470 



greatest systems of rivers in equinoctial America 

 would in the lapse of ages become entirely dis- 

 tinct. Having prescribed to myself the law of 

 describing facts only, and of comparing what I 

 have learned with certainty of the relation that 

 exists in different countries between the configu- 

 ration of the ground and the course of the wa- 

 ters, I ought to avoid whatever is merely hypo- 

 thetical. I shall first observe, that the Cassi- 

 quiare, in it's present state, is not, as the poets 

 of Latium express it, placidus et mitissimus 

 amnis : it little resembles that err am languido 

 flumine Cocytus, for in the greater part of it's 

 course it has the excessive velocity of six or 

 eight feet in a second. It is not therefore to be 

 feared, that it will entirely fill up a bed of seve- 

 ral hundred toises in breadth. The existence of 

 this branch of the Upper Oroonoko is too great 

 a phenomenon for the little changes, that we 

 observe on the surface of the Globe, to make it 

 disappear, or even to modify it considerably. 

 We will not deny, that, respecting rivers less 

 broad, and of little velocity, there exists in all 

 running waters a general tendency to diminish 

 their interbranchings, and separate their basins. 

 The most majestic rivers, when we examine the 

 abrupt sides of the distant hills or shores, appear 

 only like small streamlets of water wandering 

 in vaHies, which they could not hollow out 

 themselves ; and the present state of their bed is 



