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 belonging to Brazilians, foreign settlers, and half-civilized Indians, occur at intervals throughout the whole course of the river; and a little trade in dye-woods, India-rubber, medicinal drugs, Brazil nuts, coffee, &c., 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 Amazonians 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 whatsumdiver; an’ to tell me that the strame is ninety-six miles long and three thousand miles broad at the mouth, and sich like calcerlations, is o’ 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 enough to think about with profit for some time to come.”

And Barney did think about it, and ponder it, and revolve it in his mind, for many days after, while he worked with Martin and the old trader at the paddles of their montaria.  They found the work of canoeing easier than had been anticipated; for during the summer months the wind blows steadily up the river, and they were enabled to hoist their mat-sail, and bowl along before it against the stream.

Hotels and inns there were none; for Brazil does not boast of many such conveniences, except in the chief towns; so they were obliged, in travelling, to make use of an empty hut or shed, when they chanced to stop at a village, and to cook their own victuals.  More frequently, however, they preferred to encamp in the woods—­slinging their hammocks between the stems of the trees, and making a fire sometimes, to frighten away the jaguars, which, although seldom seen, were often heard at night.  They met large