But even at sea there was no escaping the sheer size and power of the giant river, a nonstop deluge that by itself accounts for approximately 15 percent of all fresh water carried to sea by all of the planet’s rivers put together. The river’s mouth is so vast that the island that rests in the middle of it, Marajó, is nearly the size of Switzerland, and the muddy plume that spills into the Atlantic reaches some hundred miles out into the open sea.
