OrnRENT OP THE ORINOCO. 
15 
•^se in tijg Lower Orinoco. M. Depons, who has in general 
collected very acciu-ate notions during his stay at Caracas, 
hxes it at thirteen fathoms. The heights naturally vary 
acTOrding to the breadth of the hod and the number of 
‘'^^atary streams which the principal trunk receives. 
The people believe that every five years the Orinoco rises 
♦hree feet higher than common ; but the idea of this cycle 
fioes not rest on any precise measures. We know by the 
testimony of antiquity, that the oscillations of the Nile have 
been sensibly the same with respect to their height and 
duration for' thousands of years; which is a proof, well 
worthy of attention, that the mean state of the humidity 
and the temperature does not vary in that vast basin. Will 
“bis constancy in physical phenomena, this e(piilibrium ot 
i^be elements, be preserved in the New World also after 
ages of cultivation ? I think we may reply in the 
aihrmative ; for the united efforts of man cannot fail to have 
an influence on the general causes on which the climate of 
'miiana depends. 
According to the barometric height of San Fernando de 
Apnre, I to the Boca de Navios the slope 
® the Apure and the Lower Orinoco to be three inches and 
a quarter to a nautical mile of nine hundred and fifty toises.* 
^ e may be surprised at the strength of the current in a 
®mpe so little perceptible ; but I shall remind the reader on 
's occasion, that, according to measurements made ’ jy order 
? 1 tbe Ganges was found, in a course of sixty 
? (iioniprising the windings,) to have also onlj’-four inches 
a t to a mile ; that the mean swiftness of this river is, in 
p seasons of drought, three miles an hour, and in those of 
1 ains SIX or eight miles. The strength ot the current, there- 
cre, in the Ganges as in the Orinoco, depends less on the 
ope of the bed, than on the accumulation of the higher 
be the abundance of the rains, and the num- 
p of tributary streams. European colonists have already 
Thp *^*’*°*^®> P\ 38. Gumi/ia, vol. i, p. 56 — 59. vol. iii, p. 301. 
of the rise of the Mis-sissippi is, at Natchez, fifty-five 
zonel^' lai^est peiliaps of the vfhole temperate 
iuB-n r* maximum from February to May ; at its minimum in 
+ Tli* 4 “®P*fmber. — B,Uicntt, Journal of an Expedition to the Ohio, 
e Apure itself has a slope of thirteen inches to the mile. 
