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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The
Overflowing Of The Aral Into The Caspian Sea Seems Even To Be Partly
Of A More Recent Date, And Independent Of The Bifurcation Of The Gihon
(Oxus), On Which One Of The Most Learned Geographers Of Our Day, M.
Ritter, Has Thrown New Light.)
The certainty acquired by geographers since the sixteenth century, of
the existence of several bifurcations, and the mutual dependence of
Various systems of rivers in South America, have led them to admit an
intimate connection between the five great tributary streams of the
Orinoco and the Amazon; the Guaviare, the Inirida, the Rio Negro, the
Caqueta or Hyapura, and the Putumayo or Iza.
The Meta, the Guaviare, the Caqueta, and the Putumayo, are the only
great rivers that rise immediately from the eastern declivity of the
Andes of Santa Fe, Popayan, and Pasto. The Vichada, the Zama, the
Inirida, the Rio Negro, the Uaupe, and the Apoporis, which are marked
in our maps as extending westward as far as the mountains, take rise
at a great distance from them, either in the savannahs between the
Meta and the Guaviare, or in the mountainous country which, according
to the information given me by the natives, begins at four or five
days' journey westward of the missions of Javita and Maroa, and
extends through the Sierra Tuhuny, beyond the Xie, towards the banks
of the Issana.
It is remarkable that this ridge of the Cordilleras, which contains
the sources of so many majestic rivers (the Meta, the Guaviare, the
Caqueta, and the Putumayo), is as little covered with snow as the
mountains of Abyssinia from which flow the waters of the Blue Nile;
but, on the contrary, on going up the tributary streams which furrow
the plains, a volcano as found still in activity, before you reach the
Cordillera of the Andes.
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