Amazon (mythology)

“ It was said that in order to be unimpeded in war, they burned off their right breasts; but no work of art shows them thus mutilated, and undoubtedly the story is merely an invention to explain a false etymology, as though the composition of the word Amazon were ἀ priv. ”

“ The most striking features of the Amazon are—its vast expanse of smooth water, generally from three to six miles wide; its pale yellowish-olive colour; the great beds of aquatic grass which line its shores, large masses of which are often detached, and form floating islands; the quantity of fruits and leaves and great trunks of trees which it carries down, and its level banks clad with lofty unbroken forest. In places the white stems and leaves of the Cecropias give a peculiar aspect, and in others the straight dark trunks of lofty forest-trees form a living wall along the water’s edge. ”

“ From the wide mouth of the Amazon, where it empties into the ocean, its water can be distinguished from the other—that of the ocean—for fifty leagues. The Amazon is so large and has so many tributaries that it drains two million, five hundred square miles of country. The Amazon is the king of rivers. It rises in the western range of the Andes, and is little better than a mountain torrent till it has burst through the gorges of the eastern range of the chain, where it is overhung by peaks that tower thousands of feet above its bed. ”

“ The country through which it flows is extremely fertile, and is mostly covered with immense forests; it must at some future time support a numerous population, and be the theatre of a busy commerce. Steamers and other craft ply on the river, the chief centre of trade being Para, at its mouth. The Amazon was discovered by Vicente Yañez Pinzon in 1500, but the stream was not navigated by any European till 1541, when Francis Orellana descended it. ”

“ To the beauties of this unrivaled river, which waters the finest country in the world, and keeps along its whole course at a few degrees to the south of the equator, there is to be added another quality, possessed by neither the Nile, the Mississippi, nor the Livingstone—or, in other words, the old Congo-Zaira-Lualaba—and that is (although some ill-informed travelers have stated to the contrary) that the Amazon crosses a most healthy part of South America. Its basin is constantly swept by westerly winds. ”

“ The trees on the left bank and on the island of Jahuma stood up in sharp black outline. There were recognizable in the undecided silhouettes the trunks, or rather columns, of “copahus,” which spread out in umbrellas, groups of “sandis,” from which is extracted the thick and sugared milk, intoxicating as wine itself, and “vignaticos” eighty feet high, whose summits shake at the passage of the lightest currents of air. “What a magnificent sermon are these forests of the Amazon!” has been justly said. Yes; and we might add, “What a magnificent hymn there is in the nights of the tropics!” ”

“ They are the real “wild beasts” of South America, far more to be dreaded than pumas, or crocodiles, or snakes, or even the fierce jaguar himself.
Day after day our travellers kept on their course, meeting with many incidents and adventures—too many to be recorded in this little volume. After passing the mouth of the Rio Negro, they began to get a peep now and then of high land, and even mountains, in the distance; for the valley of the Amazon, on approaching its mouth, assumes a different character from what it has farther up-stream. ”

“ Its upper parts, which belong to the Andes, feed sheep of the most exquisite wool; and as it goes on descending, vegetation springs up with a fecundity and ease unknown in the Old World. The land is cut up with mountain torrents, whose banks contain gold, and which unite to form the river “Purus,” one of the greatest tributaries of the Amazon. ”

“ For 350 years after the discovery of the Amazon, by Pinzon, the Portuguese portion of its basin remained almost an undisturbed wilderness, occupied by Indian tribes whom the food quest had split into countless fragments. It is doubtful if its indigenous inhabitants ever exceeded Population, trade, &c.one to every 5 sq. ”

“ The blood-red sun was sinking beyond the distant Geral Mountains, when a canoe, containing four white men and three natives, came to a halt a thousand miles from the mighty Amazon, in the upper waters of the Xingu River, near the great table-land of Matto Grosso.
It was hard work, forcing the long shallow boat against the rapid current of the stream, whose unknown source is somewhere among the famous diamond regions of Brazil. It was plain sailing for three hundred leagues from the Amazon, from whose majestic volume the little party of explorers had turned southward more than a month before. ”

“ There were seven more days of travel before we reached the headquarters of Floresta, the largest rubber-estate in the Javary region. It covers an area somewhat larger than Long Island. Coronel da Silva, the owner, lives in what would be called an unpretentious house in any other place but the Amazon. Here it represents the highest achievement of architecture and modern comfort. It is built on sixteen-foot poles and stands on the outskirts of a half-cleared space which contains also six smaller buildings scattered around. ”

“ They all embarked in one of the ubas used in the service of the farm, and after having passed between the islands of Iquitos and Parianta, they reached the right bank of the Amazon.
They landed at a clump of superb tree-ferns, which were crowned, at a height of some thirty feet with a sort of halo made of the dainty branches of green velvet and the delicate lacework of the drooping fronds.
“Well, Manoel,” said Minha, “it is for me to do the honors of the forest; you are only a stranger in these regions of the Upper Amazon. ”

“ The complete history of these changes,—the periods of elevation and of repose, the time when the dividing ridges first rose above the waters, and the comparative antiquity of the tributary streams,—cannot be ascertained till the country has been more thoroughly explored, and the organic remains, which must doubtless exist, be brought forward, to give us more accurate information respecting the birth and growth of the Amazon. ”

“ The Amazon is born amid the high ranges and the snowy peaks of the Andes—the greatest mountain range in the world being a fit parent of the earth's greatest river. These high streams watered the territories where dwelt a civilization or native culture, moreover, as ancient perhaps as that of Egypt, the Andine people, and their successors the Incas of Peru, the remains of whose temples and habitations are still to be encountered on headland and plateau in those high regions of the great Cordillera, as we have already had occasion to see. ”

“ It is also stated as an historical fact, that, even in the times of the Ionians, women of the Amazon race dwelt round the temple;1628 although virgins only were permitted to enter the sanctuary itself.1629 It appears therefore that the goddess upon whom these Amazons attended, being represented as a beneficent and nourishing deity, was likewise supposed to have the attributes of war and destruction; a double and opposite character, which we have traced in other branches of the worship of Artemis. ”

“ And it is an odd thing but true that people accustomed to the air of the Amazon often sicken and die soon after leaving it for one of the branch rivers, even though they go only a few miles from the main stream. ”

“ Returning from a long journey, the hero undertook an expedition against the Amazons in order to finish the ninth adventure and bring to King Eurystheus the sword belt of the Amazon Hippolyta.
The Amazons inhabited the region of the river Thermodon and were a race of strong women who followed the occupations of men. From their children they selected only such as were girls. United in an army, they waged great wars. Their queen, Hippolyta, wore, as a sign of her leadership, a girdle which the goddess of war had given her as a present. ”

“ After such statements we are safe in affirming that the basin of the Amazon has none of the burning heats of countries like Asia and Africa, which are crossed by the same parallels.
The vast plain which serves for its valley is accessible over its whole extent to the generous breezes which come from off the Atlantic. ”

“ On leaving Loreto the Amazon turns slightly toward the southwest, between the islands of Arava, Cuyari, and Urucutea. The jangada then glided along the black waters of the Cajaru, as they mingled with the white stream of the Amazon. ”

“ What a prospect of unlimited forest greets the visitor to the Amazon. What a land of dreams and mysteries is unfolded. Three or four hundred miles to the south, and as great a distance to the north, stretches an unbroken forest and jungle, until one reaches the open plateaus of Matto Grosso, on one side, or the boundaries of Venezuela and the Guianas, on the other. ”

“ A recent report of the Geographical Society of Lima gives a far less picturesque explanation of the naming of the Amazon, to the effect that “the tribe of the Nahumedes were thought to be Amazons on account of their long hair and the cushma, a long, sleeveless garment which they wore.”
Close upon the adventurers came the Jesuit missionaries, who burned to save from hell-fire the strange human beings they might find lurking in the forest depths. One Jesuit father, Fritz, spent fifty years (1680-1730) on the Amazon, trying to connect the aborigines by the introduction of a common language. ”

“ There are comparatively few towns or settlements of any importance on the banks of the Amazon, which flows mostly through a dense, unpeopled evergreen forest, not absolutely without human beings, but for very long distances nearly so. ”

“ Birds of gorgeous plumage nestle in their lofty recesses. Tall ferns, vines, creeping plants and parasites form a dense tangle of undergrowth, swarming with life. Myriads of insects in great variety, reptiles of strange and singular form, lizards and venemous serpents find their homes and sustenance in the wild, dense mass of vegetation.
The Amazon.
The valley of the Amazon collects its waters from a region 1800 miles wide from north to south and 2500 miles long from the Andes to the Atlantic ocean. Even at the foot of the Andes the Amazon is a mighty river. ”

“ I left Lopez, the servant, who had only engaged for the Ucayali trip, and two of my Sarayacu people, who were reported to have gone into the woods to gather chambira, but who I suspected were drinking with the Cocamas, and did not wish to be found. We drifted with the current all night. The soundings at the mouth of the Ucayali were forty-two feet. The Amazon looked grand in the moonlight, below the island of Omaguas, where I judged it to be a mile and a half wide. ”

“ Perhaps no country in the world contains such an amount of vegetable matter on its surface as the valley of the Amazon. Its entire extent, with the exception of some very small portions, is covered with one dense and lofty primeval forest, the most extensive and unbroken which exists on the earth. It is the great feature of the country—that which at once stamps it as a unique and peculiar region. Here we may travel for weeks and months in any direction, and scarcely find an acre of ground unoccupied by trees. ”

“ On the 5th of July the mouth of the Tunantins appeared on the left bank, forming an estuary of some four hundred feet across, in which it pours its blackish waters, coming from the west-northwest, after having watered the territories of the Cacena Indians. At this spot the Amazon appears under a truly grandiose aspect, but its course is more than ever encumbered with islands and islets. It required all the address of the pilot to steer through the archipelago, going from one bank to another, avoiding the shallows, shirking the eddies, and maintaining the advance. ”

“ It is at such times as these that Amazon travelling is enjoyable, and one no longer wonders at the love which many, both natives and strangers, have for this wandering life. The little schooner sped rapidly on with booms bent and sails stretched to the utmost. Just as day dawned, we ran with scarcely slackened speed into the port of Cametá, and cast anchor. ”

“ Because the Amazon, about a mile away from its junction with the Rio Negro, makes a sudden bend, and at the same time its bed rises, so that there is a kind of natural barrier, well known to sailors as the Bar of Frias, which things floating near the surface are alone able to clear. ”

“ They were themselves children of this great Amazon, whose affluents, well worthy of itself, from the highways which penetrate Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, New Grenada, Venezuela, and the four Guianas—English, French, Dutch and Brazilian.
What nations, what races, has it seen whose origin is lost in the far-distant past! It is one of the largest rivers of the globe. Its true source still baffles our explorers. Numbers of States still claim the honor of giving it birth. ”

“ The different travellers who have descended the Amazon, and written books about it, have all been men of slight capacity, and lacking powers of scientific observation; and one cannot help feeling regret, that Humboldt did not choose the Amazon, instead of the Orinoco, as the medium of his valuable researches into the cosmography of South America. ”

“ A great number of tributaries pour their waters into the Amazon in the lower part of its course. On the north side the first from the west, below the rapids of Manseriche, is the Morona, and then come in succession the Pastaça, Tigre, Napo, Iça, Yapurà, Rio Negro, and Oximina. From the south it receives, proceeding from west to east, the Huallaga, Ucayali, Yavari, Jutai, Jurua, Teffé, Coavy, Purus, Madera, Tapajos, Xingù, and Tocantins. Most of these affluents discharge their waters into the Amazon by more than one mouth, which frequently are widely apart. ”