Amazone River

The Amazon is South America’s most important river. A Spaniard named Francisco de Orellana made the firs explorations of theriver in 1541. The Amazon carries more water than the Mississippi, the Yangtze, and Nile together. In a single second Amazon pours more than 60,000,000 galons of water into the Atlantic Ocean. The muddy river stains the ocean brown for 200 miles. This tremendous flow is caused by heavy tropical rains and melting snow in the Andes mountains. The Amazon’s huge basin extends for about 2,700,000 square miles.

The Amazon is almost 4,000 miles long. It begins in the snow-fed Andean lakes of peru, 18,000 feet above sea level, and then flows eastward across the low paliants of Brazil. On its journey the Amazon gathers additional water from hundreds of rivers. The Negro, Madeira, Purus, and Jurua are majaor branches, each one is beetwen 1,000 and 2,000 miles in length.

The Amazon is only 200 feet above sea level at the Peru-Brazil border. It flows slowly on its lenghthy journey to the Atlantic. Sometimes the river is so wide that one cannot see the opposite shore. During the rainy season the flood water spread for miles over the jungle lowland. It is no wonder that the Amazon is sometimes called the River Sea.
Where the river empeties into the Atlantic Ocean a strange thing happens. Twice a day, when tide rises, 12-foot tidal waves called “bores” rush upstream. The current of river is reversed for as much as 400 miles.

Ocean-going ships can travel 1,700 miles up the Amazon from Belem, Brazil, at the river’s mouth. Smaller steamers can reach Iquitos, in Peru, 2,300 miles inland. Ships paa trought some of the most densely forested land in the world.