"The reed presents itself as an object of peculiar veneration, when we reflect that it formed the earliest instrument by which human ideas, and all the charms of literature and science were communicated, and which has handed down to us the light of religion and the glow of genius from the remotest ages."--_Drummond's First Steps to Botany._ [B] "The Guaraons, a free and independent people, dispersed in the Delta of the Oronooko, owe their independence to the nature of their country; for it is well known that, in order to raise their abodes above the surface of the waters, at the period of the great inundations, they support them on the cut trunks of the mangrove tree, and of the _Mauritia flexuosa_."--_Humboldt, Personal Narrative_, vol. iii. p. 277. The same people make bread of the medullary flour of this palm, which it yields in great abundance, if cut down just before going to flower.--_Ibid._, vol. iii. p. 278. To these circumstances Thomson alludes:-- "Wide o'er his isles the branching Oronooque Rolls a brown deluge, and the native driven To dwell aloft on life-sufficing trees, At once his home, his robe, his food, his arms." [C] The connection of navigation with the progress of civilization is most intimate, as may be understood from the following passage:-- "Among the circumstances which have contributed to retard the progress of civilization in Africa, one of the most important and influential is the compact and undivided form of the African continent, and the natural barriers which render access to the greater regions of the interior so remarkably difficult. It has been observed by Professor Ritter, that the civilization of countries is greatly influenced by their geographical forms, and by the relation which their interior spaces bear to the extent of coast. While all Asia is five times as large as Europe, and Africa more than three times as large, the littoral margins of these larger continents bear no similar proportion to their respective areas. Asia has seven thousand seven hundred geographical miles of coast; Europe four thousand three hundred, and Africa only three thousand five hundred. To every thirty-seven square miles of continent in Europe, there is one mile of coast; in Africa, only one mile of coast to one hundred and fifty square miles of continent. Therefore the relative extension of coast is four times as great in Europe as in Africa. Asia is in the middle between these two extremes. To every one hundred and five square miles, it has one mile of coast. The calculation of geographical spaces occupied by different parts of the two last-mentioned continents, is still more striking. The ramifications of Asia, excluded from the continental trapezium, make about one hundred and fifty-five thousand square miles of that whole quarter, or about one-fifth part. The ramifications of the continental triangle of Europe form one-third part of the whole, or even more.