w seldom heard; but,
instead, Middle Amazon, or simply Amazon. The term Alto Amazonas or High
Amazon is also applied to all above the Negro. Maranon, 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, [Greek: Amazones] from [Greek: a] and [Greek: mazos]. 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The old name, Orellana, after the discoverer, is obsolete, as also the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."]

CHAPTER XIX.

The Valley of the Amazon.--Its Physical
Geography.--Geology.--Climate.--Vegetation.

From the Atlantic shore to the foot of the Andes, and from the Orinoco
to the Paraguay, stretches the great Valley of the Amazon. In this vast
area the United States might be packed without touching its boundaries.
It could contain the basins of the Mississippi, the Danube, the Nile,
and the Hoang-Ho. It is girt on three sides by a wall of mountains: on
the north are the highlands of Guiana and Venezuela; on the west stand
the Andes; on the south rise the table-lands of Matto Grosso. The valley
begins at such an altitude, that on the western edge vegetation differs
as much from the vegetation at Para, though in the same latitude, as the
flora of Canada from the flora of the West Indies.

The greater part of the region drained by the Amazon, however, is not a
valley proper, but an extensive plain. From the mouth of the Napo to the
ocean, a distance of eighteen hundred miles in a straight line, the
slope is one foot in five miles.[15