180 CIVILIZATION PROMOTED BY RIVERS. 



branch of the Caqueta coining from the south-east, an 1 that 

 the Eio Negro issued immediately from it. It was only in 

 the second edition of his South America, that D'Anville (with- 

 out renouncing that intercommunication of the Caqueta, by 

 means of the Iniricha (Inirida), with the Orinoco and the 

 Eio Negro) describes the Orinoco as taking its rise at the 

 east, near the sources of the Eio Branco, and marks the 

 Rio Cassiquiare as bearing the waters of the Upper Orinoco 

 to the Eio Negro. It is probable that this indefatigable a d 

 learned writer had obtained information on the manner of 

 the bifurcation from his frequent communications with the 

 missionaries,* who were then the only geographers of the 

 most inland parts of the continents. 



Had the nations of the lower region of equinoctial America 

 participated in the civilization spread over the cold and 

 alpine region, that immense Mesopotamia between the 

 Orinoco and the Amazon would have favoured the develop- 

 ment of their industry, animated their commerce, and acce- 

 lerated the progress of social order. "We see everywhere 

 in the old world the influence of locality on the dawning 

 civilization of nations. The island of Meroe between the 

 Astaboras and the Nile, the Punjab of the Indus, the Douab 

 of the Granges, and the Mesopotamia of the Euphrates, 

 furnish examples that are justly celebrated in the annals of 

 the human race. But the feeble tribes that wander in the 

 savannahs and the woods of eastern America, have profited 

 little by the advantages of their soil, and the inter- 

 branchings of their rivers. The distant incursions of the 

 Caribs, who went up the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the 



recently furnished, is the communication of 'the Rio Negro w'th the 

 Orinoco ; but we must not hesitate to admit, that we are not yet 

 sufficiently informed of the manner in which this communication takes 

 place." I was surprised to see in a very rare map, which I found at Rome 

 (Provincia Quitensis Soc. Jesu in America, auctore Carolo Brentano et 

 Nicolao de la Torre; Romae, 1745), that seven years after the discovery 

 of Father Roman, the Jesuits of Quito were ignorant of the existence of 

 the Cassiquiare. The Rio Negro is figured in this map as a branch of the 

 Orinoco. 



* According to the Annals of Berredo, it would appear, that as early 

 as the year 1739, the military incursions from the Rio Negro to the 

 Cassiquiare had confirmed the Portuguese Jesuits in the opinion that 

 there was a cexzmunication between the Amazon and the Orinoco. 

 Southcy's Brazils, vol. i, p. 658. 



