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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These Bars, Which
Extend From One Bank To The Other, Present In General A Similar
Aspect:
They are composed of innumerable islands, dikes of rock, and
blocks of granite piled on one another and covered with palm-trees.
But, notwithstanding a uniformity of aspect, each of these cataracts
preserves an individual character.
The first, the Atures, is most
easily passable when the waters are low. The Indians prefer crossing
the second, the Maypures, at the time of great floods. Beyond the
Maypures and the mouth of the Cano Cameji, the Orinoco is again
unobstructed for the length of more than one hundred and sixty-seven
leagues, or nearly to its source; that is to say, as far as the
Raudalito of Guaharibos, east of the Cano Chiguire and the lofty
mountains of Yumariquin.
Having visited the basins of the two rivers Orinoco and Amazon, I was
singularly struck by the differences they display in their course of
unequal extent. The falls of the Amazon, which is nearly nine hundred
and eighty nautical leagues (twenty to a degree) in length, are pretty
near its source in the first sixth of its total length, and
five-sixths of its course are entirely free. We find the great falls
of the Orinoco on a point far more unfavourable to navigation; if not
at the half, at least much beyond the first third of its length. In
both rivers it is neither the mountains, nor the different stages of
flat lands lying over one another, whence they take their origin, that
cause the cataracts; they are produced by other mountains, other
ledges which, after a long and tranquil course, the rivers have to
pass over, precipitating themselves from step to step.
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