mous size, a prominent example being the giant lily, Victoria regia. In the undergrowth occur rubias, myrtles, leguminosæ, epiphytic orchids, bromelia, and ferns.
The Amazonian forest presents to the river a wall-like frontage of trees, interwoven with vines and roots clothed and fringed with moss in the most fantastic manner. A continuous mass of verdure overhead has a secondary flora of its own. Some of the trees grow to a height of even 200 feet; such are the moviatinga, the samauma, and the massaranduba. Palms, bamboos, and ferns grow in profusion; but few tree ferns and almost no cacti grow immediately on the river.
Among the ports on the Amazon (from its mouth upward) are Macapá, Santarem, Obidos, Manãos, Teffe, and Tabatinga. The commercial outlet of the Amazon basin is Pará, on the Rio Pará, the estuary of the Tocantins.
Bibliography. Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazon (London, 1892); Wallace, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (London, 1870, second edition, 1889); Agassiz, Voyage au Brésil (Paris, 1869); Brown and Lidstone, Fifteen Thousand Miles on the Amazon (London, 1878); Shichtel, Der Amazonenstrom (Strassburg, 1893); Marajó, As Regiões Amazonicas (Lisbon, 1895); Herndon and Gibbon, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon (Washington, 1853); Expedition into the Valley of the Amazon, 1539, 1540, 1639, translated and edited by Markham, published by the Hakluyt Society (London, 1859); Keller-Leuzinger, The Amazon and Madeira Rivers (New York, 1874); Smith, Brazil, the Amazon and the Coast (New York, 1879); Carvajal, Descubrimiento del rio de las Amazonas, with an introduction by Medina (Seville, 1894); Schütz-Holzhausen, Der Amazonas (Freiburg, 1895).
AMAZONAS, ä'mȧ-thō'nȧs. A northern
department of Peru, bounded by Ecuador on the north, the Peruvian department of Loreto on the east, Libertad on the south, and Cajamarca on the west. Area, 13,943 square miles. It is slightly mountainous and has a fertile soil. The population was officially estimated in 1895 at 70,670. Capital, Chachapoyas.
AMAZONAS, or ALTO AMAZONAS. The northernmost and largest of the Brazilian States, bounded by British Guiana, Venezuela, and Colombia on the north, State of Pará on the east, Bolivia and the State of Matto Grosso on the south, and Colombia and Peru on the west (Map: Brazil, E 4). Its total area is 732,250 square miles. The surface, with the exception of a few mountain chains on the Venezuelan border, is one alluvial plain, covered with impenetrable forests, and intersected by the River Amazon, with its numerous tributaries, including the Rio Negro and Madeira. The climate, although hot, is not unhealthful, and the soil is very fertile. Industrially, the State is very little developed, and its principal articles of trade are food products. With an area three and a half times as large as that of France, an abundance of fertile land, and excellent waterways, Amazonas had (1900) a population of 207,600, or less than one inhabitant for three square miles. Capital, Manãos, which is also the chief port. Amazonas formed a part of the State of Pará, and was constituted a separate State in 1850. Consult: J. Verissinio, Pará e Amazonas (Rio de Janeiro, 1899); C. L. Temple, The State of Amazonas (London, 1900).
AM'AZONITE, or Amazon Stone. See Microcline.
AM'AZONS, Amaz'ones (from Gk. Ἀμαζών, Amazōn). In early Greek legends, a race of war-like women, who either suffered no man to live among them, or held men in servitude for the continuance of the race. The earliest accounts place them in northeast Asia Minor, on the River Thermodon; later writers, farther to the north and west, in Scythia and the Caucasus; and finally we hear of Amazonas in Libya, at the south of the known world. Their expeditions, undertaken for war and plunder, led them into Scythia and Syria, but especially to the coast of Asia Minor, where we find them in conflict with Priam, Bellerophon, and other heroes. In this region they were said to have founded many cities, notably Ephesus, where they established the temple of Artemis, which furnished them a refuge when defeated by Hercules. They were daughters of Ares, and worshiped him and Artemis as their chief gods. They appear chiefly in three stories: (1) The killing by Achilles of their queen Penthesilea, who led her army to the relief of Troy; (2) the conflict with Hercules, which arose from his endeavor to secure the girdle of their queen, and led, according to some writers, to their annihilation; (3) the war with Athens, which began with the expedition of Theseus to carry off the Amazon queen, and ended with their invasion of Attica, attack on the Acropolis from the Areopagus, and total destruction by Theseus and the Athenians. The origin of these legends is not clear; but if we consider the localities in which the Amazons lived, and that in historic times the Greeks found tribes about the Black Sea in which the women held sway and took part in war, while in Caria, Lycia, and Lydia there is much evidence for descent traced through the mother, it seems not improbable that the Amazons embody a reminiscence of the people and civilization which preceded the Greeks on the east of the Ægean. Representations of the Amazons are very common in all periods of Greek art. At first they appear in the costume of Greek hoplites, but later assume the Scythian garb. They are armed with lance, battle axe, or bow, and usually carry a crescent shield. Among the chief ancient representations are the reliefs from Gyǒlbaschi, in Vienna, which seem to reflect the painting of Micon at Athens; and the friezes from Phigalia and the mausoleum at Halicarnassus, in the British Museum. Of the statues, three types go back to the best period of Greek art: the “Wounded Amazon,” in Berlin, probably by Polycletus; the “Wounded Amazon” of the Capitoline Museum in Rome, and the “Unwounded Amazon” in the Vatican. It was said that in order to be unimpeded in war, they burned off their right breasts; but no work of art shows them thus mutilated, and undoubtedly the story is merely an invention to explain a false etymology, as though the composition of the word Amazon were ἀ priv. and μαζός, mazos, breast. Consult: Klügmann, Die Amazonen in der attischen Litteratur und Kunst (Stuttgart, 1875), and Corey, De Amazonum Antiquissimis Figuris (Berlin, 1891).
AM'BAKIS'TA. A Bantu tribe of Amboia, Portuguese West Africa. They were enterprising
