COMMUNICATION WITH THE ORONOCO. 277 



quiari, and the latter merely requires a canal of six leagues in length, 

 over very practicable ground, to do the same. 



Let us now suppose the banks of these streams settled by an active 

 and industrious population, desirous to exchange th« rich products of 

 their lands for the commodities and luxuries of foreign countries ; let 

 us suppose introduced into such a country the railroad and the steam- 

 boat, the plough, the axe, and the hoe; let us suppose the land divided 

 into large estates, and cultivated by slave labor, so as to produce all 

 that they are capable of producing : and with these considerations, we 

 shall have no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that no territory on 

 the face of the globe is so favorably situated, and that, if trade there 

 is once awakened, the power, the wealth, and grandeur of ancient 

 Babylon and modern London must yield to that of the depots of this 

 trade, that shall be established at the mouths of the Oronoco, the Ama- 

 zon, and the La Plata. 



Humboldt, by far the greatest cosmographer that the world has yet 

 known, and one of the most learned men and profoundest thinkers of 

 any time, in contemplating the connexion between the valleys of the 

 Oronoco and the Amazon by the Cassiquiari, speaks thus of its future 

 importance : 



" Since my departure from the banks of the Oronoco and the Ama- 

 zon, a new era unfolds itself in the social state of the nations of the 

 West. The fury of civil discussions will be succeeded by the blessings 

 of peace and a freer development of the arts of industry. The bifurca- 

 tion of the Oronoco," (the Cassiquiari,) "the isthmus of Tuamini," (my 

 portage of Pimichim,) "so easy to pass over by an artificial canal, will 

 fix the attention of commercial Europe. The Cassiquiari — as broad as 

 the Rhine, and the course of which is one hundred and eighty miles in 

 length — will no longer form in vain a navigable canal between two 

 basins of rivers, which have a surface of one hundred and ninety thou- 

 sand square leagues. The grain of New Grenada will be carried to the 

 banks of the Rio Negro ; boats will descend from the sources of the 

 Napo and the Ucayali, from the Andes of Quito and upper Peru, to 

 the mouths of the Oronoco — a distance which equals that from Timbuc- 

 too to Marseilles. A country nine or ten times larger than Spain, and 

 enriched with the most varied prodwctions, is navigable in every direc- 

 tion by the medium of the natural canal of the Cassiquiari and the bi- 

 furcation of the rivers. This phenomenon, which one day will be so 

 important for the political connexions of nations, unquestionably deserves 

 to be carefully examined." 



If these things should, in the estimation of Humboldt, " fix the atten- 



