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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Some Of Those Rocks Are Covered With Signs
Or Symbolical Sculpture.
Nations, very different from those who now
inhabit the banks of the Cassiquiare, penetrated into the savannahs;
and the zone of painted rocks, extending more than 150 leagues in
breadth, bears traces of ancient civilization.
On the east of the
sporadic groups of rocks (between the meridian of the bifurcation of
the Orinoco and that of the confluence of the Essequibo with the
Rupunuri) the lofty mountains of the Parime commence only in 3 degrees
north latitude; where the plains of the Amazon terminate.
The limits of the plains of the Amazon are still less known towards
the south than towards the north. The mountains that exceed 400 toises
of absolute height do not appear to extend in Brazil northward of the
parallels 14 or 15 degrees of south latitude, and west of the meridian
of 52 degrees; but it is not known how far the mountainous country
extends, if we may call by that name a territory bristled with hills
of one hundred or two hundred toises high. Between the Rio dos
Vertentes and the Rio de Tres Barras (tributary streams of the Araguay
and the Topayos) several ridges of the Monts Parecis run northward. On
the right bank of the Topayos a series of little hills advance as far
as the parallel of 5 degrees south latitude, to the fall (cachoeira)
of Maracana; while further west, in the Rio Madeira, the course of
which is nearly parallel with that of the Topayos, the rapids and
cataracts indicate no rocky ridges beyond the parallel of 8 degrees.
The principal depression of the basin of which we have just examined
the outline, is not near one of its banks, as in the basin of the
Lower Orinoco, but at the centre, where the great recipient of the
Amazon forms a longitudinal furrow inclining from west to east, under
an angle of at least 25 degrees. The barometric measurements which I
made at Javita on the banks of the Tuamini, at Vasivia on the banks of
the Cassiquiare and at the cataract of Rentema, in the Upper Maranon,
seem to prove that the rising of the Llanos of the Amazon northward
(at the foot of the Sierra Parime) is 150 toises, and westward (at the
foot of the Cordillera of the Andes of Loxa), 190 toises above the
sea-level.
(4b.) PART OF THE BASIN OF THE AMAZON STRETCHING FROM SOUTH TO NORTH.
This is the zone or land-strait by which, between 12 and 20 degrees of
south latitude, the plains of the Amazon communicate with the Pampas
of Buenos Ayres. The western bank of this zone is formed by the Andes,
between the knot of Porco and Potosi, and that of Huanuco and Pasco.
Part of the spurs of the Rio Beni, which is but a widening of the
Cordilleras of Apolobamba and Cuzco and the whole promontory of
Cochabamba, advance eastward into the plains of the Amazon.
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