channels for canoes,
and finishing it where the great river appears a fresh-water ocean. Mr.
Church, the artist, made the sketches for his famous "Heart of the
Andes" where the headwaters of the Amazon are rivulets. But no one whose
language is the English has journeyed down and described the voyage from
the _plateaux_ of Ecuador to the Atlantic Ocean until Professor Orton
and his party accomplished this feat in 1868. Yet it was over this very
route that the King of Waters (as the Amazon is called by the
aborigines) was originally discovered. The _auri sacra fames_, which in
1541 urged the adventurous Gonzalo Pizarro to hunt for the fabled city
of _El Dorado_ in the depths of the South American forests, led to the
descent of the great river by Orellana, a knight of Truxillo. The fabled
women-warriors were said to have been seen in this notable voyage, and
hence the name of the river _Amazon_, a name which in Spanish and
Portuguese is in the plural. It was not until nearly one hundred years
after Orellana was in his grave that a voyage of discovery ascended the
river. In 1637 Pedro Teixeira started from Para with an expedition of
nearly two thousand (all but seventy of whom were natives), and with
varied experiences, by water and by land, the explorer in eight months
reached the city of Quito, where he was received with distinguished
honor. Two hundred years ago the result of this expedition was
published.

The Amazon was from that time, at rare intervals, the highway of Spanish
and Portuguese priests and friars, who thus went to their distant
charges among the Indians. In 1745 the French academician De la
Condamine descended from Quito to Para, and gave the most accurate idea
of the great valley which we had until the first quarter of this
century.

The narrow policy of Spain and Portugal was most unfruitful in its
results to South America. A jealous eye guarded that great region, of
which it can be so well said there are

"Realms unknown and blooming wilds,
And fruitful deserts, worlds of solitude,
Where the sun smiles and seasons teem in vain."

Now, the making known to the world of any portion of these "fruitful
deserts" is performing a service for the world. This Professor Orton
has done. His interesting and valuable volume hardly needs any
introduction or commendation, for its intrinsic merit will exact the
approbation of every reader. Scientific men, and tourists who seek for
new rout