Juruá, Jutahí, Javarí,
Ucayali, Napo, Iça, and Japurá are of similar color. The Negro, Coary,
and Teffé are black. Humboldt observes that "a cooler atmosphere, fewer
musquitoes, greater salubrity, and absence of crocodiles, as also of
fish, mark the region of these black rivers." This is not altogether
true. The Amazon throughout is healthy, being swept by the trade-winds.
The branches, which are not so constantly refreshed by the ocean
breezes, are occasionally malarious; the "white-water" tributaries,
except when they have a slack current in the dry season, have the best
reputation, while intermittent fevers are nearly confined to the
dark-colored streams. Much of the sickness on these tropical waters,
however, is due to exposure and want of proper food rather than to the
climate. The river system of South America will favorably compare, in
point of salubrity, with the river system of its continental
neighbor.[155]
[Footnote 154: The Madeira has often a milky color which it receives
from the white clay along its banks.]
[Footnote 155: The average temperature of the water in the Lower Amazon
is 81°, that of the air being a little less. The temperature of the
Huallaga at Yurimaguas was 75° when the air was 88° in the shade; in
another experiment both the river and air were 80°. The Marañon at
Iquitos was 79° when the air was 90°. At the mouth of the Juruá, Herndon
found both water and air 82°. In the tropics the difference between the
temperature of the water and air is proportionally less than in high
latitudes.]
As we might expect, the volume of the Amazon is beyond all parallel.
Half a million cubic feet of water pour through the narrows of Obidos
every second, and fresh water may be taken up from the Atlantic far out
of sight of land. The fall of the main easterly trunk of the Amazon is
about six and a half inches per mile, equivalent to a slope of 21'--the
same as that of the Nile, and one third that of the Mississippi. Below
Jaen there are thirty cataracts and rapids; at the Pongo de Manseriche,
at the altitude of 1164 feet (according to Humboldt), it bids adieu to
mountain scenery. Between Tabatinga and the ocean the average current is
three miles an hour. It diminishes toward Pará, and is every where at a
minimum in the dry season; but it always has the "swing" of an ocean
current.
Though not so rapid as the Mississippi, the Amazon is deeper. There are
seven fathoms of water at Nauta (2200 miles from the Atlantic), eleven
at Tabatinga, and twenty-seven on the average below Mandáos.[156]
[Footnote 156: The assertion of the _Ency. Metropolitana_, that "its
current has great violence and rapidity, and its depth is unfathomable,"
must be received with some allowance.]
The Amazon and its branches are subject to an annual rise of great
regularity. It does not take place simultaneously over the whole river,
but there is a succession of freshets. At the foot of the Andes the rise
commences in January; at Ega it begins about the end of February.
Coinciding with this contribution from the west, the October rains on
the highlands of Bolivia and Brazil swell the southern tributaries,
whose accumulated floods reach the main stream in February; and the
latter, unable to discharge the avalanche of waters, inundates a vast
area, and even crowds up the northern tributaries. As the Madeira,
Tapajos, and Purus subside, the Negro, fed by the spring rains in Guiana
and Venezuela, presses downward till the central stream rolls back the
now sluggish affluents from the south. There is, therefore, a rhythmical
correspondence in the rise and fall of the arms of the Amazon, so that
this great fresh-water sea sways alternately north and south; while the
onward swell in the grand trunk is a progressive undulation eastward. As
the Cambridge Professor well says: "In this oceanic river the tidal
action has an annual instead of a daily ebb and flow; it obeys a larger
orb, and is ruled by the sun and not the moon." As the southern
affluents have the greatest volume, the Amazon receives its largest
accession after the sun has been in the southern hemisphere. The rise is
gradual, increasing to one foot per day. One lowland after another sinks
beneath the flood; the forest stands up to its middle in the water, and
shady dells are transformed into navigable creeks.[157] Swarms of
turtles leave the river for the inland lakes; flocks of wading birds
migrate to the banks of the Negro and Orinoco to enjoy the cloudless sky
of the dry season; alligators swim where a short time before the jaguar
lay in wait for the tapir; and the natives, unable to fish, huddle in
their villages to spend the "winter of their discontent." The Lower
Amazon is at its minimum in September or October. The rise above this
lowest level is between seven and eight fathoms. If we consider the
average width of the Amazon two miles, we shall have a surface of at
least five thousand square miles raised fifty feet by the inundation. An
extraordinary freshet is expected every sixth year.
[Footnote 157: The flooded lands are called _gapos_.]
The Atlantic tide is perceptible at Obidos, four hundred and fifty miles
above Pará, and Bates observed it up the Tapajos, five hundred and
thirty miles distant. The tide, however, does not flow up; there is only
a rising and falling of the waters--the momentary check of the great
river in its conflict with the ocean. The "bore," or _piroróco_, is a
colossal wave at spring tide, rising suddenly along the whole width of
the Amazon to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, and then collapsing
with a frightful roar.
The Amazon presents an unparalleled extent of water communication. So
many and far reaching are its tributaries, it touches every country on
the continent except Chile and Patagonia. South America is well nigh
quartered by its river system: the Amazon starts within sixty miles of
the Pacific; the Tapajos and Madeira reach down to the La Plata; while
the Negro mingles its waters with those of the Orinoco. The tributaries
also communicate with each other by intersecting canals, so numerous
that central Amazonia is truly a cluster of islands. Wagons and
railroads will be out of the question for ages hence in this aquatic
basin. No other river runs in so deep a channel to so great a distance.
For two thousand miles from its month there are not less than seven
fathoms of water. Not a fall interrupts navigation on the main stream
for two thousand five hundred miles; and it so happens that while the
current is ever east (for even the ocean can not send up its tide
against it), there is a constant trade-wind westward, so that navigation
up or down has always something in its favor. As a general rule, the
breeze is not so strong during the rise of the river. There are at least
six thousand miles of navigation for large vessels. It was lately said
that the Mississippi carries more vessels in a month, and the
Yang-tse-Kiang in a day, than the Amazon all the year round. But this is
no longer true. Steamers already ascend regularly to the port of
Moyabamba, which is less than twenty days' travel from the Pacific
coast. The Amazon was opened to the world September 7, 1867; and the
time can not be far distant when the exhaustless wealth of the great
valley--its timber, fruit, medicinal plants, gums, and dye-stuffs--will
be emptied by this great highway into the commercial lap of the
Atlantic; when crowded steamers will plow all these waters--yellow,
black, and blue--and the sloths and alligators, monkeys and jaguars,
toucans and turtles, will have a bad time of it.
Officially free to the world, the great river is, however, for the
present practically closed to foreign shipping, as it is difficult to
compete with the Brazilian steamers. For, by the contract which lasts
till 1877, the company is allowed an annual subsidy of $4,000,000, which
has since been increased by 250 milreys per voyage. In 1867 the steamers
and sailing vessels on the Amazon were divided as follows, though it
must be remembered that few of the foreign ships, excepting Portuguese,
ascended beyond Pará:
Nationality. No. Tonnage
United States 37 39,901-1/2
Brazil 49 28,639
England 52 13,276-1/2
Portugal 24 7,871
France 18 5,344
Prussia 4 889-1/2
Holland 3 538
Denmark 2 525
Holstein 3 498
Norway 1 135
Spain 1 90
The vessels carrying the stars and stripes exported from Pará to the
value of 3,235,073$950, or eight times the amount carried by Brazilian
craft, and 50,000 milreys more than England. While, therefore, the
Imperial Company has the monopoly of trade on the Amazon, our ships
distribute one third of the products to the world. The United States is
the natural commercial partner with Brazil; for not only is New York the
half-way house between Pará and Liverpool, but a chip thrown into the
sea at the mouth of the Amazon will float close by Cape Hatteras. The
official value of exports from Pará in 1867 was 9,926,912$557, or about
five millions of dollars, an increase of one million over 1866.
The early expeditions into the Valley of the Amazon, in search of the
"Gilded King," are the most romantic episodes in the history of Spanish
discovery. To the wild wanderings of these worshipers of gold succeeded
the more earnest explorations of the Jesuits, those pioneers of
geographical knowledge. Pinzon discovered the mouth of the river in
1500; but Orellana, who came down the Napo in 1541, was the first to
navigate its waters. Twenty years later Aguirre descended from Cuzco; in
1637, Texeira ascended to Quito by the Napo; Cabrera descended from Peru
in 1639; Juan de Palacios by the Napo in 1725; La Condamine from Jaen in
1744, and Madame Godin by the Pastassa in 1769. The principal travelers
who preceded us in crossing the continent this century were Mawe (1828),
Poeppig (1831), Smyth (1834), Von Tschudi (1845), Castelnau (1846),
Herndon and Gibbon (1851), and Marcoy (1867), who came down through
Peru, and a Spanish commission (Almagro, Spada, Martinez, and Isern),
who made the Napo transit in 1865. To Spix and Martius (1820), Bates and
Wallace (1848-1857), Azevedo and Pinto (1862-1864), and Agassiz (1865),
the world is indebted for the most scientific surveys of the river in
Brazil.
Such is the Amazon, the mightiest river in the world, rising amid the
loftiest volcanoes on the globe, and flowing through a forest
unparalleled in extent. "It only wants (wrote Father Acuña), in order to
surpass the Ganges, Euphrates, and the Nile in felicity, that its source
should be in Paradise." As if one name were not sufficient for its
grandeur, it has three appellations: Marañon, Solimoens, and Amazon; the
first applied to the part in Peru, the second to the portion between
Tabatinga and Manáos, and the third to all below the Rio Negro.[158] We
have no proper conception of the vast dimensions of the thousand-armed
river till we sail for weeks over its broad bosom, beholding it
sweeping disdainfully by the great Madeira as if its contribution was of
no account, discharging into the sea one hundred thousand cubic feet of
water per second more than our Mississippi, rolling its turbid waves
thousands of miles exactly as it pleases,--plowing a new channel every
year, with tributaries twenty miles wide, and an island in its mouth
twice the size of Massachusetts.
[Footnote 158: The upper part of the Marañon, from its source to Jaen,
is sometimes called the Tunguragua. Solimoens is now seldom heard; but,
instead, Middle Amazon, or simply Amazon. The term Alto Amazonas or High
Amazon is also applied to all above the Negro. Marañon, says Velasco,
derives its name from the circumstance that a soldier, sent by Pizarro
to discover the sources of the Rio Piura, having beheld the mighty
stream from the neighborhood of Jaen, and, astonished to behold a sea of
fresh water, exclaimed, _"Hac mare an non?"_ Orellana's pretended fight
with a nation of female warriors gave rise to the Portuguese name of the
river, Amazonas (anglicized Amazon), after the mythical women in
Cappadocia, who are said to have burnt off their right breasts that they
might use the bow and javelin with more skill and force, and hence their
name, [Greek: Amazones] from [Greek: a] and [Greek: mazos]. Orellana's
story probably grew out of the fact that the men wear long tunics, part
the hair in the middle, and, in certain tribes, alone wear ornaments.
Some derive the name from the Indian word _amassona_, boat-destroyer.
The old name, Orellana, after the discoverer, is obsolete, as also the
Indian term Parana-tinga, or King of Waters. In ordinary conversation it
is designated as _the_ river, in distinction from its tributaries. "In
all parts of the world (says Hamboldt), the largest rivers are called by
those who dwell on their banks, _The River_, without any distinct and
peculiar appellation."]