Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/341

 THE AMAZON VALLEY. 301

Along the Andes of Quito, from Pasto to Guancabamba, it reaches close up to the eastern base of the mountains, and even ascends their lower slopes. In the moderately elevated country between the river Huallaga and Marafion, the forest extends only over the eastern portion, commencing in the neighbourhood of Moyobamba. Further on, to the east of Cuzco and La Paz, it spreads high up on the slopes of the Bolivian Andes, and passing a little to the west of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, turns off to the north-east, crossing the Tapajdz and Xingu rivers somewhere about the middle of their course, and the Tocantins not far above its junction with the Araguaya, and then passes over to the river Parnaiba, which it follows to its mouth.

The Island of Marajo, at the mouth of the Amazon, has its eastern half open plains, while in the western the forest commences. On the north of the Amazon, from its mouth to beyond Montealegre, are open plains ; but opposite the mouth of the Tapajdz at Santarem, the forest begins, and appears to extend up to the Serras of Carumani, on the Rio Branco, and thence stretches west, to join the wooded country on the eastern side of the Orinoko. West of that river, it commences south of the Vichada, and, crossing over the upper waters of the Guaviare and Uaupe's, reach the Andes east of Pasto, where we commenced our survey.

The forests of no other part of the world are so extensive and unbroken as this. Those of Central Europe are trifling in comparison ; nor in India are they very continuous or extensive ; while the rest of Asia seems to be a country of thinly wooded plains, and steppes, and deserts. Africa contains some large forests, situated on the east and west coasts, and in the interior south of the equator ; but the whole of them would bear but a small proportion to that of the Amazon. In North America alone is there anything approach- ing to it, where the whole country east of the Mississippi and about the great lakes, is, or has been, an almost uninterrupted extent of woodland.

In a general survey of the earth, we may therefore look upon the New World as pre-eminently the land of forests, contrasting strongly with the Old, where steppes and deserts are the most characteristic features.

The boundaries of the Amazonian forest have not hitherto