4NCIENT WATEB-LEYEL. 225 



10th of April ; this phenomenon surprised the natives so much 

 the more, as the first swellings are almost imperceptible, 

 and are usually followed in the month of April by a fall for 

 some days. The Orinoco was already three feet higher than 

 the level of the lowest waters. The natives showed us on a 

 granite wall the traces of the great rise of the waters of late 

 years. We found them to be forty-two feet high, which is 

 double the mean rise of the Nile. But this measure was 

 taken in a place where the bed of the Orinoco is singularly 

 hemmed in by rocks, and I could only notice the marks 

 shown me by the natives. It may easily be conceived that 

 the effect and the height of the increase differs according to 

 the profile of the river, the nature of the banks more or less 

 elevated, the number of rivers flowing in that collect the 

 pluvial waters, and the length of ground passed over. It is 

 an unquestionable fact that at Carichana, at San Borja, at 

 Atures, and at Maypures, wherever the river has forced its 

 way through the mountains, you see at a hundred* some- 

 times at a hundred and thirty feet, above the highest 

 present swell of the river, black bands and erosions, that 

 indicate the ancient levels of the waters. Is then this river, 

 which appears to us so grand and so majestic, only the 

 feeble remains of those immense currents of fresh water 

 which heretofore traversed the country at the east of the 

 Andes, like arms of inland seas ? What must have been 

 the state of those low countries of Guiana that now undergo 

 the effects of annual inundations ? What immense numbers 

 of crocodiles, manatis, and boas must have inhabited these 

 vast spaces of land, converted alternately into marshes of 

 stagnant water, and into barren and fissured plains ! The 

 more peaceful world which we inhabit has then succeeded 

 to a world of tumult. The bones of mastodons and 

 American elephants are found dispersed on the table-lands 

 <>t' the Andes. The megatherium inhabited the plains of 

 Uruguay. On digging deep into the ground, in high 

 valleys, where neither palm-trees nor arborescent ferns can 

 grow, strata of coal are discovered, that still show vestiges 

 of gigantic monocotyledonous plants. 



There was a remote period then, in which the classes of 

 plants were otherwise distributed, when the animals were 

 larger, and the rivers broader aud of .greater depth. There 



TOL. II. < 



