The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-01-16

ASCENDING THE AMAZON.
A Far as From New York to Denver or
New Orleans to Winnipeg.

A Far as From New York to Denver OF
| New Orleans to Winnipeg.
We have come of late to regard SO
attentively the militant potentiality of
all classes of our warships that we have
almost forgotten that any such vessels
are ever employed otherwise than In
making war or menace of war. Histo-
ry, it is true, Is filled with records to
| the contrary. The names of Beagle
the challenger, the Tusoarora and an IN
Vulnerable fleet besides, under more
| flags than one or two, should remind
us that peace has its commissions for
| the navy no less than war. But we
| forget. For that reason, as we'll as for
Others more potent, a cordial welcome
| Is to be given to thin pamphlet just
| issued from the government printing
Office reminding us once more of the
peaceful services of the navy, by re-
lating all too briefly, the story of the
voyage of the U. S. S. Wilmington up
the Amazon river.
There are those, whose name should
be legion, who formed in childhood
their earliest conception of the Amazon
from the fascina ting and not untruth-
full pages Of Wayne Reid, If that con-
ception, accurate at the time, has not
been modified by being brought down
to date it will meet with rude shock
in the plain tale of a modern steel war
ship "afloat in the forest" Yet the new
conception which must be formed is as
true as the old one. and not less roman
tic. There is something indescriba bly,
impressive in the simple fact of
steamships entering Peruvian waters
from the Atlantic ocean fifteen hun
dred miles away as the crow--or the
condor-flies; of its traversing three
fourths of the width Of the continent, as
though it had ploughed its way from
New York across country to Denver or
from the Mississippi delta up to Winni-
peg; of it's steaming from the Atlantic
up the Amazon, Solimoes, Orelana,
Maranon-all one rivera-to within the
very shadow Of the Andes. There is In
that an appeal to the imagination sec
ond only to that of the Pelican herself.
And what shall we say of the report
that there is in the very heart of the
continent, upon the bank of the river,
where our memories of Mayne Reid
might place a village of Indian huts in
the treetops, a modern city, with troll
ley cars, a telephone exchange and
streets paved with the latest patent
bricks!
The industrial and commercial sug-
gestiveness of the report is not less
marked The Wilmington assembled the
Amazon for a distance of twenty four
hundred miles, and passed DON the way
the mouths of tributaries each Offering
hundreds of miles of navigable water.
We may reckon that the Amazon and
its tributaries comprise at least four
thousand miles of inland waterway
available for sea-going steamships. In
truth, as this report says, it is the
greatest river system in the world.
Nor is it unimproved. At least half a
dozen regular lines of steamers are op-
Grated upon it, comprising more than
seventy vessels, besides many other
steamers used in the rubber trade. The
potentialities of the country
in rubber, cocoa, woods and what not
are simply inestimable. The needs Of it
are likewise enormous. Actually it does
not produce at present sufficient food
stuffs to feed its inhabitants, so that
much has to be imported, and many of
On the upper reaches of
the river there are abundant deposits Of
coal, yet so slack has been the enter