SOURCE OF THE AMAZON.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 23, 27 January 1912, Page 12

SOURCE OF THE AMAZON.

— ■ i. I. At this late day the ultimate source of the Amazon is revealed to Us. It ie strange that the solution hae been so lohg delayed. The facts about the heads of nearly all the great rivers are well known. We know the glaciers that give birth to the Rhine, and the literature on the sources of the Nile and the Congo, is very large. Perhaps the 1 greatest of all rivers was neglected in this respect b«cause South American exploration Was rather out of fashion while explorers were gridironing Africa with 1400 pioneer routes.- , . But Dr. Wilhelm Sievers has solved the problem, and now W& have the story of his seurch and a map of his discover ice. Ho "is one of the authorities on South American geography, and his latest explorations were among the Peruvian Andes in the neighbourhood of the head 1j waters of the Maranon, as ( the upper Amazon is called. Sievets has discovered the facia about the water parting between the streams th&t break through the western mountains to the Pacific and those that swell the floods' of the three upper •ources of the_ Maranoii. He found that the great Italian explorer Raimondi was mistaken when he declared thftt the Nupe ■ was the most important of .these Bourcee; .for' the L'auricocha carries much more water, extends further south, and is the greatest of the Amazoh. Sources. ' Df. Sievers traced this riter to its head in a snow mountain called San Lorenzo in the Cordillera de Huayhuosh. Here the waters from some glacier front are feathered into a stream that forms the ittle ' Lake Cabajlo • Qopa, 15,680 f ft&li .above the sea." Out of i this lake flows the pure blue water that forms the most important source of the M&ranon. It is further from the sea than any other water that join* the Amazon, 'and according to common usage ankbng geographers the little stream among' the snows of San Lorenzo is entitled to the distinction of being the ultimate 6ource of the Amazon. . . . • ' i The Peruvian maps are wrong in calling Lake Lauricocha the head source oi the mighty river. It, is about 100 mile* to the north-east of the real source. Ib •is not -probable that ever again will-there 1 be any controversy ac to the fountain head of the greatest river in the world,' , a river that ha* nearly eighteen thousand miles. of navigable highways a;id v development of deep channels at least ;twice as extensive a* that of the Mississippi basin.— New York Suh. '