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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In Two Rivers Equally Large, That Of
Which The Falls Have Least Height May Sometimes Present The Greatest
Dangers And The Most Impetuous Movements.
It is probable that the river Orinoco loses part of its waters in the
cataracts, not only by increased evaporation, caused by the dispersion
of minute drops in the atmosphere, but still more by filtrations into
the subterraneous cavities.
These losses, however, are not very
perceptible when we compare the mass of waters entering into the
raudal with that which issues out near the mouth of the Rio Anaveni.
It was by a similar comparison that the existence of subterraneous
cavities in the yellalas or rapids of the river Congo was discovered.
The pongo of Manseriche, which ought rather to be called a strait than
a fall, ingulfs, in a manner not yet sufficiently explored, a part of
the waters and all the floating wood of the Upper Maranon.
The spectator, seated on the bank of the Orinoco, with his eyes fixed
on those rocky dikes, is naturally led to inquire whether, in the
lapse of ages, the falls change their form or height. I am not much
inclined to believe in such effects of the shock of water against
blocks of granite, and in the erosion of siliceous matter. The holes
narrowed toward the bottom, the funnels that are discovered in the
raudales, as well as near so many other cascades in Europe, are owing
only to the friction of the sand, and the movement of quartz pebbles.
We saw many such, whirled perpetually by the current at the bottom of
the funnels, and contributing to enlarge them in every direction. The
pongos of the river Amazon are easily destroyed, because the rocky
dikes are not granite, but a conglomerate, or red sandstone with large
fragments. A part of the pongo of Rentama was broken down eighty years
ago, and the course of the waters being interrupted by a new bar, the
bed of the river remained dry for some hours, to the great
astonishment of the inhabitants of the village of Payaya, seven
leagues below the pongo. The Indians of Atures assert (and in this
their testimony is contrary to the opinion of Caulin) that the rocks
of the raudal preserve the same aspect; but that the partial torrents
into which the great river divides itself as it passes through the
heaped blocks of granite, change their direction, and carry sometimes
more, sometimes less water towards one or the other bank; but the
causes of these changes may be very remote from the cataracts, for in
the rivers that spread life over the surface of the globe, as in the
arteries by which it is diffused through organized bodies, all the
movements are propagated to great distances. Oscillations, that at
first seem partial, react on the whole liquid mass contained in the
trunk as well as in its numerous ramifications.
Some of the Missionaries in their writings have alleged that the
inhabitants of Atures and Maypures have been struck with deafness by
the noise of the Great Cataracts, but this is untrue.
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