Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 22 of 635 - First - Home
They Are United By The Rio
Negro And The Cassiquiare, A Branch Of The Orinoco; It Is A Navigable
Line, Between Two Great Basins Of Rivers, That Is Crossed By The
Equator.
The river Amazon, according to the information which I
obtained on its banks, is much less regular in the
Periods of its
oscillations than the Orinoco; it generally begins, however, to
increase in December, and attains its maximum of height in March.* (*
Nearly seventy or eighty days after our winter solstice, which is the
summer solstice of the southern hemisphere.) It sinks from the month
of May, and is at its minimum of height in the months of July and
August, at the time when the Lower Orinoco inundates all the
surrounding land. As no river of America can cross the equator from
south to north, on account of the general configuration of the ground,
the risings of the Orinoco have an influence on the Amazon; but those
of the Amazon do not alter the progress of the oscillations of the
Orinoco. It results from these data, that in the two basins of the
Amazon and the Orinoco, the concave and convex summits of the curve of
progressive increase and decrease correspond very regularly with each
other, since they exhibit the difference of six months, which results
from the situation of the rivers in opposite hemispheres. The
commencement of the risings only is less tardy in the Orinoco. This
river increases sensibly as soon as the sun has crossed the equator;
in the Amazon, on the contrary, the risings do not commence till two
months after the equinox.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 22 of 635
Words from 5680 to 5949
of 174507
