This island is quite a province in itself. It measures no
less than a hundred and eighty leagues in circumference. Cut up by
marshes and rivers, all savannah to the east, all forest to the west,
it offers most excellent advantages for the raising of cattle, which
can here be seen in their thousands. This immense barricade of Marajo
is the natural obstacle which has compelled the Amazon to divide
before precipitating its torrents of water into the sea. Following
the upper branch, the jangada, after passing the islands of Caviana
and Mexiana, would have found an _embouchure_ of some fifty leagues
across, but it would also have met with the bar of the prororoca,
that terrible eddy which, for the three days preceding the new or
full moon, takes but two minutes instead of six hours to raise the
river from twelve to fifteen feet above ordinary high-water mark.
This is by far the most formidable of tide-races. Most fortunately
the lower branch, known as the Canal of Breves, which is the natural
area of the Para, is not subject to the visitations of this terrible
phenomenon, and its tides are of a more regular description.
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