Columbia (Hnibers^ftp mtl)eCftpof3Smg0rk THE LIBRARIES The Life Travels and Books OF ' Alexander Von Humboldt. WITH AN INTRODUCTION By bayard TAYLOR. '•' / am iecome a name ; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen a/iid known ; cities of men And nnanners^ climates, councils, governments^ Myself not least, but Iwnored of them alV TENNYSON. New Y o r k : RuDD & Carleton, 130 Grand Street, (brooks B'JiLElKG;, C(»R. O* , BROi^JJWAY*) ) 1 i > > > 1,111 ' J ) Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by EJJDB & CAELETON. In the Clerk's Oflioe of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of M^^ York. 5 B. CBAIGUEAD, ^PrJBter, Slereotyper, and Klectrotyper, ^ c ' ' 'VCaitoit 33mnJttt5, • ' ', >. •* < « 9l,tSilan^ 85 Qenire Sirj^U >■ • « • « <• • • r • • >• c *• •• •••** ." • .• • • PEEF ACE There are several hiographies of Sumholdt^ French^ German^ and English^ hut none of any importance^ except Professor Klencke^s. Klencke had an excellent opportu- nity to maJce a good hooJc^ for much of his material icas obtained from Humboldt himself^ hut he failed to do so. He seemed to have no idea of writing^ heyond its heing a means of conveying facts. His facts are reliable^ hut hunglingly arranged^ xoithout order or method. He says the same thing over and over again^ and entirely lacJcs the chief requisite of a biographer — the art of tnaking his subject attractive. Stilly he is reliable^ and the author has made considerable use of his worJc^ especially in JBoolc I. The first five chapters of Booh II. are taken from Hum- boldVs "Voyage aux Regions Equinoxiales." As these chapters cover an important epjoch in HumboldVs life., it icas thought advisable to let him tell his own story ^ and this has accordingly been done., wherever it was practicable^ the relation heing changed from the first person to the third — from autobiography to narrative. Of course only the 346645 IV PREFACE. suLstance of the " Yoyage " is given^ for the worh extendi to three octavo wlunies^ of four or five hundred pages each. It would have heen easy to have rewritten this mat- ter^ hut the author could not see the advantage of so doing : his hooJc would have gained something in originality^ hut it would have lost much more in interest. No writer of travels^ ancient or modern^ can compare with Humholdt in descri2ytive p>ower^ especially in the " Voyage," where his words are pictures. These pictures have heen faithfully transferred to the chapters mentioned^ and are commended to the reader's attention. The chapters on Colomhia and Peru^ and Mexico^ are made upfront the "Yues des CordiDeres," the "Ansicbcen der Natur," and the "Essai politique sur le Royaume de Kouvelle Espagne.'' They are not so complete as the author could have wished^ hut that is rather HumholdVs fault than his own ^ for the "Yoyage" which would have furnished material for them., had it ever heen completed.^ ends abruptly at Carthagena. Beyond that point the narrative of the journey ceases. Gleams of it occur, however, in JSumholdPs other works, chiefly in those just mentioned, and it is hy these that his progress has heen traced until his return to Europe. If this portion of the Biography lachs the picturesque and adventurous element of the chapters that precede it, it has at least the merit of variety, and of heing the fullest account of the last two or three years of HumholdVs eventful journey in the New "World. The works specified above having been translated into English, the trwislations have heen generally used. PKEFACE. "V not because the autJior preferred tJiera to their origbials^ hut because he doubted his ability to better them. It is one thing to find fault icith a translator for his shortco^nings^ but quite another thing to avoid them in one^s oion trans- lation. The translators to ichom the author of this Biogra- phy is indebted are: Tfiomasina JRoss, for the "Voyage;" 3frs. Sabine for the "Ansichten der Xatur;" Helen Maria Williams, for the "Vues des Cordilleres ;" and John Blach for the " Essai politique." The last tico worl^s are out of print, though copies are occasionally to be found at the old booh stalls y the " Ansichten der ISTatur," and the "Voyage," or as it is christened in the translation, the "Personal Xarrative," are in print, though scarcely icithin the reach of the general reader, never having been reprinted in this country. The English edition of the "Personal Narrative" costs three times as much as the present volum,e. The chapter on Central Asia, in Booh III., which is th6 substance of Rose's " Reise nach dem Ural," is reioritten and enlarged from Mr. Taylor'' s " Cyclopaedia of Modern Travel." These, as far as the author remembers, are the principal sources to lohich he is indebted. He should meii' tion, perhaps, the various French and English Encyclo- pedias from lohich he has filled up his shetches of some of Humboldfs contemporaries, but Encyclopaedias have no authors, as everybody hnoics ; besides, they are made for the very purpose to ichich he has put them. The same may be said of the journals of the day. The reader now understands the extent of the author'' s VI PREFACE. ohllgations in this Biography. Of the Biography itself it does not become the author to speak., further than to say that he has taJcen great pains to make it accurate. If it shall be considered as readable as it is accurate, he will have accomplished his purpose., lohich was to write a popM- lar life of Humboldt. ^r INTRODUCTION. 9 A Biography of Alexander Yon Humboldt, which shall contam a full and conscientious account of his life and labors, written in a style sufficiently clear and untechnical to meet the popular tastes, has long been a necessity in our literature. Those biographies which are already m exist- ence do not possess this character : they are rather chroni- cles of his achievements in the various departments of natural science, than stories of a life almost unexampled for its wealth of experience, its labors, and successes. The " Lives of the Brothers Humboldt," by Klencke, which has been translated into English, is very fragmentary in this respect ; it passes over unnoticed, many episodes in the life of Alexander Yon Humboldt, which are of great interest to the general reader. In fact, it has only been in the closing years of his life, that the excellences of his charac- ter, as a man, apart from his distinction as a savant, have received full and general acknowledgment. No task could have been pleasanter to me than that of attempting to bring home to the familiar acquaintance of Vm INTRODUCTION. the great reading public of the United States, the history of the great man, with whose friendship I was honored ; and, as the literary labors I had already on hand prevented me from imdertaking such a work, it is all the more grati- fying to me to know that it has been faithfully and con- scientiously done by one every way capable of the perform- ance. Having examined the biography which follows, I can testify to its exactness and completeness, and therefore — • though the subject of the book is its own sufficient recom- mendation— cordially accede to the request of the author, that I should add a few words of introduction, embodying my own impressions of Humboldt's character. When I first saw him, he was m his eighty-eighth year, but, except in the bowed head and slow step,showed scarcely any signs of bodily decay. A portrait, painted nearly forty years before, at which time his hair was already gray, showed that time had occasioned but Httle change in his appearance, while its only efiect upon his mind was, j^er- haps, a lack of that power of concentration which enabled him to master so many various departments of natural science. He was still exerj inch a king, with no faculty appreciably dulled, no sympathy blunted, no hope for the increase of human knowledge or generous aspiration for the good of his kind less earnest than in his prime of life. A year later, I found him broken, indeed, in bodily health, yet still capable of sixteen hours of continuous mental labor, and his last letter to me, written but a short time before his death, betrayed no sign of failing faculties, though the hand which traced it was evidently weak and trembhng. LXTKODUCnON. . IS In the castle at Tegel, where he was born, and in the park of which he now sleeps beside his brother, hangs a portrait of him, painted at the age of thirty-five. He is there represented as man of rather less than the medium statm-e, but firmly and symmetrically ouilt, with a full, keen, ardent face, firm lips, clear blue eyes, and thick locks of chestnut hair, clustering about his square, massive brow. He wears a green coat, knee-breeches, and a heavy cloak lined A\dth red. He is represented as leaning against a rock on a slope of the Andes, the snowy dome of Chimbo- razo filling up the background of the picture. In com- paring this picture with his hving presence, I found that the shoulders had stooped, leaving the head bent forward, as if weighed down by the burden of its universal know- ledge ; the hau* had grown snow-white, and somewhat thinner ; the mouth had lost its clear, sharp outUne, and the eager, energetic expression of the face was gone : but the blue eyes were as serene and youthful as ever, and the skin as fair, smooth, and ruddy, almost, as that of a yoimg man. The first impression produced by Humboldt's face was that of its thorough humanity. The blood which fed his restless brain never weakened the pulsations of his human heart. Beneath that devotion to science which he illus- trated by the labours of seventy-five years, burned steadily and unwaveringly the flame of sympathy for his kind. Pro- bably no man who ever lived has ,given aid and encourage- ment to so great a number of aspiring and deserving men. I know instances of persons in humble life having sought X INTKODUCnON. his assistance for themselves or their friends, and in no case was it refused. The applicants returned from the interview cheered, inspired, and full of affectionate veneration for the man who, in the midst of his immense labours, could yet give an hour to themselves and their plans. No rational appeal to him was ever slighted, and the vast influence which he possessed, in his later years, was always exerted in the behalf of science, and her earnest votaries. Jealousy of his fellow-labourers formed no part of his nature. His enthusiasm was too pure and ardent to be alloyed by any personal consideration. Not his own fame — ^not his supremacy as an observer or a theorizer — but the advancement of human knowledge, the discovery of grand general laws — the footsteps of God in the Creation — was his aim and his ambition. What he has done is not to be measured by his own individual achievements : the generous impulse which he has given to others cannot be estimated. The vast results which have followed scientific research, since the commencement of this century, were initiated by his example ; he pointed out to others the tracks which he could not himself follov/, and, even when acknowledged as a leader, never hesitated to labor with the humblest. In this respect, his character presents an almost ideal excellence. The lesson of Humboldt's life is not without its special significance at the present day, when the thirst for wealtli, and place, and power, seems hotter and fiercer than ever. With the advantages of his birth and inherited position, many paths of advancement were oj^en to him, but he dis- dained them all, sacrincmg everything to his love of know- INTKODUCTIOX. XI ledge, until finally, in his old age, honors such as no stales- man ever won, were laid as voluntary offerings at his fc*it. The indifference which he regarded them showed how little such rewards had entered into his plan of life. Yet,though the acknowledged equal of kings, he was never seduced by the splendors of courts to forget his character as a man, whose sympathies were with the people rather than then- rulers. So well were his political predilections understood among the monarchs who called him friend, that at the Con- gress of Verona, of which he was a member, when he proposed some temporary measure which had an arbitrary charac- ter, the Emperor Alexander I. of Kussia, turning to him, said in a tone of mock reproach : " And is it you, arch-re- publican as you are, who propose- this despotic measure ?" This incident was related_to me by Humboldt himself, dur- ing my last interview with him. One can therefore under- stand the depth of that esteem felt for him by the present demented king of Prussia, when the latter introduced Hum- boldt to the Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, at Prague, some four or five years ago. His Jesuitical majesty asked : " Who is the Baron Yon Humboldt, that you present him to me with so much empresseraent f I have never heard of him I" " Xot heard of him !" exclaimed the king, in honest amazement ; " wHy he is the greatest man since the De- luge !" Humboldt's large fortune was wholly expended in the prosecution of his travels and the publication of his works, and during the later years of his hfe, he was entirely depen- dent on his diplomatic pension, and the copyright of his XU INTRODUCTION. *' Kosmos." To my friend Heine, the artist, he sent his own copy (the original edition) of his " Vues des Cordil Ih'es,^^ containing some of his marginal notes. On learning that the same gentleman had been obliged to go to Ame- rica through his connexion with the events of 1848, he pre- vailed upon the king of Prussia to grant him the Order of the Red Eagle — through which recognition the official ban was removed. This is but one instance of the many acts of kindness on his part, with which I have become ac- quainted. His mind was so admirably balanced — his development was so various, and yet so complete in every dejDartment of science, that his true greatness is not so apparent as in the case of those who have risen to eminence by devoting them- selves to some special study. Perfect symmetry never produces the effect of vastness. It is only by studying the details that we comprehend the character of the whole. Humboldt, however, may be termed the father of Physical Geography, and the suggester, if not the discoverer, of that system of the distribution of plants and animals which opens to our view another field of that Divine Order, manifested in the visible world. He strove to grasp those secrets, which, perhaps, no single mind will ever be able to compre- hend— the aggregate of the laws which underlie the myste- ries of Creation, Growth, and Decay ; and though he fell short of the sublime aim, he was at least able to say, like Kepler, when he discovered the mathematical harmonies of the solar system ; " Oh, Almighty God, I think Thy thoughts after Thee !" ESTTRODUCnON. Xlll The record of such a life, even in its external aspects, is pregnant with suggestions. It is a magnilicent illustration of true success. A combination of the purest and noblest human character with splendid qualities of the mind is un- fortunately rare. Without the former, Humboldt might have achieved the same success in his own personal labors, but he could not have given the same impetus to scientific re- search in all parts of the world. The satisfaction we feel in contemplating his life arises from its completeness. In him the heart was the focus of warmth, whence radiated the lis^ht of his intellect. The Portrait which accompanies this volume, is copied from a photograph which I obtamed from Berlin, and which is a perfect representation of Humboldt, in his eighty-sixth year. Bataed Tayloe. New York, August, 1859. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ueber die Basalte am Ehein nebst Untersuchungen uber Syenit una Basanit der Alien. Berlin, 1T90 Flora Fribergensis, prodromus. 4to. Berlin, 1793 Specimen Florce sulterranecB Fribergensis et aphorismi ex physiologia chimica planiarum. 4to. Berlin, 1793 VersucTie uber die gereizten Muskel- und Kervmfasern nebst Vermu- thungen uber den Chemischen Process des Lebens in der Thier- und PflanzenweU. 2 voK, 8vo. Posen, 1797 Versv/:he uber die Chemische Zerlegung djis Luft-Kreises und uber einige andere Gegenstdnde der Naturlehre. Plates, 8vo. Bruns-^ick, 1799 Idem einer Physiognomonik der Gewaeschse. 4to. Tubingen, 1806 VersucTie uber die Electrischen Fische. 12mo. Erfurt, 1806 Physique generale et Geohgie. 4to. Paris, 1807 Essai sur la Geographic des PUxnies accompagne dun Tableau physique des Regions equinoxiaZes, fonde des mesures executees depuis le sixiem^ degrede latitude borealejmquau dixieme degre de latitude australe, par Humboldt et Bonpland. 4to. Paris, 1807 Ansichten der Natur. 2 vols., 12mo. Stutgard & Tubingen, 1808 Mdastomatologia^ sive descriptio Melastomaii et generum affinium. Plates, FoL Cassel & Paris, 1808 Conspectus longitu/iinum et latitudinum geographicarum per decur- sum annorum 1799 ad 1804, astronomia observatarum. Plates, FoL Cassel, 1808 Plantes Equinoxiales recv£illies au Mexique, dans Vile de Cuba, dans les Provinces de Caraccas, de Cumana et de Barcehne, aux Andes de la Kouvelle Granade, de Quito, et de Perou, et sur les Bords du Bio Negro, de V Orenoque, et de la Riviere des Amazones, par Ewmboldt et Boi^pland. 2 vols., FoL Paris, 1808-1809 XVI BIBLIOGRAPUY. Vues des CordilUres, ou Monumens des Peuples indigenes ie VArie- rique. Plates, FoL and 8vo. Paris, 1310 llecueil d^ Observations astronomiques, d Operations trigonomdtriques, et de JSlesures baronieiriques. Redlgees et calculees d'apris les Tables les plies exacies par J. Olimans. 2 vols., 4to. Paris, 1810 Ideen zu einer Geographie der Pflanzen. 4to. Vienna, 1811 Essai politique sur Ic Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, avec un Atlas physique et geograpthique, fonde sur les Observations astrono- miques, des Mesures trigononietriques et des Nivellemeiis barome- triques. Atlas Pol, Texte 2 vols , 4to. Paris, 1811 Recueil d' Observations de Zoologie et d'Anatomie comparee, faits dans V Ocean Atlantique, dans VInterieur du Nouveau Continent et dans la Mer du, Sud. Par Humboldt et Bonpland. 2 vols., 4to. Paris, 1811-1833 Voyage aux Regions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent^ fait en 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, et 1804. Par A. de Humboldt et A. Bonpland. Redig'e par A. de Humboldt. Avec deux Atlas, qui renferment Vun ks Vues des Cordillhres et les Monumens des Peuples indigenes de VAmerique, et V autre des Cartes geogra- pliiques et p>hysiques. 3 vols., 4to. Paris, 1814-1825 Nova Genera et Species Plantarum in Peregrinatione Orbis Novi col- legerunt, dtscripserurd, partim adumbraverunt A. Bonpland et A. de Humboldt. In ordinem digessit G. S. Kunth. 1 vols., Fol. Paris, 1815-1825 Monographie des Mclasiomacees comp)renant toutes les Plantes de cet ordre recueillies jusqu'd ce jour et notamvient au Mexique, dans Vile de Cuba, &c., mise en ordre par A. Bonpland. Fol. Paris, 181G De Naturali familia graminum. PoL Paris, 181*7 Des Lignes isothermes et de la distribution de la, chaleur sur le globe. 8vo. Paris, 1817 De Disiributione geograpMca Plantarum secundum Coeli Temperiem et Altitudinem Montium. Prolegomena. 12 mo. Paris, 1817 Memoire sur la fixation des limites des Guyanes Fran^aise et Poriu- guaise. 4to. Paris, 1818 Mimoses et autres Plantes legumineuses du Nouveau Continent, decrites et p)ubliees imr C. S. Kunth, avec Figures color iees. 2 vols., Fol. Paris, 1819 Synopsis Plantarum quas in itinere ad plagam cequiam Orbis Novi Gollegerunt Humboldt et Bonpland. 4 vols., Fol. 1822-1826 Essai geograpihique sur le Gisement des Rochers dans les deux hemi- spheres. 8vo. Paris & Strasburg, 1823 Weber den Bau und die WirJcsamkeit der VulJcane. 8vo. Heidelberg, 1824 Evaluation numerique de la population du Nouveau Continent, con- sideree sous le rapport de la difference des culies, des races, et des idiomes. 8vo. Paris, 1825 BIBLIOGPwAPnY. XVU f]ssai politique sur Vile de Cuba, avec une Carte et un Supplement qui renferme des Considerations sur la Fopulaiion, la Richesse territoriale et le Commerce de VArchipel des Antilles et de Colombia. 2 vols., 8vo. Paris, 1826 Von der in Verschiedenen Theihn der Heissen Zone am Spiegel des Meeres Staitfindenden Temperaiur. Svo. Leipzig, 1826 Ueber die Haupiursachen der Temperatur-Yerschied&aheit auf dem Erdkop&r. 4to. Beriin, 182Y Observations sur qu£lqu£S phenomenes peu connus, qu'offre le goitre sous les tropiqv£s, dans les plaines, et les plateaux des Andes. Paris, 1828 Revision des Graminees, publiees dans les Nova Genera et Species Plantarum de Humboldt et Bonpland, precedee d'un travail general sur la famille des Graminees, par C. S. Kuntli. Ouvrage accompagne de cent Planches coloriees. Fol. Paris, 1829 Ueber die bei verschiedenen Vdlkern ublichen Systeme von Zahlzeichen und iiber Ursprung des Stellenwerthes in den Indischen Zahlen. 4to. Beriin, 1829 Fragmens de Geologie et de Climdtologie Asiatique. 2 vols., 8vo. Paris, 1831 Astronomische und hypsometrische Grundlagen der Erdbeschreibung. 8vo. Stutgard & Tubingen, 1831 Tableau statisiique de Vile de Cuba pour les annees 1825 a 1829. 8vo. Paris, 1831 Examen critique de Vhistoire de la Geographic du Kouvecm Continent, et des Progres de VAstronomie nautique au XV^ et XV3 siecles. 5 vols., Svo. Paris, 1836-1839 Petrifications recueilUes en Amerique decrites par Leopold de Buch. Plates, Fol. Beriin, 1839 Asie Centrale, Recherches sur les Chaines de Montagnes et la Clima^ tologie comparee. 3 vols., Svo. Paris, 1843 K'^mos, Eniwurf einer Physischen Weltbeschreibung. 5 vols., 8vo. Stutgard & Beriin, 1845-1858 KUinere Schriften, ersterBand; Geognostischeund PhysiJcalische Erin- netungen mit einem Atlas enhaltend Umrisse von Vulkanen aits den CordiUeren von Quito und Mexico. Svo. Stutgard & Tflbingei:, 1853 ^ tettteMt^ ''♦ » « BOOK I. 1769-1'799. CHAPTER L PAGB Childhood Am> Youth, 3 CHAPTER n. Studies and Dreams, 17 BOOK 11. 1799-1804. CHAPTER I. The Sea, 35 CHAPTER n. About Cumana, 61 CHAPTER in. Towards the Orinoco, 87 CHAPTER IT. Up the Orinoco, 119 CHAPTER Y. To Cuba and Back, 190 . CHAPTER YI. Colombia and Peru,' 214 CHAPTER YII. Mexico, 264 XX CONTENTS. BOOK III. 1804-1829. CHAPTER I. PAGH Books, . 307 CHAPTER II. Central Asia, 384 BOOK IV. 1829-1859. CHAPTER I. Humboldt at Homh), -, . . 413 CHAPTER n. Back tc Tegel, 477 BOOK I. 1769-179 9. CHAPTEE I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. Three leagues from the good city of Berlin, near an arm of the Havel, called Tegel, stands, or stood ninety years ago, the old castle of Tegel. Behind it lay a grove of dark pines which separated it from the capital ; on the southern shore of the lake were the town and for- tress of Spandau, and to the north-west grassy and wooded declivities, studded with promenades and gar- dens. Doubtless this castle, gray and antiquated, had a stirring history of its own in the days of old, but of this Tradition is silent. All that we know is, that shortly before the opening of this life-history, it was the resi- dence of a Prussian commissioner of woods and forests, who had greatly beautified it by the laying out of nurseries and plantations. This commissioner, whose name w^as Yon Burgsdorf, was succeeded in 1768, or there- abouts, by Major Alexander George Yon Humboldt. Major Yon Humboldt was born in 1720. His father, Hans Paul Yon Humboldt, served as a captain in the army of Frederick William the First ; his mother was the daughter of the Prussian major and general adjutant, Yon Schweder ; it was natural therefore that he should follow the profession of arms. He served for a long 4 ANCESTORS. time in a dragoon regiment, and was then made major, and finally adjutant to Duke Frederic of Brunswick, wlio often sent him on embassies to Frederic the Great. This was in the famous seven years' war. When the war was over, in 1765, the great Frederic made him one of his chamberlains ; he was also attendant chamberlain on Elizabeth, the newly-married princess of Prussia. His official duties compelled him to reside in Potsdam, where he probably met the lady who became his wife. A descendant of the family of Colomb, which emigrated from Burgundy, where it was celebrated for its glass works, she was the widow of a Baron Yon Holwede Major Yon Humboldt persuaded her to change her weeds for the orange wreath, so they married and settled in Potsdam. Their first child, WilHam, was born there on the 22d of June, 1767. They lived in Potsdam but a short time, two or three years at most, for the marriage of the princess being at length dissolved, she had no fur- ther need of an attendant chamberlain, consequently Major Yon Humboldt was at liberty to change his resi- dence, if so inclined. He exchanged Potsdam for Berlin, and lived partly there, and partly in his castle at Tegel. How he became possessed of the castle is not stated. It was originally a hunting seat of the great Elector, and a hunting establishment was kept up there under Frederic the Great. The Major's second son, Frederic Henry Alexander, was born at Berlin on the 14th of September, 1769. It was principally at Tegel, however, that his childhood passed. Of the first years of his life nothing remarkable has been related. There is a sameness in the lives of chil- dren, no matter what their rank or talents. If they PICTUEES OF CHILDHOOD. 5 happen to become famous in after years, admiring and credulous biographers tell wonderful stories about them, but for the most part these stories are myths. The infancy of the great, we * think, should be surrounded with marvellous influences. It will never do for us to make them common mortals like ourselves. So if we fail to discover any traits of early divinity we must boldly invent them. Should the cheat be discovered the world will forgive it, for the sake of the pleasure it has given them. That the childhood of Alexander, however, was an exceedingly happy one, cannot be doubted, for if ever Nature was kindly disposed towards any of her children, it was towards him. He was born of wealthy and noble parents, who mingled, by virtue of their rank and worth, with the most illustrious of the land. His home, the old castle of Tegel, situated in a pleasant country, was surrounded by charming and varied land- scapes. His earliest glimpse of Nature was beautiful enough to make him desire to see the rest of the book : it was a fair page that opened before his childish eyes. And here, if the reader is imaginative, he can employ himself in filling up the outlines of the first five or six years of Alexander's life. He may picture him in the chambers of the old castle, climbing up his father's knee, and wondering, as he runs his fingers through his gray hair, what the wrinkles on his forehead mean ; or tugging at the gown of his mother to make her answer some un- answerable question ; or, likelier still, scrambling on the floor with his brother William, and a heap of toys. Some day when playing alone, he sees the bookcase in the corner, and remembering, as in a dream, the pic- 6 HIS FIRST TEACHER CAMPE. tures with which the nurse pacified him when he was sick, he goes to it, and opening the door softly, lights by a sort of impish instinct, on the costliest volume on the shelves. It is some famous work on natural history, a ponderous quarto filled with coloured prints of strange plants and animals, and still stranger men. He pores over them with great eyes. Fearing at last that he is in mischief, for she has heard nothing of him for a long time, his mother steals into the room, and finds him fast asleep, with the book in his lap. As he grows older he takes himself out of doors on all possible occasions. Now he is in the garden, plucking and studying flowers and grasses ; now in the pine grove filling his pockets with last year's cones and needles, and now by the edge of the lake, skimming pebbles over its surface, or watching its fleet of mirrored clouds. In such wise, says Fancy, who is sometimes truer than Fact, lived the boy Alexander, until 1775, when his education commenced. The science of education, a science which is still in its infanc}^, the opinion of its professors to the contrary notwithstanding, was at that time agitating the European world. The new method of Rousseau, which aimed at the physical as well as the mental development of its pupils, and which considered the study of natural science full as important as that of metaphysics, and the classics, had made many adherents in Germany, and among others Joachim Heinrich Campe. Born in 1746, Campe studied theology at Helmstadt and at Halle, and was appointed, in 1773, chaplain to the Prince of Prussia's regiment in Potsdam. He fulfilled for two years the duties of his sacred calling in that doubtful sphere of action, and feeling himself much more EOBIXSOX CRUSOE. 7 fitted to teach children than men, and those men soldters^ he was transplanted by Major Von Humboldt to teach his sons, at the old castle of Tegel. A ripe and varied scholar even then, he enjoyed in after life the reputation of being, next to Klopstock, the greatest philologist and critic of German style. He is the author of a Grerman dictionary, and other works calculated to improve the language. But the books by which he is best known are those of travel and adventure. The chiefest of these are his "Discovery of America," and " Robinson Crusoe." Looking back from the vantage ground of Time, and bearing in mind what Alexander Yon Humboldt has done, what might have seemed a trivial thing then, a mere lucky chance, now seems the special ordering of Nature. He was fitted, we have since learned, to per- form a great work for her ; but before he could perform that work it was necessary that she should reveal it to him. If the child is to become the father of the man, the man must somehow be brought before the mental eye of the child. His infancy must be nurtured by noble books, and wise teachers, or "By solemn vision, and briglit silver dream." What better teacher could the boy have had, considering the work he was to do, than one who translated that marvellous fiction of the homely old truth-teller, De Foe, — the fresh, unfadins:, world-renowned Robinson Crusoe? It was the book of all others to fire his youthful imagina- tion with the desire of travel, and to fill his mind with the unconquerable spirit of adventure. It was a happy day when Joachim Heinrich Campe, philologist, critic, 8 CHRISTIAN KUXTH. translator, and finally bookseller, became the tutcr of Humboldt. He remained in the family a year, teaching the eldest boy the languages, and the youngest, who was then in his seventh year, whatever he was pleased to learn. Alexander was not so robust as his brother, for his health was considered delicate for many years, nor was he regarded as his equal in mental endowments. Their next tutor was a young man of twenty, poor in this world's goods, but rich in what the proverb declares to be better than houses and lands — Learning. His name was Christian Kunth. He is said to have pos- sessed an extraordinary knowledge of Grerman, Latin, and French literature, and to have been deeply read in philosophy and history. He taught William the lan- guages, and Alexander the natural sciences. One studied Man in classic antiquity and art, the other the World in its manifold forms and appearances. It seems strange, not to say impossible, for children of eight and ten to pursue such profound studies, but we must remember that these were not common children. Nor was their teacher Kunth a common man. Had he been he would have stopped here. But having sense as well as learning, he took care of their bodies as well as their minds. Instead of merely cramming them with books until they became unwholesome monstrosities, mental ^ja/^ de foie gras, he gave their thoughts and limbs free play, in the wind, and dew, and sunshine. They had holidays whenever they needed them; long walks with Kunth in the woods and fields; sails on the blue bosom of the Tegel lake ; excursions to the fortress of Spandau, and now and then a flying visit to Berlin. GOETHE AT TEGEL. 9 Or tliej threw aside their books, and ran off by them- selves, like the children they were, and romped and played to their hearts' content. This kept the roses of health in their cheeks (Alexander's as yet were delicate buds), and enabled them to "bear their weiofht Of learning lightly, like a flower." But for this it might have been a nightshade of deadly power. Besides, their life was diversified by the coming and going of visitors : for their father was hospitable, and the castle was always open to his friends. Retiring from the world with honor, the world sought him, in the shape of its princes, statesmen, and scholars, to say nothing of generals, colonels, and the like, his old com- panions in arms. Among other celebrities who enjoyed the hospitalities of Tegel was Goethe, who accompanying Duke Karl August to Berlin in May 1778, to see a grand review, strolled over Schonhausen one morning and dined at the castle, with the Major and his family. Little did the man of thirty know that he saw in the boy of nine, one who was destined to accomplish as much in Science, as he himself in Literature. But the time came when he knew him, and admired him, none more warmly. Among the most frequent of the visitors at the castle was Dr. Ernst Ludwig Heim, of Spandau, who, having attended the now officially-defunct head-ranger. Von Burgsdorf, continued his visits, medical and friendly, to nis sucjsessor, Major Yon Humboldt. And the major stood in need of his services, for his health, which had 1^ 10 DE. HEIM. been broken for some time, now began to fail rapidly. Day after day Dr. Ileim might have been seen on horse- back, with his saddle-bags full of medicine, rounding the stretch of land between Spandau and Tegel. But he could do little for the shattered constitution and the sixty years of his patient. He died in January 1779, and was buried at Tegel. After the major's death Dr. Heim continued to come as usual, not now bringing medicine, let us hope, but with a book under his arm for Kunth, or possibly for William and Alexander. Or perhaps it was a rare flower from his conservatory. For as long ago as the days of Yon Burgsdorf he was noted for his knowledge of foreign trees and plants, and he helped the head ranger to lay out the nurseries and plantations, which the Humboldts were now enjoying. He would drop in near their dinner hour, and being pressed would remain to dinner, and often for hours after, instructing the boys in botany, and explaining to them the twenty-four classes of the system of Linnaeus. They could now know the names, classes, and characteristics of the flowers, which they had before admired ignorantly. William was con- sidered the cleverest, because he could easily compre- hend the doctor's lessons, and retain the botanical names : Alexander was not, or did not seem, so apt. The brothers went with the doctor in his excursions about the neighbourhood, and in May 1783, were present with him in Spandau, where, they saw Frederick the Great reviewing his grenadiers — one of his annual amuse- ments. But grand reviews, country excursions, after-dinner chats on botany, and the cosy comforts' of home, must AT SCHOOL IN BEKUN. 11 soon come to an end. For though the widowed mother lives only in her children, she knows that they must one day be men, and go out into the world. So the best thing they can do is to go to Berlin, and pursue their studies, and enlarge their experiences. To Berlin they go. They are instructed in Greek and the modern lan- guages, William having great philological talent, while Alexander, whose love of the natural sciences grows with his growth, continues the stady of botany under the celebrated botanist Wildenow. Kunth, who accompanies them, engages Engel, Klein, Dohn, and others to give them complete courses of lectures on philosophy, law and political economy. Nor do they neglect the litera- ture of their own land and time. They read Goethe and Schiller together. William prefers " Werter," and "Don Carlos," and their art- writings ; Alexander, while he ad- mires these, prefers Goethe's more abstruse researches in natural history. So passes the time, now in the bustle of the capital, and now in the quiet of the old castle at home. Dear old Tegel ! it is doubly dear to them now. For there their mother lives, and there lies their dead father's dust. In 1786 they commenced their academical life in the University of Frankfort on the Oder, where they re- mained nearly two years, William devoting himself to the study of law, and Alexander to political economy, In 1788 they removed to the University of Gottingen. The name of this University will remind the reader of English comic poetry, of Canning's famous song in the burlesque drama, " The Eovers," ] 2 BLUMENBACII. " Whene'er with haggard eyes I view This dungeon that I'm rotting in, I think of those companions true, Who studied with me at the U- -niversity of Gottingen, -niversity of Grottingen." The stanzas are quizzical enough, but the University itself was a staid, grave place, fall of earnest students, and learned professors. Among the latter we may mention three who were celebrated in their different branches of literature and science, and who helped to mould the minds of William and Alexander. These were Blumen- bach, Heyne, and Eichhorn. Eichhorn, the professor of Arabic, was a profound scholar, especially in biblical literature, of which he may be considered the historian. He filled the chair of Theology. In the chair of Archae- ology sat Christian Gottlob Heyne, a venerable man of sixty, who had risen from the lowest circumstances by the force of his will, and his talents. His specialite was classic bibliography. He edited Homer, Pindar, Diodo- riis Siculus, Epictetus, Virgil, Tibullus, and other Greek and Eoman authors, great and small, enriching their text with learned commentaries. When the Humboldts be- came his scholars he was busy making out a catalogue of the immense library of the University. Last was Johann Frederic Blumenbach, professor of physiology and comparative anatomy. Passionately at- tached to science all his life, which by the way was nearly as long as that of his famous pupil, Humboldt, his love of anatomy commenced at the early age of ten, from accidentally seeing a skeleton in the house of one of his father's friends, a physician of course. He soon had a GEORGE FOESTEK. 13 collection of bones and skulls of liis own, and taking tc medicine in Jena, obtained his degree in Gottingen in 1775. The next year he was appointed conservator of the noble Museum of Natural History in the University, which he enriched by numerous collections of great value. He preceded Cuvier in many of his discoveries, institut- ing, shortly before the Humboldts entered his classes, the method of comparing different varieties of human skeletons, and skeletons of animals. To the care of these famous professors William and Alexander were com- mitted by their old tutor and friend, Kunth, and they remained under their teachings for two years. Strongly attracted by Eichhorn and Heyne, William pursued his favorite studies, philology and art, while Alexander speculated on " the ground plan of man " in the lecture room of Blumenbach. But the person who exercised the most influence over him while at Gottingen, was the son-in-law of his teacher, Heyne — George Forster. Nor is this at all strange, for the experience of every day shows us that the influence of man over man outweighs that of books a thousand fold. There are times, indeed, when even a bad man is more potent than many good books. Blu- menbach, Heyne, Eichhorn, and the rest, excellent and indispensable as they were, were books, so to speak, dead books to the realistic Alexander, while Forster was a man, a live man. He had seen what they had only dreamed of The feats of Alexander's mythical friend, Crusoe, were outdone by Forster. Not that Forster had ever been shipwrecked on a solitary island ; but he had done better — he had put a girdle round the earth. Some sixteen years before, when a bov of eighteen, he had 14 TRIBUTE TO HIS MEMOKY. accompanied Captain Cook as a naturalist in that great navigator's second voyage round the world. After- wards professor of natural history in Ilesse Casscll, and at Wilna, he was now spending the summer with his wife at the house of his father-in-law, Heyne. He had written several works on natural history, geography, philosophy, and politics, besides a history of his voyage round the world. Writing of Forster in. 1844, more than fifty years after his death, Humboldt paid the following tribute to his memory : , " Through him began a new era of scientific voyages, the aim of which was to arrive at a knowledge of the comparative history and geography of different countries. Gifted with delicate esthetic feelings, and retaining a vivid impression of the pictures with which Tahiti and the other then happy islands of the- Pacific had filled his imagination, as in recent times that of Charles Darwin, George Forster was the first to depict in pleasing colors the changing stages of vegetation, the relations of climate and of articles of food in their influence on the civiliza- tion of mankind, according to differences of original de- scent and habitation. All that can give truth, individu- ality, and distinctiveness to the delineation of exotic nature is united in his works. We trace, not only in his admirable description of Cook's second voyage of dis- covery, but still more in his smaller writings, the germ of that richer fruit which has since matured." Such was George Forster, who, after Campe, was the chief instrument in determining the future life of Alex* ander Von Humboldt. They were fast friends during the short period of their intercourse in Gottingen, and all the time they could spare from their customary DREAMS OF TRAVEL. 15 duties, was spent in eacli other's society. What conver- sations they must have had of that e\entful journey round the world, and what schemes they planned for the future ! The active imagination of the young student, fresh from the reading of wonderful adventures in the New World, the chronicles of Yasco Nunes de Balboa, Pizarro, and the rest of those grand old Spaniards, was fired with the thought of making new voyages and dis- coveries, which shoald cast the old ones for ever in the shade. Yoyages in the long swell of tropic seas, under constellations that never shine to European eyes : sailing along the dim outlines of the western continent, dark with the long belt of the pathless forests, or ragged with the peaks of inland mountains, capped with eternal snow : or up great rivers a thousand leagues in length, on, on, into the heart of the New World, the primeval solitudes of Nature ! The best hours of a man's life are those that he wastes in dreams, and happy is he who can make them true, as Humboldt did. But this was recreation rather than study, and as he went to the University to study, a graver mood soon succeeded. The University was rich in scientific collec- tions, none of which were neglected by the earnest young student. When not attending the lectures of Blumen- bach and Heyne, which were generally given in their own houses, he pursued his researches and experiments in. the University Museum. To-day in the laboratory among its vials and crucibles, testing acids and gases, or in the botanic gardens, theorizing over tropic plants and trees: to-morrow in the anatomical room, sur- rounded by casts and models ; and many a long night in the observatory unwinding the dances of the stars. 16 TOO LATE TO WRITE OF HIS YOUTH. William meanwliile was deep in the philosophy of Kant, and the esthetic speculations of Goethe and Schiller Occasionally the brothers strolled through the city, arm in arm. Led on by their vagrant fancies they would cross into the market-place to watch the fountain splash- ing its broad basin ; lounge on the bridge and look at the boats below; or quickening their steps they would hasten to the ramparts, and saunter up and down the shaded avenue of lime trees. If the day was beautiful, they wandered out of the city gates into the fertile valleys beyond, and perhaps clomb the Hainberg before they returned. So passed their university life. It ended in the autumn of 1789. It is to be regretted that we have no fuller account of the youth of Humboldt, for if there is anything interest- ing in the life of a great man like him, it is a minute relation of his youth. We want a living record of his sayings and doings in the ductile period of his genius : even his sports, if we can recover nothing better, will give us some insight into his character. We have pre- sented, as the reader will perceive, the merest skeleton of the first twenty years of Humboldt's life. He may clothe it with flesh, if he pleases, we can do no more. Nor can others at this late day. It is easy to write the biographies of those who die young, they leave so many behind who recollect all that we desire to know; but when a man of genius lives to the age of ninety, as Humboldt did, and leaves no auto-biography, the sweetest time of his life is lost, " In the dark backward and abysm of Time." CHAPTEE n. STUDIES AND DREAMS. Lsr the summer of 1789, Campe. who had been foi some years canon and councillor in Brunswick, deter- mined to make a trip to Paris, to be present at the funeral of French despotism, and it was deemed advisable for William to accompany him. They arrived in Paris on the 3d of August. Not being fortunate enough while there to follow Tyranny to its grave, Campe revenged his disappointment by doing what most authors would have done in his place — he wrote patriotic letters in favor of the revolution, and attracted much attention. Alexander remained behind, probably at Gottingen, pur- suing his favorite studies, and constantly corresjDonding with Forster, who was then at Mayence, where he was councillor and librarian of the University. The plan of the great transatlantic journey, formed a year or two be- fore, was laid aside for a time, in order that he might study what was then a new science — Geology. He was deep in the writings of the then celebrated geologist, Abraham Gottlob Werner. In his peculiar department of science Werner was un- doubtedly the most remarkable man of his time. The son of a poor iron- worker, he commenced his career as a 18 WERNER, THE GEOLOGIST. mineralogist in the Mineralogicjll Academy of Freyberg, before be was out of his teens. From thence he went to Leipsic, where he busied himself in defining the external character of minerals, experimenting, and eventually, in 1774, publishing a work on the subject. Up to that time the descriptive language of mineralogists had been too indefinite to convey accurate information, or to en- able those of different countries to understand each other. After publishing this work, which was long a manual, Werner returned to the Mineralogical Academy at Frey- berg, and took charge of its noble cabinet of natural history. He lectured on mineralogy, and the art of min- ing, rendering the latter intelligible to all, by his simpli- fication of the machinery, and his drawings and figures. His cabinet of minerals was unrivalled for its complete- ness and arrangement, numbering one hundred thousand specimens. He wrote largely in the scientific reviews of that day, the reading of which probably drew the atten- tion of Humboldt towards him. He contributed more to extend the practical knowledge of mineralogy than any one who preceded him, although his method of classifying minerals according to their external charac- teristics, instead of their internal essences, if we may use the phrase, was rather emjoirical than scientific. His geology, too, was shallow. His observations were made on the limited portion of the earth's surface in his own vicinity, and the* succession of rock-formations which he found there, extended, he reasoned, over the whole sur- fiice of the globe. A wider range of observation would have shown him, that at a little distance from Freyberg, many of his supposed universal rock-formations were not to be found, and that other rocks supply their place. nUMBOLDT'S FIEST BOOK. 19 But as lie was obstinate in his theory he remained igno- rant of this fact. He contended for the aqueous forma- tion of almost evevj kind of rock, the Neptunic theory as it was called, maintaining that even pumice stone was the production of water. He would, not visit, however, the volcanic districts of Italy, and the ancient volcanoes of France, fearing perhaps that he might be led to aban • don. his first theory — a common fault of scientific men. Still, considering the time in which he lived, and the little that was then known of the true formation of the earth, Werner was entitled to much credit, and is still honorably mentioned as a pioneer in science. He raised the art of mining into the science of geology. Such was Abraham Grottlob Werner, over whose mul- tifarious writings Alexander was now poring. That they made a deep impression on him may be gathered from the fact that we find him, in company with his friend Forster, in the spring of 1790, making a mineral- ogical journey. Their route was to the Khine, through Holland, and to Eno^land. While in Endand Forster introduced him to Sir Joseph Banks, the famous Presi- dent of the Royal Society. Humboldt studied the rock- formations of the countries through which he passed, especially the basaltic rocks of the Rhine, and embodied the result in a small work which was published in that year. It was entitled, " Mineralogical Observations on some Basaltic Formations of the Rhine," and was in- tended to support the Neptunic theory of Werner. Forster collected materials for his magnum opus, " The Views of the Lower Rhine." In the meantime William, who had returned from Paris, vibrated between Erfurt, where he and the beautiful daughter of the president. 20 DAYUOOK AND LEDGER. "Von Daclierodcn, to whom he was betrothed, were per- fecting themselves in the art of Love, and Weimar, the residence of Schiller, with whom he was intimate. Alexander sympathized with his brother in the cha- racter which he was then playing in the delightful drama of life, bnt showed no inclination to appear in the same role himself It was not that he loved woman and so- ciety less, but that he loved solitude and wisdom more. Besides, had he not his great transatlantic journey to make? To do this properly it was necessary that he should have a more thorough worldly training. So while William, who was appointed councillor of lega- tion, and assessor to the court of Berlin, went thither to familiarize himself with his duties, after which he in- tended to marry, Alexander, choosing the department of finance, set off for Hamburg, and entering the Com- mercial Academy of Busch and Ebeling, studied the practical part of book-keeping. Ere long he was initi- ated into its mysteries ; but beyond the sense of satis- faction which the performance of a duty always gives, we suspect that he found no delight in them. Evidently he preferred the leaves of flowers, luminous with the hand-writing of Nature, to the leaves of his day-books and ledgers, with their long rows of black figures, and their monotonous horizons of red lines. And instead of worshipping gold and silver, as a true book-keeper would have done, he had a scientific weakness for the less pre- cious metals. He still pursued his mineralogical and botanical studies. Indeed, he was so fond of the latter, that he would often take a tramp in mid winter to gather the mosses which onlj^ grow at that time. His stay in Hamburg was short. For in addition to weexer's lectures. 21 his admiration for "Werner, and bis growing taste for mining, one of his acquaintances, Leopold Yon Buch of Berlin, had gone to Freyberg to study mining under Wer- ner, who had just published a new theory of the forma- tion of metallic veins. This determined Alexander to vacate his high stool at the mercantile desk, and to set off for Freyberg. Before going, however, he hastened to Berlin, to enjoy for a time the society of his mother, who doubtless found the old castle of Tegel too melan- choly a place to live in, since the death of her husband, and the absence of her sons. William was there, with his beloved Caroline, and his old tutor and friend, Kunth. For Kunth was one of the family, if untiring devotion .to their interests could make him so. After his trip to Berlin Alexander proceeded to Frey- berg, where he remained a year, employing himself during that time in attending the lectures of Werner, in looking over his magnificent collection, and in visiting the mines in the neighbourhood. Freyberg had a fine cathedral, and several remarkable monuments and works of art, but nothing that would have led Humboldt thither except its mines. There were over a hundred of these in the country about; silver mines, copper mines, lead mines, and mines of cobalt. How the enthusiastic young mineralogist must have revelled in them ! In the spring of 1792 he was appointed assessor to the mining and smelting departments at Berlin ; in the latter part of the same year he was removed to Bayreuth, as superintendent of mines, in the newly-acquired Fran- o^nian districts, and officially commissioned to remodel the mining operations there. He was general director ol the mines in the principalities of Bayreuth and Anspach. 22 DIRECTOR OF MINES. His duties were many and arduous, for in addition to his scientific labours, he superintended the erection of public institutions in these districts. Bayreuth is divided into two parts, Oberland and Unterland. The former, which came more immediately under his supervision, is a hilly region, intersected by branches of the great Fichtelberg, and rich in mines of iron and other minerals. Humboldt spent a considerable part of his time in jour- neying over the country, visiting the various mines, and directing the operations of the miners. He descended into the mines for the purpose of making observations on the fungi that grew in the shafts, or, pursuing his journeys, he botanized by the way. If the region was mountainous he studied the rock-formations, and specu- lated on the Neptunic theory of his teacher, Werner. Busy as he must have been at this time he wrote largely for the scientific journals and periodicals, contributing to them the result of his experiments on the physical and chemical laws of metallurgy, and on the susceptibility of plants, their modes of nourishment, colour, etc. He also published a work of local botany, — a " Flora of Cryptogamic Plants in the Neighbourhood of Freyberg," and dedicated it to his former teacher, Wildenow. In 1794 be accompanied the provincial minister, Yon Hardenberg, on a political mission to the Rhine. He also made several tours through the Alp districts and Silesia, and an official trip into the province of Prussia and Poland. Not being able yet to begin his great jour- ney he contented himself with these small ones — slight studies as it were for the great picture that was to be. In 1795 he resigned his situation as director of mines, and went to Vienna, where he renewed his passion for DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. 23 botany, studying to great advantage an excellent collec- tion of exotic plants which he found there, and enjoying the society of the geologist Freiesleben. He also studied galvanism, and made a variety of interesting experi- ments. He planned an excursion into Switzerland with Freiesleben, but postponed it to make an Italian journey. The war, which was then raging, confined him to Upper Italy, so that he was obliged to return without visiting the volcanic regions of Naples and Sicily. Shortly before leaving Bayreuth he had received a letter from his brother Wilham, who, having finished his role as a lover, had now assumed that of a husband, telling him that the health of their mother was failing. She is ill at Tegel, the letter ran — (it was dated in June, 1795) — but we, William and Caroline, will remain with her until the spring. On his return from Italy another letter reached him — one of those mournful letters which every man sooner or later receives. It bore the escut- cheon of death — a black seal. There was a new grave at Tegel. His mother was dead. In the beginning of the year 1797 he went to Jena, where his brother AV^illiam was then residing. Here he found Freiesleben and Groethe. Goethe was so much interested in his studies in anatomy that he devoted the rest of his stay in Jena to that science. On his return to Weimar he wrote to Schiller : " I have spent the time with Humboldt agreeably and usefully : my natural his- tory studies have been roused from their winter sleep by his presence." And Schiller wrote back shortly after: " Although the whole family of Humboldt, down to the servant, lie ill with ague, they still speak only of great journeys." 24 LEOPOLD VON BUCU. But sick or well, Ilumboldt's studies went on. He con- tinued his experiments on galvanism, turning his atten- tion chiefly to the laws of muscular irritation, and tha disposition of the nerves of living animals when under the galvanic influence. He wrote a work on the subject, " Experiments on Nervous and Muscular Irritation," and sent it to his old teacher, Blumenbach, who published it for him, with notes and comments of his own. The brothers went to Berlin in May to settle the family inheritance, previous to making a journey together into Italy. William's share was the old castle at Tegel, Alex- ander's the estate of Kingenwalde, in Neumark. He sold it to the poet Franz Yon Kleist, to raise the neces- sary funds for his great journey. The unsettled state of affairs ia Italy preventing the contemplated journey, William and his family determined to proceed to Paris. Alexander went with them as far as Saltzburg, where he was induced to stay awhile by his friend Leopold Yon Buch. Buch, who had just pub- lished a scientific work, " Outlines of a Mineralogical De- scription of Landeck," had been, as the reader remem- bers, one of his fellow-students in the Mineralogical Academy at Freyberg, and was like him a believer in the Neptunic theory of Werner. Humboldt afterwards called him " the greatest geologist of the age." A scientific trip was proposed, and the pair started off on foot, armed with their geological hammers, and a change of linen. They travelled through several cantons of Saltzburg, and Styria, and reached the Tyrolese Alps. While on this Bohemian trip Humboldt made the acquaintance of Lord Bristol, an English nobleman, who had visited the coasts of Greece and Hlyria, and had planned an expedition PEOJECTED VISIT TO EGYPT. 25 to Upper Egypt. The party were to be provided witli astronomical instruments and able draughtsmen, and were to ascend the Nile as far as Assouan, after examin- ing minutely the positions of the Said between Tentyris and the cataracts. The expedition was to occupy eight months. Humboldt consented to join it, on condition that he should be allowed to continue the journey over Palestine and Svria, and went to Paris to make the necessary preparations. He arrived at Paris in the spring of 1798, and was warmly welcomed by his brother William, whose house was a rallying point for all his educated countrymen. The family led a pleasant life during their stay in the capital: gave dinner parties, esthetic teas, etc., and en- joyed themselves at the Parisian theatres. " The comedy,'* wrote Frau Yon Humboldt, " is excellent." " My little ones would please you. Caroline grows very amiable ; she is delicate, and has a rare degree of sentimentality, perfectly natural, however, as you may imagine. Her brother William is handsome, much more rough, very naughty, self-willed, and yet exceedingly good-natured. Theodore is the most amiable child I ever saw : he is stout, and almost fat, and yet looks slender ; his little face has an expression of merriment, and yet his glance seems to indicate something more profound. His eyes are as if you gaze into the heavens. The white in them is quite blue, and the eyeball brown. His hair is light, and his mouth the prettiest I ever saw in a child. If you could see the boy he would make a fool of you, as he does of me." The Humboldts were surrounded by celebrities of all sorts, artists, poets, statesmen, and savans. Among 2 26 baudin's expeditiox. others who patronised them was the celebrated Madamo de Stael, who called William, who had praised her works highly, it is scarcely necessary to say, " la ^9/^^^ grande capacite de VEurope^ Had the flattering Corinne chris- tened Alexander so, she w^ould not have been far from the truth. The political aspect of Europe destroyed the plan of the Egyptian journey, as it had already done the Italian one, and Lord Bristol having been arrested at Milan, it was given up. Another scheme, however, was soon set afoot, for Humboldt now learned that the National Mu- seum of France w^as preparing an expedition under the command of Captain Baudin. The purpose of this expedi- tion was to visit the Spanish possessions of South America, from the mouth of the river Plata, to the kingdom of Quito and the isthmus of Panama. It was to visit the archipelago of the Pacific, explore the coasts of New Holland, from Yan Dieman's Land to that of Nuyts» after w^hich the vessels were to stop at Madagascar, and return by the Cape of Good Hope. Humboldt had but little confidence in Baudin, who had given cause of dis- content to the court of Vienna when he was commis- sioned to conduct to Brazil the botanist, Yan der Schott ; but as he could not hope with his owm resources to make a voyage of such extent, he determined to take the chances of the expedition. He obtained permission to embark, with his instruments, in one of the vessels destined for the South Sea, reserving to himself the right to leave Captain Baudin whenever he thought pro- per. Michaux and Bonpland were to accompany the expedition as naturalists. The war breaking out afresh in Italy and Germany, AIME BONPLAND. 27 and the Frencli government needing the funds for some- thing more solid than science, it was postponed to an indefinite }x?riod. Truly this was the pursuit of travel under difficulties. It is an ill wind however that blows nobody good. The failure of the expedition was no interruption to the friendship which Humboldt had formed with Bonpland. Aime Bonpland, the naturalist, then in his twenty -fifth year, was a native of Kochelle, France. His father was a physician, and he studied the same profession, but the revolutionary authorities got hold of him before he could finish his studies, and made him a surgeon on a man- of-war. When peace was restored he went to Paris, and became a pupil of the celebrated Corvisart, who had established a clinical school at the hospital of La Charite. It was at this time that Humboldt and he met. They were friends at once. Understanding anatomy and botany better than Humboldt did, he gave him further instructions in those studies, receiving from him in exchange a knowledge of naturalhistorj' and mineralogy. Humboldt's friendship with Bonpland, the society that he met at the house of his brother William, and his own scientific attainments soon introduced him to the notice of the naturalists and mathematicians of Paris. He mingled with the most eminent French savans as their equal. He pursued his experiments before and after the fiulure of the expedition of Baudin, working in concert with Gay Lussac, of whom more hereafter, with whom he undertook eudiometric investigations of the chemical analysis of the atmosphere. The result of their labors was embodied in a joint production, " Kesearchcs on the Composition of the Atmosphere." He also wrote a 28 STARTS FOR AFRICA. work on subterranean gases, the fruit of his experience in the mines of Bayreuth and Anspach. In the autumn there was a prospect of another expe- dition. The Swedish consul, Skioldebrand, was at Paris on his way to embark at Marseilles, on a special mission from his government with presents to the Dey of Algiers. He had resided a long time on the coast of Africa, and being highly respected by the government of Algiers, he could, he thought, easily procure permis- sion for Humboldt to visit the chain of the Atlas moun- tains. A portion of these mountains had been visited by M. Desfontaines ; but no mineralogist had yet ex- amined them. Besides this inducement the consul despatched every year a vessel for Tunis, where the pilgrims embarked for Mecca, and he promised Hum- boldt to convey him by this means to Egypt. The opportunity was too good to be lost. Humboldt com- pleted his collection of instruments, and purchased works relating to the countries he intended to visit, and bidding adieu to his brother, and Frau Caroline, not forgetting the delicate Caroline, junior, the handsome but naughty William, and the amiable Theodore with his blue eyes and light hair, he repaired to Marseilles with his friend Bonpland. They impatiently awaited the Swedish frigate, which was expected at the end of October; several times a day they climbed the mountain of Notre Dame de la Garde, which commands an extensive out- look on the Mediterranean, eagerly watching every sail on the horizon. Two months passed, and no frigate came. The papers at length informed them that she had suffered severely in a storm on the coast of Portugal, and had been obliged to enter the port of Cadiz to refit SPAIN. 29 She would not be at Marseilles till spring. Still persist- ing in their intention of visiting Africa, they found a small vessel of Ragusa on the point of setting sail for Tunis, and agreed ^vith the captain for their passage. Before the vessel sailed they learned that the government of Tunis, inimical to la gr ancle nation^ was persecuting its residents in Barbary, and that every person coming from a French port was thrown into a dungeon. The journey was abandoned. Kot to be baffled, however, they re- solved to pass the winter in Spain, in hopes of embark- ing the next spring, either at Carthagena or Cadiz. They crossed Catalonia and the kingdom of Valencia, visiting the ruins of Tarragona and ancient Saguntum. They made an excursion from Barcelona to Montserrat, and saw the hermits that inhabit its lofty peaks. Hum- boldt ascertained by astronomical observations the posi- tion of several points important for the geography of Spain, and determined by the barometer the heights of the central plain. The inclination of the needle, and the intensity of the magnetic forces came in for a share of his attention. They arrived at Madrid in March, 1799, and Humboldt was presented to the king at Aranjuez by the minister from the court of Saxony, who was himself a mineralo- gist. The -king received him graciously. He explained to his majesty the motives which led him to undertake his journey to the New World, and presented a memoir on the subject to the secretary of state. Don Mariano Luis de Urquijo, the minister, supported Humboldt's demand, and obtained for the travellers two passports, one from the first secretary of the state, the other from the ccuncil of the Indies. The good time had come at 80 CORUNNA. last. " Never," says Humboldt, " had so extensive a permission been granted to any traveller, and never had any foreigner been honored by more confidence on the part of the Spanish government." The savans of Madrid offered the travellers great inducements to stay awhile among them. Don Casimir Ortega, the abbe Pourret, and the learned authors of the Flora of Peru opened to them their rich collections. They examined part of the recently discovered plants of Mexico, from drawings which had been sent to the Museum of Natural History of Madrid, and obtained from the chemist Proust, and the mineralogist Hergen, some curious details of the mineral substances of America. They could have spent a long time usefully as well as pleasantly in the Spanish capital, but bearing in mind their previous disappointments they departed about the middle of May, en route for Corunna, from whence they intended to embark for Cuba. They crossed a part of Old Castile and the kingdoms of Leon and Galicia. The snow still covered the lofty granitic tops of the Guadarama, but in the deep valleys of Galicia the rocks were clothed with cistuses and arborescent heaths. Pursuing his geological researches on the way Humboldt examined the mountains between Astorga and Corunna, and found that many of them were com- posed of graywacke. Near Corunna he came upon granitic ridges which contained tin ore. Arriving at Corunna they sought Don Raphael Clavijo, the superintendent of the dockyards, to whom they had recommendations from the Spanish minister, and the chief secretary of state. He advised them to embark on board the frigate Pizarro, which was soon to FAEE^VELL LETTEKS. 31 sail for Cuba, in company witli the Alcudia, the packet- boat of the month of May, which had been detained by an English fleet, then blockading the port in order to cut off the communication between Spain and her colonies. They concluded to follow his advice, and arrangements were made to receive their instruments on board the Pizarro. Don Eaphael ordered the captain to stop at Teneriffe, as long as Humboldt should deem necessary, that the travellers might visit the port of Orotava, and ascend the peak. It was ten days before their instruments were em- barked and the vessel was ready to sail. They spent that time in preparing the plants that they had collected in the beautiful valleys of Galicia, which they were the first naturalists to explore, and in examining the fuci and mollusca, which the northwest winds had cast on the rocks. Crossing from Corunna to Ferrol, a little town on the other point of the bay, they made several experi- ments on the temperature of the ocean, by means of a valved thermometrical sounding lead, and found that the neighborhood of a sand bank is revealed before the lead can be made use of, by the quick decrease in the temperature of the water, and that the seaman can there- fore perceive the approach of danger much sooner by the thermometer than by the lead. The time of departure drawing near Humboldt wrote farewell letters to his friends in Germany and Paris. As before leaving Paris he had agreed with Captain Baudin, that if the expedition for discoveries in the Pacific, which seemed to be adjourned for several years, should take place at an earlier period, he would endeavor to return from Algiers and join it, at some port in 32 OFF AT last! France or Spain ; lie now wrote him that if the govern- ment persisted in sending him by Cape Horn, he would meet him at Montevideo, Chili, or Lima, or wherever else he should touch in the Spanish colonies. This done he was ready to bid the Old World adieu. The English squadron was still off the harbor, but a storm coming up on the 5th of June, it was obliged to quit the coast, and make for the open sea. They seized the opportunity and set sail, cheered by a pleasing prophecy, from those who saw the Pizarro weigh anchor, that they would certainly be captured in three days. They sailed at two o'clock in the afternoon. The wind was contrary, and they made several tacks before they could get out of the harbor. At half-past six they passed the lighthouse of Corunna, the famous Tower of Hercules. At sunset the wind increased, and the sea ran high. The shores of Europe lessened in the dis- tance. The last thing they saw that night was the light of a fishing hut at Sisarga. It faded. The land disap- peared. The sea was before them, the wide waste Sea I BOOK II. 1799-180 4. CHAPTER I. THE SEA. At sunset on the third day they saw from the mast- head an English convoy, sailing along the coast, and steering towards the southeast. To avoid it they altered their course. From that moment no light was allowed in the great cabin, for fear of their being seen at a dis- tance. Humboldt and Bonpland were obliged to make use of dark lanterns to examine the temperature of the water. From the time of their sailing until they reached the 86th degree of latitude they saw no organic beings, ex- cept sea swallows and dolphins; they even looked in vain for sea-weeds and mollusca. On the sixth day however they entered a zone where the waves were co- vered with a prodigious quantity of medusae. The sea was nearly becalmed, but the medusae were bound towards the south-east, with a rapidity four times greater than that of the current. Between the island of Madeira and the coast of Africa, they had slight breezes and dead calms, which were favorable for the magnetic observations that occupied Humboldt during the passage. The travellers were never wearv of admiring the beauty of the nights; 36 NlGllT SCENE. nothing could be compared to tlie transparency and serenity of the African sky. They were struck with the innumerable quantity of falling stars, which appeared at every instant. The farther progress they made towards the south, the more frequent was this phenomenon, espe- cially near the Canaries. Forty leagues east of the island of Madeira a swallow perched on the topsail yard. It was so fatigued that it suffered itself to be caught by the hand. The Pizarro had orders to touch at the isle of Lance- rota, one of the seven great Canary Islands ; and at five in the afternoon of the 16th of June, that island appeared so distinctlv in view that Humboldt was able to take the angle of altitude of a conic mountain, which towered majestically over the other summits. The current drew them toward the coast more rapidly than they wished. As they advanced, they discovered at first the island of Forteventura, famous for its nume- rous camels; and a short time after saw the island of Lobos in the channel which separated Forteventura from Lancerota. They spent part of the night on deck. The moon illumined the volcanic summits of Lancerota, the flanks of which, covered with ashes, reflected a silver light. Antares threw out its resplendent rays near the lunar disk, which was but a few degrees above the horizon. The night was beautifully serene and cool. The phosphorescence of the ocean seemed to augment the mass of light diffused through the air. After mid- night, great black clouds rising behind the volcano shrouded at intervals the moon, and the beautiful con- stellation of the Scorpion. They beheld lights carried to and fro on shore, which were probably those of fish- LANCEKOTA. 37 ermen prepanng for tlieir labors. Humboldt and Bon- pland bad been occasionally employed during their passage, in reading the old voyages of the Spaniards, and these moving lights recalled to their fancy those which Pedro Gutierrez, page of Queen Isabella, saw in the isle of Guanahani, on the memorable night of the discovery of the New "World. On the 17th, in the morning, the horizon was foggy, and the sky slightly covered with vapor. The outlines of the mountains of Lancerota appeared stronger : the humidity, increasing the transparency of the air, seemed at the same time to have brought the objects nearer their view. They passed through the channel which divided the isle of Alegranza from Montana Clara, taking sound- ings the whole way, and examined the archipelago of small islands situated northward of Lancerota. In the midst of this archipelago, which was seldom visited by vessels bound for Teneriffe, they were singularly struck with the configuration of the coasts. They thought them- selves transported to the Euganean mountains in the Yicentin, or the banks of the Ehine near Bonn. The whole western part of Lancerota bore the appear- ance of a country recently convulsed by volcanic erup- tions. Everything was black, parched, and stripped of vegetable mould. They distinguished, with their glasses, stratified basalt in thin and steeply-sloping strata. They were forced by the winds to pass between the islands of Alegranza and Montana Clara, and as none on board the Pizarro had sailed through this passage, they were obliged to be continually sounding. From some noiions which the captain of the Pizarro had collected in an old Portuguese itinerary, he thought 38 MOUNTAINS OF GEACIOSA. himself opposite to a small fort, situated north of Teguisa, the capital of the island of Lancerota. Mistaking a rock of basalt for a castle, he saluted it by hoisting a Spanish flag, and sent a boat with an ofl&cer to inquire of the commandant whether any English vessels were cruising in the roads. He was not a little surprised to learn that the land which he had considered as a prolongation of the coast of Lancerota, was the small island of Graciosa, and that for several leagues there was not an inhabited place. Humboldt and Bonpland took advantage of the boat to survey the land, which inclosed a large bay. The small portion of the island which they traversed resembled a promontory of lava. The rocks were naked with no marks of vegetation, and scarcely any of vege- table soil. They re-embarked at sunset, and hoisted sail, but the breeze was too feeble to permit the Pizarro to continue her course to Teneriffe. The sea was calm ; a reddish vapor covered the horizon, and seemed to magnify every object. In this solitude, amidst so many uninha- bited islets, the travellers enjoyed for a long time the view of rugged and wild scenery. The black mountains of Graciosa appeared like perpendicular walls five or six hundred feet high. Their shadows, thrown over the surface of the ocean, gave a gloomy aspect to the scenery. Rocks of basalt, emerging from the bosom of the waters, wore the resemblance of the ruins of some vast edifice, and carried their thoughts back to the remote period when submarine volcanoes gave birth to new islands, or rent continents asunder. Everything which surrounded them seemed to indicate destruction and sterility ; but the back-ground of the picture, the coasts of Lancerota, DAXGEEOUS CURRENTS. 39 presented a more smiling aspect. In a narrow pass between two hills, crowned with, scattered tufts of trees, marks of cultivation were visible. The last rays of the sun gilded the corn ready for the sickle. The captain of the Pizarro endeavored to get out of this bay by the pass which separated Alegranza from Montana Clara, and through which he had easily entered to land at the northern point of Graciosa. The wind having fallen, the currents drove the vessel very near a rock, on which the sea broke with violence, and which was noted in the old charts under the name of Hell, or Infierno. Examined at the distance of two cables' length, this rock was found to be a mass of lava, full of cavities, and covered with scoriae resembling coke. As the vessel was prevented by the fall of the wind, and by the currents, from repassing the channel of Ale- granza, the captain resolved on tacking during the night between the island of Clara and the West Eock. This resolution had nearly proved fatal. A calm was very dangerous near this rock, towards which the current drove with considerable force. They began to feel the effects of this current at midnight. The proximity of the stony masses, which rose perpendicularly above the water, deprived the vessel of the little wind which blew ; she no longer obeyed the helm and they dreaded striking every instant. The wind having freshened a little towards the morning of the 18th, they succeeded in passing the channel. From the time of their departure from Graciosa the horizon continued so hazy that they did not discover the island of Canary, notwithstanding the height of its mountains, till the evening of the 18th. On the morning 40 A NAEllOW ESCAPE. of the 19th, they discovered the point of Naga ; but the land, obscured by a thick mist, presented forms that were vague and confused. As they approached the road of Santa Cruz, they observed that the mist, driven by the winds, drew nearer to them. The sea was strongly agi- tated, as it most commonly is in those latitudes. The vessel anchored after several soundings, for the mist was so thick that they could scarcely distinguish objects at a few cables' distance ; but at the moment they began to salute the plaoe, the fog was instantly dispelled. The peak of Teyde appeared in a break above the clouds, and the first rays of the sun, which, had not yet risen, illu- mined the summit of the volcano. Humboldt and Bonpland hastened to the prow of the vessel to behold the magnificent spectacle, and at the same instant saw four English vessels lying to, and very near the stern. They had passed without being perceived, and the same mist which had concealed the peak from their view, had saved them from the risk of being carried back to Europe. The Pizarro stood in as close as possi- ble to the fort, to be under its protection. It was on this shore, that, in the landing attempted by the English two years before, in July, 1797, the great Nelson had his arm carried off by a cannon ball. Santa Cruz stands on a narrow and sandy beach. Its houses, which are of dazzling whiteness, with flat roofs, and windows without glass, are built close against a wall of black perpendicular rock, devoid of vegetation. A fine mole built of freestone, and the public walk planted with poplars, are the only objects which break the same- ness of the landscape. The recommendation of the court of Madrid pro SANTA CRUZ. 41 cured for tliem the most satisfactory reception. The captain-general gave them immediate permission to ex- amine the island, and Col. Armiaga, who commanded a regiment of infantry, received them into his house with great hospitality. They could not enough admire the banana, the papaw tree, and other plants, which they had hitherto seen only in hot-houses, cultivated in his garden in the open air. In the evening they went to herborize along the rocks, but were little satisfied with their harvest, for the drought and dust had almost de- stroyed vegetation. The few plants that they saw, chiefly succulent ones, which draw their nourishment from the air rather than the soil on which they grow, reminded them by their appearance, that this group of islands be- longed to Africa, and even to the most arid part of that arid continent. Though the captain of the Pizarro had orders to stop long enough at Teneriffe to give the naturalists time to scale the summit of the peak, if the snows did not prevent their ascent, they received notice, on account of the block- ade of the English ships, not to expect longer delay than four or five days. They consequently hastened their departure for the port of Orotava, which was situ- ated on the western declivity of the volcano, where they were sure of procuring guides ; for they could find no one at Santa Cruz who had mounted the peak. On the 20th of June, before sunrise, they began their excursion by ascending to the Yilla de Laguna. The road by which they ascended was on the right of a tor- rent, which in the rainy season formed fine cascades. Near the town they met some white camels. The town itself, at which they soon arrived, was situated in a 42 VILLA DE lagu:na. small plain, surrounded by gardens, and protected by a hill which was crowned by a wood of laurels, myrtle, and arbutus. It was encircled by a great number of chapels. Shaded by trees of perpetual verdure, and erected on small eminences, these chapels added to the picturesque effect of the landscape. The interior of the town was not equal to its external appearance. The houses were solidly built, but very antique, and the streets seemed deserted. Our botanists, however, did not complain of the antiquity of the edifices, for the roofs and walls were covered with Canary house leek, and elegant trichomanes. Before they reached Orotava they visited, at a little distance from the port, a botanic garden, which had been laid out at a great expense some years before by the Marquis de ISTava. There they found M. Le Gros, the French vice-consul, who had often scaled the summit of the peak, and who served them as a guide. They began their ascent on the morning of the 21st. M. Le Gros, M. Lalande, secretary to the French Consul- ate at Santa Cruz, and an English gardener at Durasno, joined them on this excursion. The day was not fine, for the summit of the peak, which was generally visible at Orotava from sunrise till ten o'clock, was covered with thick clouds. They passed along a lofty aqueduct, lined with a great number of fine ferns, and visited several gardens, in which the fruit trees of the north of Europe were mingled with orange trees, pomegranate, and date trees. Here they saw the famous dragon tree of M. Franqui. Although they had been made acquainted with it, from the narratives of many travellers, they were not the less LLANO DEL EETAMA. • 43 struck with its enormous magnitude. They were told that the trunk of this tree, which is mentioned in several very ancient documents, was as gigantic in the fifteenth century as when they saw it. Its height appeared to them to be about fifty or sixty feet ; its circumference near the roots was forty-five feet. The trunk was divided into a great number of branches, which rose in the form of a candelabrum, and were terminated by tufts of leaves. On leaving Orotava, a narrow and stony pathway led them through a beautiful forest of chestnut trees to a site covered with brambles, some species of laurels, and ar- borescent heaths. The trunks of the latter grew to an extraordinary size, and were loaded with flowers. They now stopped to take in their provision of water under a Bolitary fir-tree. They continued to ascend, till they came to the rock of La Gay ta and to Portillo : traversing this narrow pass between two basaltic hills, they entered the great plain of Spartium. They spent two hours and a half in cross- ing the Llano del Eetama, which appeared like an im- mense sea of sand. As far as the rock of Gayta, or the entrance of the extensive Llano del Retama, the peak of Tenerifie was covered with beautiftil vegetation. There were no traces of recent devastation. They might have imagined themselves scaling the side of some volcano, the fire of which had been extinguished for centuries; but scarcely had they reached the plain covered with pumice-stone, when the landscape changed its aspect, and at every step they met with large blocks of obsidian thrown out by the volcano. Everything here spoke perfect solitude. A few goats and rabbits bounded across the plain. The 44 • NIGHT IN THE CAYEEN. barren region of the peak was nine square leagues; and as the lower regions viewed from this point retrograded in the distance, the island appeared an immense heap of torrefied matter, hemmed round by a scanty border of vegetation. From the Llano del Retama they passed through nar- row defiles, and small ravines hollowed at a very remote time by the torrents, first arriving at a more elevated plain, then at the place where they intended to pass the night. This station bore the name of the English Halt. Two inclined rocks formed a kind of cavern, which afforded a shelter from the winds. Though in the midst of summer, and under an African sky, they suffered from cold during the night. The thermometer descended there as low as to 41°. Their guides made up a large fire with the dry branches of retama. Having neither tents nor cloaks, Humboldt and Bonpland lay down on some masses of rock, and were incommoded by the flame and smoke, which the wind drove towards them. They had attempted to form a kind of screen with cloths tied toge- ther, but their inclosure took fire, which they did not perceive till the greater part had been consumed by the flames. As the temperature diminished, the peak became covered with thick clouds. The approach of night inter- rupted the play of the ascending current, which, during the day, rose from the plains towards the high regions of the atmosphere ; and the air, in cooling, lost its capa- city of suspending water. A strong northerly wind chased the clouds ; the moon at intervals, shooting through the vapours, exposed its disk on a firmament of the darkest blue; and the view of the volcano threw a majestic character over the nocturnal scenery. Some- MORNING CLOUDS. 45 times the peak was entirely hidden from tneir eyes by the fog, at other times it broke upon them in terrific proximity ; and, like an enormous pyramid, threw its shadow over the clouds rolling beneath their feet. About three in the morning, by the sombrous light of a few fir torches, they started on their journey to the summit of the Sugar-loaf. They scaled the volcano on. the northeast side, where the declivities were extremely steep ; and after two hours' toil reached a small plain, which, on account of its elevated position, bore the name of Alta Yista. This was the station of the neveros^ those natives whose occupation it was to collect ice and snow, which they sold in the neighbouring towns. Their mules, better practised in climbing mountains than those hired by travellers, reach Alta Yista, and the neveros are obliged to transport the snow to that place on their backs. Above this point commenced the Malpays, a term by which is designated here, as well as in every other country subject to volcanoes, a ground destitute of vegetable mould, and covered with fragments of lava. Day was beginning to dawn when the travellers left the ice-cavern, Thev observed, durino^ the twiliorht, a phenomenon which is not unusual on high mountains, but which the position of the volcano they were scaling rendered very striking. A layer of white and fleecy clouds concealed from them the sight of the ocean, and the lower region of the island. This layer did not ap- pear above five thousand feet high ; the clouds were so uniformly spread, and kept so perfect a level, that they wore the appearance of a vast plain covered with snow. The colossal pyramid of the peak, the volcanic summits of Lancerota, of Forteventura, and the isle of Palma, 46 A GRAND ILLUMINATION. were like rocks amidst tliis vast sea of vapours, and their black tints were in fine contrast with the whiteness of the clouds. While thej wiere climbing over the broken lavas of the Malpays, they perceived a very curious optical phe- nomenon, which lasted some minutes. They thought they saw on the east side small rockets thrown into the air. Luminous points, about seven or eight degrees above the horizon, appeared first to move in a vertical direction -^ but their motion was gradually changed into a horizontal oscillation. Their fellow-travellers, their guides even, were astonished at this phenomenon, with- out either Humboldt or Bonpland having made any remark on it to them. The travellers thought, at first sight, that these luminous points, which floated in the air, indicated some new eruption of the great volcano of Lancerota; for they recollected that Bouguer and La Condamine, in scaling the volcano of Pichincha, were witnesses of the eruption of Cotopaxi. But the illusion soon ceased, and they found that the luminous points were the images of several stars magnified by the vapours. These images remained motionless at intervals, they then seemed to rise perpendicularly, descended sideways, and returned to the point whence they had departed. This motion lasted one or two seconds. Though they had no exact means of measuring the extent of the lateral shift- ing, they did not the less distinctly observe the path of the luminous point. It did not appear double from an efiect of mirage, and left no trace of light behind. Bringing, with the telescope of a small sextant, the stars into contact with the lofty summit of a mountain in Lancerota, Humboldt observed that the oscillation was ACROSS THE MALPAYS. 47 constantly directed towards the same point, which was towards that part of the horizon where the disk of the sun was to appear ; and that making allowance for the motion of the star in its declination, the imaore re- turned always to the same place. These appearances of lateral refraction ceased long before daylight rendered the stars quite invisible. The road, which they were obliged to clear for them- selves across the Malpays, was extremely fatiguing. The ascent was steep, and the blocks of lava rolled from beneath their feet. At the peak the lava, broken into sharp pieces, left hollows, in which they risked falling up to their waists. Unfortunately the listlessness of their guides contributed to increase the difficulty of this ascent. Models of the phlegmatic, they had wished to persuade Humboldt and Bonpland on the preceding evening not to go beyond the station of the rocks. Every ten minutes they sat down to rest themselves, and when unobserved they threw away the specimens of obsidian and pumice-stone, which the geologists had carefully collected. They discovered at length that none of the guides had ever visited the summit of the volcano. After three hours' walking, they reached, at the ex- tremity of the Malpays, a small plain, called La Ram- bleta, from the centre of which the Sugar-loaf took its rise. They had yet to scale the steepest part of the mountain, the Sugar-loaf, which formed the summit. The slope of this small cone, covered with volcanic ashes, and fragments of pumice-stone, was so steep, that it would have been almost impossible to reach the top, had they not ascended by an old current of lava, the debris of which had resisted the ravages of time. These 48 SUMMIT OF THE SUGAK-LOAF. debris formed a wall of scorious rock, which stretched into the midst of the loose ashes. They ascended the Sugar-loaf by grasping the half- decomposed scoriae, which often broke in their hands. They employed nearly half an hour to scale a hill, the perpendicular height of which was scarcely five hundred and forty feet. When they gained the summit of the Sugar-loaf they were surprised to find scarcely room enough to seat themselves conveniently. They were stopped by a small circular wall of porphyritic lava, with a base of pitchstone^ which concealed from them the view of the crater. The west wind blew with such violence that they could scarcely stand. It was eight in the morning, and they suffered severely from the cold, though the thermometer kept a little above freezing point. The wall which surrounded the crater like a parapet^ was so high, that it would have been impossible to reach the crater itself, if, on the eastern side, there had not been a breach, which seemed to have been the effect of a flowing of very old lava. They descended through this breach toward the bottom of the funnel, the figure of which was elliptic. The greatest breadth of the mouth appeared to them to be three hundred feet, the smallest two hundred feet. The external edges of the crater were almost perpen- dicular. They descended to the bottom of the crater on a train of broken lava, from the eastern breach of the ft ' inclosure. The heat was perceptible only in a few crevices, which gave vent to aqueous vapours with a peculiar buzzing noise. Some of these funnels or cre- vices were on the outside of the inclosure, on the external brink of the parapet that surrounded the crater. Hum- EDGE OF THE CRATER. 49 bolclt plunged the thermometer into them, and saw it rise rapidly to 154'' and 167°. He also sketched on the spot a view of the interior edge of the crater as it pre- sented itself in the descent by the eastern track. The top of the circular wall exhibited those curious ramifications which are found in coke. The northern edge was most elevated. Towards the south-west the enclosure was considerably sunk, and an enormous mass of scorious lava seemed glued to the extremity of the brink. The rock was perforated on the west, and a large opening gave a view of the horizon of the sea. Seated on the brink of the crater, Humboldt dug a hole some inches deep, into which he placed the thermo- meter, which rapidly rose to 107°. Some sulphurous crys- tals which he gathered here, consumed the paper in which he wrapt them, and a part of his mineral ogical journal besides. From the outer edge of the crater the admiring tra- vellers turned their eyes towards the north-east, where the coasts were studded with villages and hamlets. At their feet were masses of vapour constantly drifted by the winds. A uniform stratum of clouds had been pierced in several places by the effect of the small currents of air, which the earth, heated by the sun, began to send towards them. The port of Orotava, its vessels at anchor, the gardens and the vineyards encircling the town, showed themselves through an opening which seemed to enlarge every instant. From the summit of these solitary regions their eyes wandered over an inhabited world. They enjoyed the striking contrast between the bare sides of the peak, its steep declivities covered with scoriae, its elevated plains destitute of vege- 3 r)0 MA.GXIFICENT PllOSrJiCn. tatioii, and the smiling aspect of the cultured country be- neath. They beheld the plants divided by zones, as the temperature of the atmosphere diminished with the eleva- tion of the site. Below the Sugar-loaf, lichens began to cover the scorious and lustrous lava : and violets rose on the slope of the volcano at eight thousand five hundred ff^et of height. Tufts of retama, loaded with flowers, adorned the valleys hollowed out by the torrents, and en- cumbered with the effects of the lateral eruptions. Below the retama, lay the region of ferns, bordered by the tract of the arborescent heaths. Forests of laurel, rhamnus, and arbutus, divided the ericas from the rising grounds planted with vines and fruit trees. A rich carpet of verdure extended from the plain of spartium. and the zone of the alpine plants even to the groups of the date tree and the musa, at the feet of which the ocean ap- peared to roll. The seeming proximity, in which, from the summit of the peak, they beheld the hamlets, the vineyards, and the gardens on the coast, was increased by the prodigious transparency of the atmosphere. In spite of the great distance, they could plainly distinguish not only the houses, the sails of the vessels, and the trunks of the trees, but they could discern the vivid colouring of the vegetation of the plains. Notwithstanding the heat which they felt in their feet on the edge of the crater, the cone of ashes remains covered with snow durino; several months in winter. It was probable that under the cap of snow considerable hollows were found, like those existing under the gla- ciers of Switzerland, the temperature of which was con- stantly less elevated than that of the soil on which they rc"00sed. The cold and violent wind, which blew from DESCENDING THE SUGAK-LOAF. 61 the time of sunrise, induced them, to seek shelter at the foot of the Sugar-loaf. Their hands and faces ■v\ere nearly frozen, while their boots were burnt bv the soil on which thej walked. Thej descended in the space of a few minutes the Sugar-loaf which thej had scaled with so much toil ; and this rapidity was in part involuntary, for they often rolled down on the ashes. It was with regret that they quitted this solitude, this domain where jNTature reigned in all her majesty. They traversed the Malpays but slowly ; for their feet found no sure foundation on the loose blocks of lava. Nearer the station of the rocks, the descent became ex- tremely difficult ; the compact short-swarded turf was so slippery that they were obliged to incline their bodies continually backward, in order to avoid falling. In the sandy plain of retama, the thermometer rose to 72° ; and this heat seemed to them suffocating in conjparison vrith the cold, which they had suffered from the air on the summit of the volcano. They were absolutely with- out water ; for their guides, not satisfied with drinking clandestinely their little supply of Malmsey wine, had broken their water jars. They at length enjoyed the refreshing breeze in the beautiful region of the arborescent erica and fern, and were enveloped in a thick bed of clouds stationary at three thou- sand six hundred feet above the plain. The clouds having dispersed, they remarked a phenomenon which afterwards became familiar to them on the declivities of the Cordilleras. Small currents of air chased trains of cloud with unequal velocity, and in opposite directions: they>bore the ap- pearance of streamlets of water in rapid motion and flowing in all directions, amidst a great mass of stagnant 52 EVE OF ST. JOHN. water. As the travellers approached the town of Oro- tava, they met great flocks of canaries. These birds, well known in Europe and America, were in general uniformly green. Some, however, had a yellow tinge on their backs ; their note was the same as that of the tame canary. Towards the close of the day they reached the port of Orotava, where they received the unexpected intelligence that the Pizarro would not set sail till the 24th or 2oth. If they could have calculated on this de- lay, they might either have lengthened their stay on the peak, or have made an excursion to the volcano of Cha- horra. As it was they passed the following day in visit- ing the environs of Orotava, and enjoying its agreeable society. They were present on the eve of St. John at a pastoral fete. In the beginning of the evening the slope of the volcano exhibited on a sudden a most extraordi- nary spectacle. The shepherds, in conformity to a cus- tom, no doubt introduced by the Spaniards, had lighted the fires of St. John. The scattered masses of fire, and the columns of smoke driven by the wind, formed a fine contrast with the deep verdure of the forests which covered the sides of the peak. Shouts of joy resound- ing from afar were the only sounds that broke the silence of nature in these solitary regions. They left the road of Santa Cruz on the 25th of June, and directed their course towards South America. They soon lost sight of the Canary Islands, the lofty moun- tains of which were covered with a reddish vapour. The peak alone appeared from time to time, as at intervals the wind dispersed the clouds that enveloped the Sugar-loaf. A few land birds, which had been driven to sea by the impetuosity of the wind, followed them for several days. AT SEA AGAIX. 6S The wind fell gradually tlie farther they receded from the African coast : it was sometimes smooth water for several hours, and these short calms were regularly inter- * rupted by electrical phenomena. Black thick clouds, marked by strong outlines, rose on the east, and it seem- ed as if a squall would have forced the Pizarro to hand her topsails ; but the breeze freshened anew, there fell a few large drops of rain, and the storm dispersed with- . out their hearing any thunder. To the north of the Cape Yerd Islands they met with great masses of floating seaweeds. They were the tropic grape, which grows on submarine rocks, only from the equator to the fortieth degree of north and south lati- tude. From the twenty-second degree of latitude, they found the surface of the sea covered with flying-fish, which threw themselves up into the air, twelve, fifteen, or eighteen feet, and fell down on the deck. From the time they entered the torrid zone, they were never weary of admiring, at night, the beauty of the southern sky, which, as they advanced to the south, opened new constellations to their view. " We feel," says Humboldt, writing of himself at this time, " we feel an indescribable sensation when, on approaching the equator, and particularly on passing from one hemi- sphere to the other, we see those stars, which we have contemplated from our infancy, progressively sink, and finally disappear. Nothing awakens in the traveller a livelier remembrance of the immense distance by which he is separated from his country, than the aspect of au unknown firmament. The grouping of the stars of the first magnitude, some scattered nebulae, rivalling in splen- dour the milky way, and tracts of space remarkable for 54 THE SOUTHERN CKOSS. tlicir extreme blackness, give a peculiar physiognomy to the soLitliern sky. This sight fills with admiration even those who, uninstructed in the several branches of physical science, feel the same emotion of delight in the contempla- * tion of the heavenly vault, as in the view of a beautiful landscape, or a majestic site. A traveller needs not to be a botanist, to recognise the torrid zone by the mere aspect of its vegetation. Without having acquired any notions of astronomy, without any acquaintance with the celes- ■ tial charts of Flamstead and De la Caille, he feels he is not in Europe, when he sees the immense constellation of the Ship, or the phosphorescent Clouds of Magellan, arise on the horizon. The heavens and the earth, everything in the equinoctial regions, presents an exotic character." The lower regions of the air were loaded with vapours for some days. They saw distinctly for the first time the Southern Cross only on the night of the 4th of July, in the sixteenth degree of latitude. It was strongly in- clined, and appeared from time to time between the clouds, the centre of which, furrowed by uncondensed lightnings, reflected a silvery light. The pleasure the travellers felt on discovering the Southern Cross was w^armly shared by those of the crew who had visited the colonies. In the solitude of the seas we hail a star as a friend, from w^hom we have long been separated. The Portuguese and the Spaniards are peculiarly susceptible of this feeling; a religious senti- ment attaches them to this constellation, the form of which recalls the sign of the faith planted by their an- cestors in the deserts of the New World. The two sfreat stars which mark the summit and the PAUL AXD TIEGINIA. 55 foot of the Cross having nearly the same right ascension, it follows that the constellation is almost perpendicular at the moment when it passes the meridian. This cir cnmstance is known to the people of every nation situ- ated beyond the tropics, or in the southern hemisphere. It has been observed at what hour of the night, in differ- ent seasons, the Cross is erect or inclined. It is a time- piece which advances very regularly nearly four minutes a day, and no other group of stars affords to the naked eye an observation of time so easily made. Often after- ward did Humboldt and Bonpland hear their guides ex' claim in the savannahs of Venezuela, or in the desert extending from Lima to Truxillo, " Midnight is past, the Cross begins to bend !" It reminded them of that affect- ing scene, where Paul and Yirginia, seated near the source of the river of Lataniers, conversed tosrether for the last time, and where the old man, at the sight of the Southern Cross, warned them that it was tune to sepa- rate. The last days of their pavssage were not so felicitous as the mildness of the climate and the calmness of the ocean had led them to hope. The dangers of the sea did not disturb them, but the germs of a malignant fever became manifest on board the Pizarro, as they drew near the An- tilles. Between decks the ship was excessively hot, and very much crowded. From the time they passed the tropic, the thermometer stood at 93^ or 97'^. Two sail ors, several passengers, two negroes from the coast of Guinea, and a mulatto child, were attacked with a dis- order which appeared to be epidemic. On the morninor of the 13th his-h land was seen from the masthead, though not clearly, as it was surrounded 66 FEVER ON BOARD. with a thick fog. The wind blew hard, and the sea was very rough. Large drops of rain fell at intervals, and every indication menaced tempestuous weather. When the sun rose, and the fog cleared away, they saw the island of Tobago. It was a heap of rocks carefully cul- tivated. The dazzling whiteness of the stone formed an agreeable contrast to the verdure of some scattered tufcs of trees. Cylindric and very lofty cactuses crowned the top of the mountains, and gave a peculiar physiognomy to this tropical landscape. The wind slackened after sunset, and the clouds disappeared as the moon reached the zenith. The number of falling stars was consider- able on this and the following nights. The malady which had broken out on board the Pizarro had made rapid progress, from the time when they approached the coasts of Terra Firma ; but having nearly reached the end of their voyage, they flattered themselves that all who were sick would be restored to health, as soon as they could land them at the island of St. Margareta, or the port of Cumana. This hope was not destined to be realized. The young- est of the passengers attacked with the malignant fever fell a victim to the disease. He was an Asturian, nine- teen years of age, the only son of a poor widow. Seve- ral circumstances rendered the death of this young man affecting. He had embarked against his own inclination ; and his mother, whom he had hoped to assist by the produce of his efforts, had made a sacrifice of her affec- tion in the hope of securing the fortune of her son, by sending him to the colonies to a rich relation, who re- sided at the island of Cuba. The unfortunate young man expired on the third day of his illness, having fallen FUJSfEEAL AT SEA. 51 from the beginning into a lethargic state interrupted only bv fits of delirium. Another Asturian, still vounsfer, did not leave for one moment the bed of his dying friend ; still he did not contract the disorder. Humboldt and Bonpland assembled on the deck, ab- sorbed in melancholy reflections. It was no longer doubtful, that the fever which raofed on board had as- sumed within the last few days a fatal aspect. Their eyes were fixed on a hilly and desert coast on which the moon, from time to time, shed her light athwart the clouds. The sea, gentlj^ agitated, emitted a feeble phos- phoric light. Nothing was heard but the monotonous cry of a few large sea-birds, flj'ing towards the shore. A profound calm reigned over these solitary regions, but this calm of nature was in discordance with the painful feelings by which they were oppressed. About eight o'clock the dead man's knell slowly tolled. The sailors suspended their labours, and threw themselves on their knees to offer a momentary prayer. All were united in one common sorrow for a misfortune which was felt to be common to all. The corpse was brought upon deck during the night, but the priest entreated that it might not be committed to the waves till after sunrise, that the last rites might be performed, according to the usasfe of the Romish church. There was not an indivi- dual on board, who did not deplore the death of this young man, whom they had beheld, but a few days be- fore, full of cheerfulness and health. Most of the passengers considered the vessel infected, and resolved to leave her at the first place at which she might touch; among these were Humboldt and Bon- pland. It was not that they feared the fever, but 3* 58 IN SIGHT OF LAND. not wishing to visit Mexico until tliej had nrade some sojourn on the coasts of Venezuela and Paria, they thought it best to land at Cumana. Humboldt was anxious to behold in their native site the beautiful tropic plants which he had seen in the conservatory at Vienna. On the morning of the loth they perceived a very low islet, covered with a few sandy downs, on which they could discover with their glasses no trace of habitation or culture. Cylindrical cactuses rose here and there in the form of candelabra. The soil, almost destitute of vegetation, seemed to have a waving motion, in conse- quence of the extraordinary refraction which the rays of the sun underwent in traversing the strata of air in contact with plains strongly heated. Under every zone, deserts and sandy shores appear like an agitated sea, from the effect of mirage. The coasts, seen at a distance, were like clouds, in which each observer met the form of the objects that occupied his imagination. The bearings of the vessel, and the chronometer being at variance with the charts which they had to consult, the crew and the passengers were lost in vain conjectures. Some took mounds of sand for Indian huts, and pointed out the place where they alleged the fort of Pampatar was situated ; others saw herds of goats, which were common in the dry valley of St. John ; or descried the lofty mountains of Macanao, which seemed to them partly hidden by the clouds. The captain resolved to send a pilot on shore, and the men were preparing to get out the long-boat when two canoes were perceived sailing along the coast. The vessel fired a gun as a signal for them, and hoisted THE INDIAN PILOT. 59 Spanish colours, but they drew near with distrust. These canoes, like all those in use among the natives, were constructed of the single trunk of a tree. In each canoe there were eighteen Guayqueria Indians, naked to the waist, and of very tall statare. They had the appearance of great muscular strength, and the colour of their skin was something between brown and copper-colour. Seen at a distance, standing motionless, and projected on the horizon, they might have been taken for statues of bronze. When they were near enough for those on board the Pizarro to hail them, which they did in Spanish, they threw off their mistrust and came on board. They had left the port of Cumana, they said, during the night, and were going in search of timber to the cedar forests, which extended from Cape San Jose to beyond the mouth of Kio Carupano. They gave Humboldt some fresh cocoa-nuts, and some beautifully coloured fish. What riches to his eyes were contained in the canoes of these poor Indians ! Broad spreading leaves, covered bunches of plantains. The scaly cuirass of an armadillo, the fruit of the cala- bash tree, used as a cup by the natives, productions common in the cabinets of Europe, had a peculiar charm for him, because they reminded him that, having reached the torrid zone, he had attained the end to which his wishes had been so long directed. The master of one of the canoes came on board as pilot, and the Pizarro weighed anchor towards evening. Thev soon came in si^ht of the little island of Cubapjua, formerly celebrated for its pearl fisheries, but now en- tirely deserted. There being but little wind, however, the captain stood off and on till daybreak. Humboldt and Bonpland passed a part of the night on deck, con« 60 TIIEY KEACH CUMANA. versing with the Indian pilot respecting the animals ooid plants of his country. At daybreak on the 16th of Julj^, 1799, forty-one days after their departure from Corunna, they beheld a verdant coast of picturesque aspect. The mountains of New Andalusia, half- veiled by mists, bounded the hori- zon to the south. The city of Cumana and its castle appeared between groups of cocoa-trees. They anchored in the port about nine in the morning : the sick dragged themselves on deck to enjoy the sight of a land which was to put an end to their sufferings. The eyes of the naturalists were fixed on the groups of cocoa-trees which bordered the river: their trunks, more than sixty feet high, towered over every object in landscape. The plain was covered with tufts of Cassia, Caper, and ar- borescent mimosas, which spread their branches in the form of an umbrella. The pinnated leaves of the palms were conspicuous on the azure sky, the clearness of which was unsullied by any trace of vapour. The sun was ascending rapidly towards the zenith. A dazzling light was spread through the air, along the whitish hills, which were strewed with cactuses, and over a sea ever calm, the shores of which were peopled with brown pelicans, egrets, and flamingoes. The splendour of the day, the vivid colouring of the vegetable Tvorld, the forms of the plants, the varied plumage of the birds, everything was stamped with the grand character of nature in the equinoctial regions. CHAPTEK n. ABOUT CUM ANA. The captain of the Pizarro conducted Humboldt and Bonpland to Don Yincente Emparan, the governor of the pro^nnce, that thej might present to him the passports which had been famished them bj the Secretary of State at Madrid. He received them with much cordiahtv, and expressed his great satisfaction at the resolution they had taken to remain for some time in the province, which at that period was but little known, even by name, in Europe. Senor Emparan was a lover of science, and the public marks of consideration which he gave them during a long abode in his government, contributed greatly to procure them a favourable welcome in every part of South America. The city of Cumana occupied the ground lying be- tween the castle of San Antonio, and the small rivers of Manzanares and Santa Catalina. The banks of the Manzanares were very pleasant, and were shaded by mimosas, erythrinas, ceibas, and other trees of gigantic growth. The children of Cumana passed a considerable part of their lives in its waters ; all the inhabitants, even the women of the most opulent families, knew how to swim ; and in a country where man was so near the state 62 EVERYBODY SWIMMING. of nature, one of the first questions asked on meeting in the morning was, whether the water was cooler than it was on the preceding evening. One of the modes ol bathing was curious. Every evening Ilumboldt and Bonpland visited a family in the suburb of the Guay- querias. In a fine moonlight night, chairs were placed in the water ; the men and women were lightly clothed, and the family and strangers, assembled in the river, passed some hours in smoking cigars, and in talking, according to the custom of the country, of the extreme dryness of the season, of the abundant rains in the neigh- bv'^uring districts, and particularly of the extravagances of which the ladies of Cumana accused those of Ca- racas and Havanna. The company were luckily under no apprehensions from the small crocodiles, which were then extremely scarce, and which approached men without attacking them. These animals are three or four feet long. Humboldt never met with them in the Manzanares, but found a great number of dolphins, which sometimes ascended the river in the night, and frightened the bathers by spouting water. The situation of the house which Humboldt and Bon- pland occupied was highly favourable for the observa- tion of the stars and meteorological phenomena. The view from it by day, however, was by no means plea- sant to them ; for a part of the great square on which it faced was surrounded with arcades, above which was one of those long wooden galleries, common in warm coun- tries. This was the place where slaves were sold. The slaves exposed to sale were young men from fifteen to twenty years of age. Every morning cocoa-nut oil was distributed among them, with which they rubbed their THE RIVER MAXZAXAREZ. 63 bodies, to give their skins a black polish. The persona who came to purchase examined the teeth of these slaves, to judge of their age and health, forcing open their mouths as if they had been horses in a market. The first excursion of the travellers was to the peninsula of Ara ja. They embarked on the Eio Manzanares on the 19th of August, about two in the morning. The principal objects of this excursion were, to see the ruins of the cas- tle of Araya, to examine the salt-works, and to make a few geological observations on the mountains forming the narrow peninsula of Maniquarez. The night was de- lightfully cool; swarms of phosphorescent insects glis- tened in the air, and over the groves of mimosa which bordered the river. When, on descending the river, they drew near planta- tions, they saw bonfires kindled by the negroes. A light and undulating smoke rose to the tops of the palm- trees, and imparted a reddish hue to the disk of the moon. It was on a Sunday night, and the slaves were dancing to the music of the guitar. The bark in which they passed the gulf of Cariaco was very spacious. Large skins of the jaguar, or American tiger, were spread for their repose during the night. Though they had been scarcely two months yet in the torrid zone, they had already become so sensible to the smallest variation of temperature that the cold prevented them from sleeping. They landed at Araya, and examined the salt-works, and having finished their operations, departed at sunset to sleep at an Indian hut, some miles distant, near the ruins of the castle of Araj^a. Night overtook them while they were in a narrow path, bordered on one side by the sea, and on the other by a range of perpendicular 64 GENIUS IN OBSCURITY. 9 rocks. The tide was rising rapidly, and narrowed the road at every step. They at length arrived at the foot of the old castle of Araya, where they enjoyed a pros- pect that had in it something melancholy and romantic. The ruins stood on a bare and arid mountain, which was crowned with agave, cactus, and thorny mimosas, and bore less resemblance to the works of man, than to masses of rock which were ruptured at the early revolu- tions of the globe. Among the mulattoes, whose huts surrounded the salt lake, they found a shoemaker of Castilian descent. He received them with an air of gravity and self-sufficiency. He was employed in stretching the string of his bow, and sharpening his arrows to shoot birds. His trade of a shoemaker was not very lucrative in a country where the greater part of the inhabitants went barefooted; and he complained that, on account of the dearness of European gunpowder, a man of his quality was reduced to employ the same weapons as the Indians. He was the sage of the plain ; he understood the formation of the salt by the influence of the sun and full moon, the symptoms of earthquakes, the marks by which mines of gold and silver were discovered, and the medicinal plants, which he classified into hot and cold. Having collected the traditions of the country, he gave them some curious accounts of the pearls of Cubagua, objects of luxury, which he treated with the utmost contempt. To show the travellers how familiar to him were the sacred writings he took a pride in reminding them that Job preferred wisdom to all the pearls of the Indies. His philosophy was circumscribed to the narrow circle of the wants of life. The possession of a very strong MANIQUAEEZ. 65 ass, able to carry a heavy load of plantains to the land- ing-place, was the consummation of all his wishes. After a long discourse on the emptiness of human greatness, he drew from a leathern pouch a few very small opaque pearls, which he forced Humboldt to ac- cept, enjoining him at the same time to note on his tablets that a poor shoemaker of Araya, but a white man, and of noble Castilian race, had been enabled to give him something which, on the other side of the sea, was sought for as very precious. In the morning the son of their Indian host conducted them to the village of Maniquarez. On their way they examined the ruins of Santiago, the structure of which was remarkable for its extreme solidity. The walls of freestone, five feet thick, had been blown up by mines ; but they still found masses of seven or eight hundred feet square, which had scarcely a crack in them. Their guide showed them a cistern, thirty feet deep, which, though much damaged, furnished water to the inhabit- ants of the peninsula of Araya. After having examiDed the environs of Maniquarez, they embarked at night in a fishiog-boat for Cumana. The small crazy boats employed by the natives here, bore testimony to the extreme calmness of the sea in these regions. The boat of the travellers, though the best they could procure, was so leaky, that the pilot's son was constantly employed in baling out the water with a calabash shell. Their first visit to the peninsula of Araya was soon succeeded by an excursion to the mountains of the mis- sions of the Chayma Indians. On the 4th of September, at five in the morning, they 66 FOOT OF THE MOUNTAINS. began tlieir journey. On account of the extreme diffi- culties of tlie road, tliev bad been advised to reduce their baggage to a very small bulk. Two beasts of burden were sufficient to carry tlieir provision, their instruments, and the paper necessary to dry their plants. The morn- ing was deliciously cool. The road, which led to Cuma- nacoa, ran along the right bank of the Manzanares, pass- ing by the hospital of the Capuchins. On leaving Cu- mana they enjoyed during the short duration of the twi- light, from the top of the hill of San Francisco, an extensive view over the sea, the plain covered with golden flowers, and the mountains of the Brigantine. After walking two hours, they arrived at the foot of the high chain of the interior mountains, which stretched from east to west ; from the Brigantine to the Cerro de San Lorenzo. There, new rocks appeared, and with them another aspect of vegetation. Every object as- sumed a more majestic and picturesque character. The soil, watered by springs, was furrowed in every direction ; trees of gigantic height, covered with lianas, rose from the ravines ; their bark, black and burnt by the double action of the light and the oxygen of the atmosphere, contrasted with the fresh verdure of the pothos and dra- contium, the tough and shining leaves of which were sometimes several feet long. From the top of a hill of sandstone, they had a mag- nificent view of the sea, of Cape Macanao, and the pen- insula of Maniquarez. At their feet an immense forest extended to the edge of the ocean. The tops of the trees, intertwined with lianas, and crowned with long wreaths of flowers, formed a vast carpet of verdure, the dark tint of which augmented the splendour of the aerial light. THE IMPOSIBLE. 67 In proportion as thej penetrated into the forest the barometer indicated the progressive elevation of the land. The trunks of the trees here presented a curious phenome- non, for a gramineous plant, like a liana, eight or ten feet high, formed festoons, which crossed the path, and swung about with the wind. They halted in the afternoon, on a small flat, known by the name of Quetepe. A few small houses had been erected near a spring, well known by the natives for its coolness and great salubrity. They found the water delicious. As they advanced toward the south-west, the soil be- came dry and sandy. They climbed a group of moun- tains, w^hich separated the coast from the vast plains, or savannahs, bordered by the Orinoco. That part of the group, over w^hich passed the road to Cumanacoa, was destitute of vegetation, and had steep declivities both on the north and the south. It was known by the name of the Imposible, because it was believed that, in the case of hostile invasion, this rido-e of mountains would be inaccessible to the enemy, and would offer an asylum to the inhabitants of Cumana. The view from the Im- posible was finer and more extensive than that from the table-land of Quetepe. Humboldt distinguished clearly by the naked eye the flattened top of the Brigantine, the landing-place, and the roadstead of Cumana. The rocky coast of the peninsula of Araya was discernible in its whole length. The travellers were particularly struck with the extraordinary configuration of a port, known by the name of Laguna Grande. A vast basin, sur- rounded by high mountains, communicated with the gulf of Cariaco by a narrow channel which admitted of the passage of only one ship at a time. 68 THE BURXING FOREST. This port was capable of containing several squadions at once. It was an nninliabited place, but annuall}^ fre- quented by vessels, which carried mules to the West India Islands. Humboldt traced the sinuosities of this arm of the sea, which, like a river, had dug a bed be- tween perpendicular rocks destitute of vegetation. The prospect here reminded him of the fanciful landscape which Leonardo da Yinci has made the back-ground of his famous portrait of Mona Lisa, the wife of Francisco del Giacondo. The Llaneros^ or inhabitants of the plains, sent their produce, especially maize, leather, and cattle, to the port of Cumana by the road over the Imposible. Humboldt and Bonpland continually saw mules arrive, driven by Indians, or mulattoes. Several parts of the vast forest, which surrounded the mountain, had taken fire; and the reddish flames, half envelojDed in clouds of smoke, presented a grand spectacle. The inhabitants frequently set fire to the forests, to improve the pasturage, and to destroy the shrubs that choked the grass. Enor- mous conflagrations, too, were often caused by the care- lessness of the Indians, who neglect, when they travel, to extinguish the fires by which they dress their food. They left the Imposible early in the morning of the 6th of September. The path was dangerous for their beasts, being in most places but fifteen inches broad, and bordered by precipices. When they quitted it it was to enter a thick forest, traversed by many small rivers. They walked for some hours in the shade of this forest, with scarcely a glimpse of the sky. In this place they were struck for the first time with the sight of nests in the shape of bottles, or small bags, SAN FEENANDO. 69 suspended from the branches of the lowest t/ees, and attesting^ the . wonderful industry of the orioles, that mingled their warbling with the hoarse cries of the par- rots and the macaws. They left the forests, and taking a narrow path with many windings, came into an open, but humid country. Here the evaporation caused by the action of the sun was so great that they were wet as with a vapour bath. The road was bordered with a kind of bamboo, more than fortv feet in heio^ht. JSTothinot could exceed its elegance. Its smooth and glossy trunk generally bent towards the banks of rivulets, and it waved with the lis'litest breath of air. The road led them to the small village of San Fer- nando, which was situated in a narrow plain, and sur- rounded by steep rocks. This was the first mission they saw in America. The huts of the Chayma Indians, though separated from each other, were not surrounded by gardens. The streets, which were wide and very straight, crossed each other at right angles. The walls of the huts were made of clay, strengthened by lianas. The uniformity of these huts, the grave and taciturn air of their inhabitants, and the extreme neatness of the dwellings reminded Humboldt of the establishments of the Moravian Brethren. Besides their own gardens, every Indian family helped to cultivate the garden of the community, which was situated at some distance from the village. In this garden the adults of each sex worked one hour in the morning, and one in the evening. The great square of San Fernando, in the centre of the village, contained the church, the dwelling of the mis- sionary, and a very humble-looking edifice pompously called the king's house. This was a caravanserai, des- 70 THE FATIIEK-MOIHER. tined for lodging travellers ; and, as our travellers often experienced, infinitely valuable in a country where the name of an inn was unknown. The missionary of San Fernando was a Capuchin, a native of Aragon, far advanced in years, but strong and healthy. His extreme corpulency, his hilarity, the in terest he took in battles and sieges, ill accorded with the ideas we form of the melancholy reveries and the con- templative life of missionaries. Though extremely busy about a cow which was to be killed next day, the old monk received Humboldt and Bonpland with kindness, and permitted them to hang up their hammocks in a gallery of his house. Seated, without doing anything, the greater part of the day, in an arm-chair of red wood, he complained bitterly of what he called the indolence and ignorance of his countrymen. The sight of Humboldt's instruments, and books, and the dried plants of Bon- pland drew from him a sarcastic smile ; and he acknow- ledged, with the naivete peculiar to the inhabitants of those countries, that of all the enjoyments of life, without excepting sleep, none was comparable to the pleasure of eating good beef In the village of Arenas, at which they next arrived, lived a labourer, Francisco Lozano, who presented a curi- ous physiological phenomenon. This man had suckled a child with his own milk. The mother havins^ fallen sick, the father, to quiet the infant, took it into bed, and pressed it to his bosom. Lozano, then thirty -two years of age, had never before remarked that he had milk: but the irritation of the nipple, sucked by the child, caused the accumulation of that liquid. The milk was thick and very sweet. Astonished at the increased size IN SIGHT OF TUE TUKIMIQUIKI. 7l of liis breast, the father suckled his child two or three times a day during live months. He drew on himself the attention of his neighbours, but he never thought, as he probably would have done in Europe, of deriving any advantage from the curiosity he excited. Humboldt and Bonpland saw the certificate, which had been drawn up on the spot, to attest this remarkable fact, eye-witnesses of which were then living. They assured them that, during this suckling, the child had no other nourishment than the milk of his father. Lo- zano, who was not at Arenas during their journey in the missions, came to them afterwards at Cumana. He was accompanied by his son, then thirteen or fourteen years of age. Bonpland examined with attention the father's breasts, and found them wrinkled like those of a woman who has given suck. He observed that the left breast in particular was much enlarged ; which Lozano explained from the circumstance, that the two breasts did not furnish milk in the same abundance. Don "Vicente Emparan sent a circumstantial account of this phenomenon to Cadiz. As they approached the southern bank of the basin of Cumanacoa, they enjoyed the view of the Turimiquiri. An enormous wall of rocks, the remains of an ancient cliff, rose in the midst of the forests. Farther to the west, at Cerro del Cuchivano, the chain of mountains seemed as if broken by the effects of an earthquake. The crevice, which was more than nine hundred feet wide, was surrounded by perpendicular rocks, and filled with trees, the interwoven branches of which found no room to spread. It appeared like a mine opened by the falling in of the earth. Two caverns opened into this 72 GOLDEN DREAMS. crevice, whence at times tliere issued flames which might be seen at a great distance in the night; judging by the elevation of the rocks, above which these fiery exhala- tions ascended, Humboldt was led to think that they rose several hundred feet. In an excursion which they made at Rinconado the travellers attempted to penetrate into the crevice, wish- ing to examine the rocks which seemed to contain in their bosom the cause of these extraordinary conflagrations; but the strength of the vegetation, the interweaving of the lianas, and thorny plants, hindered their pro- gress. Hap2:>ily the inhabitants of the valley themselves felt a warm interest in their researches, less from the fear of a volcanic explosion, than because their minds were impressed with the idea that the crevice contained a gold mine ; and although the travellers expressed their doubts of the existence of gold in a secondary limestone, they insisted on knowing " what the German miner thought of the richness of the vein." Ev^r since the time of Charles Y. and the government of the Welsers, the Alfingers, and the Sailers, at Coro and Caracas, the peo- ple of Terra Firma had entertained a great confidence in the Germans with respect to all that related to the work- ing of mines. Wherever Humboldt went in South America, when the place of his birtli was known, he was shown samples of ore. In these colonies every French- man was supposed to be a physician, and every German a miner. The firmcrs, with the aid of their slaves, opened a path across the woods to the first fall of the Rio Juagua; and on the 10th of September Humboldt and Bonpland made their excursion to the crevice. On entering it they GOING TO THE CKEYICE. 73 recognised tlie proximity of tigers bj a porcupine re- cently embowelled. For greater security the Indians returned to the farm, and brought back some dogs of a very small breed. The travellers were assured that in the event of meeting a jaguar in a narrow path he would spring on the dog rather than on a man. They did not proceed along the brink of the torrent, but on the slope of the rocks which overhung the water. They walked on the side of a precipice from two to three hundred feet deep, on a kind of very narrow cornice ; when the cor- nice was so narrow that they could find no place for their feet they descended into the torrent, crossed it by fording, and then climbed the opposite wall. These de- scents were very fatiguing, and it was not safe to trust to the lianas, which hung like great cords from the tops of the trees. The creeping and parasite plants clung but feeblv to the branches which they embraced ; the united weight ot their stalks was considerable, and the travellers ran the risk of pulling down a whole mass of verdure, if, in walking on a sloping ground, they supported their weight by the lianas. The farther they advanced the thicker the vegetation became. In several places the roots of the trees had burst the rock, by inserting them- selves into the clefts that separated the beds. They had some trouble to carry the plants which they gathered at every step. The cannas, the heliconias with fine purple flowers, the costuses, and other plants of the amomurr family, attained here eight or ten feet in height ; and their fresh tender verdure, their silky gloss, and the ex- traordinary development of the parenchyma, formed a striking contrast with the brown colour of the arbores- cent ferns, the foliage of which was delicately shaped 4 74 NO ADMIITANCE. The Indians made incisions with their large knives in the trunks of the trees, and fixed Humboldt's attention on the beautiful red and gold-coloured woods. The supposed gold mine of this crevice, which was the object of their examination, was nothing but an ex- cavation cut into a black strata of marl, which contained pyrites in abundance. The marly strata crossed the torrent, and, as the water washed out metallic grains, the natives imagined, on account of the brilliancy of the pyrites, that the torrent bore down gold. Nor could Humboldt convince them to the contrary ; for they con- tinued to pick up secretly, every bit of pyrites they saw sparkling in the water. The melancholy proverb, " All that glitters is not gold," seemed never to have reached them. Leaving this mythical gold mine they followed the course of the crevice which stretched along a narrow canal, overshadowed by lofty trees. They had suffered great fatigue, and were quite drenched by frequently crossing the torrent, when they reached the caverns. A wall of rock rose there perpen- dicularly to the height of five thousand feet. In the middle of this section, and in a position unfortunately inaccessible to man, two caverns opened in the form of crevices. The naturalists were assured by their guides that they were inhabited by nocturnal birds. The party reposed at the foot of the cavern where the flames were seen to issue. The natives discussed the danger to which the town of Cumanacoa would be exposed in case the crevice should become an active volcano, while Hum- boldt and Bonpland speculated on the causes of the phe- nomenon. So ended the expedition. On the 12th of September they continued their jour- ASCENT OF THE TUEnilQUIKI. 75 nej to the convent of Caripe, the principal settlement of the Chajma missions. Their first stopping-place was a solitary farm, situated on a small plain among the moun- tains of Cocallar. Is'o thing could be compared to the majestic tranquillity which the aspect of the firmament presented in this soli- tary region. Tracing with the eje, at nightfall, the mea- dows which bounded the horizon, the plain covered with verdure and gently undulated, they thought they beheld from afar the surface of the ocean supporting the starry vault of Heaven. The tree under which they were seated, the luminous insects flying in the air, the constellations which shone in the south ; every object seemed to tell them how far they were from their native land. If amidst this exotic nature they heard from the depth of the valley the tinkling of a bell, or the lowing of herds, the remembrance of their country was awakened suddenly. The sounds were like distant voices resound- ing from beyond the ocean, and with magical power trans- porting them from one hemisphere to the other. On the following morning they made the ascent of the Turimiquiri. The view on this mountain was vast and picturesque. From the summit to the ocean they per- ceived chains of mountains extended in parallel lines from east to west, and bounding longitudinal valleys. These valleys were intersected at right angles by an infi- nite number of small ravines scooped out by the torrents. The ground in general was a gentle slope as far as the Imposible ; farther on the precipices became bold, and continued so to the shore of the gulf of Cariaco. They seemed to look down into the bottom of a funnel, in which they could distinguish, amidst tufts of scattered 76 THE CONVENT OF CARIPE. trees, the Indian village of Aricagua. Towards the north, a narrow slip of land, the peninsula of Araya formed a dark stripe on the sea, which, being illumined by the raj^s of the sun, reflected a strong light. Beyond the peninsula the horizon was bounded by Cape Macanao, the black rocks of which rose amid the waters like an immense bastion. At last the travellers reached the convent of Caripe. It was backed with an enormous wall of perpendicular rock, covered with thick vegetation: the stone, which was of resplendent whiteness, appeared only here and there between the foliage. In a small square in front of the convent was a cross of Brazil wood, surrounded with benches for the infirm monks. They were telling their beads when Humboldt and Bonpland arrived. They were received with great hospitality by the monks of Caripe. The building had an inner court, sur- rounded by an arcade, like the convents in Spain. This inclosed place was highly convenient for setting up their instruments and making observations. The}^ found a numerous society in the convent. Young monks, re- cently arrived from Spain, were just about to settle in the Missions, while old infirm missionaries sought for health in the fresh and salubrious air of the mountains of Caripe. Humboldt was lodged in the cell of the su- perior, which contained a pretty good collection of books. He found there the Teatro Critico of Feijoo, the Lettres Edijiantes^ and the Traite cC Electricite hj abbe Nollet. It seemed as if the progress of knowledge had advanced even in the forests of America. But that which conferred the most celebrity on the valley of Caripe, was the great Cavern of the Guacharo. THE CATERX OF TUE GUACHAEO. 7^/ In a country where tlie people loved the marvellous, a cavern which gave birth to a river, and was inhabited bj thousands of nocturnal birds, the fat of which was employed in the Missions to dress food, was an everlast- ing object of conversation and discussion. The cavern, which the natives called " a mine of fat," was not in the valley of Caripe itself, but three short leagues distant from the convent. Humboldt and Bonpland set out for it on the 18th of September, acompanied by the alcaldes, or Indian magistrates, and the greater part of the monks of the convent. A narrow path led them at first towards the south, across a fine plain, covered with beautiful turf. They then turned westward, along the margin of a small river which issued from the mouth of the cavern. They ascended sometimes in the water, which was shallow, sometimes between the torrent and a wall of rocks, on a soil extremely slijDpery and miry. The falling down of the earth, the scattered trunks of trees, over which the mules could scarcely pass, and the creeping plants that covered the ground, rendered this part of the road fa- tiguing. They were within four hundred paces of the cavern, and yet they could not perceive it. The torrent ran in a crevice hollowed out by the waters, and they went on under a cornice, the projection of which pre- vented them from seeing the sky. The path wound in the direction of the river ; and at the last turning they came suddenly before the immense opening of the grotto. Pierced in the vertical profile of a rock, the entrance faced the south, and formed an arch eighty feet broad, and seventy -two feet high. The rock which surmounted the grotto was covered with trees 78 THE NOISE OF THE GUACHAROS. of gigantic height. Plants rose in its clefts, and creep ing vines, waving in the wind, were interwoven in fes- toons before the mouth of the cavern. Nor did this luxury of vegetation embellish the external arch merely ; it appeared even in the vestibule of the grotto. They saw with astonishment plantain-leaved heliconias eight- een feet high, the praga palm-tree, and arborescent arums, following the course of the river, even to those subter- ranean places. The vegetation continued in the cave of Caripe, and did not disappear till, penetrating into the interior, they had advanced thirty or forty paces from the entrance. They measured the way by means of a cord, and went on about four hundred and thirty feet without being obliged to light their torches. Daylight penetrated far into this region, because the grotto formed but one single channel, keeping the same direction. Where the light began to fail, they heard from afar the hoarse sounds of the nocturnal birds. The noise of these birds was horrible. Their shrill and piercing cries struck upon the vaults of the rocks, and were repeated by the subterranean echoes. The Indians showed the travellers the nests of the guacharos by fixing a torch to the end of a long pole. These nests were fifty or sixty feet high above their heads, in holes in the shape of fun- nels, with which the roof of the grotto was pierced like a sieve. The noise increased as they advanced, and the birds were scared by the light of the torches. When this noise ceased for a few minutes around them, thev heard at a distance the plaintive cries of the birds roosting in other ramifications of the cavern. It seemed as if differ- ent groups answered each other alternately. The Indians were in the habit of entering this cavern THE SUBTEKKAXEAN STEEAil. 79 once a year, near midsummer. They went armed with poles, with which they destroyed the greater part of the nests. At that season several thousand birds were killed ; and the old ones, as if to defend their brood, hovered over the heads of the Indians, uttering terrible cries. The young, which fell to the ground, were opened on the spot for their fat. At the period commonly called, at Caripe, the oil har- vest, the Indians built huts with palm-leaves, near the entrance, and even in the porch of the cavern. There, with a fire of brushwood, they melted in pots of clay the fat of the young birds just killed. This fat was known by the name of the butter of the guacharo. As the travellers continued to advance into the cavern, they followed the banks of the river which issued from it, and was from twenty-eight to thirty feet wide. They walked on the banks, as far as the hills formed of cal- careous incrustations permitted them. Where the tor- rent wound among high masses of stalactites, they were often obliged to descend into its bed, which was only two feet deep. They learned that this subterranean rivulet was the origin of the river Caripe, which, at the distance of a few leagues, where it joined the small river of Santa Maria, was navigable for canoes. They found on the banks of the subterranean rivulet a great quan- tity of palm-tree wood, the remains of trunks, on which the Indians climbed to reach the nests hanging from the roofs of the cavern. The rings formed by the vestiges of the old footstalks of the leaves, furnished as it were the steps of a ladder perpendicularly placed. They had great difficulty in persuading the Indians to pass beyond the anterior portion of the grotto, the only 80 THE CAVE OF SOULS. part whicli tliey annually visited to collect the fat. The wliole authority of the monks was necessary to induce them to advance as far as the spot where the torrent formed a small subterranean cascade. The natives con- nected mystic ideas with this cave, inhabited by nocturnal birds ; they believed that the souls of their ancestors so- journed in the deep recesses of the cavern. " Man," said they, " should avoid places which are enlightened neither by the sun nor by the moon." " To go and join the guacharos," was with them a phrase signifying to rejoin their fathers, to die. The magicians and the poi- soners performed their nocturnal tricks at the entrance of the cavern, to conjure the chief of the evil spirits. At the point where the river formed the subterranean cascade, a hill covered with vegetation, which was oppo- site to the opening of the grotto, presented a very pic- turesque aspect. It was seen at the extremity of a straight passage, one thousand four hundred and fifty feet in length. The stalactites descending from the roof, and resembling columns suspended in the air, were relieved on a background of verdure. The opening of the cavern appeared singularly contracted, when the travellers saw it about the middle of the day, illumined by the vivid light reflected at once from the sky, the plants, and the rocks. The distant light of day formed a strange con- trast with the darkness which surrounded them in the vast cavern. They discharged their guns at a venture, wherever the cries of the nocturnal birds and the flap- ping of their wings led them to suspect that a great number of nests were crowded together. After several fruitless attempts Bonpland succeeded in killing a couple of guacharos, which, dazzled by the light of the torches, THE GHOSTLY PLANTS. 81 seemed to pursue liim. This circumstance afft rded Hum- boldt tlie means of making a drawing of this oird, which had previously been unknown to naturalists. In this part of the cavern, the rivulet deposited a blackish mould. They could not discover whether it fell through the cracks which communicated with the surface of the ground above, or was washed down by the rain-water penetrating into the cavern. They walked in thick mud to a spot where they beheld with astonish- ment the progress of subterranean vegetation. The seeds which the birds had carried into the grotto to feed their young, had sprung up wherever they could fix in the mould which covered the incrustations. Blanched stalks, with some half-formed leaves, had risen to the height of two feet. It was impossible to ascertain the species of these plants, their form, colour, and aspect having been changed by the absence of light. These traces of organization amidst darkness forcibly excited the curi- osity of the natives, who examined them with silent meditation inspired by a place they seemed to dread. They regarded these subterranean plants, pale and de- formed, as phantoms banished from the face of the earth. To Humboldt the scene recalled one of the happiest periods of his youth — his abode in the mines of Frey- berg, where he had made experiments on the effects of blanching. The missionaries, with all their authority, could not prevail on the Indians to penetrate farther into the ca- vern. As the roof became lower the cries of the guacha- ros were more and more shrill. The travellers were obliged to yield to the pusillanimity of their guides, and retrace their steps. 4* 82 TILK CONVENT OP CARIPE. On turning back to go out of tbc cavern, they folk wed the course of the torrent. Before their eyes became dazzled with the light of day they saw on the outside of the grotto the water of the river sparkling amid the foliage of the trees which shaded it. It was like a pic- ture placed in the distance, the mouth of the cavern serv- ing as a frame. Having at length reached the entrance, they seated themselves on the bank of the rivulet, to rest after their fatigues. They were glad to be beyond the hoarse cries of the birds, and to leave a place where darkness did not offer even the charm of silence and tranquillity. Swiftly glided their days in the convent of Caripe. From sunrise to nightfall they traversed the forests and neighbouring mountains, to collect plants. When the winter rains prevented them from undertaking distant excursions, they visited the huts of the Indians, the garden of the communit}^, or assemblies in which the alcaldes every evening arranged the labours of the suc- ceeding day. They returned to the monastery only when the sound of the bell called them to the refectory to share the repasts of the missionaries. Sometimes, very early in the morning, they followed them to the church, to attend the religious instruction of the Indians. After passing almost the whole day in the open air, they employed their evenings, at the convent, in making notes, drying their plants, and sketching those that ap- peared to form new genera. Unfortunately the misty atmosphere of a valley, where the surrounding forests filled the air with an enormous quantity of vapour, was unfavourable to astro;aomical observations. Humboldt spent a part of the nights waiting to take advantage of THE DESCENT OF rUKGATOUY. . 83 the moment when some star sliould be visible between the clouds, near its passage over the meridian. He often shivered with cold, though the thermometer only sank to 60®. The instruments remained set up in the court of the convent for several hours, yet he was almost always disappointed in his expectations. From the valley of Caripe the travellers proceeded across a ridge of hills, and over a vast savannah, to the table-land of Guardia de San Augustin. Beyond this was a slope, extremely slippery and steep, to which the missionaries had given the name of the Descent of Pur- gatory. When they looked down from the top to the bottom of the hill the road seemed inclined more than 60°. The mules in going down drew their hind legs near to their fore legs, and lowering their cruppers, let themselves slide at a venture. They soon entered a thick forest, known by the name of the Montana de Santa Maria. Here they descended without intermission for seven hours. It was difficult to conceive a more tremendous descent ; it was absolutely a road of steps, a kind of ravine, in which, during the rainy season, im- petuous torrents dashed from rock to rock. The steps were from two to three feet high, and the beasts of bur- den, after measuring with their eyes the space necessary to let their load pass between the trunks of the trees, leaped from one rock to another. Afraid of missing their mark, the travellers saw them stop a few minutes to scan the ground, and bring together their four feet like wild goats. If the animal did not reach the nearest block of stone, he sank half his depth into the soft ochreous clay, that filled up the interstices of the rock. When the blocks were wanting, enormous roots served 84 INDIANS ON A TKAMI'. as supports for tlie feet of men and beasts. Some of these roots were twenty inclies thick, and they often branched out from the trunks of the trees much above the level of the soil. The Creoles had sufficient confi- dence in the address and instinct of the mules, to remain in their saddles during this long and dangerous descent. Fearing fatigue less than they did, and being accustomed to travel slowly for the purpose of gathering plants and examining the nature of the rocks, Humboldt and Bon- pland preferred going down on foot. The weather was cloudy. The sun at times illumined the tops of the trees, and, though sheltered from its rays, they felt an oppressive heat. Thunder rolled at a distance; the clouds seemed suspended on the tops of the lofty mountains of the Guacharo ; and the plaintive howling of the monkeys denoted the proximity of a storm. They stopped to observe these monkeys, which, to the number of thirty or forty, crossed the road, pass- ing in a file from one tree to another over the horizontal and intersecting branches. While the travellers were observing their movements they saw a troop of Indians going towards the mountains of Caripe. They were without clothing, as the natives of this country generally are. The women, laden with rather heavy burdens, closed the march. The men were all armed, and even the youngest boys had bows and arrows. They moved on in silence, with their eyes fixed on the ground. The travellers endeavoured to learn from them whether they were yet far from the Mission of Santa Cruz, where they intended passing the night. They were overcome with fatigue, and suffered from thirst. The heat increased as the storm drew near, and they had not met with a single THE rOr.EST OF SAXTA MARIA. 85 spring on tlieir way. The words si^ palre, nj, patre^ which the Indians continually repeated, led them tc think they understood a little Spanish. In the eyes of a native every white man was a monk ; for in the Missions the colour of the skin characterized the monk, more than the colour of the garment. In vain they questioned the Indians respecting the length of the way : they answered, si and ?zo, \vithout the travellers being able to attach any precise sense to their replies. This made them the more impatient, as their smiles and gestures indicated their wish to direct them; and the forest seemed at every step to become thicker and thicker. At length they separated from the Indians; their guides were able to follow them only at a distance, because the beasts of burden fell at every step in the ravines. After journeying for several hours, continually de- scending on blocks of scattered rock, they found them- selves unexpectedly at the outlet of the forest of Santa Maria. A savannah stretched before them farther than the eye could reach. On the left was a narrow valley, extending as far as the mountains of the Guacharo, and coYcred with a thick forest. Looking^ downward the eyes of the travellers rested on the tops of the trees, which, at eight hundred feet below the road, formed a carpet of verdure of dark and uniform tint. They passed the night at one of the king's houses already mentioned. They were desirous of continuing their journey east- ward still farther, but learning that the roads were im- passable in consequence of the torrents of rain that had fallen, and that they would be likely to lose the plants which they had already gathered, they resolved to em- bark at Cariaco, and return to Cumana by the gulf, 86 BACK AT CUMANA. instead of passing between the island of Margareta and the isthmus of Araya. They accordingly started from the mission of Catuaro, and proceeded to the town of Cariaco, where they embarked in a canoe, on the morn- ing of the 2'ith. Quitting the town they sailed westward along the river of Carenicuar, which ran through gar- dens and plantations of cotton trees. They saw the Indian women on the banks washing their clothes with the fruit of the soap-berry. Contrary winds beset them in the gulf of Cariaco. The rain fell in torrents, and the thunder rolled very near. Swarms of flamingoes, egrets, and cormorants filled the air, seeking the shore, whilst the alcatras alone continued peaceably to fish in the middle of the gulf. They landed till evening, and then resumed their voyage, under a misty sky. In the morning they saw the vultures perching on the cocoa- trees, in flocks of forty or fifty. At last they reacbjd Cumana. CHAPTER III. TOWAUDS THE ORINOCO. Humboldt and Bonpland remained a monih at Cu* mana, employing themselves in preparing for a visit tc the Orinoco and the Rio Kegro. They had to choose such instruments as could be most easily transported in narrow boats ; and to engage guides for an inland jour- ney of ten months, across a country without communica- tion with the coasts. The astronomical determination of places being the most important object of this undertaking, Humboldt felt desirous not to miss the observation of an eclipse of the sun, which was to be visible at the end of October : and in consequence preferred remaining till that period at Cumana, where the sky was generally clear and serene. It was now too late to reach the banks of the Orinoco before October; and the high valleys of Caracas promised less favourable opportunities on ac- count of the vapours which accumulated round the neigh- bouring mountains. He was, however, near being compelled by a deploi- able occurrence, to renounce, or at least delay for a long time, his journey to the Orinoco. On the 27th of Octo- ber, the day before the eclipse, he and Bonpland went as usual to take the air on the shore of the gulf, and to observe the instant of high water, which in those parts 88 FIGHT WITH THE ZAMIiO. "was only twelve or thirteen inclies. ^ It was eiglit in the evening, and the breeze was not yet stirring. They crossed the beach which separated the suburb of the Guayqueria Indians from the landing-place. Here Hum- boldt heard some one walking behind them, and on turn- ing he saw a tall Zambo, naked to the waist. He held almost over Humboldt's head a stick of palm-tree wood, enlarged to the end like a club. ■ Humboldt avoided the stroke by leaping towards the left ; but Bon- pland, who walked on his right, was less fortunate. He did not see the Zambo as soon as Humboldt did, and re ceived a stroke above the temple, which levelled him to the ground. The travellers were alone, without arms, half a league from any habitation, on a vast plain bounded by the sea. The Zambo, instead of attacking Humboldt, moved off slowly to pick up Bonpland's hat, which, having somewhat deadened the violence of the blow, had fallen off and lay at some distance. Alarmed at seeing his companion on the ground, and for some moments senseless, Humboldt thought of him only. He helped Bonpland to raise himself, and pain and anger doubled his strength. They ran towards the Zambo, who, either from cowardice, or because he perceived at a dis- tance some men on the beach, did not wait for them, but ran off in the direction of a little thicket of cactus. He chanced to fall in running, and Bonpland, who reached him first, seized him round tlie body. The Zambo drew a long knife ; and in this unequal struggle the travellers would infallibly have been wounded, if some Biscayan merchants, who were taking the air on the beach, had not come to their assistance. The Zambo seeing himself surrounded, thought no longer of defence. He again RED VAPOURS AT XIGHT. S9 ran away, and they pursued him through the thorny cac- tuses. At length, tired out, he took shelter in a cow-house, whence he suffered himself to be quietly led to prison. Bonpland was seized with fever during the night; but being endowed with gTeat energy and fortitude he continued his labours the next day. The stroke of the club had extended to the top of his head, and he felt its effect for the space of two or three months. When stooping to collect plants, he was sometimes seized with giddiness, which led him to fear that an internal abscess was forming. Happily these apprehensions were un- founded, and the symptoms gradually disappeared. During a few days which preceded and followed the eclipse of the sun, very remarkable atmospherical phe- nomena were observable. From the 10th of October to the 8rd of November, at nightfall, a reddish vapour arose in the horizon, and covered, in a few minutes, with a veil more or less thick, the azure vault of the sky. Sometimes, in the midst of the night, the vapours disap- peared in an instant ; and at the moment when Humboldt had arranged his instruments, clouds of brilliant white- ness collected at the zenith, and extended towards the horizon. On the 18th of October these clouds were so remarkably transparent, that they did not hide stars even of the fourth magnitude. He could distinguish so- per- fectly the spots of the moon, that it might have been sup- posed its disk was before the clouds. After the 28th of October, the reddish mist became thicker than it had previously been. The heat of the nights seemed stifling, though the thermometer rose only to 78°. The breeze, which generally refreshed the air from eight or nine o'clock in the evening, was no longer 90 THE EARTHQUAKE. felt. The atmosphere was burning hot, an J the ]. arched and dusty ground was cracked on every side. On the 4th of Kovember, about two in the afternoon, large clouds of peculiar blackness enveloped the high mountains of the Brigantine and the Tataraqual. They extended by degrees as far as the zenith. About four in the after- noon Humboldt and Bonpland heard thunder over their heads, at an immense height, not regularly rolling, but with a hollow and often interrupted sound. At the mo- ment of the strongest electric explosion, at twelve minutes past four, there were two shocks of earthquake, which followed each other at the interval of fifteen seconds. The people ran into the streets, uttering loud cries. Bon- pland, who was leaning over a table, examining plants, was almost thrown on the floor. Humboldt felt the shock very strongly, though he was lying in a hammock. Some slaves, who were drawing water from a well eighteen or twenty feet deep, near the river Manzanares, heard a noise like the explosion of a strong charge of gunpowder. The noise seemed to come from the bottom of the well. A few minutes before the first shock there was a very violent blast of wind, followed by electrical rain, falling in great drops. The sky remained cloudy, and the blast of wind was followed by a dead calm, which lasted all night. The sunset presented a pic- ture of extraordinary magnificence. The thick veil of clouds was rent asunder, as in shreds, quite near the horizon ; the sun appeared at 12° of altitude on a sky of indigo-blue. Its disk was enormously enlarged, dis- torted, and undulated towards the edges. The clouds were gilded; and fascicles of divergent rays, reflecting MORE EED VAPOURS. ' 91 the most brilliant rainbow hues, extended over the hea- vens. A great crowd of people assembled in the public square. This celestial phenomenon, the earthquake, the thunder which accompanied it, the red vapour seen dur ing so many days, all were regarded as the effect of the eclipse. About nine in the evening there was another shock, much slighter than the former, but attended with a subterraneous noise. In the night between the 3d and 4th of November the reddish vapour was so thick that Humboldt could not distinguish the situation of the moon, except by a beautiful halo of 20^ diameter. The travellers had frequent visits from persons who wished to know whether their instruments indicated new shocks for the next day ; and alarm was great and gene- ral when, on the 5th, exactly at the same hour as on the preceding day, there was a violent gust of wind, attended by thunder, and a few drops of rain. No shock was felt. The wind and storm returned durinof five or six days at the same hour, almost at the same minute. The reddish vapour disappeared after the 7th of iSTo- vember. The atmosphere resumed its former purity, and the firmament appeared, at the zenith, of that deep blue tint peculiar to climates where heat, light, and a great equality of electric charge seem all to promote the most perfect dissolution of water in the air. Humboldt observed, on the night of the 7th, the immersion of the second satellite of Jupiter. The belts of the planet were more distinct than he had ever seen them before. The nip^ht of the 11th was cool, and extremelv fine. From half after two in the morning, the most extraordi- nary luminous meteors were seen in the direction of the east. Bonpland, who had risen to enjoy the freshness of 92 FALLING STARS. the air, perceived them first. Thousands of bolides and falHng stars succeeded each other during the space of four hours. No trace of clouds was to be seen. From the first appearance of the phenomenon, there was not in the firmament a space equal in extent to three diameters of the moon, which was not filled every instant with bolides and falling stars. The first were fewer in number, but as they were of different sizes, it was impossible to fix the limit between these two classes of phenomena. All these meteors left luminous traces from 5^ to 10° in length. The phosphorescence of these traces, or lumi- nous bands, lasted seven or eight seconds. The phenomenon ceased by degrees after four o'clock, and the bolides and falling stars became less frequent, though Humboldt still distinguished some to the north- east by their whitish light, and the rapidity of their movement, a quarter of an hour after sunrise. On the evening of the 16th of November the travellers set sail from Cumana for La Guayra, descending the little river of Manzanares, the windings of which were marked by cocoanut-trees. At high water they passed the bar at its mouth. The evening breeze gently swelled the waves in the gulf of Cariaco. The moon had not risen, but that part of the milky way which extended from the feet of the Centaur towards the constellation of Sagittarius, seemed to pour a silvery light over the sur- face of the ocean. The white rock, crowned by the castle of San Antonio, appeared from time to time be- tween the high tops of the cocoa-trees which bordered the shore, and the voyagers soon recognised the coasts only by the scattered lights of the Guayqueria fishermen. As they advanced towards the shoal that surrounded PORPOISES AND FLAillNGOES. 93 Cape Arenas they enjoyed one of those varied sights which the great phosphorescence of the sea so often dis- plays in those chmates. Bands of porpoises followed their bark. Fifteen or sixteen of these animals swam at equal distances from each other. When turning on their backs, they struck the surface of the water with their broad tails; they diffused a brilliant light, which seemed like flames issuing from the depth of the ocean. Each band of porpoises, ploughing the surface of the waters, left behind it a track of light, the more striking as the rest of the sea was not phosphorescent. The voj-agers found themselves at midnight between some barren and rocky islands, which "uprose like bas- tions in the middle of the sea, and formed the- group of the Caracas and Chimanas. The moon was above the horizon, and lighted up these cleft rocks, which were bare of vegetation and of fantastic aspect. As they came near this group of mountainous islands, they were becalmed ; and at sunrise, small currents drifted them towards Boracha, the largest of them. The temperature of the atmosphere became sensibly higher whilst they were sailing among the islands of this little archipelago. The rocks, heated during the day, threw out at night, by radiation, a part of the heat ab- sorbed. As the sun rose on the horizon, the rugged mountains projected their vast shadows on the surface of the ocean. The flamingoes began to fish in the creeks, Humboldt and Bonpland saw them as they passed, stand- ing like a file of soldiers, along the narrow beaches, and necks of land. They were so far advanced on their voj'agc on the morning of the 20th, that they hoped to reach La Guayra 94 PESTILENT FORESTS. that day ; but their Indian pilot being afraid of the pri- vateers who were near that port, thought it would be prudent to make for hind, and anchor in the little har- bour of Higuerote, which they had already passed, and await the shelter of night to proceed on their voyage. They found neither village nor farm there, but merely two or three huts, inhabited bv fishermen. Their livid hue, and the meagre condition of their children, showed the voyagers that this spot was one of the most unhealthy of the whole coast. The sea had so little depth along these shores, that even with the smallest barks it was impossible to reach the shore without wading through the water. The forests came down nearly to the beach, which was covered with thickets of mangroves, avicen- nias, and manchineel-trees. To these thickets, and par- ticularly to the exhalations of the mangroves, Humboldt attributed the extreme insalubrity of the air. On quit- ting the boats, and whilst they were yet one hundred feet distant from the land, he perceived a faint and sickly smell, which reminded him of that diffused through the galleries of deserted mines. The tempera- ture of the air rose to 93°, heated by the reverberation from the white sands which formed a line between the mangroves and the great trees of the forest. As the shore descended with a gentle slope, small tides were sufficient alternately to cover and uncover the roots, and part of the trunks of the mangroves. The sea-water, along the whole coast, acquired a yellowish brown tint, wherever it came into contact with the mangrove trees. The beaches around were covered with infinite numbers of molluscs and insects. Loving shade and faint light they sheltered themselves from the shock of the waves CARACAS. 95 amid the scaffolding of thick and intertwining roots, which rose like lattice-work above the surface of the waters. Shell-fish clung to this lattice ; crabs nestled in the hollow trunks ; and the seaweeds, drifted to the coast by the winds and tides, remained suspended on the branches which inclined towards the earth. They set sail from this noxious place at nightfall. At sunrise they were opposite Caracas. The coast was rocky and elevated, the scenery at once wild and pictur- esque. They were sufficiently near land to distinguish scattered huts surrounded by cocoa-trees, and masses of - vegetation, which stood out from the dark ground of the rocks. The mountains were everywhere perpendicular, and three or four thousand feet high ; their sides cast broad and deep shadows upon the humid land, which stretched out to the sea, glowing with the freshest ver- dure. They soon saw the black rocks of La Guayra, studded with batteries rising in tiers one over another ; and in the misty distance, Cabo Blanco, a long promon- tory with conical summits, and of dazzling whiteness. Humboldt and Bonpland remained two months at Caracas, in a large house in the most elevated part of the town. From a gallery they could survey at once the summit of the Saddle, the serrated ridge of the Galipano, . and the charming valley of the Guayra, the rich culture of which was pleasingly contrasted with the gloomy cur- tain of the surrounding mountains. It was in the dry season, and to improve the pasturage, the savannahs and the turf covering the steepest rocks were set on fire. These vast conflagrations, viewed from a distance, pro- duced the most singular effects of light. Wherever the savannahs, following the undulating slope of the rocks, 96 THE G..TE OF THE SADDLE. had filled up the furrows hollowed out by the waters, the flame appeared in a dark night like currents of lava sus- pended over the valley. The vivid but steady light assumed a reddish tint, when the wind, descending from the Saddle, accumulated streams of vapour in the low regions. At other times these luminous bands, enve- loped in thick clouds, appeared only at intervals where it was clear; and as the clouds ascended their edges re- flected a splendid light. These various phenomena, so common in the tropics, acquired additional interest from the form of the mountains, the direction of the slopes, and the height of the savannahs covered with alpine grasses. During the day, the wind of Petare, Ijlowing from the east, drove the smoke towards the town, and diminished the transparency of the air. On the morning of the 8d of January they commenced the ascent of the Saddle, a celebrated mountain near Caracas. The party consisted of eighteen persons, and they all walked one behind another, in a narrow path, traced on a steep acclivity, covered with turf They reached a hill, connected with the body of the mountain, and called the Gate of the Saddle. Here they crossed a narrow dyke of rocks, which led to the ridge of the mountain, and looked down on two valleys, filled with thick vegetation. In one of these valleys they heard the roaring of waterfalls, which they could not see, they were so thickly hidden in groves of fig-trees. From the Gate of the Saddle the ' steepness of the • ascent increased, and they were obliged to incline their bodies considerably forwards as they advanced. Thej felt the want of cramp-irons, or sticks shod with iron. Short grass covered the rocks of gneiss, and it was .ASCENT OF THE SADDLE. 97 equally impossible to hold by the grass, or to form steps as they might have done in softer ground. This ascent, which was attended with more fatigue than danger, dis- couraged those who accompanied them from the town, and who were unaccustomed to climb mountains. The travellers lost much time in waiting for them, and they did not resolve to proceed alone till they saw them descending the mountain instead of climbing it. The weather was becoming cloudy ; the mist already issued in the form of smoke, and in slender and perpendicular streaks, from a small humid wood which bordered the region of alpine savannahs above them. It seemed as if a fire had burst forth at once on several points of the forest. These streaks of vapour gradually accumulated together, and rising above the ground, were carried along by the morning breeze, and glided like a light cloud over the rounded summit of the mountain. Humboldt and Bon^^land foresaw from these signs, that they would soon be covered by a thick fog ; and lest their guides should take advantage of this circum- stance and leave them, they obliged those who carried the most necessary instruments to precede them. The familiar loquacity of the Creole blacks formed a striking contrast with the taciturn gravity of the Indians, who had constantly accompanied them in the missions of Caripe. The negroes amused themselves by laughing at the persons who had been in such haste to abandon an expedition so long in preparation ; above all, they did not spare a young Capuchin monk, a professor of mathe- matics, who never ceased to boast of the superior physi- cal strength and courage possessed by all classes of European Spaniards over those born in Spanish America. 5 98 THE rr.OFESSOIl'S COUKAGE FAILS. He had provided himself with long slips of white paper^ which were to be cut, and flung on the savannah, to in- dicate to those who might stray behind, the direction they ought to follow. The professor had even promised the friars of his order to fire off some rockets, to an- nounce to the whole town of Caracas that they had suc- ceeded in an enterprise which to him appeared of the utmost importance. He had forgotten that his long and heavy garments would embarrass him in the ascent. Having lost courage long before the Creoles, he passed the rest of the day in a neighbouring plantation, gazing at the travellers through a glass directed to the Saddle, as they climbed the mountain. Unfortunately for them, however, he had taken charge of the water and the provi- sion so necessary in an excursion to the mountains. The slaves who were to rejoin them were so long detained by him, that they arrived very late, and the travellers were ten hours without either bread or water. They were sometimes so enveloped with mist that they could not without difficulty find their way. At this height there was no path, and they were obliged to climb with their hands, when their feet failed them, on the steep and slippery ascent. After proceeding for the space of four hours across the savannahs, they entered into a little wood composed of shrubs and small trees. The steepness of the mountain became less considerable, and they felt an indescribable pleasure in examining the plants of this region. Quitting the wood they found themselves again in a savannah. They climbed over a part of the western dome, in order to descend into the hollow of the Saddle, a valley which separated the two summits of the mountain. They had great difficulties LOST I^J THE illST. 99 to overcome here, occasioned bj the force of the vegeta- tion, and were obliged to cut their way through this forest : the negroes walked before them with cutlasses, chopping down the limbs that opposed them. On a sudden they found themselves enveloped in a thick mist; the compass alone could guide them. In advancing northward they were in danger at every step of finding themselves on the brink of an enormous wall of rocks, which descended almost perpendicularly to the depth of six thousand feet towards the sea. They were obliged to halt. Surrounded by clouds sweeping the ground, they began to doubt whether they should reach the eastern peak before night. Happily, the negroes who carried their water and provisions, rejoined them, and they resolved to take some refreshment. Their re- past did not last long. As it was only two o'clock in the afternoon, they entertained some hope of reaching the eastern summit of the Saddle before sunset, and of re-descending into the valley separating the two peaks, intending there to pass the night, to light a great fire, and to make their negroes construct a hut. They sent off half of their servants with orders to hasten the next morning to meet them with a supply of salt beef. They had scarcely made these arrangements when the east wind began to blow violently from the sea. In less than two minutes the clouds dispersed, and the two domes of the Saddle appeared singularly near. They shaped their course to the eastern summit, which they were three-quarters of an hour in reaching. They were now over eight thousand feet high, and they gazed on an extent of sea, the radius of which was tbirty-six leagues. It was as smooth as glass, but in the distance 100 THE LITTLE ANGELS. it was lost in the strata of air. Thej expected, as at Teneriffe, to see the horizon level with the eye, but in stead of distinguishing a marked limit between the two elements, the distant strata of water seemed to be trans- formed into vapour, and mingled with the aerial ocean. The western dome of the Saddle concealed from them the view of the town of Caracas; but they distin- guished the nearest houses, the villages of Chacao and Petare, the coffee plantations, and the course of the Kio Guayra, a slender streak of water reflecting a silvery light. While they were examining with their glasses that part of the sea, the horizon of which was clearly defined, and the chain of the mountains of Ocumare, behind which began the unknown world of the Orinoco and the Amazon, a thick fog from the plains rose to the elevated regions, first filling the bottom of the valley of Caracas. The vapours, illumined from above, presented a uniform tint of a milky white. The valley seemed overspread with water, and looked like an arm of the sea, of which the adjacent mountains formed the steep shore. Seated on the rock, Humboldt was determining the dip of the needle, when he found his hands covered with a species of hairy bee, a little smaller than the honey-bee of the north of Euroj^e. These insects make their nests in the ground. The people, in these regions, call them little angels, because they seldom sting. The fog became so dense that it would have been im- prudent to remain any longer, so they descended. It was now half-past four in the afternoon. Satisfied with the success of their journey, they forgot that there might be danger in descending in the dark, steep declivities DESCENDING THE SADDLE. 101 covered by a smooth and slippery turf. The mist con- cealed the valley from them ; but they distinguished the double hill of The Gate, which, like all objects lying almost perpendicularly beneath the eye, appeared ex- tremely near. They relinquished their design of passing the night between the two summits of the Saddle, and having again found the path that they cut through the thick wood, they soon arrived at the little wood already mentioned. As there is scarcely any twilight in the tropics, they passed suddenly from bright daylight to darkness. The moon was on the horizon ; but her disk was veiled from time to time by thick clouds, drifted by a cold and rough wind. Eapid slopes, covered with yellow and dry grass, now seen in shade, and now sud- denly illumined, seemed like precipices, the depth of which the eye sought in vain to measure. They pro- ceeded onwards in single file, and endeavoured to sup- port themselves by their hands^ lest they should roll down. The guides, who carried their instruments, abandoned them successively, to sleep on the mountain. Among those who remained with them was a Congo black, who evinced great address, bearing on his head a large dipping-needle : he held it constantly steady, not- withstanding the extreme declivity of the rocks. The fog had dispersed by degrees in the bottom of the valley, and the scattered lights they perceived below them caused a double illusion. The steeps appeared more dangerous than they really were ; and, during six hours of continual descent, they seemed to be always equally near the farms at the foot of the Saddle. They heard very distinctly the voices of men and the notes of guitars. Sound is generally so well propagated upwards, that in a balloon 102 THE ZAMANG DEL GUAYEE. at the elevation of eighteen thousand feet, the barking of dogs is sometimes heard. They did not arrive till ten at night at the bottom of the valley. They were overcome with fatigue and thirst, having walked for fifteen hours, nearly without stopping. The soles of their feet were cut and torn by the asperi- ties of a rocky soil and the hard and dry stalks, for they had been obliged to pull off their boots, the soles having become too slippery. They passed the night at the foot of the Saddle. On the 7th of February they departed from Caracas, en route for the banks of the Orinoco. Nothing worthy of note occurred for several days. Not far from the village of Turmero, they discovered at a league distant, an object, which appeared at the horizon like a round hillock, or tumulus, covered with vegetation. It was neither a hill, nor a group of trees close to each other, but one single tree, the famous Zamang del Guayre, known throughout the province for the enormous extent of its branches, which formed a hemispheric head five hundred and seventy -six feet in circumference. The zamang is a fine species of mimosa, and its tortuous branches are divided by bifurcation. Its delicate and tender foliage was agreeably relieved on the azure of the sk}^ They stopped a long time under this vegetable roof. The trunk of the Zamang del Guayre was only sixty feet high, and nine thick ; its real beauty consisted in the form of its head. The branches ex- tended like an immense umbrella, and bent toward the ground, from which they remained at a uniform distance of twelve or fifteen feet. The circumference of this head was so regular, that, having traced different diame- FRIGHTENED BY A JAGUAE. 103 ters, Humboldt found them one hundred and ninetj-two, and one hundred and eighty-six feet. One side of the tree was entirely stripped of its foliage, owing to the drought; but on the other side there remained both leaves and flowers; parasites covered its branches, and cracked the bark. The inhabitants of the adjacent villages, particularly the Indians, held in great venera- tion the Zamang del Guayre, which the first conquerors found almost in the same state in which it now remains. Humboldt considered it at least as old as the Orotava drasron-tree. On thje 21st, in the evening, the travellers set out for Guacara and Nueva Valencia. They preferred travel- ling by night, on account of the excessive heat of the day. The road was bordered with large zamang-trees, the trunks of which rose sixty feet high. Their branches, nearly horizontal, met at more than one hundred and fifty feet distance. The night was gloomy : the Eincon del Diablo with its denticulated rocks appeared from time to time at a distance, illumined by the burning of the savannahs, or wrapped in ruddy smoke. At the spot where the bushes were thickest, their horses were frightened by the yell of an animal that seemed to follow them closely. It was a large jaguar, which had roamed for three years among these mountains. He had con- stantly escaped the pursuits of the boldest hunters, and had carried off horses and mules from the midst of in- closures ; but, having no want of food, had not yet at- tacked men. The negro who conducted the travellers uttered wild cries, expecting by these means to frighten the jaguar, but his efforts were ineffectual. On the morning of the 27th they visited the hot springs 104 THE COW TREE. of La Triiiclicra. ISText to the springs of Urijino, in Ja pan, the waters of La Trinchera are the hottest in the world. Humboldt and Bonpland breakfasted near them, and found that eggs plunged into the water boiled in less than four minutes. The heat became stifling as they ap- proached the coast. A reddish vapour filled the horizon. It was near sunset, and the breeze was not yet stirring. The river of hot water, along the banks of which they passed, became deeper. A crocodile, more than nine feet long, lay dead on the strand. Humboldt wished to ex- amine its teeth, and the inside of its mouth ; but having been exposed to the sun for several weeks, it exhaled a smell so fetid that he was obliged to relinquish his design and remount his horse. Between Porto Cabello and the valleys of Aragua they saw a remarkable tree. They had heard, several weeks before, of a tree, the sap of which was a nourishing milk. It was called * the cow-tree ' ; and they were assured that the negroes, who drank plentifully of this vegetable milk, considered it a wholesome aliment. All the milky juices of plants being acrid, bitter, and more or less poisonous, this account appeared to them very extraordi- nary ; but they found by experience during their stay in the neighbourhood, that the virtues of this tree had not been exaggerated. It rose like the broad-leaved star- apple. Its oblong and pointed leaves, rough and alter- nate, were marked by lateral ribs, prominent at the lower surface and parallel. Some of them were ten inches long. They did not see the flower : the fruit was somewhat fleshy, and contained one and sometimes two nuts. When incisions were made in the trunk it yielded an abundance of glutinous milk, tolerably thick, devoid THE HOWLIXG MONKEYS. 105 of all acridity, and of an agreeable and balmy smell. The travellers drank considerable quantities of it in the evening before they went to bed, and very early in the morning, without feeling the least injurious effect. The negroes and the free people who worked in the planta- tions drank it, dipping into it their bread of maize or cassava. The overseer of the farm told Humboldt that the negroes grew sensibly fatter during the season when it furnished them with most milk. It was at the rising of the sun that this vegetable fountain was most abun- dant. The negroes and natives were then seen hasten- ing from all quarters, furnished with large bowls to re- ceive the milk, which grew yellow, and thickened at its surface. Some emptied their bowls under the tree itself others carried the juice home to their children. They left the valleys of Aragua at sunrise on the 6th of March. They were never weary of admiring the fertility of the soil, covered with calabashes, water- melons, and plantains. The rising of the sun was an- nounced by the distant noise of the howling monkeys. Approaching a group of trees, they saw numerous bands of these monkeys moving as in procession and very slowly, from one tree to another. A male was followed by a great number of females, several of the latter carry- ing their young on their shoulders. The howling mon- keys, which live in society in different parts of America, everywhere resemble each other in their manners, though the species are not always the same. The uniformity with which they perform their movements is extremely striking. Whenever the branches of neighbouring trees do not touch each other, the male who leads the party suspends himself by the callous and prehensile part of 5* 106 SICK liUT mouD. his tail : and, letting fall the rest of his body, swings himself till in one of his oscillations he reaches the neigh- bouring branch. The w Ae file performs the same movements on the same inot. The Indians told the travellers that when the monkeys filled the forests with their howling, there was always one that chaunted as leader of the chorus. During a long interval one soli- tary and strong voice was generally distinguished, till its place was taken by another voice of a different pitch. The Missionaries asserted that when a female among them was on the point of bringing forth, the choir sus- pended its bowlings till the moment of the birth of the 3^oung. At Guigue they lodged with an old sergeant, a native of Murcia, a man of a very original character. To prove to them that he had studied among the Jesuits, he re- cited the history of the creation of the world in Latin. He knew the names of Augustus, Tiberius, and Diocle- tian ; and while enjoying the agreeable coolness of the nights in an inclosure planted with bananas, he employed himself in reading all that related to the courts of the Roman emperors. He inquired of Humboldt for a remedy for the gout, from which he suffered severely. " I know," said he, "a Zambo of Valencia, a famous curioso^ who could cure me; but the Zambo would expect to be treated with attentions which I cannot pay to a man of his colour, so I prefer remaining as I am." In the Mesa de Paja, in the ninth degree of latitude, they entered the basin of the Llanos. The sun was almost at its zenith ; the earth, wherever it appeared sterile and destitute of vegetation, was at the temperature of 118° or 122°. Not a breath of air was felt at the height THE LLANOS. 107 at which thej were on their mules ; yet, in the midst of this apparent cahn, whirls of dust incessantly arose, driven on by small currents ; air which glided over the surface of the ground, and were occasioned by the differ, ence of temperature betwc >h the naked sand and the spots covered with grass. These sand-winds augmented the suffocating heat of the air. Every grain of quartz, hotter than the surrounding air, radiated heat in all directions ; and it was difficult for Humboldt to observe the temperature of the atmosphere, owing to the particles of sand striking against the bulb of the thermometer. All around the plains seemed to ascend to the sky, and the vast and profound solitude appeared like an ocean covered with sea-weed. The horizon in some parts was clear and distinct, in other parts it appeared undulating, sinuous, and as if striped. The earth there was con- founded with the sky. Through the dry mist and strata of vapour the trunks of palm-trees were seen from afar, stripped of their foliage and their verdant summits, and looking like the masts of a ship descried upon the hori- zon. There was something awful, as well as sad and gloomy, in the uniform aspect of these steppes. Every thing seemed motionless ; scarcely did a small cloud, passing across the zenith, and denoting the approach of the rainy season, c£ist its shadow on the earth. The chief characteristic of these steppes was the abso- lute want of hills and inequalities — the perfect level of every part of the soil. Often within a distance of thirty square leagues there was not an eminence of a foot high. After having passed two nights on horseback, and sought in vain, by day, for some shelter from the heat of the sun beneath the tufts of the palm-trees, they 108 THE IIEllDSMEN OP THE LLANOS. arrived at a little farm. It was a solitary Louse in the steppes, surrounded by a few small huts, covered with reeds and skins. The cattle, oxen, horses, and mules' were not penned, but wandered freely over an extent of several square leagues. There was nowhere any inclo- sure ; men, naked to the waist and armed with lances, rode over the savannahs to inspect the animals, bringing back those that wandered too far from the pastures of the farm, and branding all that did not already bear the mark of their proprietor. These mulattoes were partly freed-men and partly slaves. They were constantly ex- posed to the burning heat of the tropical sun. Their food was meat dried in the air, and a little salted ; and of this even their horses sometimes partook. Being always in the saddle, they fancied they could not make the slightest excursion on foot. The travellers found an old negro slave, who managed the farm in the absence of his master. He told them of herds composed of several thousand cows, that were grazing in the steppes ; yet they asked in vain for a bowl of milk. They were , offered, in a calabash, some yellow, muddy, and fetid water, drawn from a neighbouring pool. The indolence of the inhabitants of the Llanos was such that they did not dig wells, though they knew that almost everywhere, at ten feet deep, fine springs were found. After suffering during one half of the year from the effect of inunda- tions, they quietly resigned themselves, during the other half, to the most distressing deprivation of water. The old negro advised the travellers to cover tlie cup with a linen cloth, and drink as through a filter, that they might not be incommoded by the smell, and might swal- low less of the yellowish mud suspended in the water. LOST IX TilE LLANOS. ] OS As soon as their instruments were unloaded tliey let the mules go to search for water, a common custom in the Llanos. They followed them till they came to one of the pools from which the water they had drunk wah drawn. They longed impatiently to take a bath, bui found only a great pool of feculent water, surrounded with palm-trees. The water was turbid, though a little cooler than the air. Accustomed during their long jour- ney to bathe whenever they had an opportunity, often several times in a day, they hastened to plunge into the pool. They had scarcely begun to enjoy the coolness of the bath, when a noise wliich they heard on the opposite bank, made them leave the water precipitately. It was an alligator plunging into the mud. They were only at the distance of a quarter of a league from the farm, yet they continued walking more than an hour without reaching it. They perceived too late that they had taken a wrong direction. Having left it at the decline of day, before the stars were visible, they had gone forward into the plain at hazard. They were provided with a compass, and it might have been easy for them to steer their course from the position of Canopus and the Southern Cross ; but unfortunately they were uncertain whether, on leaving the farm, they had gone towards the east or the south. They attempted to return to the spot where they had bathed, and again walked three quarters of an hour without finding the pool. They sometimes thought they saw fire on the horizon ; but it was the light of the rising stars enlarged by the vapours. After having wandered a long time in the savannah, they resolved to seat themselves beneath the trunk of a palm-tree, in a spot perfectly dry, sur- 110 NIGHT IN THE LLANOS. rounded by short grass. They could not flatter tliem selves that their guides would come in search of them in the savannah before they had prepared their food and finished their repast. Whilst somewhat perplexed by the uncertainty of their situation, they were pgreeably affected by hearing from afar the sound of a horse ad- vancing towards them. The rider was an Indian, armed with a lance, who had just made the round, in order to collect the cattle. The sight of two white men, who said they had lost their way, led him at first to suspect some trick. They found it difficult to inspire him with con- fidence ; he at last consented to guide them to the farm, but without slackening the gentle trot of his horse. Their guides assured them that they had already begun to be uneasy about them; and, to justify this inquietude, they gave a long enumeration of persons who, having lost themselves in the Llanos, had been found nearly exhausted. In order to escape as much as possible from the heat of the day, they set off at two in the morning, with the hope of reaching before noon Calabozo, a small but busy trading-town, situated in the midst of the Llanos. The aspect of the country was still the same. There was no moonlight ; but the great masses of nebulae that spotted the southern sky enlightened, as they set, a part of the terrestrial horizon. The solemn spectacle of the starry vault, seen in its immense expanse ; — the cool breeze which blew over the plain during the night: — the waving motion of the grass, wherever it had attained any height ; everything recalled to their minds the surface of the ocean. The illusion was deepened when the disk of the sun appearing on the horizon, repeated its image by EFFECT OF TUE MLKAGE. IH the effects of refraction, and, soon losing its flattened form, ascended rapidly and straight towards the zenith. In proportion as the sun rose towards the zenith, and the earth and the strata of snperincnmbent air took different temperatures, the phenomenon of the mirage displayed itself in its numerous modifications. The little currents of air that swept the surface of the soil had so variable a temperature that, in a drove of wild oxen, one part appeared with the legs raised above the surface of the ground, while the other rested on it. A well-informed person assured them, that he had seen, between Calabozo and Uritucu, the image of an animal inverted, without there being any direct image. They several times thought they saw on the horizon the figures of tumuli and towers, which disappeared at intervals, without their being able to discern the real shape of the objects. They were hillocks perhaps, or small emi- nences. The plain assumed at sunrise a more animated aspect. The cattle which had reposed during the night along the pools, or beneath clumps of mauritias and rhopalas, were now collected in herds ; and these solitudes became peopled with horses, mules, and oxen, that lived here free, without settled habitations, and disdaining the care and protection of man. Thev found at Calabozo, in the midst of the Llanos, an electrical machine with large plates, electrophori, batteries, and electrometers; an apparatus nearly as com- plete as the first scientific men in Europe possessed. It was the work of a man who had never seen any instru- ment, who had no person to consult, and who was acquainted with the phenomena of electricity only by 112 THE SELF-TAUGHT ELECTRICIAN. reading the treatise of De Lafond, and Franklin's Memoirs. Senor Carlos del Pozo, the name of this ingenious man, had begun to make cylindrical electrical machines, by employing large glass jars, after having cut off the necks. It was only a few years before that he had been able to procure, by way of Philadelphia, two plates, to construct a plate machine, and to obtain more considerable effects. It is easy to judge what difficulties Senor Pozo had to encounter, since the first works upon electricity had fallen into his hands, and that he had the courage to resolve to procure himself, by his own industry, all that he had seen described in his books. Till now he had enjoyed only the astonishment and admiration pro- duced by his experiments on persons destitute of all information, and who had never quitted the solitude of the Llanos ; the abode of Humboldt and Bonpland at Calabozo gave him a satisfaction altogether new. It may be supposed that he set some value on the opinions of two travellers who could compare his apparatus with those constructed in Europe. Humboldt had brought with him electrometers mounted with straw, pith-balls, and gold-leaf ; also a small Ley den jar which served for his physiological experiments. Senor del Pozo could not contain his joy on seeing for the first time instruments which he had not made, yet which appeared to be copied from his own. Humboldt showed him the effect of the contact of heterogeneous metals on the nerves of frogs. The names of Galvani and Volta had not previously been heard in those vast solitudes. Next to the electrical apparatus, nothing at Calabozo excited in the travellers so great an interest as the gymnoti, which were animated electrical apparatuses, FISHING WITH HOESES. 113 Humboldt was impatient, from tlie time of his arrival at Cumana, to procure electrical eels. He had been promised them often, but his hopes had always been disappointed. He at first wished to make his experi- ments in the house he inhabited at Calabozo, but the dread of the shocks caused by the gymnoti was so great, and so exaggerated among the common people, that during three days, he could not obtain one, though they were easily enough caught, and he had promised the Indians two piastres for every strong and vigorous fish. Impatient, at last, of waiting, and having obtained very uncertain results from an electric eel which had been brought to him aUve, but much enfeebled, Humboldt, accompanied by Bonpland, repaired to the Cano de Bera, to make his experiments in the open air, and at the edge of the water. They set off on the 19th of March, at a very early hour, for the village of Eastro ; thence they were conducted by the Indians to a stream, which in the time of drought, formed a basin of muddy water, sur- rounded by fine trees. To catch the gymnoti with nets was considered very difficult, on account of the extreme agility of the fish, which buried themselves in the mud. The Indians told them that they would fish with horses. They found it difficult to form an idea of this manner of fishing ; but they soon saw their guides return from the savannah, which they had been scouring for wild horses and mules. They brought about thirty with them, which they forced to enter the pool. The noise caused by the horses' hoofs, made the fish issue fi:om the mud, and excited them to the attack. These yellowish and livid eels, resembling large aquatic serpents, swam on the sur- face of the water, and crowded under the bellies of the 114 BATTLE WITH ELECTRICAL EELS. horses and mules. A contest between animals of so different an organization presented a very striking spec- tacle. The Indians, provided with harpoons and long slender reeds, surrounded the pool closely, and some climbed up the trees, the branches of which extended horizontally over the surface of the water. By their ^vild cries, and the length of their reeds, they prevented the horses from running away and reaching the bank of the pool. The eels, stunned by the noise, defended themselves by the repeated discharge of their electric batteries. For a long interval they seemed likely to prove victorious. Several horses sank beneath the vio- lence of the invisible strokes which they received from all sides, and stunned by the force and frequency of the shocks, they disappeared under the water. Others, pant- ing, with mane erect, and haggard eyes expressing anguish and dismay, raised themselves, and endeavoured to flee from the storm by which they were overtaken. They were driven back by the Indians into the middle of the water; but a small number succeeded in eluding the active vigilance of the fishermen. These regained the shore, stumbling at every step, and stretched themselves on the sand, exhausted with fatigue, and with limbs benumbed by the electric shocks of the gymnoti. In less than five minutes two of the horses were drowned. The eels being five feet long, and pressing themselves against the belly of the horses, made a dis- charge along the whole extent of their electric organ. They attacked at once the heart, the intestines, and the coeliac fold of the abdominal nerves. The horses were probably not killed, but only stunned. They -were drowned from the impossibility of rising amid the THE IXDIAX GIEL IN TH"E LLANOS. 115 prolonged struggle between the other horses and the eels. The travellers had little doubt that the fishing would ter- minate by killing successively all the animals engaged ; but by degrees the impetuosity of this unequal combat diminished, and the wearied gymnoti dispersed. They re- quired a long rest, and abundant nourishment, to repair the galvanic force which they lost. The mules and horses appeared less frightened; their manes were no longei bristled, and their eyes expressed less dread. The gym- noti approached timidly the edge of the marsh, where they were taken by means of small harpoons fastened to long cords. When the cords were dry the Indians felt no shock in raising the fish into the air. In a few min- utes Humboldt had five large eels, most of which were but slightly wounded. Some others were taken, by the same means, towards evening. The travellers left the town of Calabozo on the 24th, highly satisfied with their stay, and the experiments they had made on an object so worthy of the attention of physiologists. As they advanced into the southern part of the Llanos, they found the ground more dusty more destitute of herbaoje, and more cracked bv the effect of long .drought. The palm-trees disappeared by degrees. The calmer the air appeared at eight or ten feet high, the more they were enveloped in those whirlwinds of dust, caused by the currents of air that swept the ground. In the afternoon they found a young Indian girl stretched upon the savannah. She was almost in a state of nudity, and appeared to be about twelve or thirteen years of age. Exhausted with fatigue and thirst, her eyes, nostrils, and mouth filled with dust, she breathed with a rattling in 116 FORDING THE UlUTUCU. her tliroat, and was unable to answer their questions. A pitclier, overturned, and half-filled with sand, was lying at her side. Happily one of their mules was laden with water ; and they roused the girl from her lethargic state by bathing her face, and forcing her to drink a few drops of wine. She was at first alarmed on seeing her- self surrounded by so many persons ; but by degrees she took courage, and conversed with their guides. She judged, from the position of the sun, that she must have remained during several hours in that state of lethargy. They could not prevail on her to mount one of their beasts of burden, and she would not return to Uritucu. She had been in service at a neighbouring farm ; and she had been discharged, because at the end of a long sick- ness she was less able to work than before. Their menaces and prayers were alike fruitless ; insensible to suffering, she persisted in her resolution of going to one of the Indian Missions near the city of Calabozo. They removed the sand from her pitcher, and filled it with- water. She resumed her way along the steppe before they had remounted their horses, and was soon separated from them by a cloud of dust. Daring the night they forded the river Uritucu, which abounded with a breed of crocodiles remarkable for their ferocity. They were advised to prevent their dogs from going to drink in the rivers, foj" it often happened that the crocodiles of Uri- tucu came out of the water, and pursued dogs upon the shore. They were shown a hut, in which their host of Calabozo had witnessed a very extraordinary scene. Sleeping with one of his friends on a bench or couch covered with leather, he was awakened early in the morning by a violent shaking and a horrible noi.se. SLEEPING OVER A CEOCODILE. 117 Clods of ea,rtli were thrown into the middle of the hut. Presently a young crocodile two or three feet long issued from under the bed, darted at a dog which lay on the threshold of the door, and, missing him in the impetu- osity of his spring, ran towards the beach to gain the river. On examining the spot where the couch was placed, the cause of this strange adventure was easily discovered. The ground was disturbed to a considerable depth. It was dried mud, which had covered the croco- dile in that state of lethargy, or summer-sleep, in which many of the species lie during the absence of the rains in the Llanos. The noise of men and horses, perhaps the smell of the dog, had aroused the crocodile. The hut being built at the edge of the pool, and inundated during part of the year, the crocodile had no doubt entered, at the time of the inundation of the savan- nahs, by the same opening at which it was seen to go out. On the 2oth they traversed the smoothest part of the steppes of Caracas, the Mesa de Pavones. As far as the eye could reach, not a single object fifteen inches high could be discovered. The air was clear, and the sky of a very deep blue ; but the horizon reflected a livid and yellowish light, caused by the quantity of sand- suspended in the atmosphere. They met some large herds of cattle, and with them flocks of birds of a black colour with an olive shade. They had often seen them perched on the back of cows, seeking for gadflies and other insects. Like manv birds of these desert places, they feared so little the approach of man, that children often caught them in their hands. In the valleys of Aragua, where they were yqtj common, the travellers 118 SAN FERNANDO. often saw tliem perched upon the hammocks on which they were reposing, in open day. On the 27th of March they arrived at the Yilla de San Fernando, the capital of the Mission of the Capu- chins, in the province of Yarinas. CHAPTER lY. UP THE OELN'OCO. The next journey that the travellers made was to the Orinoco. In the afternoon of the 80th of March, they set sail from San Fernando in a large canoe, managed by a pilot and four Indians. They constructed, near the stem, a cabin covered with palm-leaves, sufficiently spacious to contain a table and benches. These were made of ox-hides, strained tight, and nailed to frames of brazil-wood. The canoe was loaded with provisions for a month ; fowls, eggs, plantains, cassava, and cocoa, not forgetting sherry wine, oranges, and tamarinds, which were given them by the Capuchins. They soon entered a land inhabited only by tigers, crocodiles, and tapirs. They saw flocks of bird.^ crowded so closely together as to appear against the sky like a dark cloud which every instant changed its form. The river widened by degrees. One of its banks was barren and sandy from the effect of inundations ; the other was higher, and covered with lofly trees. In some parts the river was bordered by forests on each side, and formed a straight canal nine hundred feet broad. The manner in which the trees were disposed was remarkable. First were bushes of sauso, forming a kind of hedge four feet 120 CEOCODILES. high, and appearing as if they had been clipped by the hand of man. A copse of cedar, brazilletto, and lignum- vitae rose behind this hedge. Palm-trees were rare. The large quadrupeds of those regions, the jaguars, tapirs, and peccaries had made openings in the hedge of sauso, through which they passed when they came to drink at the river. As they feared but little the approach of a boat, the travellers had the pleasure of viewing them as the}^ paced slowly along the shore till they disappeared in the forest, which they entered by one of the narrow passes left at intervals between the bushes. When the shore was of considerable breadth, the hedge of sauso remained at a distance from the river. In the intermediate space they saw crocodiles, sometimes to the number of eight or ten, stretched on the sand. Motion- less, with their jaws wide open, they reposed by each other, without displaying any of those marks of affec- tion observed in other animals living in society. The troop separated as soon as they quitted the shore. These monstrous creatures were so numerous, that throughout the whole course of the river almost at every instant five or six were in view. Yet at this period the swelling of the Rio- ^pure was scarcely perceived ; and consequently hundreds of crocodiles were still buried in the mud of the savannahs. About four in the afternoon Humboldt stopped to measure a dead crocodile which had been cast ashore. It was sixteen feet eight inches long ; some days after Bonpland found another, a male, twenty-two feet three inches long. The Indians told them that at San Fernando scarcely a year passed without two or three grown-up persons, particularly women who fetched water from the river, being devoured by these carnivo- ADTENTUEE OF A GIEL. 121 rous reptiles. They related the history of a young girl of Uritucu, who, by singular intrepidity and presence of mind, saved herself from the jaws of a crocodile. When she felt herself seized, she sought the eyes of the animal, and plunged her fingers into them with such violence, that the pain forced him to let her go, after having bitten off the lower part of her left arm. !N'otwithstanding the enor- mous quantity of blood she lost, the girl reached the shore, swimming with the hand that still remained to her. In those desert countries, where man was ever wrestling with nature, discourse daily turned on the best means that might be employed to escape from a tiger, a boa, or a crocodile ; every one prepared himself in some sort for the dangers that might await him. " I knew," said the young girl of Uritucu coolly, "that the cayman lets go> his hold, if you push your fingers into his eyes." After ' his return to Europe, Humboldt learned that m the inte- rior of Africa the negroes knew and practised the same means of defence. Isaac, the guide of the unfortunate Mungo Park, was twice seized by a crocodile, and twice escaped from the jaws of the monster, having succeeded in thrusting his fingers into the creature's eyes while under water. The African Isaac, and the young Ameri- can girl, owed their safety to the same presence of mind, and the same combination of ideas. Humboldt often saw young crocodiles biting their tails ; and other observers have seen the same action in croco- diles at their full growth. If their movements almost always appear to be straight forward, it is because, hke lizards, they move by starts. Crocodiles are excellent swimmers ; they go with facility against the most rapid current. It appeared to Humboldt, however, that in 6 122 THE JAGUAR AND THE VULTURES. descending tlie river, they liad some difficulty in turn'ng quickly about. A large dog, which had accompanied him in his journey from Caracas to the Rio Negro, was one day pursued in swimming by an eni3rmous crocodile. The latter had nearly reached its prey, when the dog escaped by tarning round suddenlj^ and swimming against the current. The crocodile performed the same movement, but much more slowly than the dog, which succeeded in gaining the shore. Near the Joval the travellers saw the largest jaguar they had ever met with. The natives themselves were astonished at its prodigious length, which surpassed that of any Bengal tiger ever seen in the museums of Europe. The animal lay stretched beneath the shade of a large zamang. It had just killed a tapir, but had not yet touched its prey, on which it kept one of its paws. The zamuro vultures were assembled in great numbers to devour the remains of the jaguar's repast. They pre- sented the most curious spectacle, by a singular mixture of boldness and timidity. They advanced within the dis- tance of two feet from the animal, but at the least move- ment he made they drew back. In order to observe more nearly the manners of these creatures, Humboldt and Bonpland went into the little skiff that accompanied their canoe. Tigers very rarely attack boats by swim- ming to them; and never but when their ferocity is heightened by a long privation of food. The noise of their oars led the animal to rise slowly, and hide itself behind the sauso bushes that bordered the shore. The vultures tried to profit by this moment of absence to devour the tapir ; but the tiger^ notwithstanding the proximity of the boat, leaped into the midst of them, DON iGXACio roisrposo. 123 and in. a fit of rage, expressed by his gait and the move- ment of his tail, carried off his prey to the forest. Continuing to descend the river, they met with a great herd of tapirs which the tiger had put to flight, and from whom he had selected his prey. These animals saw them land very unconcernedly ; some were seated, and gazed upon them, moving ' the upper lip like rabbits. They seemed not to be afraid of man, but the sight of the dog put them to flight. Their hind legs being longer than their fore legs, their pace was a slight gallop, but with so little swiftness that the travellers succeeded in catching two of them. They passed the night in the open air, though in a plantation, the proprietor of which employed himself in hunting tigers. He wore scarcely any clothing, and was of a dark brown complexion like a Zambo. This did not prevent his classing himself among the whites. He called his wife and his daughter, who were as naked as himself, Dona Isabella and Dona Manuela. Without having ever quitted the banks of the Apure, he took a lively interest in the news of Madrid, enquiring eagerly re- specting " those never-ending wars, and everything down yonder." He knew, he said, that the king was soon to come and visit the grandees of the country of Caracas, but he added with some pleasantry, " as the people of the court can eat only wheaten bread, they will never pass beyond the town of Victoria, and we shall not see them here." Humboldt had brought with him a tapir which he had intended to have roasted; but his host assured him that such ' Indian game ' was not food fit for white gentlemen like the travellers and himself. Accordingly he offered them some venison, which he 124 DRENCHED IN THE TEMPEST. had killed the day before with an arrow, for he had neither powder nor fire-arms. They supposed that a small wood of plantain-trees concealed the hut of the farm ; but this man, so proud of his nobility and the colour of his skin, had not taken the trouble of constructing even a hut of palm-leaves. He invited them to have their hammocks hung near his own, between two trees ; and he assured them with an air of complacency, that, if they came up the river in the rainy season, they should find him beneath a roof They soon had reason to complain of a system of philosoph}' which was indulgent to indolence, and rendered a man indifferent to the conveniences of life. A furious wind arose after midnight, lightnings flashed over the horizon, thunder rolled, and they were wet to the skin. During this storm a whimsical incident served to amuse them for a moment. Dona Isabella's cat had perched upon the tamarind-tree, at the foot of which they lay. It fell into the hammock of one of their companions, who being hurt by the claws of the cat, and suddenly aroused from a profound sleep, imagined he was attacked by some wild beast of the forest. They ran to him on hearing his cries, and had some trouble to convince him of his error. While it rained in torrents on their hammocks and on their instruments which they had brought ashore, their host congratulated them on their good fortune in not sleeping on the strand, but finding themselves in his domain, among whites and persons of respectability. Wet as they were, they could not easily persuade them- selves of the advantages of their situation, and they listened with some impatience to the long narrative which he gave of his pretended expedition to the CRIES OF THE ANIMALS AT NIGHT. 125 Rio Meta,-of tlie valour lie had displayed in a sanguinary combat with the Guahibo Indians, and the services that he had rendered to God and his king, in carrying away Indian children, from their parents, to distribute them in the Missions. On the 1st of April, at sunrise, they quitted Senor Don Ignacio and Senora Dona Isabella his wife. They passed the next night on a bare and extensive strand of the river. The forest on its banks being im- penetrable, they had the greatest difficulty in finding dry wood to light fires. The night was calm and serene, and there was a beautiful moonlight. The crocodiles, stretched along the shore, placed themselves in such a manner as to be able to see the fire. The travellers thought they observed that its blaze attracted them, as it attracts fishes, crayfish, and other inhabitants of the water. The Indians showed them the tracks of three tigers in the sand, two of which were very young. A female had no doubt conducted her little ones to drink at the river. Finding no tree near, the travellers stuck their oars in the ground, and fastened their hammocks to them. Everything passed tranquilly till eleven at night; and then a noise so terrific arose in the neigh- bouring forest, that it was almost impossible to close their eyes. Amid the cries of so many wild beasts howling at once, the Indians discriminated only such as were at intervals heard separately. These were the little soft cries of the sapajous, the moans of the alouate apes, the bowlings of the jaguar and couguar, the peccary, and the sloth, and the cries of the curassao, the parraka, and other gallinaceous birds. "When the jaguars approached the skirt of the forest, the dog, which accompanied the 126 PORPOISES AND BIRDS. party, and wbicli till then had never ceased barking, began to howl and seek for shelter beneath their ham- mocks. Sometimes, after a long silence, the cry of the . tiger came from the tops of the trees ; and then it was followed by the sharp and long whistling of the monkeys, which apj^eared to flee from the danger that threatened them. When the natives were interrogated on the causes of the tremendous noise made by the beasts of the forest at certain hours of the night, they answered, " They are keeping the feast of the full moon." The travellers set sail on the 2d of April. The morn- ing was beautiful and cool. The porpoises ploughed the river in long files. The shore was covered with fish- ing-birds. Some of these perched on the floating wood as it passed down the river, and surprised the fish that pre- ferred the middle of the stream. The canoe was aground several times during the morning. These shocks were sufficiently violent to split a light bark. They were caused by the limbs of large trees, which had remained for years in an oblique position, sunk in the mud. Reaching a spot near the island of Carizales, they saw trunks of the locust-tree, of an enormous size, above the surface of the water. They were covered with a species of plotus, nearly resembling the white bellied darter. These birds perched in files, like pheasants, and re- mained for hours entirely motionless, wdth their beaks raised towards the sky. It rained towards evening, and before the rain fell, swallows skimmed over the surface of the water. They saw also a flock of paroquets pursued by little goshawks. The piercing cries of these paroquets contrasted singu- larly with the whistling of the birds of prey. They IN DANGEE FKOM A JAGUAE. 127 passed the niglit in the open air, upon the beach near the island of Carizales. There were several Indian huts in the neighbourhood, surrounded with plantations. Their pilot assured them beforehand that they should not hear the cries of the jaguar, which, when not ex- tremely pressed by hunger, withdraws from places where he does not reign unmolested. " Men put him out of humour," said the people in the Missions. They stopped at noon the next day in a spot called Algodonal. Leaving his companions while they drew the boat ashore and were occupied in preparing their dinner, Humboldt went along the beach to get a near view of a group of crocodiles sleeping in the sun, and Ij^'ing in such a manner as to have their tails resting on one another. Some little herons, white as snow, walked along their backs, and even upon their heads, as if passing over trunks of trees. The crocodiles were of a greenish gray, half covered with dried mud ; from their colour and im- mobility they might have been taken for bronze statues. This excursion had nearly proved fatal to him. He had kept his eyes constantly turned towards the river ; but, whilst picking up some spangles of mica agglomerated together in the sand, he discovered the recent footsteps of a tiger, easily distinguishable from their form and size. The animal had gone towards the forest, and turning his eyes on that side, he found himself within eighty paces of a tiger that was lying under the thick foliage of a ceiba. No tiger ever appeared to him so large- He was extremely alarmed, yet sufficiently master of himself and of his motions to enable him to follow the advice which the Indians had so often given him as to how he ousht to act in such cases. He continued to 128 TROUBLED WITH ZANCUDOS. walk on without running, avoided moving his arms, and thought he observed that the jaguar's attention was fixed on a herd of capybaras which was crossing the river. He then began to return, making a large circuit toward the edge of the water. He was often tempted to look back in order to assure himself that he was not pursued ! Happily he yielded very tardily to this desire. The jaguar had remained motionless. He arrived at the boat out of breath, and related his adventure to the Indians. They appeared very little interested by it ; yet, after the party had loaded their guns, they accompanied him to the ceiba beneath which the jaguar had lain. He was there no longer. The 4th of April was the last day that they passed on the Eio Apure. During several days they had suffered cruelly from the stings of zancudos, which covered their faces and hands. These insects were gnats, though very different from those that they had seen in Europe. They appeared only after sunset. Their proboscis was so long that, when they fixed on the lower surface of a hammock, they pierced through it and the thickest garments with their sting. The travellers had intended to pass the night at the Yuelta del Palmito, but the number of jaguars at that part of the Apure was so great that the Indians found two hidden behind the trunk of a locust-tree, at the moment when they were going to sling their hammocks. Finding no trees to which they could suspend their ham- mocks, they were obliged to sleep on ox-hides spread on the ground. The boats were too narrow and too full of zancudos to permit them to pass the night in them. In the place where they had landed their instruments, I]S SIGHT OF THE OEIXOCO. 129 the banks being very steep, tliej saw new proofs of the indolence of the gallinaceous birds of the tropics. The curassaos and cashew birds had the habit of going down several times a day to the river to allay their thirst. They drank a great deal, and at short intervals. A vast number of these birds had joined, near their station, a flock of pheasants. They had great difficulty in climb- ing up the steep banks ; they attempted it several times without using their wings. The travellers ' drove them before them as if they had been driving sheep. Continuing their journey they discerned towards the south the lovely hills of Coranto ; while to the east the granite rocks of the Curiquima, the Sugar-loaf of Cay- cara, and the mountains of the Tyrant began to rise on the horizon. It was not without emotion that they beheld for the first time the waters of the Orinoco. On leaving the Rio Apure they found themselves in a country presenting a totally different aspect. An im- mense plain of water stretched before them like a lake, as far as they could see. White-topped waves rose to the height of several feet, from the conflict of the breeze and the current. The air resounded no longer with the piercing cries of herons, flamingoes, and spoonbills, cross- ing in long files from one shore to the other. Their eyes sought in vain those water-fowls, the habits of which vary in each tribe. All nature appeared less animated. Scarcely could they discover in the hollows of the waves a few large crocodiles, cutting obliquely, by the help of their long tails, the surface of the agitated waters. The horizon was bounded by a zone of forests, which nowhere reached so far as the bed of the river. A vast beach, constantly parched by the heat of the sun, desert and 6-^ 130 TUE MOUNTAINS OF ENCARAMADA. bare as the shores of the sea, resembled at a distancej from the effect of the mirage, pools of stagnant water. These sandy shores, far from fixing the limits of the river, rendered them uncertain, by enlarging or contract- ing them alternately, according to the variable action of the solar rays. Struck with the extreme breadth of the Orinoco, be- tween the mouth of the Apure and the rock Curiquima, Humboldt ascertained it by means of a base measured twice on the western beach. The bed of the Orinoco, at low water, was over six thousand feet broad ; but this breadth was increased to thirtj^-two thousand feet in the rain}^ season. The travellers first proceeded south-west, as far as the shore inhabited by the Gruaricoto Indians on the left bank of the Orinoco, and then advanced straight towards the south. The river was so broad that the mountains of Encaramada appeared to rise from the water, as if seen above the horizon of the sea. They formed a continued chain from east to west. These mountains were com- posed of enormous blocks of granite, cleft and piled one upon another. What contributed above all to embellish the scene at Encaramada was the luxuriance of vegeta- tion that covered the sides of the rocks, leaving bare only their rounded summits. They looked like ancient ruins rising^ in the midst of a forest. In the port of Encaramada they met with some Caribs of Panapana. A cacique was going up the Orinoco in his canoe, to join in the famous fishing of turtle's eggs. His canoe was rounded toward the bottom, and fol- lowed by a smaller boat. He was seated beneath a sort of tent, constructed, like the sail, of palm-leaves. His THE CAKIBS. 131 cold and silent gravity, the respect with which he was treated by his attendants, everything denoted him to be a person of importance. He was equipped, however, in the same manner as his Indians. They were all equally naked, armed with bows and arrows, and painted with onoto. The chief, the domestics, the furniture, the boat, and the sail were all painted red. These Caribs were men of an almost athletic stature ; they appeared to the travellers much taller than any Indians they had hitherto seen. Their smooth and thick hair, cut short on the forehead like that of choristers, their eyebrows painted black, their look at once gloomy and animated, gave a singular expression to their countenances. The women, who were very tall, and disgusting from their want of cleanliness, carried their infants on their backs. The thighs and legs of the infants were bound at certain dis- tances by broad strips of cotton cloth, and the flesh, strongly compressed beneath the ligatures, was swelled in the interstices. JSTear Encaramada a very long island divided the river into two branches. They passed the night in a rocky creek, opposite the mouth of the Kio Cabullare, which was formed by the Payara and the Atamaica. The evening was beautiful. The moon illumined the tops of the granite rocks. The heat was so uniformly distri- buted, that, notwithstanding the humidity of the air, no twinkling of the stars was observable, even at four or five degrees above the horizon. Towards midnight, the north-east wind became extremely violent. It brought no clouds, but the vault of the sky was covered more and more with vapours. Strong gusts were felt, and made them fear for the safety of their canoe. During this 132 THE TAINTED KOCK. whole day they had seen very few crocodiles, but all of an extraordinary size, from twenty to twenty four feet. The Indians assured them that the yoyng crocodiles preferred the marshes, and the rivers that were less broad and less deep. Speaking of the mountains of Encaramada, Humboldt says that the natives of those countries had retained the belief that, " at the time of the great waters, when their fathers were forced to have recourse to boats, to escape the general inundation, the waves of the sea beat against the rocks of Encaramada." This belief was. not confined to one nation singly, it made part of a system of historical tradition, of which he found scattered notions among the Maypures of the great cataracts ; among the Indians of the Rio Erevato, and among almost all the tribes of the Upper Orinoco. When the Indians were asked how the human race survived this great deluge they said, " a man and a woman saved themselves on a high moun- tain, called Tamanacu, situated on the banks of the Asiveru ; and casting behind them, over their heads, the fruits of the mauritia palm-tree, they saw the seeds con- tained in those fruits produce men and women, who repeopled the earth." A few leagues from Encaramada, a rock, called "the painted rock," rose in the midst of the savannah. Upon it were traced representations of ani- mals and symbolic figures. Between the banks of the Cassiquiare and the Orinoco, between Encaramada, the Capuchino, and Caycara, these hieroglyphic figures were often seen at great heights, on rocky cliffs which could be accessible only by constructing very lofty scaffolds. When the natives were asked how those figures could have been sculptured, they answered with a smile, as if THE HARVEST OF EGGS. 133 relating a fact of wbicli only a white man could be ig- norant, that "at the period of the great waters, their fathers went to that height in boats." A fresh breeze carrying the travellers towards the Boca de la Tortuga they landed at an island in the middle of the river. This island was celebrated for the turtle- fishery, or, as it was called there, " the harvest of eggs," that took place annually. Here the travellers found an assemblage of Indians, encamped under huts made of palm-leaves. This encampment contained more than three hundred persons. Accustomed, since they had left San Fernando de Apure, to see only desert shores they were singularly struck by the bustle that prevailed here. They found, besides the Guamos and the Ottomaca of Uruana, who were both considered as savage races, Oaribs, and other Indians of the Lower Orinoco. Every tribe was separately encamped, and was distinguished by the pigments with which their skins were painted. Some white men were seen amidst this tumultuous assemblage, chiefly pulperos, or little traders of Angostura, who had come up the river to purchase turtle-oil from the natives. The missionary of Uruana, a native of Alcala, came to meet Humboldt and Bonpland, and he w^as extremely astonished at seeing them. After having admired their instruments, he gave them an exaggerated picture of the sufferings to which they would be necessarily exposed in ascending the Orinoco beyond the cataracts. The object of their journey appeared to him very mysterious. "How is it possible to believe," said he, "that you have left your country, to come and be devoured by mosquitos on this river, and to measure lands that are not your own ?" They were happily furnished with recommendations from 134 HOW TIIEY FOUND THE EGGS. the Superior of tlie Franciscan Missions, and the brother in-law of the Governor of Varinas, who accompanied them, soon dissipated the doubts to which their dress, their accent, and their arrival in this sandy island, had given rise among the Whites. The missionary invited them to partake a frugal repast of fish and plantains. He told them that he had come to encamp with the Indians during the time of the harvest of eggs, "to celebrate mass every morning in the open air ; to procure the oil necessary for the church-lamps, and especially to govern this mixed republic in which every one wished to profit singly by what God had granted to all." They made the tour of the island, accompanied by the missionary and by a trader, wdio boasted of having, for ten successive years, visited the camp of the Indians, and attended the turtle-fishery. They were on a plain of sand perfectly smooth ; arid were told that, as far as they could see along the beach, turtles' eggs were concealed under a layer of earth. The missionary carried a long pole in his hand. He showed them, that by means of this pole, the extent of the stratum of eggs could be deter- mined as accurately as the miner determines the limits of a bed of marl, of bog iron-ore, or of coal. On thrusting the rod perpendicularly into the ground, the sudden want of resistance showed that the cavity or layer of loose earth, containing the eggs, had been reached. They saw that the stratum was generally spread with so much uniformity, that the pole found it everywhere in a radius of sixty feet around any given s^^ot. Here they talked continually of square perches of eggs; it was like a mining-country, divided into lots, and worked with the greatest regularity. The stratum of eggs, however, was HATCHING TUE EGGS. 135 far from covering the whole island ; tiiey were not found wherever the ground rose abruptly, because the turtle could not mount heights. The Indians assured them that, in going up the Orinoco from its mouth to its junction with the Apure, not one island or one beach was to be found, where eggs could be collected in abundance. The great turtle dreads places inhabited by men, or much frequented by boats. It is a timid and mistrustful animal, raising only its head above the water, and hiding itself at the least noise. The period at which it lays its eggs coincides with the period of the lowest waters. The Orinoco beginning to increase from the vernal equinox, the lowest flats are found uncovered from the end of January till the 20th or 25th of March. The turtles collect in troops in the month of January, then issue from the water, and warm themselves in the sun, reposing on the sands. The In- dians believed that great heat was indispensable to the health of the animal, and that its exposure to the sun favoured the laying of the eggs. They are found on the beach a great part of the day during the whole month of February. At the beginning of March the straggling troops assemble, and swim towards the small number of islands on which they habitually deposit their eggs. At this period, a few days before they lay their eggs, thou- sands of these animals may be seen ranged in long files, on the borders of the islands of Cucuruparu, Uruana, and Pararuma, stretching out their necks and holding their heads above water, to see whether they have any- thing to dread. The Indians, who are anxious that the bands when assembled should not separate, that the tur- tles should not disperse, and that the laying of the eggs 130 MAD TURTLES. bIiouW be performed tranquilly, place sentinels at certain distances along the shore. The people who pass in boats are told to keep in the middle of the river, and not frighten the turtles by cries. The laying of the eggs tak,es place always during the night, and it begins soon after sunset. With its hind feet, which are very long, and furnished with crooked claws, the animal digs a hole of three feet in diameter and two in depth. These turtles feel so pressing a desire to lay their eggs, that some of them descend into holes that have been dug by others, but which are not yet covered with earth. There they deposit a new layer of eggs on that which has been recently laid. In this tumultuous movement an immense number of eggs are broken. The missionary showed the travellers, by removing the sand in several places, that this loss probably amounted to a fifth of the whole quan- tity. The yelk of the broken eggs contributes, in drying, to cement the sand ; and they found very large concre- tions of grains of quartz and broken shells. The num- ber of animals working on the beach during the night is so considerable, that day surprises many of them before the laying of their eggs is terminated. They are then urged on by the double necessity of depositing their eggs, and closing the holes they have dug, that they may not be perceived by the jaguars. The turtles that thus re- main too late are insensible to their own danger. They work in the presence of the Indians, who visit the beach at a very early hour, and who call them ' mad turtles.' Notwithstanding the rapidity of their movements, they are then easily caught with the hand. The encampments formed by the Indians began about the end of March or commencement of April. The MAKING TURTLE BUTTER. 137 gathering of the eggs was conducted in a uniform man- ner, and with that regularity which characterizes all mon- astic institutions. Before the arrival of the missionaries on the banks of the river, the Indians profited much less from a production which nature has supplied in such abundance. Every tribe searched the beach in its own way, and an immense number of eggs were uselessly broken, because they were not dug up with precaution, and more eggs were uncovered than could be carried away. It was hke a mine worked by unskilful hands. When the camp was formed, the missionary of Uruana named his lieutenant, or commissary, who divided the ground where the eggs were found into different por- tions, according to the number of the Indian tribes who took part in the gathering. The lieutenant began his operations by sounding. He examined by means of a long wooden pole or cane of bamboo, how far the stratum of eggs extended. This stratum, according to the mea- surements of Humboldt, extended to the distance of one hundred and twenty feet from the shore. Its average depth was three feet. The lieutenant placed marks to indicate the point where each tribe should stop its labours. The Indians removed the earth with their hands ; they placed the eggs they had collected in small baskets, carried them to their encampment, and threw them into long troughs of wood filled with water. In these troughs the eggs, broken and stirred with shovels, remained ex- posed to the sun till the oily part, which swam on the surface, had time to inspissate. As fast as this collected on the surface of the water, it was taken off and boiled over a quick fire. This animal oil, called turtle butter, kept the better in proportion as it had undergone a strong 138 UP THE ORINOCO. ebullition. When well prepared, it was limpid, inodorous, and scarcely yellow. The missionaries compared it to the best olive oil, and it was used not merely for burning in lamps, but for cooking. It was not easy, however, to procure oil of turtles' eggs quite pure. It had generally a putrid smell, owing to the mixture of eggs in which the young were already formed. The Indians brought away a great number of eggs to eat them dried in the sun ; and they broke a considerable number through carelessness during the gathering. The number of eggs that were hatched before the people could dig them up was so prodigious, that near the encampment of Uruana Humboldt saw the whole shore of the Orinoco swarming with little turtles an inch in diameter, escaping with diffi- culty from the pursuit of the Indian children. At the Playa de huevos where their pilot had an- chored to purchase provisions, their store having begun to run short, the travellers found fresh meat, Angostura rice, and even biscuit made of w4ieat-flour. Their In- dians filled the boat with little live turtles, and eggs dried in the sun, for their own use. Having taken leave of the missionary of Uruana, who had treated them with great kindness, they set sail about four in the afternoon. The wind was fresh, and blew in squalls. Since they had entered the mountainous part of the country, they had discovered that their canoe carried sail very badly ; but the master was desirous of showing the Indians who were assembled on the beach, that, by going close to the wind, he could reach, at one single tack, the middle of the river. At the very moment when he was boasting of his dexterity, and the boldness of his manoeuvre, the force of the wind upon the sail became so great that they UPSET BY A SQUALL. 139 were on the point of going down. One side of the boat was under water, which rushed in with such violence that it was soon up to their knees. It washed over a little table at which Humboldt was writing at the stern of the boat. He had some difficulty in saving his journal, and in an instant they saw their books, papers, and dried plants, all afloat. Bonpland was lying asleep in the middle of the canoe. Awakened by the entrance of the water and the cries of the Indians, he understood tlie danger of their situation, whilst he maintained a coolness which he always displayed in the most difficult circum- stances. The lee-side righting itself from time to time during the squall, he did not consider the boat as lost. He thought that, were they even forced to abandon it, they might save themselves by swimming, since there were no crocodiles in sight. Amidst this uncertainty the cordage of the sail suddenly gave way. The same gust of wind, that had thrown them on their beam, served also to right them. They laboured to bail the water out of the boat with calabashes, the sail was again set, and in less than half an hour they were in a state to proceed. The wind now abated a little. Squalls alternating with dead calms were common in that part of the Orinoco which, was bordered by mountains. They were very dangerous for boats deeply laden, and without decks. The travellers had escaped by a miracle. To the reproaches that were heaped on their pilot for having kept too near the wind, he replied with the phlegmatic coolness peculiar to the Indians, observing " that the whites would find sun enough on those banks to dry their papers." They lost onlv one book, the first volume of the " Grenera Plan- tarum" of Schreber, which had fallen overboard. At 140 THE BEL.VCH OF PARARUMA. nightfall they landed on a barren island in the middle of the river, near the mission of Uruana. They supped in a clear moonlight, seating themselves on some large turtle-shells that were found scattered about the beach. On the 8th the travellers passed the mouths of the Sua pure and the Caripo, on the east, and the outlet of the Sinaruco on the west. This last river was, next to the Eio Arauca, the most considerable between the Apure and the Meta. The Suapure, full of little cascades, was celebrated among the Indians for the quantity of wild honey obtained from the forests in its neighbourhood. Early on the following morning the travellers arrived at the beach of Pararuma, where they found an encamp- ment of Indians. They had assembled to search the sands, for collecting the turtles' eggs, and extracting the oil ; but they had unfortunately made a mistake of seve- ral days. The young turtles had come out of their shells be- fore the Indians had formed their camp ; and consequently the crocodiles, and a species of large white herons, availed themselves of the delay. These animals, and birds fond of the flesh of young turtles, devour an innumerable quantity. They fish during the night, for the young turtles do not come out of the earth to gain the neigh- bouring river till after the evening twilight. The zamuro vultures are too indolent to hunt after sunset. They stalk along the shores in the daytime, and alight in the midst of the Indian encampment to steal provisions ; but they often find no other means of satisfying their voracity than by attacking young crocodiles of seven or eight inches long, either on land, or in water of little depth. It was curious to see the address with which these little animals defended themselves for a time against the vul MONKS TLAYIXG CAKDS. 141 tui'es. As soon as thej perceived the enemj they raised themselves on their fore paws, bent their backs, and lifted up their heads, opening their wide jaws. They turned continually, though slowly, towards their assailant to show him their teeth, which even when the animal had but recently issued from the egg, were very long and sharp. Often while the attention of a young crocodile was wholly engaged by one of the zamuros, another seized the favourable opportunity for an unforeseen at- tack. He pounced on the animal, grasped him by the neck, and bore him otf to the higher regions of the air. They found among the Indians assembled at Pararuma some white men, who had come from Angostura to purchase the turtle-butter. After having wearied the travellers for a long time with their complaints of the bad harvest, and the mischief done by the tigers among the turtles, at the time of laying their eggs, they con- ducted them beneath an ajoupa, that rose in the centre of the Indian camp. They found there the missionary- monks of Carichana and the Cataracts seated on the ground playing at cards, and smoking tobacco in long pipes. From their ample blue garments, their shaven heads, and their long beards, they might have been mis- taken for natives of the East. These poor priests re- ceived them in the kindest manner, giving them every information necessary for the continuance of their voy- age. They had suffered from tertian fever for some months ; and their pale and emaciated aspect easily con- vinced the travellers that the countries they were about to visit were not without danger to their health. The Indian pilot who had brought them from San Fernando de Apure as far as the shore of Pararuma, was 142 INDIANS PAINTING. unacquainted witli the passage of the rapids of the Ori- noco, and would not undertake to conduct their bark any flxrthcr. They were obliged to conform to his will. Happily for them, the missionary of Carichana consented to sell them a fine canoe at a very moderate price : and Father Bernardo Zea, missionary of the Atures and May- pures near the great cataracts, offered, though still un- well, to accompany them as far as the frontiers of Brazil. Most of the missionaries of the Upper and Lower Ori- noco permitted the Indians of their Missions to paint their skins ; some of them even speculated on this bar- barous practice of the natives. In their huts, pompously called convents, Humboldt often saw stores of chica, which they sold as high as four francs the cake. To form a just idea of the extravagance of the decoration of these naked Indians, he tells us that a man of large stature gains with dif&culty enough by the labour of a fortnight, to procure in exchange the chica necessary to paint himself red. Thus as we say in temperate climates, of a poor man, "he has not enough to clothe himself," the Indians of the Orinoco say, " that man is so poor, that he has not enough to paint half his body." Humboldt was surprised to see, that, the women far advanced in years, were more occupied with their orna- ments than the youngest w^omen. He saw an Indian female of the nation of the Ottomacs employing two of her daughters in the operation of rubbing her hair with the oil of turtles' eggs, and painting her back with anato and caruto. The ornament consisted of a sort of lattice- work formed of black lines crossing each other on a red ground. Each little square had a black dot in the centre. It was a work of incredible patience. He returned from AXIMALS OF THE OEIXOCO. 143 a very long lierborization, and tlie painting was not half finished. The Indians were not always satisfied with one coloar ■uniformly spread ; they sometimes imitated in the most whimsical manner, in painting their skin, the form of European garments. The travellers saw some at Para- ruma, who were painted with blue jackets and black buttons. The missionaries related to them that the Guaynaves of the Eio Caura were accustomed to stain themselves red with anato, and to make broad transverse stripes on the body, on which they stuck spangles of silvery mica. Seen at a distance, these naked men ap- peared to be dressed in laced clothes. The travellers had an excellent opportunity while on the Orinoco of examining several animals in their natural state, which, till then, they had seen only in the collec- tions of Europe. These little animals formed a branch of commerce for the missionaries. They exchanged to- bacco, resin, the pigment of chica, rock-manakins, orange monkeys, capuchin monkeys, and other species of mon- keys in great request on the coast, for cloth, nails, hatch- ets, fish-hooks, and pins. The productions of the Ori- noco were bought at a low price from the Indians, who lived in dependence on the monks ; and these same Indi- ans purchased fishing and gardening implements from the monks at a very high price, with the money they gained at the egg-harvest. Humboldt and Bonpland bought several animals, which they kept throughout the rest of their passage on the river, and studied their man- ners. Among these was a little monkey called the titi. ISTo other monkey has so much the physiognomy of a child ns the titi; there is the same expression of inno- 144 THE monkey's taste in art. cence, the same playful smile, the same rapidity in the transition from joy to sorrow. Its large eyes are in- stantly filled with tears, when it is seized with fear. Ii is extremely fond of insects, particularly of spiders. The sagacity of this little animal is so great that one brought in their boat to Angostura distinguished perfectly the different plates annexed to one of Cuvier's works on Natural History. The engravings of this work were not coloured ; yet the titi advanced rapidly its little hand in the hope of catching a grasshopper or a wasp, every time the travellers showed it the plate, on which these insects were represented. It remained perfectly indiffer- ent when it was shown engravings of skeletons or heads of mammiferous animals. When several of these little monkeys, shut up in the same cage, were exposed to the rain, they twisted their tail round their neck, and inter- twined their arms and legs to warm one another. The hunters told the travellers that in the forests they often met groups of ten or twelve of these animals, whilst others sent forth lamentable cries, because they wished to enter the group to find warmth and shelter. By shooting arrows dipped in weak poison at one of these groups, a great number of young monkeys are taken alive at once. The titi in falling remains clinging to its mother, and if it be not wounded by the fall, it does not quit the shoulder or the neck of the dead animal. Most of those that were found alive in the huts of the Indians, had been taken thus from the dead bodies of their mothers. To gain something in breadth in their narrow canoe the travellers constructed a sort of lattice-work on the stern with branches of trees, that extended on each side THE ROOF OF LEAVES. 145 beyond the gunwale. Unfortunately, the roof of. leaves, that covered this lattice-work, was so low that they were oblio:ed to lie down, w^ithout seeing^ anvthina^, or, if seated, to sit nearly double. The necessity of carrying the canoe across the rapids, and even from one river to another, and the fear of giving too much hold to the wind, by making the roof higher, rendered this construc- tion necessary. The roof was intended to cover four persons, lying on the deck or lattice-work of brush-wood ; but their legs reached far beyond it, and when it rained half their bodies were wet. Their couches consisted of ox-hides or tiger-skins, spread upon branches of trees, which were painfully felt through so thin a covering. The fore part of the boat was filled with Indian rowers, furnished with paddles, three feet long, in the form of spoons. They were all naked, seated two by two, and they kept time in rowing with a surprising uniformity, singing songs of a sad and monotonous character. The small cages containing the birds and the monkeys of the travellers, the number of which increased as they advanced, were hung, some to the roof and others to the bow of the boat. This was their travelling menagerie. Every night, when they established their watch, their collection of animals and instruments occupied the centre ; around these were placed first their hammocks, then the hammocks of the Indians ; and on the outside were the fires which were thought indispensable against the attacks of the jaguar. In a canoe not three feet wide, and so encumbered, there remained no other place for the dried plants, trunks, sextants, dipping-needles, and the meteorological instruments, than the space below the lattice-work of 146 STORMY WEATHER. branclies, on wliich Humboldt and Bonpland were com- pelled to remain stretched the greater part of the day. If thej wished to take the least object out of a trunk, or to use an instrument, it was necessary to row ashore and land. To these inconveniences were joined the torment of the mosquitos which swarmed under the roof, and the heat radiated from the leaves of the palm-trees, the upper surface of which was continually exposed to the solar rays. They attempted every instant, but always without success, to mend their situation. While one of them hid himself under a sheet to ward off the insects, the other insisted on having green wood lighted beneath the roof in the hope of driving away the mosquitos by the smoke. The painful sensations of the eyes, and the increase of heat, already stifling, rendered both these contrivances alike impracticable. On the 11th of April they found the course of the river encumbered by blocks of granite rocks. They passed on the west the Cano Orupe, and then a great rock known by ihe name of the Rock of the Tiger. The river there was so deep, that no bottom could be found with a line of twenty-two fathoms. Towards evening the weather became cloudy and gloomy. The proximity of the storm was marked by squalls alternating with dead calms. The rain was violent, and the roof of foliage, under which the travellers lay, afforded but little shelter. Happily these showers drove away the mosquitos for some time. They found themselves before the cataract of Cariven, and the impulse of the waters was so strong, that they had great difficulty in gaining the land. They were continually driven back to the middle of the cur- rent. At length two Salive Indians, excellent swimmers, EIVEES 0R5TEUCTED BY EOCKS. 14*? leaped into the water, and having drawn the boat to shore by means of a rope, made it fast to a shelf of bare rock, on which they passed the night. The thunder continued to roll during a part of the night ; the swell of the rivei- became considerable ; and they were several times afraid that their frail bark would be driven from the shore by the impetuosity of the waves. The next day they found the bed of the river, to the length of thirty-six hundred feet, full of granite rocks. They passed through channels that were not five feet broad. Their canoe was sometimes jammed between two blocks of granite. WTien the current was too violent to be resisted the rowers leaped into the water, and fastened a rope to the point of a rock, to warp the boat along. This manoeuvre was very tedious ; and the tra- vellers sometimes availed themselves of it, to climb the rocks among which they were entangled. The rocks were of all dimensions, rounded, very black, glossy like lead, and destitute of vegetation. It was an extraordinary phenomenon to see the waters of one of the largest rivers on the globe in some sort disappear. They perceived, even far from the shore, those immense blocks of granite rising from the ground, and leaning one against another. The intervening channels in the rapids were more than twenty-five fathoms deep ; and were the more difiicult to be observed, as the rocks were often narrow towards their bases, and formed vaults suspended over the surface of the river. From the mouth of the Meta, the Orinoco appeared to be freer of shoals and rocks. They navigated in a channel three thousand feet broad. The Indians remained row- ing in the boat, without towing or pushing it forward 148 THE MISSION OF SAN BOKJA. with their arms, and wearying the travellers with tneii wild cries. It was night when they reached the Cataract of Tabaje. As the Indians would not hazard passing the cataract, they slept on a very incommodious spot, on the shelf of a rock, with a slope of more than eighteen degrees, and of which the crevices sheltered a swarm of bats. They hoard the cries of the jaguar very near them during the whole night. The jaguars were answered by their great dog in lengthened howlings. Humboldt waited the appearance of the stars in vain : the sky was exceedingly black ; and the hoarse sounds of the cascades of the Orinoco mingled with the rolling of the distant thunder. Early in the morning of the 13th they passed the rapids of Tabaje, and again disembarked. Father Zea, who accompanied them, desired to perform mass in the New Mission of San Borja, established two years before. They found there six houses inhabited by un- catechised Guahibos. They differed in nothing from the wild Indians. Their eyes, which were large and black, had more vivacity than those of the Indians who inha- bited the ancient missions. They were offered brandy, but they would not even taste it. The faces of all the young girls were marked with round black spots ; like the patches by which the ladies of Europe formerly imagined they set off the whiteness of their skins. The bodies of the Guahibos were not painted. Several of them had beards, of which they seemed proud; and, taking the white men by the chin, they showed them by signs, that they were made like them. The Orinoco, in running from south to north, was crossed by a chain of granitic mountains. Twice con^ EOCKS AXD TOEEEXTS. 149 fined in its course, it turbnlently broke on tlie rocks. Nothing coukl be grander than the aspect of this sjDot. It was traversed, in an extent of more than five miles, by innumerable dikes of rock, forming so many natural dams. The space between these dikes was filled with islands of different dimensions ; some hilly, divided into several peaks, and twelve or fifteen hundred feet in length, others small, low, and like mere shoals. Thes6 islands divided the river into a number of torrents, which boiled up as they broke against the rocks. The jaguas and cucuritos with plumy leaves, with which all the islands were covered, seemed like groves of palm-trees rising from the foamy surface of the waters. Blocks of granite were heaped together, as in the moraines which the glaciers of Switzerland drive before them. The river was ingulfed in caverns ; and in one of these caverns the travellers heard the water roll at once over their heads and beneath their feet. The Orinoco seemed divided into a multitude of arms or torrents, each of which sought to force a passage through the rocks. They were struck with the little water to be seen in the bed of the river, the frequency of subterraneous falls, and the tumult of the waters breaking on the rocks in foam. From Caracas the travellers proceeded to Atures. The missionary at Atures related to them a striking instance of the familiarity of a jaguar. Some months before their arrival, a jaguar, which was thought to be young, though of a large size, had wounded a child in playing with him. The facts of this case, which were verified to them on the spot, are not without interest in the history of the man- ners of animals. Two Indian children, a boy and a girl, about eight and nine years of age, were seated on the 150 THE HAIRY MAN OF THE WOODS. grass near the village of Atures, in the middle of a savannah. At two o'clock in the afternoon, a jaguar issued from the forest, and approached the children, bounding around them ; sometimes he hid himself in the high grass, sometimes he sprang forward, his back bent, his head hung down, in the manner of a cat. The little boy, ignorant of his danger, seemed to be sensible of it only when the jaguar with one of his paws gave him some blows on the head. These blows, at first slight, became ruder and ruder; the claws of the jaguar wounded the child, and the blood flowed freely. The little girl then took a branch of a tree, struck the animal, and it fled from her. The Indians ran up at the cries of the children, and saw the jaguar, which bounded off without making the least show of resistance. The little boy, who was brought to the travellers, ap- peared lively and intelligent. The claw of the jaguar had torn away the skin from the lower part of the fore- head, and there was a second scar at the top of the head. Among the cataracts of Atures the travellers began to hear of the hairy man of the woods, that carried off women, constructed huts, and sometimes ate human flesL The Tamancas called it achi, and the Maypures vasitri, or " great devil." The natives and the missionaries had no doubt of the existence of this man-shaped monkey, of which they entertained a singular dread. Father Gili .gravely relates the history of a lady in the town of San Carlos, in the Llanos of Venezuela, who much praised the gentle character and attentions of the man of the woods. She is stated to have lived several years with one in great domestic harmony, and only requested some ZANCUDOS AND MOSQUITOS. 151 hunters to take lier back, " because she and her children (a Httle hairy also) were wearj of living far from the church and the sacraments." The travellers did not see this mythical hairy mati. They were horribly tormented in the day by mosqui- tos and the jejen, a small venomous fl}^, and at night by the zancudos. Their hands began to swell considerably, and this swelling increased daily till their arrival on the banks of the Temi. The means that were employed to escape from these little plagues were extraordinary. The good missionary Bernardo Zea, who passed his life tor- mented by mosquitos, had constructed near the church, on a scaffolding of palm-trees, a small apartment, in which the travellers breathed more freely. To this they went up in the evening, by means of a ladder, to dry their plants and -write their journal. The missionary had observed, that the insects abounded more particu- larly in the lowest strata of the atmosphere, that which reaches from the ground to the height of twelve or fifteen feet. At Maypures the Indians quitted the village at night, to go and sleep on the little islets in the midst of the cataracts. There they enjoyed some rest, the mos- quitos appearing to shun air loaded with vapours. The travellers found evervwhere fewer in the middle of the river than near its banks. In the missions of the Orinoco, in the villages on the banks of the river, surrounded by immense forests, the plague of the mosquitos, afforded an inexhaustible sub- ject of conversation. When two persons met in the morning, the first questions they addressed to each other were : " How did you find the zancudos during the night? How are vre to-day for the mosquitos ?" These 152 TAVENTY YEARS OF MOSQUTTOS. questions reminded Humboldt of a Cliinese form of \}0 liteness, wliicli indicated the ancient state of the country where it took birth. Salutations were formerly made in the Celestial Empire in the following words, "Have you been incommoded in th-e night by the serpents ?" " How comfortable must people be in the moon !" said a Salive Indian to Father Gumilla ; " She looks so beau- tiful and so clear, that she must be free from mosquitos." These words which denoted the infancy of a people were remarkable. The satellite of the earth appears to all savage nations the abode of the blessed, the country of abundance. The Esquimaux, who counts among his riches a plank or trunk of a tree, thrown by the currents on a coast destitute of vegetation, sees in the moon plains covered with forests ; the Indian of the forests of Ori- noco beholds there open savannahs, where the inhabit- ants are never stung by mosquitos. At Mandavaca the travellers found an old missionary, who told them with an air of sadness, that he had had " his twenty years of mosquitos in America." He de- sired them to look at his legs, "that they might be able to tell one day beyond the sea, what the poor monks suffer in the forests of Cassiquiare." Every sting leav- ing a small darkish brown point, his legs were so speckled that it was difl&cult to recognise the whiteness of his skin, through the sj3ots of coagulated blood. What appeared to the travellers singular, was that the different species did not associate together, and that at different hours of the day they were stung by distinct species. Every time that the scene changed, and, to use the simple expression of the missionaries, other insects "mounted guard," they had a few minutes, often a quar- INSECTS MOUNTING GUARD. 153 ter of an hour, of repose. The insects that disappeared did not have their places instantly supplied bj their suc- cessors. From half-past six in the morning till five in the afternoon, the air was filled ^Yith mosquitos. An hour before sunset a species of small gnat took the place of the mosquitos. Their presence scarcely lasted an hour and a half; they disappeared between six and seveTi in the evening, or, as they said there, afi:er the Angelus. After a few minutes' repose, the travellers would be stung by zancudos, another species of gnat with very long legs. The zancudo, the proboscis of which- contains a sharp-pointed sucker, caused the most acute pain, and a swelling that remained several weeks. Its hum resembled that of the European gnat, but was louder and more prolonged. In the day-time, and t ven when labouring at the oar, the natives, in order to chase the insects, were continually giving one another smart slaps vfith the palm of the hand. They even struck themselves and their comrades mechanically during their sleep. ISTear Maypures the travellers saw some young Indians seated in a circle and rubbing cruelly each other's backs with the bark of trees dried at the fire. Indian women were occupied, with a degree of patience of which the copper-coloured race alone are capable, in extracting, by means of a sharp bone, the little mass of coagulated blood that formed the centre of every sting, and gave the skin a speckled appearance. One of the most bar- barous nations of the Orinoco, that of the Ottomacs, was acquainted with the use of mosquito-curtains, woven from the fibres of the moriche palm-tree. At Higuerote, on the coast of Caracas, the copper-coloured people slept buried in the sand. In the villages of the Rio Magda- 154 TUE CATARACT OF THE GUAHIBOS. lena the Indians often invited the travellers to stretch themselves on ox-skins, near the church, in the middle of the great square, where they had assembled all the cows in the neighbourhood. The proximity of cattle gives some repose to man. The Indians of the Upper Orinoco and the Cassiquiare, seeing that Bonpland could not prepare his herbal, owing to the continual torment of the mosquitos, invited him to enter their ovens. Thus they called the little chambers, without doors or win- dows, into which they crept horizontally through a very low opening. When they had driven away the insects by means of a fire of wet brushwood, which emitted a great deal of smoke, they closed the opening of the oven. The absence of the mosquitos was purchased dearly enough by the excessive heat of the stagnated air, and the smoke of a torch of copal, which lighted the oven during their stay in it. Bonpland, with courage and patience well worthy of praise, dried hundreds of plants, shut up in these ovens of the Indians. They embarked on the morning of the 17th of April. On the 18th they stopped at the mouth of the Rio Tomo. The Indians went on shore, to prepare their food, and take some repose. Wlien the travellers reached the foot of the Cataract of the Guahibos it was near five in the afternoon. It was extremely difficult to go up the cur- rent against a mass of water, precipitated from a bank of gneiss several feet high. An Indian threw himself into the water, to reach, by swimming, the rock that di voided the cataract into two parts. A rope was fastened to the point of this rock, and when the canoe was hauled near enough, their instruments, their dry plants, and the pro- vision they had collected at Atures, were landed in the LEMONADE FOR THE MISSIONARY. 155 cataract itself. Thej remarked with surprise, that the natural dam over which the river was precipitated, pre- sented a dry sjoace of considerable extent, where the;y stopped to see the boat go up. The rock of gneiss exhibited circular holes, the largest of which were four feet deep, and eighteen inches wide. These funnels contained quartz pebbles, and appeared to have been formed by the friction of masses rolled along by the impulse of the waters. Their situation, in the midst of the cataract, was singular enough, but unat- tended by the smallest danger. The missionary, who accompanied them, had his fever-fit on him. In order to quench the thirst by which he was tormented, the idea suggested itself to them of preparing a refreshing beverage for him in one of the excavations of the rock. They had taken on board at Atures an Indian basket filled with sugar, limes, and grenadillas. As they were destitute of large vessels for holding and mixing liquids, they poured the water of the river, by means of a cala- bash, into one of the holes of the rock : to this they added sugar and lime-juice. In a few minutes they had an excellent beverage. Ailer an hour of expectation they saw their boat arrive above the cataract, and were soon ready to depart. They were now overtaken by a storm, accompanied happily by no wind, but the rain fell in torrents. After rowing awhile, the pilot declared, that, far from gaining upon the current, they were again approaching the cata- ract. These moments of uncertainty appeared to them very long ; the Indians spoke only in whispei^, as they always did when they thought their situation perilous. They redoubled their efforts, and the travellers arrived 156 THE VILLAGE OF MAYPUKES. at nightfall, without any accident, in the port of May pures. The night was extremely dark, and it was two hours or more before they could reach the village. They were wet to the skin. In proportion as the rain ceased, the zancudos re-appeared, with that voracit;y which tipulary insects always display immediately after a storm. Their fellow-travellers were uncertain whether it would be best to stop in the port or proceed Qn their way on foot, in spite of the darkness of the night. Father Zea was determined to reach his home. He had given directions for the construction of a large house of two stories, which was to be begun by the Indians of the mission. " You will there find," said he gravely, " the same conveniences as in the open air; I have neither a bench nor a table, but you will not suffer so much from the flies, which are less troublesome in the mission than on the banks of the river." They followed the counsel of the missionary, who caused torches of copal to be lio^lited. Thev walked at first over beds of rock, w^hich were bare and slippery, and then entered a thick grove of palm-trees. They were twice obliged to pass a stream on trunks of trees hewn down. The torches had already ceased to give light. Being formed on a strange principle, the wood}^ substance which resembled the wick surrounding the resin, they emitted more smoke than light, and were easily extinguished. The Indian pilot, who expressed himself with some facility in Span- ish, told the travellers of snakes, water-serpents, and tigers, by which they might be attacked. Arriving during the night at Maypures they were forcibly struck by the solitude of the place ; the Indians were plunged in profound sleep, and nothing was heard THE CATAEACT OF MAYPUEES. 15/ but tlie cries of nocturnal birds, and the distant sound of the cataract. In the calm of the night, amid the deep repose of nature, the monotonous sound of a fall of water had in it something sad and solemn. They re- mained three days at Maypures. Humboldt and Bonpland were enraptured with the cataract of Maypures, and they often visited the little mountain of Manimi to gaze upon it. A foaming sur- face of four miles in length presented itself at once to the eve : iron -black masses of rock, resemblinoj ruins and battlemented towers, rose frowning from the waters. Kocks and islands were adorned with the luxuriant vege- tation of the tropical forest ; a perpetual mist hovered over the waters, and the summits of the lofty palms pierced through the clouds of spray and vapour. When the rays of the glowing evening sun were refracted in these humid exhalations a magic optical effect began. Coloured bows shone, vanished and reappeared; and the ethereal image was swayed to and fro by the breath of the sportive breeze. During the long rainy season the streaming waters brought down islands of vegetable mould, and thus the naked rocks were studded with bright flower-beds adorned with Melastomas and Droseras, and with small silver-leaved mimosas and ferns. The calm of the atmosphere, and the tumultuous movement of the waters, produced a contrast peculiar to this zone. Here no breath of wind ever agitated the foliage, no cloud veiled the splendour of the heaven ; a great mass of light was diffused in the air, on the eartt strewn with plants with glossy leaves, and on the bed of the river, which extended as far as the eye could reach. 158 THE MOUTH OF THE ZAMA. They spent two days and a half in the little village of Maypures, on the banks of the great Upper Cataract, and on the 21st of April embarked in the canoe they had obtained from the missionary of Carichana. It was much damaged by the shoals it had struck against, and the carelessness of the Indians ; but still greater dan- gers awaited it. It had to be dragged over land, across an isthmus of thirtj^-six thousand feet; from the Rio Tuamini to the Rio Negro, to go up by the Cassiquiare to the Orinoco, and to repass the two cataracts. They landed at the mouth of the Rio Yichada or Yisata to examine the plants of that part of the country. The scenery was very singular. The forest was thin, and an innumerable quantity of small rocks rose from the plain. These formed massy prisms, ruined pillars, and solitary towers fifteen or twenty feet high. Some were shaded by the trees of the forest, others had their summits crowned with palms. Passing the Cano Pirajavi on the east, and then a small river on the west, they rested on the night of the 22d on the shore of the Orinoco, at the mouth of the Zama. Notwithstanding the " black waters" of the Zama, they suffered greatly from insects. The night was beautiful, without a breath of wind in the lower regions of the at- mosphere, but towards two in the morning they saw thick clouds crossing the zenith rapidly from east to west. When, declining towards the horizon, they traversed the great nebulae of Sagittarius and the Ship, they appeared of a dark blue. The travellers left the mouth of the Zama at five in the morning of the 23d. The river continued to be skirted on both sides by a thick forest. The mountains on the UP THE GUAVIARE. 159 east seemed gradually to retire farther back. They passed first the mouth of the Rio Mataveni, and afterwards an islet of a very singular form ; a square granitic rock that rose in the middle of the water. It was called by the mis- sionaries the Little Castle. They passed the night on the right bank opposite the mouth of the Rio Siucurivapu, near a rock called Aricagua. During the night an in- numerable quantity of bats issued from the clefts of the rock, and hovered around their hammocks. On the 24:th a violent rain obliged them early to re- turn to their boat. They departed at two o'clock, after having lost some books, which they could not find in the darkness of the nisrht, on the rock of Aricaorua. The river ran straight from south to north ; its banks were low, and shaded on both sides by thick forests. They passed the mouths of the Ucata, the Arapa, and the Caranaveni. 'About four in the afternoon they landed at the Indian plantations of the mission of San Fernando. The good people wished to detain them among them, but they continued to go up against the current, which ran at the rate of five feet a second. They entered the mouth of the Guaviare on a dark night, passed the point where the Rio Atabapo joins the Guaviare, and arrived at the mission after midnight. They were lodged as usual at the Convent, that is, in the house of the missionary, who, though much surprised at their unexpected visit, never- theless received them with the greatest hospitality. During the night, they had left, almost unperceived, the waters of the Orinoco ; and at sunrise found them- selves as if transported to a new country, on the banks of a river the name of which they had scarcely ever heard pronounced, and which was to conduct them, by 160 THE CONQUEST OF SOULS. the portage of Pimichin, to the Rio Negro, on the frou tiers of Brazih " You will go up," said the president of the missions, who resided at San Fernando, "first the Atabapo, then the Temi, and finally, the Tuamini. When the force of the current of ' black waters ' hinders you from advancing, you will be conducted out of the bed of the river through forests, which you will find in- undated. Two monks only are settled in those desert places, between the Orinoco and the Rio ISTegro ; but at Javita you will be furnished with the means of having your canoe drawn over land in the course of four days to Cano Pimichin. If it be not broken to pieces you will descend the Rio Negro without any obstacle (from north-west to south-east) as far as the little fort of San Carlos ; you will go up the Cassiquiare (from south to north), and then return to San Fernando in a month, descending the Upper Orinoco from east to west." Such was the plan traced for their passage, and they carried it into effect without danger, though not without some suffering, in the space of thirty-three days. In theii* walks together the president of the mission gave the travellers an animated account of his incur- sions on the Rio Guaviare. He related to them how much these journeys, undertaken for the conquest of souls, were desired by the Indians of the missions. All, even women and old men, took part in them. Under the pretext of recovering neophytes who had deserted the village, chil- dren above eight or ten years of age were carried off, and distributed among the Indians of the missions as serfs. Three years before the arrival of the travellers the missionary of San Fernando led his Indians to the banks of the Rio Guaviare, on one of those hostile in- THE CAPTIVE MOTHEU. 161 cursions. They found in an Indian hut a Guahiba woman with her three children, two of whom were still infants, occupied in preparing the flour of cassava. Resistance was impossible ; the father was gone to fish, and the mother tried in vain to flee with her children. Scarcely had she reached the savannah when she was seized by the Indians of the mission. The mother and her children were bound, and dragged to the bank of the river. The monk, seated in his boat, waited the issue of an expedition of which he shared not the danger. Had the mother made too violent a resistance the Indians would have killed ber, for everything was permitted for tbe sake of the conquest of souls, and it was particularly desirable to capture children, who might be treated in the mission as slaves of the Christians. The prisoners were carried to San Fernando, in the hope that the mother would be unable to find her way back to her home by land. Separated from her other children who had ac- companied tbeir father on the day in which she had been carried off, the unhappy woman showed signs of the deepest despair. She attempted to take back to her home the children who had been seized by the mission- ary ; and she fled with them repeatedly from the village of San Fernando. But the Indians never failed to re- capture her ; and the missionary, after having caused her to be mercilessly beaten, took the cruel resolution of separating the mother from the two children who had been carried off with her. She was conveyed alone to the missions of the Rio Negro, going up the Atabapo. Slightly bound, she was seated at the bow of the boat, ignorant of the fate that awaited her ; but she judged by the direction of the sun, that she was removing farther 162 HEE PUNISHMENT AND ESCAPE. and fartlicr from her hut and her native country. She succeeded in breaking her bonds, threw herself into the water, and swam to the left bank of the Atabapo. The current carried her to a shelf of rock, which bears her name to this day — The Mother's Rock. She landed and took shelter in the woods, but the president of the mis- sions ordered the Indians to row to the shore, and follow the traces of the Guahiba. In the evenins^ she was brought back. Stretched upon the rock, a cruel punish- ment was inflicted upon her with straps of manati leather, which served for whips in that country, and with which the alcaldes were always furnished. The unhappy wo- man, her hands tied behind her back, was then dragged to the mission of Javita. She was there thrown into one of the caravanserais. It was the rainy season, and the night was profoundly dark. . Forests till then believed to be impenetrable separated the mission of Javita from that of San Fer- nando, which was twenty-five leagues distant in a straight line. No other route was known than that by the rivers ; no man ever attempted to go by land from one village to another. But such difficulties could not deter a mother, separated from her children. The Guahiba was carelessly guarded in the caravanserai. Her arms being wounded, the Indians of Javita had loosened her bonds, unknown to the missionary and the alcaldes. Having succeeded by the help of her teeth in break- ing them entirely, she disappeared during the night ; and at the fourth sunrise was seen at the mission of San Fernando, hovering around the hut where her children were confined. ." What that woman performed," added the missionary, who gave the travellers this sad narra* UP THE EIO TEAII. 163 tive, ''the most robust Indian would not have ventured to undertake !" She traversed the woods when the sky was constantly covered with clouds, and the sun during the whole days appeared but for a few minutes. Did the course of the waters direct her way? The inundations of the rivers forced her to go fiir from the banks of the main stream, throu2;h the midst of woods where the movement of the water was almost imperceptible. How often must she have been stopped by the thorny lianas, that formed a network around the trunks they entwined ! How often must she have swum across the rivulets that ran into the Atabapo ! This unfortunate woman was asked how she had sustained herself during the four days. She said that, exhausted with fatigue, she could find no other nourishment than black ants. The travel- lers pressed the missionary to tell them whether the Guahiba had peacefully enjoyed the happiness of remain- ing with her children ; and if any repentance had fol- lowed this excess of cruelty. He would not satisfy their curiosity ; but at their return from the Rio Negro they learned that the Indian mother was again separated from her children, and sent to one of the missions of the Upper Orinoco. She there died, refusing all kind of nourish- ment. Above the mouth of the Guasucari they entered the Rio Temi. The country exhibited the uniform aspect of forests covejing ground perfectly flat. Wherever the river had formed caves the forest was inundated to the extent of more than half a league square. To avoid the sinuosities of the river and shorten the passage, the navigation was performed here in an extraordinary man ner. The Indians made the travellers leave the bed of 164 DOLPHINS IN THE FOREST. the river; and they proceeded southward across the forest, through open channels of four or five feet broad. The depth of the water seldom exceeded half a fathom These channels were formed in the inundated forest like paths on dry ground. The Indians, in going from one mission to another, passed with their boats as much as possible by the same way ; but the communications not being frequent the force of vegetation sometimes pro- duced unexpected obstacles. An Indian, furnished with a machete, a great knife, the blade of which was fourteen inches long, stood at the head of their boat, employed continually in chopping ofi' the branches that crossed each other from the two sides of the channel. In the thickest part of the forest they were astonished by an extraordinary noise. On beating the bushes, a shoal of fresh-water dolphins, four feet long, surrounded their boat. These animals had concealed themselves beneath the branches of a Bombax ceiba. They fled across the forest, throwing out those spouts of compressed air and water which have given them in every language the name of "blowers." How singular was this spectacle in an inland spot, three or four hundred leagues from the mouths of the Orinoco and the Amazon ! At five in the evening they regained with some diffi- culty the bed of the river. Their canoe remained fast for some time between two trunks of trees ; and it was no sooner disengaged than they reached a spot where several small channels crossed each other, so that the pilot was puzzled to distinguish the most open path. They navigated through a forest so thick that they could guide themselves neither by the sun nor by the stars. On the 1st of May the Indians chose to depart long SAX AXTOXIO DE J A VITA. 165 tx before sunrise. The travellers were stirring before them, however, because Humboldt waited, though vainly, for a star ready to pass the meridian. In those humid regions covered with forests, the nights became more obscure in proportion as they drew nearer to the Eio Negro and the interior of Brazil. They remained in the bed of the river till daybreak, being afraid of losing themselves among the trees. At sunrise they again entered the inundated forest, to avoid the force of the current. On reaching the junction of the Temi with another little river, the Tuamini, the waters of which were equally black, they proceeded along the latter to the south-west. This direc- tion led them near the mission of Javita, which was founded on the banks of the Tuamini ; and at this Christian settlement they were to find the aid necessary for transporting their canoe by land to the Rio Xegro. They arrived at San Antonio de Javita shortly before noon. They went every day to see how their canoe advanced on the portages. Twenty-three Indians w^ere employed in dragging it by land, placing branches of trees to serve as rollers. The canoe being very large it was necessary to avoid with particular care any friction on the bottom ; consequently the passage occupied more than four days. Hearing on the 6th that it had arrived, they set off and followed it on foot, fording a great number of streams which were considered dangerous on account of the vipers with which the marshes abounded. They passed the night in a hut lately abandoned by an Indian family, who had left behind them their fishing-tackle, pottery, nets made of the petioles of palm-trees ; in short, all that composed the household furniture of that careless race of 16G VirEKS IN THE HUT. men, little attaclied to property. A great store of resin was accumulated round the house. This was used by the Indians to pitch their canoes, and fix the bony spines of the ray at the points of their arrows. They found in the same place jars filled with a vegetable milk, which served as a varnish, and was celebrated in the missions by the name of " milk for painting." Before they took possession of the deserted hut, the Indians killed two great mapanare serpents. These serpents grow to four or five feet long. As the inside of the hut was filled with grass, and Hum- boldt and Bonpland were lying on the ground, there being no means of suspending their hammocks, they were not without inquietude during the night. In the morning a large viper was found on lifting the jaguar-skin "upon which one of their domestics had slept. They embarked on the Rio Negro on the 8th of May. Passing the mission of Maroa, and the mouths of the Aquio and the Tomo, they arrived at the little mission of San Miguel de Davipe. Here they bought provisions, among which w^ere some fowls and a pig. This purchase greatly interested their Indians, who had been a long time deprived of meat. They pressed the travellers to depart in order to reach the island of Dapa, w^here the pig was to be killed and roasted during the night. They reached this island at sunset, and were surprised to find some cultivated ground on it, and on the top of a small hill an Indian hut. Four natives were seated round a fire of brushwood, in this hut, and they were eating a sort of white paste with black spots. These black spots proved to be large ants, the hinder parts of which resem- bled a lump of grease. They had been dried, and black- AN EXCELLENT A>T: PASTE. IG7 ened bj smoke. The travellers saw several bags of them suspended above the fire. These good people paid but little attention to their guests ; yet there were more than fourteen persons in this confined hut, lying naked in hammocks hung one above another. When Father Zea arrived, he was received with great demonstrations of joy. Two young women came down from their ham- mocks, to prepare for them cakes of cassava. In answer to some inquiries which were put to them through an interpreter, they answered that cassava grew poorly on the island, but that it was a good land for ants, and food was not wanting. In fact, these ants furnished subsist- ence to the Indians of the Rio ISTegro and the Guainia. They did not eat the ants as a luxury, but because the fat of ants was a very substantial food. When the cakes of cassava were prepared. Father Zea, whose fever seemed rather to sharpen than to enfeeble his appetite, ordered a little basr to be brouo-ht to him filled with smoked ants. He mixed these bruised insects with floui of cassava, which he pressed Humboldt and Bonpland to taste. It somewhat resembled rancid butter mixed with crumb of bread. The cassava had not an acid taste, but some remains of European prejudices prevented their joining in the praises bestowed by the good missionary on what he called " an excellent ant paste." The violence of the rain obliged them to sleep in this crowded hut. The Indians slept only from eight till two in the morning ; the rest of the time they employd in conversing in their hammocks, and preparing their bitter beverage of cupana. They threw fresh fuel on the fire, and complained of cold, although the temperature of the air was at 70°. This custom of being awake, and even 1C8 STOPPED AT SAN CARLOS. on foot, four or five hours before sunrise, was general among the Indians of Guiana. t The travellers left the island of Dapa long before day- break ; and notwithstanding the rapidity of the current, and the activity of their rowers, their passage to the fort of San Carlos del Kio Negro occupied twelve hours. They were informed at San Carlos that, on account of political circumstances, it was difficult at that moment to pass from the Spanish to the Portuguese settlements ; but they did not know till after their return to Europe the extent of the danger to which they would have been exposed in proceeding as far as Barcellos. It was known at Brazil, through the medium of the newspapers, that Humboldt was going to visit the missions of the Rio Negro, and to examine the natural canal which united two great systems of rivers. In those desert forests in- struments had been seen only in the hands of the com- missioners of the boundaries; and at that time the sub- altern agents of the Portuguese government could not conceive how a man of sense could expose himself to the fatigues of a long journey, "to measure lands that did not belong to him." Orders had been issued to seize his person, his instruments, and above all, his registers of astronomical observations. The pair of dangerous na- turalists were to be conducted by way of the Amazon to Grand Para, and thence sent back to Lisbon. But for- tunately for Humboldt, the government at Lisbon, on being informed of the zeal of its ignorant agents, in- stantly gave orders that he should not be disturbed in his operations ; but that on the contrary they should be encouraged, if he traversed any part of the Portuguese possessions. CLOUDY WEATHER. 169 On the lOtli of May, their canoe being ready, they em- barked to go up the Eio Negro as far as the mouth of the Cassiquiare, and to devote themselves to researches on the real course of that river, which united the Orinoco to the Amazon. The morning was fine ; but, in propor- tion as the heat augmented, the sky became obscured. The air was so saturated by water in these forests, that the vesicular vapours became visible on the least increase of evaporation at the surface of the earth. The breeze being never felt, the humid strata were not displaced and renewed by dryer air. The travellers were every day more grieved at the aspect of the cloudy sky. Bonpland was losing by this excessive humidity the plants he had collected ; and Humboldt, for his part, was afraid lest he should again find the fogs of the Eio Negro in the valley of the Cassiquiare. No one in these missions for half a century past had doubted the existence of communica- tion between two great systems of rivers ; the important point of their voyage was confined therefore to fixing by astronomical observations the course of the Cassiquiare, and particularly the point of its entrance into the Kio Negro, and that of the bifurcation of the Orinoco. With- out a sight of the sun and the stars this object would be frustrated, and they would have exposed themselves in vain to long and painful privations. Their fellow-travel- lers would have retupned by the shortest way, that of the Pimichin and the small rivers ; but Bonpland and Humboldt persisted in the plan of the voyage, which they had traced for themselves in passing the Great Cata- racts. They had already travelled one hundred and eighty leagues in a boat from San Fernando de Apure to San Carlos, on the Rio Apure, the Orinoco, the Atabapo, 8 1*70 THE WHITE WATERS. the Temi, the Tuamini, and the Rio Negro In again entering the Orinoco by the Cassiquiare they would have to navigate three hundred and twent}^ leagues, from San Carlos to Angostura. By this way they would have to struggle against the currents during ten days ; the rest was to be performed by going down the stream of the Orinoco. It would have been blamable, they thought, to have suffered themselves to be discouraged by the fear of a cloudy sky, and by the mosquitos of the Cassiquiare. Their Indian pilot promised them the sun, and " those great stars that eat the clouds," as soon as they should have left the black waters of the Guaviare. They there- fore carried out their first project of returning to San Fernando de Atabapo by the Cassiquiare; and, fortu- nately for their researches, the prediction of the Indian was verified. The white waters brought them by degrees a more serene sky, stars, mosquitos, and crocodiles. They reached San Carlos again, and Humboldt passed a part of the night in the open air, waiting vainly for stars. The air was misty, notwithstanding the white waters, which were to lead them beneath an ever-starry sky. They passed three nights at San Carlos, Humboldt watching during the greater part of them, in the hope of seizing the moment of the passage of some star over the meridian. That he might have nothing to reproach him- self with, he kept his instruments always ready for an observation. On the banks of the Cassiquiare he. purchased from the Indians two fine large birds, a toucan, and a species of macaw, seventeen inches long, having the whole body of a purple colour. He had already in his canoe THEIR BIRDS AND MONKEYS. I7l seven parrots, two manakins, a motmot, two guans, two manaviris, and eight monkeys. Father Zea whispered some complaints at the daily augmentation of this ambu- latory collection. The toucan resembles the raven in manners and intelligence. It is a courageous bird, but easily tamed. Its long and stout beak serves to "defend it at a distance. It makes itself master of the house, steals whatever it can come at, and loves to bathe often and fish on the banks of the river. The toucan that Humboldt bought was very young ; yet it took delight, during the whole voyage, in teasing the nocturnal mon- keys, which were melancholy and irritable. Most of the animals were confined in small wicker cages ; others ran at full liberty in all parts of the boat. At the approach of rain the macaws sent forth noisy cries, the toucan wanted to reach the shore to fish, and the little monkeys went in search of Father Zea, to take shelter in the large sleeves of his Franciscan habit. These incidents sometimes amused the travellers so much that they forgot the torment of the mosquitos. At night they placed a leather case containing their provisions in the centre ; then their instruments, and the cages of their animals ; their hammocks were suspended around the cages, and beyond were those of the Indians. The ex- terior circle was formed by the fires which were lighted to keep off the jaguars. Such was the order of their en- campment on the banks of the Cassiquiare. Amonsr the Indians in their canoe was a fapjitive from Guaisia, who had become sufficiently civilized in a few weeks to be useful to them in placing the instruments ne- cessary for their observations at night. He was no less mild than intelligent, and they had some desire of taking 1V2 A CAITNIBAL AMONG THEM. him into their service. What was their horror when, talk- ing to him by means of an interpreter, they learned, that the flesh of the marimonde monkeys, though blacker, appeared to him to have the taste of human flesh. He told them, that " his relations preferred the inside of the hands in man, as in bears." This assertion was accom- panied with gestures of savage gratification. They in- quired of this young man, so calm and so affectionate in the little services which he rendered them, whether he still felt sometimes a desire to eat of a Cheruvichahena. He answered, without discomposure, that, living in the mission, he would only eat what he saw was eaten by the Padres. As they approached the bifurcation of the Orinoco their passage became troublesome, on account of the luxuriance of the vegetation. There was no longer a bank: a palisade of tufted trees formed the margin of the river. They saw a canal, one thousand two hundred feet broad, bordered by two enormous walls, clothed with lianas and foliage. They often tried to land, but without success. Towards sunset they sailed along for an hour seeking to discover, not an opening, since none existed, but a spot less wooded, where their Indians by means of the hatchet and manual labour, could clear space enough for a resting-place for twelve or thirteen persons. It was impossible to pass the night in the canoe ; the mosquitos, which tormented them dur- ing the day, accumulated towards evening beneath the roof covered with palm-leaves, which served to shelter them from the rain. Their hands and faces had never before been so much swelled. Father Zea, who had till then boasted of having in his missions of the cataracts NIGHT IN THE FOREST. 173 the largest and fiercest mosquitos, at lengtli gradually acknowledged that the sting of the insects of the Cassi- quiare was the most painfal he had ever felt. Thev ex- perienced great difficulty, amid a thick forest, in finding wood to make a fire, the branches of the trees being so full of sap that they would scarcely burn. There being no bare shore, it was hardly possible to procure old wood, which the Indians called wood hahed in the sun. However, fire was necessary to them only as a defence against the beasts of the forest ; for they had such a scarcity of provision that they had little need of fuel for the purpose of preparing their food. On the 18th of May, towards evening, they discovered a spot where wild cocoa-trees were growing on the bank of the river. It rained violently, but the pothoses, arums, and lianas, furnished so thick a natural trellis, that they were sheltered as under a vault of foliage. The Indians, whose hammocks were placed on the edge of the river, interwove the heliconias, so as to form a kind of roof over them. Their fires lighted up, to the height of fifi:y or sixty feet, the palm-trees, the lianas loaded with flowers, and the columns of white smoke, which ascended in a straight line towards the sky. They passed the night of the 20th, the last of their passage on the Cassiquiare, near the point of the bifur- cation of the Orinoco. They had some hope of being able to make an astronomical observation, as falling-stars of remarkable magnitude were visible through the vapours that veiled the sky ; whence they concluded that the stra- tum of vapours must be very thin, since meteors of this kind were scarcely ever seen below a cloud. Those they now beheld shot towards the north, and succeeded each 174 THE CRIES OF THE JAGUAES. other at almost equal intervals. The Indians, who seldom ennobled by their expressions the wanderings of the ima gination, named the falling-stars the urine, and the dew the spittle of the stars. The clouds thickened anew, and the travellers discerned neither the meteors, nor the real stars, for which thej had waited during several days. They had been told that they should find the insects at Esmeralda still more cruel and voracious, than in the branch of the Orinoco which they were going up ; never- theless they indulged the hope of at length sleeping in a spot that was inhabited, and of taking some exercise in herbalizing. This anticipation was, however, disturbed at their last resting-place on the Cassiquiare. Whilst they were sleeping on the edge of the forest, they were warned by the Indians, in the middle of the night, that they heard very near the cries of a jaguar. These cries, they alleged, came from the top of some neighbouring trees. As their fires burnt brightly, the travellers paid little attention to the cries of the jaguars, who had been attracted by the smell and noise of their dog. This animal began at first to bark ; and when the jaguars drew nearer, to howl, hiding himself below the hammocks of the travellers. Great was their grief, when in the morning, at the moment of re-embarking, the Indians informed them that the dog had disappeared 1 There could be no doubt that he had been carried off by the jaguars. Perhaps, when their cries had ceased he had wandered from the fires on the side of the beach. They waited part of the morning, in the hope that the dog had only strayed. Three days after they came back to the same place ; they heard again the cries of the jaguars, THE SHOP KEEPER OF ESMERALDA. 1*75 but all their searcli was in vain. The dog, which had accompanied them from Caracas, and had so often in swimming escaped the pursuit of the crocodiles, had been devoured in the forest. On the 21st they again entered the bed of the Orinoco, three leagues below the mission of Esmeralda. It was now a month since they had left that river near the mouth of the Guaviare. They had still to proceed seven hundred and fifty leagues before reaching Angostura. At Esmeralda they were cordially received by an old of&cer, who took them for Catalonian shopkeepers, and who supposed that trade had led them to the missions. On seeing packages of paper intended for drying their plants, he smiled at their simple ignorance. "You come," said he, " to a country where this kind of mer- chandise has no sale ; we write little here ; and the dried leaves of maize, the plantain-tree, and the heliconia serve us, like paper in Europe, to wrap up needles, fish-hooks, and other little articles of which we are careful." This old officer united in his person the civil and ecclesiastical authority. He taught the children the Rosary; he rang the bells to amuse himself; and impelled by ardent zeal for the service of the church, he sometimes used his chorister's wand in a manner not very agreeable to the natives. When they arrived at Esmeralda, the greater part of the Indians were returning from an excursion which they had made to the east, beyond the Kio Padamo, to gather brazil nuts. Their return was celebrated by a festival, which was called in the mission the festival of brazil nuts, and which resembled the harvest-homes and vintage-feasts of Germany. The women had prepared a 176 KOASTED MOXKEYS. quantity of fermented liquor, and during two days the Indians were in a state of intoxication. The harvest was celebrated by dancing and drinking. The hut where the natives were assembled, displayed during several days a singular aspect. There was neither table nor bench ; but large roasted monkeys, blackened by smoke, were ranged in regular order against the wall. The manner of roasting these animals contributed to render their appearance extremely disagreeable in the eyes of the travellers. A little grating or lattice of very hard wood was formed, and raised one foot from the ground. The monkey was skinned, and bent into a sitting posture ; the head generally resting on the arms, which were meagre and long. When it was tied on the grating, a very clear fire was kindled below. The mon- key, enveloped in smoke and flame, was broiled and blackened at the same time. On seeing the natives de- vour the arm or leg of a roasted monkey, it was difficult not to believe that this habit of eating animals so closely resembling man in their physical organization, had, to a certain degree, contributed to diminish the horror of can- nibalism among these people. The flesh of monkeys is so lean and dry, that Bonpland preserved in his collec- tions at Paris an arm and hand, wldch had been broiled over the fire at Esmeralda ; and no smell rose from them after the lapse of a number of years. The travellers saw the Indians dance. The monotony of their dancing was increased by the women not daring to take part in it. The men, young and old, formed a circle, holding each other's hands, and turned sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, for whole hours, with silent gravity. Most frequently the dancers themselves INDIANS DANCING. 177 "were tlie musicians. Feeble sounds, drawn fiorn a series of reeds of different lengths, formed a slow and plaintive accompaniment. The first dancer, to mark the time, bent both knees in a kind of cadence. Sometimes they all made a pause in their places, 'and executed little oscillatory movements, bending the body from one side to the other. When they were weary of dancing the w^omen brought them roasted monkeys and palm cabbage, not forgetting their native liquors, which were strong and headv. Leaving Esmeralda on the afternoon of the 23d the travellers reached the bifurcation of the Orinoco, "svhere they remained that night. Descending the river the next morning they passed the mouths of the Rio Cunucunumo, and the Guanami, and Puriname. Be- tween the sources of the Eio Blanco, and the Rio Esse- quibo, they met with rocks and symbolical figures. They were also shown, near the Culimacari, on the banks of the Cassiquiare, traces which were believed to be regular characters. They were however only misshapen figures, representing the heavenly bodies, together with tigers, crocodiles, boas, and instruments used for making the flour of cassava. It was impossible to recognise in these painted rocks any symmetrical arrangement, or characters with regular spaces. The travellers stopped at the village of Santa Barbara on the evenincr of the 25th. Durino^ the w^hole of the next day they enjoyed the view of the fine mountains of Sipapo, which rose at a distance of more than eighteen leagues in the direction of north-north-west. The vege- tation of the banks of the Orinoco was singularly varied in this part of the country ; the arborescent ferns de- 8* 178 THE RIO MATAVENI. scended from the mountains, and mingled with the palm-trees of the plain. They^ rested that night on the island of Minisi; and, after having passed the mouths of the little rivers Qnejanuma, Ubua, and Masao, arrived, on the 27th, at San Fernando de Atabapo. They lodged in the same house which they had occupied a month previously, when going up the Rio Negro. Then they directed their course towards the south, by the Atabapo and the Temi ; they were now returning from the west, having made a long circuit by the Cassiquiare and the Upper Orinoco. Quitting San Fernando on the 27th, they arrived, by help of the rapid current of the Orinoco, in seven hours, at the mouth of the Rio Mataveni. They passed the night in the open air, under the granitic rock El Cas- tillito, which rose in the middle of the river, the form of which reminded Humboldt of the ruin called the Mouse- tower, opposite Bingen. ' Fair Binnfen on the Rhine." '& On the evening of the 31st they landed just before sunset on the eastern bank of the Orinoco in order tc visit the cavern of Ataruipe, the sepulchre of a de- stroyed nation. They climbed with difficult}^, and not without some danger, a steep rock of granite, entirely bare. It would have been almost impossible for them to have fixed their feet on its smooth and sloping surface, but for large crystals of feldspar, resisting decomposition, which stood out from the rock, and furnished points of support. Scarcely had they attained the summit of the mountain when they TUE CAVZEN OIP ATAKUIPE. I'/G belield tlie singular aspect of the surrounding country. The foamy bed of the waters was filled with an archi- pelago of islands covered with palm-trees. Westward, on the left bank of the Orinoco, the wide-stretching savannahs of the Meta and the Casanare resembled a sea of verdure. The setting sun seemed like a globe of fire suspended over the plain, and the solitary peak of Uniana, which appeared more lofty from being wrapped in vapours which softened its outline, all contributed to deepen the majesty of the scene. Immediately below them lay a deep valley, inclosed on every side. Birds of prey and goatsuckers winged their lonely flight in this inaccessible place. The travellers found a pleasure in following with the eye their fleeting shadows, as they glided slowly over the flanks of the rock. The most remote part of the valley was covered by a thick forest. In this shady and solitary spot, on the declivity of a steep mountain, the cavern of Ataruipe opened to the view. It was less a cavern than a jutting rock, in which the waters had scooped a vast hollow when, in the ancient revolutions of our planet, they attained that height. In this tomb of an extinct tribe the travellers counted nearly six hundred skeletons well preserved, and regularly placed. Every skeleton reposed in a sort of basket made of the petioles of the palm-tree. These baskets had the form of a square bag. Their size was proportioned to the age of the dead ; there were some for infants cut off at the moment of their birth. The travel- lers saw them from ten inches to three feet four inches long, the skeletons in them being bent together. They were all ranged near each other, and were so entire that not a rib or a phalanx was wanting. The bones had been 180 FUNERAL URNS. prepared in three difFercnt manners, either whitened in the air and the sun, dyed red with anoto, or like mummie.' varnished with odoriferous resins, and enveloped in leaves of the heliconia, or the plantain-tree. The Indians in- formed them that the fresh corpse was placed in damp ground, that the flesh might be consumed by degrees ; some months afterwards it was taken out, and the flesh remaining on the bones was scraped off with sharp stones. Earthen vases half-baked were found near the baskets. They appeared to contain the bones of the same family. The largest of these vases, or funeral urns, were five feet high, and three feet three inches long. Their colour was greenish-grey, and their oval form was pleasing to the eye. The handles were made in the shape of crocodiles or serpents ; the edges were bordered with painted mean- ders, labyrinths, and grecques, in rows variously com- bined. Such designs are found in every zone among nations the farthest removed from each other, either with respect to their respective positions on the globe, or to the degree of civilization which they have attained. They still adorn the common pottery made by the inhabitants of the little mission of Maypures ; they ornament the bucklers of the Otaheitans, the fishing- implements of the Esquimaux, the walls of the Mexican palace of Mitla, and the vases of ancient Greece. They could not acquire any precise idea of the period to which the origin of tlie baskets and the painted vases, contained in the bone-cavern of Ataruipe, could be traced. A tradition circulated among the Guahibos, that the war- like Atures, pursued by the Caribs, escaped to the rocks that rose in the middle of the Great Cataracts ; and there that nation became gradually extinct, as well as its Ian- A MILE LOAD OF SKELETON'S. 181 guage. The last families of tlie Atures still existed in" '. 767, in the time of tlie missionary Gili. At the period of Hamboldt's voyage an old parrot was shown at May- pures, of which the inhabitants said, that " they did not understand what it said, because it spoke the language of the Atures." The travellers opened, to the great concern of their guides, several baskets, for the purpose of examining attentively the form of the skulls. They were all marked by the characteristics of the American race, with the exception of two or three, which approached to the Caucasian. In the middle of the Cataracts, in the most inaccessible spots, cases were found strengthened with iron bands, and filled with European tools, vesLiges of clothes, and glass trinkets. These articles, which had given rise to the most absurd reports of treasures hidden by the Jesuits, probably belonged to Portuguese traders who had penetrated into these savage countries. Humboldt and Bonpland took several skulls, the skeleton of a child of six or seven years old, and two full-o-rown men of the nation of the Atures, from the cavern of Ataruipe. All these bones, partly painted red, partly varnished with odoriferous resins, were placed in the baskets which we have just described. They made almost the whole load of a mule ; and as the travellers knew the superstitious feelings of the Indians in refer- ence to the remains of the dead after burial, they care- fully enveloped the baskets in mats recently woven. Unfortunately for them, the penetration of the Indians, and the extreme quickness of their sense of smelling, rendered all these precautions useless. Wherever they stopped, in the missions of the Caribces, amid the Llanoa 182 SMELLING THEIR OLD RELATIONS. ^Dctween Angostura and Nucva Barcelona, the natives assembled round their mules to admire the monkeys which they had purchased at the Orinoco. These good people had scarcely touched their baggage, when they announced the approaching death of the beast of burden that carried the dead. In vain the travellers told them they were deceived in their conjectures ; and that the baskets contained the bones of crocodiles and manatis ; they persisted in repeating that they smelt the resin that surrounded the skeletons, and " that they were their old relations." The travellers were obliged to request that the monks would interpose their authority, to overcome the aversion of the natives, and procure for them a change of mules. They withdrew in silence from the cavern of Ataruipe. It was one of those calm and serene nights which are so common in the torrid zone. The stars shone with a mild and planetary light. Their scintillation was scarcely sensible at the horizon, which seemed illumined by the great nebulae of the southern hemisphere. An innumer- able multitude of insects spread a reddish light upon the ground, loaded with plants, and resplendent with these living and moving fires, as if the stars of the firmament had sunk down on the savannah. On quitting the ca- vern the travellers stopped to admire the beauty of this singular scene. The odoriferous vanilla and fes- toons of bignonia decorated the entrance ; and above, on the summit of the hill, the arrowy branches of the palm- trees waved murmuring in the air. They descended towards the river, to take the road to the mission, where they arrived late in the night. Thev staj'ed at the mission of Atures only during the PASSING THE CATARACT OF ATUEES. 183 time necessary for passing the canoe tlirougb. the Great Cataract. The bottom of their frail bark had become so thin that it required great care to prevent it from split- ting. They took leave of the missionary, Bernardo Zea, who remained at Atures, after having accompanied them during two months, and shared all their sufferings. This poor monk still continued to have fits of tertian ague ; they had become to him an habitual evil, to which he paid little attention. Other fevers of a more fatal kind prevailed at Atures on their second visit. The greater part of the Indians could not leave their hammocks, and the travellers were obliged to send in search of cassava- bread, the most indispensable food of the country, to the independent but neighbouring tribe of the Piraoas. The travellers passed in their canoe through the lat- ter half of the Cataract of Atures. They landed here and there, to climb upon the rocks, which like narrow dikes joined the islands one to another. Sometimes the waters forced their way over the dikes, sometimes they fell within them with a hollow noise. A considerable portion of the Orinoco was dry, because the river had found an issue by subterraneous caverns. In these soli- tary haunts the rock-manakin with gilded plumage, one of the most beautiful birds of the tropics, built its nest. The little Cataract of Carucari was caused by an accu- mulation of enormous blocks of granite, several of which were spheroids of five or six feet in diameter, and they were piled together in such a manner, as to form spacious caverns. The travellers entered one of these caverns to gather the confervas that were spread over the clefts and humid sides of the rock. This spot displayed one of the most extraordinary scenes of nature, that they had con- 184 WAITING IN THE STORM. templated on the banks of the Orinoco. The river rolled its waters turbulently over their heads. It seemed like the sea dashing against reefs of rocks ; but at the en- trance of the cavern they could remain dry beneath a large sheet of water that precipitated itself in an arch from above the barrier. In other cavities, deeper, but less spacious, the rock was pierced by the effect of suc- cessive iiltrations. They saw columns of water, eight or nine inches broad, descending from the top of the vault, and finding an issue by clefts, that seemed to communi- cate at great distances with each other. They had the opportunity of examining this extraor- dinary sight longer than they wished. Their boat was to coast the eastern bank of a narrow island, and to take them in again after a long circuit. They passed an hour and a half in vain expectation of it. Night approached, and with it a tremendous storm. It rained with vio- lence. They began to fear that their frail bark had been wrecked against the rocks, and that the Indians, con- formably to their habitual indifference for the evils of others, had returned tranquilly to the mission. There were only three of the party ; they were completely wet, and uneasy respecting the fate of their boat : it appeared far from agreeable to pass, without sleep, a long night of the torrid zone, amid the noise of the cataracts. Bon- pland proposed to leave Humboldt on the island, and to swim across the branches of the river, that were separated by the granitic dikes. He hoped to reach the forest, and seek assistance at Atures from Father Zea. They dissuaded him with difficulty from undertaking this hazardous enterprise. The little monkeys which they had carried along with them for months, were deposited THE MISSION OF URITANA, 185 on the point of tlie island. "Wet by the rains, and sensi- ble of the least lowering of the temperature, these deli- cate animals sent forth plaintive cries, and attracted to the spot two crocodiles, the size and leaden colour of which denoted their great age. After long waiting, the Indians at length arrived at the close of day. The na- tural coffer-dam, by which they had endeavoured to de- scend, in order to make the circuit of the island, had become impassable, owing to the shallowness of the water. The pilot sought long for a more accessible pas- sage in this labyrinth of rocks and islands. Happily the canoe was not damaged, and in less than half an hour the instruments, provision, and animals, were em- barked. They stopped a few days after at the mission of Uruana. The situation of this mission was extremely picturesque. The little Indian village stood at the foot of a lofty granitic mountain. Rocks everywhere appeared in the form of pillars above the forest, rising higher than the tops of the tallest trees. The aspect of the Orinoco was nowhere more majestic, than when viewed from the hut of the missionary. Fray Ramon Bueno. It was more than fifteen thousand six hundred feet broad, and it ran without any winding, like a vast canal, straight towards the east. Two long and narrow islands contributed to give extent to the bed of the river. The mission was inhabited by the Ottomacs, a tribe in the rudest state, and presenting one of the most extraordinary physiologi- cal phenomena. They ate earth ; that is, they swallowed every day, during several months, very considerable quantities, to appease hunger, and this practice did not appear to have any injurious effect on their health. 186 THE DIET EATEES. Though the travellers could stay only one day at Uruana, this short space of time sufficed to make them acquainted with the preparation of the balls of earth. Humboldt also found some traces of this vitiated appetite among the Guamos ; and between the confluence of the Meta and the Apure, where everybody spoke of dirt- eating as of a thing anciently known. The inhabitants of Uruana belonged to those nations of the savannahs called wandering Indians, who, more difficult to civilize than the nations of the forest, had a decided aversion to cultivating the land, and lived almost exclusively by hunting and fishing. They were men of very robust constitution ; but ill-looking, savage, vindic- tive, and passionately fond of fermented liquors. They were omnivorous animals in the highest degree ; and therefore the other Indians, who considered them as barbarians, had a common saying, " nothing is so loath- some but that an Ottomac will eat it." While the waters of the Orinoco and its tributary streams were low, the Ottomacs subsisted on fish and turtles. The former they killed with surprising dexterity, by shooting them with arrows when they appeared at the surface of the Water. When the rivers swelled fishing almost entirely ceased. It was then very difficult to procure fish, which often failed the poor missionaries, on fast-days as well as flesh- days, though all the young Indians were under the obli- gation of fishing for the convent. During the period of these inundations, which lasted two or three months, the Ottomacs swallowed a prodigious quantity of earth. The travellers found heaps of earth-balls in their huts, piled up in pyramids three or four feet high. These balls were five or six inches in diameter. The earth which ANGOSTURA. 187 • the Ottomacs ate was a very fine and unctuous clay, of a yellowish grey colour ; when it was slightly baked at the fire, the hardened crust had a tint inclining to red, owing to the oxide of iron which was mingled with it, The travellers brought away some of this earth, which they took from the winter-provision of the Indians. They reached Angostura on the 13th of June. In seventy-five days they had performed a passage of five hundred leagues on tha five great rivers, Apure, Orinoco, Atabapo, Eio Negro, and Cassiquiare ; and in this vast extent they had found but a very small number of inha- bited places. After the life they had led in the woods, their dress was not in the verv best order, nevertheless they hastened to present themselves to Don Felipe de Ynciarte, the governor of the province of Guiana, He received them in the most cordial manner, and lodged them in the house of the secretary of the Intendencia. Coming from an almost desert country, they were struck with the bustle of the town, though it contained only six thousand inhabitants. They admired the conveniences which industry and commerce furnish to civilized man. Humble dwellings appeared to them magnificent ; and every person with whom they conversed, seemed to be endowed with superior intelligence. Long privations give a value to the smallest enjoyments ; and Humboldt could not express the pleasure he felt, when he saw for the first time wheaten bread on the governor's table. They felt themselves on the first days after their arrival tired and enfeebled, but in perfect health. Bonpland began to examine the small number of plants which he had been able to save from the influence of the damp climate; and Humboldt was occupied in settling by 188 TAKEN DOWN WITH FEVEK. astronomical observations tlie longitude and latitude of the capital, as well as the dip of the magnetic needle. These labours were soon interrupted. They were both attacked almost on the same day by a disorder, which with Bonpland took the character of a debilitating fever. At this period the air was in a state of the greatest salubrity at Angostura ; and as the only mulatto servant they had brought from Cumana felt symptoms of the same disorder, it was suspected that they had imbibed the germs of typhus in the damp forests of Cassiquiare. Their mulatto servant having been much more exposed to the rains than they were, his disorder increased with frightful rapidity. His prostration of strength was exces- sive, and on the ninth day his death was announced to them. He was however only in a state of swooning, which lasted several hours, and was followed by a salu- tary crisis. Humboldt was attacked at the same time with a violent fit of fever, during which he was made to take a mixture of honey and bark, a remedy much extolled in the country by the Capuchin missionaries. The intensity of the fever increased, but it left him on the following day. Bonpland remained in a very alarm- ing state, which during several weeks caused them the most serious inquietude. Fortunately he preserved suf- ficient self-possession to prescribe for himself. The fever was continual ; and, as almost always happens within the tropics, it was accompanied by dysentery. Bonpland displayed that courage and mildness of character which never forsook him in the most trying situations. Hum- boldt was agitated by sad presages ; for he remembered that the botanist Loefling, a pupil of Linneus, died not far from Angostura, near the banks of the Carony, a MELAXCIIOLY FOREBODINGS. 189 victim of his zeal for the progress of natural history. They had nort yet passed a year in the torrid zone ; and Humboldt's faithful memory conjured up everything he had read in Europe on the dangers of the atmosphere inhaled in the forests. Instead of going up the Orinoco, they might have sojourned some months in the temperate and salubrious climate of the Sierra Nevada de Merida. *'It was I," he thought, "who chose the path of the rivers, and Bonpland's death, if he dies, will be laid at my door." CHAPTER Y. TO CUBA AND BACK. The travellers left Angostura on the 10th of July, Night had set in when they crossed for the last time the bed of the Orinoco. They purposed to rest near the little fort San Rafael, and on the following morning at daybreak to set out on their journe}^ through the plains of Vene- zuela. About a month had elapsed since their arrival at Angostura ; and they earnestly wished to reach the coast, with the view of finding, at Cumana, or at ISTueva Barce- lona, a vessel in which they might embark for the island of Cuba, thence to proceed to Mexico. After the sufferings to which they had been exposed during several months, whilst sailing in small boats on rivers infested by mos- quitos, the idea of a sea- voyage was not without its charms. They had no idea of ever again returning to South America. Sacrificing the Andes of Peru to the Archipelago of the Philippines, they adhered to their old plan of remaining a year in Mexico, then proceeding in a galleon from Acapulco to Manilla, and returning to Europe by way of Bassora and Aleppo. Their mules were in waiting for them on the left bank- of the Orinoco. The collection of plants, and the differ- ent geological series, which they had brought from the THE CArJBS AT CARI. 191 Esmeralda and Eio ISTegro, had greatly increased their baggage ; and, as it would have been dangerous to lose sight of their herbals, they expected to make a very slow journey across the Llanos. On the 13th they arrived at the village of Cari, the first of the Caribbee missions. They lodged as usual at the convent. Their host could scarcely comprehend " how natives of the north of Europe could arrive at his dwelling from the frontiers of Brazil by the Eio Negro, and not by way of the coast of Cumana." He treated them in the most poilte manner, at the same time manifesting that somewhat importunate curiosity which the appearance of a stranger, not a Spaniard, always ex- cited in South America. He expressed his belief that the minerals they had collected must contain gold ; and that the plants, dried with so much care, must be medici- nal. Here, as in many parts of Europe, the sciences were thought worthy to occupy the mind only so far as they conferred some immediate and practical benefit on society. The travellers found more than five hundred Caribs in the village of Cari; and saw many others in the sur- rounding missions. They were a very tall race of men, their height being from five feet six, to five feet ten inches. According to a practice common in Ameri a the women were more sparingly clothed than the men. The former wore only the guajuco^ in the form of a band. The men had the lower part of the body wrapped in a piece of blue cloth, so dark as to be almost black. This drapery was so ample, that, on the lowering of the tem- perature towards evening, the Caribs threw it over their shoulders. The men cut their hair in a peculiar manner, 192 DIFFICULTIES WITH THE MULETEEES. very much in the style of the monks. A part of the forehead was shaved, which made it appear extremely high, and a circular tuft of hair was left near the crown of the head. The Carib women were less robust and good-looking than the men. On them devolved almost the whole burden of domestic work, as well as much of the out-door labour. They asked the travellers eagerly for pins, which they stuck under their lower lip, making the head of the pin penetrate deeply into the skin. The 3^oung girls were painted red, and were almost naked. On quitting the mission of Cari, they had some diffi- culties to settle with their Indian muleteers. They had discovered that the travellers had brought skeletons with them from the cavern of Ataruipe ; and they were fully persuaded that the beasts of burden which carried the bodies of their old relations would perish on the journey. Every precaution the travellers had taken was useless ; nothing could escape a Carib's penetration and keen sense of smell, and it required all the authority of the mission- ary to forward their passage. They had to cross the Kio Cari in a boat, and the Kio de Agua Clara, by fording, or, it may almost be said, by swimming. They had two bad stations, one at Matagorda and the other at Los Kiecetos, before they reached the little town of Pao They beheld everywhere the same objects; small huts constructed of reeds, and roofed with leather; men on horseback armed with lances, guarding the herds ; herds of cattle half wild, remarkable for their uniform colour, and disputing the pasturage with horses and mules. The travellers arrived, on the 23rd, at the town of Nueva Barcelona, less fatigued by the heat of the Llanos, to which they had been long accustomed, than annoyed NUEVA BAKCELOXA. 193 by tlie winds of sand, which occasioned painful chaps in the skin. The climate of Barcelona was not so hot as that of Cumana, but it was extremely damp, and somewhat un- healthy in the rainy season. Bonpland had borne very well the irksome journey across the Llanos, and had recovered his strength and activity ; but Humboldt suf- fered more at Barcelona than at Angostura, unmediately after their passage on the rivers. They remained nearly a month at Barcelona, where they found their friend Fray Juan Gonzales, who had traversed the Upper Orinoco before them. He expressed regret that they had not been able to prolong their visit to that unknown coun- try ; and he examined their plants and animals with that interest which must be felt by even the most uninformed man for the productions of a region he has long since visited. Fray Juan had resolved to go to Europe, and to accompany them as far as the island of Cuba. They were together for the space of seven months, and they found his society agreeable : he was cheerful, intelligent, and obliging. Little did they anticipate the sad fate that awaited him. He took charge of a part of their collec- tions; and a fiiend of his own confided to his care a child, who was to be conveyed to Spain for its education. Alas! the collection, the child, and the young ecclesias- tic, were all buried in the waves. The packet boats from Corunna bound for Havanna and Mexico had been due three months ; and it was be- lieved they had been taken by the English cruisers sta- tioned on this coast. Anxious to reach Cumana, in order to avail themselves of the first opportunity that might offer for their passage to Vera Cruz, the travel- 9 194 TAKEN BY A -PRIVATEER. lers hired an open boat called a lancha, a sort of ciafL employed habitually in the latitudes east of Cape Co- dera, where the sea was scarcely ever rough. Their Jancha, which was laden with cocoa, carried on a contra- band trade with the island of Trinidad. For this reason the owner imagined they had nothing to fear from the enemy's vessels, which then blockaded all the Spanish ports. They embarked their collection of plants, their instruments, and their monkeys ; and, the weather being delightful, they hoped to make a very short passage from the mouth of the Rio Neveri to Cumana. But they had scarcely reached the narrow channel between the conti- nent and the rocky isles of Borracha and the Chiraanas, when to their great surprise they came in sight of an armed boat, which, whilst hailing them from a great dis- tance, fired some musket-shot at them. The boat be- longed to a privateer of Halifax. The protestations of the travellers were without effect ; they were carried on board the privateer, and the captain, affecting not to re- cognise the passports delivered by the governor of Trini- dad for the illicit trade, declared them to be a lawful prize. Being a little in the habit of speaking English, Humboldt entered into conversation with the captain, begging not to be taken to Nova Scotia, but to be put on shore on the neighbouring coast. While he endeavoured, in the cabin, to defend his own rights, and those of the owner of the lancha, he heard a noise on deck. Some- thing was whispered to the captain, who left in con- sternation. Happily for them an English sloop of war, the Hawk, was cruising in those parts, and had signalled the captain to bring to ; but the signal not being promptly answered, a gun was fired from the sloop, RELEASED BY THE ENGLISH CAPTAIN. 195 and a midshipman sent on board the vessel. He gave Humboldt hopes, that the lancha, which was laden with cocoa, would be given up, and that on the following day they might pursue their voyage. In the meantime he in- vited the traveller to accompany him on board the sloop, assuring him that his commander, Captain Garnier, would furnish him with better accommodation for the night, than he would find in the vessel from Halifax. Humboldt accepted these obliging offers, and was re- ceived with the utmost kindness by Captain Garnier, who had made the voyage to the north-west coast of America with Vancouver, and who appeared to be highly interested in all he related to him respecting the great cataracts of Atures and Maypures, the bifurcation of the Orinoco, and its communication with the Amazon. He introduced to him several of his officers, who had been with Lord Macartney in China. Humboldt had not, during the space of a year, enjoyed the society of so many well-informed persons. They had learned from the English newspapers the object of his enterprise. He was treated with great confidence, and the commander gave him up his own state-room. The travellers continued their passage the next day, and were surprised at the depth of the channels between the Caracas Islands, where the sloop worked her way through them almost touching the rocks. Numbers of pelicans, and of flamingoes, which fished in the nooks, or harassed the pelicans in order to seize their prey, indi- cated their approach to the coast of Cumana. At sun- rise the sea-birds suddenly appeared, and animated the scene, reminding the travellers, in these solitary re- gions, of the activity of the cities of Europe at the 19G BACK AT CUM ANA. dawn of day. At nine in the morning tliej reached the gulf of Cariaco, which served as a roadstead to the town of Cumana. The hill, crowned by the castle of San An- tonio, stood out, prominent from -its whiteness, on the dark curtain of the inland mountains. They gazed with interest on the shore, where they first gathered plants in America, and where, some months later, Bonpland had been in such danger. Among the cactuses that rose in columns twenty feet high appeared the Indian huts of the Guayqucrias. Their friends at Cumana came out to meet them : men of all castes, w^ith whom their frequent herborizations had brought them in contact, expressed the greater joy at sight of them, as a report that they had perished on the banks of the Orinoco had been cur- rent for several months. The travellers hastened to visit Don Yicente Em- paran, whose recommendations and constant solicitude had been so useful to them during the long journey they had just terminated. He procured for them, in the centre of the town, a house which was extremely useful for their instruments. They enjoyed from its terraces a ma- jestic view of the sea, of the isthmus of Araya, and the archipelago of the islands of Caracas, Picuita, and Bor- racha. The port of Cumana was every day more and more blockaded, and the vain expectation of the arrival of Spanish packets detained them two months and a half longer. They were often nearly tempted to go to the Danish islands, which enjoyed a happy neutrality ; but they feared that, if they left the Spanish colonies, they might find some obstacles to their return. They em- ployed their time in completing the Flora of Cumana, geologically examining the eastern part of the peninsula OFF AGAIN-. 197 of Araja, and obser\dng many eclij^ses of satellites, which confirmed the longitude of the place already obtained by other means. They also made experiments on the extraordinary refractions, on evaporation, and on atmo- spheric electricity. They prolonged their stay at Ciimana a fortnight. Having lost all hope of the arrival of a packet from Corunna, they availed themselves of an American vessel, laden at Nueva Barcelona with salt provision for the island of Cuba. They had now passed sixteen months on this coast, and in the interior of Venezuela, and on the 1 6th of November they parted from their friends at Cumana to make the passage for the third time across the gulf of Cariaco to ISTueva Barcelona. The night was cool and delicious. It was not without emotion that they beheld for the last time the disc of the moon illuminating the summit of the cocoa-trees that surrounded the banks of the Manzanares. The breeze was strong, and in less than six hours they anchored near the Morro of Nueva Barcelona, where the vessel which was to take them to Havanna was ready to sail. They sailed from ISTueva Barcelona on the 24th. On the 2d of December they descried Cape Beata. During the night there was a very curious optical phenomenon, which Humboldt could not account for. At half-past twelve the wind blew feebly from the east ; the ther- mometer rose to 74°. Humboldt had remained upon the deck to observe the culmination of some stars. The full moon was high in the heavens. Suddenly, in the direction of the moon, 45^ before its passage over the meridian, a great arch was formed tinged with the pris- matic colours, though not of a bright hue. The arch 198 IIAVANXA. appeared higher than the moon ; this iris-band was neai 2^ broad, and its summit seemed to rise nearly from 80° to 85*^ above the horizon of the sea. The sky was sin- gularly pure ; there was no appearance of rain ; and what struck him most was, that this phenomenon, which perfectly resembled a lunar rainbow, was not in the direction opposite to the moon. The arch remained sta- tionary, or at least appeared to do so, during eight or ten minutes ; and at the moment when he tried if it were possible to see it by reflection in the mirror of the sex- tant, it began to move and descend, crossing successively the moon and Jupiter. It lacked six minutes of one o'clock when the summit of the arch sank below the horizon. This movement of an arch, coloured like the rainbow, filled with astonishment the sailors who were on watch on the deck. They alleged, as they did on the appearance of every extraordinary meteor, that it denoted wind. The travellers anchored at Havanna on the 19th of December. Not being able to find a passage in any neu- tral vessel, Humboldt freighted a Catalonian sloop, lying at Batabano, which was to be at his disposal to take him either to Porto Bello or Carthagena, according as .the gales of Saint Martha should permit. The travellers set sail on the 9th of March, somewhat incommoded by the smallness of their vessel, which afforded no sleeping place but upon deck. The cabin received no air or light but from above ; it was merely a hold for provisions, and it was with difiiculty that they could place their instruments in it. They were soon in the gulf of Batabano, which was bounded by a low and marshy coast, and looked like a vast desert. The fishing birds, which were generally at GARDENS AND BOWERS. 199 their post whilst the small birds and the indolent vul- tures were at roost, were seen onlj in small numbers. The sea was of a STeenish-brown hue, as in some of the lakes of Switzerland ; while the air, owing to its extreme purity, had, at the moment the sun appeared above the horizon, a cold tint of pale blue, similar to that which landscape painters observe at the same hour in the south of Italj, and which makes distant objects stand out in strong relief. They sailed E.S.E., taking the passage of Don Cristoval, to reach the rocky island of Cayo de Piedras, and to clear the archipelago, which the Spanish pilots, in the early times of the conquest, designated by the names of Gardens and Bowers. The Queen's Grar- dens, properly so. called, were nearer Cape Cruz, and were separated from the archipelago by an open sea thirty-five leagues broad. Columbus gave them the name they bear, in 14:94, when, on his second voyage, he struggled during fifty-eight days with the winds and currents between the island of Pinos and the eastern cape of Cuba. He describes the islands of this archipelago as verdant, full of trees and pleasant. A part of these so-styled gardens was indeed beautiful ; the voyagers saw the scene change every moment, and the verdure of some of the islands appeared the more lovely from its contrast with chains of rocks, displaying only white and barren sands. The surfiice of these sands, heated by the rays of the sun, seemed to be undulating like the surface of a liquid. The contact of layers of air of unequal temperature, produced the most varied pheno« mena of suspension and mirage, from ten in the morning till four in the afternoon. Even in these desert places the sun animated the landscape, and gave mobility to the 200 THE PASS OF DON CRISTOVAL. sandy plain, to tlie trunks of trees, and to the rocks that projected into the sea like promontories. When the sun appeared these inert masses seemed suspended in air; and on the neighbouring beach, the sands presented the appearance of a sheet of water gently agitated by the winds. A train of clouds sufiiced to seat the trunks of trees and the suspended rocks again on the soil ; to render the undulating surface of the plains motionless ; and to dissipate the charm which the Arabian, Persian, and Hindoo poets have celebrated as " The sweet illusions of the lonely desert." They doubled Cape Matahambre very slowly. Hum- boldt determined, "as they sailed, as they sailed," the positions of Cayo de Don Cristoval, Cayo Flamenco, Cayo de Diego Perez, and Cayo de Piedras. He also employed himself in examining the influence which the changes at the bottom of the sea produce on- its tempera- ture at the surface. Noth withstanding the small size of their bark, and the boasted skill of their pilot, they often ran aground. The bottom being soft, there was no danger ; but, nevertheless, at sunset, near the pass of Don Cristoval, they preferred to lie at anchor. The first part of the night was beauti- fully serene : they saw an incalculable number of falling- stars, all following one direction, opposite to that from whence the wind blew in the low regions of the atmo- sphere. The most absolute solitude prevailed in this spot, which, in the time of Columbus, was inhabited and frequented by great numbers of fishermen. The inhabit- ants of Cuba then employed a small fish to take the great sea-turtles. The " fisher-fish," formerly employed FISHIXG WITH FISH. 201 by the Cubans, by means of the flattened disc on hia head, furnished with suckers, fixed himself on the shell of the sea-turtle, which was common in the narrow and winding channels of the Bowers. " The fish," says Columbus, "will sooner suffer himself to be cut in pieces than let go the body to which he adheres." The Indians drew to the shore by the same cord, the fisher- fish and the turtle. When Gomara, and the learned secretary of the Emperor Charles Y., Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, promulgated in Europe this fact which they had learnt from the companions of Columbus, it was received as a traveller's tale. There is indeed an air of the marvellous in the recital of d'Anghiera, which begins in these words : " Exactly as we follow hares with greyhounds in the fields, so do the natives of Cuba take fishes with other fish trained for that purpose." We now know, from the united testimony -of Rogers, Dampier, and Commerson, that the artifice resorted to in the Bowers to catch turtles, is emploj^ed by the inhabit- ants of the eastern coast of Africa, near Cape IN'atal, at Mozambique, and at Madagascar. In Egypt, at San Domingo, and in the lakes of the valley of Mexico, the method practised for catching ducks was as follows : men, whose heads were covered with great calabashes pierced with holes, hid themselves in the water, and seized the birds by the feet. The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have employed the cormorant, a bird of the pelican family, for fishing on the coast : rings are fixed round the bird's neck to prevent him from swallow- ing his prey, and fishing for himself. In the lowest de- gree of civilization, the sagacity of man is displayed in the stratagems of hunting and fishing : nations, who 9* 202 SLAUGIITKiaXG TUE YOUNG ALCATRAS. probably never had any communication witb eticb other furnish the most striking analogies in the means they employ in exercising their empire over animals. It was three days before the travellers could leave this labyrinth of Grardens and Bowers. At night they lay at anchor; by day they visited the islands, or chains of rock, that were most easily accessible. One day while they were employed in herborizing on the Cayo Bonito, their sailors were searching among the rocks for lobsters. Disappointed at not finding lobsters there, they avenged themselves by climbing on the man2;roves and makins; a dreadful slauo;hter of the o o o young alcatras, grouped in pairs in their nests. With the want of foresight peculiar to the great pelagic birds, the alcatra builds his nest where several branches of trees unite together Humboldt and Bonpland counted four or five nests on the same trunk of a mangrove. The 3^oung birds defended themselves valiantly with their enormous beaks, which were six or seven inches long ; the old ones hovered over their heads, making hoarse and plaintive cries. Blood streamed from the tops of the trees, for the sailors were armed with great sticks and cutlasses. In vain were they reproved for this cruelty. Condemned to long obedience in the solitude of the seas, they felt pleasure in exercising a cruel tyranny over animals, when occasion offered. The ground was covered with wounded birds struggling in death. At the arrival of the sailors a profound calm prevailed in this secluded spot ; when they left, everything seemed to say : Man has passed this way. They sailed along the coast keeping two or three miles distant from land. On the 13 th, a little before sunset, TKINIDAD DE CUBA. 2 OS thej were opposite the month of the Eio San Juan, which was dreaded by navigators on account of the innumera- ble quantity of mosquitos and zancudos which filled the atmosphere. Humboldt passed a great part of the night on deck. The coast was dreary and desolate. Not a light announced a fisherman's hut. There was no village between Batabano and Trinidad, a distance of fifty leagues ; scarcely were there more than two or three farm-yards, containing hogs or cows. Yet, in the time of Columbus, this territory was inhabited along the shore. AVhen the ground is dug to make wells, or when torrents furrow the surface of the earth in floods, stone hatchets and copper utensils are often discovered. . On the 14th the travellers entered the Eio Guaurabo, one of the two ports of Trinidad de Cuba, to put on shore the pilot of Batabano, who had steered them across the flats of the Bowers, though not without causing them to run aground several times. They also hoped to find a packet-boat in this port, which would take them to Car- thagena. Humboldt landed towards evening, and placed Borda's azimuth compass and the artificial horizon, on the shore, for the purpose of observing the passage of some stars by the meridian ; but they had scarcely begun their preparations, when a party of traders, who had dined on board a foreign ship recently arrived, invited them to accompany them to the town. They requested the tra- vellers to mount two by two on the same horse ; and, as the heat was excessive, their ofier was accepted. The road leading to the port was brilliantly illuminated by phosphorescent insects. The grass that overspread the ground, the branches and foliage of the trees, all shone with a reddish and moveable light, which varied 204 CHEAr LANTEIINS. in its intensity at the will of tlie animal by wliicli it was produced. It seemed as though the starry firmament reposed on the savannah. In the hut of the poorest in- habitants of the countrj^, fifteen of these insects, placed in a calabash pierced with holes, afforded sufficient light to search for anything during the night. To shake the calabash forcibly was all that was necessary to excite the animal to increase the intensity of the luminous discs situated on each side of its body. Tlie people of the country remarked, that calabashes filled with these phos- phorescent insects were lanterns always ready lighted. They were, in fact, only extinguished by the sickness or death of the insects, which were easily fed with a little sugar-cane. A young woman at Trinidad de Cuba told the travellers, that during a long and difficult passage from the main land, she always made use of their phos- phorescence when she gave suck to her child at night ; the captain of the ship would allow no other light on board, from the fear of corsairs. The travellers quitted Trinidad on the night of the 15th. The municipality caused them to be conducted tc the mouth of the Rio Guaurabo in a fine carriage lined with old crimson damask ; and, to add to their confusion, an ecclesiastic, the poet of the place, habited in a suit of velvet notwithstanding the heat of the climate, cele- brated, in a sonnet, their voyage to the Orinoco. On the morning of the 17th they came within sight of the most eastern island of the group of the Lesser Caymans. As long as they were within sight of this island, sea- turtles of extraordinary dimensions swam round their vessel. The abundance of these animals led Columbus to give the whole group of the Caymans the name of ZAPOTE. .205 "The R(>3ks of tlie Turtles." The sailors would have thrown themselves into the water to catch some of these animals; but the numerous sharks that accompanied them, rendered the attempt too perilous. The sharks fixed their jaws on great iron hooks which were flung to them ; these hooks were very sharp and, for want of fish-hooks wdth chains, they were tied to cords. The sharks were in this manner drawn up half the length of their bodies ; and the voyagers were surprised to see that those which had their mouths wounded and bleeding continued to seize the bait over and over again during several hours. The passage from the island of Cuba to the coast of South America terminated at the mouth of the Eio Sinu, and it occupied sixteen days. The roadstead near the Punta del Zapote afforded bad anchorage ; and in a rough sea, and with a hard wind, the travellers found some difficulty in reaching the coast. Everything denoted that they had entered a wild region, rarely visited by strangers. A few scattered houses formed the village of Zapote : they found a great number of mariners assem- bled under a sort of shed, all men of colour, who had descended the Rio Sinu in their barks, to carry maize, bananas, poultry, and other provisions, to the port of Carthagena. Their barks, which were from fifty to eighty feet long, belonged for the most part to the planters of Lorica. The Zambos of the Rio Sinu wearied the travellers with idle questions respecting the purpose of their voyage, their books, and the use of their instru- ments. They regarded them with mistrust; and to escape from their importunate curiosity, the travellers went to herborize in the forest, although it rained. The Zambos had endeavoured, as usual, to alarm them by 20G HUMBOLDT MEETS A FELLOW-COUNTRYMAN. stories of boas, vipers, and the attacks of jaguars; but during a long residence among the Chajma Indians of the Orinoco, the travellers were used to these exaggerations. Quitting the coast of Zapote, covered with mangroves, they entered a forest remarkable for a great variety of palm-trees. After an hour's walk, they found, in a cleared spot, several inhabitants employed in collecting palm-tree wine. The dark tint of the Zambos formed a strong contrast with the appearance of a little man with light hair and a pale complexion, who seemed to take no share in the labour. Humboldt thought at first that he was a sailor who had escaped from some North American ves- sel ; but was soon undeceived. This fair-complexioned man was his countryman, born on the coast of the Bal- tic ; he had served in the Danish navy, and had lived for several years in the upper part of the Rio Sinu, near Santa Cruz de Lorica. He had come, to use the words of the loungers of the country, " to see other lands, and to roam about : nothing else." The sight of a man who could speak to him of his country, seemed to have no attraction for him ; and, as he had almost forgotten Ger- man without being able to express himself clearly in Spanish, the conversation was not very animated. Dur- ing the five years of his travels in Spanish America, Humboldt found only two opportunities of speaking his native language. The first Prussian he met with was a sailor from Memel, who served on board a ship from Halifax, and who refused to make himself known till after he had fired some musket-shot at his boat. The second, the man he met at the Rio Sinu, was very amica- bly disposed. Without answering his questions, he con- THE PAPS OF TOLU. 207 * tinned repeating, with a smile, "tliat the country was hot and humid ; that the houses in the town of Pomerania were finer than those of Santa Cruz de Lorica ; and that, if they remained in the forest, they would have the ter- tian fever from which he had long suffered." The travel- lers had some difficulty in showing their gratitude to this man for his kind advice ; for according to his somewhat aristocratic principles, a white man, were he barefooted, should never accept money "in the presence of those vile coloured people !" Less disdainful ttian their Euro- pean countryman, the travellers saluted politely the group of men of colour, who were employed in drawing off into large calabashes, the palm-tree wine, from the trunks of felled trees. They weighed anchor in the road of Zapote, on the 27th, at sunrise. The sea was less stormy, and the weather rather warmer, although the fury of the wind was undiminished. They saw on the north a succession of small cones of extraordinary form, as far as the Morro de Tigua ; these cones were known by the name of the Paps of Santero, Tolu, Rincon, and Chichimar. The two latter were nearest the coast. The Paps of Tolu rose in the middle of the savannahs. There, from the trunks of the Toluifera balsamum was collected the precious balsam of Tolu. In the savannahs of Tolu the travellers saw oxen and mules wandering half wild. In the archi- pelago of San Bernardo, they passed between the island of Salamanquilla and Cape Boqueron. They had scarcely quitted the gulf of Morosquillo, when the sea became so rough, that the waves frequently washed over the deck of their little vessel. Their captain sought in vain a sheltering-place on the coast, to the north of the village 2Q8 THE ISLAND OF BARU. of Bincon. Thej cast anchor at four fathoms ; but having discovered that they were lying over a reef of coral they preferred the open sea. The wind having dropped during the night they could only advance to the island of Arenas, where they an- chored. The weather became stormy during the night. They again set sail on the morning of the 29th, hoping to be able to reach Boca Chica that day. The gale blew with extreme violence, and they were unable to proceed with their frail bark against the wind and the current, when by a false manoeuvre in setting the sails (they had but four sailors), they were during some minutes in im- minent danger. The captain, who was not a very bold mariner, declined to proceed further up the coast, and they took refuge, sheltered from the wind, in a nook of the island of Baru. There was to be an eclipse of the moon during the night, and the next day an occultation of a star in Yir- go. The observation of the latter phenomenon might have been very important in determining the longitude of Carthagena. In vain Humboldt urged the captain to allow one of his sailors to accompany him by land to the foot of Boca Chica, a distance of -live miles. He objected on account of the wild state of the country, in which there was neither habitation nor path. A little incident, which might have rendered the expedition more fatal, justified the prudence of the captain. Humboldt and Bonpland went by moonlight, to collect plants on the shore ; as they approached the land, they saw a young negro issue from the thicket. He was quite naked, loaded with chains, and armed with a long knife. He invited them to land on a part of the beach covered with ESCAPED CONVICTS. 209 large mangroves, as being a spot where the surf did not break, and offered to conduct them to the interior of the island of Baru, if they would promise to give him some clothes. His cunning and wild appearance, the often- repeated question whether they were Spaniards, and cer- tain unintelligible words which he addressed to some of his companions who were concealed amidst the trees, inspired them with mistrust. These blacks were no doubt maroon negroes: slaves escaped from prison. The party from the vessel were without arms ; the negroes appeared to be more numerous than they were, and, thinking that possibly they invited them to land with the desire of taking possession of their canoe, they thought it prudent to return on board. On the mornino^ of the 30th thev doubled Punta Gi- gantes, and made for the Boca Chica, the entrance of the port of Carthagena. From thence the distance was seven or eight miles to the anchorage near the town ; and although they took a pilot to guide them, they repeat- edly touched on the sandbanks. On landing, Hum- boldt learned, with great satisfaction, that the expedition appointed to take the survey of the coast, had not yet put to sea. This circumstance not only enabled him to ascertain the astronomical position of several towns on the shore, which had served him as points of departure in fixing chronometrically the longitude of the Llanos and the Orinoco, but also served to guide him with respect to the future direction of his journey to Peru. The passage from Carthagena to Porto Bello, and that of the isthmus by the Pio Chagres and Cruces, were alike short ^ and easy ; but it was to be feared, that they might stay long at Panama before they could find an opportunity of pro- 210 CHANGE OF ROUTE. ceeding to Guayaquil, and in that case the voyage on the Pacific would be extremely lingering, as they would have to sail against contrary winds and currents. The persons they consulted all agreed that* the journey by land along the Cordilleras, by Santa Fe de Bogota, Popayan, Quito, and Caxamarca, would be preferable to the sea- voyage, and would furnish an immense field for exploration. The predilection of Europeans for the cold and temperate climate that prevailed on the back of the Andes, gave further weight to these counsels. The distances were known, but Humboldt was deceived with respect to the time it would take to traverse them on mules' backs. He did not imagine that it would require over eighteen months to go from Carthagena to Lima. Notwithstand- ing this delay, or rather owing to the slowness with which he passed through Cundinamarca, the provinces of Popayan, and Quito, he did not regret having sacri- ficed the passage of the isthmus to the route of Bogota, for every step of the journey was full of interest both geographically and botanically. This change of direc- tion gave him occasion to trace the map of the Eio Mag- dalena, to determine astronomically the position of eighty points situated in the inland country between Cartha gena, Popayan, and the upper course of the river Ama- zon and Lima, to discover an error in the longitude of Quito, to collect several thousand new plants, and to ob- serve on a vast scale the relations between the rocks of syenitic porphyry and trachyte, with the fire of vol- canoes. During the six days of their stay at Carthagena their most interesting excursions were to the Boca Grande, and the hill of Popa. A small j)ortion of hilly land sepa- THE HILL OF POPA. 211 rated tlie town of Carthagena and the islet of Manga from the Cienega de Tesca. These hills, some of which were more than five hundred feet hio^h, commanded the town. The Castillo de San Lazaro was seen from afar rising like a great rockj pyramid ; when examined nearer its fortifications were not very formidable. Layers of clay and sand were covered with bricks, and furnished a kind of construction which had little stabilit}^ The Cerro de Santa Maria de la Popa, crowned by a convent and some batteries, rose above the fort of San Lazaro, and was worthy of more solid and extensive works. The image of the Virgin, preserved in the church of the convent, had been long revered by mariners. The view from the Popa was extensive and varied, and the windings and rents of the coast gave it a peculiar character. Hum- boldt was assured that sometimes from the windows of the convent, and even in the open sea, before the fort of Boca Chica, the snowy tops of the Sierra Kevada de Santa Marta were discernible. In order to avoid the excessive heats, and the diseases which prevailed during the summer at Carthagena, the travellers removed inland to the village of Turbaco. This small Indian village stood on a hill, at the entrance of a majestic forest, which extended towards the south and the east as far as the canal of Mahates and the river Ma^dalena. The houses were mostlv built of bamboos, and covered with palm leaves. Here and there limpid springs rose out of the calcareous rock, which contained numerous fragments of petrified coral, and were shaded by the splendid foliage of the anacardium caracoli, a tree of colossal size, to which the natives attributed the pro- perty of attracting from great distances the vapours float- 212 THE VOLCANOES OF TURBACO. ing in the atmosphere. As the soil of Turbaco was more than nine hundred feet above the level of the ocean, a delightful coolness prevailed, especially during the night. The Indians of Turbaco, who accompanied the travel- lers in their herbalizations, spoke of a marshy coun- try, situated in a forest of palm trees, and called by the Creoles the Little Volcanoes. They related that, accord- ing to a tradition still existing among them, this spot had formerly been in flames ; but that a very pious man, a vicar of the village, had succeeded by his frequent asper- sions of holy water in extinguishing the subterraneous fire. They added, that, since this time, the fiery volcano had become a water volcano. From their long residence in the Spanish colonies, the travellers were familiar with the strange and marvellous stories, which the natives eagerly recited to fix the attention of travellers on the phenomena of nature; though they knew, that these stories were in general less indebted for their currency to the superstition of the Indians, than to that of the whites, the mulattoes, and the African slaves ; and that the reveries of a few individuals, who reasoned on the progressive changes of the surface of the globe, gradu- ally assumed the character of historical traditions. With- out giving any credit to the existence of an extent of country in a former state of ignition, they were conducted by the Indians to the Volcanoes; and this excursion made them acquainted with phenomena, much more im- portant than any they could have expected. The Volcanoes were situated to the east of the village of Turbaco, in a thick forest, abounding with balsam of Tolu trees. The ground rose gradually two hundred SPOUTING MUD. 213 and fifty or three hundred feet above the village of Tur- baco ; but as it was everywhere covered with vegetation, it was not possible to distinguish the nature of the rocks that reposed on the shelly calcareous soil. In the centre of a vast plain wxre eighteen or twenty small cones, in height not above twenty-five feet. These cones were formed of a blackish gray clay, and had an opening at their summits filled with water. Od ap- proaching these small craters, a hollow but very distinct sound was heard at intervals, fifteen or eia:hteen seconds previous to the disengagement of a great quantity of air. The force with which this air rose above the surface of the water led them to suppose, that it underwent a great pressure in the bowels of the earth. Humboldt generally reckoned five explosions in two minutes ; and this phe- nomenon was often attended with a muddy ejection. The Indians assured him, that the forms of the cones suffered no visible change in a great number of years ; but the ascending force of the gas, and the frequency of the explosions, appeared to vary according to the seasons. He found by analyses made by means both of nitrous gas and of phosphorus, that the disengaged air scarcely contained a thousandth part of oxygen. It was azotic gas, much more pure than that which is generally pre- pared in laboratories. CHAPTER VI. COLOMBIA AND PEKU. Completing about tlie end of April the observations they proposed to make at the northern extremity of the torrid zone, Humboldt and Bonpland were on the point of proceeding to Vera Cruz with the squadron of Admiral Ariztizabal ; but being misled by false intelligence respecting the expedition of Captain Baudin, they were mduced to relinquish the project of passing through Mexico on their way to the Philippine Islands. The public journals announced that two French sloops, the " Geographe" and the " Naturaliste," had sailed for Cape Horn ; that they were to proceed along the coasts of Chili and Peru, and thence to New Holland. This in- telligence revived in Humboldt's mind all the projects he had formed during his stay in Paris, when he solicited the Director}^ to hasten the departure of Captain Bau- din. The travellers at once set to work and divided their precious herbals into three portions, to avoid ex- posing to the risks of a long vo3'age the objects they had obtained with so much difficulty on the banks of the Orinoco, the Atabapo, and the Rio [N'egro. They sent one collection by way of England to Germany, another by way of Cadiz to France, and a third remained at rr THE KIO MAGDALENA. 215 Havanna. Thov had reason to cono-ratulute themselves on this foresight : each collection contained nearly the same species, and no precautions were neglected to have the cases, if taken by English or French vessels, remitted to Sir Joseph Banks, or to the professors of natural history at the Museum at Paris. It happened fortunately that the manuscripts which Humboldt iit first intended to send with the collection to Cadiz, were not intrusted to Fray Juan Gonzales, who had followed them to Havanna with the view of returning to Spain. He left the island of Cuba soon after the travellers, but the vessel in which he sailed foundered on the coast of Africa, and the cargo and crew were all lost. By this event the travellers lost some of the duplicates of their herbals, and what was more important, all the insects whicb Bonpland had with great difficulty collected during their voyage to the Ori noco and the Eio Kegro. Their collections shipped, the travellers ascended the Eio Magdalena, Boopland, as was his wont, exploring the botanical treasures of the shore, and Humboldt making: a chart of the river district. The sky was cloudy, but the nights were tropically fine. Their old torments, the mosquitos followed them. By and by they passed the little city of Monpex, with its white houses and its red roofs. Thev saw the inhabitants chattinoj before the doors of their dwellings (it was evening at the time,) and promenading the darkening streets. In addition to the plague of mosquitos, which kept them most of the day in their hammocks, the inhabitants of Monpex were horribly disfigured with goitres. Their city was sur- rounded with swamps, and was liable to inundations. Sometimes they were obliged to desert their houses, and 216 HONDA. take to their canoes. Crocodiles came up to the bank? to feed on the offal thrown from the city. From Monpox to Santa Margarita the shore was bor- dered with orange and lemon trees. At Pinon they saw the mountains in the interior. The depth of the water increasing along the shore, they were now and then obliged to lay in the poles, and haul along by the trees. They passed the island of Morales, which was shaded with cocoa palms. Beyond Badillo the crocodiles diminished, and cocoa plantations began. Sometimes the river, broadening, resembled a large lake, bordered with forest- trees. At such places the travellers saw their old friends of Cumana and the Orinoco, flamingoes, herons, parrots, and macaws, and hordes of howling monkeys. Turtles were plentiful, as were also crocodiles and jaguars. They saw the crocodiles and jaguars fighting on the banks as they passed. At last they reached the town of Honda, having been thirty -five days on the river. From Honda they proceeded on mules to Bogota. The road was more like the bed of a torrent than a road. They descended from the mountain of Sarjento into the picturesque valley of Guaduas ; then they climbed the steep sides of the Alta del Trigo, and again descended to the plain of Yillietas. From the paramo of Cerradera they saw the plains of Bogota, though they were still nine leagues from the capital. At last they came in sight of the white towers of the cathedral, and the monasteries of Monserrat and Guadalupe. The travellers arrived at Bogota in June, and remained till September, pursuing their botanical and geographi- cal researches, and making excursions to the natural curiosities of the neighborhood. THE FALJ.S OF TEQUEXDAMA. 21 7 The plain of Bogota was encircled with lofty moun- tains ; and the perfect level of the soil, its geological structure, the form of the rocks of Suba and Facatativa, which rose like small islands in the midst of the savan- nas, all served to indicate the existence of an ancient lake. The Rio Funzha, into which flowed the waters of the valley, forced its way through the mountains to the south-west of Bogota. Kear the farm of Canoas this river rushed from the plain by a narrow outlet into a crevice, vvhich descended towards the basin of the Rio Magdalt-na. Here were the celebrated falls of Tequen- •lama. 'Oaking one pleasant day the road which led to ^he falls, the travellers passed the village of Suacha, and *h.e great farm of Canoas, famous for its crops of wheat. At a umall distance from the farm, on the height of Chipa, f-hey found themselves surrounded with oaks and elms, and plants which recalled to their minds the vege- tation of Europe. Looking down, as from a terrace, «:hey discovered below them a country producing bana- nas and sugar canes. They descended by a dangerous pathway to the brink of the precipice, into which the river threw itself. At a short distance above them it was one hundred and forty feet broad, but as it drew near the fall it contracted itself in a deep but narrow bed, scarcely forty feet wide, and plunged at two bounds down a perpendi- cular rock to the depth of six hundred and fifty feet. It came on like a broad arch of glass ; as soon as it was over the brink of the precipice it became a fleece of spray, which was changed in its descent to mist. The mist rose, how- ever, to a considerable height, and was crowned with glit- terino^ rainbows. From the rockv sides of the crevice, hung with shrubs and bushes, gushed innumerable springs 10 218 THE LEGEND OF BOCUiCA. and tributary streams, and over and around all darted strange birds, with beautiful plumage. A great portion of the fall was lost in vapour ; what little was left below, a dwindled streamlet, rushed impetuously along a stony bed overhung with trees, and was lost in the dark windings of the rock. The crevice into which the river plunged, communicating with the plains of the warm regions, a few palm trees had sprung up at the foot of the cataract. This led the inhabitants of Bogota to say that the river plunged from a hot into a cold country. Humboldt suc- ceeded, not without danger, in carrying his instruments into the crevice. It took him three hours to reach the bottom by a narrow path. A few feeble rays of noon fell on the bottom of the crevice. The solitude of the place, the richness of the vegetation, and the dreadful roar that struck upon his ear, were long remembered by him. He considered it one of the wildest scenes in the whole range of the Cordilleras. The column of vapour, rising like a thick cloud from the falls, could be seen from the walks round Bogota, at five leagues distance. There was a legend connected with the place: " In the remotest times," it ran, " before the moon accompanied the earth, the inhabitants of the plain of Bogota lived like barbarians, naked, without agriculture, without any form of laws or worship. Suddenly there appeared among them an old man, who came from the plains situ- ate on the east of the Cordillera of Chingasa, and who appeared to be of a race unlike that of the natives, having a long and bushy beard. He was known by three distinct appellations, Bochica, Nemquetheba, and Zuhe. This old man instructed men how to clothe THE LAKE OF GUATAYITA. 219 themselves, build huts, till the ground, and form them- selves into communities. He brought with him a woman, to whom also tradition gives three names, Chia, Yube- cayguaja, and Hujthaca. This woman, extremely beau- tiful and not less malignant, thwarted every enterprise of her husband for the happiness of mankind. By her skill in magic she swelled the Eio Funzha, and inun- dated the valley of Bogota. The greater part of the inhabitants perished in this deluge ; a few only found refuge on the summits of the neighbouring mountains. The old man, in anger, drove the beautiful Huythaca far from the Earth, and she became the Moon, which began from that epoch to enlighten our planet during the night. Bochica, moved with compassion for those who were dis- persed over the mountains, broke with his powerful arm the rocks that inclosed the valley on the side of Canoas and Tequendama. By this outlet he drained the waters of the Lake of Bogota. He built towns, introduced the worship of the Sun, named two chiefs, between whom he divided the civil and ecclesiastical authority, and then withdrew himself, under the name of Idacanzas, into the holy valley of Iraca, near Tunja, where he lived in the exercise of the most austere penitence for the space of two thousand years." After the excursion to the Falls of Tequendama, the travellers visited the Lake of Gruatavita. It was situated to the north of Bogota, in a wild and soli- tary spot, on a ridge of the mountains of Zipaguira, at a height of eight thousand five hundred feet. It was held in veneration by the Indians in the olden time, who were supposed to have repaired thither for the purpose of ablution and purification. The travellers found the 220 icoNO^'Zo. remains of a flight of steps, by which the Indians were accustomed to descend to the water, and a channel by which the Spaniards, after the conquest, had attempted to drain the lake, to recover the treasures which were said to have been concealed there when Quesada and his cavalry appeared on the plains of Cundinamarca. It lay on a plain, surrounded by mountains. Its basin was a sort of half oval, whose stony sloping sides were over grown with bushes and trees. Towards the end of September Humboldt and Bon- pland bade Bogota adieu, and started for Quito. Out of two roads w^hich they might have taken, like true natu- ralists they chose the worst. The road from Bogota to Fusagasuga and thence to Icononzo was one of the most difficult and least frequented in the Cordilleras. " The traveller," Humboldt afterwards wrote, "must feel a passionate enthusiasm for the beauties of nature, who prefers the dangerous descent of the desert of San Fortu- nato, and the mountains of Fusagasuga, leading towards the natural bridges of Icononzo, to the usual road by the Mesa de Juan Diaz, to the banks of the Magdalena." Journeying two days in a south-easterly direction they came to Icononzo, a ruined town of the Muysco Indians. It lay at the southern end of a valley of the same name. The rocks of this valley seemed to have been carved by the hand of man. Their naked and barren summits presented a picturesque contrast with the tufts of trees and shrubs which covered the brinks of a deep crevice in the centre of the valley. Through this valley ran a small torrent called the Rio de la Summa Paz. To this torrent the travellers came, nor could they have crossed it, without great difficulty, had not nature provided two THE XATUCAL BEIDGES. 22i bridges of rocks, like tlie natural bridge in Yirgihia The highest of these bridges was fortj-six feet in length, and nearly forty in breadth ; its thickness m the centre was about seven feet. Humboldt experimented on its height, and found it three hundred and twelve feet above the level of the torrent. For the safety of travellers the Indians of the valley had formed a small balustrade of reeds, ex- tending along the precipitous road leading to the bridge. Sixty feet below this bridge was another, to which the travellers were led by a narrow pathway, descending along the brink of the crevice. In the middle of the second bridore was a hollow of more than tvrentv-four feet square, through which they perceived the bottom of the abyss. The torrent seemed to flow through a dark ca- vern, from which arose a melancholy noise, caused by the numberless flights of nocturnal birds that haunted the crevice. Humboldt at first mistook them for bats of gigantic size. Thousands of them were seen flying over the surface of the water. The Indians assured him that these birds were of the size of a fowl, with a curved beak and an owl's eye. They were called cacas. It was impossible to catch them, on account of the depth of the valley ; and they could be examined only by throwing down rockets, to illumine the sides of the crevice. Leaving the bridges of Icononzo, the travellers pursued their journey untjl they came to the mountain of Quin- diu. At the entrance of this mountain, near Ibague, they saw the truncated cone of Zolima covered with per- petual snow. The little river of Combeima wound along a narrow valley, and forced its way across a thicket of palm-trees. 222 THE MOUNTAIN OF QUIXDIU. The mountain of Quindiu was considered the most difficult passage in the Cordilleras of the Andes. It was a thick, uninhabited forest, which, in the finest season, could not be traversed in less than ten or twelve days. Not even a hut was to be seen, nor could any means of subsistence be found. Travellers, at all times of the year, furnished themselves with a month's provision, since it often happened, that, by the melting of the snows, and the sudden swell of the torrents, they found themselves so circumstanced, that they could descend neither on the side of Cartago, nor that of Ibague. The highest point of the road, the Garito del Paramo, was one thousand four hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea. As the foot of the mountain, towards the banks of the Cauca, was only three thousand one hundred and forty feet, the climate there was, in general, mild and tem- perate. The pathway which formed the passage of the Cordilleras was only about a foot in breadth, and had the appearance, in several places, of a gallery dug, and left open to the sky. In this part of the Andes the rock was covered with a thick stratum of clay. The streamlets which flowed down the mountains, had hol- lowed out gullies eighteen or twenty feet deep. Along these crevices, which were full of mud, the travellers were forced to grope their passage, the darkness of which was increased by the thick vegetation that covered the opening above. The oxen, which were the beasts of burden commonlv made use of in this countrv, could scarcely force their way through these galleries, some of which were two thousand yards in length ; if a travel- ler had met them in one of these passages, he could not have avoided them, but by turning back, and climb- A DELUGE OF KAIN. 223 ing the earthen wall wliicli bordered the crevice, and keeping himself suspended, by laying hold of the roots which penetrated to this depth from the surface of the ground. They traversed the mountain of Quindiu in October, on foot, followed by twelve oxen, which carried their collections and instruments, amidst a deluge of rain, to which they were exposed during the last three or four days in their descent on the western side of the Cordil- leras. The road passed through a country full of bogs, and covered with bamboos. Their shoes were so torn by the prickles which shoot out from the roots of these gigantic gramina^ that they w^ere forced, like all other travellers who disliked being carried on men's backs, to go barefooted. This circumstance, the continued hu- midity, the length of the passage, the muscular force required to tread in a thick and muddy clay, and the necessity of fording deep torrents of icy water, rendered this journey extremely fatiguing ; but, however painful, it was accompanied by none of those dangers with w^hich the credulity of the people alarmed travellers. The road was narrow, but the places where it skirted precipices were very rare. As the oxen were accustomed to put their feet in the same tracks they formed small furrows across the road, separated fi^om each other by narrow ridges of earth. In very rain}^ seasons, these ridges were covered with water, which rendered the steps of the travellers doubly uncertain, since they knew not whether they placed their feet on the ridge or in the furrow. The usual mode of travelling for persons in easy cir- cumstances, was in a chair, strapped to the back of one of the native porters, who lived by letting out their backs 224 HIDING 02s men's BACKS. and loins to travellers. They talked in this country of going on a man's back, as we mention going on horse- back. No liLimiJiating idea was annexed to the trade of porters ; and the men who followed that occupation were not Indians, but mulattoes, and sometimes even whites. It was curious to hear these men, with, scarcely any covering, quarrelling in the midst of a forest, because one had refused the other, who pretended to have a whiter skin, the pompous title of don^ or of su merced. The usual load of a porter was six or seven arrobas ; those who were very strong carried as much as nine arrobas. When we reflect on the enormous fatigue to which these miserable men were exposed, journeying eight or nine hours a day over a mountainous country ; when we know, that their backs were sometimes as raw as those of beasts of burden ; that travellers had often the cruelty to leave them in the forests when they fell sick ; that they earned by a journey from Ibague to Cartago, only twelve or fourteen piasters in from fifteen to twenty- five days ; we are at a loss to conceive how this employ- ment of a porter was so eagerly embraced by all the robust young men who lived at the foot of the moun- tains. The taste for a wandering life, the idea of a cer- tain independence amid forests, led them to prefer it to the sedentary and monotonous labour of cities. The passage of the mountain of Quindiu was not the only part of South America which was traversed on the backs of men. The whole of the province of Antioquia was surrounded by mountains so difficult to pass, that those who disliked entrusting themselves to the skill of a bearer, and were not strong enough to travel on foot from Santa Fe de Antioquia to Bocca de Nares or Eio THE FAT AXIIOQUI-VX. 225 Samana, relinquished all thoughts of leaving the country. Humboldt was acquainted with an inhabitant of this' province so immensely bulky, that he had not met with more than two mulattoes capable of carying him ; and it would have been impossible for him to have returned home, if these two carriers had died while he was on the banks of the Magdalena, at Monpox, or at Honda. The number of young men who undertook the employment of beasts of burden at Choco, Ibague, and Medellin, was so considerable, that the travellers sometimes met a file of fifty or sixty. A few years later, when a project was formed to make the passage from Naires to Antioquia passable for mules, the porters presented formal remon- strances against mending the road, and the government yielded to their clamours. The person carried in a chair by a porter was compelled to remain several hours mo- tionless, and leaning backwards. The least motion was suf&cient to throw him down, and his fall was so much the more dangerous, as the porter, confident in his own skill, generally chose the most rapid declivities, or crossed a torrent on a narrow and slippery trunk of a tree. These accidents were, however, rare; and those which happened were attributed to the imprudence of travellers, who, frightened at a false step of the porters, leaped down from their chairs. At Ibague, before the porters started on their journey across Quindiu, they plucked on the neighbouring moun- tains several hundred leaves of the vijao, a plant of the family of bananas. These leaves were twenty inches long, and fourteen inches broad. Their lower surface was covered with a farinaceous substance which fell off in scales. This peculiar varnish enabled them to resist the 10* 226 UNDER THE VIJAO LEAVES. rain for a long time. Of these leaves, with which thej were plentifully supplied on their journey, the porters made a roof; a hundred weight was sufficient to cover a hut large enough to hold six or eight persons. When Humboldt and Bonpland stopped for the night, in Quin diu, they picked out a spot in the forest where the ground was dry, and the porters lopped from the trees a few branches, and made a tent. Dividing their timber-work into squares, by the stalks of some climbing plants that grew near, or perhaps by the threads of the agave, they spread over this frame- work their vijao leaves, the stems of which were notched so as to hang, row overlapping row, like the tiles of a house. The travellers found these extemporized houses cool and commodious : if they felt the rain during the night, they had only to point out the spot through which it dropped upon them — a single leaf would mend it. Day after day passed, and they were still on the moun- tains of Quindiu, struggling along its difficult paths, now buried in the depths of its forests, and now emerging into solitary openings, rugged and stern with rocks. When the rain ceased, and the sun shone, a varied prospect opened before them ; deep but irregular valleys : table- lands of rock sloping away precipitously : barren-looking hills whose sides were studded with trees ; now and then a gigantic cactus like a bundle of broken spears ; forests before and behind, and in the distance the snowy cone of Zolima, looming among the ragged peaks, in a wilderness of clouds ! Then the sky would be overcast, and the rain would fall in torrents, drenching them to the skin. They reached Popayan in November, and rested there awhile to recruit themselves. Popayan was situated in THE CATARACTS OF TUE KIO \INAGKE. 22f~^ the beautiful valley of the Eio Cauca, at the foot of the great volcanoes of Purace and Sotara. They visited these volcanoes during their stay. On ascending from Popayan towards the top of Purace they found, at an elevation of eight thousand feet, a small plain inhabited by Indians^ and cultivated with the greatest care. This delightful plain was bounded by two ravines extremely deep, on the brink of which the houses of the village of Purace were built. Waters sprang out profusely from the porphyritic rock ; every garden was inclosed by a hedge of euphor- biums, with slender leaves, and of the most delicate gTeen. Nothing could be more agreeable than the contrast of this beautiful verdure with the chain of black and arid mountains, which surrounded the volcano, and which were cleft and torn asunder by earthquakes. The village of Purace was celebrated in the country for the beautiful cataracts of the Eio Pusambio, the waters of which were acid, and were called by the Spaniards Rio Yinagre. This small river was warm towards its source, and probably owed its origin to the daily melting of the snows, and the sulphur that burned in the interior of the volcano. It formed, near the plains, three cataracts, the two uppermost of which were very striking. Humboldt sketched the second of these in the garden of an Indian, near the house of the missionary of Purace. The water which made its way through a cavern precipitated itself downward nearly four hundred feet. The cascade was extremely picturesque, but the inhabit- ants of Popayan regretted that the river was not ingulfed in some abyss, instead of mingling, as it did, with the Rio Cauca. For the latter river was destitute of fish for four leagues, on account of the mixture of its waters with those 228 QUITO. of tlie Rio Yinagre, whicli were loaded with oxide of iron, and sul]3liuric and muriatic acids. The travellers arrived at Quito on the 6th of January, 1802, and remained there nearly nine months. How they filled up the greater part of this time is not stated ; but from the number of celebrated mountains in the neighbourhood, most of which they visited, and from their omnivorous taste in the sciences, it is certain that it seldom or never hung heavily on their hands. They had first to look after their instruments and their collections ; Humboldt had to complete his map of the Rio Magdalena, and Bonpland to arrange his crowded herbal. Then there were visits to be received, and returned ; excursions to be planned and executed : in short a thousand ways to .make the days and months slip away unperceived. When not in the city of Quito itself they resided in the neighbour- hood, in the villas and country houses of their friends. Humboldt resided at one time in the hacienda of General Aguerre, at Chileo, where his portrait was painted by a Quitan artist, and where it still hangs. When Mr. Church, our greatest landscape painter, was in South America, making studies for his magnificent painting, " The Heart of the Andes," he lodged in the very room that Humboldt occupied, and struck with his portrait, which continuall}^ met his eyes on the wall, he procured a copy of it, from a pupil of the artist who painted it, and brought it with him, in his return to the United States. It is an invaluable relict of the great traveller, representing him, not as we know him from later engrav- ings and photographs, a gray old man, with his head drooping on his bosom, heavy with its harvest of thought ; but in the vigour of manhood, thin and muscular, with MOUXTAIXS AND VOLCANOES. 229 his hair long, as was the fashion then, and in a Prussian uniform. The pleasant look of the old face is there, and the beautiful blue eyes ; but the look is more eager and longing, and the eyes are brighter and keener. A copy of the same picture hangs in the old castle at Tegel. The months of May and June were devoted to moun- tains and volcanoes, which abounded in the regions about Quito. Within the space of thirty-seven leagues to the west, were Casitagua, Pichincha, Atacazo, Corazon, Illi- niza, Carguairazo, Chimborazo, and Cumambag: to the east, were Guamani, Antisana, Passuchoa, Kumminnavi, Cotopaxi, Quelendanna, Tungurahua, and Capa-Urcu. Humboldt visited several of these mountains, but two of the grandest ones, Chimborazo and Cotopaxi, he was unable to ascend. Cotopaxi was situated twelve leagues from the city, to the south-east, between the mountain of Kumminnavi, the summit of which, rugged with small separate rocks, ex- tended like a wall of enormous height, and Quelendanna, w^hich entered the boundaries of eternal snow. Its height was eighteen thousand seven hundred feet. The masses of scorise and huge pieces of rock, which it had in former times vomited from its fiery depths, were spread over the neighbouring valleys, covering a space of several square leagues ; could they have been col- lected and heaped together, they would have formed a colossal mountain, as large perhaps as Cotopaxi itself. Cotopaxi was the most dreadful mountain in the whole kingdom of Quito. During one of its eruptions in 1739, flames rose into the lurid air three thousand feet above the brink of its crater. In 1744 its roaring^ was heard as far as Honda, a distance of two hundred leasrues. In 7 O 230 COTOPAXI. 1768 the quantity of ashes sifted from it was so great, that in the towns of Hambato and Taciinga, day broke only at three o'clock in the afternoon, and the inhabit- ants were obliged to use lanterns in the streets. The summit of Cotopaxi was one of the most beauti- ful and regular of all the colossal summits of the Cor- dilleras. It was a perfect cone, covered with an enormous laj^er of snow, which at sunset shone with a dazzling splendour, detaching itself picturesquely from the in- tensely blue sky. This covering of snow concealed from the eyes of the travellers the smallest inequalities of the soil; no point of rock, no stony mass penetrated this coat of ice, or broke the regularity of the figure of the cone. Near the brink of the crater they saw a ledge of rock which was never covered with snow, and which looked like a series of belts of the darkest hue. The cone was too steep here for the snow ever to lodge upon it; besides, currents of heated air were continually issuing from the crevices. The soul of Winter himself would have shrunk into nothingness before these " blasts from hell." The crater of Cotopaxi, like that of TeneriflPe, was sur- rounded by a circular wall, which the travellers were unable to scale ; for unlike the crater of Teneriffe it had no opening. The lava which had poured over its horri- ble brink had never yet made a breach in it. Indeed they found it difficult to attain even the inferior boun- dary of perpetual snow : so the}^ were reluctantly com- pelled to descend. Humboldt made two sketches of the volcano, one at Suniguaicu, from a ridge of porphyritic mountains which joined Cotopaxi to the Nevada of Quelendanna — a southern view of the crater, near the CHIMr.OEAZO. 231 limit of eternal snow; the other, a westerly view from the terrace of a beaiitifal country house, belonging to his friend, the Marquis of Maenza, with whom he occasion- ally lodged during his residence in Quito. On the 22nd of June, the birthday of his brother, Humboldt commenced his ascent of Chimborazo, accom- panied by Bonpland and Carlos de Montufar, a young Spanish naturalist. Tliey started from the plain of Tapia, at an elevation of over nine thousand feet. This arid table-land was near the villao-e of Lican, the ancient residence of the sovereigns of Quito. From Lican to the summit of Chimborazo was nearly five leagues in a straight line. They followed the plain, leaving behind them groups of Indians bound to the market of Lican, and slowly ascending halted for the night at the little vil- lage of Calpi. They were now at the foot of Chimbo- razo It rose before them stupendously in the light of the setting sun. The foreground was veiled in the vaporous dimness that striped the lower strata of the air, but as they cast their eyes towards the summit it de- tached itself from the deep blue sky. They saw above the region of ligneous plants and alpine shrubs a broad belt of grass like a gilded yellow carpet. Beyond this was a region of porphyritic rocks, and beyond these rocks, eternal ice and snow. As the earth below grew darker, the heaven above seemed to grow brighter ; their sight was dazzled with the refulgent splendour of the snow. Early the next morning their Indian guides awoke them, and thev bepran to climb the mountain on the south-western side, traversing the great plains which rose like terraces, one above another, until they reached the plain of Sisgun, twelve thousand four hundred feet 232 THE FOKEST OF KOCKS. above tlie level of the sea. Here Humboldt wished to make a trigonometrical meaiturement to ascertain the height of the summit, but it was shrouded in thick clouds. From time to time they caught a momentary glimpse of it, through openings in the clouds, but the sky was gradually darken- ing. They continued to ascend until they reached the little lake of Yana-Cocha, a circular basin one hundred and thirty feet in diameter. It was the most elevated spot yet reached by man on the ridge of mountains, three thou- sand three hundred feet higher than the summit of Mont Blanc. Here they left their mules. The barometer showed a height of fourteen thousand three hundred and fifty feet. Crossing the yellow belt of grass which they had seen over night, they came to a region of augite. Here rocks rose in columns fifty or sixty feet high, and looked like the trunks of trees. Traversing the aisles of this enchanted forest of stone, over fields of new-fallen snow, they gained a narrow ridge which led directly to the summit of Chim- borazo, and hy which alone they might hope to reach it ; for the snow around was too soft and yielding to be ven- tured upon. The path became steeper and narrower, and at last the guides refused to go any further. When they were sixteen thousand five hundred feet high, all but one left them. Kothing daunted, however, the travellers went on, enveloped in a thick mist. The path which they were ascending was in many places not more than eight or ten inches broad : the natives called it a " knife-blade." On one hand was a declivity of snow covered with a glassy coating of ice, on the other a chasm one thousand feet deep, the bottom of which was covered with masses of naked rocks. They inclined their bodies over this chasm, dan- gerous as it was, for they dared not trust themselves to the BIRDS AND EU'iTERFLIES. 233 snowy pitcli on the opposite side. Had tliej stumbled they would either have been buried in the mingled snow and ice, or would have rolled headlong down the steep. The character of the rock, which was brittle and crumbling, increased the difficulty of the ascent. Here and there they were obliged to crawl on their hands and feet ; the sharp edges of the rock wounded them, and they left behind a bloody trail. They marched in single file, testing with their poles the stability of the rocks before them. This precaution was very necessary, as many of the rocks were lying loose on the brink of the precipice. Desirous of knowinsf how much of the mountain remained to be ascended, for the summit was continually hidden from their sight, Humboldt opened the barometer on a point where the path was broad enough to allow two persons to sit side by side : the mercury indicated a height of eighteen thousand three hundred and eighty feet. The temperature of the air was 98°, and that of the earth 107°. They proceeded for another hour, and found the rocky path less steep ; the mist, however, was thicker than ever. They now began to suffer severely from the extreme rarefaction of the air. They breathed with difficulty, and what was still more disagreeable, felt like vomiting. Their heads swam, their lips and gums bled profusely, and their eyelids and eyeballs were charged with blood. From time to time great birds, probably condors, came swooping down the terrible pass, sailing grandly away ; and little winged insects, resembling flies, fluttered gaily around. It was impossible to catch them, owing to the narrowness of the ledge ; but Humboldt j udged that they were Dipteras. Bonpland saw yellow butterflies, a little lower down, flying very near the ground. 234 STOrPED BY A CHASM. Finally the belts of cloud parted, and they saw on the sudden, the vast dome of Chimborazo It seenaed near them, so near that in a few minutes they might reach it. The ledges too seemed to 'favor them by becoming broader. They hurried onward for a short distance, excited with the hope of soon standing on the pinnacle. All at once the path was stopped by a chasm, four hun- dred feet deep, and sixty feet broad. There was no way by which they could cross it: the difficulty was insur- mountable. To tantalize them still further they saw that the path went forward on the other side of the ledge, evidently reaching the summit. If they could have but crossed that chasm ! It was one o'clock in the afternoon, and they were benumbed with cold. They were nineteen thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea. The belt of clouds closed again, and the peak was lost. The mist grew thicker and thicker, and everything indicated a storm. There was nothing left them but to descend. Halting long enough to collect a few specimens of the rock they retraced their steps. A storm of hail overtook them, but as they descended into a lower atmo- sphere it changed into snow. When they reached the little lake of Yana-Cocha, where they had left their mules, they found the ground covered with snow several inches deep. Before dusk they reached the Indian village of Calpi, and were entertained that night by the priest. So ended the attempt to scale the summit of Chimbo- razo. Not content with his defeat at Chimborazo and Coto- paxi, Humboldt visited several other mountains and vol- canoes in the neighbourhood of Quito. If he could not ILLINISSA AND COE.VZOX. 235 ascend them, he could at least sketch them, which was something. He visited and sketched Corazon, Illinissa, and Cavambe. Of the various summits of the Cordilleras, the heights of which have been determined with any precision. Cay- ambe is the loftiest after Chimborazo. From angles which he took on the Exido of Quito, to observe the progress of the terrestrial refraction at different hours of the day, Humboldt found its elevation to be eighteen thousand seven hundred feet. Its form, which was that of a truncated cone, reminded him of the peak of Zolima, as he saw it looming above the forests of Quindiu. Among the many snow-clad mountains that surrounded the city of Quito he considered it the most beautiful, as well as the most majestic, and it never ceased to excite his admiration when at sunset it threw its vast shadow over the plain. Illinissa was grand and picturesque. Its summit was divided into two pyramidal points, which were probably the wrecks of a volcano that had fallen in. These pyra- mids were visible at an enormous distance. Corazon derived its name from the form of its summit, which was nearly that of a heart. It was on the western Cordillera, between Illinissa and Pichincha. Bouguer and Condamine ascended this mountain in July, 1738. " AVe began our journey," says Condamine, in his celebrated Yoyage to the Equator, " in very fine weather. The persons whom we had left in our tents soon lost sight of us among the clouds, which appeared to us only a mist, from the time we entered them. A cold and piercing wind covered us in a short time with icicles. In several places we were forced to scale the rock, by climbing with 236 THE BRIDGE OF ROPES AT PENIPE. our hands and feet. At length we reached the summit : and on looking at each other, we perceived all one side of our clothes, one of our eyebrows, and half our beards, stuck full of small frozen points, exhibiting a singular spectacle." In one of their excursions to Riobamba, on the west- ern slope of the volcano of Tunguragua the travellers visited the delightful village of Penipe, where they saw a famous bridge of ropes. It crossed the river of Chambo, which separated the villages of Penipe and Guanando. The ropes of this bridge, which were three or four inches in diameter, were made of the fibrous part of the roots of the agave Americana^ and were fastened on each bank to a clumsy wooden framework. As their weight made them bend towards the middle of the river, and as it would have been imprudent to have stretched them with too much force, the Indians were obliged, when the banks were low, to form steps or ladders at both extremities of the bridge. That which the travellers crossed at Penipe was a hundred and twenty feet long, and seven or eight broad. The great ropes were covered transversely with small cylindrical pieces of bamboo. These structures, of which the people of South America made use long be- fore the arrival of the Europeans, reminded Humboldt of the chain bridges at Boutan, and in the interior of Africa. Mr. Turner, in his interesting account of his journey to Thibet, gives the plan of the bridge of Tchintchieu, near the fortress of Chuka, which is one hundred and forty feet in length, and which may be passed on horseback. Travellers had often spoken of the extreme danger of passing over these rope bridges, which look like ribanda suspended above a crevice or an impetuous torrent ; but PERUVIAN BRIDGES OF WOOD. 23*7 Humboldt did not consider this danger great, when a single person passed over the bridge as quickly as possi- ble, with his body leaning forward. The oscillations of the ropes, however, become very strong, when the travel- ler is conducted by an Indian who walks quicker than himself; or when frightened by the view of the water which he sees through the interstices of the bamboos, he has the imprudence to stop in the midst of the bridge, and lay hold of the ropes that serve as a raiL A bridge of this kind lasted generally in good condition only twenty or twenty-five years. It was necessary to renew- some of the ropes every eight or ten years. But in these countries the police was so negligent, that Humboldt often saw bridges, in which most of the pieces of bam- boo were broken. On these old bridges it was necessary to proceed with great circumspection, to avoid holes, through which the whole body might slip. A few years before Humboldt's visit to Penipe, the bridge of the Eio Chambo suddenly broke down. This was owing to a very dry wind having succeeded long rains, in conse- quence of which all the ropes gave way at the same time. By this accident four Indians were drowned in the river, which was Terj deep and rapid. The ancient Peruvians constructed also bridges of wood, supported by piers of stone ; though they most commonly satisfied themselves with bridges of ropes. These were extremely useful in a mountainous country, where the depth of the crevices and the impetuosity of the torrents prevented the construction of piers. It was bj a bridge of ropes, of extraordinary length, on which travellers could pass with loaded mules, that a permanent communication was established between Quito and Lima, 238 THE PANECILI-O OF CALLO. after uselessly expending upwards of forty thousand pounds sterling, to build a stone bridge, near Santa, over a torrent, which rushed from the Cordillera of the Andes. But we must not forget the various monuments of the ancient Peruvians, visited by the travellers during their nine months' residence in Quito, especially the Panecillo of Callo, and the House of the Inca Huayna-Capac. They came upon these singular remains in April, on their way to the volcano of Cotopaxi, and Humboldt made a sketch of them as the}^ then appeared. He found them in an immense plain covered wdth pumice stone. The Panecillo was a conic hillock, about two hundred and fifty feet high, covered with small bushes of molina, spermacoce, and cactus. The natives believed that this hillock, which resembled a bell, and was perfectly regular in its figure, was a tumulus, or one of those numerous hills, which the ancient inhabitants of this country raised for the interment of the sovereign, or some other distinguished personage. It w^as alleged, in favour of this oj^inion, that the Pane- cillo was wholly composed of volcanic rubbish, and that the same pumice stone, which surrounded its basis, was found also on its summit. This reason might appear little conclusive in the eyes of a geologist, for the back of the neighbouring mountain of Tiopullo, which was much higher than the Panecillo, was also covered with great heaps of pumice stone, probably owing to ancient eruptions of Cotopaxi and Illinissa. We cannot doubt, but that in both Americas, as well as in the north of Asia, and on the banks of the Boristhenes, mounds raised by men, and real tumuli of an extraordinary height, are to be seen. Those which are found amid the ruins of the ancient town of Mansiche, THE HOUSE OF THE IXCA. 239 in Peru, are not much lower than the Panecillo of Callo. It is nevertheless possible, and this opinion appeared to Humboldt the most probable one, that the latter was a volcanic hillock to which the natives had given a more regular form. Ulloa, who visited the Panecillo, and whose authority is of great weight, adopted the opinion of the natives ; he even thought that the Panecillo was a military monument ; and that it served as a watch tower, to discover what passed in the country, and to insure the prince's safety on the first alarm of an unforeseen attack. The Inca's House was a little to the south-west of the Panecillo, three leagues from the crater of Cotopaxi, and about ten leagues to the south of the city of Quito. This edifice formed a square, each side of which was one hundred feet long ; four great outer doors were still distinguish- able, and eight apartments, three of which were in good preservation. The walls were nearly fifteen feet high and three feet thick. The doors were similar to those of Egyptian temples; the niches, eighteen in number in each apartment, were distributed with the greatest symmetry. The stone made use of in building the Inca's House was a rock of volcanic origin, a burnt and spungy porphyry with basaltic bases. It was probably ejected by the mouth of the volcano of Cotopaxi. As this monument appeared to have been constructed in the be- ginning of the sixteenth century, the materials emj^loyed in it proved that it was a mistake to consider as the first eruption of Cotopaxi that which took place in 1533, when Sebastien de Belalcazar made the conquest of the kingdom of Quito. The stones of the Inca's House were cut in parallelopipedons, not all of the same size, but forming courses as regular as those of Roman workman- 240 A yiKW ItOL'TE. ship. During his long abode in the Cordilleras Ilumboldt never found any structure resembling those which are teamed Cyclopean. In every edifice that dated from the time of *the Incas, the front of the stones was very skil- fully cut, while the back part was rugged, and often angular. Before Humboldt and Bonpland visited the ruins at Callo, Don Juan Larea had remarked, that in the walls of the Inca's House the interstices between the outer and inner stones were filled with small pebbles cemented with clay. Humboldt did not observe this circumstance. He saw no vestige of floor, or roof; he supposed, however, that the latter was of wood. He could not decide whether 'the edifice had originally more than a single story, or not ; as the height of its walls had been diminished no less by the avidity of the neighbouring peasantry, who took away the stones for their own use, than by the earthquakes, to which this unfortunate country was con- tinually exposed. He thought it probable that this edifice, as well as others which he heard called at Peru, Quito, and as far as the banks of the Amazon, by the name of Inca's Houses, did not date farther back than the thirteenth century. Some time in August or September Humboldt received intelligence that Baudin's expedition had sailed to New Zealand, intending to pass homeward around the Cape of Good Hope. This frustrated his projected visit to the Philippine Islands. As he was by this time, however, somewhat accustomed to having his plans thwarted, he devised a new route, and as soon as it was practicable he and Bonpland started upon it. About the last of Sep- tember they left Quito, following the chain of the Andes by the way of Assuay, Cuenca, and Loxa. THE FOETEESS OF CANNAE. 241 The road which led them over the Paramo of Assaay was nearly as hiorh as Mont Blanc. Here it descended a valley, there it ascended a mountain, and a little farther on it stretched monotonously across a level plain. In one of these plains, which was six leagues square in breadth, the travellers found lakes of fresh water of con- siderable depth. These lakes were bordered by a thick turf of Alpine grasses, but contained no fish, and scarcely any aquatic insects. Here they found the remains of the great road of the Incas, which ran by the side of their heavily-laden mules for over a mile. It had a deep under- structure, and was paved with well-cut blocks of blackish trap-porphyry. Nothing that Humboldt had seen of the remains of Roman roads in Italy, the South of France, or Spain, was more imposing than these works of the an- cient Peruvians. They originally formed a line of com- munication through all the provinces of the Empire, extending over a length of more than a thousand miles. Proceeding from Assuay towards Cuenca the road led them to the ancient fortress of Cannar. It was on a hill, terminated by a platform, and was in excellent preserva- tion. A wall built of large blocks of freestone, rose to the height of twenty feet, forming a regular oval, the great axis of which was nearly one hundred and twenty feet in length. The interior of this oval was a flat piece of ground, covered with rich vegetation. In the centre of this inclosure stood the Fortress of Cannar, a house containing only two rooms, the walls of which were twenty feet high. It was probably a lodging-place for the Incas, when they .journeyed from Cuzco to the king- dom of Quito. The foundations of a great number of 11 242 THE EAYIXE OF THE SUN. edifices surrounding^ tlie inclosure showed that there was room enough to lodge the small army which generaMy accompanied the Incas on these journeys. What was curious about the Fortress of Cannar was the form of its roof, which gave it the appearance of a European house. As one of the first historians of America, Pedro de Cieca de Leon, who began to describe his travels in 1541^ says that several similar houses, which he examined in the province of Los Canares, were covered with rushes, this roof was probably added after the conquest of Peru by the Spaniards. Leaving the Fortress of Cannar, the travellers came to a valley hollowed out by the river Gulan. Here the)' found small foot-paths cut in the rock. These paths Icl to a fissure, which the ancient Peruvians called th Ravine of the Sun. In this solitary spot, shaded b beautiful and luxuriant vegetation, the travellers saw an isolated mass of sandstone, twelve or fifteen feet high. On side of this rock was remarkable for its whiteness : it wa •> cut perpendicularly as if it had been worked by th- hand of man. On this smooth white ground were several concentric circles, representing the image of the sun. They were of a blackish brown, and in the space the; inclosed were features, half effaced, that indicated two eyes and a mouth. Examining these circles closeh Humboldt found that they were small veins of iron ore, common in every formation of sandstone. The feature:: • indicating the eyes and mouth, which were evident!; made by some metallic tool, were probably added by tht Peruvian priests to impose upon the people. When th( Spaniards conquered the country, it was to the in teres, of the missionaries to efface them, and it was accord- THE CHAIR OF THE INCAS. 243 ingly done. Humboldt saw traces of tlieir chisels in all the circles. The foot of the rock was cut into steps, which led to a seat, hollowed out on the top, and so placed that from the bottom of a hollow the image of the sun might be seen. The natives related that when the Inca Yupa-Yupangi advanced with his army to conquer the kingdom of Quito, then commanded by the conchocando of Lican, the priests who accompanied him discovered on the stone the image of the Divinity whose worship ought to be introduced among the conquered nations. The prince and his soldiers considered the discovery of the stone as a lucky augury, and it no doubt contributed the choice of the ground on which the Fortress of Cannar was built. Kear by was a chain of hills which was once a part of the garden belonging to the ancient fortress. Here, as at the ravine, the travellers found a number of small path- ways cut in the slope of a rock, which was scarcely covered with veofetable mould. There was not a tree which seemed to have outlived fifty years. Nothing re- minded them of the Incas, except a small monument of stone, placed on the edge of a precipice. At a distance it resembled a sofa, the back of which was decorated with a sort of arabesque, in the form of a chair. From this singular chair, in which but one person could sit at a time, there was a delightful prospect. Here, without doubt, the Incas used to sit and gaze over the surround- ino- country. Before them was the verdant valley, through which ran the river Gulan, broken into cascades, and foaming along through tufts of gunnera and mela* stomas : behind and around were the everlasting hills ! 244 THE CIXCHONA AVOODS. The travellers rested awhile at Loxa, and visited its cinchona woods which yielded quinine, or Peruvian Xark. Peruvian bark was first brought into Europe in the middle of the seventeenth century, either, as Sebas- tian Badus asserts, to Alcala de Henares in 1632, or to Madrid in 1640, on the arrival of the wife of the Yicero}^, the Countess of Chinchon, who had been cured of inter- mittent fever at Lima, accompanied by her physician, "Juan del Yego. The trees which yielded the finest quality of quinine were found from eight to twelve miles to the south-east of Loxa, in the mountains of Uritusinga, Villonaco, and Eumisitana. They grew in dense woods, and aspired above the surrounding trees. Their leaves were five inches long and two broad, and of a peculiar reddish color. When the upper branches waved to and fro in the wind, their glittering could be seen at a great distance. The quinine tree was cut down in its first flowering season, or in the fourth or seventh year of its age, accord- ing as it had sprung from a vigorous root-shoot, or from a seed. Humboldt learned, that at the period of his journey, according to official computations, only 11,000 lbs. of the bark were collected annually. None of this precious store found its way at that time into commerce ; the whole was sent from the port of Payta on the Pacific, round Cape Horn to Cadiz, for the use of the Spanish Court. In order to furnish this small quantity eight or nine hundred trees were cut down every year. The older and thicker stems were already becoming scarce ; but the luxuriance of vegetation was such that the younger trees, which supplied the demand, though only six inches in diameter, often attained the height of fifty or sixty feet. EUIXS OF CHULUCANAS. 245 Between the Indian villages of Ajavaca and Guanca- bamba the travellers found the ruins of the city of Chulu- canas. These ruins were situated on a slope of the Cordilleras, near the brink of a river, from w^hich they were separated by a wall. Two openings in this wall corresponded with the two principal streets of the city. The houses, built of porphyry, were distributed into eight quarters, formed by streets cutting each other at right angles. In the centre of these quarters, each of which contained twelve small habitations, were the remains of four large buildings of an oblong form, sepa- rated by four small square buildings, occupying the four corners. The hill on which the city stood was divided into six terraces, the platforms of which were faced with hewn stone. On the right of the river which bounded ■ the city, they discovered an uncouth structure, evidently an ancient amphitheatre. The region of country in which they were now travel- ling— a series of mountain wildernesses, was cold and stormy. They were often for days in a dense mist, or worse still, they endured the peltings of violent showers of hail, which cut their faces and hands. The vegetation had a peculiar character, from the absence of trees, the short close branches of the small-leaved myrtle- like shrubs, the large-sized and numerous blossoms, and the perpetual freshness of the whole from the constant and abundant supply of moisture. At various points in their journey they came upon the remains of the old road of the Incas. The finest portions of these roads were at Chulucanas, and in the neighbourhood of Ingatambo, at Pomahuaca. It was nine thousand seven hundred feet lower at the latter place than at Assuay. 240 TUE E0AD3 OF THE INCAS. Thej found placed at nearly equal distances apart, sta tions consisting of dwelling-houses built of well-cut stone These stations were a kind of caravanserai, and were called Tambos, and Inca-houses. Some were surrounded by a kind of fortification ; others were constructed for baths with arrangements for conducting hot water. The largest of them were designed for the use of the family of the Monarch himself There were two great artificial Peruvian paved roads or systems of roads, covered with flat stones, or some- times even with cemented gravel. One passed through the wide and arid plain between the Pacific Ocean and the chain of the Andes, and the other over the ridges of the Cordilleras. Mile-stones, or stones marking the dis- tances, were often found at regular intervals. The road was conducted across rivers and deep ravines by bridges of stone, wood, and rope. Both systems of roads were directed to the central point, Cuzco, the seat of government of the great empire. As the Peruvians em- ployed no wheel carriages, and the roads were con- sequently only designed for the march of troops, for men carrying burdens, and for lightly-laden lamas, Hum- boldt and Bonpland found them occasionally inter- rupted, on account of the steepness of the mountains, bj^ long flights of steps, provided with, resting-places at suitable intervals. Francisco Pizarro and Diego Al- magro, who on their distant expeditions used the militarj^ roads of the Incas with so much advantage, found great difiiculties for the Spanish Cavalry at the places where these steps occurred. The impediment presented to their march on these occasions was so much the greater, be- cause in the early times of the Conquista, the Spaniards WHAT THEY TV'EEE WHEX PEEFECT. 247 used only horses instead of the carefully treading mule, who in the difficult parts of the mountains seems to de- liberate on every step he takes. It was not until a later period that mules were employed. Sarmiento, who saw the E-oads of the Incas while they were still in a perfect state of preservation, asks in a Eelacion which long lay unread, buried in the Library of the Escorial, "how a nation unacquainted with the use of iron could have completed such grand works in so high and rocky a region, extending from Cuzco to Quito on the one hand, and to the coast of Chili on the other? The Emperor Charles," he adds, " with all his power could not accomplish even a part of what the well-ordered Govern- ment of the Incas effected through the obedient people over whom they ruled." Hernando Pizarro, the most educated and civilized of the three brothers, who for his misdeeds suffered a twenty years' imprisonment at Medina del Campo, and died at last at a hundred years of age in the odour of sanctity, exclaims : "In the whole of Christendom there are nowhere such fine roads as those which we here admire." The two important capitals and seats of govern- ment of the Incas, Cuzco and Quito, are one thousand English geographical miles apart in a straight line, without reckoning the many windings of the way ; and includ- ing the windings, the distance is estimated by Garcilaso de la Yega and other Conquistadores at five hundred leagues. ^Notwithstanding the great distance, we learn from the well-confirmed testimony of the Licentiate Polo de Ondegardo, that Huayna Capac, whose father had conquered Quito, caused some of the building materials for the houses of the Incas in the latter city, to be brought from Cuzco. 248 WHEN TIIEY WERE CONSTRUCTED. When enterprising races inhabit a land where the form of the ground presents to them difficulties on a grand scale which they may encounter and overcome, this contest with nature becomes a means of increasing their strength and power as well as their courage. Under the despotic centralizing system of the Inca-rule, security and rapidity of communication, especially in the move- ment of troops, became an important necessity of govern- ment. Hence the construction of artificial roads on so grand a scale, and hence also the establishment of a highly improved postal system. Among nations in very different stages of cultivation we see the national activity display itself with peculiar predilection in some particular directions, but we can by no means determine the general state of culture of a people from the striking development of such particular and partial activity. Egyptians, Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos, show many interesting contrasts in these respects. It is difficult to pronounce what length of time may have been required for the execution of the Peruvian roads. The great works in the northern part of the Empire of the Incas, in the highlands of Quito, must at all events have been completed in less than thirty or thirty -five years ; i. e. within the short period intervening between the defeat of the Ruler of Quitu, and the death of Huayna Capac. But entire obscurity prevails as to the period of the formation of the Southern roads. Not withstanding: the tribute of admiration which the first Conquistadores paid to the roads and aqueducts of the Peruvians, they not only neglected the repair and preservation of both these classes of useful works, but they even wantonly destroyed them ; and this still moie FOEDIXG THE GUANCxVBAMBA. 249 towards the sea-coast, than on the ridges of the Andes, oi in the deep-cleft valleys by which the mountain chain is intersected. In their journey from the rocks of Zaulaca to the Valley of San Felipe, the travellers were obliged to wade through the Rio de Guancabamba, which flowed into the Amazon, no less than twenty-seven times, on account of the windings of the stream ; while they continually saw near them, running in a straight line along the side of a steep precipice, the remains of the high built road of the Incas. The mountain torrent, though only from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty feet broad, was so strong and rapid that, in fording it, their mules were often in danger of being swept away by the flood. As these mules carried their manuscripts, their dried plants, and all that they had been collecting for a year past, we can conceive the suspense with which they watched from the other side of the stream until the long train of eighteen or twenty beasts of burden had passed in safety. The same river, in the lower part of its course, where it had many falls and rapids, was made to serve in a singular manner for the conveyance of correspondence with the coast of the Pacific. In order to expedite more quickly the few letters from Truxillo which were intended for the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, a swimming courier, as he was called in the country, was employed. This post messenger, who was usually a young Indian, swam in two days from Pomahuaca to Tomependa, first by the Rio de Chamaya, and then by the Amazon. He carefully placed the few letters entrusted to him in a large cotton handkerchief, which he wound round his head 11* 250 THE SWIMMING POSTMAN. in the manner of a turban. When he came to the water- falls he left the river, and made a circuit through the woods. In order to lessen the fatigue of swimming for so long a time, he sometimes threw one arm round a piece of a very light kind of wood. Sometimes a friend went with him to bear him company. The pair had no concern about provisions, as they were always sure of a hospitable reception in any of the scattered huts, which were abun- dantly surrounded with fruit trees. The Governor of the province of Jaen de Bracamoros assured Humboldt that letters carried bv this sino^ular water-post were rarely either wetted or lost. Soon after his return to Europe from Mexico, the traveller received, in Paris, letters from Tomependa, which had been sent in the manner above described. Several tribes of Indians, living on the banks of the Upper Amazon, made their journeys in a similar manner, swimming down the stream sociably in parties. On approaching the hot climate of the basin of the Amazons, the eyes of the travellers were cheered by the aspect of a beautiful, and occasionally luxuriant vegeta- tion. They had never before, not even in the Canaries, or on the hot sea coast of Cumana and Caraccas, seen finer oranQ!:e trees than those of the Huertas de Pucara. Laden with many thousands of golden fruits, they attained a height of sixty feet ; and, instead of rounded tops, had aspiring branches, almost like laurels or bay trees. The oranges of these trees were deliciously sweet, though the bitter, or Seville orange, was not wanting among them. Not far from thence, near the Ford of Cavico, the travellers were surprised by an unexpected sight. They saw a grove of small trees, only about eighteen or nineteen DOWN THE AMAZOXS. 251 feet liigli, which, instead of green, had apparently red or rose-coloured leaves. It was a new species of Bougainvilliiea, a genus first established by the elder Jussieu, from a Brazilian specimen in Commerson's herbarium. The trees were almost entirely without true leaves, as what were taken for leaves at a distance, proved to be thickly crowded bracteas. The appearance was altogether different, in the purity and freshness of the colour, from the autumnal tints which, in manv of our forest trees, adorn the woods of the temperate zone at the season of the fall of the leaf. They found at Chamaya rafts in readiness to convey them to Tomependa, which they desired to visit for the purpose of determining the difference of longitude be- tween Quito and the mouth of the Cliinchipe. They slept as usual under the open sky, on the sandy shore at the confluence of the Eio de Chamaya with the Amazons. The next day they embarked on the latter river, and descended it to the Cataracts and Karrows of Rentema, where rocks of coarse-grained sandstone rose like towers, and formed a rocky dam across the river. Humboldt measured a base line on the flat and sandy shore, and found that at Tomependa the afterwards mighty river of the Amazons was only a little above thirteen hundred and eighty-six feet across. In the celebrated River Narrow of Manseritche, between Santiago and San Boija, in a mountain ravine where at some points the overhanging rocks and the canopy of foliage forbade more than a feeble light to penetrate, and where all the drift wood, consisting of a countless number of trunks of trees, was broken and dashed in pieces, the breadth of the stream was less than one hundred and sixty feet. The 252 THE NARROW OF RKNTEMA. locks by whicli all these Narrows were formed underwent many changes in the course of centuries. Thus a part of the rocks forming the Narrow of Rentema, had been broken up by a high flood a year before Humboldt's journey ; and there had been preserved among the inha- bitants, by tradition, a lively recollection of the precipitous fall of the then towering masses of rock along the whole of the Narrow — an event which took place in the early part of the eighteenth century. This fall, and the con- sequent blocking-up of the channel, arrested the flow of the stream ; and the inhabitants of the village of Puaya, situated below the Narrow of Rentema, saw with 'alarm the wide river-bed entirely dry : but after a few hours the waters again forced their way. Earthquake move- ments were not supposed to have occasioned this remark- able occurrence. The powerful stream appeared to be incessantly engaged in improving its bed, and some idea of the force which it exerted may be formed from the circumstance, that notwithstanding its breadth it was sometimes so swollen as to rise more than twenty -six feet in the course of twenty or thirty hours. The travellers remained for seventeen days in the hot valley of the Upper Amazons. Here Humboldt cor- rected and revised the chart of the Amazon made by Condamine, by sketching an accurate chart of this un- known portion of the great river, partly from his own observations, and partly from careful inquiries. This done they ascended the easte^^n declivity of the Cordil- leras, and arrived at the argentiferous mountain of Gual- gayoc, the principal site of the silver mines of Chota. Gualgayoc was an isolated mass of siliceous rock, tra- versed by a multitude of veins of silver which often in- , THE WINDOWS OF Gl'ALGAYOC. 253 tersected, and terminating to the north and west by a deep and ahnost perpendicular precipice. The outline of the mountain was broken by numerous tower-like and pyramidal points. "Our mountain," said a rich possessor of mines to the travellers, " stands there like an enchanted castle." Gualgayoc reminded Humboldt of the serrated crest of the Monserrat Mountains in Cata- lonia, which he had visited before his departure for the ITew World. Besides being perforated to its summit by many hundred galleries driven in every direction, this mountain presented natural openings in the mass of the siliceous rock, through which the intensely dark blue sky of those elevated regions was visible to a spectator stand- ing at the foot of 'the mountain. These openings were called windows — the windows of Gualo-avoc. Similar "windows were pointed out to the travellers in the walls of the Volcano of Pichincha, and called by a similar name, — the windows of Pichincha. The strangeness of the view was still farther increased by the numerous small sheds and dwelling-houses, which nestled on the side of the fortress-like mountain wherever a flat surface permitted their erection. The miners carried down the ore in bas- kets by very steep and dangerous paths to the places where the process of amalgamation was performed. The travellers quartered themselves awhile near the mines in the small mountain town of Micuipampa, w^hicb was twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea, and where, though only 6^ 43' from the equator, water froze in the house nightly throughout a large portion of the year. In this desert devoid of vegetation lived three or four thousand persons, who were obliged to have all their means of subsistence brought from the warm valleys, as 254 MICUIPAMPA. they themselves onlj^ reared some kinds of kale and salad Here, as in every town in the high mountains of Peru^ ennui led the richer class of persons to pass their time in gambling. They reminded Humboldt of the soldier of Pizarro's troop, who, after the pillage of the temple at Cuzco, complained that he had lost in one night at play " a great piece of the sun." In a high plain not far from Micuipampa, there were found throughout an area of above a square mile, imme- diately under the turf, and as it were intertwined with the roots of the alpine grasses, enormous masses of rich red silver ore, and threads of pure silver. Another ele- vated plain near the Quebrada de Chiquera, was called the Field of Shells. The name referred to fossils which belonged to the cretaceous group, and which were found there in such abundance that they early attracted the attention of the natives. In this place there was obtained near the surface a mass of pure gold, spun round with threads of silver in the richest manner. The path by which the travellers journeyed from Micuipampa to Caxamarca was difficult even for mules. Their way lay over a succession of Paramos, where they were exposed almost incessantly to the fury of the wind, and to the sharp-edged hail so peculiar to the ridges of the Andes. The height of the route above the level of the sea was generally between nine and ten thousand feet. Reaching at length the last of these mountain wilder- nesses, they looked down with increased pleasure on the fertile valley of Caxamarca. It afforded a charming prospect : a small river wound through the elevated plain, which was of an oval form and about a hundred CAXAMARCA. 25c square miles in extent. The plain resembled that of Bo- gota : both were probably the bottoms of ancient lake? But at Caxamarca there was wanting the myth of the wonder-working Bochica, who opened for the waters a passage through the rock of Tequendama. Caxamarca was situated six hundred and forty feet higher than Bo- gota— almost as high as the city of Quito ; but being sheltered by surrounding mountains it enjoyed a far milder and more agreeable climate. The soil was ex- tremely fertile, and the plain full of cultivated fields and gardens traversed by avenues of willows, large flowered red, white, and yellow varieties of Datura, Mimosas, and beautiful Quinuar-trees. Wheat yielded on an average in the Pampa de Caxamarca fifteen to twentyfold, but the hopes of a plentiful harvest were sometimes disappointed by night frosts, occasioned by the great radiation of heat towards the unclouded sky through the dry and rarefied mountain air; these frosts were not felt in the roofed houses. In the northern part of the plain, small porphyritic domes broke through the widely extended sandstone strata, and probably once formed islands in the ancient lake before its waters had flowed off. On the summit of one of these domes, the Cerro de Santa Polonia, the travellers enjoyed a beautiful prospect. The ancient residence of Atahuallpa was surrounded on this side by fruit gardens and by irrigated fields of lucerne. Co- lumns of smoke were seen at a distance rising from the warm baths of Pultamarca, which were still called the Baths of the Inca. Atahuallpa spent a part of the year at these baths, where some slight remains of his palace Btill survived the devastating rage of the Conquistadores, 256 THE PALACE OF ATAHUALLPA. A large and deep basin in which, according to tradition^ one of the golden chairs in which the Inca was carried had been sunk, and has ever since been sought in vain appeared to Humboldt, from the regularity of its circulai shape, to have been artificially excavated in the rock above one of the fissures through which the springs issued. Of the fort and palace of Atahuallpa there were only very slight remains in the town, which was adorned with some fine churches. The destruction of the ancient buildings was hastened by the devouring thirst of gold which led men, before the close of the sixteenth century, in digging for supposed hidden treasures, to overturn walls and carelesslv to undermine or weaken the founda- tions of all the houses. The palace of the Inca was situated on a hill of porphyry which had originally been hollowed at the surface, so that it surrounded the princi- pal dwelling almost like a wall or rampart. A state prison and a municipal building had been erected on a part of the ruins. The most considerable ruins still visi- ble, but which were only from thirteen to sixteen feet high, were opposite the convent of San Francisco ; they consisted of fine-cut blocks of stone two or three feet long, and placed upon each other without cement, as in the fortress of Cannar. There was a shaft sunk in the porphyritic rock which once led into subterranean chambers, and a gallery said to extend to the other porphyritic dome before spoken of. Such arrangements showed an apprehension of the uncertainties of war, and the desire to secure the means of escape. The burying of treasures was an old and very generally prevailing Peruvian custom. Subter- THE PRISON OF ATAHUALLPA. 257 ranean chambers were often found below many of the private dwellings of Caxamarca. The travellers were shown steps cut in the rock, and also what was called the Inca's foot-bath. The washing of the monarch's feet was accompanied by some incon- venient usages of court etiquette. Minor buildings, designed according to tradition for the servants, were constructed partly ,like the others of cut stones, and pro- vided with sloped roofs, and partly with well formed bricks alternating with siliceous cement. In the latter class of constructions there were vaulted recesses, the antiquity of which Humboldt long doubted, but, as he afterwards believed, without sufficient grounds. In the principal building the room was still shown in which the unhappy Atahuallpa was kept a prisoner for nine months from jSTovember, 1532, and there was pointed out the wall on which the captive signified to what height he would fill the room with gold, if set free. This height is given variously, by Xerez in his " Conquista del Peru" which Barcia has preserved for us, by Hernando Pizarro in his letters, and by other writers of the period. The prince said that '• gold in bars, plates, and vessels, should be heaped up as high as he could reach with his hand." Xerez assigns to the room a length of twenty- three feet, and a breadth of eighteen feet. Garcilaso de la Yega, who quitted Peru in his twentieth year, in 1560, estimates the value of the treasure collected from the temples of the sun at Cuzco, Huaylas, Huamachuco, and Pachacamac, up to the fateful 29th of August, 1553, on which day the Inca was put to death, at three mil- lion, eio^ht hundred and thirtv-eiorht thousand Ducados de Oro, — not far from fifteen millions of dollars. 258 THE BLOOD-STAIXED STONE. In the cliapel of the state prison the stone was shown still marked bj the indelible stains of blood. It was a thin slab, thirteen feet long, placed in front of the altar, and had probably been taken from the porphyry or trachyte of the vicinity. Humboldt was not permitted to make a precise examination by striking off a part of the stone, but the three or four supposed blood spots appeared to him to be natural collections of horn- blende, or pyroxide in the rock. The Licentiate Fer- nando Montesinos, who visited Peru scarcely a hundred years after the taking of Caxamarca, even at that early period gave currency to the fable that Atahuallpa was beheaded in prison, and that stains of blood were still visible on the stone on which the execution had taken place. There is no reason however to doubt the fact, confirmed by many eye-witnesses, that the Inca, to avoid being burnt alive, consented to be baptized under the name of Juan de Atahuallpa, by his fanatic persecutor, the Dominican monk Vicente de Valverde. He was put to death by strangulation, publicly, and in the open air. Another tradition relates that a chapel was raised over the spot where Atahuallpa was garroted, and that his ' body rests beneath the stone ; in such case, the supposed spots of blood would remain entirely unaccounted for. In reality, however, the corpse was never placed beneath the stone in question. After a mass for the dead, and solemn funereal rites, at which the brothers Pizarro were present in mourning habits, it was conveyed first to the churchyard of the convent of San Francisco, and after- wards to Quito, Atahuallpa's birthplace. This last trans- fer was in compliance with the expressed wish of the dying Inca. His personal enemy, the astute Euminnavi, TUB SON OF ASTOEPILCO. 259 from, political motives, caused the body to be buried at Quito, with solemn obsequies. Humboldt found descendants of the monarch, the family of the Indian Cacique Astorpilco, dwelling in Caxamarca, among the melancholy ruins of ancient departed splendour, and living in great poverty and pri- vation ; but patient and uncomplaining. The son of Cacique Astorpilco, a pleasing and friendly youth of seventeen, who accompanied Humboldt over the ruins of the palace of his ancestor, while living in extreme poverty, had filled his imagination with images of buried splendour and golden treasures hidden beneath the masses of rubbish upon which they trod. He related to the traveller that one of his more immediate forefathers had bound his wife's eyes, and then conducted her through many labyrinths cut in the rock into the subter- ranean garden of the Incas. There she saw, skilfully and elaborately imitated, and formed of the purest gold, artificial trees, with leaves and fruit, and birds sitting on the branches; and there too was the much sought for golden travelling chair of Atahuallpa. The man com- manded his wife not to touch any of these enchanted riches, because the long foretold period of the restoration of the empire had not yet arrived, and that whoever should attempt before that time to appropriate any of them would die that verv nis^ht. These oroklen dreams and fancies of the youth were founded on recollections and traditions of former days. These artificial golden gardens were often described by actual eye-witnesses, Cieza de Leon Sarmiento, Garcilaso, and other early his- torians of the Conquest. They were found beneath the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, in Caxamarca, and in the 2G0 GOLDEN DKEAMS. pleasant valley of Yucay, a favourite residence of the monarch's family. Where the golden gardens were not below ground, living plants grew by the side of the arti- . ficial ones ; among the latter, tall plants and ears of maize were mentioned as particularly well executed. The morbid confidence with which the young Astor- pilco assured Humboldt that below their feet, a little to the right of the spot on which Humboldt stood at the moment, there was an artificial large-flowered Datura tree, formed of gold wire and gold plates, which spread its branches over the Inca's chair, impressed him pain- fully, for it seemed as if those illusive and baseless visions were cherished as consolations in present sufferings. He asked the lad : " Since you and your parents believe so firmly in the existence of this garden, are not you some- times tempted in your necessities to dig in search of trea- sures so close at hand ?" The boy's answer was so sim- ple, and expressed so fully the quiet resignation charac- teristic of the aborginal inhabitants of the country, that Humboldt noted it down in his journal. " Such a desire does not come to us ; father says it would be sin- ful. If we had the golden branches with all their golden fruits, our white neighbours would hate and injure us. We have a small field and good wheat." Quitting Caxamarca, the travellers descended into the valley of the Magdalena, the outlet to which lay over the mountain pass of Gruangamarca. A longing desire now seized them to behold the sea, which they had not seen for ei2;hteen mouths. In lookino; from the summits of the volcanos near Quito, no sea horizon could be clearly distinguished, by reason of the too great distance of the coast and the height of the station : it was like looking THEY PIXE FOK THE SEA. 261 down from an air-balloon into vacancy. Subsequently when between Loxa and Guancabamba they reached the Paramo de Guamini, from whence the mule-drivers had confidently assured them that they should see beyond the plain, beyond the low districts of Piura and Lamba- jeque, the sea itself, which they so much desired to behold, a thick mist covered both the plain and the dis- tant sea shore. They saw only variously shaped masses of rock alternately rise like islands above the waving sea of mist, and again disappear. They were now exposed to almost the same disappointment. As they toiled up the mighty mountain side, with their expecta- tions continually on the stretch, their guides, who were not very well acquainted with the road, repeatedly pro- mised them that at the end of the hour's march their hopes would be realized. The stratum of mist which enveloped them appeared occasionally to be about to dis- perse, but at such moments their field of view was again restricted by intervening heights. " The desire which we feel," says Humboldt, " to behold certain objects does not depend solely on their grandeur, their beauty, or their importance ; it is inter- woven in each individual with many accidental impres- sions of his youth, with early predilection for particular occupations, with an attachment to the remote and dis- tant, and with the love of an active and varied life. The previous improbability of the fulfilment of a wish gives besides to its realization a peculiar kind of charm. The traveller enjoys by anticipation the first sight of the con- stellation of the cross, and of the Magellanic clouds circling round the Southern Pole; of the snow of the Chimborazo, and the column of smoke ascending from 262 IX SIGHT OF the pacific. the volcano of Quito ; of the first grove of tree-ferns, and of the Pacific Ocean. • The davs on which such wishes are realized form epochs in life, and produce ineffaceable impressions ; exciting feelings of which the vividness seeks not justification by processes of reasoning." With the longing which Humboldt felt for the first view of the Pacific from the crests of the Andes, there mingled the interest with which he had listened as a boy to the narrative of the adventurous expedition of Vasco I^unez de Balboa, the fortunate man who, followed by Francisco Pizarro, first among Europeans beheld from the heights of Quarequa, on the Isthmus of Panama, the eastern T)art of the Pacific Ocean. When, after many undulations of the ground, on the summit of the steep mountain ridge, the travellers finally reached the highest point, the Alto de Guangamarca, the heavens which had been long veiled became suddenly clear: a sharp west wind dispersed the mist, and the deep blue of the sky in the thin mountain air appeared between narrow lines of the highest cirrhous clouds. The whole of the western declivity of the Cordillera by Cho- rillos and Cascas, covered with large blocks of quartz, and the plains of Chala and Molinos as far as the sea shore near Truxillo, lay beneath their eyes in astonishing apparent proximity. They now saw for the first time the Pacific Ocean itself; and they saw it clearly, forming along the line of the shore a large mass from which the light shone reflected, and rising in its immensity to the well-defined horizon. They reached Truxillo, from whence they proceeded southward along the sandy tracts that bordered the Pa- cific, till they came to Lima. Near Truxillo Humboldt THEY SET SAIL FOK MEXICn. 263 visited the ruins of tlie ancient city of Chimii, and de- scended into the tomb of a Peruvian prince, in which Garci Gutierez de Toledo, while digging a gallery, in 1576, discovered a mass of gold amounting in value to more than a million of dollars. They remained some time at Lima and Callao, Bonpland botanizing, and Humboldt studvino^ the influence of the climate, and making astronomical observations. They were fortu nate enough while at Lima to observe the transit of ^fer- cury over the sun's disk, which enabled Humboldt to determine the exact latitude of the city. Towards the end of December, 1802, or at the begin- ning of January, 1803, they departed for Mexico, sailing for Acapulco in the Spanish frigate, Atalanta. They touched at Guayaquil on their way, and remained there several days. Here they heard from their inaccessible old friend, Cotopaxi, although they were at least one hundred and fifty miles from him. After a long period of rest the volcano had suddenly burst into violent erup- tion, and was discharging its terrible artillery. They heard it day and night. After a few hasty preparations they started inland, fired with the determination to re- visit the volcano: but before they had gone far they were recalled by the news, that the frigate was obliged to set sail immediately. They were soon at sea again, standing away to the north and west for Acapulco. They landed in Mexico on the 23d of March, 1803. CHAPTER YII. MEXICO. The letters with which Don Mariano de Urquizo had furnished Humboldt before leaving Spain, introduced him at Acapulco, and throughout Mexico, as they had already done in South America, to the highest govern- ment officials. We accordingly find him three days after his arrival at the house of the contador, Don Bal- •■asar Alvarez Ordono, taking observations to ascertain ',he latitude and longitude of the town. Except in a sci- entific point of view Acapulco had little to attract him. It stood on the southern shore of Mexico, on the recess of a bay, near a chain of granitic mountains. On a hill commanding the town and the entrance to the harbour, stood the castle or fortress of San Diego. The harbour was shut in by mountains. It had two entrances formed by the island of Roquetta; one a quarter of a mile wide, the other a mile and a half. This was the extent of its picturesqueness. From Acapulco, in the beginning of April, the travel- lers proceeded to the capital, passing the plains of Chil- pantzingo, rich in wheat fields, and the little town of Tasco, famous for its beautiful church. They stopped at Caernavaca on the southern declivity of the Cordillera of Guchilaque, to rectify the longitude, which was incor- THE MOX'JMENT OF XOCIlICxNXCO. 265 rect on the common maps. Not far from Cuernavaca was the monument of Xochicalco, an isolated pile three hundred and fifty feet high. It was a mass of rocks to which the hands of man had given a regular conic form. It was divided into five stories, or terraces, each of which was at least sixty feet high, but narrowed towards the top. The hill was surrounded with a deep and broad ditch ; the whole encampment was nearly twelve thou- sand feet in circumference. The summit, which was an oblong platform, two hundred and thirty feet from north to south, and three hundred feet fronr"east to west, was encircled by a wall of hewn stone six or eight feet high. Within this wall stood the remains of a pyramidal monu- ment. It was originally five stories high, but only the first story remained ; for the owners of a neighbouring sugar-house had demolished the rest, and used the stones to build their ovens. There was no vestige of a stair- case leading to the top of the pyramid, where, it was said, there was once a stone seat, ornamented with hiero- glyphics. The stones of the pyramid were beautifully cut and polished, and decorated with reliefs. As each of these reliefs occupied several stones, and as they were interrupted by the joints, they must have been sculp- tured after the edifice was finished. Among tl^e hiero- glyphical ornaments were heads of crocodiles spouting water, and figures of men sitting cross-legged, after the manner of some Asiatic nations. As the building was on a plain four thousand feet above the sea, and croco- diles haunted only the rivers near the coast, it was strange that the architect should have sculptured them, instead of the plants and animals that belong to moun- tainous countries. 12 26G. THE CITY OF MEXICO. This artificial mountain, or pyramid, was probably a fortified temple, which originally contained an arsenal, and served in war as a fort. The Indians of the neigh- bourhood showed an ancient map, drawn before the ai rival of the Spaniards, in which, where this monument should have been, there was a rude sketch of two war- riors fighting with clubs. And about thirty years before the arrival of Humboldt and Bonpland, an isolated stone was found near by, with a relief of an eagle tearing a captive. It was in the capital, however, which they soon reached, that the travellers found the greatest number of ruins. In fact the city of Mexico was based on ruins — the wrecks of the ancient capital, Tenochtitlan. Under the Grreat Square were fragments of the spacious temple of Mexitli. Behind the Cathedral was the palace of the king of Axajacatl, where Montezuma lodged the Span- iards on their arrival ; and opposite the Viceroy's palace stood formerly the palace of Montezuma himself These things had a great influence over the imaginative travel- lers; but their first object, after finding a residence, and delivering their letters, was to inquire for a new set of scientific instruments, in order to pursue their studies. They were not content to run through the country like ordinary travellers, chronicling their journey by a list of the inns at which they stopped : nor yet like artists or poets, alive to the charm of beautiful scenery and strange traditions. They were poets, artists, travellers, it is true : but they were 'something more. They were men of science, philosophers, savanSj whose business and pleasure it was, to understand what they saw. They would read, or at least would try to, every page in the THE ACADE:^1Y of rAl^-llNG AND SCULPTUEE. 201 great World-Book ; not skipping an 3^, because tliey were common, or. tedious, but reading all. They found in Mexico a School of Mines, like tlie Mineralogical Academy of Freyberg, (the director, by the way, was a pupil of Humboldt's old teacher, Wer- ner) a Botanic Garden, and an Academ}^ of Painting and Sculpture. The last bore the title of Academia de los Nobles Aries de Mexico. It owed its existence to the patriotism of several private citizens, and the protection of the minister, Galvez. The s-overnment had assis^ned it a spacious building, which was enriched by a finer and more complete collection of casts, than was at that time to be found in any part of Germany. Kumboldt was surprised and delighted when he saw the Apollo Belvi- dere and the Laocoon. There were no fees for entrance at the Academy : it was free to all, even mulattoes and Indians. The rooms were lighted every evening with Argand lamps, and filled with hundreds of young peo- ple, who drew from reliefs, or living models, or copied drawings of furniture, chandeliers, or ornaments in bronze. The director of the class of sculpture, Don Manuel Tolsa, had just completed a bronze equestrian statue of Charles lY., the then reigning king of Spain. Humboldt was present when it was cast, and saw it moved to the Great Square — a five days' task. As the buildings around the Square were not lofty it looked admirably on its pedestal, standing grandly out from its blue background of sky. This royal statue, the Viceroy^ palace, and above all the new Cathedral with its massive towers, made the Great Square an imposing place. Humboldt did it full justice, we have no doubt, for his tastes like his powers were 2G8 THE GREAT AZTEC IDOL. universal, bat we suspect it interested him more foi what it had been, than what it was — more for what was under it, than what was above and around it. Below it, as we have already remarked, were the remains of the great temple of Mexitli, fragments of which were fre quently brought to light. A few years before his arrival, (in August 1790) some workmen who were emplo3^ed there in making excavations, in order to build a subter- raneous aqueduct, discovered a great Aztec Idol of basaltic porphyry. It was about twenty feet high, and six or seven feet broad, and was sculptured on every side. At jQrst it appeared an almost shapeless mass, but on being examined closely, upon the upper part was found the united heads of two monsters. The eyes were large, and in each mouth were four hideous teeth. The arms and feet were hidden under a drapery surrounded by enormous serpents; the ancient Mexicans called this drapery the Garment of Serpents. All these accessories, especially the fringes, which were in the form of feathers, were sculptured with the greatest care. This double idol probably represented Huitzilpochtle, the Aztec God of War, and his wife, Teoyamiqui, who conducted the souls of the warriors who died in the defence of the gods, to the House of the Sun, where she transformed them into humminof-birds. Her bosom was surrounded with deaths'- heads and mutilated hands, symbols of the sacrifices which were celebrated in honour of this horrible pair. The hands alternated with the figures of vases, in which in- cense was burnt. As the idol was sculptured on every side it was doubtless supported in the air on two columns, between which the priests dragged their victims to the altar of the temple beyond. Upon the under side of the IIIE AZriEC TEIESTESS. 2Cr) idol was a representation of Miclilanteulitli, the lord of ttie place of the dead. It was a fitting roof to that ter- rible portal of death. The viceroy, Count Revillagigedo, transported it to the University of Mexico ; but the professors of the University were unwilling to expose it to the sight of the Mexican youth, so they buried it anew, in one of the passages of the college. At Humboldt's solicitation the Bishop of Monteray, who was passing through the capital on his way to his diocese, persuaded the rector to unbury it, which gave the traveller an opportunity of sketch- ing it. Humboldt was shown another idol at the house of Senor Dupe, one of his Mexican friends. It represented a sitting, or rather squatting woman. She had no hands, but where they should have been were the toes of her feet. This statue was remarkable for its head-dress, which resembled the veils sculptured on the heads of Isis and the Sphynxes. The forehead was ornamented with a string of pearls on the edge of a narrow fillet : the neck was covered with a three-cornered handkerchief, to which hung twenty-two Little balls or tassels. These tassels and the head-dress generally, reminded Humboldt of the apples and pomegranates on the robes of the Jewish Hiorh Priests. This stranofe fio^ure was called the statue of an Aztec priestess, but Humboldt thought it a representation of some of the Mexican divinities. It was probably one of the old household gods. Besides this statue he saw the great Monument of the Calendar, and the Stone of Sacrifice, adorned in relief with the triumphs of some old Aztec king, both of which were dug up in the Great Square. He also visited the 270 VIEW FKOM CIIAPOLTEPEC. archives of the Viccroyaltv, and pored over its hoard of Aztec manuscrij^ts. These hieroglyphs were written either on agave pajDcr, or on stag-skins. They were fre- quently from sixty -live to seventy feet in length, and each page contained from two to three feet of surface They were folded here and there in the form of a rhomb, and thin wooden boards fastened to the extremities formed their binding, and gave them a resemblance to our volumes in quarto. No nation of the old continent ever made such an extensive use of hieroglyphical writ- ing as the Aztecs, and in none of them were real books bound in this way. Humboldt procured several frag- ments of similar manuscripts during his stay in Mexico. But mysterious manuscripts which he could not read, and uncouth idols with which he could have no sym- pathy, were soon laid aside for the great Book of Nature, and the thousands of men around him. One of his favour- ite haunts was the famous hill of Chapoltepec. From the centre of this solitude his eye swept over a vast plain of cultivated fields which extended to the feet of the dis- tant mountains covered with perpetual snow. Below him were old cypress trunks fifty feet in circumference, and off to the east the city. It appeared as if washed by the waters of the lake of Tezcuco, whose basin, sur- rounded with villages and hamlets, brought to his mind the most beautiful lakes of the mountains of Switzerland. Large avenues of elms and poplars led to it in every direction ; and two aqueducts, constructed over arches of great elevation, crossed the plain like walls. The magnificent convent of Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared joined to the mountains of Tepe3'acac, among ravines, which sheltered date and yucca trees. Towards the THE ilAEKETS OF MEXICO. 271 south was the tract between San Angel, Tacabaya. and San Augustin de las Cuevas, an immense garden of orange, peach, apple, and cherry trees. This beautifal cultivation formed a singular contrast with the wild ap- pearance of the naked mountains which enclosed the valley, amono^ which were the famous volcanoes of La Puebla, Popocatepetl, and Iztaccihuatl. And around and overhead, steeped in sunshine, was the deep blue tropic sky. Sometimes in the morning Humboldt went to the market-place and watched the Indian hucksters, en- trenched in verdure. No matter what they sold, fruit, roots, or pulque, their shops were ornamented with flowers. A hedge, a yard high, made of fresh herbs and delicate leaves, surrounded like a semicircular wall the fruits offered to public sale. The bottom of the market, which was smooth and green, was divided by garlands of flowers, which ran parallel to one another. Small nosegays placed symmetrically between the festoons, gave this enclosure the appearance of a carpet strewn with flowers. Humboldt was struck with the way in which the natives displayed their fruit in small cages of light wood. They filled the bottom of these cages with raisins and pears, and ornamented the top with the most odorous flowers. Without doubt this art of entwining fruits and flowers had its origin in that happy period when, long before the introduction of inhuman rites, the first inhabitants of Anahuac offered up to the great spirit Teotl the first fruits of their harvest. But the prettiest sight was to see at sunrise the In- dians with their boats loaded with fruits and flowers, descending the canals of Iztacalco and Chalco. The greater part of their fruits and roots were cultivated on 272 TIIK FLOATIN