468 



confine myself to the mention of an hydraulic 

 phenomenon, which the fine maps of Norway 

 by Baron Hermelin have made known in the 

 greatest detail. A branch of the river Torneo^ 

 in Lapland, (the Tarendo-Elf ) runs to the Calix- 

 Elf, which forms a little separate hydraulic sys- 

 tem. This Cassiquiare of the northern zone is 

 only ten or twelve leagues long, but it makes a 

 real river island of all the land in the vicinity of 

 the gulf of Bothnia. We learn from Mr. von 

 Buch that the existence of this natural canal 

 was long denied, as obstinately as that of a 

 branch of the Oroonoko flowing into the basin 

 of the Amazon. Another bifurcation, more in- 

 teresting on account of the ancient communica- 

 tion between the nations of Latium and Etruria, 

 appears to have taken place formerly near the 



to which the Quolla must communicate with the Rio Congo or 

 Zaire. This traveller thinks, that a branch of the Quolla 

 runs toward the south-west, under the name of the Ogooa- 

 wai 5 and that this Ogooawai, near Adjoomba, divides itself 

 anew, forming on the west the river Assazee, which flows 

 into the sea near Cape Lopez, and on the east, near Tanyan, 

 a tributary stream of the Congo. 



+ Voyage en Norwege, vol. 2, p. 237. The south of France 

 furnishes, but at a little distance only from the Mediterranean, 

 an example of bifurcation similar to those of the Cassiquiare 

 and the Conorichite. See, on the great map of Cassini, the 

 extraordinary interbranchings between the Sorgue, the 

 Louveze, and the river Vesque, near Avignon and Mon- 

 teux. 



