Besides these rivers, the Parana has many long and powerful affluents from the Brazilian States of Sao Paulo and Parana. Most of them, although obstructed by rapids, are navigable for launches and canoes. Among the eastern tributaries are the Tiete, the Parana-panema, formerly known as the Anemby, and the Iguazu. The Parana-panema is about 600m. long, and rises in an offshoot of the Serra Paranapicaba which overlooks the Atlantic ocean. It is navigable for only 3om. above its mouth.
The IguazU, also called the Rio Grande de Curutiba, has its sources on the slopes of the Serra do Mar of Brazil, and flows nearly west, through thick forests, along the line of 26° South. Its navigation is difficult even for small craft, as it is full of reefs, rapids and cataracts. Sixteen miles above its mouth is the magnifi cent Salto del Iguazu, sometimes called the Victoria Fall, round which canoes have to be transported 37m. before quiet water is again reached. The width of the falls, measured along their crest or edge, is 21m. ; part of the river takes two leaps of about i ooft. each, but a portion of it plunges down the whole depth in un broken mass. Its mouth is about 800ft. wide, and the depth in mid-river 4of t.
The Parana has unobstructed navigation for about 400m. be tween the Falls of Urubuponga and the Falls of Guayra, in 24° 3' S., where it forms a lake 41m. long and 21m. wide, preparatory to breaching the Serra de Mbaracayu, which there disputes its right of way. It has torn a deep gorge through the mountains for a length of about 2171., where it is divided into several channels, filled with rapids and cataracts. It finally gathers its waters into a single volume, to plunge with frightful velocity through a long canon only about 2ooft. wide. From these so-called falls of Guayra or "Sete Quedas," as far as its confluence with the Para guay river, the Parana has carved a narrow bed through an im mense cap of red sandstone, along which it sometimes flows with great rapidity, occasionally being interrupted by dangerous nar rows and rapids, where the banks in some places close in to a width of 450 to 600ft., although the average is from 1,200 to
1,600 feet. At the south-east angle of Paraguay the Parana, is turned westwards; but before escaping from its great sandstone bed it is obstructed by several reefs, notably at the rapids of Apipe, which are the last before it joins the placid Paraguay, 130m. farther on.
On the west side of the upper Paraguay, between about 17° 30' and 19° S., are several large, shallow lagunas or lakes which re ceive the drainage of the southern slopes of the Chiquitos sierras, but represent mainly the south-west overflow of the vast morass of Xarayas. The principal of these lakes, naming them from north to south, are the Uberaba, the Gaiba, Mandiore and the "Bahia" de Caceres. The Uberaba is the largest. It is in great part sur rounded by high ground and hills, but its southern coast is swampy and flooded during the rainy season. The west shore is historic. Here, in the conquistador, Martinez de Irala, founded the "Puerto de los Reyes," with the idea that it might become the port for Peru ; and from Lake Gaiba several expeditions, in Span ish colonial days, penetrated 500m. across the Chaco to the fron tier of the empire of the Incas. At the Puerto de los Reyes Bo livia laid out a town in Dec. 1900, in the forlorn hope that the "Port" may serve as an outlet for that commercially suffocated country, there being no other equally good accessible point for Bolivia on the Paraguay river.