Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 335 of 406 - First - Home
These Passages, From One Basin Of A River To Another, By
The Natural Canal Of The Cassiquiare, Excite No More Attention In The
Colonists At Present Than The Arrival Of Boats That Descend The Loire
By The Canal Of Orleans, Awakens On The Banks Of The Seine.
Although, since the journey of Father Roman, in 1744, precise notions
have been acquired in the Spanish possessions in
America, both of the
direction of the Upper Orinoco from east to west, and of the manner of
its communication with the Rio Negro, this knowledge did not reach
Europe till a much later period. In 1750, La Condamine and D'Anville*
were still of opinion that the Orinoco was a branch of the Caqueta
coming from the south-east, and that the Rio Negro issued immediately
from it. (* See the classical memoir of this great geographer in the
Journal des Savans, March 1750 page 184. "One fact," says D'Anville,
"which cannot be considered as equivocal, after the proofs with which
we have been recently furnished, is the communication of the Rio Negro
with the Orinoco; but we must not hesitate to admit, that we are not
yet sufficiently informed of the manner in which this communication
takes place." I was surprised to see in a very rare map, which I found
at Rome (Provincia Quitensis Soc. Jesu in America, auctore Carolo
Brentano et Nicolao de la Torre; Romae 1745) that seven years after
the discovery of Father Roman, the Jesuits of Quito were ignorant of
the existence of the Cassiquiare. The Rio Negro is figured in this map
as a branch of the Orinoco.) It was only in the second edition of his
South America, that D'Anville (without renouncing that
intercommunication of the Caqueta, by means of the Iniricha (Inirida),
with the Orinoco and the Rio Negro) describes the Orinoco as taking
its rise at the east, near the sources of the Rio Branco, and marks
the Rio Cassiquiare as bearing the waters of the Upper Orinoco to the
Rio Negro. It is probable that this indefatigable and learned writer
had obtained information on the manner of the bifurcation from his
frequent communications with the missionaries,* who were then the only
geographers of the most inland parts of the continents. (* According
to the Annals of Berredo, it would appear, that as early as the year
1739, the military incursions from the Rio Negro to the Cassiquiare
had confirmed the Portuguese Jesuits in the opinion that there was a
communication between the Amazon and the Orinoco. Southey's Brazils
volume 1 page 658.)
Had the nations of the lower region of equinoctial America
participated in the civilization spread over the cold and alpine
region, that immense Mesopotamia between the Orinoco and the Amazon
would have favoured the development of their industry, animated their
commerce, and accelerated the progress of social order. We see
everywhere in the old world the influence of locality on the dawning
civilization of nations. The island of Meroe between the Astaboras and
the Nile, the Punjab of the Indus, the Douab of the Ganges, and the
Mesopotamia of the Euphrates, furnish examples that are justly
celebrated in the annals of the human race.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 335 of 406
Words from 173904 to 174434
of 211397