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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If We Have Given The Plains Or Great Basins Of South America The Names
Of The Rivers That Flow In Their Longitudinal Furrows, We Have Not
Meant By So-Doing To Compare Them To Mere Valleys.
In the plains of
the Lower Orinoco and the Amazon all the lines of the declivity
doubtless reach a principal recipient, and the tributaries of
tributary streams, that is the basins of different orders, penetrate
far into the group of the mountains.
The upper parts or high valleys
of the tributary streams must be considered in a geological table as
belonging to the mountainous region of the country, and beyond the
plains of the Lower Orinoco and the Amazon. The views of the geologist
are not identical with those of the hydrographer. In the basin of the
Rio de la Plata and Patagonia the waters that follow the lines of the
greatest declivities have many issues. The same basin contains several
valleys of rivers; and when we examine nearly the polyedric surface of
the Pampas and the portion of their waters which, like the waters of
the steppes of Asia, do not go to the sea, we conceive that these
plains are divided by small ridges or lines of elevation, and have
alternate slopes, inclined, with reference to the horizon, in opposite
directions. In order to point out more clearly the difference between
geological and hydrographic views, and to prove that in the former,
abstracting the course of the waters which meet in one recipient, we
obtain a far more general point of view, I shall here again recur to
the hydrographic basin of the Orinoco.
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