Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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When We Reflect On Their Small
Elevation Above The Surface Of The Ocean, We Are Tempted To Consider
Them As
Gulfs stretching in the direction of the current of rotation.
If, from the effect of some peculiar attraction, the waters
Of the
Atlantic were to rise fifty toises at the mouth of the Orinoco, and
two hundred toises at the mouth of the Amazon, the flood would
submerge more than the half of South America. The eastern declivity,
or the foot of the Andes, now six hundred leagues distant from the
coast of Brazil, would become a shore beaten by the waves. This
consideration is the result of a barometric measurement, taken in the
province of Jaen de Bracamoros, where the river Amazon issues from the
Cordilleras. I found the mean height of this immense river only one
hundred and ninety-four toises above the present level of the
Atlantic. The intermediate plains, however, covered with forests, are
still five times higher than the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, and the
grass-covered Llanos of Caracas and the Meta.
Those Llanos which form the basin of the Orinoco, and which we crossed
twice in one year, in the months of March and July, communicate with
the basin of the Amazon and the Rio Negro, bounded on one side by the
Cordillera of Chiquitos, and on the other by the mountains of Parime.
The opening which is left between the latter and the Andes of New
Grenada, occasions this communication. The aspect of the country here
reminds us, but on a much larger scale, of the plains of Lombardy,
which also are only fifty or sixty toises above the level of the
ocean; and are directed first from La Brenta to Turin, east and west;
and then from Turin to Coni, north and south.
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