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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We Have Just Seen That, In The Orinoco, As In The Amazon, The Great
Cataracts Are Not Found Near The Sources Of The Rivers.
After a
tranquil course of more than one hundred and sixty leagues from the
little Raudal of Guaharibos, east
Of Esmeralda, as far as the
mountains of Sipapu, the river, augmented by the waters of the Jao,
the Ventuari, the Atabapo, and the Guaviare, suddenly changes its
primitive direction from east to west, and runs from south to north:
then, in crossing the land-strait* in the plains of Meta, (* This
strait, which I have several times mentioned, is formed by the
Cordilleras of the Andes of New Granada, and the Cordillera of
Parima.) meets the advanced buttresses of the Cordillera of Parima.
This obstacle causes cataracts far more considerable, and presents
greater impediments to navigation, than all the Pongos of the Upper
Maranon, because they are proportionally nearer to the mouth of the
river. These geographical details serve to prove, in the instances of
the two greatest rivers of the New World, first, that it cannot be
ascertained in an absolute manner that, beyond a certain number of
toises, or a certain height above the level of the sea, rivers are not
navigable; secondly, that the rapids are not always occasioned, as
several treatises of general topography affirm, by the height of the
first obstacles, by the first lines of ridges which the waters have to
surmount near their sources.
The most northern of the great cataracts of the Orinoco is the only
one bounded on each side by lofty mountains.
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