Aspects of nature, in different lands and different climates (Vol. 1 of 2) / with scientific elucidations

by Alexander von Humboldt

ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS.

[53] p. 209.—“Across the peaceful ocean arm, which fills the wide valley between the American shore and Western Africa.”

The Atlantic Ocean, from the 23d degree of South to the 70th degree of North latitude, has the form of an excavated longitudinal valley, in which the salient and re-entering angles are opposite to each other. I first developed this idea in my “Essai d’un Tableau géologique de l’Amérique méridionale,” printed in the Journal de Physique, T. liii. p. 61. (Geognostische Skizze von Südamerika, in Gilbert’s Annalen der Physik, Bd. xvi. 1804, S. 394–449.) From the Canaries, and especially from the 21st degree of North latitude and the 23d degree of West longitude, to the North-East coast of South America, the surface of the sea is usually so calm, and the waves so gentle, that an open boat might navigate in safety.

[54] p. 209.—“A wonderful outbreak of fresh springs in the middle of the ocean.”

On the southern coast of the island of Cuba, south-west of the Port of Batabano in the gulf of Xagua, a few miles from the coast, springs of fresh water gush from the bed of the ocean probably under the influence of hydrostatic pressure, and rise through the midst of the salt water. They issue forth with such force that boats are cautious in approaching this locality, which has an ill repute on account of the high cross sea thus caused. Trading vessels sailing along the coast and not disposed to land, sometimes visit these springs to take in a supply of fresh water, which is thus obtained in the open sea. The greater the depth from which the water is taken, the fresher it is found to be. The “river cow,” Trichecus manati, which does not remain habitually in salt water, is often killed here. This remarkable phenomenon of fresh springs issuing from the sea has been most carefully examined by a friend of mine, Don Francisco Lemaur, who made a trigonometrical survey of the Bay of Xagua. I have been farther to the South in the group of islands called the Jardines del Rey, (the King’s Gardens), making astronomical observations for latitude and longitude; but I have never been at Xagua itself.

[55] p. 210.—“The ancient site of a rocky bulwark.”

Columbus, whose unwearied spirit of observation exerted itself in every direction, propounds in his letters to the Spanish monarchs a geognostical hypothesis respecting the forms of the larger Antilles. Having his mind deeply impressed with the strength of the East and West Equinoctial current, he ascribes to it the breaking up of the group of the smaller West Indian islands, and the singularly lengthened configuration of the southern coasts of Porto Rico, Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica, which all follow almost exactly the direction of parallels of latitude. On his third voyage (from the end of May 1498 to the end of November 1500), in which, from the Boca del Drago to the Island of Margarita, and afterwards from that island to Haiti, he felt the whole force of the Equinoctial current, “that movement of the waters which is in accordance or conformity with the movement of the heavens—movimiento de los cielos,” he says expressly that the Island of Trinidad had been torn from the mainland by the violence of the current. He alludes to a chart which he sends to the monarchs,—a “pintura de la tierra” by himself, which is often referred to in the celebrated lawsuit against Don Diego Colon respecting the rights of the Admiral. “Es la carta de marear y figura que hizo el Almirante señalando los rumbos y vientos por los quales vino á Paria, que dicen parte del Asia”, (Navarrete Viages y Descubrimientos que hiciéron por mar los Españoles, T. i. p. 253 and 260; T. iii. p. 539 and 587.)

[56] p. 210.—“Over the snow-covered Paropanisus.”

Diodorus’s descriptions of the Paropanisus (Diodor. Sicul. lib. xvii. p. 553, Rhodom.) might almost pass for a description of the Andes of Peru. The Army passed through inhabited places where snow fell daily!

[57] p. 211.—“Herrara in the Decades.”

Historia general de las Indias occidentales, Dec. i. lib iii. cap. 12 (ed. 1601, p. 106); Juan Bautista Muñoz, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, lib. vi. c. 31, p. 301; Humboldt, Examen Crit. T. iii p. 111.

[58] p. 213.—“The Sources of the Orinoco have never been visited by any European.”

Thus I wrote respecting these sources in the year 1807, in the first edition of the “Ansichten der Natur,” and I have to repeat the same statement after an interval of 41 years. The travels of the brothers Robert and Richard Schomburgk, so important for all departments of natural knowledge and geography, have afforded us thorough investigations of other and more interesting facts; but the problem of the situation of the sources of the Orinoco has been only approximately solved by Sir Robert Schomburgk. It was from the West that M. Bonpland and myself advanced as far as Esmeralda, or the confluence of the Orinoco and the Guapo; and I was able to describe with certainty, by the aid of well-assured information, the upper course of the Orinoco to above the mouth of the Gehette, and to the small Waterfall (Raudal) de los Guaharibos. It was from the East that Robert Schomburgk, advancing from the mountains of the Majonkong Indians, (the altitude of the inhabited portions of which he estimated by the boiling point of water at 3300 F., or 3517 E. feet), came to the Orinoco by the Padamo River, which the Majonkongs and Guinaus (Guaynas?) call Paramu (Reisen in Guiana, 1841, S. 448). In my Atlas I had estimated the position of the confluence of the Padamo with the Orinoco at N. lat. 3° 12′, and W. long. 65° 46′: Robert Schomburgk found it by direct observation, lat. 2° 53′, long. 65° 48′. The leading object of this traveller’s arduous journey was not the pursuit of natural history, but the solution of the prize question proposed by the Royal Geographical Society of London in November 1834,—viz. the connection of the coast of British Guiana with the easternmost point which I had reached on the Upper Orinoco. After many difficulties and much suffering, the desired object was completely attained. Robert Schomburgk arrived with his instruments on the 22d of February, 1839, at Esmeralda. His determinations of the latitude and longitude of the place agreed more closely with mine than I had expected would be the case (S. xviii. and 471). Here let us allow the observer to speak for himself:—“I want words to describe the feelings which overpowered me as I sprang to shore. My aim was attained; my observations, began on the coast of Guiana, were brought into connection with those of Humboldt at Esmeralda: I frankly own, that in the course of this enterprise, at a time when almost all my physical powers had well nigh deserted me, and when I was surrounded by dangers and difficulties of no common nature, it was only by the recognition which I hoped for from him, that I had been encouraged to press onward with unalterable determination towards the goal which I had now reached. The emaciated figures of my Indians and faithful guides told more plainly than any words could do, what difficulties we had had to surmount, and had surmounted.” After expressions so kind towards myself, I must be permitted to subjoin the following passage, extracted from my Preface to the German Edition of Robert Schomburgk’s Account of his Travels, published in 1841.

“Immediately after my return from Mexico, I notified the direction and the routes which should be followed to explore the unknown portion of the South American Continent between the sources of the Orinoco, the mountain chain of Pacaraima, and the sea-shore near Essequibo. These wishes, which I expressed so strongly in my Rélation Historique, have at last, after the lapse of almost half a century, been for the greater part fulfilled. Besides the joy of having lived to see so important an extension of our geographical knowledge, I have had that of seeing it attained by means of a courageous and well-conducted enterprise, requiring the most devoted perseverance, executed by a young man with whom I feel united by the double bond of similarity of pursuits and efforts, and of our common country. Motives such as these have alone been sufficient to overcome the distaste which I entertain, perhaps without reason, to introductory prefaces by another hand than that of the author of the work. But in this case I could not consent to forego the opportunity of expressing, thus publicly, my heartfelt esteem for the accomplished traveller who, in pursuit of an object deriving all its interest from the mind,—namely, in the self-imposed task of penetrating from East to West, from the Valley of the Essequibo to Esmeralda,—succeeded, after five years of efforts and of sufferings (which I can in part appreciate from my own experience), in reaching the goal which he had proposed to himself. Courage for the momentary execution of a hazardous action is more easily met with, and implies less of inward strength, than does the resolution to endure patiently long-continued physical sufferings, incurred in the pursuit of some deeply-felt mental interest, and still to determine to go forward, undismayed by the certainty of having to retrace the same painful route, and to support the same privations in returning with enfeebled powers. Serenity of mind, almost the first requisite for an undertaking in inhospitable regions, passionate love for some class of scientific labour, (be it in natural history, astronomy, hypsometrics, magnetism, or aught else,) and a pure feeling for the enjoyment which nature in her freedom is ready to impart, are elements which, when they meet together in an individual, ensure the attainment of valuable results from a great and important journey.”

In discussing the question respecting the sources of the Orinoco, I will begin with the conjectures which I had myself formed on the subject. The dangerous route travelled in 1739 by the surgeon Nicolas Hortsmann, of Hildesheim; in 1775 by the Spaniard Don Antonio Santos, and his friend Nicolas Rodriguez; in 1793 by the Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st Regiment of the Line of Para, Don Francisco Jose Rodriguez Barata; and (according to manuscript papers, for which I am indebted to the former Portuguese Ambassador in Paris, Chevalier de Brito) by several English and Dutch settlers, who in 1811 went from Surinam to Para by the Portage of the Rupunuri and by the Rio Branco;—divides the terra incognita of the Parime into two unequal portions, and serves to limit the situation of a very important point in the geography of those regions—viz. the sources of the Orinoco, which it is no longer possible to remove to an uncertain distance to the East, without interfering thereby with what we know of the course of the Rio Branco, which flows from north to south through the basin of the Upper Orinoco; while that river itself, in this part of its course, pursues for the most part an East and West direction. From political reasons, the Brazilians, since the beginning of the present century, have testified a lively interest in the extensive plains east of the Rio Branco. See the memoir which I drew up at the request of the Portuguese court in 1817, “sur la fixation des limites des Guyanes Française et Portuguaise” (Schoell, Archives historiques et politiques, ou Recueil de Pièces officielles, Memoires, &c. T. i. 1818, p. 48–58). Viewing the position of Santa Rosa on the Uraricapara, the course of which appears to have been determined with tolerable accuracy by Portuguese engineers, the sources of the Orinoco cannot be looked for east of the meridian of 65½° from Paris, (63°.8′ W. long. from Greenwich). This being the eastern limit beyond which they cannot be placed, and considering the state of the river at the Raudal de los Guaharibos (above Caño Chiguire, in the country of the surprisingly fair-skinned Guaycas Indians, and 52′ East of the great Cerro Duida), it appears to me probable that the upper part of the Orinoco does not really extend, at the utmost, beyond the meridian of 66½° from Paris (64°.08′ W. from Greenwich.) This point is according to my combinations 4°.12′ West of the little lake of Amucu, which was reached by Sir Robert Schomburgk.

I next subjoin the conjectures of that gentleman, having given the earlier ones formed by myself. According to his view, the course of the upper Orinoco to the east of Esmeralda is dedicated from South-east to North-west; my estimations of latitude for the mouths of the Padamo and the Gehette appearing to be respectively 19 and 36′ too small. Robert Schomburgk supposes the sources of the Orinoco to be in lat. 2°.30′ (S. 460); and the fine “Map of Guayana, to illustrate the route of R. H. Schomburgk,” which accompanies the splendid English work entitled “Views in the Interior of Guiana,” places the sources of the Orinoco in 67°.18′ (W. from Paris), i. e. 1°.6′ west of Esmeralda, and only 48′ of longitude nearer to the Atlantic than I had thought admissible. From astronomical combinations Schomburgk has placed the mountain of Maravaca, which is upwards of nine thousand feet high, in lat. 3°.41′ and long. 65°.38′. Near the mouth of the Padamo or Paramú the Orinoco was scarcely three hundred yards wide; and more to the west, where it spreads to a breadth of from four to six hundred yards, it was so shallow and so full of sand-banks that the Expedition were obliged to dig channels, the river bed being only fifteen inches deep. Fresh water Dolphins were still to be seen everywhere in large numbers; a phenomenon which the zoologists of the 18th century would not have been prepared to expect in the Orinoco and the Ganges.

[59] p. 213.—“The most vigorous of the productions of the tropical world.”

The Bertholletia excelsa (Juvia), of the family of Myrtaceæ (and placed in Richard Schomburgk’s proposed division of Lecythideæ), was first described by Bonpland and myself in the “Plantes équinoxiales,” T. i. 1808, p. 122, tab. 36. This gigantic and magnificent tree offers, in the perfect formation of its cocoa-like, round, thick, woody fruit enclosing the three-cornered and also woody seed-vessels, the most remarkable example of high organic development. The Bertholletia grows in the forests of the Upper Orinoco between the Padamo and the Ocamu, near the mountain of Mapaya, and also between the rivers Amaguaca and Gehette. (Rélation historique, T. ii. p. 474, 496, 558–562.)

[60] p. 213.—“Grass stalks having joints above eighteen feet long from knot to knot.”

Robert Schomburgk, when visiting the small mountainous country of the Majonkongs, on his way to Esmeralda, was so fortunate as to determine the species of Arundinaria which furnishes the material for the blowpipes or tubes through which the Indians discharge their arrows. He says of this plant: “It grows in large tufts like the Bambusa; the first joint rises without a knot to a height of from 16 to 17 feet before it begins to put forth leaves. The entire height of the Arundinaria, as it grows at the foot of the great mountain of Maravaca, is from 30 to 40 feet, with a thickness of scarcely half an inch diameter. The top is always inclined. This kind of grass is peculiar to the sandstone mountains between the Ventuari, the Paramu (Padamo), and the Mavaca. The Indian name is Curata, and hence, from the excellence of these far-famed blow tubes of great length, the Majonkongs and Guinaus of these districts have been given the names of the Curata nation.” (Reisen in Guiana und am Orinoco, S. 451.)

[61] p. 214.—“Fabulous lake—origin of the Orinoco.”

The lakes of these regions (some of which have had their real size much exaggerated by theoretical geographers, while the existence of others is purely imaginary), may be divided into two groups. The first of these groups comprises the lakes, whether real or imaginary, placed between Esmeralda (the easternmost mission on the upper Orinoco), and the Rio Branco; and the second those assumed to exist in the district between the Rio Branco and French, Dutch, and British Guiana. This general view, of which travellers should never lose sight, shews that the question of whether there is yet a Lake Parime east of the Rio Branco, other than the Lake Amucu, seen by Hortsmann, Santos, Colonel Barata, and Schomburgk, has nothing whatever to do with the problem of the sources of the Orinoco. As the name of my friend the former Director of the Hydrographic Office at Madrid, Don Felipe Bauza, is deservedly of great weight in geography, the impartiality which ought to preside over every scientific investigation makes me feel it a duty to recall that this learned man was inclined to the view, that there must be lakes west of the Rio Branco and not far from the sources of the Orinoco. He wrote to me from London, a short time before his death: “I wish you were here, that I might converse with you on the subject of the geography of the upper Orinoco, which has occupied you so much. I have been so fortunate as to rescue from entire destruction the papers of the General of Marine, Don José Solano, father of the Solano who perished in so melancholy a manner at Cadiz. These documents relate to the boundary division between the Spaniards and the Portuguese, with which the elder Solano had been charged, in conjunction with Chef d’Escadron Yturriaga and Don Vicente Doz, since 1754. In all these plans and sketches I see a Laguna Parime, represented sometimes as the source of the Orinoco, and sometimes quite detached from that river. Are we, then, to admit the existence of another lake north-east of Esmeralda?”

Löffling, the celebrated pupil of Linnæus, came to Cumana as the botanist of the boundary expedition above alluded to. After traversing the missions on the Piritu and the Caroni he died on the 22d of February, 1756, at the mission of Santa Eulalia de Murucuri, a little to the south of the confluence of the Orinoco and the Caroni. The documents of which Bauza speaks are the same as those on which the great map of De la Cruz Olmedilla is based. They constitute the type of all the maps which appeared in England, France, and Germany up to the close of the last century; and they also served for the two maps drawn in 1756 by Peter Caulin, the historian of Solano’s expedition, and by an unskilful compiler, M. de Surville, Keeper of the Archives of the Secretary of State’s office at Madrid. The discordance between these maps shews the little dependence which can be placed on the surveys of the expedition; besides which, Caulin’s acute remarks lead us to perceive the circumstances which gave occasion to the fiction of the Lake Parime; and Surville’s map, which accompanies his work, not only restores this lake under the name of the White Sea and of the Mar Dorado, but also adds another lake, from which, partly through lateral outlets, the Orinoco, the Siapa, and the Ocamo issue. I was able to satisfy myself on the spot of the fact, well known in the missions, that Don José Solano went indeed beyond the cataracts of Atures and Maypures, but not beyond the confluence of the Guaviare and the Orinoco, in lat. 4°.3′ and long. 68°.09′; that the instruments of the Boundary Expedition were not carried either to the Isthmus of the Pimichin and the Rio Negro, or to the Cassiquiare; and that even on the Upper Orinoco they were not taken above the mouth of the Atabapo. This extensive country, in which previous to my journey no exact observations had been attempted, had been traversed since the time of Solano only by a few soldiers sent in search of discoveries; and Don Apolinario de la Fuente (whose journals I obtained from the archives of the province of Quiros), had collected, without critical discrimination, from the lying tales told by Indians, whatever could flatter the credulity of the governor Centurion. No member of the Expedition had seen any lake, and Don Apolinario had not advanced farther than the Cerro Yumariquin and the Gehette.

Having now established throughout the extensive district, to which it is desired to direct the inquiring zeal of travellers, a dividing line bounding the basin of the Rio Branco, it still remains to remark, that for a century past no advance has taken place in our geographical knowledge of the country west of this valley between 61½° and 65½° W. longitude. The attempts repeatedly made by the Government of Spanish Guiana, since the expeditions of Iturria and Solano, to reach and to pass the Pacaraima mountains, have only produced very inconsiderable results. When the Spaniards, in travelling to the missions of the Catalonian Capuchin monks of Barceloneta at the confluence of the Caroni and the Rio Paragua, ascended the latter river, in going southward, to its junction with the Paraguamusi, they founded at the site of the latter junction the mission of Guirion, which at first received the pompous name of Ciudad de Guirion. I place it in about 4½° of North latitude. From thence the governor Centurion, stimulated by the exaggerated accounts given by two Indian chiefs, Paranacare and Arimuicapi, of the powerful nation of the Ipurucotos, to search for el Dorado, prosecuted what were then called spiritual conquests still farther, and founded beyond the Pacaraima mountains the two villages of Santa Rosa and San Bautista de Caudacacla; the former on the higher eastern bank of the Uraricapara, a tributary of the Uraricuera which in the narrative of Rodriguez I find called Rio Curaricara; and the latter six or seven German (24 or 28 English) geographical miles farther to the east south-east. The astronomer of the Portuguese Boundary Commission, Don Antonio Pires de Sylva Pontes Leme, captain of a frigate, and the captain of engineers, Don Ricardo Franco d’Almeida de Serra, who between 1787 and 1804 surveyed with the greatest care the whole course of the Rio Branco and its upper branches, call the westernmost part of the Uraricapara “the Valley of Inundation.” They place the Spanish mission of Santa Rosa in 3°.46′ N. lat., and point out the route which leads from thence northward across the chain of mountains to the Caño Anocapra, an affluent of the Paraguamusi, by means of which one passes from the basin of the Rio Branco to that of the Caroni. Two maps of these Portuguese officers, which contain the whole details of the trigonometrical survey of the windings of the Rio Branco, the Uraricuera, the Tacutu, and the Mahu, have been kindly communicated to Colonel Lapie and myself by the Count of Linhares. These valuable unpublished documents, of which I have made use, are in the hands of the learned geographer who began a considerable time ago to have them engraved at his own expense. The Portuguese sometimes give the name of Rio Parime to the whole of the Rio Branco, and sometimes confine that denomination to one branch or tributary, the Uraricuera, below the Caño Mayari and above the old mission of San Antonio. As the words Paragua and Parime signify water, great water, lake, or sea, it is not surprising to find them so often repeated among nations at a distance from each other, the Omaguas on the Upper Marañon, the Western Guaranis, and the Caribs. In all parts of the world, as I have already remarked, the largest rivers are called by those who dwell on their banks “the River,” without any distinct and peculiar appellation. Paragua, the name of a branch of the Caroni, is also the name given by the natives to the Upper Orinoco. The name Orinucu is Tamanaki; and Diego de Ordaz first heard it pronounced in 1531, when he ascended the river to the mouth of the Meta. Besides the “Valley of Inundation,” above spoken of, we find other large lakes or expanses of water between the Rio Xumuru and the Parime. One of these belongs to the Tacutu river, and the other to the Uraricuera. Even at the foot of the Pacaraima mountains the rivers are subject to great periodical overflows; and the Lake of Amucu, which will be spoken of more in the sequel, imparts a similar character to the country at the commencement of the plains. The Spanish missions of Santa Rosa and San Bautista de Caudacacla or Cayacaya, founded in the years 1770 and 1773 by the Governor Don Manuel Centurion, were destroyed before the close of the century, and since that period no fresh attempt has been made to penetrate from the basin of the Caroni to the southern declivity of the Pacaraima mountains.

The territory east of the valley of the Rio Branco has of late years been the subject of some successful examination. Mr. Hillhouse navigated the Massaruni as far as the bay of Caranang, from whence, he says, a path would have conducted the traveller in two days to the sources of the Massaruni, and in three days to streams flowing into the Rio Branco. In regard to the windings of the great river Massaruni, described by Mr. Hillhouse, that gentleman remarks, in a letter written to me from Demerara (January 1, 1831), that “the Massaruni beginning from its source flows first to the West, then to the North for one degree of latitude, afterwards almost 200 English miles to the East, and finally North and N.N.E. to its junction with the Essequibo.” As Mr. Hillhouse was unable to reach the southern declivity of the Pacarima chain, he was not acquainted with the Amucu Lake: he says himself, in his printed account, that “from the information he had gained from the Accaouais, who constantly traverse all the country between the shore and the Amazons river, he had become satisfied that there is no lake at all in these districts.” This statement occasioned me some surprise, as it was in direct contradiction to the views which I had formed respecting the Lake of Amucu, from which the Caño Pirara flows according to the narratives of Hortsmann, Santos, and Rodriquez, whose accounts inspired me with the more confidence because they agree entirely with the recent Portuguese manuscript maps. Finally, after five years of expectation, Sir Robert Schomburgk’s journey has dispelled all doubts.

“It is difficult to believe,” says Mr. Hillhouse, in his interesting memoir on the Massaruni, “that the report of a great inland water is entirely without foundation. It seems to me possible that the following circumstances may have given occasion to the belief in the existence of the fabulous lake of the Parime. At some distance from the fallen rocks of Teboco the waters of the Massaruni appear to the eye as motionless as the tranquil surface of a lake. If at a more or less remote epoch the horizontal stratum of granite at Teboco had been perfectly compact and unbroken, the waters must have stood at least fifty feet above their present level, and there would thus have been formed an immense lake, ten or twelve English miles broad and 1500 to 2000 English miles long.” (Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 1836, Sept. p. 316.) It is not solely the vast extent of this supposed inundation which prevents me from accepting this explanation. I have seen plains (the Llanos), where during the rainy season the overflowing of the affluents of the Orinoco annually cover with water a space of 400 German geographical square miles (equal to 6400 English geographical square miles). At such times the labyrinth of branches between the Apure, the Arauca, the Capanaparo, and the Sinaruco (see Maps 17 and 18 of my Geographical and Physical Atlas), can no longer be traced, for the separate courses are obliterated, and all appears one vast lake. But the fable of the Dorado of the Parime, and of the White Sea or Lake of the Parime, belongs historically, as I endeavoured to shew in another work thirty years ago, to an entirely different part of Guiana, namely, to the country south of the Pacaraima mountains; and originated in the shining appearance of the micaceous rocks of the Ucucuamo, the name of the Rio Parime (Rio Branco), the overflowings of the tributaries of that river, and especially the existence of the Lake of Amucu, which is in the vicinity of the Rio Rupunuwini or Rupunuri, and is connected through the Pirara with the Rio Parime.

I have seen with pleasure that the travels of Sir Robert Schomburgk have fully confirmed these early views. The part of his map which gives the course of the Essequibo and the Rupunuri is entirely new and of great geographical importance. It places the Pacaraima chain in 3° 52′ to 4° North latitude (I had given it 4° to 4° 10′), and makes it reach the confluence of the Essequibo and the Rupunuri, in 3° 57′ N. lat. and 60° 23′ W. long. from Paris (58° 01′ from Greenwich). I had placed this spot half a degree too far to the north. Sir Robert Schomburgk calls the last named river Rupununi, according to the pronunciation of the Macusis; he gives as synonymes of Rupuniri, Rupunuwini and Opununy, the Carib tribes in these districts having much difficulty in articulating the sound of the letter r. The situation of Lake Amucu and its relations to the Mahu (Maou) and Tacutu (Tacoto) are quite in accordance with my map of Columbia in 1825. We agree equally well respecting the latitude of the lake, which I gave 3° 35′, and which he finds to be 3° 33′; but the Caño Pirara, (Pirarara) which connects the Lake of Amucu with the Rio Branco, flows from it to the north, instead of to the west as I had supposed. The Sibarana of my map, of which Hortsmann places the source near a fine mine of rock-crystal, a little to the north of the Cerro Ucucuamo, is the Siparuni of Schomburgk’s map. His Waa-Ekuru is the Tavaricuru of the Portuguese geographer Pontes Leme; it is the tributary of the Rupunuri, which approaches nearest to the Lake of Amucu.

The following remarks from the narrative of Robert Schomburgk throw some light on the subject before us. “The Lake of Amucu,” says this traveller, “is incontestably the nucleus of the Lake of Parime and the supposed White Sea. When we visited it in December and January its length scarcely amounted to a mile, and its surface was half covered with reeds.” (This remark is found as early as in D’Anville’s map, in 1748.) “The Pirara issues from the lake west north-west of the Indian village of Pirara, and falls into the Maou or Mahu. The last named river, from such information as I was able to gather, rises on the north side of the Pacaraima mountains, the easternmost part of which only attains a height of 1500 French (in round numbers 1600 English) feet. The sources of the Mahu are on a plateau, from whence it descends in a fine waterfall called Corona. We were about to visit this fall when on the third day of our excursion to the mountains the sickness of one of my companions obliged us to return to the station near Lake Amucu. The Mahu has “black” or coffee-brown water, and its current is more rapid than that of the Rupunuri. In the mountains through which it makes its way it is about 60 yards broad, and its environs are remarkably picturesque. This valley, as well as the banks of the Buroburo which flows into the Siparuni, are inhabited by the Macusis. In April the whole of the savannahs are overflowed, and present the peculiar phenomenon of the waters belonging to different river basins being intermixed and united. The enormous extent of this temporary inundation may not improbably have given occasion to the story of the Lake of Parime. During the rainy season there is formed in the interior of the country a water communication between the Essequibo, the Rio Branco, and Gran Para. Some groups of trees, which rise like oases on the sand hills of the savannahs, assume at the time of the inundation the character of islands scattered over the extensive lake; they are, no doubt, the Ipomucena Islands of Don Antonio Santos.”

In D’Anville’s manuscripts, which his heirs have kindly permitted me to examine, I find that the surgeon Hortsmann, of Hildesheim, who described these countries with great care, saw a second Alpine lake, which he places two days’ journey above the confluence of the Mahu with the Rio Parime (Tacutu?). It is a lake of black water on the top of a mountain. He distinguishes it clearly from the Lake of Amucu, which he describes as “covered with reeds.” The narratives of Hortsmann and Santos are as far as the Portuguese manuscript maps of the Bureau de la Marine at Rio Janeiro from indicating or admitting a constant connection between the Rupunuri and the Lake of Amucu. In D’Anville’s maps the rivers are better drawn in the first edition of his South America, published in 1748, than in the more widely circulated edition of 1760. Schomburgk’s travels have completely established this general independence of the basins of the Rupunuri and the Essequibo; but he remarks that during the rainy season the Rio Waa-Ekuru, a tributary of the Rupunuri, is in connection with the Caño Pirara. Such is the state of these river basins, which are, as it were, still imperfectly developed, and are almost entirely without separating ridges.

The Rupunuri and the village of Anai (lat. 3° 56′, long. 58° 34′), are at present recognised as the political boundary between the British and the Brazilian territories in these uncultivated regions. Sir Robert Schomburgk makes his chronologically determined longitude of the Lake of Amucu depend on the mean of several lunar distances (East and West) measured by him during his stay at Anai, where he was detained some time by severe illness. His longitudes for these points of the Parime are in general a degree more easterly than the longitudes of my map of Columbia. I am far from throwing any doubt on the observations of lunar distances taken at Anai, and would only remark that their calculation is important if it is desired to carry the comparison from the Lake of Amucu to Esmeralda, which I found in long. 68° 23′ 19″ W. from Paris (66° 21′ 19″ Gr.)

We see, then, the great Mar de la Parima,—which was so difficult to displace from our maps that, after my return from America, it was still set down as having a length of 160 English geographical miles,—reduced by the result of modern researches to the little Lake of Amucu, of two or three miles circumference. The illusions cherished for nearly two centuries (several hundred lives were lost in the last Spanish expedition for the discovery of el Dorado, in 1775), have thus finally terminated, leaving some results of geographical knowledge as their fruit. In 1512, thousands of soldiers perished in the expedition undertaken by Ponce de Leon for the discovery of the “Fountain of Youth,” supposed to exist in one of the Bahama Islands called Bimini, and which is not to be found on our maps. This Expedition led to the conquest of Florida, and to the knowledge of the great current of the Gulf Stream, which issues forth through the Bahama channel. The thirst for treasures, and the desire of renovated youth, stimulated with nearly equal force the passions and cupidity of the nations of Europe.

[62] p. 216.—“The Piriguao, one of the noblest of palm trees.”

Compare Humboldt, Bonpland, and Kunth, Nova Genera Plant. æquinoct. T. i. p. 315.

[63] p. 229.—“The vault or cemetery of an extinct nation.”

During the period of my stay in the forests of the Orinoco, these caves of bones were examined by order of the Court. The Missionary of the Cataracts had been unjustly accused of having discovered in the caves treasures which had been hidden there by the Jesuits previous to their flight.

THE NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS
IN THE
PRIMEVAL FOREST.

If the vivid appreciation and sentiment of nature which differ so greatly in nations of different descent, and if the natural character and aspect of the countries which those nations now inhabit, or which have been the scene of their earlier wanderings or abode, have rendered different languages more or less rich in well defined and characteristic expressions denoting the forms of mountains, the state of vegetation, the appearance of the atmosphere, and the contour and grouping of the clouds, it is also true that long use, and perhaps their arbitrary employment by literary men, have diverted many such words from their original meaning. Terms have been gradually regarded as synonymous which ought to have been preserved distinct; and thus languages have lost part of the vigour and the grace, as well as the fidelity, which they might otherwise have been capable of imparting to descriptions of natural scenery and of the characteristic physiognomy of a landscape. With the view of shewing how much an intimate acquaintance and contact with nature, and the wants and necessities of a laborious nomade life, may increase the riches of a language, I would recall the numerous characteristic appellations which may be used in Arabic[64] and in Persian to distinguish plains, steppes, and deserts, according as they are quite bare, covered with sand, broken by tabular masses of rock, or interspersed with patches of pasturage, or with long tracts occupied by social plants. Scarcely less striking is it to observe in the old Castilian idiom[65] the many expressions afforded for describing the physiognomy of mountain-masses, and more particularly for designating those features which, recurring in every zone of the earth’s surface, announce from afar to the attentive beholder the nature of the rock. As the declivities of the Andes, of Peru, Chili, and Mexico, and the mountainous parts of the Canaries, the Antilles and the Philippines, are all inhabited by men of Spanish descent, and as these are the parts of the earth where, (with the exception, perhaps, of the Himalaya and the Thibetian Highlands), the manner of life of the inhabitants is most affected by and dependent on the form of the earth’s surface, so all the expressions which the language of the mother country afforded for denoting the forms of mountains in trachytic, basaltic, and porphyritic districts, as well as in those where schists, limestones, and sandstone are the prevailing rocks, have been happily preserved in daily use. Under such influences even newly formed words become part of the common treasure. Speech is enriched and animated by everything that tends to and promotes truth to nature, whether in rendering the impressions received through the senses from the contemplation of the external world, or in expressing thoughts, emotions, or sentiments which have their sources in the inner depths of our being.

In descriptions of natural objects or scenery, both in the manner of viewing the phenomena, and in the choice of the expressions employed to describe them, this truth to nature must ever be kept in view as the guiding aim: its attainment will be at once most easily and most effectually secured by simplicity in the narration of what we have ourselves beheld or experienced, and by limiting and individualising the locality with which the narrative is connected. Generalisation of physical views, and the statement of general results, belong rather to the “study of the Cosmos,” which, indeed, must ever continue to be to us a science of Induction; but the animated description of organic forms (plants and animals) in their local and picturesque relations to the varied surface of the earth (as a small fragment of the whole terrestrial life) affords materials towards the study of the Cosmos, and also tends to advance it by the stimulus or impulse imparted to the mind when artistic treatment is applied to phenomena of nature on a great scale.

Among such phenomena must certainly be classed the vast forest region which, in the tropical portion of South America, fills the great connected basins of the Orinoco and the Amazons. If the name of primeval forest, or “Urwald,” which has of late years been so prodigally bestowed, is to be given to any forests on the face of the earth, none can claim it perhaps so strictly as the region of which we are speaking. The term “Urwald,” primitive or primeval forest, as well as Urseit and Urvolk,—primitive age, primitive nation,—are words of rather indefinite meaning, and, for the most part, only relative import. If this name is to be given to every wild forest full of a thick growth of trees on which Man has never laid a destroying hand, then the phenomenon is one which belongs to many parts of the temperate and cold zones. But if the character of the “Urwald” is that of a forest so truly impenetrable, that it is impossible to clear with an axe any passage between trees of eight or twelve feet diameter for more than a few paces, then such forests belong exclusively to the tropical regions. Nor is it by any means, as is often supposed in Europe, only the interlacing “lianes” or climbers which make it impossible to penetrate the forest; the “lianes” often form only a very small portion of the underwood. The chief obstacle is presented by an undergrowth of plants filling up every interval in a zone where all vegetation has a tendency to become ligneous. An impatient desire for the fulfilment of a long cherished wish may sometimes have led travellers who have only just landed in a tropical country, or perhaps island, to imagine that although still in the immediate vicinity of the sea-shore they had entered the precincts of a primeval forest, or “Urwald,” such as I have described as impenetrable. In this they deceived themselves; it is not every tropical forest which is entitled to an appellation which I have scarcely ever used in the narrative of my travels; although I believe that of all investigators of nature now living, Bonpland, Martius, Poppig, Robert and Richard Schomburgk, and myself, are those who have spent the longest period of time in primeval forests in the interior of a great continent.

Rich as is the Spanish language, (as I have already remarked), in appellations of distinct and definite meaning in the description of nature, yet the same word “Monte” is employed for mountain and forest, for cerro, (montaña) and for selva. In an inquiry into the true breadth and greatest easterly extension of the chain of the Andes, I have shewed how this two-fold signification of the word “monte” led to the introduction, in a fine and extensively circulated English map of South America, of high mountain ranges, where, in reality, only plains exist. When the Spanish map of La Cruz Olmedilla, which has served as the foundation of so many other maps, shewed “Montes de Cacao,”[66] “cacao woods,” Cordilleras were made to rise although the cacao seeks only the lowest and hottest localities.

If we comprehend in one general view the wooded region which includes the whole of the interior of South America, from the grassy steppes of Venezuela (los Llanos de Caracas) to the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, or from 8° North to 19° South latitude, we shall perceive that this connected forest of the tropical zone has an extent unequalled in any other portion of the earth’s surface. Its area is about twelve times that of Germany. Traversed in all directions by systems of rivers, in which the minor and tributary streams sometimes exceed our Rhine or our Danube in the abundance of their waters, it owes the wonderful luxuriance of the growth of its trees to the combined influence of great moisture and high temperature. In the temperate zone, and especially in Europe and Northern Asia, forests may be named from particular genera or species, which, growing together as social plants, (plantæ sociales) form separate and distinct woods. In the northern forests of Oaks, Pines, and Birches, and in the eastern forests of Limes or Linden trees, usually only one species of Amentaceæ, Coniferæ, or Tiliaceæ, prevails or is predominant; sometimes a single species of Needle-trees is intermingled with the foliage of trees of other classes. Tropical forests, on the other hand, decked with thousands of flowers, are strangers to such uniformity of association; the exceeding variety of their flora renders it vain to ask of what trees the primeval forest consists. A countless number of families are here crowded together, and even in small spaces individuals of the same species are rarely associated. Each day, and at each change of place, new forms present themselves to the traveller, who, however, often finds that he cannot reach the blossoms of trees whose leaves and ramifications had previously arrested his attention.

The rivers, with their countless lateral arms, afford the only routes by which the country can be traversed. Between the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, astronomical observations, and where these were wanting, determinations by compass of the direction of the rivers, respectively shewed us that two lonely mission villages might be only a few miles apart, and yet that the monks when they wished to visit each other could only do so by spending a day and a half in following the windings of small streams, in canoes hollowed out of the trunks of trees. A striking evidence of the impenetrability of particular parts of the forest is afforded by a trait related by an Indian of the habits of the large American tiger, or panther-like jaguar. While in the Llanos of Varinas and the Meta, and in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, the introduction of European cattle, horses, and mules has enabled the beasts of prey to find an abundant subsistence,—so that since the first discovery of America their numbers have increased exceedingly in those extended and treeless grassy steppes,—their congeners in the dense forests around the sources of the Orinoco lead a very different and far less easy life. In a bivouac near the junction of the Cassiquiare with the Orinoco we had had the misfortune of losing a large dog, to which we were much attached, as the most faithful and affectionate companion of our wanderings. Being still uncertain whether he had been actually killed by the tigers, a faint hope of recovering him induced us, in returning from the mission of Esmeralda through the swarms of musquitoes by which it is infested, to spend another night at the spot where we had so long sought him in vain. We heard the cries of the jaguar, probably the very individual which we suspected of the deed, extremely near to us; and as the clouded sky made astronomical observations impossible, we passed part of the night in making our interpreter (lenguaraz) repeat to us the accounts given by our native boat’s crew of the tigers of the country.

The “black jaguar” was, they said, not unfrequently found there; it is the largest and most bloodthirsty variety, with black spots scarcely distinguishable on its deep dark-brown skin. It lives at the foot of the mountains of Maraguaca and Unturan. One of the Indians of the Durimund tribe then related to us that jaguars are often led, by their love of wandering and by their rapacity, to lose themselves in such impenetrable parts of the forest that they can no longer hunt along the ground, and live instead in the trees, where they are the terror of the families of monkeys and of the prehensile-tailed viverra, the Cercoleptes. I borrow these notices from journals written at the time in German, and which were not entirely exhausted in the Narrative of my Travels, which I published in the French language. They contain a detailed description of the nocturnal life, or perhaps I might rather say the nocturnal voices, of the wild animals in the forests of the torrid zone; which appears to me particularly suited to form part of a work bearing the title of the present volumes. That which is written down on the spot, either in the immediate presence of the phenomena, or soon after the reception of the impressions which they produce, may at least lay claim to more life and freshness than can be expected in recollections.

Descending from West to East the Rio Apure, the overflowings of whose waters and the inundations produced by them were noticed in the chapter on Steppes and Deserts, we arrived at its junction with the Orinoco. It was the season of low water, and the average breadth of the Apure was only a little more than twelve hundred English feet, yet I found the Orinoco at the confluence of the two rivers, not far from the granite rock of Curiquima, where I was able to measure a base line, still upwards of 11430 French (12180 English) feet wide. Yet this point, i. e. the Rock of Curiquima, is four hundred geographical miles in a straight line from the sea and from the Delta of the Orinoco. Part of the plains watered by the Apure and the Pagara are inhabited by tribes of the Yaruros and Achaguas, who, as they persist in maintaining their independence, are called savages in the mission villages established by the monks: their manners, however, are scarcely more rude than those of the Indians of the villages,—who, although baptized and living “under the bell” (baxo la compana), are still almost entirely untaught and uninstructed.

On leaving the Island del Diamante, in which Zambos who speak Spanish cultivate sugar-canes, we entered on scenes of nature characterized by wildness and grandeur. The air was filled with countless flocks of flamingoes (Phœnicopterus) and other water birds, which appeared against the blue sky like a dark cloud with continually varying outlines. The river had here narrowed to between 900 and 1000 feet, and flowing in a perfectly straight line formed a kind of canal enclosed on either side by dense wood. The margin of the forest presents at this part a singular appearance. In front of the almost impenetrable wall of giant trunks of Cæsalpinia, Cedrela, and Desmanthus, there rises from the sandy river beach, with the greatest regularity, a low hedge of Sauso, only four feet high, consisting of a small shrub, Hermesia castaneifolia, which forms a new genus[67] of the family of Euphorbiaceæ. Some slender thorny palms, called by the Spaniards Piritu and Coroso (perhaps species of Martinezia and Bactris), stand next; and the whole resembles a close, well-pruned garden hedge, having only occasional openings at considerable distances from each other, which have doubtless been made by the larger four-footed beasts of the forest to gain easy access to the river. One sees, more especially in the early morning and at sunset, the American tiger or jaguar, the tapir, and the peccary, lead their young through these openings to the river to drink. When startled by the passing canoe, they do not attempt to regain the forest by breaking forcibly through the hedge which has been described, but one has the pleasure of seeing these wild animals stalk leisurely along between the river and the hedge for four or five hundred paces, until they have reached the nearest opening, when they disappear through it. In the course of an almost uninterrupted river navigation of 1520 geographical miles on the Orinoco to near its sources, on the Cassiquiare, and on the Rio Negro,—and during which we were confined for seventy-four days to a small canoe,—we enjoyed the repetition of the same spectacle at several different points, and I may add, always with new delight. There came down together, to drink, to bathe, or to fish, groups consisting of the most different classes of animals, the larger mammalia, being associated with many coloured herons, palamedeas, and proudly-stepping curassow and cashew birds (Crax Alector and C. Pauxi). “Es como en el Paraiso;” it is here as in Paradise, said, with a pious air, our steersman, an old Indian who had been brought up in the house of an ecclesiastic. The peace of the golden age was, however, far from prevailing among the animals of this American paradise, which carefully watched and avoided each other. The Capybara, a Cavy three or four feet long, (a magnified repetition of the Brazilian Cavy, Cavia aguti), is devoured in the river by the crocodiles, and on shore by the tiger. It runs so indifferently that we were several times able to catch individuals from among the numerous herds which presented themselves.

Below the mission of Santa Barbara de Arichuna we passed the night as usual, under the open sky, on a sandy flat on the bank of the Rio Apure closely bordered by the impenetrable forest. It was not without difficulty that we succeeded in finding dry wood to kindle the fire with which it is always customary in that country to surround a bivouac, in order to guard against the attacks of the jaguar. The night was humid, mild, and moonlight. Several crocodiles approached the shore; I think I have observed these animals to be attracted by fire, like our cray-fish and many other inhabitants of the water. The oars of our boat were placed upright and carefully driven into the ground, to form poles from which our hammocks could be suspended. Deep stillness prevailed; only from time to time we heard the blowing of the fresh-water dolphins[68] which are peculiar to the Orinoco net-work of rivers (and, according to Colebrooke, to the Ganges as far as Benares), which followed each other in long lines.

Soon after 11 o’clock such a disturbance began to be heard in the adjoining forest, that for the remainder of the night all sleep was impossible. The wild cries of animals appeared to rage throughout the forest. Among the many voices which resounded together, the Indians could only recognise those which, after short pauses in the general uproar, were first heard singly. There was the monotonous howling of the aluates (the howling monkeys); the plaintive, soft, and almost flute-like tones of the small sapajous; the snorting grumblings of the striped nocturnal monkey[69] (the Nyctipithicus trivirgatus, which I was the first to describe); the interrupted cries of the great tiger, the cuguar or maneless American lion, the peccary, the sloth, and a host of parrots, of parraquas, and other pheasant-like birds. When the tigers came near the edge of the forest, our dog, which had before barked incessantly, came howling to seek refuge under our hammocks. Sometimes the cry of the tiger was heard to proceed from amidst the high branches of a tree, and was in such case always accompanied by the plaintive piping of the monkeys, who were seeking to escape from the unwonted pursuit.

If one asks the Indians why this incessant noise and disturbance arises on particular nights, they answer, with a smile, that “the animals are rejoicing in the bright moonlight, and keeping the feast of the full moon.” To me it appeared that the scene had probably originated in some accidental combat, and that hence the disturbance had spread to other animals, and thus the noise had increased more and more. The jaguar pursues the peccaries and tapirs, and these, pressing against each other in their flight, break through the interwoven tree-like shrubs which impede their escape; the apes on the tops of the trees, being frightened by the crash, join their cries to those of the larger animals; this arouses the tribes of birds, who build their nests in communities, and thus the whole animal world becomes in a state of commotion. Longer experience taught us that it is by no means always the celebration of the brightness of the moon which disturbs the repose of the woods: we witnessed the same occurrence repeatedly, and found that the voices were loudest during violent falls of rain, or when, with loud peals of thunder, the flashing lightning illuminated the deep recesses of the forest. The good-natured Franciscan monk, who, although he had been suffering for several months from fever, accompanied us through the Cataracts of Atures and Maypures to San Carlos on the Rio Negro, and to the Brazilian boundary, used to say, when fearful on the closing in of night that there might be a thunder-storm, “May Heaven grant a quiet night both to us and to the wild beasts of the forest!”

Scenes, such as those I have just described, were wonderfully contrasted with the stillness which prevails within the tropics during the noontide hours of a day of more than usual heat. I borrow from the same journal the recollections of a day at the Narrows of Baraguan. At this part of its course the Orinoco forces for itself a passage through the western portion of the Parime Mountains. What is called at this remarkable pass a “Narrow” (Angostura del Baraguan), is still a bed or water-basin of 890 toises (5690 English feet) in breadth. On the naked rocks which formed the shores we saw only, besides an old withered stem of Aubletia (Apeiba tiburba), and a new Apocinea (Allamanda salicifolia), a few silvery croton shrubs. A thermometer observed in the shade, but brought within a few inches of the towering mass of granite rock, rose to above 40° Reaumur (122° Fah.) All distant objects had wave-like undulating outlines, the effect of mirage; not a breath of air stirred the fine dust-like sand. The sun was in the zenith, and the flood of light which he poured down upon the river, and which, from a slight rippling movement of the waters, flashed sparkling back, rendered still more sensible the red haze which veiled the distance. All the naked rocks and boulders around were covered with a countless number of large thick-scaled iguanas, gecko-lizards, and variously spotted salamanders. Motionless, with uplifted heads and open mouths, they appeared to inhale the burning air with ecstacy. At such times the larger animals seek shelter in the recesses of the forest, and the birds hide themselves under the thick foliage of the trees, or in the clefts of the rocks; but if, in this apparent entire stillness of nature, one listens for the faintest tones which an attentive ear can seize, there is perceived an all-pervading rustling sound, a humming and fluttering of insects close to the ground, and in the lower strata of the atmosphere. Every thing announces a world of organic activity and life. In every bush, in the cracked bark of the trees, in the earth undermined by hymenopterous insects, life stirs audibly. It is, as it were, one of the many voices of Nature, heard only by the sensitive and reverent ear of her true votaries.