In Diodorus’ description of the Paropanisus,[[IE]] we seem to recognise a delineation of the Peruvian chain of the Andes. The army passed through inhabited districts in which snow daily fell!
[57]. p. 156—“Herrera in his Decades.”
Historia general de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. i. lib. iii. cap. 12 (ed. 1601, p. 106); Juan Batista Muñoz, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, lib. vi. c. 31, p. 301; Humboldt, Examen Crit., t. iii. p. 111.
[58]. p. 158—“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 repeat with equal truth the same statement after an interval of forty-one years. The travels of the brothers Robert and Richard Schomburgk, so important in reference to all departments of natural science and geography, have established other and more interesting facts; but the problem of the situation of the sources of the Orinoco has been only partially solved by Sir Robert Schomburgk. M. Bonpland and myself advanced from the west as far as Esmeralda, or the confluence of the Orinoco with the Guapo; and I was enabled, by the aid of well-attested information, to describe the upper course of the Orinoco to above the mouth of the Gehette, and to the small waterfall (Raudal) de los Guaharibos. From the east Sir Robert Schomburgk, proceeding from the mountains of the Majonkong Indians, the inhabited portion of which he estimated by the boiling point of water to be 3517 feet in height, succeeded in reaching the Orinoco by the Padamo River, which the Majonkongs and Guinaus (Guaynas?) call Paramu.[[IF]] I had placed this confluence of the Padamo with the Orinoco in my Atlas, in 3° 12′ N. lat., and 65° 46′ W. long. but Schomburgk found it by direct observation in 2° 53′ lat. and 65° 48′ W. long. The main object of this traveller’s journey was not ‘natural history,’ but the solution of the prize question proposed by the Royal Geographical Society of London, in November, 1834,—on the connection of the coast of British Guiana with the easternmost point which I had reached on the Upper Orinoco. After undergoing many sufferings, this object was thoroughly achieved. Robert Schomburgk reached Esmeralda, with his instruments, on the 22nd of February, 1839. His determinations of the latitude and longitude of the place agreed more closely with mine than I had anticipated. Let us here allow the observer to speak for himself:—“Words are inadequate to describe the feelings which overwhelmed me when I sprang on shore. My object was attained; my observations, begun on the coast of Guiana, were brought into connection with those of Humboldt at Esmeralda, and I freely admit that at a time when my physical powers had almost entirely deserted me, and when I was surrounded by dangers and difficulties of no ordinary kind, the recognition which I hoped for from him, was the sole inducement which inspired me with a fixed determination to press forward towards the goal which I had now reached. The emaciated figures of my Indian companions and my faithful guides proclaimed more fully than any words could do, what difficulties we had had to surmount, and had surmounted.” After citing expressions so gratifying, I must be permitted to subjoin the opinions I expressed regarding this great undertaking promoted by the Royal Geographical Society of London, in my Preface to the German edition of Robert Schomburgk’s Account of his Travels, published in 1841. “Immediately after my return from Mexico, I indicated the direction and the routes by which 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, might be explored. These wishes, so strongly expressed in the personal narrative of my journey, have at length, after the lapse of nearly half a century, been for the most part fulfilled. I rejoice that I have been spared to see so important an enlargement of our geographical knowledge; I rejoice too in seeing a courageous and well-conducted enterprise, requiring the most devoted perseverance, executed by a young man, to whom I feel bound no less by the ties of similarity of pursuits than those of country. These circumstances were alone able to overcome the aversion and disinclination which I entertain, perhaps unjustly, for introductory prefaces by a different hand than that of the author himself. But I could not resist the impulse of expressing thus publicly my sincere esteem for the accomplished traveller who, led on by the meritorious idea of penetrating from east to west, from the Valley of the Essequibo to Esmeralda, has succeeded, after five years of efforts and of sufferings (the extent of which I well appreciate from my own experience), in attaining the object of his ambition. Courage for the sudden accomplishment of a hazardous undertaking is easier to find, and implies less inward strength, than the resolution to endure with resignation long-continued physical sufferings, excited by absorbing mental interest; and still to press forward, undismayed by the certainty of having to retrace his steps under equally great privations and with enfeebled powers. Serenity of mind, which is almost the first requisite for an enterprise in inhospitable regions, a passionate love for any department of scientific labour (be it natural history, astronomy, hypsometrics, or magnetism), a pure feeling for the enjoyment which nature is capable of imparting, are elements which, when they combine together in one individual, ensure valuable results from a great and important journey.”
I will preface my consideration of the question of the sources of the Orinoco with my own conjectures in relation to the subject. The perilous 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 José Rodriguez Barata; and (according to manuscript maps, for which I am indebted to the former Portuguese Ambassador in Paris, Chevalier de Brito) by several English and Dutch settlers, who in 1811 travelled 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 parts, and serves to mark the position 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 indefinite distance towards the east, without intersecting the bed of the Rio Branco, which flows from north to south through the fluvial district of the Upper Orinoco; while this portion of the great river itself pursues for the most part a direction from east to west. The Brazilians, since the beginning of the present century, have from political motives manifested a vivid interest in the extensive plains east of the Rio Branco.[[IG]] Owing to the position of Santa Rosa on the Uraricapara, whose course appears to have been pretty accurately determined by Portuguese engineers, the sources of the Orinoco cannot be situated east of the meridian of 63° 8′ west long. This is the eastern limit beyond which they cannot be placed, and taking into consideration the state of the river at the Raudal de los Guaharibos (above Caño Chiguire, in the country of the strikingly fair-skinned Guaycas Indians, and 52′ east of the great Cerro Duida), it appears to me probable that the Orinoco in its upper part does not extend, at the utmost, beyond the meridian of 64° 8′ west long. This point is, according to my combinations, 4° 12′ west of the little lake of Amucu, which was reached by Sir Robert Schomburgk.
I will now detail the conjectures of that traveller, after having first given my own earlier ones. According to him the course of the Upper Orinoco, to the east of Esmeralda, is directed from south-east to north-west; my estimations of latitude for the mouths of the Padamo and the Gehette appear to be respectively 19′ and 36′ too small. Schomburgk conjectures that the sources of the Orinoco are situated in lat. 2° 30′, 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 its geographical sources in 64° 56′ west long., i.e., 1° 6′ west of Esmeralda, and only 48′ of longitude nearer to the Atlantic than I had determined the position of this point. Astronomical combinations led Schomburgk to place the mountain of Maravaca, which is about ten thousand feet high, in 3° 41′ lat. and 65° 48′ west long. The Orinoco was scarcely three hundred yards wide near the mouth of the Padamo or Paramu, and more to the west, where it expands to a width of from four to six hundred yards, it was so shallow, and so full of sandbanks, that the expedition was obliged to dig channels, as the river bed was only fifteen inches deep. Fresh-water dolphins were still to be seen in great numbers everywhere—a phenomenon which the zoologists of the eighteenth century would not have expected to find in the Orinoco and the Ganges.
[59]. p. 158—“The most luxurious product of a tropical climate.”
The Bertholletia excelsa (Juvia), of the family of Myrtaceæ (and placed in Richard Schomburgk’s proposed division of Lecythideæ), was first described in Plantes Equinoxiales, t. i. 1808, p. 122, tab. 36. This colossal and magnificent tree offers, in the perfect development of its cocoa-like, round, close-grained, woody fruit, inclosing the three-cornered and also woody seed-vessels, the most remarkable example of luxuriant organic development. The Bertholletia grows in the forests of the Upper Orinoco, between the Padamo and the Ocamu, in the vicinity of the mountain of Mapaya, as well as between the rivers Amaguaca and Gehette.[[IH]]
[60]. p. 158—“Grass stalks, whose joints measure upwards of eighteen feet from knot to knot.”