After threading this system of narrow channels the boat enters the river proper, which at first is very wide and is more like an inland sea; the natives call it the sea-river. In places it opens out in sea-like expanses; at times the boat coasts along the shore near enough to hear the monkeys chatter, and again it is out so far that the shore is only a hazy line. The lower river varies from two to ten miles in width, but you are never sure whether you are not mistaking the shores of islands for the actual banks of the river. Slowly past you floats débris that has come for two thousand miles on these yellow waters. Mixed up with the water may be soil from Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and half of the republics of South America. You pass the mouths of streams which are themselves navigable for a thousand miles by vessels. In all it has been said that the Amazon and its tributaries furnish fifty thousand miles of navigable waters, half of which are available for steamers. There are few towns of any size, and only a few miserable little villages. Along the bank is an occasional cleared patch on which stands the little wood and thatch hut of a rubber gatherer. Naked babies play on the shores and barefooted men and women gaze at your steamer as it goes by. There are no roads in the forest, and if a path is blazed to-day in six months it would be impassable. Every one travels by water, except the rubber gatherers and medicine hunters, who chop their way through the undergrowth. Nature’s apothecary shop is located here, for hundreds of medicinal plants have been found in these woods and jungles. Sarsaparilla is probably the most profitable, but ipecac, oil of copaiba, and many other drugs useful in stopping a tooth-ache or poisoning a dog, are extracted from trees and vines of the Amazon Valley. Gums and balsams, essential oils and dyeing substances, spices and aromatic plants are also among the varied products. Rain! Rain! Rain! One tires of hearing its ceaseless patter on the roof, and everything is soon covered with a coat of rust. Every article made of leather, which is allowed to stand for a few days, becomes covered with a down-like fungi of green mould. From November to February is the “rainy” season, and then the rain falls in perfect torrents, and the Amazon, fed by all its connecting streams, rises twenty-five, thirty or forty feet above its usual level. Thousands of square miles of territory are then submerged, and inland seas are formed in many places. The fall of the river is not more than two hundred inches in the first thousand miles from its mouth, and the current is not very swift. For this distance the depth will average one hundred and fifty feet.