Brazil, the Amazons and the coast (1879) (14783342955)

Identifier: brazilamazonscoa00smit (find matches)
Title: Brazil, the Amazons and the coast
Year: 1879 (1870s)
Authors: Smith, Herbert H. (Herbert Huntington), 1851-1919
Subjects: Folklore -- Brazil Brazil -- Description and travel Brazil -- Economic conditions Amazon River Valley -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Brown University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brown University



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nearly every civilized language. But after all, the tanglehas only been discovered at many different points ; it hasnever been explored. Your careful writer will generalizeAvith a qualifying phrase : So far as we know the forest isso and so. I find high woods, for instance, on the Xingiialong its western bank ; I find similar woods on the easternside of the Tapajos ; and I infer that all the intervening spaceis like these two spots. In this case I have fair confirmationfrom the reports of Indians and fugitive slaves. But fromother regions there are no reports at all; tracts as large as THE FOREST. 177 New England are utterly unknown. However, we may safelysuppose that the same climate, over the same low plain every-where, will encourage a similar forest growth. Reasoningfrom this, and the knowledge that we have, we can tell prettynearly the extent and limits of the great wood. In general language we may say that it occupies thenorthern plain of South America. That is, part of Bolivia,
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Forest Group. Peru, Ecuador and Colombia east of the Andes ; SouthernVenezuela; Guiana; and all of Brazil north of lat. 10° S.,and west of the River Parnahyba, with extensions as far as15° or even 20° S. In other words, if you please, the con-nected basins of the Amazons and the Orinoco. We note two things in the outset. First, the body of the12 178 BRAZIL. forest lies within ten degrees nortii or south of the equator,where rains are more or less abundant all through the year;second, it is higher and thicker and wider in the drippingwest-region ; toward the east it narrows off, and here, also,it is broken somewhat by more open tracts, sandy or stonycampos. The largest of these campos are on the northernside of the Amazons, between the river and the Guiana Moun-tains. We have seen how the trade-wind is dried by these