Of GUIANA. 6i 



ill the Nile during the infancy of fcience, is now a well known 

 phenomenon to every inhabitant of a continent in the torrid 

 zone. From the fituation of the river Amazons, it amounts 

 to a certainty, that the Demerary, ElTequebo, and other rivers 

 of Guiana, cannot originate very far up in the continent of 

 South America. This is con£rmed by what 1 could learn of 

 the rife and duration of the floods of thefe two rivers. En- 

 quiring about them at the plantations below, is to little pur- 

 pofe, for there the floods are hardly difcernible ; but by the 

 poflholder and the fettlers farthefl up, I was informed, that 

 they are there fenflble enough, and that, independent of all 

 partial fwells from accidental rains, the Demerary generally 

 rofe every year in the month of June, and continued high 

 through July and part of Auguft. " The rife there, upon the 

 whole, might be about twelve feet ; it is fuflicient to lay the 

 level parts of the country under water, and to render the woods, 

 that cover them in feveral places, paflable in canoes. We 

 could have wiflied for more exadl information. This, how-, 

 ever, was fuflicient to prove, that the rivers did not rife very 

 far inland, elfe the floods would have been later in the year ; 

 but at the fame time that they were of extent enough to fol- 

 low the rule of all coniiderable intertropical rivers, fo as to have 

 a flood in the rainy feafon, that is, in the months when the 

 fun is upon the fame flde of the line on which they have their 

 origin and courfe. 



The great Oroonoko, I have been informed, begins to rife a 

 little in May, it continues increaflng through the fummer 

 months, and the inundation is at its height in September. At 

 that time, as far up as the Angufl:uras, the rife is about forty 

 feet perpendicular above the low water-mark. It diminiflies as 

 you defcend till about the mouth, where it is only a very few 

 feet.. 



