Spaniards, the descendants of the adventurous Orellana, whose vague
but enthusiastic stories went to show that there existed a tribe of
female warriors on the Rio Nhamunda, one of the middle-sized
affluents of the great river.

From its commencement the Amazon is recognizable as destined to
become a magnificent stream. There are neither rapids nor obstacles
of any sort until it reaches a defile where its course is slightly
narrowed between two picturesque and unequal precipices. No falls are
met with until this point is reached, where it curves to the
eastward, and passes through the intermediary chain of the Andes.
Hereabouts are a few waterfalls, were it not for which the river
would be navigable from its mouth to its source. As it is, however,
according the Humboldt, the Amazon is free for five-sixths of its
length.

And from its first starting there is no lack of tributaries, which
are themselves fed by subsidiary streams. There is the Chinchipa,
coming from the northeast, on its left. On its right it is joined by
the Chachapoyas, coming from the northeast. On the left we have the
Marona and the Pastuca; and the Guallaga comes in from the right near
the mission station of Laguna. On the left there comes the Chambyra
and the Tigré, flowing from the northeast; and on the right the
Huallaga, which joins the main stream twenty-eight hundred miles from
the Atlantic, and can be ascended by steamboats for over two hundred
miles into the very heart of Peru. To the right, again, near the
mission of San Joachim d'Omaguas, just where the upper basin
terminates, and after flowing majestically across the pampas of
Sacramento, it receives the magnificent Ucayali, the great artery
which, fed by numerous affluents, descends from Lake Chucuito, in the