Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/342

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been ascertained with 'much accuracy. The open plains of Caguan have been supposed much more extensive thanthey really are ; but I have very nearly determined their limits to the south and east, by the observations I made, and the information I obtained in my voyage up the Uaup£s. Again, on the Uaycali there is a district marked on the maps as the " Pampas del Sacramento," which has been supposed to be an open plain ; but the banks of the Amazon up to the mouth of the Uaycali are clothed with thick forest, and Messrs. Smyth and Lowe, who crossed the Pampa in two places, found no open plains ; and from their observations and those of Lieut. Mawe we must extend the forest district up to near Moya- bamba, west of the Huallaga, and to the foot of the mountains east of Pasco and Tarma. I was informed by a native of Ecuador, well acquainted with the country, that the Napo, Tigre, Pastaza, and the adjacent rivers all flow through dense forest, which extends up even to Baeza and Canelos and over all the lower slopes of the Andes. Tschudi informs us that the forest districts commence on all the north and east slopes cf the Andes of Peru, near Huanta, and at Urubamba north of Cuzco. I have learnt from a gentleman, a native of La Paz, that immediately on crossing the Bolivian Andes from that city and from Oropessa and Santa Cruz, you enter the great forests, which extend over all the tributaries of the Madeira. Traders up the Purus and all the southern branches of the Upper Amazon, neither meet with, nor hear accounts of, any open land, so that there is little doubt but that the extent here pointed out is one vast, ever-verdant, unbroken forest.

The forests of the Amazon are distinguished from those of most other countries, by the great variety of species of trees composing them. Instead of extensive tracts covered with pines, or oaks, or beeches, we scarcely ever see two individuals of the same species together, except in certain cases, principally among the Palms. A great extent of flooded land about the mouth of the Amazon, is covered with the Miriti Palms {Manritia flexnosa and M. vim/era), and in many places the Assai {Euterpe edulis) is almost equally abundant. Generally, however, the same species of tree is repeated only at distant intervals. On a road for ten miles through the forest near Para, there are only two specimens of the Masserandiiba, or Cow-tree, and all through the adjoining district they are