With these magnificent prospects the present forms a melancholy contrast. Here and there some small town or wretched village rises on the banks of the mighty stream; and a few Indians roam over the forests, through which it rolls along, or enjoy the produce of its prolific waters. The vast province of Para, the garden of Brazil, the paradise of unborn millions, has scarcely four inhabitants on a geographical square mile; while even the northern province of Archangel, the land of the stunted fir and the mossy tundra, has a population four times as large. But since the last few years, steamboats regularly ascend the giant stream and some of its tributaries almost to the foot of the Andes; railroads are being made where navigation is impeded by rapids, and ere long civilization and industry will have dawned over the vast woodlands of the Amazon. Eight years after Columbus had revealed the existence of a new world, Vincent Yañez Pinson, the companion of his first voyage, sailed with four ships from the port of Palos (13th January, 1500), steered boldly towards the south, crossed the line, and discovered the mouth of the Amazons. Forty years later Gonsalo Pizarro, governor of Quito, left his capital with 340 Spaniards and 4,000 Indian carriers to conquer the unknown countries to the east of the Andes. The march over the Puna and the high mountain ridges proved fatal to the greater part of their wretched attendants; and even the Spaniards--accustomed to brave every climate and hardship wherever gold held forth its glittering promise-- had much to suffer from the excess of cold and fatigue. But when they descended into the low country their distress increased. During two months it rained incessantly, without any interval of fair weather long enough to enable them to dry their clothes. They could not advance a step, unless they cut a road through woods, or made it through marshes. The land, either altogether without inhabitants, or occupied by the rudest and least industrious tribes in the New World, yielded little food. Such incessant toil and continual scarcity were enough to shake the most stedfast hearts; but the heroism and perseverance of the Spaniards of the sixteenth century surmounted obstacles which to all others would have seemed insuperable. Allured by false accounts of rich countries before them, they struggled on, until they reached the banks of the Napo, one of the rivers whose waters add to the greatness of the Marañon. There, with infinite labour, they built a bark, which they expected would prove of great use in conveying them over rivers, in procuring provisions, and in exploring the country. This was manned with fifty soldiers, under the command of Francis Orellana, the officer next in rank to Pizarro.