"Tell me what you know of the
Cartius," he said.
"It is an important subequatorial
waterway," I said. "It flows west
by northwest, entering the rain forests
and emptying into Lake Ushindi, which lake
is drained by the Kamba and the Nyoka rivers.
The Kamba flows directly into Thassa.
The Nyoka flows into Schendi
harbor, which is the harbor
of the port of Schendi, and moves
thence to Thassa." Schendi was an equatorial free port,
well known on Gor. It is also the home
port of the League of Black Slavers.
"It was, at one time, conjectured,"
said Samos, "that the Cartius proper was a tributary of the
Vosk." "I had been taught that," I said.
"We now know that the Thassa
Cartius and the subequatorial Cartius
are not the same river." "It had been thought, and shown
on many maps," I said, "that the
subequatorial Cartius not only flowed into Lake Ushindi,
but emerged northward, traversing
the sloping western flatlands to
join the Vosk at Turmus." Turmus was
the last major river port on the Vosk
before the almost impassable marshes of the delta.
"Calculations performed by the black geographer,
Ramani, of the island of Anango, suggested
that given the elevations involved the
two rivers could not be the same. His pupil,
Shaba, was the first civilized
man to circumnavigate Lake Ushindi.
He discovered that the Cartius,
as was known, enters Lake Ushindi,
but that only two rivers flow out of
Ushindi, the Kamba and Nyoka.
The actual source of the tributary
to the Vosk, now called the Thassa Cartius,
as you know, was found five years later by the.
explorer, Ramus of Tabor, who,
with a small expedition, over a period
of nine months, fought and bartered
his way through the river tribes,
beyond the six cataracts, to the Ven
highlands. The Thassa Cartius, with its
own tributaries, drains the highlands and
the descending plains."