Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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A Great Number Of Local Circumstances Cause The Produce Of Evaporation
To Vary; It Changes In Proportion As More Or
Less shade covers the
basin of the waters, with their state of motion or repose, with their
depth, and the
Nature and colour of their bottom; but in general
evaporation depends only on three circumstances, the temperature, the
tension of the vapours contained in the atmosphere, and the resistance
which the air, more or less dense, more or less agitated, opposes to
the diffusion of vapour. The quantity of water that evaporates in a
given spot, everything else being equal, is proportionate to the
difference between the quantity of vapour which the ambient air can
contain when saturated, and the quantity which it actually contains.
Hence it follows that the evaporation is not so great in the torrid
zone as might be expected from the enormous augmentation of
temperature; because, in those ardent climates, the air is habitually
very humid.
Since the increase of agricultural industry in the valleys of Aragua,
the little rivers which run into the lake of Valencia can no longer be
regarded as positive supplies during the six months succeeding
December. They remain dried up in the lower part of their course,
because the planters of indigo, coffee, and sugar-canes, have made
frequent drainings (azequias), in order to water the ground by
trenches. We may observe also, that a pretty considerable river, the
Rio Pao, which rises at the entrance of the Llanos, at the foot of the
range of hills called La Galera, heretofore mingled its waters with
those of the lake, by uniting with the Cano de Cambury, on the road
from the town of Nueva Valencia to Guigue. The course of this river
was from south to north. At the end of the seventeenth century, the
proprietor of a neighbouring plantation dug at the back of the hill a
new bed for the Rio Pao. He turned the river; and, after having
employed part of the water for the irrigation of his fields, he caused
the rest to flow at a venture southward, following the declivity of
the Llanos. In this new southern direction the Rio Pao, mingled with
three other rivers, the Tinaco, the Guanarito, and the Chilua, falls
into the Portuguesa, which is a branch of the Apure. It is a
remarkable phenomenon, that by a particular position of the ground,
and the lowering of the ridge of division to south-west, the Rio Pao
separates itself from the little system of interior rivers to which it
originally belonged, and for a century past has communicated, through
the channel of the Apure and the Orinoco, with the ocean. What has
been here effected on a small scale by the hand of man, nature often
performs, either by progressively elevating the level of the soil, or
by those falls of the ground occasioned by violent earthquakes. It is
probable, that in the lapse of ages, several rivers of Soudan, and of
New Holland, which are now lost in the sands, or in inland basins,
will open for themselves a course to the shores of the ocean.
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