741 



As long as, confounding the Rio Paragua of 

 Esmeralda with the Rio Guaviare, the sources 

 of the Oroonoko were sought toward the south- 

 west, on the eastern back of the Andes, the ris- 

 ings of this river were attributed to a periodical 

 melting of the snows. This reasoning was as 

 far from the truth as that, in which the Nile 

 was formerly supposed to be swelled by the 

 waters of the snows of Abyssinia. The Cordil- 

 leras of New Grenada, near which the western 

 tributary streams of the Oroonoko*, the Gua- 

 viare, the Meta, and the Apure, take their rise, 

 enter no more into the limit of perpetual snows, 

 with the sole exception of the Paramos of Chita 

 and Mucuchies, than the Alps of Abyssinia. 

 Snowy mountains are much more rare in the 

 torrid zone -f-, than is generally admitted ; and 

 the melting of the snows, which is not copious 

 there at any season, does not at all increase 

 at the time of the inundations of the Oroonoko. 

 The sources of this river are found (east of the 

 Esmeralda) in the mountains of Parima, the 

 highest summits of which do not exceed 1,200 



less or greater activity of trade, and, I may add, from what 

 we know of the nations of Egypt, Meroe, and India, on the 

 progress of civilization along the valleys of the rivers. 

 * See above, p. 201, 215, and 319. 

 f See my Nouvelles Reckerches sur les Montagues de V Hima- 

 laya et la Hauteur des Neiges perpetuelles sous I'Equateur, in the 

 Annates de Chimie et de Physique, vol. xiv, p. 41. 



