Napo

Before it reaches the plains it receives a great number of small streams from impenetrable, saturated and much broken mountainous districts, where the dense and varied vegetation seems to fight for every piece of ground. From the north it is joined by the river Coca, having its sources in the gorges of Cayambe on the equator, and also a powerful river, the Aguarico, having its headwaters between Cayambe and the Colombian frontier.

From the west it receives a secondary tributary, the Curaray, from the Andean slopes, between Cotopaxi and the volcano of Tunguragua. From its Coca branch to the mouth of the Curaray
the Napo is full of snags and shelving sandbanks, and throws
out numerous canos among jungle-tangled islands, which
in the wet season are flooded, giving the river an immense
width. From the Coca to the Amazon it runs through a forested
plain where not a hill is visible from the river - its
uniformly level banks being only interrupted by swamps and
lagoons.

From the Amazon the Napo is navigable for river craft up to its Curaray branch, a distance of about 216 miles (350 km),
and perhaps a bit further; thence, by painful canoe
navigation, its upper waters may be ascended as far as Santa Rosa, the usual point of embarkation for any venturesome
traveller who descends from the Quito tableland. The Coca
river may be penetrated as far up as its middle course, where
it is jammed between two mountain walls, in a deep canyon, along
which it dashes over high falls and numerous reefs. This is
the stream made famous by the expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro.