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

by Alexander von Humboldt

In the rock of Keri, in the islands of the Cataracts, in the gneiss hills of Cumadaminari above the island of Tomo, and lastly at the mouth of the Jao, we trace these black-coloured hollows at elevations of 150 to 180 (160 to 192 English) feet above the present height of the river. Their existence teaches us a fact of which we may also observe indications in the river beds of Europe; viz. that the streams whose magnitude now excites our astonishment are only the feeble remains of the immense masses of water belonging to an earlier age of the world.

These simple remarks and inferences have not escaped even the rude natives of Guiana. The Indians everywhere called our attention to the traces of the former height of the waters. There is in a grassy plain near Uruana an isolated granite rock, on which, according to the report of trustworthy witnesses, there are at a height of more than eighty feet drawings of the sun and moon, and of many animals, particularly crocodiles and boas, engraven or arranged almost in rows or lines. Without artificial aid it would now be impossible to ascend this perpendicular precipice, which deserves to be carefully examined by future travellers. The hieroglyphical rock engravings on the mountains of Uruana and Encaramada are equally remarkable in respect to situation.

If one asks the natives how these figures can have been cut in the rocks, they answer that it was done when the waters were so high that their fathers’ boats were only a little lower than the drawings. Those rude memorials of human art would in such case have belonged to the same age as a state of the waters implying a distribution of land and water very different from that which now prevails, and belonging to an earlier condition of the earth’s surface; which must not, however, be confounded with that in which the earlier vegetation which adorned our planet, the gigantic bodies of extinct land animals, and the oceanic creatures of a more chaotic state, became entombed in the indurating crust of globe.

At the northernmost extremity of the cataracts, attention is excited by what are called the natural drawings or pictures of the Sun and Moon. The rock Keri, to which I have several times referred, has received its name from a white spot which is conspicuous from a great distance, and in which the Indians have thought they recognised a remarkable similarity to the disk of the full moon. I was not myself able to climb the steep precipice, but the white mark in question is probably a large knot of quartz formed by a cluster of veins in the greyish-black granite.

Opposite to the Keri rock, on the twin mountain of the island of Uivitari, which has a basaltic appearance, the Indians shew with mysterious admiration a similar disk which they venerate as the image of the Sun, Camosi. Perhaps the geographical position of the two rocks may have contributed to these denominations, as the Keri (or Moon Rock) is turned to the West, and the Camosi to the East. Some etymologists have thought they recognised in the American word Camosi a similarity to Camosh, the name of the Sun in one of the Phœnician dialects, and to Apollo Chomeus, or Beelphegor and Ammon.

Unlike the grander falls of Niagara (which are 140 French or 150 English feet high) the “Cataracts of Maypures” are not formed by the single precipitous descent of a vast mass of waters, nor are they “narrows” or passes through which the river rushes with accelerated velocity, as in the Pongo of Manseriche in the River of the Amazons. The Cataracts of Maypures consist of a countless number of little cascades succeeding each other like steps. The “Raudal” (the name given by the Spaniards to this species of cataract) is formed by numerous islands and rocks which so restrict the bed of the river, that out of a breadth of 8000 (8526 E.) feet there often only remains an open channel of twenty feet in width. The eastern side is now much more inaccessible and dangerous than the western.

At the confluence of the Cameji with the Orinoco, goods are unladen in order that the empty canoe, or, as it is here called, the Piragua, may be conveyed by Indians well acquainted with the Raudal to the mouth of the Toparo, where the danger is considered to be past. Where the separate rocks or steps (each of which is designated by a particular name) are not much above two or three feet high, the natives, if descending the stream, venture, remaining themselves in the canoe, to let it go down the falls: if they are ascending the stream they leave the boat, swim forward, and when after many unsuccessful attempts they have succeeded in casting a rope round the points of rock which rise above the broken water, they draw up their vessel, which is often either overset or entirely filled with water in the course of these laborious proceedings.

Sometimes, and it is the only case which gives the natives any uneasiness, the canoe is dashed in pieces against the rocks; the men have then to disengage themselves with bleeding bodies from the wreck and from the whirling force of the torrent, and to gain the shore by swimming. Where the rocky steps are very high and extend across the entire bed of the river, the light boat is brought to land and drawn along the bank by means of branches of trees placed under it as rollers.

The most celebrated and difficult steps, those of Purimarimi and Manimi, are between nine and ten feet high. I found with astonishment by barometric measurements, (geodesical levelling being out of the question from the inaccessibility of the locality, its highly insalubrious atmosphere, and the swarms of mosquitoes which fill the air), that the whole fall of the Raudal from the mouth of the Cameji to that of the Toparo hardly amounts to 28 or 30 feet (30 or 32 English). I say, “I found with astonishment;” for this shews that the dreadful noise and wild dashing and foaming of the river are the results of the narrowing of its bed by countless rocks and islands, and of the counter currents produced by the form and situation of the masses of rock. The best ocular demonstration of the small height of the whole fall is obtained by descending from the village of Maypures to the bed of the river by the rock of Manimi.

From this point a wonderful prospect is enjoyed. A foaming surface of four miles in length presents itself at once to the eye: iron-black masses of rock resembling ruins and battlemented towers rise frowning from the waters. Rocks and islands are adorned with the luxuriant vegetation of the tropical forest; a perpetual mist hovers over the waters, and the summits of the lofty palms pierce through the cloud of spray and vapour. When the rays of the glowing evening sun are refracted in these humid exhalations a magic optical effect begins. Coloured bows shine, vanish, and reappear; and the ethereal image is swayed to and fro by the breath of the sportive breeze. During the long rainy season the streaming waters bring down islands of vegetable mould, and thus the naked rocks are studded with bright flower-beds adorned with Melastomas and Droseras, and with small silver-leaved mimosas and ferns. These spots recall to the recollection of the European those blocks of granite decked with flowers which rise solitary amidst the glaciers of Savoy, and are called by the dwellers in the Alps “Jardins,” or “Courtils.”