The Andes and the Amazon; Or, Across the Continent of South America

PALMS ON THE MIDDLE AMAZON.
PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY IN VASSAR COLLEGE, POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y., AND CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES, PHILADELPHIA.
WITH A NEW MAP OF EQUATORIAL AMERICA AND NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by Harper & Brothers, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Terra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature: no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. —Darwin's Journal , p. 503.
Nearly the entire region traversed by the expedition is strangely misrepresented by the most recent geographical works. On the Andes of Ecuador we have little besides the travels of Humboldt; on the Napo, nothing; while the Marañon is less known to North Americans than the Nile.
Many of the following pages first appeared in the New York Evening Post . The author has also published Physical Observations on the Andes and the Amazon and Geological Notes on the Ecuadorian Andes in the American Journal of Science , an article on the great earthquake of 1868 in the Rochester Democrat , and a paper On the Valley of the Amazon read before the American Association at Salem. These papers have been revised and extended, though the popular form has been retained. It has been the effort of the writer to present a condensed but faithful picture of the physical aspect, the resources, and the inhabitants of this vast country, which is destined to become an important field for commercial enterprise. For detailed descriptions of the collections in natural history, the scientific reader is referred to the various reports of the following gentlemen, to whom the specimens were committed by the Smithsonian Institution: