MARTIN RATTLER. 145

while higher up it spreads out in some places into
sheets of ten miles in width. The Madeira, another
tributary, is also a river of the largest size. The
Amazon is divided into two branches at its mouth by
the island of Marajo, the larger branch being ninety-
six miles in width. About two thousand miles from
its mouth it is upwards of a mile wide. So great is
the force of this flood of water that it flows into the
sea unmixed for nearly two hundred miles, The tide
affects the river to a distance of about four hundred
miles inland, and it is navigable from the sea for a
distance of three thousand miles inland.

On the north bank of the Amazon there are ranges
of low hills, partly bare and partly covered with
thickets. These hills vary from three hundred to a
thousand feet high, and extend about two hundred
miles inland. Beyond them the shores of the river
are low and flat for more than two thousand miles,
till the spurs of the Andes are reached.

During the rainy season the Amazon overflows all
its banks, like the Nile, for many hundreds of miles;
during which season, as Martin Rattler truly remarked,
the natives may be appropriately called aquatic
animals. Towns and villages, and plantations belong-
ing to Brazilians, foreign settlers, and half-civilized
Indians, occur at intervals throughout the whole

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