RIVERS. 75 



mountainous regions, or on the melting of snows in the neighbourhood 

 of their sources. The period depends on the return of these seasons in 

 different places. Within the tropics the rainy season is usually about 

 the time when the sun passes the meridian towards the tropics, and 

 continues until his return to the same place. The floods of the Maranon 

 and La Plata, cover a vast extent of unexplored country. The rise of the 

 Orinoco commences in May, its inundation begins in June, and the 

 waters return to their channel in September; from which time they 

 decrease until April of the succeeding year. The inundations of the 

 Lower Mississippi begin in March, are at their height in June, and the river 

 is lowest in October. The waters at their height, lOOOmiles from the sea, 

 attain a rise of 50 feet; at 300 miles, of 25 feet; and at 100 miles, of 12 

 feet. The western bank of the Mississippi forms a vast series of lakes, 

 which are dried up in Autumn into arid plains, interspersed with swamps, 

 but the delta below the juncture of Bed Eiver is a dismal swamp, 

 scarcely elevated above the sea. In the Red River, the Arkausas, and the 

 Lower Mississippi, are found those enormous rafts of drift wood formed 

 during the river floods, which sometimes extend for ten or twelve miles 

 in one mass, rise and fall with the stream, yet have a luxuriant vegetation 

 on their summits. The inundations of the Ganges follow a nearly similar 

 course ; the waters begin to increase in April, when the rains commence 

 in the mountains in which it has its sources; the rate of its increase is 

 about three inches daily, until the month of July, when the rains 

 descend in torrents in the plains. The increase of the river is then 

 more rapid, being about five inches daily, and the country for 100 miles 

 along its banks presents in the end of July the appearance of a vast lake, 

 interspersed with isolated villages and woods. The general height of 

 the inundation waters in Bengal is about twelve feet, but in some places 

 they have a depth of more than thirty feet. The great rivers of Ava, the 

 Indus, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, have all their periods of inundation 

 depending on the circumstances determining the setting in of the rains, 

 in which they originate. 



The inundations of the Nile have long been celebrated ; shortly after 

 the commencement of the rains on the mountains of Abyssinia, in June, 

 the river begins to rise, and attains its greatest height in August. In 

 Cairo, the greatest rise is 28 feet; at Rosetta it is no mere than four about 

 the middle of August, when the valley of Egypt, with a mean breadth 

 of three or four leagues, and the greatest part of the Delta, are covered with 

 one sheet of water. Its increase is irregular, and it decreases gradually 

 until the following May. As soon as the waters are within their own 



