The Vast Amazon

The Vast Amazon

    Plunging from the snowy peaks of the Andes mountains, and flowing through the steamy heat of endless tropical forests, the vast Amazon river coils lazily east across South America. It finally pours out İnto the Atlantic Ocean, 6450 kilometres from its source. Although not quite the longest river in the world (The Nile is 250 kilometres longer) the Amazon is by far the biggest. So much water flows through it that it could fill the huge Lake Ontario, in North America, in three hours.

    But the Amazon is much more than just one river. Like veins in a leaf, hundreds of small streams join larger ones and keep swelling until they reach the Amazon itself. The whole area, called the Amazon basin, is more than ten times the size of France. It covers over half the land of South America, including much of Brazil and parts of Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Most towns and villages lie beside the big rivers, which carve highways through the forests of the       Amazon basin. The dense trees make exploring the Amazon region difficult and large areas are still unknown. Stories of gold, lost cities, and strange and wondrous people, animals and plants, have made it seem a mysterious place. But the building of road is changing all this, as people reach deep into previously remote areas, and clear the forest for new development. 

    The Amazon is treasure-house of animals and plants. More varieties are found here than anywhere else in the world. Because it is one of the last big natural plant and animal reserves on our planet, many people are worried that it might be lost for ever. No one knows how the rainforests could be useful to us in the future and what would happen to the world if they are destroyed. The future of the Amazon basin is one of the great issues facing the world today. 

Here, 2,000 kilometres from the ocean, The River Amazon is almost like an inland sea.