If the faculty of appreciating nature, in different races of man, and if the character of the countries they now inhabit, or have traversed in their earlier migrations, have more or less enriched the respective languages by appropriate terms, expressive of the forms of mountains, the state of vegetation, the appearances of the atmosphere, and the contour and grouping of the clouds, it must be admitted that by long use and literary caprice many of these designations have been diverted from the sense they originally bore. Words have gradually been regarded as synonymous, which ought to have remained distinct; and languages have thus lost a portion of the expressiveness and force which might else have imparted a physiognomical character to descriptions of natural scenery. As an evidence of the extent to which a communion with nature, and the requirements of a laborious nomadic life, may enrich language, I would recall the abundance of characteristic denominations employed in Arabic and Persian, to distinguish plains, steppes, and deserts[[65]], according as they are entirely bare, covered with sand, or intersected by tabular masses of rock; or as they are diversified by spots of pasture land and extended tracts of social plants. The old Castilian dialects are no less remarkable[[66]] for the copiousness of their terms descriptive of the physiognomy of mountains, especially in reference to those features which recur in all regions of the earth, and which proclaim afar off the nature of the rock. As the declivities of the Andes and the mountainous parts of the Canaries, the Antilles, and the Philippines, are all inhabited by races of Spanish descent; and as the nature of the soil has there influenced the mode of life of the inhabitants to a greater degree than in other parts of the world, excepting perhaps in the Himalaya and the Thibetian Highlands; so also the designations expressive of the forms of mountains in trachytic, basaltic, and porphyritic districts, as well as in schistose, calcareous, and sandstone formations, have been happily preserved in daily use. Under such circumstances, newly formed words become incorporated with the common stock. Speech acquires life from everything which bears the true impress of nature, whether it be by the definition of sensuous impressions received from the external world, or by the expression of thoughts and feelings that emanate from our inner being.

In descriptions of natural phenomena, as well as in the choice of the expressions employed, this truth to nature should be especially kept in view. The object will be the best attained by simplicity in the narration of whatever we have ourselves observed and experienced, and by closely examining the locality with which the subject-matter is connected. Generalisation of physical views, and the enumeration of results, belong principally to the study of the Cosmos, which, indeed, must still be regarded as an inductive science; but the vivid delineation of organic forms (animals and plants,) in their picturesque and local relations to the multiform surface of the earth, although limited to a small section of terrestrial life, still affords materials for this study. It acts as a stimulus to the mind wherever it is capable of appreciating the great phenomena of nature in an æsthetic point of view.

To these phenomena belongs especially the boundless forest district which, in the torrid zone of South America, connects the river basins of the Orinoco and the Amazon. This region deserves, in the strictest sense of the word, to be called a primeval forest—a term that has, in recent times, been so frequently misapplied. Primeval (or primitive), as applied to a forest, a nation, or a period of time, is a word of rather indefinite signification, and generally but of relative import. If every wild forest, densely covered with trees, on which man has never laid his destroying hand, is to be regarded as a primitive forest, then the phenomenon is common to many parts both of the temperate and the frigid zones; if, however, this character consists in impenetrability, through which it is impossible to clear with the axe, between trees measuring from 8 to 12 feet in diameter, a path of any length, primitive forests belong exclusively to tropical regions. This impenetrability is by no means, as is often erroneously supposed in Europe, always occasioned by the interlaced climbing “lianes,” or creeping plants, for these often constitute but a very small portion of the underwood. The chief obstacles are the shrub-like plants which fill up every space between the trees, in a zone where all vegetable forms have a tendency to become arborescent. If travellers, the moment they set foot in a tropical region, and even while on islands, in the vicinity of the sea-coast, imagine that they are within the precincts of a primeval forest, the misconception must be ascribed to their ardent desire of realizing a long-cherished wish. Every tropical forest is not primeval forest. I have scarcely ever used the latter term in the narrative of my travels; although, I believe, that of all investigators of nature now living, Bonpland, Martius, Pöppig, Robert and Richard Schomburgk, and myself, have spent the longest period of time in primeval forests in the interior of a great continent.

Notwithstanding the striking richness of the Spanish language in designations, (descriptive of natural objects, of which I have already spoken), yet one and the same word monte is employed for a mountain and a forest, for cerro (montaña), and for selva. In a work on the true breadth and the greatest extension of the chain of the Andes towards the east, I have shown how this twofold signification of the word monte has led to the error, in a fine and extensively circulated English map of South America, of marking ranges of high mountains in districts occupied only by plains. Where the Spanish map of La Cruz Olmedilla, which formed the basis of so many others, indicated Cacao Woods, Montes de Cacao[[67]], Cordilleras were supposed to exist, although the Cacao-tree affects only the hottest of the low lands.

If we comprehend, in one general view, the woody region which embraces the whole of South America, between the grassy plains of Venezuela (los Llanos de Caracas) and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, lying between 8° north and 19° south latitude, we perceive that this connected Hylæa of the tropical zone is unequalled in extent by any other on the surface of the earth. Its area is about twelve times that of Germany. Traversed in all directions by rivers, some of whose direct and indirect tributary streams (as well those of the second as of the first order) surpass the Danube and Rhine in the abundance of their waters, it owes the wonderful luxuriance of its vegetation to the twofold influence of great humidity and high temperature. In the temperate zone, particularly in Europe and Northern Asia, forests may be named from particular genera of trees which grow together as social plants (plantæ sociales), and form separate woods. In the Oak, Pine, and Birch forests of the northern regions, and in the Linden or Lime Woods of the eastern, there usually predominates only one species of Amentaceæ, Coniferæ or Tiliaceæ; while sometimes a single species of Piniferæ is intermixed with trees of deciduous foliage. Such uniformity of association is unknown in tropical forests. The excessive variety of their rich sylvan flora renders it vain to ask, of what do the primeval forests consist. Numberless families of plants are here crowded together; and even in small spaces, plants of the same species are rarely associated. Every day, and with every change of place, new forms present themselves to the traveller’s attention; often flowers, beyond his reach, although the shape of the leaf and the ramifications of the plant excite his curiosity.

The rivers, with their innumerable branches, are the only means of traversing the country. Astronomical observations, or in the absence of these, determinations by compass of the bends of the rivers, between the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, have shewn that two lonely mission-stations might be situated only a few miles apart, and yet the monks thereof, in visiting each other would require a day and a half to make the passage in their hollow-tree canoes, along the windings of small streams. The most striking evidence of the impenetrability of some portions of these forests, is afforded by a trait in the habits of the American tiger, or panther-like Jaguar. While the introduction of European horned cattle, horses, and mules, has yielded so abundant a supply of food to the beasts of prey in the extensive grassy and treeless plains of Varinas, Meta, and Buenos Ayres; that these animals, (owing to the unequal contest between them and their prey,) have considerably increased since the discovery of America; other individuals of the same species lead a toilsome life in the dense forests contiguous to the sources of the Orinoco. The distressing loss of a large mastiff, the faithful companion of our travels, while we were bivouacking near the junction of the Cassiquiare with the Orinoco, induced us on our return from the insect-swarming Esmeralda, to pass another night on the same spot (uncertain whether he was devoured by a tiger) where we had already long sought him in vain. We again heard in the immediate neighbourhood the cries of the Jaguar, probably the very same animal to which we owed our loss. As the cloudy state of the sky rendered it impossible to conduct astronomical observations, we made our interpreter (lenguaraz) repeat to us what the natives, our boatmen, related of the tigers of the country.

The so called black Jaguar is, as we learnt, not unfrequently found among them. It is the largest and most blood-thirsty variety, and has a dark brown skin marked with scarcely distinguishable black spots. It lives at the foot of the mountain ranges of Maraguaca and Unturan. “The love of wandering, and the rapacity of the Jaguars,” said our Indian narrator, one of the Durimond tribe; “often lead them into such impenetrable thickets of the forest, that they can no longer hunt on the ground, and then live for a long time in the trees—the terror of the families of monkeys, and of the prehensile-tailed viverra. (Cercoleptes.)”

The journal which I wrote at the time in German, and from which I borrow these extracts, was not entirely exhausted in the narrative of my travels (published in French). It contains a circumstantial description of the nocturnal life of animals; I might say, of their nocturnal voices in the tropical forests. And this sketch seems to me to be especially adapted to constitute one of the chapters of the Views of Nature. That which is written down on the spot, or soon after the impression of the phenomena has been received, may at least claim to possess more freshness than what is produced by the recollection of long passed events.

We reached the bed of the Orinoco by descending from west to east along the Rio Apure, whose inundations I have noticed in the sketch of the Deserts and Steppes. It was the period of low water, and the average breadth of the Apure was only a little more than 1200 feet; while the Orinoco, at its confluence with the Apure (near the granite rocks of Curiquima, where I was able to measure a base-line), was still upwards of 12,180 feet. Yet this point (the rock of Curiquima,) is 400 miles in a straight line from the sea and from the delta of the Orinoco. Some of the plains, watered by the Apure and the Payara, are inhabited by Yaruros and Achaguas, who are called savages in the mission-villages established by the monks, because they will not relinquish their independence. In reference to social culture, they however occupy about the same scale as those Indians, who, although baptized and living “under the bell” (baxo la campana), have remained strangers to every form of instruction and cultivation.

On leaving the Island del Diamante, where the Zambos, who speak Spanish, cultivate the sugar-cane, we entered into a grand and wild domain of nature. The air was filled with countless flamingoes (Phœnicopterus) and other water-fowl, which seemed to stand forth from the blue sky like a dark cloud in ever-varying outlines. The bed of the river had here contracted to less than 1000 feet, and formed a perfectly straight canal, which was inclosed on both sides by thick woods. The margin of the forest presents a singular spectacle. In front of the almost impenetrable wall of colossal trunks of Cæsalpinia, Cedrela, and Desmanthus, there rises with the greatest regularity on the sandy bank of the river, a low hedge of Sauso, only four feet high; it consists of a small shrub, Hermesia castanifolia, which forms a new genus[[68]] of the family of Euphorbiaceæ. A few slender, thorny palms, called by the Spaniards Piritu and Corozo (perhaps species of Martinezia or Bactris) stand close alongside; the whole resembling a trimmed garden hedge, with gate-like openings at considerable distances from each other, formed undoubtedly by the large four-footed animals of the forests, for convenient access to the river. At sunset, and more particularly at break of day, the American Tiger, the Tapir, and the Peccary (Pecari, Dicotyles) may be seen coming forth from these openings accompanied by their young, to give them drink. When they are disturbed by a passing Indian canoe, and are about to retreat into the forest, they do not attempt to rush violently through these hedges of Sauso, but proceed deliberately along the bank, between the hedge and river, affording the traveller the gratification of watching their motions for sometimes four or five hundred paces, until they disappear through the nearest opening. During a seventy-four days’ almost uninterrupted river navigation of 1520 miles up the Orinoco, to the neighbourhood of its sources, and along the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro—during the whole of which time we were confined to a narrow canoe—the same spectacle presented itself to our view at many different points, and, I may add, always with renewed excitement. There came to drink, bathe, or fish, groups of creatures belonging to the most opposite species of animals; the larger mammalia with many-coloured herons, palamedeas with the proudly-strutting curassow (Crax Alector, C. Pauxi). “It is here as in Paradise” (es como en el Paradiso), remarked with pious air our steersman, an old Indian, who had been brought up in the house of an ecclesiastic. But the gentle peace of the primitive golden age does not reign in the paradise of these American animals, they stand apart, watch, and avoid each other. The Capybara, a cavy (or river-hog) three or four feet long (a colossal repetition of the common Brazilian cavy, (Cavia Aguti), is devoured in the river by the crocodile, and on the shore by the tiger. They run so badly, that we were frequently able to overtake and capture several from among the numerous herds.