else, of late years, to attract attention to the subject.[77] There are points where the researches of the statesman and the investigator meet, and natural science is not without a voice even in the practical bearings of this question. Shall this region be legislated for as sea or land? Shall the interests of agriculture or navigation prevail in its councils? Is it essentially aquatic or terrestrial? Such were some of the inquiries which came up in the course of the discussion. A region of country which stretches across a whole continent and is flooded for half the year, where there can never be railroads or highways, or even pedestrian travelling to any great extent, can hardly be considered as dry land. It is true that in this oceanic river-system the tidal action has an annual instead of a daily ebb and flow, that its rise and fall obey a larger orb, and is ruled by the sun and not the moon; but it is, nevertheless, subject to all the conditions of a submerged district, and must be treated as such. Indeed, these semiannual changes of level are far more powerful in their influence on the life of the inhabitants than any marine tides. People sail half the year above districts where for the other half they walk, though hardly dry shod, over the soaked ground; their occupations, their dress, their habits are modified in accordance with the dry and wet seasons. And not only the ways of life, but the whole aspect of the country, the character of the landscape, are changed. The two picturesque cascades, at one of which we took our bath the other morning, and at this season such favorite resorts with the inhabitants of Manaos, will disappear in a few months, when the river rises for some forty feet above its lowest level. Their bold rocks and shady nooks will have become river bottom. All that we hear or read of the extent of the Amazons and its tributaries fails to give an idea of its immensity as a whole. One must float for months upon its surface, in order to understand how fully water has the mastery over land along its borders. Its watery labyrinth is rather a fresh-water ocean, cut up and divided by land, than a network of rivers. Indeed, this whole valley is an aquatic, not a terrestrial basin; and it is not strange, when looked upon from this point of view, that its forests should be less full of life, comparatively, than its rivers.