EESEMBLAirCE OF THE ASOIEITT LEGEKDS. 
13 
E horn. This animal is at once the Antelope-fish of the 
Hindoos, the Capricorn of our zodiac, the Deucalion of the 
Weeks, and the Noah (Coxcox) of the Azteks.* Thus we 
find the general results of comparative hydrography in the 
astrological monuments, the divisions of time, and the reli- 
gious traditions of nations the most remote from each other 
HI their situation and in their degree of intellectual 
advancement. 
As the equatorial rains take place in the flat country 
}^hen the sun passes through the zenith of the place, that 
IS, when its declination becomes homonymous with the zone 
comprised between the equator and one of the tropics, tie 
ivaters of the Amazon siniv, while those of the Orinoco rise 
P^^°^tibly. In a very judicious discussion on the origin of 
t*® Hio Congo,t the attention of philosophers has been 
a ready called to the modifications which the periods of the 
must undergo in the course of a river, the sources 
^Hd the mouth of which are not on the same side of the 
equinoctial line.J The hydraulic systems of the Orinoco 
End the Amazon furnish a combination of circumstances still 
more extraordinary. They are united by the Kio Negro and 
e Cassiquiare, a branch of the Orinoco ; it is a navigable 
rn^f also the denomination of Teo-Cipaclli, in which the 
ffod or divine is added to the name of the sign Cipactli. It is the 
laef* Fourth Age ; who, at the fourth destruction of tlie world (the 
renovation of nature), saved himself with his wife, and reached the 
ountam of Colhuacan. According to the commentator Germaniqus, 
^eucahon was placed in Aquarius ; but the three signs of tlie Fishes, 
linWi^'l*’ Capricorn (the Antelope-fish), were heretofore intimately 
wate The animal, which, after having long inhabited the 
o I*’ ‘be form of an antelope, and climbs the mountains, reminds 
thp^ imagination seizes the most remote similitudes, of 
traditions of Menou, of Noah, and of those Deucalions cele- 
aoH M Ihe Scythians and the Thessalians. As the Tartarian 
the zodiacs contain the signs of the Monkey and tl)e Tiger, 
hit ‘’"'’B'nated in the torrid zone. With the Muyscas, inha- 
Grenada, the first sign, as in eastern Asia, was that of 
r*. hgured by a Frog. It is also remarkable, that the astrological 
, ’T of the Muyscas came to the table-land of Bogotfi from the 
ern side, from the plains of San Juan, which extend toward the 
Guaviare and the Orinoco, 
t Voyage to the Zaire, p. xvii. 
K ‘bo rivers of America this is the case with the Rio Negro 
Kio Branco, and the Juimra. 
