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understand by putting sorne outstanding
Amazonian facts on paper.
The Amazon is the greatest single
geographic marvel known to man -
except the earth itself! It is the biggest
river in the world. With that knowl–
cdge, you probably picture the Amazon
as a running stream slicing through
walls of green junglc.
The Amazon is not like that.
The Amazon is a sea-river. It is
called precisely that in Portuguese, and
rescmbles the Med itcrranean almost as
much
as
it does the Mississippi.
"The Sea-river"-says the renowncd
Amazon explorer Willard P rice -
"has eleven hundred known tribu–
taries. Ten of them are larger than
the Rhine. Seven are a thousand miles
long. The Madeira
is
three thotmmd
miles
long
and collects
11inety trib11taries
of its own befare it joins the Amazon.
Standing where they join you can just
make out the other shore of the Madeira
but you cannot see across the Amazon"
(The
Amazing AmtiZOn,
p.l l) .
King Loopo/<1 Photos
Above: An orea of
Manaus, one of the
few trading centers in
the heart of Amazo–
nia.
Left: Road building in
the dense t ro p ical
rain forest i s ex–
tremely d ifficult
and
costly.
Every Amazon tributary is a story in
itsclf. For example: the black Rio
Negro is twenty miles wide as it pours
into the brown Amazon. The Purus
spills into the mother Amazon through
two mouths -
a
hundred miles apart.
The outside two mouths of thc Japura's
four are two hundred mi les apart as
they enter the Amazon.
The near-4,000-mile Amazon, watcrcd
by the greatest sprawl of rivers on
ear th, drains closc to three mj ll ion
sguare miles of territory. That is an area
almost as large as the entire United
$tates.
Still your mind does not compr<;hend
the depth and the breadth of the amaz–
ing Amazon. Keep trying to strctch
your imagination.
The Amazon is so wide at its mouth
(from one hundred eighty to ovcr two
hundred miles depending on the capes
you choose) that neither bank is \'Ísible
from the middlc - not even from an
airplane! This "South American Medi–
terranean" discharges from four to
l9
seven and a half million cubic fect of
water cvery second of every day - 60
bi llion gallons an hour! A wall of
f
resh
water pushcs more than two hundrcd
miles out into the Atlantic Ocean with a
current forcing ships off coursc. At its
mouth, the Rivcr divides around an
island, Marajó, which is biggcr than
Switzerland.
Where this mighty "Dragan" bends
south at l<¡uitos (2,500 miles upstrcam)
the River is still one hundred twenty
feet deep. And its width? You must go
four hundred miles furthcr up befare
the river shnnks to the width of the
Mississippi at its mouth!
Beauti
fui
But Savage
Looking at the developmcnt problern
geographira/ly,
the Sca-river is too
long, too broad, too gigantic, too for–
bidding, too unpredictable, too dan–
gerous, too powcrful, too inhospitable
to yield up the fabulous
"El
Dorado"
hopes of pol iticians to feed the world.
The Amazon Sea-river is a
GREEN
HELL.
Th.tt's what the Spaniards callcd
it.
That's what
I
thought it was, trapped
in a twclvc-foot Iaunch, forty miles
from Iquitos. With rain splattcring in
my face,
I
thought of the onc-hundrcd–
inch annual rainfall which drives most
farmers mad. And even though the
rainfall reaches two hundred inches a
year
in
sorne places, the summer is
a
near
drought.
Typically as with tropical storms, the
fog clearcd around our launch, thc rain
stopped and the shore appeared! We
made the final twenty-five miles to the
Maniti Hotel - a stilt-supported, open–
walled, grass-covered hut called
a
malorc(t
-
safely and uncveotfully.
Behind my partition in the exotic
malocct~,
I
began jotting down notes in
flickering lamplight on the important
lessons
I
was learning.
Learn a Lesson
If
you havc never personally secn
Amazonia - as the Sea-river and its
giant basin are caiJed - thcn perhaps
you would accept this lesson on geogra–
phy from an C)'e\vitness.
First, gel the picture in mind. In
mind,
because the picture will not fit in
your
eye.
Thc green, flat wilderncss