146 MARTIN RATTLER.

course of the river; and a little trade in dye-woods,
india-rubber, medicinal drugs, Brazil nuts, coffee, ete.,
is done, but nothing to what might and ought to be,
and perhaps would be, were this splendid country in
the hands of an enterprising people. But the Ama-
zonians are lazy, and the greater part of the resources
of one of the richest countries in the world is totally
neglected.

“Arrah!” said Barney, scratching his head and
wrinkling his forehead intensely, as all that we have
just written, and a great deal more, was told to him
by a Scotch settler whom he found superintending a
cattle estate and a saw-mill on the banks of the
Amazon—* faix, then, I’m jist as wise now as before
ye begun to spake. I’ve no head for fagures what-
sumdiver; an’ to tell me that the strame is ninety-six
miles long and three thousand miles broad at the
mouth, and sich like ealcerlations, is 0’ no manner
o’ use, and jist goes in at wan ear an’ out at the
tother.”

Whereupon the Scotch settler smiled and _ said,
“ Well, then, if ye can remember that the Amazon is
longer than all Europe is broad; that it opens up to
the ocean not less than ten thousand miles of the
interior of Brazil; and that, comparatively speaking,

no use is made of it whatever, ye'll remember