{"collection":"aor","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/aor/dv/0970.htm","path":"aor/dv/0970.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/aor/dv/0970.htm","text":"Sacred Texts\u00a0\nAge of Reason\u00a0\nIndex\u00a0\nXVI. Physical Geography Index\n\u00a0\nPrevious\u00a0\nNext\u00a0\nBuy this Book at Amazon.com\nThe Da Vinci Notebooks\n970.\np. 200\nIV.\nOF RIVERS.\nOF THE ORIGIN OF RIVERS.\n On the way in which the sources of rivers are fed.The body of the earth, like the bodies of animals, is intersected\nwith ramifications of waters which are all in connection and are\nconstituted to give nutriment and life to the earth and to its\ncreatures. These come from the depth of the sea and, after many\nrevolutions, have to return to it by the rivers created by the\nbursting of these springs; and if you chose to say that the rains of\nthe winter or the melting of the snows in summer were the cause of\nthe birth of rivers, I could mention the rivers which originate in\nthe torrid countries of Africa, where it never rains--and still less\nsnows--because the intense heat always melts into air all the clouds\nwhich are borne thither by the winds. And if you chose to say that\nsuch rivers, as increase in July and August, come from the snows\nwhich melt in May and June from the sun's approach to the snows on\nthe mountains of Scythia \u00a0512\n, and that such meltings come down into certain valleys and\nform lakes, into which they enter by springs and subterranean\np. 201\ncaves to issue forth again at the sources of the Nile, this is false;\nbecause Scythia is lower than the sources of the Nile, and, besides,\nScythia is only 400 miles from the Black sea and the sources of the\nNile are 3000 miles distant from the sea of Egypt into which its\nwaters flow.\nFootnotes\n200:512 9: Scythia means here, as in\nAncient Geography, the whole of the Northern part of Asia as far as\nIndia.\nNext: 971.","title":"Vol. II: XVI. Physical Geography: 970.","type":"page"}