Amazon River

This vast, sparsely inhabited region is the world's last great frontier, and the Amazon basin covers the bulk of it. After traveling through the region at the beginning of the century, the Brazilian writer Euclides da Cunha described Amazonia as the "last unwritten page of Genesis."

The North and Amazonia roughly coincide, covering an area seven times the size of France. At the mouth of the great river, Marajo Island alone is larger than Switzerland. The Amazon River was called the River Sea by the early Spanish and Portuguese explorers, it is one of the great natural wonders of the world.

Stretching more than 3,900 miles from its source in the Peruvian Andes until it empties into the Atlantic, the Amazon is just a few miles shorter than the Nile.

After descending from its source in the Andes (at an altitude above 18,000 feet), the river drops less than two inches per mile over the next 3,500 miles to the Atlantic.

Even more impressive than the river's length is its volume and size. Because the Amazon is more than fifteen miles across in some spots, its opposite bank is sometimes invisible below the horizon.

Reaching a depth of 250 feet in some places, it is the deepest river *in the world. The Amazon discharges 160,000 cubic meters of fresh water per second into the Atlantic - about 15 percent of all the fresh water emptied each day into the world's oceans.

Its daily discharge could supply all U.S. homes with their water needs for five months. (As a point of comparison, the Mississippi passes less than 20,000 cubic meters per second into the Gulf of Mexico.)

This immense river system drains one fifth of the world's forests.

Ancient Acai - the Amazing Fruit of the Rainforest

For five centuries, the Rainforest has fascinated and perplexed the outsider and attracted explorers and adventurers. Without a doubt, it is the best known and most widely written about area of Brazil.

The enormous states of Amazonas (in the west) and Para (in the east) cover most of the North and Amazonia. The region also includes the small states of Amapa (on Brazil's northernmost coast) and Roraima (sandwiched between Amazonas and Venezuela).

The states of Acre and Rondonia on the Peruvian and Bolivian borders make up the remainder of the region. just under 7 percent of Brazilians live in the North. The population density is 3 inhabitants per square kilometer.

The vast majority of the region is uninhabited.

Two major cities, with more than a million inhabitants each, account for half of the population of the North. Belem (at the mouth of the river) and Manaus (1,000 miles upriver). Three quarters of this sparse population are the descendants of both Europeans and Indians (caboclos).

Since the arrival of the first Europeans in the sixteenth century, the Amazonian North has been alternately portrayed as a hell or a paradise on earth.

The pessimists see nothing but dense jungle, unbearable heat and humidity, hundreds of deadly predators, and tropical diseases.

The optimists see a tropical Garden of Eden, vast resources with enormous potential, and seemingly unlimited land.

For five centuries, Amazonia has attracted (and often swallowed up) countless outsiders in search of El Dorado, the Garden of Eden, or a world they believed to be uncorrupted by modern civilization.

Amazon River

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