The trees had not been launched into the Amazon to begin with; Joam
Garral was accustomed to proceed in a different way. The whole mass
of trunks was symmetrically arranged on a flat part of the bank,
which he had already leveled up at the junction of the Nanay with the
great river.

There it was that the jangada was to be built; thence it was that the
Amazon was to float it when the time came for it to start for its
destination.

And here an explanatory note is necessary in regard to the geography
of this immense body of water, and more especially as relating to a
singular phenomenon which the riverside inhabitants describe from
personal observation.

The two rivers which are, perhaps, more extensive than the great
artery of Brazil, the Nile and the Missouri-Mississippi, flow one
from south to north across the African continent, the other from
north to south through North America. They cross districts of many
different latitudes, and consequently of many different climates.

The Amazon, on the contrary, is entirely comprised--at least it is
from the point where it turns to the east, on the frontiers of
Ecuador and Peru--between the second and fourth parallels of south
latitude. Hence this immense river system is under the same climatic
conditions during the whole of its course.

In these parts there are two distinct seasons during which rain
falls. In the north of Brazil the rainy season is in September; in