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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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. But the feeble tribes that
wander in the savannahs and the woods of eastern America, have
profited little by the advantages of their soil, and the
interbranchings of their rivers. The distant incursions of the Caribs,
who went up the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, to carry
off slaves and exercise pillage, compelled some rude tribes to rouse
themselves from their indolence, and form associations for their
common defence; the little good, however, which these wars with the
Caribs (the Bedouins of the rivers of Guiana) produced, was but slight
compensation for the evils that followed in their train, by rendering
the tribes more ferocious, and diminishing their population.
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