Nyuki - an inland village noted for its honey
"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."
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