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entertained, that our rivers and lakes have 

 undergone immense diminutions ; but many 

 geological facts remind us also, that these great 

 changes in the distribution of the waters have 

 preceded all historical times ; and that for many 

 thousand years most lakes have attained a per- 

 manent equilibrium between the produce of 

 the water flowing in, and that of evaporation 

 and nitration. Whenever we find this equili- 

 brium broken, it will be more prudent to ex- 

 amine, whether the rupture be not owing to 

 causes merely local, and of a very recent date, 

 than to admit an uninterrupted diminution of 

 the water. This reasoning is conformable to 

 the more circumspect method of modern science. 

 At a time when the physical history of the 

 world, traced by the genius of some eloquent 

 writers, borrowed all it's charms from the fic- 

 tions of imagination, a new proof would have 

 been found, in the phenomenon of which we 

 are treating, of the contrast that these writers 

 were fond of establishing between the two 

 continents. To demonstrate, that America rose 

 later than Asia and Europe from the bosom of 

 the waters, they would have cited the lake of 

 Tacarigua as one of those interior basins, which 

 have not had time to become dry by the effects 

 of a slow and gradual evaporation. I have no 

 doubt, that, in very remote times, the whole 

 valley, from the foot of the mountains of 



