Upstream, downstream.

AuthorWerner, Louis
PositionPerspectives on the Amazon - Includes related article

MOST TRIPS to the Amazon begin by flying to Manaus, the belle epoque jungle capital built some one thousand miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean. A more historically appropriate starting point however is near the river's mouth at Belem, a once resplendent but now sleepy city of baroque cathedrals, azulejo-tiled mansions, and aging dockworks. Formally known as Santa Maria de Belem do Grao Para, the city's name and riverfront both are witness to the fallen hopes and glory of New World exploration, Portuguese empire building and British transatlantic trade.

Indeed, to approach Belem by water is to follow in the wake of Spanish conquistadors, dauntless seekers of El Dorado, and linen-suited rubber merchants. To enter the Amazon from the Atlantic is also to see up close the topographical ambiguities that occur when equatorial tides encounter the world's largest river and its flatest, most extensive tropical floodplain. It is no accident that Brazilians have as many words for jungle--mondongo, varzea, baixo, teso, resinga, igapo, campo, campina, campinarana, to name but a few--as the Inuit have for ice and the Bedouin have for sand.

But with a Brazilian's precision in describing the Amazon's fine distinctions of jungle terrain, the river's mouth is surprisingly reluctant to let itself anywhere simply be called terra firma. The farther one penetrates up the channels and subchannels of the delta, the less likely one is to find a dry place to come ashore.

The irony of being at sea for weeks before finally sighting the New World and then entering its mightiest river, but without ever having glimpsed the continent itself, never once seeing the actual soil that anchors its flora and houses its fauna, was not lost on H.M. Tomlinson in his classic 19th century travel narrative The Sea and the Jungle. With characteristic understatement he glanced at his watch and wrote, "It was two in the afternoon. There was America. I discovered it with some difficulty. What showed as land was of too unsubstantial a quality, too thin and broken a rind on that vast area of water to be of any use as a foothold."

So confusing does the delta make even a question of simple geography that many scientists wonder if Belem should be called an Amazonian port of call in the first place, or rther if it belongs exclusively to the Para River, once considered to have a completely separte basin. Studies have since shown that a significant amount of the Amazon drains to the Para through the lacelike waterways known as furos, some almost 400 feet deep and one-half mile in width. The more stable channels in the Para and the furos make upstream navigation much easier than through the Amazon's northern mouth, subject to shifting mud bars and strong currents.

But what really happens at the Amazon's mouth when 7,067 cubic feet of fresh water discharge every day into the Atlantic Ocean? As one might expect, such a massive volume of fresh water, sufficient to cover the state of Texas in 47 days or to refill the Mediterranean Sea in a year, has extraordinary but still imperfectly understood consequences on coastal Brazil's environment, marine life, tides, and weather.

The Amazon River system, containing more than twenty percent of all the world's river water, consists of some 1,100...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT