The appearance of this region first convinced the bold navigator Columbus of the existence of an American continent. “Such an enormous body of fresh water,” concluded this acute observer of nature, “could only be collected from a river having a long course; the land, therefore, which supplied it must be a continent, and not an island.” As, according to Arrian, the companions of Alexander, when they penetrated across the snow-crowned summits of Paropanisus[[56]], believed that they recognized in the crocodile-teeming Indus a part of the Nile,[[HZ]] so Columbus, in his ignorance of the similarity of physiognomy which characterises all the products of the climate of palms, imagined that the New Continent was the eastern coast of the far projecting Asia. The grateful coolness of the evening air, the ethereal purity of the starry firmament, the balmy fragrance of flowers, wafted to him by the land breeze—all led him to suppose. (as we are told by Herrera, in the Decades[[57]],) that he was approaching the garden of Eden, the sacred abode of our first parents. The Orinoco seemed to him one of the four rivers, which, according to the venerable tradition of the ancient world, flowed from Paradise, to water and divide the surface of the earth, newly adorned with plants. This poetical passage in the Journal of Columbus, or rather in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, written from Haiti in October, 1498, presents a peculiar psychological interest. It teaches us anew, that the creative fancy of the poet manifests itself in the discoverer of a world, no less than in every other form of human greatness.
When we consider the great mass of water poured into the Atlantic Ocean by the Orinoco, we are naturally led to ask which of the South American rivers is the greatest—the Orinoco, the Amazon, or the La Plata? The question is as indeterminate as the idea of greatness itself. The Rio de la Plata has undoubtedly the widest mouth, its width measuring 92 miles across; but this river, like those of Great Britain, is comparatively of but inconsiderable length. Its shallowness, too, is so great as to impede navigation at Buenos Ayres. The Amazon, which is the longest of all rivers, measures 2880 miles from its rise in the Lake of Lauricocha to its estuary. Yet its width in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, near the cataract of Rentama, where I measured it at the foot of the picturesque mountain of Patachuma, is scarcely equal to that of the Rhine at Mayence.
The Orinoco is narrower at its mouth than either the La Plata or the Amazon, while its length, according to my astronomical observations, does not exceed 1120 geographical miles. But in the interior of Guiana, 560 miles from its estuary, I found that at high water the width of the river measured upwards of 17,265 feet. Its periodical swelling here raises the level of the waters every year from 30 to 36 feet above the lowest water-mark. We are still without sufficient data for an accurate comparison between the enormous rivers which traverse the South American Continent. For such a comparison it would be necessary to ascertain the profile of the river-bed, as well as the velocity of the water, which varies very considerably at different points.
If the Orinoco, in the Delta formed by its variously divided and still unexplored branches, as well as in the regularity of its rise and fall, and in the number and size of its crocodiles, exhibits numerous points of resemblance to the Nile; there is this further analogy between the two rivers, that they for a long distance wind their impetuous way, like forest torrents, between granitic and syenitic rocks, till, slowly rolling their waters over an almost horizontal bed, skirted by treeless banks, they reach the sea.
An arm of the Nile (the Green Nile, Bahr-el-Azrek), from the celebrated mountain lake, near Gondar, in the Gojam Alps, in Abyssinia, to Syene and Elephantis, winds its way through the mountain range of Schangalla and Sennar; and in like manner the Orinoco rises on the southern slope of a mountain chain, which stretches between the parallels of 4° and 5° north lat., from French Guiana, in a westerly direction towards the Andes of New Granada. The sources of the Orinoco have never been visited by any European[[58]], nor even by any natives who have held intercourse with Europeans.
When, in the summer of 1800, we ascended the Upper Orinoco, we passed the mission of Esmeralda, and reached the mouths of the Sodomoni and the Guapo. Here soars high above the clouds, the mighty peak of the Yeonnamari or Duida; a mountain which presents one of the grandest spectacles in the natural scenery of the tropical world. Its altitude, according to my trigonometrical measurement, is 8278 (8823 English) feet above the level of the sea. Its southern slope is a treeless grassy plain, redolent with the odour of pine-apples, whose fragrance scents the humid evening air. Among lowly meadow plants rise the juicy stems of the anana, whose golden yellow fruit gleams from the midst of a bluish green diadem of leaves. Where the mountain springs break forth from beneath the grassy covering, rise isolated groups of lofty fan-palms, whose leaves, in this torrid region, are never stirred by a cooling breeze.
To the east of the Duida mountain, begins a thicket of wild cacao trees, among which are found the celebrated almond tree, Bertholletia excelsa, the most luxurious product of a tropical vegetation[[59]]. Here the Indians collect colossal stalks of grass, whose joints measure upwards of 18 feet from knot to knot, which they use as blow-pipes for the discharge of their arrows[[60]]. Some Franciscan monks have penetrated as far as the mouth of the Chiguire, where the river is already so narrow that the natives have suspended over it, near the waterfall of the Guaharibes, a bridge woven of the stems of twining plants. The Guaicas, of palish complexion and short stature, armed with poisoned arrows, oppose all further progress eastward.
Therefore, all that has been advanced to prove that the Orinoco derives its source from a lake must be regarded as a fable[[61]]. In vain the traveller seeks to discover the Lake of El Dorado, which, in Arrowsmith’s maps, is set down as an inland sea measuring upwards of 20 geographical (80 English) miles. Can the little reed-covered lake of Amucu, near which rises the Pirara (a branch of the Mahu), have given rise to this myth? This swamp lies, however, 4° to the east of the region in which we may suppose the sources of the Orinoco to be situated. Here tradition placed the island of Pumacena, a rock of micaceous schist, whose shining brightness has played a memorable, and, for the deluded adventurers, often a fatal, part in the fable of El Dorado, current since the sixteenth century.
According to the belief of many of the natives, the Magellanic clouds of the southern sky, and even the glorious nebulæ in the constellation Argo, are mere reflections of the metallic brilliancy of these silver mountains of the Parime. It was besides an ancient custom of dogmatising geographers to make all the most considerable rivers of the world originate in lakes.
The Orinoco is one of those remarkable rivers which, after numerous windings, first towards the west and then to the north, finally return towards the east in such a manner as to bring both its estuary and its source into nearly the same meridian. From the Chiguire and the Gehette as far as the Guaviare, the course of the Orinoco inclines westward, as if it would pour its waters into the Pacific. Here branches off to the south, the Cassiquiare, a remarkable river, but little known to Europeans, which unites with the Rio Negro, or as the natives call it, the Guainia: furnishing the only example of a bifurcation which forms in the very interior of a continent a natural connection between two great river valleys.