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204 distances, flowing parallel to each other, until they converge and form a navigable stream, which reaches to the heart of South America. The country watered by these branches comprises more than fifty leagues. Primeval forests cover the surface, and unite the gorgeousness of India with the beauties of Greece.

The walnut interlaces its long branches with the mahogany and ebony; the cedar and the classic laurel grow side by side, and beneath these the myrtle consecrated to Venus; still leaving space for the fragrant spikenard and the white lily.

A belt of odoriferous cedar allows a passage through the forest, which is everywhere else impassable because of the thick and thorny rose-bushes. The old trunks are covered with various species of flowering mosses, and the bindweed and other vines festoon and entwine all these different trees.

Over all this vegetation, which defies the brush of fancy in combination and richness of coloring, fly myriads of golden butterflies, brilliant humming-birds, green parrots, blue magpies, and orange-colored toucans. The sound of these noisy birds greets one all day long like the roar of a cataract.

Major Andrews, an English traveller, who has devoted many pages to the description of these beauties, relates that he used to go out every morning to enjoy the sight of this magnificent vegetation, and that he often penetrated far into the thick, aromatic forests, so enraptured that only after his return home did he know that his clothes were torn, and his face scratched and bleeding. The city is surrounded for many leagues by a forest of orange-trees, rounded to about the same