298 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



dation at 45 feet above the ordinary level ; but above the greatest height to which its 

 waters are now elevated, he traced its ancient action at 106 or even 138 feet. " Is this 

 river, then," inquires he, " the Orinoco, which appears to us so imposing and majestic, 

 merely the feeble remnant of those immense currents of fresh water which, swelled by 

 Alpine snows or by more abundant rains, every where shaded by dense forests, and 

 destitute of those beaches that favour evaporation, formerly traversed the regions to the 

 east of the Andes, like arms of inland seas ? What must then have been the state of 

 those low countries of Guiana, which now experience the effects of annual inundations ! 

 What a prodigious number of crocodiles, lamartines, and boas must have inhabited these 

 vast regions, alternately converted into pools of stagnant water and arid plains ! The more 

 peaceful world in which we live has succeeded to a tumultuous world. Bones of masta- 

 dons and real American elephants are found dispersed over the platforms of the Andes. 

 The megatherium inhabited the plains of Uruguay. By digging the earth more deeply 

 in high valleys, which at the present day are unable to nourish palms or tree-ferns, we 

 discover strata of coal, containing gigantic remains of monocotyledonous plants. There 

 was therefore a remote period when the tribes of vegetables were differently distributed, 

 when the animals were larger, the rivers wider and deeper. There stop the monuments 

 of nature which we can consult." 



The bifurcation of flowing waters is sufficiently illustrative of the physics of the earth 

 to justify a few words : Europe presents two instances of bifurcation one in Italy, 

 between the Arno and the Chiana ; the other in Germany, between the Haase and the 

 Else, in Westphalia. Asia also possesses, on the peninsula lying beyond India, two grand 

 examples. What we know about them is principally founded upon the informations 

 gathered by Dr. Buchanan Hamilton, during his stay in Ava, the capital of the Birman 

 empire. But it is to be observed, that the communications of these Indian rivers, at least 

 as regards those in the country of the Jun-Shan, appear doubtful. British travellers 

 have succeeded in penetrating, from Maulmain, at the mouth of the river Saluan, into 

 the interior of the country of the Shan, which has been so long shut up ; but Lieutenant 

 M'Leod, who reached the river of Kambodja, says nothing to confirm the information 

 Dr. Buchanan gives us. The most important of all known divisions in the form of a 

 fork, however, is the bifurcation of the Orinoco, which communicates through the Cassi- 

 quiare with the Rio Negro, and through this river with the Amazon. It has already been 

 remarked, that the observations of A. von Humboldt have put this bifurcation beyond a 

 doubt ; but the subject deserves a recurrence to it, as presenting to our attention a singular 

 physical feature, and illustrating the energy of the great traveller of modern times. 



He and Bonpland left Carracas in the year 1800, crossed the valleys of Aragua, and 

 the Llanos of Calabozo excellent pastures, which separate the cultivated part of 

 Venezuela from the region of the forests and missions and embarked at San Fernando, 

 on the Rio Apure, to follow its course downwards to its discharge into the principal branch 

 of Orinoco. They then ascended the Orinoco, passing its two great cataracts of Apures 

 and Maypures, and reached the village of San Fernando de Atabapo, situated at the 

 junction of the Guaviare and Atabapo, and near lat. 4 N. Here they left the river, 

 and sailed up the Atabapo to the mouth of the Rio Temi, which latter they followed as 

 far as its confluence with the Tuamini, and arrived at the village of San Antonio de 

 Javita, formerly mentioned as remarkable for its amount of rain. From this point the 

 Indians carried their boat across the isthmus which separates the Tuamini from the Rio 

 Pimichin, the travellers following on foot, passing through dense forests, often in danger 

 from the number of snakes that infested the marshes. Embarking on the Pimichin, they 

 came in four hours and a half into the Rio Negro. " The morning," says Humboldt, was 

 cool and beautiful. We had been confined thirty-six days in a narrow canoe, so unsteady 



