THE SOCIETY'S NEW MAP OE SOUTH AMERICA 



THE map of South America that 

 accompanies this issue of the 

 National Geographic Maga- 

 zine; portrays a continent which has 

 many characteristics peculiar to itself. 



It is the most southerly of all the conti- 

 nents. Where Africa reaches to approxi- 

 mately 36 south latitude and Australia 

 to 38 °, South America stretches into the 

 austral seas until Cape Horn touches 56 

 south latitude. In other words. South 

 America extends some 1,200 miles nearer 

 to the South Pole than any other continent. 



This continent has twice the area of 

 Europe, yet it has less than two-thirds 

 the combined population of France and 

 Italy. Twice as large as the United 

 States, including Alaska, it has a popula- 

 tion only a little more than half as great. 

 In general outline it is not unlike Africa, 

 but it is more symmetrical than the Dark 

 Continent. 



The three continents of the Southern 

 Hemisphere are similar in their unin- 

 dented coast-lines, and the headlands of 

 Brazil seem to reach out as if to join 

 hands across the sea with the correspond- 

 ing headlands of Guinea. 



The vast basins of the Amazon, the 

 Rio de la Plata, and the Orinoco are in 

 many parts so low-lying as to be swampy, 

 and in spite of the tremendous amount of 

 water they carry off, the currents are 

 sluggish; yet so towering and so exten- 

 sive are the Andes Mountains that if all 

 the highlands were plowed down and all 

 the lowlands were filled up, the continent 

 would be a plateau 1,312 feet above sea- 

 level, and 820 feet of this would be 

 represented by the material that consti- 

 tutes the Andes. 



DIVERS OF NORTH AND SOUTH MINGEK AT 

 THEIR SOURCES 



South America is distinguished among 

 all the continents for the absence of 

 clearly defined watersheds between its 

 great river basins. From the Orinoco 

 delta to the Rio de la Plata estuary there 

 is almost a continuous overlapping of 

 these basins. In southern Venezuela, 

 where that country thrusts a political 

 peninsula into northern Brazil, below the 

 town of Esmeralda, the waters of the 

 upper Orinoco suddenly decide to part 



company, some of them reaching the 

 Amazon and the sea through the Brazos 

 Casiquiare and the others forcing their 

 way to the lower ( )rinoco over the rapids 

 of the eroded mountain barriers at Mai- 

 pures and Attires. 



Although the communications between 

 the Amazon and the Rio de la Plata 

 basins are not so marked as those be- 

 tween the Amazon and the Orinoco 

 basins, there are numerous places where 

 the flip of a bird's wing, the direction of 

 the wind, the abundance of local rains, 

 the formation of a sand-bar, or the slip 

 of a bit of land may determine the destiny 

 of a drop of water, whether it shall flow 

 past Para or Buenos Aires. At the foot 

 of the Bolivian highlands of Santa Cruz 

 Province various branches of the Ama- 

 zon-feeding Mamore and the Rio de la 

 Plata- feeding Pilcomayo seem rivals in 

 their bid for territory to drain. 



In Oriente Province, Bolivia, the San 

 Miguel, which reaches the sea through 

 the Amazon, after stealing around the 

 Continental Divide in the Serra Aguapehy 

 Hills, seems bent on capturing the waters 

 that belong to the Rio de la Plata's tribu- 

 tary, the Otuquis. 



FROM HUDSON BAY TO GULF OF MEXICO IF 

 MISSISSIPPI WFRF AMAZON 



Further to the northeast, in Matto 

 Grosso Province, Brazil, the Paraguay 

 River returns the compliment of the San 

 Miguel by breaking through between the 

 Serra Azul and the Serra do Tombador 

 into the drainage basin of the head- 

 waters of the Arinos branch of the Tapa- 

 joz, a tributary of the Amazon. Two 

 attempts have been made to join these 

 two rivers by a canal — in 17 13 and 1845. 



In several places, canals five miles long 

 would give free communication by inland 

 waterways between Para and Buenos 

 Aires. 



The great length of the navigable 

 reaches of the principal rivers of South 

 America and their major tributaries more 

 than compensate for the lack of indented 

 coast-lines. The Missssippi, "Father of 

 Waters," and its tributaries, have seven- 

 teen thousand miles of navigable waters, 

 the major portion exceedingly shallow. 

 The Amazon and its tributaries have 



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