Amazon
Amazon names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Amazon a river of South America
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a river of South America , the largest in the world. Its head waters are fed by the perpetual snows of the Andes, a few hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean. It flows in a general north-northeasterly direction, receiving enormous tributaries, and finally discharges its waters into the Atlantic under the equator in a mighty flood 150 miles wide. The Amazon is 4,000 miles long. It has a hundred navigable tributaries. Seventeen of the largest are from 1,000 to 2,300 miles in length. The entire Amazon system affords over 50,000 miles of navigable waterways. In the lower 750 miles of its course, from the mouth of the Rio Negro to the Atlantic, the main river is nowhere less than 180 feet in depth. Other rivers are longer, but of all rivers in the world none equals the Amazon in volume. Roughly stated the Amazon carries to the sea not each hour, but each minute, a volume of water represented by eighty acres fifty feet deep. Its basin, also the largest in the world, covers 1,900,000, some authorities say 2,500,000, square miles, or nearly a third of all South America. From the headwaters of the Amazon, the Indian in his canoe may pass north by connecting streams into the Orinoco or south to the Rio de la Plata . The entire central and eastern part of the Amazon Valley is occupied by dense forests. Surrounding the forest region toward the west, and lying between its tributaries, are vast savannas or treeless grassy tracts. The waters are thronged with turtles and crocodiles, water fowl, tapirs, and anacondas, and teem with fishes. Agassiz described 1,163 species of the latter. The forests, impassable jungles of trees and tropical vines, are inhabited by monkeys, parrots, sloths, tapirs, boa constrictors, and pumas. Along the rivers Indians live in villages and barter with white traders marketing dyewoods, rubber, and Brazil nuts. Para, near the mouth, is the chief port of the Amazon. Perhaps half a hundred steamers ply between Para and up river landings. They bring down forest products, including lumber and dyewoods, and carry up groceries, tools, and clothing. The basin of the Amazon comprises the largest tract of fertile unimproved land in the world. Its only rival in this respect is the valley of the Congo. See Brazil-Nuts; Rubber ; Boa Constrictor ; Tapir ; Wallace ; South America
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a river of South America, the largest in the world, formed by a great number of sources which rise in the Andes; the two head branches being the Tunguragua or Marañon and the Ucayale, both rising in Peru, the former from Lake Lauricocha, in lat. 10° 29′ S., the latter formed by the Apurimac and Urubamba, the headwaters of which are between lat. 14° and 16° S.; general course N. of E.; length, including windings, between 3,000 and 4,000 miles; area of drainage basin, 2,300,000 square miles. It enters the Atlantic under the equator by a mouth 200 miles wide divided into two principal and several smaller arms by the large island of Marajo, and a number of smaller islands. In its upper course, navigation is interrupted by rapids, but from its mouth upward for a distance of 3,300 miles (mostly in Brazil) there is no obstruction. It receives the water of about 200 tributaries. Northern tributaries: Santiago, Morona, Pastaça, Tigre, Napo, Putumayo, Japura, Ria Negro (the Cassiquiare connects this stream with the Orinoco), etc. Southern: Huallaga, Ucayale, Javari, Jutay, Jurua, Coary, Purus, Madeira, Tapajos, Xingu, etc. At Tabatinga, where it enters Brazilian territory, the breadth is 1/2 miles; below the mouth of the Madeira, it is 3 miles wide, and where there are islands often as much as 7; from the sea to the Rio Negro, 750 miles in a straight line, the depth is nowhere less than 30 fathoms; up to the junction of the Ucayale there is depth sufficient for the largest vessels. The Amazonian water system affords some 50,000 miles of river suitable for navigation. The singular phenomenon of the bore, or, as it is called on the Amazon, the pororoca, occurs at the mouth of the river at spring-tides on a grand scale. The river swarms with alligators, turtles, and a great variety of fish. It is a great highway of commerce. The Amazon was discovered by Yañez Pinçon in 1500, but the stream was not navigated by any European till 1540, when Francis Orellana descended it. He stated that he found on its banks a nation of armed women, and this circumstance gave the name to the river.
Amazon or AMAZONE (from a= without
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or AMAZONE (from a= without, and mazos the breast, from the story that the Amazons cut off their right breast to prevent its interfering with the use of the bow), a nation on the river Thermodon, the Thermodon, the modern Termeh in Pontus, in Asia Minor, said to consist entirely of women renowned for their love of manly sports, and as warriors. Men were excluded from their territory, and commerce was held only with strangers, while all male children born among them were killed. They are mentioned by Homer. Also the females of an Indian tribe on the banks of the great river Maranon, in South America, who assisted their husbands when fighting against the Spaniards, and caused the Maranon to receive the new name of the Amazon, and any female soldiers, such as the band of female warriors kept by the King of Dahomey in Africa. In entomology, Huber's name for the neuters of a red ant (polyergus), which are accustomed to sally forth in large numbers from their nests, in military array, and, proceeding to some neighboring anthill belonging to another species, plunder it of the larvæ of its neuters. These, when hatched, become a kind of pariah caste in the habitation of the Amazons. AMBALA or UMBALLA, a city of India, the capital of the district of the same name in the Punjab. It is a well built town and contains a handsome Gothic church, several hospitals and asylums. It is also an important military station. Pop. about 90,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 entry treats the basin as "the largest tract of fertile unimproved land in the world" and Collier's in 1921 calls the river "a great highway of commerce" — the rubber boom it describes had in fact already collapsed after 1912, when cheaper plantation rubber from Southeast Asia undercut Pará and Manaus. Since then roads rather than steamers have opened the basin: the Trans-Amazonian Highway was begun in 1970, and roughly a fifth of the rainforest has been cleared, making the region a central issue in global climate politics rather than a frontier awaiting improvement. The river's own measurements have tightened too: its source was traced to the Nevado Mismi area of Peru in the 1990s, and whether the Amazon or the Nile is the world's longest river is still argued, though no one disputes Aiton's claim that none equals it in volume. Of the Amazons themselves, Collier's folk etymology (a-mazos, "without breast") is now generally rejected, while excavations of Scythian and Sarmatian burials on the Eurasian steppe have found women interred with weapons, suggesting the Greek stories had some real warrior-women behind them.
Written for this edition, 2026.