Astonished at this phenomenon, he stood in for land, and arrived among a number of islands whose people he found hospitable and in no way afraid of intercourse with the strangers. By degrees Pinzon realised the fact that these islands lay at the mouth of an immense river, a river so great that its dimensions can scarcely be realised by one accustomed even to the largest of European streams, such as the Danube or the Volga, far less by one whose ideas of an inland stream were formed by the Guadalquiver. The mariner had in fact alighted at the mouth of the mightiest of the mighty streams of the New World, a river which pours into the ocean a greater volume of water than even the _Mississippi_ or the _Plata_; he had reached the _Amazons_, a stream which, discovered at its mouth by one Spaniard, was, a few years later, to be traced throughout the greater part of its course down to the ocean by another Spaniard, the ill-fated Orellana.
The _Amazons_ at its mouth has a breadth of no less than thirty leagues, the volume of water proceeding through which penetrates for forty leagues into the sea before losing its sweetness. Whilst lying at the mouth of this river, Pinzon encountered a sudden swelling of the stream, which, meeting the current of the ocean, caused a rise of more than five fathoms, the mountain waves threatening his ships with destruction. Having extricated his vessels with no small difficulty from this danger, Pinzon, finding that there was no object to detain him in this region, showed that he was not less civilised than other Spanish navigators at the time in the matter of requiting hospitality, by carrying off thirty-six natives as slaves.
Having the polar star once more to guide him, the mariner pursued his course along the coast, passing the mouths of the _Orinoco_, and entering the gulf of _Pária_, where he took in brazil-wood, and from which he emerged by the celebrated _Boca del Drago_. He subsequently reached Palos about the end of September of the same year, having lost two of his vessels at the _Bahamas_. Vicente Pinzon has the glory of having been the first European to cross the equinoctial line on the Western Atlantic and of having discovered _Brazil_.