[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.
[154] The Madeira has often a milky color which it receives from the white clay along its banks.
[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.
[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.
[157] The flooded lands are called gapos.
[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, Αμαξὁνες from α and μαξος. 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."
[159] Professor Agassiz gives the average slope as hardly more than a foot in ten miles, which is based on the farther assertion that the distance from Tabatinga to the sea-shore is more than 2000 miles in a straight line. The distance is not 1600, or exactly 1500, from Pará.—See A Journey in Brazil, p. 349.
[160] Messrs. Myers and Forbes found this red clay on the Negro, most abundantly near Barcellos; also in small quantities on the Orinoco above Maipures. The officers of the "Morona" assured us that the same formation was traceable far up the Ucayali and Huallaga. This clay from the Amazon, as examined microscopically by Prof. H. James Clark, contains fragments of gasteropod shells and bivalve casts. The red earth of the Pampas, according to Ehrenberg, contains eight fresh-water to one salt-water animalcule.
[161] "On the South American coast, where tertiary and supra-tertiary beds have been extensively elevated, I repeatedly noticed that the uppermost beds were formed of coarser materials than the lower; this appears to indicate that, as the sea becomes shallower, the force of the waves or currents increased."—Darwin's Observations, pt. ii., 131. "Nowhere in the Pampas is there any appearance of much superficial denudation."—Pt. iii., 100.
[162] A Journey in Brazil, p. 250, 411, 424. Again, in his Lecture before the Lowell Institute, 1866: "These deposits could not have been made by the sea, nor in a large lake, as they contain no marine nor fresh-water fossils."