418 
PHYSICAL CxEO GRAPH Y OF 
is a virgin forest. The Indians however in the upper 
part give account of campos, or plains, and cattle, fur- 
ther up ; and they possess Spanish knives, and other 
articles, showing that they have communications with the 
civilized inhabitants of the country to the east of Bogota. 
I am therefore strongly inclined to believe that the 
rivers Ariari and others, rising about a hundred miles 
south of Bogota, are not, as shown in all our maps, the 
sources of the Guaviare, but of the Uaupes, and that 
the basin of the Amazon must therefore be here ex- 
tended to within sixty miles of the city of Bogota. , This 
opinion is strengthened by information obtained from 
the Indians of Javita, who annually ascend the Guaviare 
to fish' in the dry season, and who state that the river is 
very small, and in its upper part, where some hills occur, 
and the forest ends, it is not more than a hundred 
yards wide ; whereas the Uaupes, at the furthest point 
the traders have reached, is still a large river, from a 
quarter of a mile to a mile in width. 
The Amazon and all its branches are subject, like 
most tropical rivers, to an annual rise and fall of very 
great regularity. 
In the main stream, and in all the branches which 
flow from the Andes, the waters begin to rise in Deceim 
ber or January, when the rains generally commence, 
and continue rising till June, when the fine weather has 
just set in. The time when the waters begin to fall is 
about the 21 st of June, — seldom deviating more than a 
few days from this date. In branches which have their 
sources in a different direction, such as the Rio Negro, 
the time of rising does not coincide. On that river the 
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