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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(* The Figure Of Water Itself Is Often Substituted
For That Of The Rat (Arvicola) In The Tartar Zodiac.
The Rat takes the
place of Aquarius.
Gaubil, Obs. Mathem. volume 3 page 33.) These two
Mexican signs are Water (Atl) and Cipactli, the sea-monster furnished
with a horn. This animal is at once the Antelope-fish of the Hindoos,
the Capricorn of our zodiac, the Deucalion of the Greeks, and the Noah
(Coxcox) of the Azteks.* (* Coxcox bears also the denomination of
Teo-Cipactli, in which the root god or divine is added to the name of
the sign Cipactli. It is the man of the Fourth Age; who, at the fourth
destruction of the world (the last renovation of nature), saved
himself with his wife, and reached the mountain of Colhuacan.
According to the commentator Germanicus, Deucalion was placed in
Aquarius; but the three signs of the Fishes, Aquarius and Capricorn
(the Antelope-fish) were heretofore intimately linked together. The
animal, which, after having long inhabited the waters, takes the form
of an antelope, and climbs the mountains, reminds people, whose
restless imagination seizes the most remote similitudes, of the
ancient traditions of Menou, of Noah, and of those Deucalions
celebrated among the Scythians and the Thessalians. As the Tartarian
and Mexican zodiacs contain the signs of the Monkey and the Tiger,
they, no doubt, originated in the torrid zone. With the Muyscas,
inhabitants of New Grenada, the first sign, as in eastern Asia, was
that of water, figured by a Frog. It is also remarkable that the
astrological worship of the Muyscas came to the table-land of Bogota
from the eastern side, from the plains of San Juan, which extend
toward the Guaviare and the Orinoco.) Thus we find the general results
of comparative hydrography in the astrological monuments, the
divisions of time and the religious traditions of nations the most
remote from each other in their situation and in their degree of
intellectual advancement.
As the equatorial rains take place in the flat country when the sun
passes through the zenith of the place, that is, when its declination
becomes homonymous with the zone comprised between the equator and one
of the tropics, the waters of the Amazon sink, while those of the
Orinoco rise perceptibly. In a very judicious discussion on the origin
of the Rio Congo,* (* Voyage to the Zaire page 17.) the attention of
philosophers has been already called to the modifications which the
periods of the risings must undergo in the course of a river, the
sources and the mouth of which are not on the same side of the
equinoctial line.* (* Among the rivers of America this is the case
with the Rio Negro, the Rio Branco, and the Jupura.) The hydraulic
systems of the Orinoco and the Amazon furnish a combination of
circumstances still more extraordinary. 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. It is known that in the forests north of the
line the rains are earlier than in the less woody plains of the
southern torrid zone. To this local cause is joined another, which
acts perhaps equally on the tardy swellings of the Nile. The Amazon
receives a great part of its waters from the Cordillera of the Andes,
where the seasons, as everywhere among mountains, follow a peculiar
type, most frequently opposite to that of the low regions.
The law of the increase and decrease of the Orinoco is more difficult
to determine with respect to space, or to the magnitude of the
oscillations, than with regard to time, or the period of the maxima
and minima. Having been able to measure but imperfectly the risings of
the river, I report, not without hesitation, estimates that differ
much from each other.* (* Tuckey, Maritime Geogr. volume 4 page 309.
Hippisley, Expedition to the Orinoco page 38. Gumilla volume 1 pages
56 to 59. Depons volume 3 page 301. The greatest height of the rise of
the Mississippi is, at Natchez, fifty-five English feet. This river
(the largest perhaps of the whole temperate zone) is at its maximum
from February to May; at its minimum in August and September.
Ellicott, Journal of an Expedition to the Ohio.) Foreign pilots admit
ninety feet for the ordinary rise in the Lower Orinoco. M. Depons, who
has in general collected very accurate notions during his stay at
Caracas, fixes it at thirteen fathoms. The heights naturally vary
according to the breadth of the bed and the number of tributary
streams which the principal trunk receives.
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