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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What The Inhabitants Of Upper Egypt And Nubia Call Chellal
In The Nile, Is Called Yellala In The River Congo.
This analogy
between words signifying rapids is remarkable, on account of the
enormous distance of the yellalas of the Congo from the chellal and
djenadel of the Nile.
Did the word chellal penetrate with the Moors
into the west of Africa? If, with Burckhardt, we consider the origin
of this word as Arabic (Travels in Nubia, 1819), it must be derived
from the root challa, to disperse, which forms chelil, water falling
through a narrow channel.); the rapids of the Orange River in Africa,
above Pella; and the falls of the Missouri, which are four leagues in
length, where the river issues from the Rocky Mountains. Such also are
the cataracts of Atures and Maypures; the only cataracts which,
situated in the equinoctial region of the New World, are adorned with
the noble growth of palm-trees. At all seasons they exhibit the aspect
of cascades, and present the greatest obstacles to the navigation of
the Orinoco, while the rapids of the Ohio and of Upper Egypt are
scarcely visible at the period of floods. A solitary cataract, like
Niagara, or the cascade of Terni, affords a grand but single picture,
varying only as the observer changes his place. Rapids, on the
contrary, especially when adorned with large trees, embellish a
landscape during a length of several leagues. Sometimes the tumultuous
movement of the waters is caused only by extraordinary contractions of
the beds of the rivers.
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