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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That Immense River Rises On The
Southern Slope Of The Sierra Parime.
It is bounded by plains on the
left bank, from the Cassiquiare to the mouth of the Atabapo, and
Flows
in a basin which, geologically speaking, according to one great
division of the surface of South America into three basins, we have
called the basin of the Rio Negro and the Amazon. The low regions,
which are bounded by the southern and northern declivities of the
Parime and Brazil mountains, and which the geologist ought to mark by
one name, contain, according to the no less precise language of
hydrography, two basins of rivers, those of the Upper Orinoco and the
Amazon, separated by a ridge that runs from Javita towards Esmeralda.
From these considerations it results that a geological basin (sit
venia verbo) may have several recipients and several emissaries,
divided by small ridges almost imperceptible; it may at the same time
contain waters that flow to the sea by different furrows independent
of each other, and the systems of inland rivers flowing into lakes
more or less charged with saline matter. A basin of a river, or
hydrographic basin, has but one recipient, one emissary; if, by a
bifurcation, it gives a part of its waters to another hydrographic
basin, it is because the bed of the river, or the principal recipient,
approaches so near the banks of the basin or the ridge of partition
that the ridge partly crosses it.
The distribution of the inequalities of the surface of the globe does
not present any strongly marked limits between the mountainous country
and the low regions, or geologic basins.
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