latitude."

"And in a basin which from south to north does not comprise less than
twenty-five degrees."

"A basin!" exclaimed Benito. "Can you call it a basin, the vast plain
through which it runs, the savannah which on all sides stretches out
of sight, without a hill to give a gradient, without a mountain to
bound the horizon?"

"And along its whole extent," continued Manoel, "like the thousand
tentacles of some gigantic polyp, two hundred tributaries, flowing
from north or south, themselves fed by smaller affluents without
number, by the side of which the large rivers of Europe are but petty
streamlets."

"And in its course five hundred and sixty islands, without counting
islets, drifting or stationary, forming a kind of archipelago, and
yielding of themselves the wealth of a kingdom!"

"And along its flanks canals, lagoons, and lakes, such as cannot be
met with even in Switzerland, Lombardy, Scotland, or Canada."

"A river which, fed by its myriad tributaries, discharges into the
Atlantic over two hundred and fifty millions of cubic meters of water
every hour."

"A river whose course serves as the boundary of two republics, and
sweeps majestically across the largest empire of South America, as if
it were, in very truth, the Pacific Ocean itself flowing out along