Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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It Is Curious To Observe In The Lowest Degree Of
Human Civilization The Existence Of A Whole Tribe Depending On One
Single Species Of Palm-Tree, Similar To Those Insects Which Feed On
One And The Same Flower, Or On One And The Same Part Of A Plant.
The navigation of the river, whether vessels arrive by the Boca de
Navios, or risk entering the labyrinth of the bocas chicas, requires
various precautions, according as the waters are high or low.
The
regularity of these periodical risings of the Orinoco has been long an
object of admiration to travellers, as the overflowings of the Nile
furnished the philosophers of antiquity with a problem difficult to
solve. The Orinoco and the Nile, contrary to the direction of the
Ganges, the Indus, the Rio de la Plata, and the Euphrates, flow alike
from the south toward the north; but the sources of the Orinoco are
five or six degrees nearer to the equator than those of the Nile.
Observing every day the accidental variations of the atmosphere, we
find it difficult to persuade ourselves that in a great space of time
the effects of these variations mutually compensate each other: that
in a long succession of years the averages of the temperature of the
humidity, and of the barometric pressure, differ so little from month
to month; and that nature, notwithstanding the multitude of partial
perturbations, follows a constant type in the series of meteorological
phenomena. Great rivers unite in one receptacle the waters which a
surface of several thousand square leagues receives.
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