Presented to the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY

by the

ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY

1980

BOHN'S SCIENTIFIC LIBRARY.

HUMBOLDTS PERSONAL NARRATIVE

VOL. II.

fct

GEORGE BELL AND SONS

LONDON ; PORTUGAL ST., LINCOLN'S INN.
CAMBRIDGE : DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO.
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO.
BOMBAY : A. H. WHEELER AND CO.

X

PER:

ERSQN&fi NAR

OF TRAVELS TO THE
EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS OF
AMERICA (M^^W

DURING THE YEARS 1799-1804
BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT AND AIME BONPLAND

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

AND EDITED BY

THOMASINA ROSS

IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II.

8&*

LONDON

GEORGE BELL & SONS
1907

LIBRARY

F

i a

m Stereotype plates. J

CONTENTS

OF

VOLUME THE SECOND.

CHAPTER XVI.

Pag«

Lake of Tacarigua. — Hot Springs of Mariara.— Town of Nueva
Valencia del Key — Descent towards the Coasts of Porto
Cabello ....... 1

CHAPTER XVII.

Mountains which separate the Valleys of Aragua from the Llanos
of Caracas. — Villa de Cura.— Parapara. — Llanos or Steppes.
— Calabozo . . • . . . .68

CHAPTER XVIII.

San Fernando de Apure. — Intertwinings and Bifurcations of the

Rivers Apure and Arauca. — Navigation on the Rio Apure . 137

CHAPTER XIX.

Junction of the Apure and the Orinoco. — Mountains of Enca-
ramada. — Uruana. — Baraguan. — Carichana. — Mouth of the
Meta. — Island of Panumana . . . . .174

CHAPTER XX.

The Mouth of the Rio Anaveni. — Peak of Uniana. — Mission of
Atures. — Cataract, or Raudal of Mapara. — Islets of Suro-
pamana and Uirapuri ..... 234

CHAPTER XXI.

of Garcita.— Maypures. — Cataracts of Quituna. — Mouth of
the Vichada and the Zama. — Rock of Aricagua. — SiquiU . 281

CONTESTS.
CHAPTER XXII.

San Fernando de Atabapo. — San Balthasar. — The rivers Terai and
Tuamini. — Javita. — Portage from the Tuamini to the Rio
Negro .... . 329

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Rio Negro. — Boundaries of Brazil.— The Cassiquiare.— Bifur-
cation of the Orinoco . . . . .372

CHAPTER XXIV.

The Upper Orinoco, from the Esmeralda to the confluence of the
Guaviare. — Second passage across the Cataracts of Atures and
Maypures.— 'The Lower Orinoco, between the mouth of tte
Rio Apure, and Angostura the capital of Spanish Guiana 432

PERSONAL NARRATIVE

OF A

JOURNEY

TO THE

EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS

OP

THE NEW CONTINENT.

CHAPTER XVI.

Lake of Tacarigua. — Hot Springs of Mariara. — Town of Nueva Valencia
del Key. — Descent towards the Coasts of Porto Cabello.

THE valleys of Aragua form a narrow basin between gra-
nitic and calcareous mountains of unequal height. On the
north, they are separated by the Sierra Mariara from the
sea-coast ; and towards the south, the chain of Guacimo
and Tusma serves them as a rampart against the heated
air of the steppes. Groups of hills, high enough to deter-
mine the course ol the waters, close this basin on the east
and west like transverse dykes. We find these hUs between
the Tuy and La Victoria, as well as on the road from
Valencia to Nirgua, and at the mountains of Torito.* From

* The lofty mountains of Los Teques, where the Tuy takes its source,
may be looked upon as the eastern boundary of the valleys of Aragua.
The level of the ground continues, in fact, to rise from La Victoria to the
Hacienda de Tuy ; but the river Tuy, turning southward in the direction
of the sierras of Guniraima and Tiara has found an issue on the east «,

VOL. II. B

LAKE OF VALENCIA. •

this extraordinary configuration of the land, the little ri
of the valleys of Aragua form a peculiar system, and direct
their course towards a basin closed on all sides. These
rivers do not bear their waters to the ocean ; they are
collected in a lake ; and subject to the peculiar influence
of evaporation, they lose themselves, if we may use the
expression, in the atmosphere. On the existence of rivers
and lakes, the fertility of the soil and the produce of culti-
vation in these valleys depend. The aspect of the spot,
and the experience of half a century, have proved that the
level of the waters is not invariable ; the waste by evapora-
tion, and the increase from the waters running into the
lake, do not uninterruptedly balance each other. The labe
being elevated one thousand feet above the neighbouring
steppes of Calabozo, and one thousand three hundred and
thirty-two feet above the level of the ocean, it has been
suspected that there are subterranean communications and
nitrations. The appearance of new islands, and the gradual
retreat of the waters, have led to the belief that the lake
may perhaps, in time, become entirely dry. An assemblage
of physical circumstances so remarkable was well fitted to
fix my attention on those valleys where the wild beauty of
nature is embellished by agricultural industry, and the arts
of rising civilization.

The lake of Valencia, called Tacarigua by the Indians,
exceeds in magnitude the lake of Neufchatel in Switzerland ;
but its general form has more resemblance to the lake of
Geneva, which is nearly at the same height above the level
of the sea. As the slope of the ground in the- valleys of
Aragua tends towards the south and the west, that* part
of the basin still covered with water is the nearest to the
southern chain of the mountains of Guigue, of Yusma,
and of Guacimo, which stretch towards the high savannahs
of Ocurnare. The opposite banks of the lake of Valencia
display a singular contrast ; those on the south are desert,
and almost uninhabited, and a screen of high momitains

and it is more natural to consider as the limits of the basin of Aragua a
line drawn through the sources of the streams flowing into the lake of
Valencia. The charts and sections I have traced of the road from Cara-
cas to Nueva Valencia, and from Porto Cabello to Villa de Cura. exhibit
the whole of these geological relations.

SCENERY OF THE LAKE.

givea th< m a gloomy and monotonous aspect. The northern
shore on the contrary, is cheerful, pastoral, and decked with
the rich cultivation of the sugar-cane, coffee-tree, and
cotton. Paths bordered with cestrums, azedaracs, and other
shrubs always in flower, cross the plain, and join the scat-
tered farms. Every house is surrounded by clumps of trees.
The ceiba with its large yellow flowers* gives a peculiar
character to the landscape, mingling its branches with those
of the purple erythrina. This mixture of vind vegetable
colours contrasts finely with the uniform tint of an un-
clouded sky. In the season of drought, where the burning
soil is covered with an undulating vapour, artificial irriga-
tions preserve verdure and promote fertility. Here and
there the granite rock pierces through the cultivated ground.
Enormous stony masses rise abruptly in the midst of the
valley. Bare and forked, they nourish a few succulent
plants, which prepare mould for future ages. Often on the
summit of these lonely hills may be seen a fig-tree or a
clusia with fleshy leaves, which has fixed its roots in the
rock, and towers over the landscape. With their dead and
withered branches, these trees look like signals erected on
a steep cliff. The form of these mounts unfolds the secret
of their ancient origin ; for when the whole of this valley
was filled with water, and the waves beat at the foot of the
peaks of Mariara (the Devil's Nook)f and the chain of the
coast, these rocky hills were shoals or islets.

These features of a rich landscape, these contrasts be-
tween the two banks of the lake of Valencia, often reminded
me of the Pays de Vaud, where the soil, everywhere cul-
tivated, and everywhere fertile, offers the husbandman, the
shepherd, and the vine-dresser, the secure fruit of their
labours, while, on the opposite side, Chablais presents only
a mountainous and hall-desert country. In these distant
climes surrounded by exotic productions, I lored to recall
to mind the enchanting descriptions with which the aspect
of the Leman lake and the rocks of La Meillerie inspired
a great writer. Now, while in the centre of civilized Europe,
I endeavour in my turn to paint the scenes of the New
World, I do not imagine I present the reader with clearer

* Camet tollendas (Bombax hibiscifolius).
t £1 Rincon del Diablo.

B 2

4 i A.FCIETTT EXTENT.

images, or more precise ideas, by comparing our landscapes
with those of the equinoctial regions. It cannot be too
often repeated that nature, in every zone, whether wild
or cultivated, smiling or majestic, lias an individual cha-
racter. The impressions which she excites are infinitely
varied, like the emotions produced by works of genius,
according to the age in which they were conceived, and the
diversity of language from which they in part derive their
charm. We must limit our comparisons merely to dimen-
sions and external form. We may institute a parallel
between the colossal summit of Mont Blanc and the
Himalaya Mountains; the cascades of the Pyrenees and
those of the Cordilleras : but these comparisons, useful with
respect to science, fail to convey an idea of the character-
istics of nature in the temperate and torrid zones. On the
banks of a lake, in a vast forest, at the foot of summits
covered with eternal snow, it is not the mere magnitude
of the objects which excites our admiration. That which
speaks to the wul, which causes such profound and varied
emotions, escapes our measurements as it does the forms
of language. Those who feel powerfully the charms of
nature cannot venture on comparing one with another,
scenes totally different in character.

But it is not alone the picturesque beauties of the lake
of Valencia that have given celebrity to its banks. This
basin presents several other phenomena, and suggests ques-
tions, the solution of which is interesting alike to physical
science and to the well-being of the inhabitants. "What are
the causes of the diminution of the waters of the lake ?
Is this diminution more rapid now than in former ages ?
Can we presume that an equilibrium between the waters
flowing in and the waters lost will be shortly re-established,
or may we apprehend that the lake will entirely disappear ?

According to astronomical observations made at La Vic-
toria, Hacienda de Cura, Nueva Valencia, and Gruigue, the
length of the lake in its present state from Cagua to
Gruayos, is ten leagues, or twenty-eight thousand eight
hundred toises. Its breadth is very unequal. If we judge
fr.om the latitudes of the mouth of the Rio Cura and the
village of Gruigue, it nowhere surpasses 2*3 leagues, or six
thousand five hundred toises ; most commonly it is but four

DIMINUTION OF THE LAKE. &

cr five miles. The dimensions, as deduced from my observa-
tions are much less than those hitherto adopted by the
natives. It might be thought that, to form a precise idea
of the progressive diminution of the waters, it would be
sufficient to compare the present dimensions of the lake
with those attributed to it by ancient chroniclers; by
Oviedo for instance, in his History of the Province of Vene-
zuela, published about the year 1723. This writer in his
emphatic style, assigns to "this inland sea, this monstruoso
cuerpo de la lagunade Valencia"* fourteen leagues in length
and six in breadth. He affirms that at a small distance
from the shore the lead finds no bottom ; and that large
floating islands cover the surface of the waters, which are
constantly agitated by the winds. No importance can be
attached to estimates which, without being founded on any
measurement, are expressed in leagues (leguas) reckoned in
the colonies at three thousand, five thousand, and six thou-
sand six hundred and fifty varas.-\ Oviedo, who must so
often have passed over the valleys of Aragua, asserts that
the town of Nueva Valencia del Eey was built in 1555,
at the distance of half a league from the lake ; and that
the proportion between the length of the lake and its
breadth, is as seven to three. At present, the town of
Valencia is separated from the lake by level ground of more
than two thousand seven hundred toises (which Oviedo
would no doubt have estimated as a space of a league and
a half) ; and the length of the basin of the lake is to its
breadth as 10 to 2-3, or as 7 to 1/6. The appearance of the

* " Enormous body of the lake of Valencia."

f Seamen being the first, and for a long time the only, persons who
introduced into the Spanish colonies any precise ideas on the astrono-
mical position and distances of places, the legua nautica of 6650 varas,
or of 2854 toises (20 in a degree), was originally used in Mexico and
throughout South America ; but this legua nautica has been gradually
reduced to one-half or one-third, on account of the slowness of tra-
velling across steep mountains, or dry and burning plains. The common
people measure only time directly ; and then, by arbitrary hypotheses,
infer from the time the space of ground travelled over. In the course of
my geographical researches, I have had frequent opportunities of exa-
mining the real value of these leagues, by comparing the itinerary dis-
tances between points lying under the same meridian with the difference
of latitudes.

6 CHANGES OF LETEL.

soil between Valencia and G-uigue, the little hills rising
abruptly in the plain east of the Cano de Cambury, some of
which (el Islote and la Isla de la Negra or Caratapona)
have even preserved the name of islands, sufficiently prove
that the waters have retired considerably since the time of
Oviedo. "With respect to the change in the general form
of the lake, it appears to me improbable that in the seven-
teenth century its breadth was nearly the half of its length.
The situation of the granite mountains of Mariara and of
Guigue, the slope of the ground which rises more rapidly
towards the north and south than towards the east and
west, are alike repugnant to this supposition.

In treating the long-discussed question of the diminution
of the waters, I conceive we must distinguish between the
different periods at which the sinking of their level has
taken place. Wherever we examine the valleys of rivers, or
the basins of lakes, we see the ancient shore at great dis-
tances. No doubt seems now to be entertained, that our
rivers and lakes have undergone immense diminutions ; but
many geological facts remind us also, that these great
changes in the distribution of the waters have preceded all
historical times; and that for many thousand years most
lakes have attained a permanent equilibrium between the
produce of the water flowing in, and that of evaporation and
nitration. "Whenever we find this equilibrium broken, it
will be well rather to examine whether the rupture be
not owing to causes merely local, and of very recent date,
than to admit an uninterrupted diminution of the water.
This reasoning is conformable to the more circumspect
method of modern science. At a time when the physical
history of the world, traced by the genius of some eloquent
writers, borrowed all its charms from the fictions of imagi-
nation, the phenomenon of which we are treating would
have been adduced as a new proof of the contrast these
writers sought to establish between the two continents.
To demonstrate that America rose later than Asia and
Europe from the bosom of the waters, the lake of Tacarigua
would have been described as one of those interior basins
which have not yet become dry by the effects of slow and
gradual evaporation. I have no doubt that, in very remote
times, the whole valley, from the foot of the mountains of

RETREAT OF THTT WATEE. 7

Cocuyza to those of Torito and Nirgua, and from La Sierra
de Mariara to the chain of Guigue, of Guacimo, and La
Palma, was filled with water. Everywhere the form of the
promontories, and their steep declivities, seem to indicate
the shore of an alpine lake, similar to those of Stvria and
Tyrol. The same little helicites, the same valvataB, which now
live in the lake of Valencia, are found in layers of three or
four feet thick as far inland as Turmero and La Concesion
near La Victoria. These facts undoubtedly iirove a retreat
of the waters ; but nothing indicates that this retreat has
continued from a very remote period to our days. The
valleys of Aragua are among the portions of Venezuela most
anciently peopled; and yet there is no mention in Oviedo,
or any other old chronicler, of a sensible diminution of the
lake. Must we suppose, that this phenomenon escaped
their observation, at a time when the Indians far exceeded
the white population, and when the banks of the lake were
*ess inhabited? Within half a century, and particularly
within these thirty years, the natural desiccation of this
great basin has excited general attention. We find vast
tracts of land which were formerly inundated, now dry, and
already cultivated with plantains, sugar-canes, or cotton.
Wherever a hut is erected on the bank of the lake, we see
the shore receding from year to year. We discover islands,
which, in consequence of the retreat of the waters, are just
beginning to be joined to the continent, as for instance the
rocky island of Culebra, in the direction of Guigue ; other
islands already form promontories, as the Morro, between
Guigue and Nueva Valencia, and La Cabrera, south-east of
Mariara ; others again are now rising in the islands them-
selves like scattered hills. Among these last, so easily
recognized at a distance, some are only a quarter of a mile,
others a league from the present shore. I may cite as the
most remarkable three granite islands, thirty or forty toises
high, on the road from the Hacienda de Cura to Aguas
Calientes; and at the western extremity of the lake, the
Serrito de Don Pedro, Islote, and Caratapona. On visiting
two islands* entirely surrounded by water, we found in the

* Isla de Cura and Cabo Blanco. The promontory of Cabrera has
been connected with the shore ever since the year 1750 or 1760 by a little
f alley, which bears the name of PorUclmelo.

8

SUPPOSED OUTLET.

midst of brushwood, on small flats (four, six, and even eighl
toises height above the surface of the lake,) fine sand mixed
with helicites, anciently deposited by the waters. In each of
these islands may be perceived the most certain traces of the
gradual sinking of the waters. But still farther (and this
accident is regarded by the inhabitants as a marvellous phe-
nomenon) in 1796 three new islands appeared to the east
of the island Caiguira, in the same direction as the islands
Burro, Otama, and Zorro, These new islands, called by the
people Los nuevos Penones, or Los Aparecidos^ form a kind
of banks with surfaces quite flat. They rose, in 1800, more
than a foot above the mean level of the water.

It has already been observed that the lake of Valencia,,
like the lakes of the valley of Mexico, forms the centre
of a little system of rivers, none of which have any com-
munication with the ocean. These rivers, most of which
deserve only the name of torrents, or brooks,f are twelve
or fourteen in number. The inhabitants, little acquainted
with the effects of evaporation, have long imagined that
the lake has a subterranean outlet, by which a quantity of
water runs out equal to that which flows in by the rivers.
Some suppose tha^ this outlet communicates with grottos,,
supposed to be at great depth; others believe that the
water flows through an oblique channel into the basin
of the ocean. These bold hypotheses on the communi-
cation between two neighbouring basins have presented
themselves in every zone to the imagination of the igno-
rant, as well as to that of the learned; for the latter,
without confessing it, sometimes repeat popular opinions
in scientific language. "We hear of subterranean gulfs and
outlets in the New World, as on the shores of the Caspian
sea, though the lake of Tacarigua is two hundred and
twenty-two toises higher, and the Caspian sea fifty-four
toises lower, than the sea; and though it is well known,
that fluids find the same level, when they communicate by a
lateral channel.

* Los Nuevos Penones (the New Rocks). Los Apareci dos (the Un-
expectedly-appeared^.

t The following are their names : Rios de Aragua, Turmero, Maracay,
Tapatapa, Aguas Calientes, Mariara, Cura, Guacara, Guataparo, Valencia,
Caflo Gvande de Cambury, &c.

DIMINUTION or FOHESTS.

The changes which the destruction of forests, the clearing
of plains, and the cultivation of indigo, have produced within
half a century in the quantity of water flowing in on the
one hand, and on the other the evaporation of the soil, and
the dryness of the atmosphere, present causes sufficiently
powerful to explain the progressive diminution of the lake of
Valencia. I cannot concur in the opinion of M. Depons *
(who visited these countries since I was there) " that to
set the mind at rest, and for the honour of science," a sub-
terranean issue must be admitted. By felling the trees
which cover the tops and the sides of mountains, men in
every climate prepare at once two calamities for future gene-
rations ; want of fuel and scarcity of water. Trees, by the
nature of their perspiration, and the radiation from their
leaves in a sky without clouds, surround themselves with an
atmosphere constantly cold and misty. They affect the
copiousness of springs, not, as was long believed, by a pecu-
liar attraction for the vapours diffused through the air, but
because, by sheltering the soil from the direct action of the
sun, they diminish the evaporation of water produced by
rain. When forests are destroyed, as they are everywhere
in America by the European planters, with imprudent pre-
cipitancy, the springs are entirely dried up, or become less
abundant. The beds of the rivers, remaining dry during
a part of the year, are converted into torrents whenever
great rains fall on the heights. As the sward and moss
disappear with the brushwood from the sides of the moun-
tains, the waters falling in ram are no longer impeded in
their course ; and instead of slowly augmenting the level of
the rivers by progressive nitrations, they furrow, during
heavy snowers, the sides of the hills, bearing down the
loosened soil, and forming sudden and destructive inunda-
tions. Hence it results, that the clearing of forests, the
want of permanent springs, and the existence of torrents,
are three phenomena closely connected together. Countries

* In his 'Voyage & la Terre Ferme,' M. Depons says, "The small
extent of the surface of the lake renders 'mpossible the supposition that
evaporation alone, however considerable within the tropics, could remove
M much water as the rivers furnish." In the sequel, the author himself
seems to abandon what he terms " this occult case, the hypothesis of an
aperture." > ttf

10 *ATE OF EVAPORATION.

situated in opposite hemispheres, as, for example, Lombard/
bordered by the Alps, and Lower Peru inclosed between the
Pacific and the Cordillera of the Andes, afford striking proofs
of the justness of this assertion.

Till the middle of the last century, the mountains round
the valleys of Aragua were covered with forests. Great
trees of the families of mimosa, ceiba, and the fig-tree,
shaded and spread coolness along the banks of the lake.
The plain, then thinly inhabited, was filled with brushwood,
interspersed with trunks of scattered trees and parasite
plants, enveloped with a thick sward, less capable of emitting
radiant caloric than the soil that is cultivated and conse-
quently not sheltered from the rays of the sun. With the
destruction of the trees-1., and the increase of the cultivation
of sugar, indigo, and cotton, the springs, and all the natural
supplies of the lake of Valencia, have diminished from year
to year. It is difficult to form a just idea of the enormous
quantity of evaporation which takes place under the torrid
zone, in a valley surrounded with steep declivities, where
a regular breeze and descending currents of air are felt
towards evening, and the bottom of which is flat, and looks
as if levelled by the waters. It has been remarked, that
the heat which prevails throughout the year at Cura,
Guacara, Nueva Valencia, and on the borders of the lake,
is the same as that felt at midsummer in Naples and
Sicily. The mean annual temperature of the valleys of
Aragua is nearly 25-5°; my hygrometrical observations of
the month of February, taking the mean of day and night,
gave 71'4° of the hair hygrometer. As the words great
drought and great humidity have no determinate significa-
tion, and air that would be called very dry in the lower
regions of the tropics would be regarded as humid in
Europe, we can judge of these relations between climates
only by comparing spots situated in the same zone. Now
at Cumana, where it sometimes does not rain during a
whole year, and where I had the means of collecting a
great number of hygrometric observations made at different
hours of the day and night, the mean humidity of the air
is 86°; corresponding to the mean temperature of 27'7°.
Taking into account the influence of the rainy months, that
is to say, estimating the difference observed in other part*

MATE OF EVA.POHATIOir, ]\

of South America between the mean humidity of tin dry
months and that of the whole year ; an annual mean hami-
dity is obtained, for the valleys of Aragua, at farthest rjf 74?,
the temperature being 25'5°. In this air, so hot, and at the
same time so little humid, the quantity of water evaporated
is enormous. The theory of Dalton estimates, under the
conditions just stated, for the thickness of the sheet of
water evaporated in an hour's time, 0*36 mill., or 3'8 lines
in twenty-four hours. Assuming for the temperate zone,
for instance at Paris, the mean temperature to be 10*6°, and
the mean humidity 82°, we find, according to the same
formula, 0*10 mill, an hour, and 1 line for twenty-four
hours. If we prefer substituting for the uncertainty of
these theoretical deductions the direct results of observa-
tion, we may recollect that in Paris, and at Montmorency,
the mean annual evaporation was found by Sedileau and
Cotte, to be from 32 in. 1 line to 38 in. 4 lines. Two able
engineers in the south of France, Messrs. Clausade and
Pin, found, that in subtracting the effects of filtrations, the
waters of the canal of Languedoc, and the basin of Saint
Ferreol lose every year from 0'758 met. to 0*812 met., OP
from 336 to 360 lines. M. de Prony found nearly similar
results in the Pontine marshes. The whole of these experi-
ments, made in the latitudes of 41° and 49°, and at 10'5°
and 16° of mean temperature, indicate a mean evaporation
of one line, or one and three-tenths a day. In the
torrid zone, in the West India Islands for instance, the
effect of evaporation is three times as much, according to
Le Gaux, and double according to Cassan. At Cumana, in
a place where the atmosphere is far more loaded with humi-
dity than in the valley of Aragua, I have often seen evapo-
rate during twelve hours, in the sun, 8*8 mill., in the shade
3*4 mill.; and 1 believe, that the annual produce of evapo-
ration in the rivers near Cumana is not less than one
hundred and thirty inches. Experiments of this kind are
extremely delicate, but what I nave stated will suffice to
demonstrate how great must be the quantity of vapour that
rises from the lake of Valencia, and from the surrounding
country, the waters of which flow into the lake. I shall
have occasion elsewhere to resume this subject; for, in a
work which displays the great laws of nature in different

T2 ATMOSPHERIC MOISTURW

zones, we must endeavour to solve the problem of tt e mean
tension of the vapours contained in the atmosphere in dif-
ferent latitudes, and at different heights above the surface
of the ocean.

A great number of local circumstances cause the produce
of evaporation to vary ; it changes in proportion as more or
less shade covers the basin of the waters, with their state
of motion or repose, with their depth, and the nature and
colour of their bottom ; but in general evaporation depends
only on three circumstances, the temperature, the tension of
the vapours contained in the atmosphere, and the resistance
which the air, more or less dense, more or less agitated,
opposes to the diffusion of vapour. The quantity of water
that evaporates in a given spot, everything else being equal,
is proportionate to the difference between the quantity of
vapour which the ambient air can contain when saturated,
and the quantity which it actually contains. Hence it
follows that the evaporation is not so great in the torrid
zone as might be expected from the enormous augmentation
of temperature ; because, in those ardent climates, the air ia
habitually very humid.

Since the increase of agricultural industry in the valleys of
Aragua, the little rivers which run into the lake of Valencia
can no longer be regarded as positive supplies during the
six months succeeding December. They remain dried up
in the lower part of their course, because the planters of
indigo, coffee, and sugar-canes, have made frequent drainings
(azequias), in order to water the ground by trenches. AVe
may observe also, that a pretty considerable river, the Kio
Pao, which rises at the entrance of the Llanos, at the foot of
the range of hills called La G-alera, heretofore mingled its
waters with those of the lake, by uniting with the Cafio de
Cambury, on the road from the town of Nueva Valencia to
Gruigue. The course of this river was from south to north.
At the end of the seventeenth century, the proprietor of a
neighbouring plantation dug at the back of the hill a new
bed for the Bio Pao. He turned the river; and, after
having employed pirt of the water for the irrigation of hia
fields, he caused the rest to flow at a venture southward,
following the declivity of the Llanos. In this new southern
direction the Kio Pao, mingled with three other rivers, the

CHANGE OF IT VER-COUE8Eg. 13

Tinaco, the Guanarito, and the Chilua, falls into the Portu-
guesa, which is a branch of the Apure. It is a remarkable
phenomenon, that by a particular position of the ground,
and the lowering of the ridge of division so south-west, the
Kio Pao separates itself from the little system of interior
rivers to which it originally belonged, and for a century
past has communicated, through the channel of the Apure
and the Orinoco, with the ocean. What has been nere
effected on a small scale by the hand of man, nature often
performs, either by progressively elevating the* level of the
soil, or by those falls of the ground occasioned by violent
earthquakes. It is probable, that in the lapse of ages,
several rivers of Soudan, and of New Holland, which are
now lost in the sands, or in inland basins, will open for
themselves a course to the shores of the ocean. We cannot
at least doubt, that in both continents there are systems of
interior rivers, which may be considered as not entirely
developed ; and which communicate with each other, either
in the time of great risings, or by permanent bifurcations.

The Rio Pao has scooped itself out a bed so deep and
broad, that in the season of rains, when the Cano Grande de
Cambury inundates all the land to the north-west of Guigue,
the waters of this Cano, and those of the lake of Valencia,
flow back into the Eio Pao itself; so that this river, instead
of adding water to the lake, tends rather to carry it away.
We see something similar in North America, where geo-
graphers have represented on their maps an imaginary chain
of mountains, between the great lakes of Canada and the
country of the Miamis. At the time of floods, the waters
flowing into the lakes communicate with those which run
into the Mississippi; and it is practicable to proceed by
boats from the sources of the river St. Marv to the Wabasli,
as well as from the Chicago to the Illinois. These analo-
gous facts appear to me well worthy of the attention 01
hydrographers.

T»he land that surrounds the lake of Valencia being en-
tirely flat and even, a diminution of a few inches in the level
of the water exposes to view a vast extent of ground covered
with fertile mud and organic remains.* In proportion aa
the lake retires, cultivation advances towards the new shore.
* This I observed daily in the Lake of Mtiico.

14 MBAN WATER-LEVEL.

These natural desiccations, so important to agriculture,
have been considerable durit % the last ten years, in which
America has suffered from great droughts. Instead of mark-
ing the sinuosities of the present banks of the lake, I have
advised the rich landholders in these countries to fix
columns of granite in the basin itself, in order to observe
from year to year the mean height of the waters. The
Marquis del Toro has undertaken to put this design into
execution, employing the fine granite of the Sierra de
Mariara, and establishing limnometers, on a bottom of gneiss
rock, so common in the lake of Valencia.

It is impossible to anticipate the limits, more or less
narrow, to which this basin of water will one day be con-
fined, when an equilibrium between the streams flowing in
and the produce of evaporation and filtration, shall be com-
pletely established. The idea very generally spread, that
the lake will soon entirely disappear, seems to me chimerical.
If in consequence of great earthquakes, or other causes
equally mysterious, ten very humid years should succeed
to long droughts; if the mountains should again become
clothed with forests, and great trees overshadow the shore
and the plains of Aragua, we should more probably see the
volume of the waters augment, and menace that beautiful
cultivation which now trenches on the basin of the lake.

While some of the cultivators of the valleys of Aragua
fear the total disappearance of the lake, and others its re-
turn to the banks it has deserted, we hear the question
gravely discussed at Caracas, whether it would not be advis-
able, in order to give greater extent to agriculture, to
conduct the waters of the lake into the Llanos, by digging a
canal towards the Bio Pao. The possibility* of this enter-

* The dividing ridge, namely, that which divides the waters between
the valleys of Aragua and the Llanos, lowers so much towards the west of
Guigue, as we have already observed, that there are ravines which conduct
the waters of the Caflo de Cambury, the Rio Valencia, and the Guataparo,
in the time of floods, to the Rio Pao ; but it would be easier to open a
navigable canal from the lake of Valencia to the Orinoco, by the Pao, the
Portuguesa, and the Apure, than to dig a draining canal level with the
bottom of the lake. This bottom, according to the sounding, and my
barometric measurements, is 40 toises less than 222, or 182 above the
surface of the ocean. On the road from Guigue to the Llanos, by the
table-land of La Villa de Cura, I found, to the south of the dividing

ATEEAOE OF DEPTH. 15

prise cannot be denied, particularly ty havi'ig recourse to
tunnels, or subterranean canals. The progressive retieat oi
the waters has given birth to the beiutiful. and Itu.uriant
plains of Maracay, Cura, Mocundo, GKiigue, and Santa Cruz
del Escoval, planted wit1! tobacco, sugair-canes, coffee, indigo,
and cacao ; but how can it be doubted for a momrnt that
the lake alone spreads fertility over tiis country ? If de-
prived of the enormous mass of vapOTir which th'j surface
of the waters sends forth daily into i'ne s.;«:nosphere, the
valleys of Aragua would become as dry and barren as the
surrounding mountains.

The mean depth of the lake is from twelve to fifteen
fathoms ; the deepest parts are not, as is generally admitted,
eighty, but thirty-five or forty deep. Such is the result of
soundings made with the greatest care by Don Antonio
Manzano. When we reflect on the vast depths of all the
lakes of Switzerland, which, notwithstanding their position
in high valleys, almost reach the level of the Mediterranean,
it appears surprising that greater cavities are not found at
the Dottom of the lake of Valencia, which is also an Alpine
lake. The deepest places are between the rocky island of
BUITO and the point of Cana Fistula, and opposite the high
mountains of Mariara. But in general the southern part
of the lake is deeper than the northern : nor must we forget
that, if all the shores be now low, the southern part of the
basin is the nearest to a chain of mountains with abrupt
declivities ; and we know that even the sea is generally
deepest where the coast is elevated, rocky, or perpendicular.

The temperature of the lake at the surface during my
abode in the valleys of Aragua, in the month of February,
was constantly from 23° to 237°, consequently a little below
the mean temperature of the air. This may be from the
effect of evaporation, which carries off caloric from the air
and the water ; or because a great mass of water does not
follow with an equal rapidity the changes in the tempera-
ridge, and on its southern declivity, no point of level corresponding to
the 182 toises, except near San Juan. The absolute height of this village
is 194 toisee. But. I repeat that, farther towards the west, in the country
between the Caflo de Cambury and the sources of the Rio Pao, which I
was not able to visit, the point of level of the bottom of the lake ia much
farther north.

16 MEA.N TEMPE3ATUBE.

ture of the atmosphere, and the lake recems streams whic/i
rise from several cold springs in the neighbouring mountains.
i have to regret that, notwithstanding its small depth, I could
not determine the temperature of the water at thirty or
forty fathoms. I was not provided with the thermometrical
sounding apparatus which I had used in the Alpine lakes
of Salzburg, and in the Caribbean Sea. The experiments
of Saussure prove that, on both sides of the Alps, the lakes
which are from one hundred and ninety to two hundred and
seventy-four toises of absolute elevation* have, in the middle
of winter, at nine hundred, at six hundred, and sometimes
even at one hundred and fifty feet of depth, a uniform
temperature from 4'3 to 6 degrees : but these experiments
have not yet been repeated in lakes situated under the
torrid zone. The strata of cold water in Switzerland are
of an enormous thickness. They have been found so near
the surface in the lakes of Geneva and Bienne, that the
decrement of heat in the water was one centesimal degree
for ten or fifteen feet ; that is to say, eight times more rapid
than in the ocean, and forty-eight times more rapid than in
the atmosphere. In the temperate zone, where the heat of
the atmosphere sinks to the freezing point, and far lower,
the bottom of a lake, even were it not surrounded by glaciers
and mountains covered with eternal snow, must contain
particles of water which, having during winter acquired at
the surface the maximum of their density, between 3'4° and
4*4°, have consequently fallen to the greatest depth. Other
particles, the temperature of which is + 0'5°, far from
placing themselves below the stratum at 4°, can only find
their hydrostatic equilibrium above that stratum. They
will descend lower only when their temperature is aug-
mented 3° or 4° by the contact of strata less cold. If
water in cooling continued to condense uniformly to the
freezing point, there would be found, in very deep lakes
and basins having no communication with each other (what-
ever the latitude of the place), a stratum of water, the
temperature of which would be nearly equal to the maxi-
mum of refrigeration above the freezing point, which the
lower regions of the ambient atmosphere annually attain.

* This is the difference between the absolute elevations of the lakeg ot
Geneva and Thun.

•1

MEAN TEMPEHATUBE. IT

Hence it is probable, that, in the plains of the torrid zone,
or in the valleys but little elevated, the mean heat of which
is from 25*5° to 27°, the temperature of the bottom of the
lakes can never be below 21° or 22°. If in the same zone
the ocean contain at depths of seven or eight hundred
fathoms, water the temperature of which is at 7°, that is to
say, twelve or thirteen degrees colder than the maximum
of the heat* of the equinoctial atmosphere over the sea,
I think it must be considered as a direct proof of a sub-
marine current, carrying the waters of the pole towards the
equator. We will not here solve the delicate problem, as
to the manner in which, within the tropics and in the tem-
perate zone, (for example, in the Caribbean Sea and in the
lakes of Switzerland,) these inferior strata of water, cooled
to 4° or 7°, act upon the temperature of the stony strata of
the globe which they cover ; and how these same strata, the
primitive temperature of which is, within the tropics, 27°,
and at the lake of Q-eneva 10°, react upon the half-frozen
waters at the bottom of the lakes, and of the equinoctial
ocean. These questions are of the highest importance, both
with regard to the economy of animals that live habitually
at the bottom of fresh and salt waters, and to the theory
of the distribution of heat in lands surrounded by vast and
deep seas.

The lake of Valencia is full of islands, which embellish
the scenery by the picturesque form of their rocks, and the
beauty of the vegetation with which they are covered :
an advantage which this tropical lake possesses over those
of the Alps. The islands are fifteen in number, distributed
in three groups ;t without reckoning Morro and Cabrera,
which are already joined to the shore. They are partly

* It is almost superfluous to observe that I am considering here only
that part of the atmosphere lying on the ocean between 10° north and 10*
south latitude. Towards the northern limits of the torrid zone, in latitude
23°, whither the north winds bring with an extreme rapidity the cold air
of Canada, the thermometer falls at sea as low as 16°, and even lower.

f The position of these islands is as follows : northward, near the
shore, the Isla de Cura ; on the south-east, Burro, Homo, Otama, Sorro,
Caiguira, Nuevos Peflones, or the Aparecidos ; on the north-west, Cabo
Blanco, o\ Isla de Aves, and Chamberg ; on the south-west, Brucha and
Culebra. In the centre of the lake rise, like shoals or small detached rocka,
Vagre, Fraile, Peflasco, and Pan de Azucar.

VOL. II. 0

18 INHABITANTS OF THE ISLANDS.

cultivated, and extremely fertile on account of the vapours
that rise from the lake. Burro, the largest of these islands,
is two miles in length, and is inhabited by some families
of mestizos, who rear goats. These simple people seldom
visit the shore of Mocundo. To them the lake appears of
immense extent ; they have plantains, cassava, milk, and a
little fish. A hut constructed of reeds ; hammocks woven
from the cotton which the neighbouring fields produce ; a
large stone on which the fire is made ; the ligneous fruit of
the tutuma (the calabash) in which they draw water, con-
stitute their domestic establishment. An old mestizo who
offered us some goat's milk had a beautiful daughter. "We
learned from our guide, that solitude had rendered him as
mistrustful as he might perhaps have been made by the
society of men. The day before our arrival, some hunters
had visited the island. They were overtaken by the shades
of night ; and preferred sleeping in the open air to return-
ing to Mocundo. This news spread alarm throughout the
island. The father obliged the young girl to climb up a
very lofty zamang or acacia, which grew in the plain at
some distance from the hut, while he stretched himself at
the foot of the tree, and did not permit his daughter to
descend till the hunters had departed.

The lake is in general well stocked with fish ; though it
furnishes only three kinds, the flesh of which is soft and
insipid, the guavina, the vagre, and the sardina. The two
last descend into the lake with the streams that flow into
it. The guavina, of which I made a drawing on the spot,
is 20 inches long and 3'5 broad. It is perhaps a new
species of the genus erythrina of Gronovius. It has large
silvery scales edged with green. This fish is extremely
voracious, and destroys other kinds. The fishermen as-
sured us that a small crocodile, the lava* which often
approached us when we were bathing, contributes also to
the destruction of the fish. We never could succeed in pro-
curing this reptile so as to examine it closely : it generally

* The bava, or bavilla, is very common at Bordones, near Cumana.
See vol. i, p. 160. The name of bava (baveuse) has misled M. Depons;
he takes this reptile for a fish of our seas, the Blennius pholis. (Voyage
a la Terre Ferme.) The Blennius pholis (smooth blenny), is called by
the French baveuse (slaverer), in Spanish, baba.

CROCODILES. 19

attaint only three or four feet in length. It is said to be
very harmless ; its habits however, as well as its form, much
resemble those of the alh'gator (Crocodilus acutus). It
swims in such a manner as to show only the point of its
snout, and the extremity of its tail ; and places itself
at mid-day on the bare beach. It is certainly neither a
monitor (the real monitors living only in the old continent,)
nor the sauvegarde of Seba (Lacerta teguixin,) which dives
and does not swim. It is somewhat remarkable that the
lake of Valencia, and the whole system of small rivers
flowing into it, have no large alligators, though this dan-
gerous animal abounds a few leagues off in the streams
that flow either into the Apure or the Orinoco, or imme-
diately into the Caribbean Sea between Porto Cabello and
La Guayra.

In the islands that rise like bastions in the midst of the
waters, and wherever the rocky bottom of the lake is visible,
I recognised a uniform direction in the strata of gneiss.
This direction is nearly that of the chains of mountains 011
the north and south of the lake. In the hills of Cabo
Blanco there are found among the gneiss, angular masses
of opaque quartz, slightly translucid on the edges, and vary-
ing from grey to deep black. This quartz passes sometimes
into hornstein, and sometimes into kieselschiefer (schistose
jasper). I do not think it constitutes a vein. The waters
of the lake* decompose the gneiss by erosion in a very
extraordinary manner. I have found parts of it porous,
almost cellular, and split in the form of cauliflowers, fixed
on gneiss perfectly compact. Perhaps the action ceases
with the movement of the waves, and the alternate contact
of air and water.

The island of Chamberg is remarkable for its height.
It is a rock of gneiss, with two sumimiti in the form of
a saddle, and raised two hundred feet above the surface of
the water. The slope of this rock is barren, and affords
only nourishment for a few plants of clusia with large white

* The water of the lake is not salt, as is asserted at Caracas. It may
be drunk without being filtered. On evaporation it leaves a very small
residuum of carbonate of lime, and perhaps a little nitrate of potash. It
u surprising that an inland lake should not be richer in alkaline and
•arthy salts, acquired from the neighbouring soils.

0 '*

20 PLANTS AND TREES.

flowers. But the view of the lake and of the richly culti-
vated neighbouring valleys is beautiful, and their aspect is
wonderful after sunset, when thousands of aquatic birds,
herons, flamingoes, and wild ducks cross the lake to roost
in the islands, and the broad zone of mountains wrhich
surrounds the horizon is covered with fire. The inhabitants,
as we have already mentioned, burn the meadows in order
to produce fresher and finer grass. Gramineous plants
abound, especially at the summit of the chain ; and those
vast conflagrations extend sometimes the length of a thou-
sand toises, and appear like streams of lava overflowing
the ridge of the mountains. When reposing on the banks
of the lake to enjoy the soft freshness of the air in one of
those beautiful evenings peculiar to the tropics, it is delight-
ful to contemplate in the waves as they beat the shore, the
reflection of the red fires that illumine the horizon.

Among the plants which grow on the rocky islands of the
iake of Valencia, many have been believed to be peculiar
to those spots, because till now they have not been dis-
covered elsewhere. Such are the papaw-trees of the lake ;
and the tomato* of the island of Cura. The latter differs
from our Solanum lycopersicum ; the fruit is round and
small, but has a fine flavour ; it is now cultivated at La
Victoria, at Nueva Valencia, and everywhere in the valleys
of Aragua. The papaw-tree of the lake (papaya de la
laguna) abounds also in the island of Cura and at Cabo
Blanco ; its trunk shoots higher than that of the common
papaw (Carica papaya), but its fruit is only half as large,
perfectly spherical, without projecting ribs, and four or five
inches in diameter. "When cut open it is found quite filled
with seeds, and without those hollow places which occur
constantly in the common papaw. The taste of this fruit,
of which I have often eaten, is extremely sweet.f I know
not whether it be a variety of the Carica microcarpa, de-
scribed by Jaequin.

The environs of the iake are insalubrious only in times
of great drought, when the waters in their retreat leave a

* The tomatos are cultivated, as well as the papaw-tree of the lake,
in the Botanical Garden of Berlin, to which I had sent some seeds.

f The people of the country attribute to it an astringent quality, and
call it tapaculo.

HOT SPRINGS OP THE LAKE. 21

muddy sediment exposed to the rays of the sun. The
banks, shaded by tufts of Coccoloba barbadensis, and
decorated with fine liliaceous plants,* remind us, by the
appearance of the aquatic vegetation, of the marshy shores
of our lakes in Europe. We find there, pondweed (pota-
mogeton), chara, and cats'-tail three feet high, which it
is difficult not to confound with the Typha angustifolia of
our marshes. It is only after a careful examination, that
we recognise each of these plants for distinct species,f
peculiar to the new continent. How many plants of the
Straits of Magellan, of Chile, and the Cordilleras of Quito
have formerly been confounded with the productions of the
northern temperate zone, owing to their analogy in form
and appearance.

The inhabitants of the valleys of Aragua often inquire
why the southern shore of the lake, particularly the south-
west part towards los Aguacotis, is generally more shaded,
and exhibits fresher verdure than the northern side. We
saw, in the month of February, many trees stripped of their
foliage, near the Hacienda de Cura, at Mocundo, and at
Guacara ; while to the south-east of Valencia everything
presaged the approach of the rains. I believe that in the
early part of the year, when the sun has southern declina-
tion, the hills around Valencia, Guacara, and Cura are
scorched by the heat of the solar rays, while the southern
shore receives, along with the breeze when it enters the
valley by the Abra de Porto Cabello, an atmosphere which
has crossed the lake, and is loaded with aqueous vapour.
On this southern shore, near Gruaruto, are situated the
finest plantations of tobacco in the whole province.

Among the rivers flowing into the lake of Valencia some
owe their origin to thermal springs, and deserve particular
.•ittention. These springs gusn out at three points of the
granitic Cordillera of the coaat ; near Onoto, oetween Tur-
niero and Maracay; near Mariara, north-east of the Hacienda
de Cura ; and near Las Trincheras, on the road from Nueva
Valencia to Porto Cabello. I could examine with care only
the physical and geological relations of the thermal waters of
Mariara and Las Trincheras. In going up the small river

• Pancratium undulatum, Amaryllis nervosa.
t Potaraogeton tenuifolium, Chara conipressa, Typha tenuifoli*.

22 EIO DE AQUAS CALIENTES.

Cura towards its source, the mountains of Mariara are seen
advancing into the plain in the form of a vast amphitheatre,
composed of perpendicular rocks, crowned by peaks with
rugged summits. The central point of the amphitheatre
bears the strange name of the Devil's Nook (Eincon del
Diablo). The range stretching to the east is called El
Chaparro ; that to the west, Las Viruelas. These ruin-like
rocks command the plain ; they are composed of a coarse-
grained granite, nearly porphyritic, the yellowish white feld-
spar crystals of which are more than an inch and a half long.
Mica is rare in them, and is of a fine silvery lustre. Nothing
can be more picturesque and solemn than the aspect of this
group of mountains, half covered with vegetation. The
Peak of Calavera, which unites the Eincon del Diablo to the
Chaparro, is visible from afar. In it the granite is separated
by perpendicular fissures into prismatic masses. It would
seem as if the primitive rock were crowned with columns of
basalt. In the rainy season, a considerable sheet of water
rushes down like a cascade from these cliffs. The moun-
tains connected on the east with the Eincon del Diablo,
are much less lofty, and contain, like the promontory of La
Cabrera, and the little detached hills in the plain, gneiss
and mica-slate, including garnets.

In these lower mountains, two or three miles north-east
of Mariara, we find the ravine of hot waters called Que-
brada de Aguas Calientes. This ravine, running JN".W. 75°,
contains several small basins. Of these the two uppermost,
which have no communication with each other, are only
eight inches in diameter ; the three lower, from two to three
feet. Their depth varies from three to fifteen inches. The
temperature of these different funnels (pozos) is from 56°
to 59° ; and what is remarkable, the lower funnels are
hotter than the upper, though the difference of the level
is only seven or eight inches. The hot waters, collected
together, form a little rivulet, called the Eio de Aguas
Calientes, which, thirty feet lower, has a temperature of only
48°. In seasons of great drought, the time at which we
visited the ravine, the whole body of the thermal waters
forms a section of only twenty-six square inches. This is
considerably augmented in the rainy season ; the rivulet is
then transformed into a torrent, and its heat

SULPHUREOUS SPRINGS. 23

for it appears that the hot springs themselves are subject
only to imperceptible variations. All these springs are
slightly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen gas. The
fetid smell, peculiar to this gas, can be perceived only by
approaching very near the springs. In one of these wells
only, the temperature of which is 56*2°, bubbles of air are
evolved at nearly regular intervals of two or three minutes.
I observed that these bubbles constantly rose from the same
points, which are four in number ; and that it was not pos-
sible to change the places from which the gas is emitted, by
stirring the bottom of the basin with a stick. These places
correspond no doubt to holes or fissures on the gneiss ; and
indeed when the bubbles rise from one of the apertures, the
emission of gas follows instantly from the other three. I
could not succeed in inflaming the small quantities of gas
that rise above the thermal waters, or those I collected in
a glass phial held over the springs, an operation that ex-
cited in me a nausea, caused less by the smell of the gas,
than by the excessive heat prevailing in this ravine. Is this
sulphuretted hydrogen mixed with a great proportion of car-
bonic acid or atmospheric air? I am doubttul of the first
of these mixtures, though so common in thermal waters ; for
example at Aix la Chapelle, Enghien, and Bareges. The
gas collected in the tube of Fontana's eudiometer had been
shaken for a long time with water. The small basins are
covered with a light film of sulphur, deposited by the sul-
phuretted hydrogen in its slow combustion in contact with
the atmospheric oxygen. A few plants near the springs
were incrusted with sulphur. This deposit is scarcely
visible when the water of Mariara is suffered to cool in aii
open vessel ; no doubt because the quantity of disengaged
gas is very small, and is not renewed. The water, when
cold, gives no precipitate with a solution of nitrate of copper;
it is destitute of flavour, and very drinkable. If it contain
any saline substances, for example, the sulphates of soda or
magnesia, their quantities must oe very insignificant. Being
almost destitute of chemical tests,* we contented ourselves

• A small case, containing acetate of lead, nitrate of silver, alcohol,
prussiate of potash, &c., had been left by mistake at Cumana. 1 evapo.
rated some of the water of Mariara, and it yielded only a very small
residuum, which, digested with nitric acid, appeared to contain only •
little silica and extractive vegetable matter.

24 NATURAL HOT BATH.

with filling at the spring two bottles, which were sent,
along with the nourishing milk of the tree called polo de
vaca, to MM. Fourcroy and Vauquelin, by the way of
Poriio Cabello and the Havannah. This purity in hot
waters issuing immediately from granite mountains is in
Europe, as well as in the New Continent, a most curious
phenomenon.* How can we explain the origin of the
sulphuretted hydrogen? It cannot proceed from the de-
composition of sulphurets of iron, or pyritic strata. Is it
owing to sulphurets of calcium, of magnesium, or other
earthy metalloids, contained in the interior of our planet,
under its rocky and oxidated crust ?

In the ravine of the hot waters of Mariara, amidst little
funnels, the temperature of which rises from 56° to 59°, two
species of aquatic plants vegetate ; the one is membrana-
ceous, and contains bubbles of air; the other has parallel
fibres. The first much resembles the Ulva labyrinthiformis
of Vandelli, which the thermal waters of Europe furnish.
At the island of Amsterdam, tufts of lycopodium and mar-
chantia have been seen in places where the heat of the soil
was far greater : such is the effect of an habitual stimulus
on the organs of plants. The waters of Mariara contain no
aquatic insects. Erogs are found in them, which, being
probably chased by serpents, have leaped into the funnels,
and there perished.

South of the ravine, in the plain extending towards the
shore of the lake, another sulphureous spring gushes out,
less hot and less impregnated with gas. The crevice whence
this water issues is six toises higher than the funnel just
described. The thermometer did not rise in the crevice
above 42°. The water is collected in a basin surrounded by
large trees ; it is nearly circular, from fifteen to eighteen feet
diameter, and three feet deep. The slaves throw themselves
into this bath at the end of the day, when covered with
dust, after having worked in the neighbouring fields of in-
digo and sugar-cane. Though the water of this bath (bano)
is habitually from 12° to 14° hotter than the air, the negroes
call it refreshing ; because in the torrid zone this term is

* Warm springs equally pure are found issuing from the granites
of Portugal, and those of Cantal. In Italy, the Pisciarelli of the lake
Agnano have a temperature equal to 93°. Are these pure waters pro-
duced by condensed vapours ?

THE VOLADOE. 25

used for whatever restores strength, calms the irritation of
the nerves, or causes a feeling of comfort. We ourselves ex-
perienced the salutary effects of the bath. Having slung our
hammocks on the trees round the basin, we passed a whole
day in this charming spot, which abounds in plants. We
found near the baiio of Mariara the volador, or gyrocarpus.
The winged fruits of this large tree turn like a fly-wheel,
when they fall from the stalk. On shaking the branches of
the volad&r, we saw the air filled with its fruits, the simul-
taneous fall of winch presents the most singular spectacle.
The two membranaceous and striated wings are turned so
as to meet the air, in falling, at an angle of 45°. Fortu-
nately the fruits we gathered were at their maturity. We
sent some to Europe, and they have germinated in the
gardens of Berlin, Paris, and Malmaison. The numerous
plants of the volador, now seen in hot-houses, owe their
origin to the only tree of the kind found near Mariara.
The geographical distribution of the different species of gyro-
carpus, which Mr. Brown considers as one of the laurinese,
is very singular. Jacquin saw one species near Carthagena
in America.* This is the same which we met with again
in Mexico, near Zumpango, on the road from Acapulco to
the capital.f Another species, which grows on the moun-
tains of Coromandel.J has been described by Koxburgh:
the third and fourth § grow in the southern hemisphere, oil
the coasts of A ustralia.

After getting out of the bath, while, half-wrapped in a
sheet, we were drying ourselves in the sun, according to
the custom of the country, a little man of the mulatto race
approached us. After bowing gravely, he made us a long
speech on the virtues of the waters of Mariara, adverting
to the numbers of invalids by whom they have been visited
for some years past, and to the favourable situation of the
springs, between the two towns Valencia and Caracas. He

* The Gyrocarpus Jacquini of Gartner, or Gyrocarpus ameiicanus of
Willdenow.

t The natives of Mexico called it gmtlacocffi. I saw some of its

young leaves with three and five lobes; the full-grown leaves are in the

form of a heart, and always with three lobes. We never met with tin

volalv In flower. V * V> ?

J This is the Gyrocarpus asiaticus of WilldenowX^. *

| Syroc&rpus sphenopterus, and G. rugosui. .

26 PUWTA ZAMUBO.

showed us his house, a little hut covered with palm-leaves,
situated in an enclosure at a small distance, on the bank
of a rivulet, communicating with the bath. He assured us
that we should there find all the conveniences of life ; nails
to suspend our hammocks, ox-leather to stretch over benches
made of reeds, earthern vases always filled with cool water,
and what, after the bath, would be most salutary of all,
those great lizards (iguanas), the flesh of which is known
to be a refreshing aliment. "We judged from his harangue,
that this good man took us for invalids, who had come to
stay near the spring. His counsels and offers of hospitality
were not altogether disinterested. He styled himself ' the
inspector of the waters, and the pulpero* of the place.'
Accordingly all his obliging attentions to us ceased as soon
as he heard that we had come merely to satisfy our curi-
osity; or as they express it in the Spanish colonies, those
lands of idleness, para ver, no mas, ' to see, and nothing
more.' The waters of Mariara are used with success in
rheumatic swellings, and affections of the skin. As the
waters are but very feebly impregnated with sulphuretted
hydrogen, it is necessary to bathe at the spot Where the
springs issue. Farther on, these same waters are employed
for the irrigation of fields of indigo. A wealthy landed
proprietor of Mariara, Don Domingo Tovar, had formed
the project of erecting a bathing-house, and an establish-
ment which would furnish visitors with better resources
than lizard's flesh for food, and leather stretched on a bench
for their repose.

On the 21st of February, in the evening, we set out from
the beautiful Hacienda de Cura for Gruacara and Nueva
Valencia. We preferred travelling by night, on account
of the excessive heat of the day. We passed by the hamlet
of Punta Zamuro, at the foot of the high mountains of Las
Viruelas. The road is bordered with large zamang-trees,
or mimosas, the trunks of which rise to sixty feet high.
Their branches, nearly horizontal, meet at more than one
hundred and fifty feet distance. I have nowhere seen a
vault of verdure more beautiful and luxuriant. The night
was gloomy: the Eincon del Diablo with its denticulated
rocks appeared from time to time at a distance, illumined
• Proprietor of a pulperia, or little shop where refreshments are sold.

SUGAR-CANE PLANTATION. 27

the burning of the savannahs, or wrapped in ruddy
oke. At the spot where the bushes were thickest, our
rses were frightened by the yell of an animal that seemed
follow us closely, ft was a large jaguar, which had
amed for three years among these mountains. He had
mstantly escaped the pursuits of the boldest hunters, and
ad carried oft' horses and mules from the midst of enclo-
; but, having no want of food, had not yet attacked
en. The negro who conducted us uttered wild cries,
xpecting by these means to frighten the tiger; but his
ftbrts were ineffectual. The jaguar, like the wolf of Europe,
follows travellers even when he will not attack them; the
wolf in the open fields and in unsheltered places, the jaguar
skirting the road and appearing only at intervals between
the bushes.

We passed the day on the 23rd in the house of the
Marquis de Toro, at the village of Gruacara, a very con-
siderable Indian community. An avenue of carolineas leads
from Gruacara to Mocundo. It was the first time I had
seen in the open air this majestic plant, which forms one
of the principal ornaments of the extensive conservatories
of Schonbrunn.* Mocundo is a rich plantation of sugar-
canes, belonging to the family of Toro. "We there find,
what is so rare in that country, a garden, artificial clumps
of trees, and on the border of the water, upon a rock of
gneiss, a pavilion with a mirador, or belvidere. The view
is delightful over the western part of the lake, the surround-
ing mountains, and a forest of palm-trees that separates
Guacara from the city of Nueva Valencia. The fields of
sugar-cane, from the soft verdure of the young reeds, re-
semble a vast meadow. Everything denotes abundance;
but it is at the price of the liberty of the cultivators. At
Mocundo, with two hundred and thirty negroes, seventy-
seven tablones, or cane-fields, are cultivated, each of which,
ton thousand varas square,f yields a net profit of two

* Every tree of the Carolinea princeps at ScluJnbrunn has sprung from
•eeds collected from oiie single tree of enormous size, near Chacao, east
of Caracas.

f A tablon, equal to 1849 square toises, contains nearly an acre and
one-fifth : a legal acre has 1344 square toises, and 1*95 legal acre is equal
to one hectare.

28 CULTIVATION OF THE CAXE.

hundred or two hundred and forty piastres a-year.
Creole cane and the cane of Otaheite* are planted in the
month of April, the first at four, the second at five feet
distance. The cane ripens in tourteen months. It flowers
in the month of October, if the plant be sufficiently vigo-
rous; but the top is cut off before the panicle unfolds.
In all the monocotvledonous plants (for example, the ma-
guey cultivated at Mexico for extracting pulque, the wine-
yielding palm-tree, and the sugar-cane), the flowering alters
the quality of the juices. The preparation of sugar, the
boiling, and the claying, are very imperfect in Terra Firma,
because it is made only for home consumption; and for
wholesale, papelon is preferred to sugar, either refined or
raw. This papelon is an impure sugar, in the form of little
loaves, of a yellow-brown colour. It contains a mixture of
molasses and mucilaginous matter. The poorest man eats
papelon, as in Europe he eats cheese. It is believed to have
nutritive qualities. Fermented with water it yields the
guarapo, the favourite beverage of the people. In the pro-
vince of Caracas subcarbonate of potash is used, instead of
lime, to purify the juice of the sugar-cane. The ashes of
the bucare, which is the Erythrina corallodendnim, are pre-
ferred.

The sugar-cane \vas introduced very late, probably towards
the end of the sixteenth century, from the West India
Islands, into the valleys of Aragua. It was known in India,
in China, and in all the islands of the Pacific, from the
most remote antiquity; and it was planted at Khorassan, in
Persia, as early as the fifth century of our era, in order to
obtain from it solid sugar.f The Arabs carried this reed,
so useful to the inhabitants of hot and temperate countries,
to the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1306, its culti-
vation was yet unknown in Sicily; but was already common
in the island of Cyprus, at Rhodes, and in the Morea. A
hundred years after it enriched Calabria, Sicily, and the
coasts of Spain. From Sicily the Infante Don Henry trans-

* In the island of Palma, where in the latitude of 29° the sugar-cane
is said to be cultivated as high as 140 toises above the level of the
Atlantic, the Otaheite cane requires more heat than the Creole cane.

t The Indian name for the sugar-cane is sharkara. Thence the word

MANUFACTURE OF SUOAB. 29

planted the cane to Madeira: from Madeira it passed to
the Canary Islands, where it was entirely unknown; for
the ' ferulae' of Juba, ' quse express® liquorem fundunt potui
ucundum,' are euphorbias (the Tabayba dulce), and not,
as has been recently asserted,* sugar-canes. Twelve sugar-
manufactories (ingenios de azucar) were soon established
ji the island of Great Canary, in that of Palma, and between
Adexe, Icod, and Guarachico, in the island of Tenerifte.
Negroes were employed in this cultivation, and their de-
scendants still inhabit the grottos of Tiraxaua, in the
Great Canary. Since the sugar-cane has been transplanted
to the West Indies, and the New "World has given maize
to the Canaries, the cultivation of the latter has taken the
place of the cane at Tenerifte and the Great Canary. The
cane is now found only in the island of Palma, near Argual
and Tazacorte,f where it yields scarcely one thousand quin-
tals of sugar a year. The sugar-cane of the Canaries, which
Aiguilon transported to St. Domingo, was there cultivated
extensively as early as 1513, or during the six or seven
following years, under the auspices of the monks of St.
Jerome. Negroes were employed in this cultivation from
its commencement ; and in 1519 representations were made
to government, as in our own time, that the West India
Islands would be ruined and made desert, if slaves were
not conveyed thither annually from the coast of Guinea.

For some years past the culture and preparation of sugar
has been much improved in Terra Firma ; and, as the pro-
cess of refining is prohibited by the laws at Jamaica, they
reckon on the fraudulent exportation of refined sugar to
the English colonies. But the consumption of the pro-
vinces of Venezuela, in papelon, and in raw sugar employed
in making chocolate and sweetmeats (dulces) is so enor-
mous, that the exportation has been hitherto entirely null.
The finest plantations of sugar are in the valleys of Aragua
and of the Tuy, near Pao de Zarate, between La Victoria

• On the origin of cane-sugar, in the Journal de Pharmacie, 1816,
p. 387. The Tabayba dulce is, according to Von Buch, the Euphorbia
balsamifera, the juice of which is neither corrosive nor bitter like that of
the cordon, or Euphorbia canariensis.

f " Notice sur la Culture du Sucre dam lea Isle* Canariennes." by
Leopold von Buch.

<M) EMPLOYMENT OF CAMELS.

and San Sebastian, near Guatire, Gluarenas, and Caurimare.
The first canes arrived in the New World from the Canary
Islands ; and even now Canarians, or Islenos, are placed at
the head of most of the great plantations, and superintend
the labours of cultivation and refining.

It is this connexion between the Canarians and the
inhabitants of Venezuela, that has given rise to the in-
troduction of camels into those provinces. The Marquia
del Toro caused three to be brought from Lancerote. The
expense of conveyance was very considerable, owing to the
space which these animals occupy on board merchant- vessels,
and the great quantity of water they require during a long
sea-voyage. A camel, bought for thirty piastres, costs
between eight and nine hundred before it reaches the coast
of Caracas. We saw four of these animals at Mocundo ;
three of which had been bred in America. Two others had
died of the bite of the coral, a venomous serpent very
common on the banks of the lake. These camels have
hitherto been employed only in the conveyance of the sugar-
canes to the mill. The males, stronger than the females,
carry from forty to fifty arrobas. A wealthy landholder in
the province of Yarinas, encouraged by the example of the
Marquis del Toro, has allotted a sum of 15,000 piastres for
the purpose of bringing fourteen or fifteen camels at once
from the Canary Islands. It is presumed these beasts of
burden may be employed in the conveyance of merchandise
across the burning plains of Casanare, from the Apure and
Calabozo, which in the season of drought resemble the
deserts of Africa. How advantageous it would have been
had the Conquistadores, from the beginning of the sixteenth
century, peopled America with camels, as they have peopled
it with horned cattle, horses, and mules. Wherever there
are immense distances to cross in uninhabited lands ; where-
ever the construction of canals becomes difficult (as in the
isthmus of Panama, on the table-land of Mexico, and in the
deserts that separate the kingdom of Quito from Peru, and
Peru from Chile), camels would be of the highest import-
ance, to facilitate inland commerce. It seems the more
surprising, that their introduction was not encouraged by
the government at the beginning of the conquest, as, long
after the taking of Grenada, camels, for which the Moors

OPPOSITION TO TIIEIB USE. 31

had a great predilection, were still very common in the
south of Spain. A Biscayan, Juan de Reinaga, carried
some of these animals at his own expense to Peru. Father
Acosta saw them at the foot of the Andes, about the end
of the sixteenth century; but little care being taken of
them, they scarcely ever bred, and the race soon became
extinct. In those times of oppression and cruelty, which
have been described as the era of Spanish glory, the com-
mendataries (encomenderos) let out the Indians to travel-
lers like beasts of burden. They were assembled by hun-
dreds, either to carry merchandise across the Cordilleras,
or to follow the armies in their expeditions of discovery and
pillage. The Indians endured this service more patiently,
because, owing to the almost total want of domestic ani-
mals, they had long been constrained to perform it, though
in a less inhuman manner, under the government of their
own chiefs. The introduction of camels attempted by
Juan de Reinaga spread an alarm among the encomen-
deros, who wrere, not by law, but in fact, lords of the Indian
villages. The court listened to the complaints of the enco-
menderos; and in consequence America was deprived of
one of the means which would have most facilitated inland
communication, and the exchange of productions. Now,
however, there is no reason why the introduction of camels
should not be attempted as a general measure. Some
hundreds of these useful animals, spread over the vast
surface of America, in hot and barren places, would in a
few years have a powerful influence on the public prosperity.
Provinces separated by steppes would then appear to be
brought nearer to each other ; several kinds of inland mer-
chandize would diminish in price on the coast ; and by in-
creasing the number of camels, above all the species called
hedjin, or * the ship of the desert,' a new life would be
given to the industry and commerce of the New World.

On the evening of the 22ud we continued our journey from
Mocundo by Los Guayos to the city of Nueva Valencia.
We passed a little forest of palm-trees, which resembled, by
their appearance, and their leaves spread like a fan, the
Cliumaerops humilis of the coast of Barbary. The trunk,
however, riaes to twenty-four and sometimes thirty

32 THE SOMTmERO PALM.

high. It 13 probably a new species of the genus corypta;
and is called in the country palma de sombrero, the footstalks
of the leaves being employed in weaving hats resembling
our straw hats. This grove of palm-trees, the withered
foliage of which rustles at the least breath of air — the
camels feeding in the plain — the undulating motion of the
vapours on a soil scorched by the ardour of the sun, give the
landscape an African aspect. The aridity of the land aug-
ments as the traveller approaches the town, after passing
the western extremity of the lake. It is a clayey soil, which
has been levelled and abandoned by the waters. The neigh-
bouring hills, called Los Morros de Valencia, are composed
of white tufa, a very recent limestone formation, imme-
diately covering the gneiss. It is again found at Victoria,
and on several other points along the chain of the coast.
The whiteness of this tufa, which reflects the rays of the sun,
contributes greatly to the excessive heat felt in this place.
Everything seems smitten with sterility; scarcely are a few
plants of cacao found on the banks of the Bio de Valencia ;
the rest of the plain is bare, and destitute of vegetation.
This appearance of sterility is here attributed, as it is every-
where in the valleys of Aragua, to the cultivation of indigo ;
which, according to the planters, is, of all plants, that which
most exhausts (cansa) the ground. The real physical causes
of this phenomenon would be an interesting inquiry, since,
like the effects of fallowing land, and of a rotation of crops,
it is far from being sufficiently understood. I shall only
observe in general, that the complaints of the increasing
sterility of cultivated land become more frequent between
the tropics, in proportion as they are near the period of
their first breaking-up. In a region almost destitute of
herbs, where every plant has a ligneous stem, and tends to
raise itself as a shrub, the virgin soil remains shaded either
by great trees, or by bushes; and under this tufted shade it
preserves everywhere coolness and humidity. However
active the vegetation of the tropics may appear, the number
of roots that penetrate into the earth, is not so great in an
uncultivated soil ; while the plants are nearer to each otjier
in lands subjected to cultivation, and covered with indigo,
sugar-canes, or cassava. The trees and shrubs, loaded with

NUEVA VALENCIA. 88

branches and leaves, draw a great part of their nourishment
from the ambient air ; and the virgin soil augments its fer-
tility hy the decomposition of the vegetable substances
which progressively accumulate. It is not so in the fields
covered with indigo, or other herbaceous plants; where the
rays of the sun penetrate freely into the earth, and by the
accelerated combustion of the hydrurets of carbon and other
acidifiable principles, destroy the germs of fecundity. These
effects strike the imagination of the planters the more for-
cibly, as in lands newly inhabited they compare the fertility
of a soil which has been abandoned to itself during thou-
sands of years, with the produce of ploughed fields. The
Spanish colonies on the continent, and the great islands of
Porto-Eico and Cuba, possess remarkable advantages with
respect to the produce of agriculture over the lesser West
India Islands. The former, from their extent, the variety
of their scenery, and their small relative population, still
bear all the characters of a new soil; while at Barbadoes,
Tobago, St. Lucia, the Virgin Islands, and the French part
of St. Domingo, it may be perceived that long cultivation
has begun to exhaust the soil. If in the valleys of Aragua,
instead of abandoning the indigo grounds, and leaving them
fallow, they were covered during several years, not with
corn, but with other alimentary plants and forage; if among
these plants such as belong to different families were pre-
ferred, and which shade the soil by their large leaves, the
amelioration of the fields would be gradually accomplished,
and they would be restored to a part of their former fer-
tility.

The city of Nueva Valencia occupies a considerable extent
of ground, but its population scarcely amounts to six or
seven thousand souls. The streets are very broad, the
market place, (plaza mayor,) is of vast dimensions; and, the
houses being low, the disproportion between the population
of the town, and the space that it occupies, is still greater
than at Caracas. Many of the whites, (especially the
poorest,) forsake their houses, and live the greater part of
the year in their little plantations of indigo and cotton,
where they can venture to work with their own hands;
which, according to the inveterate prejudices of that country,
would be a disgrace to them in the t^wn.

VOL. ii. I)

84 RAVAGES OF THE TERMITES.

Nueva Valencia, founded in 1555 under the government
of Villaeinda, by Alonzo Diaz Moreno, is twelve years older
than Caracas. Valencia was at first only a dependency of
Burburata; but this latter town is nothing now but a place
of embarkation for mules. It is regretted, and perhaps
justly, that Valencia has not become the capital of the
country. Its situation in a plain, on the banks of a lake,
recalls to mind the position of Mexico. "\Vhen we reflect on
the easy communication afforded by the valleys of Aragua
with the Llanos and the rivers that flow into the Orinoco ;
when we recognize the possibility of opening an inland
navigation, by the Bio Pao and the Portuguesa, as far as the
mouths of the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Amazon,
it may be conceived that the capital of the vast provinces of
Venezuela would have been better placed near the fine
harbour of Porto Cabello, beneath a pure and serene sky,
than near the unsheltered road of La Guayra, in a tem-
perate but constantly foggy valley. Near the kingdom of
New Grenada, and situate between the fertile corn-lands of
La Victoria and Barquesiuieto, the city of Valencia ought to
have prospered; but, notwithstanding these advantages, it
has been unable to maintain the co'ntest with Caracas.

Only those who have seen the myriads of ants, that infest
the countries within the torrid zone, can form an idea of the
destruction and the sinking of the ground occasioned by
these insects. They abound to such a degree on the site of
Valencia, that their excavations resemble subterranean
canals, which are filled with Water in the time of the rains,
and become very dangerous to the buildings. Here recourse
has not been had to the extraordinary means employed at
the beginning of the sixteenth century in the island of
St. Domingo, when troops of ants ravaged the fine plains of
La Vega, and the rich possessions of the order of St. Francis.
The monks, after having in vain burnt the larvae of the ants,
and had recouse to fumigations, advised the inhabitants to
choose by lot a saint, who would act as a mediator against
the plague of the ants.* The honour of the choice fell on
St. Saturnin; and the ants disappeared as soon as the first
festival of this saint was celebrated. Incredulity has made
Ijrreat progress since the time of the conquest; and Jt vaa
* Un abogado contra los hannigos.

LOPEZ DE AGUIKRE. 35

only on the back of the Cordilleras that I found a small
chapel, destined, according to its inscription, for prayers to
be addressed to Heaven for the destruction of the termites.

Valencia affords some historical remembrances; but these,
like everything connected with the colonies, have no remote
date, and recall to mind either civil discords or sanguinary
conflicts with the savages. Lopez de Aguirre, whose crimes
and adventures form some of the most dramatic episodes of
the history of the conquest, proceeded in 1561, from Peru,
by the river Amazon to the island of Margareta; and
thence, by the port of Burburata, into the valleys of Aragua.
On his entrance into Valencia, which proudly entitles itself
' the City of the King,' he proclaimed the independance of
the country, and the deposition of Philip II. The inha-
bitants withdrew to the islands of the lake of Tacarigua,
taking with them all the boats from the shore, to be more
secure in their retreat. In consequence of this stratagem,
Aguirre could exercise his cruelties only on his own people.
From Valencia he addressed to the king of Spain, a remark-
able letter, in which he boasts alternately of his crimes and
his piety; at the same time giving advice to the king on the

fovernment of the colonies, and the system of missions,
urrounded by savage Indians, navigating on a great sea of
fresh water, as he calls the Amazon, he is alarmed at the
heresies of Martin Luther, and the increasing influence of
schismatics in Europe.* Lopez de Aguirre, or as he is still

• The following are some remarkable passages in the letter from
Aguirre to the king of Spain.

" King Philip, native of Spain, son of Charles the Invincible ! I,
Lopez de Aguirre, thy vassal, an old Christian, of poor but noble parents,
and a native of the town of Onate in Biscay, passed over young to Peru, to
labour lance in hand. I rendered thee great services in the conquest of
India. I fought for thy glory, without demanding pay of thy officers, as
is proved by the books of thy treasury. I firmly believe, Christian King
and Lord, that, very ungrateful to me and my companions, all those who
write to thee from this land [America], deceive thee much, because thou
•eest things from too far off. I recommend to thee to be more just toward
the good vassals whom thou hast in this country : for 1 and mine,
weary of the cruelties and injustice which thy viceroys, thy governors,
and thy judges, exercise in thy name, are resolved to obey thee no more.
We regard ourselves no longer as Spaniards. We wage a cruel war against
thee, because we will not endure the oppression of thy ministers ; who,
to give places to their nephews and their children, dispose of our lives,

D 2

86 LOPEZ DE AGUIRBE.

called bj the common people, 'the Tyrant,' was killed at
Barquesimeto, after having been abandoned by his own men.
At the moment when he fell, he plunged a dagger into the
bosom of his only daughter, " that she might not have to

our reputation, and our fortune. I am lame in the left foot from two
shots of an arquebuss, which I received in the valley of Coquimbo,
fighting under the orders of thy marshal, Alonzo de Alvarado, against
Francis Hernandez Giron, then a rebel, as I am at present, and shall be
always; for since thy viceroy, the Marquis de Caflete, a cowardly, am-
bitious, and effeminate man, has hanged our most valiant warriors, I care
no more for thy pardon than for the books of Martin Luther. It is not
well in thee, King of Spain, to be ungrateful toward thy vassals ; for it
was whilst thy father, the emperor Charles, remained quietly in Castile,
that they procured for thee so many kingdoms and vast countries.
Remember, King Philip, that thou hast no right to draw revenues from
these provinces, the conquest of which has been without danger to thee,
but inasmuch as thou recompensest those who have rendered thee such
great services. I am certain that few kings go to heaven. Therefore
we regard ourselves as very happy to be here in the Indies, preserving in
all their purity the commandments of God, and of the Roman Church ;
and we intend, though sinners during life, to become one day martyrs to
the glory of God. On going out of the river Amazon, we landed in an
island called La Margareta. We there received news from Spain of the
great faction and machination (maquina) of the Lutherans. This news
alarmed us extremely ; we found among us one of that faction ; his
name was Monteverde. I had him cut to pieces, as was just: for, believe
me, Sefior, wherever I am, people live according to the law. But the
corruption of morals among the monks is so great in this land that it is
necessary to chastise it severely. There is not an ecclesiastic here who
does not think himself higher than the governor of a province. I beg of
thee, great King, not to believe what the monks tell thee down yonder in
Spain. They are always talking of the sacrifices they make, as well as of
the hard and bitter life they are forced to lead in America : while they
occupy the richest lands, and the Indians hunt and fish for them every
day. If they shed tears before thy throne, it is that thou mayest send
them hither to govern provinces. Dost thou know what sort of life they
lead here ? Given up to luxury, acquiring possessions, selling the sacra-
ments, being at once ambitious, violent, and gluttonous ; such is the life
they lead in America. The faith of the Indians suffer by such bad ex-
amples. If thou dost not change all this, O King of Spain, thy govern-
ment will not be stable.

" What a misfortune that the Emperor, thy father, should have con-
quered Germany at such a price, and spent, on that conquest, the money
we procured for him in these very Indies! In the year 1559 the
Marquis de Caflete sent to the Amazon, Pedro de Ursua, a Navarrese, of
rather a Frenchman : we sailed on the largest rivers of Peru till we cam«
to a gulf cf fresh water. We had already gone three hundred ieagaa

INCURSION OF THE CARlBi. . 87

oluah bofore the Spaniards at the name of the daughter of a
traitor." TJie soul of the tyrant (such is the belief of the
natives) wanders in the savannahs, like a flame that flies the
approach of men.*

The second historical event connected with the name of
Valencia is the great incursion made by the Caribs of the
Orinoco in 1578 and 1580. That cannibal horde went up
the banks of the Guarico, crossing the plains or llanos.
They were happily repulsed by the valour of Garcia Gon-
/.ulca, one of the captains whose names are still most revered
in those provinces. It is gratifying to recollect, that the
descendants of those very Caribs now live in the missions
as peaceable husbandmen, and that no savage nation of
Guiana dares to cross the plains which separate the region
of the forests from that of cultivated land. The Cordillera
of the coast is intersected by several ravines, very uniformlv
directed from south-east to north-west. This phenomenon
is general from the Quebrada of Tocume, between Pe tares
and Caracas, as far as Porto Cabello. It would seem as if
the impulsion had everywhere come from the south-east;
and this fact is the more striking, as the strata of gneiss and

when we killed that bad and ambitious captain. We chose a caballero
of Seville, Fernando de Guzman, for king : and we swore fealty to him,
as is done to thyself. I was named quarter-master-general : and because
I did not consent to all he willed, he wanted to kill me. But I killed this
new king, the captain of his guards, his lieutenant-general, his chaplain,
a woman, a knight of the order of Rhodes, two ensigns, and five or six
domestics of the pretended king. I then resolved to punish thy ministers
and thy auditors (counsellors of the audiencia). I named captains and
sergeants: these again wanted to kill me, but I had them all hanged.
In the midst of these adventures we navigated for eleven months, till we
reached the mouth of the river. We sailed more than fifteen hundred
leagues. God knows how we got through that great mass of water. I
advise thee, O great King, never to send Spanish fleets into that accursed
river. God preserve thee in his holy keeping."

This letter was given by Aguirre to the vicar of the island of Mar-
fareta, Pedro de tontreras, in order to be transmitted to King Philip II.
Fray Pedro Simon, Provincial of the Franciscans in New Grenada, saw
several manuscript copies of it both in America and in Spain. It wag
printed, for the first time, in 1723, in the History of the Province of
Venezuela, by Oviedo, vol. i, p. 206. Complaints no less violent, on
the conduct of the monks of the 16th century, were addressed directly to
Ihe pope by the Milanese traveller, Girolamo Benzoni.
* See vol. i, p. 164.

SB . HOT SPRINGS OF LA TRINCHERA.

mica-slate in the Cordillera of the coast are generally di-
directed from the south-west to the north-east. Most of
these ravines penetrate into the mountains at their southern
declivity, without crossing them entirely. But there is an
opening (abra) on the meridian of Nueva Valencia, which
leads towards the coast, and by which a cooling sea-breeze
penetrates every evening into the valleys of Aragua. This
breeze rises regularly two or three hours after sunset.

By this abra, the farm of Barbula, and an eastern branch
of the ravine, a new road is being constructed from Va-
lencia to Porto Cabello. It will be so short, that it will
require only four hours to reach the port ; and the traveller
will be able to go and return in the same day from the coast
to the valleys of Aragua. lu order to examine this road, we
set out on the 26th of February in the evening for the farm
of Barbula.

On the morning of the 27th we visited the hot springs of
La Trinchera, three leagues from Valencia. The ravine is
very large, and the descent almost continual from the banks
of the lake to the sea-coast. La Trinchera takes its name
from some fortifications of earth, thrown up in 1677 by the
French buccaneers, who sacked the town of Valencia. The
hot springs (and this is a remarkable geological fact,) do not
issue on the south side of the mountains, like those of Ma-
riara, Onoto, and the Brigantine; but they issue from the
chain itself, almost at its northern declivity. They are much
more abundant than any we had till then seen, forming a
rivulet which, in times of the greatest drought, is two feet
deep and eighteen wide. The temperature of the water,
measured with great care, was 9O3° of the centigrade ther-
mometer. Next to the springs of Urijino, in Japan, which
are asserted to be pure water at 100° of temperature, the
waters of the Trinchera of Porto Cabello appear to be the
hottest in the world. "We breakfasted near the spring;
eggs plunged into the water were boiled in less than four
minutes. These waters, strongly charged with sulphuretted
hydrogen, gush out from the back of a hill rising one hun-
dred and fifty feet above the bottom of the ravine, and tend-
ing from south-south-east to north-north-wp«t The rock
from which the springs gush, is a real coarse-grained granite,
resembling that of the Rincon del Diablo, in the mountains

VEGETATION OF THE BASIN. 80

of Mariara. Wherever the waters evaporate it. the air, they
form sediments and incrustations of carbonate of lime; pos-
sibly they traverse strata of primitive limestone, so common
in the mica-slate and gneiss of the coasts of Caoucas. We
were surprised at the luxuriant vegetation that surrounds
the basin ; mimosas with slender pinnate leaves, clusias, and
fig-trees, have pushed their roots into the bottom of a pool,
the temperature of which is 85° ; and the branches of these
trees extended over the surface of the water, at two or three
inches distance. The foliage of the mimosas, though con-
stantly enveloped in the hot vapours, displayed the most
beautiful verdure. An arum, with a woody stem, and with
large sagittate leaves, rose in the very middle of a pool the
temperature of which was 70°. Plants of the same species
vegetate in other parts of those mountains at the brink of
torrents, the temperature of which is not 18°. What is still
more singular, forty feet distant from the point whence the
springs gush out at a temperature of 90°, other springs are
found perfectly cold. They all follow for some time a parallel
direction; and the natives showed us that, by digging a hole
between the two rivulets, they could procure a bath of any
given temperature they pleased. It seems remarkable, that
in the hottest as well as the coldest climates, people display
the same predilection for heat. On the introduction of
Christianity into Iceland, the inhabitants would be baptized
only in the hot springs of Hecla: and in the torrid zone,
in the plains, as well as on the Cordilleras, the natives flock
from all parts to the thermal waters. The sick, who come
to La Trmchera to use vapour-baths, form a sort of frame-
work over the spring with branches of trees and very slender
reeds. They stretch themselves naked on this frame, which
appeared to me to possess little strength, and to be danger-
ous of access. The liio de Aguas Calientes runs towards the
north-east, and becomes, near the coast, a considerable river,
swarming with great crocodiles, and contributing, by its
inundations, to the insalubrity of the shore.

We descended towards Porto Cabello, having constantly
the river of hot water on our right. The road is extremely
picturesque, and the waters roll down on the shelves of
rock. We mipht have fancied we were gazing on the cas-
cades of the iieuss, that flows down Mount St. Gotbard;

40 GEOLOGICAL PHENOMENON.

but what a contrast in the vigour and richness of the veg©»
tation ! The white trunks of the cecropia rise majestically
amid bignonias and melastomas. They do not disappear tiJl
we are within a hundred toises above the level of the ocean.
A small thorny palm-tree extends also to this limit; the
slender pinnate leaves of which look as if they had been
curled toward the edges. This tree is very common in
these mountains ; but not having seen either its fruit or its
flowers, we are ignorant whether it be the piritu palm-tree
of the Caribbees, or the Cocos aculeata of Jacquin.

The rock on this road presents a geological phenome-
non, the more remarkable as the existence of real stratified
granite has lung been disputed. Between La Trinchera and
the Hato de Cambury a coarse-grained granite appears,
which, from the disposition of the spangles of mica, collected
in small groups, scarcely admits of confounding with gneiss,
or with rocks of a schistose texture. This granite, divided
into ledges of two or three feet thick, is directed 52° north-
east, and slopes to the north-west regularly at an angle of
from 30° or 40°. The feldspar, crystallized in prisms with
four unequal sides, about an inch long, passes through every
variety of tint from a flesh-red to yellowish white. The
mica, united in hexagonal plates, is black, and sometimes
green. The quartz predominates in the mass; and is ge-
nerally of a milky white. I observed neither hornblende,
black schorl, nor rutile titanite, in this granite. In
some ledges we recognised round masses, of a blackish
gray, very quartzose, and almost destitute of mica. They
are from one to two inches diameter; and are found in
every zone, in all granite mountains. These are not im-
bedded fragments, as at Greiflenstein in Saxony, but aggre-
gations of particles which seem to have been subjected to
partial attractions. I could not follow the line of junc-
tion of the gneiss and granitic formations. According to
angles taken in the valleys of Aragua, the gneiss appears to
descend below the granite, which must consequently be of
a more recent formation. The appearance of a stratified
granite excited my attention the more, because, having had
the direction of the mines of Fichtelberg in Franconia for
several years, I was accustomed to see granites divided into
ledges of three or four feet thick, but little inclined, and

FOBDS OF THE GUATGUAZA. 41

forming masses like towers, or old ruins, at the summit of
the highest mountains.*

The heat became stifling as we approached the coast. A
reddish vapour veiled the horizon. It was near sunset, arid
the breeze was not yet stirring. We rested in the lonely
farms known under the names of the Hato de Cambury and
' the House of the Canarian' (Casa del Isleno). The river of
hot water, along the banks of which we passed, became deeper.
A crocodile, more than nine feet long, lay dead on the
strand. We wished to examine 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 we were obliged to
relinquish our design and remount our horses. When we
arrived at the level of the sea, the road turned eastward, and
crossed a barren shore a league and a half broad, resembling
that of Cumana. We there found some scattered cactuses,
a sesuvium, a few plants of Coccoloba uvifera, and along the
coast some avicennias and mangroves. We forded the Guay-
guaza and the E-io Estevan, which, by their frequent over-
flowing, form great pools of stagnant water. Small rocks of
meandrites, madrepores, and other corals, either ramified or
with a rounded surface, rise in this vast plain ; and seem to
attest the recent retreat of the sea. JBut these masses,
which are the habitations of polypi, are only fragments im-
bedded in a breccia with a calcareous cement. I say a
breccia, because we must not confound the fresh and white
corallites of this very recent littoral formation, with the
corallites blended in the mass of transition-rocks, grau-
wacke, and black limestone. We were astonished to find
in this uninhabited spot a large Parkinsonia aculeata loaded
with flowers. Our ootanical works indicate this tree as
peculiar to the New World ; but during five years we saw it
only twice in a wild state, once in the plains of the Rio
Guayguaza, and once in the llanos of Cumana, thirty leagues

* At Ochsenkopf, at Rudolphstein, at Epprechtstein, at Luxburg, and
at Schneeberg. The dip of the strata of these granites of Fichtelberg is
generally only from 6" to 10°, rarely (at Scheeberg) 18°. According to
the dips I observed in the neighbouring strata of gneiss and mica-slate, 1
should think that the granite of Fichtelberg is very ancient, and serves as
a basis for other formations ; but the strata of grUnstein, and the disse-
minated tin-ore which it contains, may lead us to doubt its great an*
tiquity, from the analogy of the granites of Saxony containing tin.

i2 AEEIVAL AT POETO CABELLO.

from the coast, near la Villa del Pao, but there was reason
to beaeve that this latter place had once been a conttco, or
cultivated enclosure. Everywhere else on the continent of
America we saw the Parkinsonia, like the Plumeria, only in
the gardens of the Indians.

At Porto Cabello, as at La Gruayra, it is disputed whether
the port lies east or west of the town, with which the com-
munications are the most frequent. The inhabitants believe
that Porto Cabello is north-north-west of Nueva Valencia ;
and my observations give a longitude of three or four
minutes more towards the west.

We were received with the utmost kindness in the house
of a French physician, M. Juliac, who had studied medicine
at Montpelier. His small house contained a collection of
things the most various, but which were all calculated to
interest travellers. We found works of literature and
natural history ; notes on meteorology ; skins of the jaguar
and of large aquatic serpents ; live animals, monkeys, arma-
dilloes, and birds. Our host was principal surgeon to the
royal hospital of Porto Cabello, and was celebrated in the
country for his skilful treatment of the yellow fever.
During a period of seven years he had seen six or eight
thousand persons enter the hospitals, attacked by this
cruel malady. He had observed the ravages that the epi-
demic caused in Admiral Ariztizabal's fleet, in 1793. That
fleet lost nearly a third of its men; for the sailors were
almost all unseasoned Europeans, and held unrestrained
intercourse with the shore. M. Juliac had heretofore treated
the sick as was commonly practised in Terra Firma, and in
the island, by bleeding, aperient medicines, and acid drinks.
In this treatment no attempt was made to raise the vital
powers by the action of stimulants, so that, in attempting to
allay the fever, the languor and debility were augmented.
In the hospitals, where the sick were crowded, the mortality
was often thirty-three per cent, among the white Creoles ;
and sixty-five in a hundred among the Europeans recently
disembarked. Since a stimulant treatment, the use of opium,
of benzoin, and of alcoholic draughts, has been substituted
for the eld debilitating method, the mortality has con-
siderably diminished. It was believed to be reduced to
twenty in a hundred among Europeans, and ten among

BATAOES OP EPIDEMICS. 48

Creoles;* even when black vomiting, and haemorrhage from
the nose, ears, and gums, indicated a high degree of exacer-
bation in the malady. I relate faithfully what was then
pi ven as the general result of observation: but I think, in
these numerical comparisons, it must not be forgotten, that,
notwithstanding appearances, the epidemics of several suc-
cessive years do not resemble each other ; and that, in order
to decide on the use of fortifying or debilitating remedies,
(if indeed this difference exist in an absolute sense,) we
must distinguish between the various periods of the malady.
The climate of Porto Cabello is less ardent than that of
La G-uayra. The breeze there is stronger, more frequent,
and more regular. The houses do not lean against rocks
that absorb the rays of the sun during the day, and emit
caloric at night, and the an- can circulate more freely between
the coast and the mountains of Ilaria. The causes of the
insalubrity of the atmospere must be sought in the shores
that extend to the east, as far as the eye can reach, towards
the Punta de Tucasos, near the fine port of Chichiribiche.
There are situated the salt-works ; and there, at the begin-
ning of the rainy season, tertian fevers prevail, and easily
degenerate into asthenic fevers. It is affirmed that the
mestizoes who are employed in the salt-works are more
tawny, and have a yellower skin, when they have suifered
several successive years from those fevers, which are called
* the malady of the coast.' The poor fishermen, who dwell
on this shore, are of opinion that it is not the inundations
of the sea, and the retreat of the salt-water, which render
the lands covered with mangroves so unhealthful ;f they

• I have treated in another work of the proportions of mortality in the
yellow fever. (Nouvelle Espagne, vol. ii, p. 777, 785, and 867.) At
Cadiz the average mortality was, in 1800, twenty per cent ; at Seville, in
1801, it amounted to sixty per cent. At Vera Cruz the mortality does
not exceed twelve or fifteen per cent, when the sick can be properly
attended. In the civil hospitals of Paris the number of deaths, one year
with another, is from fourteen to eighteen per cent.; but it is asserted
tlrit a great number of patients enter the hospitals almost dying, or at a
very advanced time of life.

t In the West India Islands all the dreadful maladies which prevail
during the wintry season, have been for a long time attributed to the
south winds. These winds convey the emanations of the mouths of tht
Orinoco and of the small rivers ol Terra Firma toward the high latitude*.

44 TEE SALT-WORKS.

believe that the insalubrity of the air is owing to the fresh
water, that is, to the overflowings of the Guayguaza and Este-
\an, the swell of which is so great and sudden in the months
of October and November. The banks of the Rio Estevan
have been less insalubrious since little plantations of maize
and plantains have been established; and, by raising and
hardening the ground, the river has been confined within
narrower limits. A plan is formed of giving another issue
to the Rio San Estevan, and thus to render the environs of
Porto Cabello more wholesome. A canal is to lead the
waters toward that part of the coast which is opposite the
island of Guayguaza.

The salt-works of Porto Cabello somewhat resemble those
of the peninsula of Araya, near Cumana. The earth, how-
ever, which they lixivate by collecting the rain-water into
small basins, contains less salt. It is questioned here, as
at Cumana, whether the ground be impregnated with saline
particles because it has been for ages covered at intervals
with sea-water evaporated by the heat of the sun, or
whether the soil be muriatiferous, as in a mine very poor
in native salt. I had not leisure to examine this plain with
the same attention as the peninsula of Araya. Besides,
does not this problem reduce itself to the simple question,
whether the salt be owing to new or very ancient inunda-
tions? The labouring at the salt-works of Porto Cabello
being extremely unhealthy, the poorest men alone engage
in it. They collect the salt in little stores, and afterwards
sell it to the shopkeepers in the town.

During our abode at Porto Cabello, the current on the
coast, generally directed towards the west,* ran from west
to east. This upward current (corriente por arriba), is
very frequent during two or three months of the year, from
September to November. It is believed to be owing to
some north-west winds that have blown between Jamaica
and Cape St. Antony in the island of Cuba.

* The wrecks of the Spanish ships, burnt at the island of Trinidad, at
the time of its occupation by the English in 1797, were carried by the
general or rotary current to Punta Brava, near Porto Cabello. This
general current toward the east, from the coasts of Paria to the isthmus
of Panama and the western extremity of the island of Cuba, was the
subject of a violent dispute between Don Diego Columbus, Oviedo, and
the pilot Ai.nlres, in the sixteenth century.

COAST-DEFENCES. 46

Tho military defence of the coasts of Terra Firma rests
on six points : the castle of San Antonio at Cumana ;
the Morro of Nueva Barcelona; the fortifications of La
Gruayra, (mounting one hundred and thirty-four guns) ;
Porto Cabello ; fort San Carlos, (at the mouth of the lake
jf Maracaybo) ; and Car thagena. Porto Cabello is, next to
Carthagena, the most rjiportant fortified place. The town
of Porto Cabello is quite modern, and the port is one of
the finest in the world. Art has had scarcely any-
thing to add to the advantages which the nature of the
spot presents. A neck of land stretches first towards the
north, and then towards the west. Its western extremity
is opposite to a range of islands connected by bridges, and
so close together that they might be taken for another neck
of land. These islands are all composed of a calcareous
breccia of extremely recent formation, and analagous to
that on the coast of Cumana, and near the castle of Araya.
It is a conglomerate, containing fragments of madrepores
and other corals cemented by a limestone basis and grains
of sand. We had already seen this conglomerate near the
Rio Guayguaza. By a singular disposition of the ground
the port resembles a basin or a little inland lake, the south-
ern extremity of which is filled with little islands covered
with mangroves. The opening of the port towards the west
contributes much to the smoothness of the water.* One
vessel only can enter at a time ; but the largest ships of the
line can anchor very near land to take in water. There is
no other danger in entering the harbour than the reefs of
Punta Brava, opposite which a battery of eight guns has
been erected. Towards the west and south-west we see the
fort, which is a regular pentagon with five bastions, the
battery of the reef, and the fortifications that surround the
ancient town, founded on an island of a trapezoidal form.
A bridge and the fortified gate of the Staccado join the old
to the new town; the latter is already larger than the

• It is disputed at Porto Cabello whether the port takes its name
from the tranquillity of its waters, " which would not move a hair
(cabello)," or (which is more probable) derived from Antonio Cabello,
one of the fishermen with whom the smugglers of Cura9oa had formed a
connexion at the period when the first haml*t was constructed on thifl
Iwlf-desert coast

46 POPULATION OF PORTO CAEELLO.

former, though considered only as its suburb. The bottom
of the basin or lake which forms the harbour of Porto
Cabello, turns behind this suburb to the soutVwest. It is
a marshy ground filled with noisome and stagnant water.
The town, which has at present nearly nine thousand inha-
bitants, owes its origin to an illicit commerce, attracted to
these shores by the proximity of the town of Burburata,
which was founded in 1549. It is only since the adminis-
tration of the Biscayans, and of the company of Ghiipuzcoa,
that Porto Cabello, which was but a hamlet, has been
converted into a well-fortified town. The vessels of La
G-uayra, which is less a port than a bad open roadstead,
come to Porto Cabello to be caulked and repaired.

The real defence of the harbour consists in the low bat-
teries on the neck of land at Punta Brava, and on the reef ;
but from ignorance of this principle, a new fort, the Mira-
dor of Solano* has been constructed at a great expense, on
the mountains commanding the suburb towards the south.
More than ten thousand mules are annually exported from
Porto Cabello. It is curious enough to see these animals
embarked; they are thrown down with ropes, and then
hoisted on board the vessels by means of a machine resem-
bling a crane. Eanged in two files, the mules with difficulty
keep their footing during the rolling and pitching of the ship ;
and in order to frighten and render them more docile, a
drum is beaten during a great part of the day and night.
We may guess what quiet a passenger enjoys, who has the
courage to embark for Jamaica in a schooner laden with
mules.

We left Porto Cabello on the first of March, at sunrise.
We saw with surprise the great number of boats that were
laden with fruit to be sold at the market. It reminded me
of a fine morning at Venice. The town presents in general,
on the side towards the sea, a cheerful and agreeable aspect.
Mountains covered with vegetation, and crowned with
peaks called Las Tetas de Ilaria, which, from their outline
would be taken for rocks of a trap-formation, form the
background of the landscape. Near the coast all is bare,
white, and strongly illumined, while the screen of mountains

* The Mirador is situate eastward oi the Vigia Alta, and south-east of
the battery of the salt -works and the powder-mill.

THE PALO DE VACA, OB COW-rBEB, 47

w clothed with trees of thick foliage that project their vast
shadows upon the brown and rocky ground. On going out
•f the town we visited an aqueduct that had been just
finished. It is five thousand varas long, and conveys the
waters of the Kio Estevan bv a trench to the town. Thia
work has cost more than thirty thousand piastres ; but its
waters gush out in every street.

We returned from Porto Cabello to the valleys of Aragua,
and stopped at the Farm of Barbula, near which, a new
road to Valencia is in the course of construction. We had
heard, several weeks before, of a tree, the sap of which is
a nourishing milk. It is called ' the cow-tree' ; and we were
assured that the negroes of the farm, who drink plentifully
of this vegetable milk, consider it a wholesome aliment.
All the nnlky juices of plants being acrid, bitter, and more
or less poisonous, this account appeared to us very extraor-
dinary ; but we found by experience during our stay at
Barbula, that the virtues of this tree had not been exag-
gerated. This fine tree rises like the broad-leaved star-
apple.* Its oblong and pointed leaves, rough and alternate,
are marked by lateral ribs, prominent at the lower surface,
and parallel. Some of them are ten inches long. We
did not see the flower : the fruit is somewhat fleshy, and
contains one and sometimes two nuts. When incisions are
made in the trunk of this tree, it yields abundance of a
glutinous milk, tolerably thick, devoid of all acridity, and
of an agreeable and balmy smell. It was offered to us in
the shell of a calabash. We drank considerable quantities
of it in the evening before we went to bed, and very early
in the morning, without ieemig the least injurious effect.
I ne viscosity of this milk alone renders it a little disagree-
able. The negroes and the free people who work in the
plantations drink it, dipping into it their bread of maize or
cassava. The overseer of the farm told us that the negroes
grow sensibly fatter during the season when the polo de
vaca furnishes them with most milk. This juice, exposed to
the air, presents at its surface (perhaps in consequence of
the absorption of the atmospheric oxygen) membranes of &
strongly animalized substance, yellowish, stringy, and resem-
bling cheese. These membranes, separated from the rest oj
* Chrysophylluin calnito.

48 MILK OF THE COW-TREE.

the more aqueous liquid, are elastic, almost like caoutchouc 5
but they undergo, in time, the same phenomena of putre-
faction as gelatine. The people call the coagulum that
separates by the contact of the air, cheese. This coagulum
grows sour in the space of five or six days, as I observed in
the small portions which I carried to Nueva Valencia. The
milk contained in a stopped phial, had deposited a little
coagulum ; and, far from becoming fetid, it exhaled con-
stantly a balsamic odour. The fresh juice mixed with cold
water was scarcely coagulated at all ; but on the contact of
nitric acid the separation of the viscous membranes took
place. We sent two bottles of this milk to M. Fourcroy at
Paris : in one it was in its natural state, and in the other,
mixed with a certain quantity of carbonate of soda. The
French consul residing in the island of St. Thomas, under-
took to convey them to him.

The extraordinary tree of which we have been speaking
appears to be peculiar to the Cordillera of the coast, par-
ticularly from Barbula to the lake of Maracaybo. Some
stocks of it exist near the village of San Mateo ; and, ac-
cording to M. Bredemeyer, whose travels have so much
enriched the fine conservatories of Schonbrunn and Vienna,
in the valley of Caucagua, three days journey east of Caracas.
This naturalist found, like us, that the vegetable milk of the
palo de vaca had an agreeable taste and an aromatic smell.
At Caucagua, the natives call the tree that furnishes this
nourishing juice, 'the milk-tree' (arbol del leche). They
profess to recognize, from the thickness and colour of the
foliage, the trunks that yield the most juice ; as the herds-
man distinguishes, from external signs, a good milch-cow.
Isro botanist has hitherto known the existence of this plant.
It seems, according to M. Kunth, to belong to the sapota
family. Long after my return to Europe, I found in the
Description of the East Indies by Laet, a Dutch traveller,
a passage that seems to have some relation to the cow-tree.
"There exist trees," says Laet,* "in the province of Cu-

* " Inter arbores quse sponte hie passim nascuntur, memorantur a
scriptoribus Hispanis qusedam quse lacteum quemdam liquorem fundunt,
qui durus admodum evadit instar gummi, et suavem odorem de se fundit ;
aliee quse liquorem quemdam edunt, instar lactis coagulati, qui in cibis ab
ipsis usurpatur sine noxa." (Among the trees growing here, it ifl re«

BENEFICENCE OF KATUBE. 49

a>ftj.a, the sap of which much resembles curdled milk, and
ailbrds a salubrious nourishment."

Amidst the great number of curious phenomena which I
have observed in the course of my travels, I confess there
are few that have made BO powerful an impression on me
as the aspect of the cow-tree. Whatever relates to milk
or to corn, inspires an interest which is not merely that
of the physical knowledge of things, but is connected with
another order of ideas and sentiments. We can scarcely
conceive how the human race could exist without farina-
ceous substances, and without that nourishing juice which
the breast of the mother contains, and which is appro-
priated to the long feebleness of the infant. The amy-
laceous matter of corn, the object of religious veneration
among so many nations, ancient and modern, is diffused in
the seeds, and deposited in the roots of vegetables ; milk,
which serves as an aliment, appears to us exclusively the
produce of animal organization. Such are the impressions
we have received in our earliest infancy : such is also
the source of that astonishment created by the aspect of
the tree just described. It is not here the solemn shades
of forests, the majestic course of rivers, the mountains
wrapped in eternal snow, that excite our emotion. A few
drops of vegetable juice recall to our minds all the power-
fulness and the fecundity of nature. On the barren flank
of a rock grows a tree with coriaceous and dry leaves. Its
large woody roots can scarcely penetrate into the stone.
For several months of the year not a single shower moistens
its foliage. Its branches appear dead and dried ; but when
the trunk is pierced there flows from it a sweet and nourish-
ing milk. It is at the rising of the sun that this vegetable
fountain is most abundant. The negroes and natives are
then seen hastening from all quarters, furnished with large
bowls to receive the milk, which grows yellow, and thickens
at its surface. Some empty their bowls under the tree
itself, others carry the juice home to their children.

marked by Spanish writers that there are some which pour out a milky
juice which soon grows solid, like gum, affording a pleasant odour; and
also others that give out a liquid which coagulates like cheese, and which
they eat at meals without any ill effects). Descriptio Indiarum Ocidew-
talinm, lib. 18.

VOL. II. B

50 ALIMENTARY PROPERTIES OF TREES-

ID examining the physical properties of animal and vege-
table products, science displays them as closely linked
together ; but it strips them of what is marvellous, and
perhaps, therefore, of a part of their charms. Nothing
appears isolated ; the chemical principles that were believed
to be peculiar to animals are found in plants ; a common
chain links together all organic nature.

Long before chemists had recognized small portions of
wax in the pollen of flowers, the varnish of leaves, and the
whitish dust of our plums and grapes, the inhabitants of the
Anctes of Quindiu made tapers with the thick layer of wax
that covers the trunk of a palm-tree.* It is but a few
year? since we discovered, in Europe, caseum, the basis of
cheese, in the emulsion of almonds ; yet for ages past, in
the mountains of the coast of Venezuela, the milk of a tree,
and Vhe cheese separated from that vegetable milk, have
beeii considered as a salutary aliment. How are we to
account for this singular course in the development of
knowledge? How have the unlearned inhabitants of one
hendsphere become cognizant of a fact which, in the other,
so long escaped the sagacity of the scientific ? It is because
a small number of elements and principles differently com-
bined are spread through several families of plants ; it is
because the genera and species of these natural families are
not equally distributed in the torrid, the frigid, and the
temperate zones; it is that tribes, excited by want, and
deriving almost all their subsistence from the vegetable
kingdom, discover nutritive principles, farinaceous and ali-
mentary substances, wherever nature has deposited them
in the sap, the bark, the roots, or the fruits of vegetables.
That amylaceous fecula which the seeds of the cereal plants
furnish in all its purity, is found united with an acrid and
sometimes even poisonous juice, in the roots of the arums,
the Tacca pinnatifida, and the Jatropha manihot. The
savage of America, like the savage of the South Sea
islands, has learned to dulcify the fecula, by pressing and
separating it from its juice. In the milk of plants, and in
the milky emulsions, matter extremely nourishing, albumen,
caseum, and sugar, are found mixed with caoutchouc and
with deleterious and caustic principles, such as nurphine
* Coroxylon andicola.

MILK-PRODUCING PLANTS. 51

and hydrocyanic acid.* These mixtures vary not only in
the different families, but also in the species which belong
to the same genus. Sometimes it is morphine or the nar-
cotic principle, that characterises the vegetable milk, as in
some papaverous plants ; sometimes it is caoutchouc, as in
the hevea and the castilloa ; sometimes albumen and caseum,
as in the cow-tree.

The lactescent plants belong chiefly to the three families
of the euphorbiaceae, the urticea?, and the apocineffif. Since,
on examining the distribution of vegetable forms over the
globe, we find that those three families are more nume-
rous in species in the low regions of the tropics, we must
thence conclude, that a very elevated temperature contri-
butes to the elaboration of the milky juices, to the formation
of caoutchouc, albumen, and caseous matter. The sap of
the palo de vaca furnishes unquestionably the most striking
example of a vegetable milk in which the acrid and de-
leterious principle is not united with albumen, caseum,
and caoutchouc : the genera euphorbia and asclepias, how-
ever, though generally known lor their caustic properties,
already present us with a few species, the juice of which
is sweet and harmless. Such are the Tabayba dulce of the
Canary Islands, which we have already mentioned,^ and the
Asclepias lactifera of Ceylon. Burman relates that, in the
latter country, when cow's milk is wanting, the milk of this
asclepias is used; and that the aliments commonly pre-
pared with animal milk are boiled with its leaves. It may
be possible, as Decandolle has well observed, that the
natives employ only the juice that flows from the young
plant, at a period when the acrid principle is not yet deve-
loped. In fact, the first shoots of the apocyneous plants are
eaten in several countries.

* Opium contains morphine, caoutchouc, &c.

t After these three great families follow the papaveracese, the chico-
raceae, the lobeliacese, the campanulaceae, the sapoteae, and the cucurbi-
taceoe. The hydrocyanic acid is peculiar to the group of rosaceo-amyg-
dalacese. In the monocotyledonous plants there is no milky juice ; but
the perisperm of the palms, which yields such sweet and agreeable milky
emulsions, contains, no doubt, caseum. Of what nature is the milk of
mushrooms ?

t Euphorbia balsamifera. The milky juice of the Cactus mannllaris if
equally *wert.

x 2

62 ANALYSTS OF VEGETABLE MILK

I have endeavoured by these comparisons to bring into
consideration, under a more general point of view, the milky
juices that circulate in vegetables ; and the milky emulsions
that the fruits of the amygdalaceous plants and palms yield.
I may be permitted to add the result of some experiments
which I attempted to make on the juice of the Carica
papaya during my stay in the valleys of Aragua, though
I was then almost destitute of chemical tests. The juice
has been since examined by Vauquelin, and this celebrated
chemist has very clearly recognized the albumen and caseous
matter ; he compares the milky sap to a substance strongly
animalized, — to the blood of animals; but his researches
were confined to a fermented juice and a coagulum of a
foetid smell, formed during the passage from the Mauritius
to France. He has expressed a wish that some traveller
would examine the milk of the papaw-tree just as it flows
from the stem or the fruit.

The younger the fruit of the carica, the more milk it
yields : it is even found in the germen scarcely fecundated.
In proportion as the fruit ripens, the milk becomes less abun-
dant, and more aqueous. Less of that animal matter which
is coagulable by acids and by the absorption of atmospheric
oxygen, is found in it. As the whole fruit is viscous,* it
might be supposed that, as it grows larger, the coagulable
matter is deposed in the organs, and forms a part of the
pulp, or the ileshy substance. When nitric acid, diluted
with four parts of water, is added drop by drop to the milk
expressed from a very young fruit, a very extraordinary phe-
nomenon appears. At the centre of each drop a gelatinous
pellicle is formed, divided by greyish streaks. These streaks
are simply the juice rendered more aqueous, owing to the
contact of the acid having deprived it of the albumen. At
the same time, the centre of the pellicles becomes opaque,
and of the colour of the yolk of an egg ; they enlarge as if
by the prolongation of divergent fibres. The whole liquid

" The same viscosity is also remarked in the fresh milk of the
palo de vaca. It is no doubt occasioned by the caoutchouc, which ii
not yet separated, and which forms one mass with the albumen and the
caseum, as the butter and the caseum in amimal milk. The juice of a
enphorbiaceous plant (Sapium aucuparium), which also yields caoutchouc
U so glutinous that it is used to catch parrots.

ANALYSIS OF VEGETABLE MILK. 08

assumes at first the appearance of an agate with milky
clouds ; and it seems as if organic membranes were forming
under the eye of the observer. When the coagulum extends
to the whole mass, the yellow spots again disappear. By
agitation it becomes granulous like soft cheese.* The
yellow colour reappears on adding a few more drops of
nitric acid. The acid acts in this instance as the oxygen of
the atmosphere at a temperature from 27° to 35° ; for the
white coagulum grows yellow in two or three minutes, when
exposed to the sun. After a few hours the yellow colour
turns to brown, no doubt because the carbon is set more
free progressively as the hydrogen, with which it was com-
bined, is burnt. The coagulum formed by the acid becomes
viscous, and acquires that smell of wax which I have
observed in treating muscular flesh and mushrooms (morels)
with nitric acid. According to the fine experiments of Mr.
Hatchett, the albumen may be supposed to pass partly to
the state of gelatine. The coagulum of the papaw-tree,
when newly prepared, being thrown into water, softens, dis-
solves in part, and gives a yellowish tint to the fluid. The
milk, placed in contact with water only, forms also mem-
branes. In an instant a tremulous jelly is precipitated,
resembling starch. This phenomenon is particularly striking
if the water employed be heated to 40° or 60°. The jelly
condenses in proportion as more water is poured upon it.
It preserves a long time its whiteness, only growing yellow
by the contact of a few drops of nitric acid. Guided by the
experiments of Fourcroy and Vauquelin on the juice of the

* The substance which falls down in grumous and filamentous clots is
not pure caoutchouc, but perhaps a mixture of this substance with caseum
and albumen. Acids precipitate the caoutchouc from the milky juice of
the euphorbiums, fig-trees, and hevea; they precipitate the caseum from
the milk of animals. A white coagulum was formed hi phials closely
stopped, containing the milk of the hevea, and preserved among our col-
lections, during our journey to the Orinoco. It is perhaps the develop-
ment of a vegetable acid which then furnishes oxygen to the albumen.
Th6 formation of the coagulum of the hevea, or of real caoutchouc, is
nevertheless much more rapid in contact with the air. The absorption of
atmospheric oxygen is not in the least necessary to the production of
butter which exists already formed in the milk of animals ; but I believe
it cannot be doubted that, in the milk of plants, this absorption produces
the pellicles of caoutchouc, of coagulated albumen, and of caseum, which
we successively formed in vessels exposed to the open air.

64i ANIMAL AND TEGETABLE MILK.

hevea, I mixed a solution of carbonate of soda with the
milk of the papaw. No clot ig formed, even when pure
water is poured on a mixture of the milk with the alkaline
solution. The membranes appear only when, by adding an
acid, the soda is neutralized, and the acid is in excess. I
made the coagulum formed by nitric acid, the juice of
lemons, or hot water, likewise disappear by mixing it with
carbonate of soda. The sap again becomes milky and liquid,
as in its primitive state ; but this experiment succeeds only
when the coagulum has been recently formed.

On comparing the milky juices of the papaw, the cow-tree,
and the hevea, there appears a striking analogy between the
juices which abound in caseous matter, and those in which
caoutchouc prevails. All the white and newly prepared
caoutchouc, as well as the waterproof cloaks, manufactured
in Spanish America by placing a layer of milk of hevea
between two pieces of cloth, exhale an animal and nauseat-
ing smell. This seems to indicate that the caoutchouc, in
coagulating, carries with it the caseum, which is perhaps
only an altered albumen.

The produce of the bread-fruit tree can no more be
considered as bread than plantains before the state of
maturity, or the tuberous and amylaceous roots of the cas-
sava, the dioscorea, the Convolvulus batatas, and the potato.
The milk of the cow-tree contains, on the contrary, a
caseous matter, like the milk of mammiferous animals.
Advancing to more general considerations, we may regard,
with M. Gay-Lussac, the caoutchouc as the oily part, —
the butter of vegetable milk. We find in the milk of
plants caseum and caoutchouc; in the milk of animals,
caseum and butter. The proportions of the two albuminous
and oily principles differ in the various species of animals
and of lactescent plants. In these last they are most fre-
quently mixed with other substances hurtful as food ; but of
which the separation might perhaps be obtained by chemical
processes. A vegetable milk becomes nourishing when it is
destitute of acrid and narcotic principles ; and abounds less
in caoutchouc than in caseous matter.*

* The milk of the lactescent agarics has not been separately analysed ;
it contains an acrid principle in the Agaricus piperatus ? and in other
•pecies it is sweet and harmless. The experiments of MM. Braconnofc,

THE BUTTEH TEEB. 55

Whilst the polo de vaca manifests the immense fecundity
and the bounty of nature in the torrid zone, it also
reminds us of the numerous causes which favour in those
fine climates the careless indolence of man. Mungo Park
has made known the butter-tree of Bambarra, which M. De
Candolle suspects to be of the family of sapotas, as well as
our milk-tree. The plantain, the sago-tree, and the mauritia
of the Orinoco, are as much bread-trees as the rema of the
South Sea. The fruits of the crescentia and the lecythis
serve as vessels for containing food, while the spathes of the
palms, and the bark of trees, furnish caps and garments
without a seam. The knots, or rather the interior cells of

Bouillon-Lagrange, and Vauquelin (Annales de Chimie, vol. xlvi, vol. li,
vol. Ixxix, vol. Ixxx, vol. Ixxxv, have pointed out a great quantity of al-
bumen in the substance of the Agaricus deliciosus, an edible mushroom.
It is this albumen contained in their juice which renders them so hard when
boiled. It has been proved that morels (Morchella esculenta) can be con-
verted into sebaceous and adipocerous matter, capable of being used in the
fabrication of soap. (De Candolle, sur les Proprietes medicinales des
Plantes.) Saccharine matter has also been found in mushrooms by Gun-
ther. It is in the family of the fungi, more especially in the clavariae, phalli,
helvetise, the merulii, and the small gymnopae which display themselves
in a few hours after a storm of rain, that organic nature produces with
most rapidity the greatest variety of chemical principles — sugar, albumen,
adipocire, acetate of potash, fat, ozmazome, the aromatic principles, &c.
It would be interesting to examine, besides the milk of the lactescent
fungi, those species which, when cut in pieces, change their colour on the
contact of atmospheric air.

Though we have referred the palo de vaca to the family of the sapotas,
we have nevertheless found in it a great resemblance to some plants of the
urticeous kind, especially to the fig-tree, because of its terminal stipulae
in the shape of a horn ; and to the brosimum, on account of the struc-
ture of its fruit. M. Kunth would even have preferred this last classifi-
cation ; if the description of the fruit, made on the spot, and the nature
of the milk, which is acrid in the urticese, and sweet in the sapotas, did
not seem to confirm our conjecture. Bredemeyer saw, like us, the fruit,
and not the flower of •*•• o^w .xee. He asserts that he observed [some-
times ?] two seeds, lying one against the other, as in the alligator pear-
tree (Laurus persea). Perhaps this botanist had the intention of ex-
pressing the same conformation of the nucleus that Swartz indicates in the
description of the brosimum : — "nucleus bilobus aut bipartibilis." We
have mentioned the places where this remarkable tree grows : it will bd
easy for botanical travellers to procure the flower of the palo de vaca
and to remove the doubts which still remain, of the family to which •
belongs.

56 CULTIVATION OF COTTOK.

the trinks of bamboos, supply ladders, and facilitate in a
thousard ways the construction of a hut, and the fabrication
of chairs, beds, and other articles of furniture that compose
the wealth of a savage household. In the midst of this
lavish vegetation, so varied in its productions, it requires
very powerful motives to excite man to labour, to rouse him
from his lethargy, and to unfold his intellectual faculties.

Cacao and cotton are cultivated at Barbula. We there
found, what is very rare in that country, two large cylin-
drical machines for separating the cotton from its seed;
one put in motion by an hydraulic wheel, and the other by
& wheel turned by mules. The overseer of the farm, who
had constructed these machines, was a native of Merida.
He was acquainted with the road that leads from Nueva
Valencia, by the way of Gruanare and Misagual, to Varinas ;
and thence by the ravine of Collejones, to the Paramo de
Mucuchies and the mountains of Merida covered with eternal
snows. The notions he gave us of the time requisite for
going from Valencia by Varinas to the Sierra Nevada, and
thence by the port of Torunos, and the Bio Santo Domingo,
to San Fernando de Apure, were of infinite value to us. It
can scarcely be imagined in Europe, how difficult it is to
obtain accurate information in a country where the commu-
nications are so rare ; and where distances are diminished or
exaggerated according to the desire that may be felt to encou-
rage the traveller, or to deter him from his purpose. 1 had
resolved to visit the eastern extremity of the Cordilleras of
New Grenada, where they lose themselves in the paramos
of Timotes and Niquitao. I learned at Barbula, that this
excursion would retard our arrival at the Orinoco thirty-five
days. This delay appeared to us so much the longer, as the
rains were expected to begin sooner than usual. We had
the hope of examining afterwards a great number of moun-
tains covered with perpetual snow, at Quito, Peru, and
Mexico ; and it appeared to me still more prudent to relin-
quish our project of visiting the mountains of Merida, since
by so doing we might miss the real object of our journey,
that of ascertaining by astronomical observations the point
of communication between the Orinoco, the Rio Negro,
ind the river Amazon. We returned in consequence from
Barbula to GKiacara, to take leave of the family of the

CABNIVAL SPOUTS. 57

Marquis del Toro, and pass three days more on the borders
of the lake.

It was the carniva* season, and all was gaiety. The
sports in which the people indulge, and which are called
carnes tollendas* assume occasionally somewhat of a savage
character. Some led an ass loaded with water, and, where-
ever they found a window open, inundated the apartment
within by means of a pump. Others carried bags filled with
hairs of picapica ;t and blew the hair, which causes a great
irritation of the skin, into the faces of those who passed by.

From Gruacara we returned to Nueva Valencia. We
found there a few French emigrants, the only ones we saw
during five years passed in the Spanish colonies. Notwith-
standing the ties of blood which unite the royal families of
France and Spain, even French priests were not permitted
to take refuge in that part of the New World, where man
with such facility finds food and shelter. Beyond the At-
lantic, the United States of America afford the only asylum
to misfortune. A government, strong because it is free, con-
fiding because it is just, has nothing to fear in giving refuge

the proscribed.

We have endeavoured above to give some notions of the
tate of the cultivation of indigo, cotton, and sugar, in the
>rovince of Caracas. Before we quit the valley of Aragua

id its neighbouring coast, it remains for us to speak of the

icao-plantations, which have at all times been considered as
the principal source of the prosperity of those countries.
The province of Caracas,^ at trie end of the eighteenth
century, produced annually a hundred and fifty thousand
'megas, of which a hundred thousand were consumed in
Spain, and thirty thousand in the province. Estimating a
"mega of cacao at only twenty-five piastres for the price
;iven at Cadiz, we find that the total value of the exporta-
tion of cacao, by the six ports of the Capitania General of

* Or "farewell to flesh." The word carnival has the same meaning,
these sports being always held just before the commencement of Lent.

t Dolichos pruriens (cowage).

t The province, not the capitania-general, consequently not including
the cacao plantations of Cqmana, the province of Barcelona, of Maracaybo,
* Yarinas, and of Spanish Guiana.

(58 niEPAiiATioN or CHOCOLATE.

Caracas, amounts to four million eight hundred thousand
piastres. So important an object of commerce merits a
careful discussion ; and I flatter myself, that, from the great
number of materials 1 have collected on all the branches of
colonial agriculture, I shall be able to add something to the
information published by M. Depons, in his valuable work
on the provinces of Venezuela.

The tree which produces the cacao is not at present found
wild in the forests of Terra Firma to the north of the
Orinoco ; we began to find it only beyond the cataracts of
Ature and Maypure. It abounds particularly near the
banks of the Ventuari, and on the Upper Orinoco, between
the Padamo and the Grehette. This scarcity of wild cacao-
trees in South America, north of the latitude of 6°, is a very
curious phenomenon of botanical geography, and yet little
known. This phenomenon appears the more surprising, as,
according to the annual produce of the harvest, the number
of trees in full bearing in the cacao-plantations of Caracas,
Nueva Barcelona, Venezuela, Varinas, and Maracaybo, is
estimated at more than sixteen millions. The wild cacao-
tree has many branches, and is covered with a tufted and
dark foliage. It bears a very small fruit, like that variety
which the ancient Mexicans called tlalcacahuatl. Trans-
planted into the conucos of the Indians of Cassiquiare and
the Bio Negro, the wild tree preserves for several genera-
tions that force of vegetable life, which makes it bear fruit
in the fourth year ; while, in the province of Caracas, the
harvest begins only the sixth, seventh, or eighth year. It
is later in the inland parts than on the coasts and in the
valley of G-uapo. \Ve met with no tribe on the Orinoco
that prepared a beverage with the seeds of the cacao-tree.
The savages suck the pulp of the pod, and throw away the
seeds, which are often found in heaps where they have
passed the night. Though chorote, which is a very weak
infusion of cacao, is considered on the coast to be a very
ancient beverage, no historical fact proves that chocolate,
or any preparation whatever of cacao, was known to the
natives of Venezuela before the arrival of the Spaniards.
It appears to me more probable that the cacao-plantations of
Caracas were suggested by those of Mexico and Gruatimala ;
and that the Spaniards inhabiting Terra Eirma learned the

EARLY USE OF C1IOCOJ.A.TE. 59

cultivation of the cacao-tree, sheltered in its youth by the
foliage of the crythrina and plantain;* the fabrication of
cakes of chocolatl, and the use of the liquid of the same
name, in course of their communications with Mexico, Goia-
timahi, and Nicaragua.

Down to the sixteenth century travellers differed in
opinion respecting the chocolatl. Benzoni plainly says that
it is a drink "titter for hogs than men."t The Jesuit
Acosta asserts, that " the Spaniards who inhabit America
are fond of chocolate to excess ; but that it requires to be
accustomed to that black beverage not to be disgusted at
the mere sight of its froth, which swims on it like yeast
on a fermented liquor." He adds, "the cacao is a prejudice
(una supersticion) of the Mexicans, as the coca is a pre-
judice of the Peruvians." These opinions remind us of
Madame de Sevigne's prediction respecting the use of coffee.
Fernando Cortez and his page, the gentilhombre del gran
Conquistador, whose memoirs were published by Eamusio,
on the contrary, highly praise chocolate, not only as an
agreeable drink, though prepared cold,J but in particular
as a nutritious substance. "He who has drunk one cup,"
says the page of Fernando Cortez, " can travel a whole day
without any other food, especially in very hot climates ; for
chocolate is by its nature cold and refreshing." We shall
not subscribe to the latter part of this assertion ; but we
shall spon have occasion, in our voyage on the Orinoco, and
our excursions towards the summit of the Cordilleras, to
celebrate the salutary properties of chocolate. It is easily
conveyed and readily employed : as an aliment it contains a
large quantity of nutritive and stimulating particles in a
small compass. It has been said with truth, that in the
East, rice, gum, and ghee (clarified butter), assist man in
crossing the deserts; and so, in the New World, cho-

* This process of the Mexican cultivators, practised on the coast of
Caracas, is desciibed in the memoirs known under the title of " Rela-
«ione di certo Gentiluomo del Signor Cortez, Conquistadore del Messico."
(Ramusio, torn, ii, p. 134).

f Benzoni, Istoria del Mondo Nuovo, 1572, p. 104.

£ Father Gili has very clearly shown, from two passages in Torque-
mada (Monarquia Indiana, lib. xiv.) that the Mexicans prepared th«
infusion cold, and that the Spaniards introduced the custom of preparing
chocolate by boiling water with the paste of cacao.

60 THE CACAO UAKA'EST.

co late and the flour of maize, have rendered accessible to
the traveller the table-lands of the Andes, and vast unin-
habited forests.

The cacao harvest is extremely variable. The tree vege-
tates with such vigour that flowers spring out even from the
roots, wherever the earth leaves them uncovered. It suffers
from the north-east winds, even when they lower the tem-
perature only a few degrees. The heavy showers that fall
irregularly after the rainy season, during the winter months,
from December to March, are also very hurtful to the
cacao-tree. The proprietor of a plantation of fifty thousand
trees often loses the value of more than four or five thou-
sand piastres in cacao in one hour. Great humidity is
favourable to the tree only when it augments progressively,
and is for a long time uninterrupted. If, in the season of
drought, the leaves and the young fruit be wetted by a
violent shower, the fruit falls from the stem ; for it appears
that the vessels which absorb water break from being ren-
dered turgid. Besides, the cacao-harvest is one of the most
uncertain, on account of the fatal effects of inclement sea-
sons, and the great number of worms, insects, birds, and
quadrupeds,* which devour the pod of the cacao-tree ; and
this brancr of agriculture has the disadvantage of obliging
the new planter to wait eight or ten years for the fruit of
his labours, and of yielding after all an article of very
difficult preservation.

The finest plantations of cacao are found in the province
of Caracas, along the coast, between Caravalleda and the
mouth of the Bio Tocuyo, in the valleys of Caucagua,
Capaya, Curiepe, and Guapo; and in those of Cupira,
between cape Conare and cape TJnare, near Aroa, Bar-
quesimeto, Guigue, and Uritucu. The cacao that grows
on the banks of the Uritucu, at the entrance of the llanos, in
the jurisdiction of San Sebastian de las Beyes, is considered
to be of the finest quality. Next to the cacao of Uritucu
comes that of Guigue, of Caucagua, of Capaya, and of
Cupira. The merchants of Cadiz assign the first rank to
the cacao of Caracas, immediately after that rf Socomusco ;
and its price is generally from thirty to forty per cent,
higher than that of Guayaquil.

* Parrots, monkeys, agoutis, squirrels, and stags.

EXPORT OF CACAO. 61

It is only since the middle of the seventeenth century,
when the Dutch, tranquil possessors of the island of Curacoa,
awakened, by their smuggling, the agricultural industry of
the inhabitants of the neighbouring coasts, that cacao
has become an object of exportation in the province of
Caracas. We are ignorant of everything that passed in
those countries before the establishment of the Biscay
Company of Guipuzcoa, in 1728. No precise statistical
data have reached us: we only know that the exportation
of cacao from Caracas scarcely amounted, at the beginning
of the eighteenth century, to thirty thousand fanegas a-year.
From 1730 to 1748, the company sent to Spain eight hun-
dred and fifty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-
eight i'anegas, which make, on an average, forty-seven thou-
sand seven hundred fanegas a-year ; the price of the fanega
fell, in 1732, to forty-five piastres, when it had before kept
at eighty piastres. In 1763 the cultivation had so much
augmented, that the exportation rose to eighty thousand
six hundred and fifty-nine fanegas.

In an official document, taken from the papers of the
minister of finance, the annual produce (la cosecha) of the
province of Caracas is estimated at a hundred and thirty-
five thousand fauegas of cacao; thirty -three thousand of
which are for home consumption, ten thousand for other
Spanish colonies, seventy-seven thousand for the mother-
country, fifteen thousand for the illicit commerce with the
French, English, Dutch, and Danish colonies. From 1789
to 1793, the importation of cacao from Caracas into Spain
was, on an average, seventy-seven thousand seven hundred
aud nineteen fanegas a-year, of which sixty-five thousand
seven hundred and sixty-six were consumed in the country,
and eleven thousand nine hundred and fifty-three exported
to France, Italy, and Germany.

The late wars have had much more fatal effects on the
cacao trade of Caracas than on that of Guayaquil. On
account of the increase of price, less cacao of the first quality
has been consumed in Europe. Instead of mixing, as was
done formerly for common chocolate, one quarter of the
cacao of Caracas, with three-quarters of that of Guayaquil,
the latter has been employed pure in Soain. We nii'st here

62 EXHAUSTION OF TITE SOIL.

remark, that a groat deal of cacao of an inferior quality,
such as that of Muranon, the liio Negro, Honduras, and
the island of St. Lucia, bears the name, in commerce, of
Guayaquil cacao. The exportation from that port amounts
only to sixty thousand fanegas; consequently it is two-
thirds less than that of the ports of the Capitania- General
of Caracas.

Though the plantations of cacao have augmented in the
provinces of Cumana, Barcelona, and Maracaybo, in pro-
portion as they have diminished in the province of Caracas,
it is still believed that, in general, this ancient branch of
agricultural industry gradually declines. In many parts
coffee and cotton-trees progressively take place of the cacao,
of which the lingering harvests weary the patience of the
cultivator. It is also asserted, that the new plantations of
cacao are less productive than the old; the trees do not
acquire the same vigour, and yield later and less abundant
fruit. The soil is still said to be exhausted ; but probably
it is rather the atmosphere that is changed by the progress
of clearing and cultivation. The air that reposes on a virgin
soil covered with forests is loaded with humidity and those
gaseous mixtures that serve for the nutriment of plants,
and arise from the decomposition of organic substances.
When a country has been long subjected to cultivation, it
is not the proportions between the azote and oxygen that
vary. The constituent bases of the atmosphere remain
unaltered ; but it no longer contains, in a state of suspen-
sion, those binary and ternary mixtures of carbon, hydrogen,
and nitrogen, which a virgin soil exhales, and which are
regarded as a source of fecundity. The air, purer and less
charged with miasmata and heterogeneous emanations, be-
comes at the same time drier. The elasticity of the vapours
undergoes a sensible diminution. On land long cleared,
and consequently little favourable to the cultivation of the
cacao-tree (as, for instance, in the West India Islands), the
fruit is almost as small as that of the wild cacao-tree. It is
on the banks of the Upper Orinoco, after having crossed the
Llanos, that we find the true country of the cacao-tree,
thick forests, in which, on a virgin soil, and surrounded by
an atmosphere continually humid, the tree? furnish, from

ADULTERATION OF CACAO.

the fourth year, abundant crops. "Wherever the soil is not
exhausted, the fruit lias become by cultivation larger and
bitter, but also later.

On seeing the produce of cacao gradually dimmish in
Terra Firma, it may be inquired, whether the consumption
will diminish in the same proportion in Spain, Italy, and
the rest of Europe ; or whether it be not probable, that by
the destruction of the cacao plantations, the price will
augment sufficiently to rouse anew the industry of the
cultivator. This latter opinion is generally admitted by
those who deplore, at Caracas, the diminution of so ancient
and profitable a branch of commerce. In proportion as
civilization extends towards the humid forests of the inte-
rior, the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazon, or towards
the valleys that furrow the eastern declivity of the Andes
the new planters will find lands and an atmosphere equally
favourable to the culture of the cacao-tree.

The Spaniards, in general, dislike a mixture of vanilla
with the cacao, as irritating the nervous system ; the fruit,
therefore, of that orchideous plant is entirely neglected in
the province of Caracas, though abundant crops of it might
be gathered on the moist and feverish coast between Porto
Cabello and Ocumare; especially at Turiamo, where the
fruits of the Epidendrum vanilla attain the length af eleven
or twelve inches. The English and the Anglo-Americans
often seek to make purchases of vanilla at the port of La
Guayra, but the merchants procure with difficulty a very
small quantity. In the valleys that descend from the chain
of the coast towards the Caribbean Sea, in the province of
Truxillo, as well as in the Missions of Guiana, near the
cataracts of the Orinoco, a great quantity ol vanilla might
be collected; the produce of which would be still more
abundant, if, according to the practice of the Mexicans, the
plant were disengaged, from time to time, from the creeping
plants by which it is entwined and stifled.

The hot and fertile valleys of the Cordillera of the coast
of Venezuela occupy a tract of land which, on the west,
towards the lake of Maracaybo, displays a remarkable
variety of scenery. I shall exhibit in one view, to close
this chapter, the facts I have been able to collect -espectmg

$£ CORDILLERA OF THE COAST.

the quality of the soil and the metallic riches of tLe districts
oF Area, of Barquesnneto, and of Carora.

From tne Sierra Nevada of Merida, and the paramos of
Niquitao, Bocono, and Las Rosas,* which contain the valu-
able bark-tree, the eastern Cordillera of New Granada t
decreases in height so rapidly, that, between the ninth and
tenth degrees of latitude, it forms only a chain of little
mountains, which, stretching to the north-east by the Altar
and Torito, separates the rivers that join the Apure and
the Orinoco from those numerous rivers that flow either
into the Caribbean Sea or the lake of Maracaybo. On this
dividing ridge are built the towns of Nirgua, San Felipe
el Fuerte, Barquesioeto, and Tocuyo. The first three are
in a very hot climate; but Tocuyo enjoys great coolness,
and we heard with surprise, that, beneath so fine a sky, the
inhabitants have a strong propensity to suicide. The
ground rises towards the south; for Truxillo, the lake of
IJrao, from which carbonate of soda is extracted, and La
Grita, all to the east of the Cordillera, though no farther
distant, are four or five hundred toises high.

On examining the law which the primitive strata of the
Cordillera of the coast follow in their dip, we believe we
recognize one of the causes of the extreme humidity of the
land bounded by this Cordillera and the ocean. The dip of
the strata is most frequently to the north-west ; so that the
waters flow in that direction on the ledges of rock; and
form, as we have stated above, that multitude of torrents
and rivers, the inundations of which become so fatal to the

* Many travellers, who were monks, have asserted that the little
Paramo de Las Rosas, the height of which appears to be more than
1,600 toises, is covered with rosemary, and the red and white roses of
Europe grow wild there. These roses are gathered to decorate the altars
in the neighbouring villages on the festivals of the church. By what
accident has our Rosa centifolia become wild in this country, while we
nowhere found it in the Andes of Quito and Peru ? Can it really be the
rose-tree of our garden ?

f The bark exported from the port of Maracaybo does not come from
the territory of Venezuela, but from the mountains of Pamplona in New
Grenada, being brought down the .'Rio de San Faustino, that flows into
the lake of Maracaybo. (Pombsv Noticias sobre las Quinas,. 1814,
p. 65.) Some is collected near Mtcida, in the ravine of Viscucucuy.

Vc-

COPPER-MINES OF AROA.

health of the inhabitants, from cape Codera as far»a/j<
kke of Maracaybo.

Among the rivers which descend north-east toward the
coast of Porto Cabello, and La Punta de Hicacos, the most
remarkable are those of Tocuyo, Aroa, and Yaracuy. Were
it not for the miasmata which infect the atmosphere, the val-
leys of Aroa and of Yaracuy would perhaps be more popu-
lous than those of Aragua. Navigable rivers would even
give the former the advantage of facilitating the exportation
of their own crops of sugar and cacao, and that of the pro-
ductions of the neighbouring lands ; as the wheat of Quibor,
the cattle of Monai, and the copper of Aroa. The mines
from which this copper is extracted, are in a lateral valley,
opening into that of Aroa ; and which is less hot, and less
unhealthy, than the ravines nearer the sea. In the latter
the Indians have their gold-washings, and the sou conceals
rich copper-ores, which no one has yet attempted to extract.
The ancient mines of Aroa, after having been long neglected,
have been wrought anew by the care of Don Antonio Hen-
riquez, whom we met at San Fernando on the borders of the,
Apure. The total produce of metallic copper is twelve or
fit teen hundred quintals a year. This copper, known at
Cadiz by the name of Caracas copper, is of excellent quality.
It is even preferred to that of Sweden, and of Coquimbo in
Chile. Part of the copper of Aroa is employed for making
bells, which are cast on the spot. Some ores of silver have
been recently discovered between Aroa and Nirgua, near
Guanita, in the mountain of San Pablo. Grains of gold
are found in all the mountainous lands between the Rio
Yaracuy, the town of San Felipe, Nirgua, and Barque-
simeto; particularly in the Rio de Santa Cruz, in which the
Indian gold-gatherers have sometimes found lumps of the
value of four or five piastres. Do the neighbouring rocks
of mica-slate and gneiss contain veins ? or is the gold dis-
seminated here, as in the granites of Guadarama in Spain,
and of the Fichtelberg in Franconia, throughout the whole
mass of the rock? Possibly the waters, in filtering through
it, bring together the disseminated grains of gold; in
which case every attempt to work the rock would be useless.
In the Savana de la Miel, near the town of Barquesimeto, a
ihaft has been sunk in a black shining slate resembling

VOL. II. F

CO MCNTCIPALITT OF KEGBOEB.

ampelite. The minerals extracted from this shaft, which
were sent to me at Caracas, were quartz, non-auriferous
pyrites, and carbonated lead, crystallized in needles of a
silky lustre.

In the early times of the conquest the working of the
mines of Nirgua and of Buria* was begun, notwithstanding
the incursions of the warlike nation of the Griraharas. In
this very district the accumulation of negro slaves in 1553
gave rise to an event bearing some analogy to the insur-
rection in St. Domingo. A negro slave excited an insur-
rection among the miners of the Real de San Felipe de
Buria. He retired into the woods, and founded, with two
hundred of his companions, a town, where he was proclaimed
king. Miguel, this new king, was a friend to pomp and
parade. He caused his wife &uiomar, to assume the title of
queen; and, according to Ovtedo, he appointed ministers
and counsellors of state, officers of the royal household, and
even a negro bishop. He soon after ventured to attack the
neighbouring town of Nueva Segovia de Barquesimeto ; but,
being repulsed by Diego de Losada, he perished in the conflict.
This African monarchy was succeeded at Nirgua by a republic
of Zamboes, the descendants of negroes and Indians. The
whole municipality (cabildo) is composed of men of colour
to whom the king of Spain has given the title of " his
faithful and loyal subjects, the Zamboes of JSTirgua." Few
families of Whites will inhabit a country where the system
of government is so adverse to their pretensions ; and the
little town is called in derision La republica de Zambos y
Mulatos.

If the hot vallies of Aroa, of Taracuy, and of the Rio
Tocuyo, celebrated for their excellent timber, be rendered
feverish by luxuriance of vegetation, and extreme atmo-
spheric humidity, it is different in the savannahs of Monai
and Carora. These Llanos are separated by the moun-
tainous tract of Tocuyo and Nirgua from the great plains of
La Portuguesa and Calabozo. It is very extraordinary to
see barren savannahs loaded with miasmata. No marshy
ground is found there, but several phenomena indicate a

* The valley of Buria, and the little river of the same name, com-
municate with the valley of the Rio Coxede, or the Rio de Barque*

INFLAMMABLE EXHALATIONS. 67

disengagement of hydrogen.* When travellers, who ore not
acquainted with natural inflammable gases, are shown the
Cueva del Serrito de Monai, the people of the country love
to frighten them by setting fire to the gaseous combination
which is constantly accumulated in the upper part of the
cavern. M^y we attribute the insalubrity of the atmosphere
to the same causes as those which operate in the plains be-
tween Tivoli and Home, viz., disengagements of sulphuretted
hydrogen ?f Possibly, also, the mountainous lands, near
the llanos of Monai, may have a baneful influence on the
surrounding plains. The south-easterly winds may convey
to them the putrid exhalations that rise from the ravine
of Villegas, and from La Sienega de Cabra, between Carora
and Carache. I am desirous of collecting every circum-
stance having a relation to the salubrity of the air ; for, in a
matter so obscure, it is only by the comparison of a great num-
ber of phenomena, that we can hope to discover the truth.

The barren yet feverish savannahs, extending from Ear-
quesimeto to the eastern shore of the lake of Maracaybo, are
partly covered with cactus; but the good silvester-cochineal,
known by the vague name of grana de Carora, comes from a
more temperate region, between Carora and Truxillo, and

* What is that luminous phenomenon known under the name of the
Lantern (farol) of Maracaybo, which is perceived every night toward the
seaside as well as in the inland parts, at Merida for example, where M.
Palacios observed it during two years? The distance, greater than 40
leagues, at which the light is observed, has led to the siipposition that it
might be owing to the effects of a thunderstorm, or of electrical explo-
sions which might daily take place in a pass in the mountains. It is
asserted that, on approaching the farol, the rolling of thunder is heard.
Others vaguely allege that it is an air-volcano, and that asphaltic soils,
like those of Mena, cause these inflammable exhalations which are so
constant in their appearance. The phenomenon is observed on a moun-
tainous and uninhabited spot, on the borders of the Rio Cutatumbo, near
its junction with the Rio Sulia. The situation of the farol is such that,
being nearly in the meridian of the opening (boca) of the lake of Mara-
caybo, navigators are guided by it as by a lighthouse.

t Don Carlos del Pozo has discovered in this district, at the bottom of
the Quebrada de Moroturo, a stratum of clayey earth, black, strongly
soiling the fingers, emitting a powerful smell of sulphur, and inflaming
spontaneously when slightly moistened and exposed for a long time to
the rays of the tropical sun. The detonation of this muddy substance if
rery violent.

* 5fi

68 MOUNTAINS OF TACABIGUA.

particularly from the valley of the Eio Muci ju,* to the
of Merida. The inhabitants altogether neglect this produc-
tion, so much sought for in commerce.

CHAPTEE XVII.

Mountains which separate the Valleys of Aragua from the Llanos of
Caracas.— Villa de Cura. — Parapara. — Llanos or Steppes. — Calabozo.

THE chain of mountains, bordering the lake of Tacarigua
towards the south, forms in some sort the northern shore of
the great basin of the Llanos or savannahs of Caracas. To
descend from the valleys of Aragua into these savannahs, it
is necessary to cross the mountains of Guigue and of Tucu-
tunemo. Prom a peopled country embellished by culti-
vation, we plunge into a vast solitude. Accustomed to the
aspect of rocks, and to the shade of valleys, the traveller
beholds with astonishment these savannahs without trees,
these immense plains, which seem to ascend to the horizon.

Before I trace the scenery of the Llanos, or of the region
of pasturage, I will briefly describe the road we took
from Nueva Valencia, by Villa de Cura and San Juan, to
the little village of Ortiz, at the entrance of the steppes.
We left the valleys of Aragua on the 6th of March before
sunrise. We passed over a plain richly cultivated, keeping
along the south-west side of the lake of Valencia, and cross-
ing the ground left uncovered by the waters of the lake.
AVe were never weary of admiring the fertility of the soil,
covered with calabashes, water-melons, and plantains. The
rising of the sun was announced by the distant noise of the
howling monkeys. Approaching a group of trees, which rise
in the midst of the plain, between those parts which were
anciently the islets of Don Pedro and La Negra, we saw
numerous bands of araguatos 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 carrying

* This little river descends from the Paramo de los Conejos, and flow*
csio the Rio Albarregas.

EXAGGERATED TALES. 69

their young on their shoulders. The howling monkeys,
which live in society in different parts of America, every-
where resemble eacn other in their manners, though the
species are not always the same. The uniformity with
A\liichthe araguatos* perform their movements is extremely
striking. Whenever the branches of neighbouring trees do
not touch each other, the male who leads the party sus-
pends himself by the callous and prehensile part of his
tail ; and, letting fall the rest of his body, swings himself
till in one of his oscillations he reaches the neighbouriug
branch. The whole file performs the same movements on
the same spot. It is almost superfluous to add how dubious
is the assertion of Ulloa, and so many otherwise well-
informed travellers, according to whom, the marimondos,f
the araguatos, and other monkeys with a prehensile tail,
form a sort of chain, in order to reach the opposite side
of a river.J We had opportunities, during five years, of
observing thousands of these animals; and for this very
reason we place no confidence in statements possibly
invented by the Europeans themselves, though repeated by
the Indians of the Missions, as if they had been transmitted
to them by their fathers. Man, the most remote from civi-
lization, enjoys the astonishment he excites in recounting
the marvels of his country. He says he has seen what he
imagines may have been seen by others. Every savage is a
hunter, and the stories of hunters borrow from the imagi-
nation in proportion as the animals, of which they boast the
artifices, are endowed with a high degree of intelligence.
Hence arise the fictions of which foxes, monkeys, crows,
and the condor of the Andes, have been the subjects in both
hemispheres.

The araguatos are accused of sometimes abandoning their
young, that they may be lighter for flight when pursued by
the Indian hunters. It is said that mothers have been seen
removing their young from their shoulders, and throwing
them down to the foot of the tree. I am inclined to believe
that a movement merely accidental has been mistaken for

• Simia ursina. t Simia belzebuth.

% Ulloa has not hesitated to represent in an engraving this extraordi-
nary feat of the monkeys with a prehensile tail. — See Viage 6 la America
Meridional (Madrid, 1748).

70 HOWLING OF THE APES.

one premeditated. The Indians have a dislike and a pre-
dilection for certain races of monkeys ; they love the viu-
ditas, the titis, and generally all the little sagoins ; while
the araguatos, on account of their mournful aspect, and
their uniform howling, are at once detested ana abused.
In reflecting on the causes that may facilitate the pro-
pagation of sound in the air during the night, I thought
it important to determine with precision the distance at
which, especially in damp and stormy weather, the howling
of a band of araguatos is heard. I believe I obtained proof
of its being distinguished at eight hundred toises distance.
The monkeys which are furnished with four hands cannot
make excursions in the Llanos; and it is easy, amidst vast
plains covered with grass, to recognize a solitary group of
trees, whence the noise proceeds, and which is inhabited by
howling monkeys. Now, by approaching or withdrawing
from this group of trees, the maximum of the distance may
be measured, at which the howling is heard. These dis-
tances appeared to me sometimes one-third greater during
the night, especially when the weather was cloudy, very hot,
and humid.

The Indians pretend that when the araguatos fill the
forests with their howling, there is always one that chaunts
as leader of the chorus. The observation is pretty accurate.
During a long interval one solitary and strong voice is gene-
rally distinguished, till its place is taken by another voice of
a different pitch. We may observe from time to time the
same instinct of imitation among frogs, and almost all
animals which live together and exert their voices in union.
The Missionaries further assert, that, when a female among
the araguatos is on the point of bringing forth, the choir
suspends its bowlings till the moment of the birth of the
young. I could not myself judge of the accuracy of this
assertion ; but I do not believe it to be entirely unfounded.
I have observed that, when an extraordinary incident, the
moans for instance of a wounded araguato, fixed the atten-
tion of the band, the bowlings were for some minutes
suspended. Our guides assured us gravely, that, " to cure
an asthma, it is sufficient to drink out of the bony drum of
the hyoidal bone of the araguato." This animal having so
eitraordinary a volume of voice, it is supposed that its

TILLAGE OP OUIOUB. 71

larynx must necessarily impart to the water poured into it
the virtue of curing affections of the lungs. Such is the
science of the vulgar, which sometimes resembles that of the
ancients.

We passed the night at the village of Guigue, the latitude
of which I found by observations of Canopus to be 10° 4'
11". The village, surrounded with the richest cultivation,
is only a thousand toises distant from the lake of Tacarigua.
\\'c lodged with an old sergeant, a native of Murcia, a man
of a very original character. To prove to us that he had
studied among the Jesuits, he recited the history of the
creation of the world in Latin. He knew the names of
Augustus, Tiberius, and Diocletian ; and while enjoying the
agreeable coolness of the nights in an enclosure planted with
bananas, he employed himself in reading all that related to
the courts of the Koman emperors. He inquired of us with
earnestness 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, and I prefer remaining as I am."

On leaving Guigue we began to ascend the chain of
mountains, extending on the south of the lake towards
Guacimo and La Palma. From the top of a table-land, at
three hundred and twenty toises of elevation, we saw for the
last time the valleys of Aragua. The gneiss appeared unco-
vered, presenting the same direction of strata, and the same
dip towards the north-west. Veins of quartz, that traverse
the gneiss, are auriferous ; and hence the neighbouring
ravine bears the name of Quebrada del Oro. We heard with
surprise at every step the name of " ravine of gold," in a
country where only one single mine of copper is wrought.
We travelled five leagues to the village of Maria Magdalena,
and two leagues more to the Villa de Cura. It was Sunday,
and at the village of Maria Magdalena the inhabitants were
assembled before the church. They wanted to force our
muleteers to stop and hear mass. We resolved to remain ;
but, after a long altercation, the muleteers pursued their
way. I may observe, that this is the only dispute in whicli
we became engaged from such a cause. Very erroneous ideas

72 SAN LUIS DE CUBA.

are forme* m Europe of the intolerance, and even of the
religious fervour of the Spanish colonists.

San Luis de Cura, or, as it is commonly called, the Villa
de Oura, lies in a very barren valley, running north-west and
south-east, and elevated, according to my barometrical obser-
vations, two hundred and sixty-six toises above the level of
the ocean. The country, with the exception of some fruit-
trees, is almost destitute of vegetation. The dryness of the
plateau is the greater, because (and this circumstance is
rather extraordinary in a country of primitive rocks) several
rivers lose themselves in crevices in the ground. The Eio
de Las Minas, north of the Villa de Cura, is lost in a rock,
again appears, and then is ingulphed anew without reaching
the lake of Valencia, towards which it flows. Cura resembles
a village more than a town. We lodged with a family
who had excited the resentment of government during the
revolution at Caracas in 1797. One of the sons, after
having languished in a dungeon, had been sent to the
Havannah, to be imprisoned in a strong fortress. With
what joy his mother heard that after our return from the
Orinoco, we should visit the Havannah ! She entrusted me
with five piastres, "the whole fruit of her savings." I
earnestly wished to return them to her; but 1 feared to
wound her delicacy, and give pain to a mother, who felt a
pleasure in the privations she imposed on herself. All the
society of the town was assembled in the evening, to admire
in a magic lantern views of the great capitals of Europe.
We were shown the palace of the Tuileries, and the statue
of the Elector at Berlin.

An apothecary who had been ruined by an unhappy pro-
pensity for working mines, accompanied us in our excursion
to the Serro de Chacao, very rich in auriferous pyrites. We
continued to descend the southern declivity of the Cordil-
lera of the coast, in which the plains of Aragua form a
longitudinal valley. We passed a part of the night of the
llth of March at the village of San Juan, remarkable for
its thermal waters, and the singular form of two neighbour-
ing mountains, called the Morros of San Juan. They form
slender peaks, which rise from a wall of rocks with a very
•xtensive base. The wall ia perpendicular, and resembles

OFB LADY OF THE YALENCIAtfS. 73

the Devil's Wall, which surrounds a part of the group of
mountains in the Hartz.* These peaks, when seen from afar
in the Llanos, strike the imagination of the inhabitants of
the plain, who are not accustomed to the least unequal
ground, and the height of the peaks is singularly exag-
gerated by them. They were described to us as being in
the middle of the steppes (which they in reality bound on
the north) far beyond a range of hills called La Galera.
Judging from angles taken at the distance of two miles, these
hiDs are scarcely more than a hundred and fifty-six toises
higher than the village of San Juan, and three hundred and
fifty toises above the level of the Llanos, The thermal
waters glide out at the foot of these hills, which are formed
of transition-limestone. The waters are impregnated with
sulphuretted hydrogen, like those of Mariara, and form a
little pool or lagoon, in which thy thermometer rose only to
31/3°. I found, on the night of the 9th of March, by very
satisfactory observations of the stars, the latitude 01 Villa
de Cura to be 10° 2' 47".

The Villa de Cura is celebrated in the country for tin1
miracles of an image of the Virgin, known by the name oi
Nuestra Setiora de los Valcncianos. This image was found
in a ravine by an Indian, about the middle of the eighteenth
century, when it became the object of a contest between
the towns of Cura and San Sebastian de los Reyes. The
vicars of the latter town asserting that the Virgin had made
her first appearance on the territory of their parish, the
Bishop of Caracas, in order to put an end to the scandal of
this long dispute, caused the image to be placed in the
archives of his bishopric, and kept it thirty years under
seal. It was not restored to the inhabitants of Cura till
1802.

After having bathed in the cool and limpid water of the
little river of San Juan, the bottom of which is of basaltic
griinstein, we continued our journey at two in the morning,
by Ortiz and Parapara, to the Mesa de Paja. The road to
the Llanos being at that time infested with robbers, several
travellers joined us so as to form a sort of caravan. We
proceeded down hill during six or seven hours ; and we
skirted the Cerro de Florei, near which the road turns off
* "Die Teufels Mauer/' near Wernigerode in Germany.

ANCIENT SEA-SHORE.

leading to tee great village of San Jose de Tisnao.
parsed the farms of Luque and Juncalito, to enter the
valleys which, on account of the bad road, and the blue
colour of the slates, bear the names of Malpaso and Pie-
dras Azules.

This ground is the ancient shore of the great basin of
the steppes, and it furnishes an interesting subject of re-
search to the geologist. We there find trap-formations, pro-
bably more recent than the veins of diabasis near the town
of Caracas, which seem to belong to the rocks of igneous
formation. They are not long and narrow streams as in
Auvergne, but large sheets, streams that appear like real
strata. The lithoid masses here cover, if we may use the
expression, the shore of the ancient interior sea; everything
subject to destruction, such as the liquid dejections, and the
scoria} filled with bubbles, has been carried away. These
phenomena are particularly worthy of attention on account
of the close affinities observed between the phonolites and
the amygdaloids, which, containing pyroxenes and horn-
blende-griinsteins, form strata in a transition-slate. The
better to convey an idea of the whole situation and super-
position of these rocks, we will name the formations as they
occur in a profile drawn from north to south.

"We find at first, in the Sierra de Mariara, which belongs
to the northern branch of the Cordillera of the coast, a
coarse-grained granite ; then, in the valleys of Aragua, on
the borders of the lake, and in the islands, it contains, as
in the southern branch of the chain of the coast, gneiss
and mica-slate. These last-named rocks are auriferous in
the Quebrada del Oro, near Guigue; and between Villa
de Cura and the Morros de San Juan, in the mountain of
Chacao. The gold is contained in pyrites, which are found
sometimes disseminated almost imperceptibly in the whole
mass of the gneiss,* and sometimes united in small veins
of quartz. Most of the torrents that traverse the moun-
tains bear along with them grains of gold. The poor in-
habitants of Villa de Cura and San Juan have sometimes
gained thirty piastres a-day by washing the sand ; but most

* The four metals, which are found disseminated in the granite rocks,
as if they were of contemporaneous formation, are gold, tin, titanium,
rod cobalt.

DESERTED MINES.

75

commonly, in spite of their industry, they do not in a week
find particles of gold of the value of two piastres. Here,
however, as in every place where native gold and auriferous
pyrites are disseminated in the rock, or by the destruction
of the rocks, are deposited in alluvial lands, the people con-
ceive the most exaggerated ideas of the metallic riches of
the soil. But the success of the workings, which depends
less on the abundance of the ore in a vast space of land
than on its accumulation in one point, has not justified
these favourable prepossessions. The mountain of Chacao,
bordered by the ravine of Tucutunemo, rises seven hundred
feet above the village of San Juan. It is formed of gneiss,
which, especially in the superior strata, passes into mica-
slate. AVe saw the remains of an ancient mine, known by
the name of Real de Santa Barbara. The works were
directed to a stratum of cellular quartz,* full of polyhedric
cavities, mixed with iron-ore, containing auriferous pyrites
and small grains of gold, sometimes, it is said, visible to
the naked eye. It appears that the gneiss of the Cerro de
Chacao also furnishes another metallic deposit, a mixture of
copper and silver-ores. This deposit has been the object of
works attempted with great ignorance by some Mexican
miners under the superintendance of M. Avalo. The gal-
leryf directed to the north-east, is only twenty-five toises
long. We there found some fine specimens of blue carbo-
nated copper mingled with sulphate of barytes and quartz ;
but we could not ourselves judge whether the ore contained
any argentiferous fahlerz, and whether it occurred in a
stratum, or, as the apothecary who was our guide asserted,
in real veins. This much is certain, that the attempt at
working the mine cost more than twelve thousand piastres
two years. It would no doubt have been more prudent
have resumed the works on the auriferous stratum of the
Real de Santa Barbara.

* This stratum of quartz, and the gneiss in which it is contained, lie
hor. 8 of the Freyberg compass, and dip 70° to the south-west. At a
hundred toises distance from the auriferous quartz, the gneiss resumes its
ordinary situation, hor. 3-4, with 60° dip to the north-west. A few
strata of gneiss abound in silvery mica, and contain, instead of garnets,
an immense quantity of small octahedrons of pyrites. This silvery gneisi
tesembles that of the famous mine of Himmelsftlrst, in Saxony,
f La Cueva de los Mexicanos.

76 STRATA Of GKETSS.

The zone of gneiss just mentioned is, in the coast-chain
from the sea to the Villa de Cura, ten leagues broad. In
this great extent of land, gneiss and mica-slate are found
exclusively, and they constitute one formation.* Beyond
the town of Villa de Cura and the Cerro de Chacao the
aspect of the country presents greater geognostic variety.
There are still eight leagues of declivity from the table-land
of Cura to the entry of the Llanos ; and on the southern
slope of the mountains of the coast, four different forma-
tions of rock cover the gneiss. We shall first give the
description of the different strata, without grouping them
systematically.

On the south of the Cerro de Chacao, between the ravine
of Tucutunemo and Piedras JSTegras, the gneiss is concealed
beneath a formation of serpentine, of which the composition
varies in the different superimposed strata. Sometimes it
is very pure, very homogeneous, of a dusky olive-green, and
of a conchoidal fracture : sometimes it is veined, mixed with
bluish steatite, of an unequal fracture, and containing
spangles of mica. In both these states I could not discover
in it either garnets, hornblende, or diallage. Advancing
farther to the south (and we always passed over this ground
in that direction) the green of the serpentine grows deeper,
and feldspar and hornblende are recognised in it: it is
difficult to determine whether it passes into diabasis or
alternates with it. There is, however, no doubt of its con-

* This formation, which we shall call gneiss-mica-slate, is pecu-
liar to the chain of the coast of Caracas. Five formations must be dis-
tinguished, as MM. von Buch and Raumer have so ably demonstrated
in their excellent papers on Landeck and the Riesengebirge, namely,
granite, granite -gneiss, gneiss, gneiss -mica- slate, and mica-slate. Geo-
logists whose researches have been confined to a small tract of land,
having confounded these formations which nature has separated in several
countries in the most distiact manner, have admitted that the gneiss and
mica-slate alternate everywhere in superimposed beds, or furnish in-
sensible transitions from one rock to the other. These transitions and
alternating superpositions take place no doubt in formations of granite-
gneiss and gneiss-mica-slate ; but because these phenomena are observed
in one region, it does net follow that in other regions we may not find
very distinct circumscribed formations of granite, gneiss, and mica-slate.
The same considerations may be applied to the formations of serpentine,
which are sometimes isolated, and sometimes belong to the eurite, mica-
elate, and grunstelii.

THE MOHltOS OF SAN JtJAK. 77

taining veins of copper-ore.* At the foot of this mountain
two tine springs gush out from the serpentine. Near tiie
village of San Juan, the granular diabasis appears alone
uncovered, and takes a greenish black hue. The feldspar
intimately mixed with the mass, may be separated into
distinct crystals. The mica is very rare, and thore is no
quartz,. The mass assumes at the surface a yellowish crust
like dolerite and basalt.

In the midst of this tract of trap-formation, the Morros
of San Juan rise like two castles in ruins. They appear
linked to the mornes of St Sebastian, and to La Gralera
which bounds the Llanos like a rocky wall. The Morros of
San Juan are formed of limestone of a crystalline texture ;
sometimes very compact, sometimes spongy, of a greenish-
grey, shining, composed of small grains, and mixed with
scattered spangles of mica. This limestone yields a strong
effervescence with acids. I could not find in it any vestige
of organized bodies. It contains in subordinate strata,
masses of hardened clay of a blackish blue, and carburetted.
These masses are fissile, very heavy, and loaded with
iron ; their streak is whitish, and they produce no efferves-
cence with acids. They assume at their surface, by their
decomposition in the air, a yellow colour. We seem to
recognize in these argillaceous strata a tendency either
to the transition-slates, or to the kieselschiefer (schistose
iasper), which everywhere characterise the black transition-
limestones. When in fragments, they might be taken at
first sight for basalt or hornblende.f Another white lime-
stone, compact, and containing some fragments of shells,
backs the Morros de San Juan. I could not see the line of
junction of these two limestones, or that of the calcareous
formation and the diabasis.

* One of these veins, on which two shafts have been sunk, wa§
directed nor. 2'i, and dipped 80° east. The strata of the serpentine,
where it is stratified with some regularity, run hor. 8, and dip almost
perpendicularly. I found malachite disseminated in this serpentine,
where it passes into griinstein.

•f I had an opportunity of examining again, with the greatest care, the
rocks of San Juan, of Chacao, of Parapara, and of Calabozo, during my
stay at Mexico, where, conjointly with M. del Rio, one of the most di».
tinguished pupils of the school of Freyberg, I formed a geognoatical col
lection for the Colegio de Miaeria of New Spain.

78 SLATE FOBMATICXS.

The transverse valley which descends from Piedras Negraa
and tho village of San Juan, towards Parapara and the
Llanos, is filled with trap-rocks, displaying close affinity
with the formation of green slates, which they cover. Some-
times we seem to see serpentine, sometimes griinstein, and
sometimes dolerite and basalt. The arrangement of these
problematical masses is not less extraordinary. Between
San Juan, Malpaso, and Piedras Azules, they form strata
parallel to each other; and dipping regularly northward
at an angle of 40° or 50°, they cover even the green slates
in concordant stratification. Lower down, towards Para-
para and Ortiz, where the amygdaloids and phonolites are
connected with the griinstein, everything assumes a basaltic
aspect. Balls of griinstein heaped one upon another, form
those rounded cones, which are found so frequently in the
Mittelgebirge in Bohemia, near Bilin, the country of pho-
nolites. The following is the result of my partial obser-
vations.

The griinstein, which at first alternated with strata of
serpentine, or was connected with that rock by insensible
transitions, is seen alone, sometimes in strata considerably
inclined, and sometimes in balls with concentric strata, im-
bedded in strata of the same substance. It lies, near Mal-
paso, on green slates, steatitic, mingled with hornblende,
destitute of mica and grains of quartz, dipping, like the
griinsteins, 45° toward the north, and directed, like them,
75° north-west.

A great sterility prevails where these green slates predo-
minate, no doubt on account of the magnesia they contain,
which (as is proved by the magnesian-limestone of England*)
is very hurtful to vegetation. The dip of the green slates
continues the same ; but by degrees the direction of their
strata becomes parallel to the general direction of the pri-
mitive rocks of the chain of the coast. At Piedras Azules
these slates, mingled with hornblende, cover in concordant
stratification a blackish-blue slate, very fissile, and traversed
by small veins of quartz. The green slates include some
strata of griinstein, and even contain balls of that sub-
stance. I nowhere saw the green slates a.ternate with

* Magnesian limestone is of a straw-yellow colour, and contains
madrepores : it lies beneath red marl, or muriatiferous red sandstone.

CEREO DE FLORES. 79

the black elates of the ravine of Piedras Azules : at tts
of junction these two slates appear rather to pass one into
the other, the green slates becoming of a pearl-grey in pro-
portion as they lose their hornblende.

Farther south, towards Parapara and Ortiz, the slates dis-
appear. They are concealed under a trap-formation more
varied in its aspect. The soil becomes more fertile; the
rocky masses alternate with strata of clay, which appear to
be produced by the decomposition of the griinsteins, the
amygdaloids, and the phonolites.

The griinstein, wThich farther north was less granulous,
and passed into serpentine, here assumes a very different
character. It contains balls of mandelstein, or amygdaloid,
eight or ten inches in diameter. These balls, sometimes a
little flattened, are divided into concentric layers: this is
the effect of decomposition. Their nucleus is almost as hard
as basalt, and they are intermingled with little cavities, owing
to bubbles of gas, filled with green earth, and crystals of
pyroxene and mesotype. Their basis is greyish blue, rather
soft, and showing small white spots which, by the regular
form they present, I should conceive to be decomposed feld-
spar. M. von Buch examined with a powerful lens the
species we brought. He discovered that each crystal of
pyroxene, enveloped in the earthy mass, is separated from
it by fissures parallel to the sides of the crystal. These
fissures seem to be the effect of a contraction which the
mass or basis of the mandelstein has undergone. I some-
times saw these balls of mandelstein arranged in strata, and
separated from each other by beds of grunstein of ten or
fourteen inches thick ; sometimes (and this situation is most
common) the balls of mandelstein, two or three feet in
Hituneter, are found in heaps, and form little mounts with
rounded summits, like spheroidal basalt. The clay which
separates these amygdaloid concretions arises from the de-
composition of their crust. They acquire by the contact of
the air a very thin coating of yellow ochre.

South-west of the village of Parapara rises the little Cerro
de Flores, which is discerned from afar in the steppes
Almost at its foot, and in the midst of the mandelstein
tract we have just been describing, a porphyritic phonolite,
A mass of compact feldspar of a greenish grey, or mountain-

80 GEOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT.

green, containing long crystals of vitreous feldspar, appears
exposed. It is the real porphyrschiefer of Werner ; and it
would bo uimcult to distinguish, in a collection of stouee,
the phonolite of Parapara from that of Biliri, in Bohemia.
It does not, however, here form rocks in grotesque shapes,
but little hills covered with tabular blocks, large plates
extremely sonorous, translucid on the edges, and wounding
the hands when broken.

Such are the successions of rocks, w^hich I described on
the spot as I progressively found them, from the lake of
Tacarigua to the entrance of the steppes. Few places in
Europe display a geological arrangement so well worthy of
being studied. We saw there in succession six formations :
viz., mica-slate-gneiss, green transition-slate, black transi-
tion-limestone, serpentine and griinstein, amygdaloid (with
pyroxene), and phonolite.

I must observe, in the first place, that the substance just
described under the name of griinstein, in every respect
resembles that which forms layers in the mica-slate of
Cabo Blanco, and veins near Caracas. It differs only by
containing neither quartz, garnets, nor pyrites. The
close relations we observed near the Cerro de Chacao,
between the griinstein and the serpentine, cannot surprise
these geologists who have studied the mountains of Eran-
conia and Silesia. Near Zobtenberg* a serpentine rock al-
ternates also with gabbro. In the district of Grlatz the
fissures of the gabbro are filled with a steatite of a greenish
white colour, and the rock which was long thought to
belong to the griinsteinsf is a close mixture of feldspar and
diallage.

* Between Tampadel and Silsterwiz.

•f In the mountains of Bareuth, in Franconia, so abundant in griinstein
and serpentine, these formations are not connected together. The ser-
pentine there belongs rather to the schistose hornblende (hornblend-
schiefer), as in the island of Cuba. Near Guanaxuato, in Mexico, I saw
it alternating with syenite. These phenomena of serpentine rocks form-
ing layers in-eurite (weisstein), in schistose hornblende, in gabbro, and
in syenite, are so much the more remarkable, as the great mass of gar-
netiferous serpentines, which are found in the mountains of gneiss aud
mica-slate, form little distinct mounts, masses not covered by other for
inations. It is nut the same in the mixtures of serpentine and granulate*
limestone.

VARIETIES OF ROCK. 81

The grunsteins of Tucutunemo, which we consider aa
constituting the same formation as the serpentine rock,
contain veins of malachite and copper-pyrites. These same
metalliferous combinations are found also in Franconia, in
the grimsteins of the mountains of Steben and Lichtenberg.
With respect to the green slates of Malpaso, which have all
the characters of transition-slates, they are identical with
those which M. von Buch has so well described, near
Schonau, in Silesia. They contain beds of griinstein, like
the slates of the mountains of Steben just mentioned.*
The black limestone of the Morros de San Juan is also
a transition-limestone. It forms perhaps a subordinate
stratum in the slates of Malpaso. This situation would be
analogous to what is observed in several parts of Switzer-
land, f The slaty zone, the centre of which is the ra>dne of
Piedras Azules, appears divided into two formations. On
some points we think we observe one passing into the other.

The griinsteins, which begin again to the south of these
elates, appear to me to differ little from those found north
of the ravine of Piedras Azules. I did not see there any
pyroxene ; but on the very spot I recognized a number of
crystals in the amygdaloid, which appears so strongly linked
to the griinstein that they alternate several times.

The geologist may consider his task as fulfilled when he
has traced with accuracy the positions of the diverse strata ;
and has pointed out the analogies traceable between these
positions and what has been observed in other countries.
But how can he Avoid being tempted to go back to the origin
of so many different substances, and to inquire how far the
dominion of fire has extended in the mountains that bound
the great basin of the steppes ? In researches on the posi-
tion of rocks we have generally to complain of not suffi-
ciently perceiving the connection between the masses, which
we believe to be superimposed on one another. Here the

* On advancing into the adit for draining the Friedrich-Wilhelmstollen
mine, which I caused to be begun in 1794, near Steben, and which is yet
only 340 toises long, there have successively been found, in the transition-
ilate subordinate strata of pure and porphyritic grtinstein, strata, of
Lydian stone and ampelite (alanuschiefer), and strata of fine-grained
griinstein. All these strata characterise the transition-slates.

t For instance, at the Glyshorn, at the Col de Balm«, &c.

fOL. il O

8:2 PHONOLITIC EOCK8.

difficulty seems to arise from the too intimate and too
numerous relations observed in rocks that are thought not
to belong to the same family.

The phonolite (or leucostine compacts of Cordier) is pretty
generally regarded by all who have at once examined burn-
ing and extinguished volcanos, as a flow of lithoid lava. I
found no real basalt or dolerite; but the presence of
pyroxene in the amygdaloid of Parapara leaves little doubt
of the igneous origin of those spheroidal masses, fissured,
and full of cavities. Balls of this amygdaloid are enclosed
in the grunsteiu; arid this griinstein alternates on one
side with a green slate, on the other with the serpentine
of Tucutunemo. Here, then, is a connexion sufficiently
close established between the phonolite s and the green
slates, between the pyroxenic amygdaloids and the serpen-
tines containing copper-ores, between volcanic substances
and others that are included under the vogue name of
transition-traps. All these masses are destitute of quartz
like the real trap-porphyries, or volcanic trachytes. This
phenomenon is the more remarkable, as the griinsteins
which are called primitive almost always contain quartz in
Europe. The most general dip of the slates of Piedras
Azules, of the griinsteins of Parapara, and of the pyroxenic
amygdaloids embedded in strata of griinstein, does not follow
the slope of the ground from north to south, but is pretty
regular towards the north. The strata incline towards the
chain of the coast, as substances which had not been in fusion
might be supposed to do. Can we admit that so many al-
ternating rocks, imbedded one in the other, have a commor.
origin ? The nature of the phonolites, which are lithoid
lavas with a feldspar basis, and the nature of the green slates
intermixed with hornblende, oppose this opinion. In this
state of things we may choose between two solutions of the
problem in question. In one of these solutions the phono-
lite of the Cerro de Flores is to be regarded as the sole
volcanic production of the tract ; and we are forced to unite
the pyroxenic amygdaloids with the rest of the griinsteins,
in one single formation, that which is so common in the
transition-mountains of Europe, considered hitherto as not
volcanic. In the other solution of the problem, the masses
of phonolite, amygdaloid, and griinstein, which are found

1JTC1INATION OF STRATA. 83

in the south of the ravine of Piedras Azules, arc separated
from the griinsteins and serpentine rocks that cover the
declivity of the mountains north of the ravine. In the
present state of knowledge I find difficulties almost equally
great in adopting either of these suppositions ; but I have
no doubt that, when the real grunsteins (not the hornblende-
griinsteins) contained in the gneiss and mica-slates, shall
have been more attentively examined in other places ; when
the basalts (with pyroxene) forming strata in primitive
rocks* and the diabases and amygdaloids in the transition
mountains, shall have been carefully studied; when the
texture of the masses shall have been subjected to a kind
of mechanical analysis, and the hornblendes better distin-
guished from the pyroxenes,t and the grunsteins from the
dolerites ; a great number of phenomena which now appear
isolated and obscure, will be ranged under general laws.
The phonolite and other rocks of igneous origin at Parapara
are so much the more interesting, as they indicate ancient
eruptions in a granite zone ; as they belong to the shore of
the basin of the steppes, as the basalts of Harutsh belong
to the shore of the desert of Sahara; and lastly, as they
are the only rocks of the kind we observed in the mountains
of the Capitania- General of Caracas, which are also destitute
of trachytes or trap-porphyry, basalts, and volcanic produc-
tions. J

The southern declivity of the western chain is tolerably
steep ; the steppes, according to my barometrical measure-
ments, being a thousand feet lower than the bottom of the
basin of Aragua. From the extensive table-land of the
Villa de Cura we descended towards the banks of the Rio
Tucutunemo, which has hollowed for itself, in a serpentine
rock, a longitudinal valley running from east to west, at
nearly the same level as La Victoria. A transverse valley,
lying generally north and south, led us into the Llanos, by

* For instance, at Krobsdorf, in Silesia, a stratum of basalt has been
recognized in the mica-Mate by two celebrated geologists, MM. von Buch
and Raumer. (Vom Granite des Riesengebirges, 1813.)

t The griinsteins or diabases of the Fichtelgebirge, in Franconia, which
belong to the transition -slate, sometimes conain pyroxenes.

J From the Rio Negro to the coasts of Cumana and Caracas, to tin
esut of the mountains of Mericia, which we did not visit.

o 2

64 BASIN OF THE LLA3TOS.

the villages of Parapara and Ortiz. It grows very narrow
in several parts. Basins, the bottoms of which are perfectly
horizontal, communicate together by narrow passes with
steep declivities. They were, no doubt, formerly small lakes,
which, owing to the accumulation of the waters, or some
more violent catastrophe, have broken down the dykes by
which they were separated. This phenomenon is found
in both continents, wherever we examine the longitudinal
valleys forming the passages of the Andes, the Alps,* or
the Pyrenees. It is probable, that the irruption of the
waters towards the Llanos have given, by extraordinary
rents, the form of ruins to the Morros of San Juan and
of San Sebastian. The volcanic tract of Parapara and Ortis
is now only 30 or 40 toises above the Llanos. The eruptions
consequently took place at the lowest point of the granitic
chain.

In the Mesa de Paja, in the ninth degree of latitude,
we entered the basin of the Llanos. The sun was almost at
its zenith ; the earth, wherever it appeared sterile and des-
titute of vegetation, was at the temperature of 48° or 50°.t
Not a breath of air was felt at the height at which we were
on our mules; yet, in the midst of this apparent calm,
whirls of dust incessantly arose, driven on by those small
currents of air which glide only over the surface of the
ground, and are occasioned by the difference of temperature
between the naked sand and the spots covered with grass.
These sand- winds augment the suffocating heat of the air.
Every grain of quartz, hotter than the surrounding air,
radiates heat in every direction; and it is difficult to ob-
serve the temperature of the atmosphere, owing to these
particles of sand striking against the bulb of the thermo-
meter. All around us the plains seemed to ascend to the
sky, and the vast and profound solitude appeared like an
ocean covered with sea-weed. According to the unequal
mass of vapours diffused through the atmosphere, and the
variable decrement in the temperature of the different strata
of ail*, the horizon in some parts was clear and distinct ; in
other parts it appeared undulating, sinuous, and as if striped.

* For example, the road from the valley of Ursern to the Hospice of
St. Gothard, and thence to Airolo.

f A thermometer, placed in the sand, rose to 38*4° and 40" Reaumur.

DBE1ET ASPECT >F PLAINS. 85

The earth there was confounded 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 horizon.

There is something awful, as well as sad and gloomy,
in the uniform aspect of these steppes. Everything seems
motionless ; scarcely does a small cloud, passing across the
zenith, and denoting the approach of the rainy season, cast
its shadow on the earth. I know not whether the first
aspect of the Llanos excite less astonishment than that of the
chain of the Andes. Mountainous countries, whatever may
be the absolute elevation of the highest summits, have an
anologous physiognomy; but we accustom ourselves with
difficulty to the view of the Llanos of Venezuela and Casa-
nare, to that of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres and of Chaco,
which recal to mind incessantly, and during journeys of
twenty or thirty days, the smooth surface of the ocean. I
had seen the plains or llanos of La Mancha in Spain, and
the heaths (ericeta) that extend from the extremity of Jut-
land, through Luneburg and Westphalia, to Belgium. These
last are really steppes, and, during several ages, only small
portions of them have yielded to cultivation ; but the plains
of the west and north of Europe present only a feeble image
of the immense llanos of South America. It is in the south-
east of our continent, in Hungary, between the Danube and
the Theiss ; in Russia, between the Borysthenes, the Don,
and the Volga, that we find those vast pastures, which seem
to have been levelled by a long abode of the waters, and
which meet the horizon on every side. The plains of Hun-
gary, where I traversed them on the frontiers of Germany,
between Presburg and (Edenburg, strike the imagination of
the traveller by the constant mirage; but their greatest
extent is more to the east, between Czegled, Debreczin, and
Tittel. There they present the appearance of a vast ocean
of verdure, having only two outlets, one near Gran and
Waitzen, the other between Belgrade and Widdin.

The different Quarters of the world have been supposed to
be characterized oy the remark, that Europe has its heaths,
Asia its steppes, Africa its deserts, and America its savan-
nahs ; but by this distinction, contrasts are established that

86 HEATHS AND DESEKTS.

are not founded either on the nature of things, cr the
genius of languages. The existence of a heath always sup-
poses an association of plants of the family of ericas; the
steppes of Asia are not everywhere covered with saline
plants; the savannahs of Venezuela furnish not only the
gramma, but with them small herbaceous mimosas, legu-
mina, and other dicotyledonous plants. The plains of Son-
garia, those which extend between the Don and the Volga,
and the puszta of Hungary, are real savannahs, pasturages
abounding in grasses ;* while the savannahs to the east and
west of the Eocky Mountains and of New Mexico produce
chenopodiums containing carbonate and muriate of soda.
Asia has real deserts destitute of vegetation, in Arabia, in
Grobi, and in Persia. Since we have become better ac-
quainted with the deserts in the interior of Africa, so long
and so vaguely confounded together under the name ot
desert of Sahara (Zahra) ; it has been observed, that in this
continent, towards the east, savannahs and pastures are
found, as in Arabia, situated in the midst of naked and
barren tracts. It is these deserts, covered with gravel
and destitute of plants, which are almost entirely wanting
in the New World. I saw them only in that part of
Peru, between Amotape and Coquimbo, on the shores of
the Pacific. These are called by the Spaniards, not llanos,

* These vast steppes of Hungary are elevated only thirty cr forty
toises above the level of the sea, which is more than eighty leagues
distant from them. (See Wahlenberg's Flora Carpathianica.) Baron
Podmanitzky, an Hungarian nobleman, highly distinguished for his
knowledge of the physical sciences, caused the level of these plains to
be taken, to facilitate the formation of a canal then projected between
the Danube and the Theiss. He found the line of division, or the con-
vexity of the ground, which slopes on each side towards the beds of the
two rivers, to be only thirteen toises above the height of the Danube.
The widely extended pastures, which reach in every direction to the
horizon, are called in the country, Puszta, and, over a distance of many
leagues, are without any human habitation. Plains of this kind, inter-
mingled with marshes and sandy tracts, are found on the western side of
the Theiss, between Czegled, Csaba, Komloss, and Szarwass ; and on the
eastern side, between Debreczin, Karczag, and Szoboszlo. The area of
these plains of the interior basin of Hungary has been estimated, by a
pretty accurate calculation, to be between two thousand five hundred
and three thousand square leagues (twenty to a degree). Between
Caegled, Szolnok, and Ketskemet, the plain resembles a sea of sand.

THE PAMPAS. 87

but the desiertos of Sechura and Atacamez. This solitary
tract is not broad, but it is four hundred and forty leagues
long. The rock pierces everywhere though the quicksands.
No drop of rain ever falls on it; and, like the desert of
Sahara, north of Timbuctoo, the Peruvian desert affords,
near Huaura, a rich mine of native salt. Everywhere else,
in the New World, there are plains desert because not
inhabited, but no real deserts.*

The same phenomena are repeated in the most distant
regions; and, instead of designating those vast treeless
plains in accordance with the nature of the plants they
produce, it seems natural to class them into deserts, steppes,
or savannahs; into bare lands without any appearance of
vegetation, and lands covered with gramina or small plants
of the dicotyledonous tribe. The savannahs of America,
especially those of the temperate zone, have in many works
been designated by the French term prairies; but this
appears to me little applicable to pastures which are often
very dry, though covered with grass of four or five feet in
height. The Llanos and the Pampas of South America are
really steppes. They are covered with beautiful verdure in
the rainy season, but in the cime of great drought they
assume the aspect of a desert. The grass is then reduced to
powder ; the earth cracks ; the alligators and the great ser-
pents remain buried in the dried mud, till awakened from
their long lethargy by the first showers of spring. These
phenomena are observed on barren tracts of fifty or sixty
leagues in length, wherever the savannahs are not traversed
by rivers ; for on the borders of rivulets, and around little
pools of stagnant water, the traveller finds at certain dis-
tances, even during the period of the great droughts, thickets
of mauritia, a palm, the leaves of which spread out like a
fan, and preserve a brilliant verdure.

The steppes of Asia are all beyond the tropics, and form
very elevated table-lands. America also has savannahs of

* We are almost tempted, however, to give the name of desert to lhat
vast and sandy table-land of Brazil, the Campos dos Parecis, which gives
birth to the rivers Tapajos, Paraguay, and Madeira, and which reach'*
the summit of the highest mountains. Almost destitute of veg. tutior., it
reminds us of Gobi, in Mongolia.

88 LBTEL ASPECT OF THE STEPPES.

considerable extent on the backs of the mountains of Mexico,
Peru, and Quito ; but its most extensive steppes, the Llanos
of Cumana, Caracas, and Meta, are little raised above the
level of the ocean, and all belong to the equinoctial zone.
These circumstances give them a peculiar character. They
have not, like the steppes of southern Asia, and the deserts
of Persia, those lakes without issue, those small systems of
rivers which lose themselves either in the sands, or by sub-
terranean nitrations. The Llanos of America incline to the
east and south ; and their running waters are branches of
the Orinoco.

The course of these rivers once led me to believe, that the
plains formed table-lands, raised at least from one hundred
to one hundred and fifty toises above the level of the ocean.
I supposed that the deserts of interior Africa were also at a
considerable height ; and that they rose one above another
as in tiers, from the coast to the interior of the continent.
No barometer has yet been carried into the Sahara. With
respect to the Llanos of America, I found by barometric
heights observed at Calabozo, at the Villa del Pao, and at
the mouth of the Meta, that their height is only forty «.>i
fifty toises above the level of the sea. The fall of the rivers
is extremely gentle, often nearly imperceptible; and theio
fore the least wind, or the swelling of the Orinoco, causes a
reflux in those rivers that flow into it. The Indians believe
themselves to be descending during a whole day, when
navigating from the mouths of these rivera to their sources.
The descending waters are separated from those that flow
back by a great body of stagnant water, in which, the
equilibrium being disturbed, whirlpools are formed very
dangerous for boats.

The chief characteristic of the savannahs or steppes of
South America is the absolute want of hills and inequalities,
— the perfect level of every part of the soil. Accordingly
the Spanish conquerors, who first penetrated from Coro to
the banks of the Apure, did not call them deserts or
savannahs, or meadows, but plains (llanos). Often within a
distance of thirty square leagues there is not an eminence
of a foot high. This resemblance to the surface of the sea
strikes the imagination nost powerfully where the plains ara

BANKS OF THE LLANOS. 89

altogether destitute of palm-trees ; and where the mountains
of the shore and of the Orinoco are so distant that they
cannot be seen, as in the Mesa de Pavones. A person would
be tempted there to take the altitude of the sun with a quad-
rant, if the horizon of the land were not constantly misty on
account of the variable effects of refraction. This equality
of surface is still more perfect in the meridian of Calabozo,
than towards the east, between Cari, La Villa del Pao, and
Nueva Barcelona ; but it extends without interruption from
the mouths of the Orinoco to La Villa de Araure and to
Ospinos, on a parallel of a hundred and eighty leagues in
length; and from San Carles to the savannahs of Caqueat,
on a meridian of two hundred leagues. It particularly cha-
racterises the New Continent, as it does the low steppes ol
Asia, between the Borysthenes and the Volga, between the
Irtish and the Obi. The deserts of central Africa, of Arabia,
Syria, and Persia, Gobi, and Casna, present, on the contrary,
many inequalities, ranges of hills, ravines without water,
and rocks which pierce the sands.

The Llanos, however, notwithstanding the apparent uni-
formity of their surface, present two kinds of inequalities,
which cannot escape the observation of the traveller. The
first is known by the name of banks (bancos) ; they are in
reality shoals in the basin of the steppes, fractured strata of
sandstone, or compact limestone, standing four or five feet
higher than the rest of the plain. These banks are some-
times three or four leagues in length ; they are entirely
smooth, with a horizontal surface; their existence is per-
ceived only by examining their margins. The second species
of inequality can be recognised only by geodesical or baro-
metric le veilings, or by the course of rivers. It is called a
mesa or table, and is composed of small flats, or rather
convex eminences, that rise insensibly to the height of a
lew toises. Such are, towards the east, in the province of
Cumana, on the north of the Villa de la Merced and Can-
delaria, the Mesas of Amana, of Guanipa, and of Jonoro, the
direction of which is south-west and north-east ; and which,
in spite of their inconsiderable elevation, divide the watert
between the Orinoco and the northern coast of Terra Firm a.
The convexity of the savannah alone occasions this partition :
we there find the ' dividing of the waters ' (divortia aqua-

90 MOUNTAIN CHAINS.

rum*), as in Poland, where, far from the Carrathian moun-
tains, the plain itself divides the waters between the Baltic
and the Black Sea. Geograj hers, who suppose the existence
of a chain of mountains wl erever there is a line of divi-
sion, have not failed to mart one in the maps, at the sources
of the Rio Neveri, the Utiare, the Gruarapiche, and the
Pao. Thus the priests of Mongol race, according to ancient
and superstitious custom, erect oboes, or little mounds of
stone, on every point where the rivers flow in an opposite
direction.

The uniform landscape of the Llanos; the extremely
small number of their inhabitants ; the fatigue of travelling
beneath a burning sky, and an atmosphere darkened by
dust ; the view of that horizon, which seems for ever to fly
before us ; those lonely trunks of palm-trees, which have all
the same aspect, and which we despair of reaching, because
they are confounded with other trunks that rise by degrees
on the visual horizon ; all these causes combine to make the
steppes appear far more extensive than they are in reality.
The planters who inhabit the southern declivity of the chain
of the coast see the steppes extend towards the south, as far
as the eye can reach, like an ocean of verdure. They know
that from the Delta of the Orinoco to the province of
Varinas, and thence, by traversing the banks of the Meta,
the Gruaviare, and the Caguan, they can advance three
hundred and eighty leagues t into the plains, first from east
to west, and then from north-east to south-east beyond the
Equator, to the foot of the Andes of Pasto. They know by
the accounts of travellers the Pampas of Buenos Ayres,
which are also Llanos covered with fine grass, destitute
of trees, and filled with oxen and horses become wild.
They suppose that, according to the greater part of our
maps of A merica, this continent has only one chain of moun-
tains, that of the Andes, which stretches from south to
north ; and they form a vague idea of the contiguity of all
the plains from the Orinoco and the Apure to the llio de la
Plata and the Straits of Magellan.

Without stopping here to give a mineralogical description

* " C. Manlium prope jugis [Tauri] ad divortia aquarum castrj
j-5SHis»e." Livy, lib. 38, c. 75.

f This is the diitauce from Timbuctoo to the northern coast of Africa.

POINTS OF RESEMBLANCE.

91

of the transverse chains which divide America front oast to
west, it will be sufficient to notice the general struct-.ro of a
continent, the extremities of which, though situated in cli-
mates little analogous, nevertheless present several features
of resemblance. In order to have an exact idea of the plains,
their configuration, and their limits, we must know the chains
*»f mountains that form their boundaries. We have already
described the Cordillera of the coast, of which the highest
summit is the Silla de Caraccas, and which is linked by the
Paramo de las Rosas to the Nevada de Merida, and the
Andes of New Grenada. We have seen that, in the tenth
degree of north latitude, it stretches from Quibor and Bar-
quesimeto as far as the point of Paria. A second chain of
mountains, or rather a less elevated but much larger group,
extends between the parallels of 3° and 7° from the mouths
of the Guaviare and the Meta to the sources of the Orinoco,
the Marony, and the Essequibo, towards French and Dutch
Guiana. I call this chain the Cordillera of Parime, or of
the great cataracts of the Orinoco. It may be followed for
a length of two hundred and fifty leagues ; but it is less a
chain, than a collection of granitic mountains, separated by
small plains, without being everywhere disposed in lines.
The group of the mountains of Parime narrows considerably
between the sources of the Orinoco and the mountains of
Demerara, in the Sierras of Quimiropaca and Pacaraimo,
which divide the waters between the Carony and the Rio
""arime, or Eio de Aguas Blancas. This is the scene of the
tpeditions which were undertaken in search of El Dorado,
id the great city of Manoa, the Timbuctoo of the New Con-
aent. The Cordillera of Parime does not join the Andes of
Tew Grenada, but is separated from them by a space eighty
agues broad. If we suppose it to have been destroyed in
lis space by some great revolution of the globe (which is
scarcely probable) we must admit that it anciently branched
off from the Andes between Santa Fe de Bogota and Pam-
plona. This remark serves to fix more easily in the memory
of the reader the geographical position of a Cordillera till
now very imperfectly known. A third chain of mountains
unites in 16° and 18° south latitude (by Santa Cruz de
Sierra, the Serranias of Aguapehy, and the famoui

92 THREE DESCRIPTIONS Of PLAINS.

Campos dos Parcels) the Andes of Peru, to the mountains
of Brazil. It is the Cordillera of Chiquitos which widens in
the Capitaiiia de Minas Geraes, and divides the rivers flowing
into the Amazon from those of the Bio de la Plata,* not only
in the interior of the country, in the meridian of ATilla Boa,
but also at a few leagues from the coast, between Rio
Janeiro and Bahia.t

These three transverse chains, or rather these three groups
of mountains stretching from west to east, within the
limits of the torrid zone, are separated by tracts entirely
level, the plains of Caracas, or of the Lower Orinoco ; the
plains of 1iie Amazon and the Rio Negro ; and the plains of
Buenos Ayres, or of La Plata. I use the term plains,
because the Lower Orinoco and the Amazon, far from
flowing in a valley, form but a little furrow in the midst
of a vast level. The two basins, placed at the extremi-
ties of South America, are savannahs or steppes, pasturage
without trees; the intermediate basin, which receives the
equatorial rains during the whole year, is almost entirely
one vast forest, through which no other roads are known
save the rivers. The strong vegetation which conceals the
soil, renders also the uniformity of its level less perceptible ;
and the plains of Caracas and La Plata bear no other name.
The three basins we have just described are called, in the
language of the colonists, the Llanos of Varinas and of
Caracas, the bosques or selvas (forests) of the Amazon, and
the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. The trees not only for the
most part cover the plains of the Amazon, from the Cor-
dillera de Chiquitos, as far as that of Parime; they also
crown these two chains of mountains, which rarely attain
the height of the Pyrenees. % On this account, the vast
plains of the Amazon, the Madeira, and the Bio Negro, are
not so distinctly bounded as the Llanos of Caracas, and the

* There is only a portage or carrying-place of 5,322 bracas between
the Guapore (a branch of the Marmore and of the Madeira), and the Rio
Aguapehy (a branch of the Jaura and of the Paraguay).

t The Cordillera of Chiquitos and of Brazil stretches toward the south-
east, in the government of the Rio Grande, beyond the latitude of 30*
south.

J We must except the most western part of the Cordillera of Chiquitos,
between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra where the summit!

GEOLOGICAL PHENOMENA, 93

Pampas of Buenos Ayres. As the region of forests com-
prises at once the plains and the mountains, it extends from
18° south to 7° and 8° north,* and occupies au extent of
near a hundred and twenty thousand square leagues. This
forest of South America, for in fact there is only one, is six
times larger than France. It is known to Europeans only
on the shores of a few rivers, by which it is traversed ; and
has its openings, the extent of which is in proportion to that
of the forests. We shall soon skirt the marshy savannahs,
between the Upper Orinoco, the Conorichite, and the Cassi-
quiare, in the latitude of 3° and 4°. There are other open-
ings, or as they are called, * clear savannahs,'f in the same
parallel, between the sources of the Mao and the Rio de
Aguas Blancas, south of the Sierra de Pacaraima. These
last savannahs, which are inhabited by Caribs, and nomad
Macusis, lie near the frontiers of Dutch and French
Guiana.

Having noticed the geological constitution of South Ame-
rica, we shall now mark its principal features. The western
coasts are bordered by an enormous wall of mountains, rich
in precious metals wherever volcanic fire has not pierced
through the eternal snow. This is the Cordillera of the
Andes. Summits of trap-porphyry rise beyond three thou-
sand three hundred toises, and the mean height of the
chain J is one thousand eight hundred and fifty toises. It
stretches in the direction of a meridian, and sends into each
hemisphere a lateral branch, in the latitudes of 10° north,
and 16° and 18° south. The first of these two branches,
that of the coast of Caracas, is of considerable length, and
forms in fact a chain. The second branch, the Cordillera of

are covered with snow ; but this colossal group almost belongs to the
Andes de la Paz, of which it forms a promontory or spur, directed toward
the east.

* To the west, in consequence of the Llanos of Manso, and the Pampas
de Huanacos, the forests do not extend generally beyond the parallels of
18° or 19° south latitude; but to the east, in Brazil (in the capitanias of
San Pablo and Rio Grande), as well as in Paraguay, on the borders of the
Parana, they advance as far as 25° south.

f Savannas limpias, that is to say, clear of trees.

t la New Grenada, Quito, and Peru, according to
taken by Bouguer, La Condamine, au.d myself.

94 SMALL ELEYATION OI THE LLAFOS.

Chiquitos and of the sources of the G-uapoie, is very rich in
gold, and widens toward the east, in Brazil, into vast table-
lands, having a mild and temperate climate. Between these
two transverse chains, contiguous to the Andes, an isolated
group of granitic mountains is situated, from 3° to 7° north
latitude; which also runs parallel to the Equator, but, not
passing the meridian of 71°, terminates abruptly towards
the west, and is not united to the Andes of New Grenada.
These three transverse chains have no active volcanos ; we
know not whether the most southern, like the two others,
be destitute of trachytes or trap-porphyry. None of their
summits enter the limit of perpetual snow; and the mean
height of the Cordillera of La Parime, and of the littoral
chain of Caracas, does not reach six hundred toises, though
some of its summits rise fourteen hundred toises above the
level of the sea.* The three transverse chains are separated
by plains entirely closed towards the west, and open towards
the east and south-east. When we reflect on their small
elevation above the surface of the ocean, we are tempted to
consider them as gulfs stretching in the direction of the cur-
rent of rotation. If, from the effect of some peculiar attrac-
tion, the waters of the Atlantic were to rise fifty toises at
the mouth of the Orinoco, and two hundred toises at the
mouth of the Amazon, the flood would submerge more than
the half of South America. The eastern declivity, or the
foot of the Andes, now six hundred leagues distant from the
coast of Brazil, would become a shore beaten by the waves.
This consideration is the result of a barometric measurement,
taken in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, where the
river Amazon issues from the Cordilleras. I found the mean
height of this immense river only one hundred and ninety-
four toises above the present level of the Atlantic. The
intermediate plains, however, covered with forests, are still
five times higher than the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, anc
the grass-covered Llanos of Caracas and the Meta.

Those Llanos which form the basin of the Orinoco, and
which we crossed twice in one year, in the months of March

* We do not reckon here, as belonging to the chain of the coast, th*
Nevados and Paramos of Merida and of Truxillo, which are a prolonga
lion of the Andes of New Grenada.

CONNEXION OF THE PLAINS. 95

and July, communicate with the basin of the Amazon and
the Rio Negro, bounded on one side by the Cordillera of
Chiquitos, and on the other by the mountains of Parime.
The opening which is left between the latter and the
Andes of New Grenada, occasions this communication. The
aspect of the country here reminds us, but on a much
larger scale, of the plains of Lombardv. which also are only
fifty or sixty toises above the level o, 53? ocean ; and are
directed first from La Brenta to Turin, east and west ; and
then from Turin to Coni, north and south. If we were
authorized, from other geological facts, to regard the three
great plains of the Lower Orinoco, the Amazon, and the
Rio de la Plata as basins of ancient lakes,* we should
imagine we perceived in the plains of the Rio Vichada and
the Meta, a channel by which the waters of the upper
lake (those of the plains of the Amazon) forced their way
towards the lower basin, (that of the Llanos of Caracas,)
separating the Cordillera of La Parime from that of the
Andes. This channel is a kind of land-strait. The ground,
which is perfectly level between the Guaviare, the Meta,
and the Apure, displays no vestige of a violent irruption of
the waters ; but on the edge of the Cordillera of JParime,
between the latitudes of 4° and 7°, the Orinoco, flowing in
a westerly direction from its source to the mouth of the
Guaviare,* has forced its way through the rocks, directing
its course from south to north. All the great cataracts, as
we shall soon see, are within the latitudes just named.
When the river has reached the mouth of the Apure in tha*;
very low ground where the slope towards the north is met
by the counter-slope towards the south-east, that is to say,
by the inclination of the plains which rise imperceptibly
towards the mountains 'of Caracas, the river turns anew and
flows eastward. It appeared to me, that it was proper to
fix the attention of the reader on these singular inflexions
of the Orinoco because, belonging at once to two basins, its
course marks, in some sort, even on the most imperfect
maps, the direction of that part of the plains intervening

* In Siberia, the great steppes between the Irtish and the Obi, espe-
cially that of Baraba, full of salt lakes (Tchabakly, Tchany, KarasouK,
•nd Topolony), appear to have been, according to the Chinese traditioi *
even within historical times, an inland sea.

96 ANCIENT NATITE REMAINS.

between New Grenada and tr-e western border of the

mountains of La Parime.

The Llanos or steppes of the Lower Orinoco and of the
Meta, like the deserts of Africa, bear different names in
different parts. From the mouths of the Dragon the Llanos
of Cumana, of Barcelona, and of Caracas or Venezuela,*
follow, running from east to west. Where the steppes turn
towards the south and south-south-west, from the latitude
of 8°, between the meridians of 70° and 73°, we find from
north to south, the Llanos of Varinas, Cawanare, the Meta,
Gruaviare, Caguau, and Caqueta.f The plains of Varinas
contain some few monuments of the industry of a nation
that has diappeared. Between Mijagual and the Cano de la
Hacha, we find some real tumuli, called in the country the
Serillos de los Indios. They are hillocks in the shape of cones,
artificially formed of earth, and probably contain bones, like
the tumuli in the steppes of Asia. A fine road is also
discovered near Hato de la Calzada, between Varinas and
Canagua, five leagues long, made before the conquest, in
the most remote times, by the natives. It is a causeway of
earth fifteen feet high, crossing a plain often overflowed.
Did nations farther advanced in civilization descend from
the mountains of Truxillo and Merido to the plains of the
Bio Apure ? The Indians whom we now find between this
river and the Meta, are in too rude a state to think of
making roads or raising tumuli.

I calculated the area of these Llanos from the Caqueta
to the Apure, and from the Apure to the Delta of the
Orinoco, and found to be it seventeen thousand square

* The following are subdivisions of these three great Llanos, as I
marked them down on the spot. The Llanos of Cumana and New Anda-
lusia include those of Maturin and Terecen, of Amana, Guanipa, Jonoro,
and Cari. The Llanos of Nueva Barcelona comprise those of Aragua,
Pariaguan, and Villa del Pao. We distinguish in the Llanos of Caracas
those of Chaguaramas, Uritucu, Calabozo or Guarico, La Portuguesa,
San Carlos, and Araure.

•f- The inhabitants of these plains distinguish as subdivisions, from the
Rio Portuguesa to Caqueta, the Llanos of Guanare, Bocono, Nutrius or
the Apure, Palmerito near Quintero, Guardalito and Arauca, the Meta,
Apiay near the port of Pachaquiaro, Vichada, Guaviare, Arriari, Inirida,
the Rio Hacha, and Caguan. The limits between the savannahs and the
forests, in the plains that extend from the sources of the Rio Negro U
Putumayo, are not sufficiently known.

IMMENSE EXTENT OF THE PAMPAS. 97

leagues twenty to a degree. The part running from north
to south is almost double that which stretches from east to
west, between the Lower Orinoco and the littoral chain of
I aracas. The Pampas on the north and north-west of
Buenos Ayres, between this city and Cordova, Jujuy, and
the Tucuman, are of nearly the same extent as the Llanos ;
but the Pampas stretch still farther on to the length of 18°
southward ; and the land they occupy is so vast, that they
produce palm-trees at one 01 their extremities, while the
other, equally low and level, is covered with eternal frost.

The Llanos of America, where they extend in the direc-
tion of a parallel of the equator, are three-fourths narrower
th/in the great desert of Africa. This circumstance is very
important in a region where the winds constantly blow from
east to west. The farther the plains stretch in this direc-
tion, the more ardent is their climate. The great ocean of
sand in Africa communicates by Yemen* with Gedrosia and
Beloochistan, as far as the right bank of the Indus. It is
from the effect of winds that have passed over the deserts
situated to the east, that the little basin of the Bed Sea,
surrounded by plains which send forth from all sides
radiant caloric, is one of the hottest regions of the globe.
The unfortunate captain Tuckey relates,f that the centi-
grade thermometer keeps there generally in the night at
34°, and by day from 40° to 44°. We shall soon see that,
even in the westernmost part of the steppes of Caracas, we
seldom found the temperature of the air, in the shade,
above 37°.

* We cannot be surprised that the Arabic should be richer than any
other language of the East in words expressing the ideas of desert, unin-
habited plains, and plains covered with gramina. I could give a list of
thirty-five of these words, which the Arabian authors employ without
always distinguishing them by the shades of meaning which each separate
word expresses. Makadh and kaah indicate, in preference, plains ;
bakadh, a table-land; tafr, mikfar, smlis, mahk, and habaucer, a naked
desert, covered with sand and gravel ; tantifah, a steppe. Zahra means
at once a naked desert and a savannah. The word steppe, or step, is
Russian, and not Tartarian. In the Turco-Tartar dialect a heath is
called tola or tschol. The word ffobi, which Europeans have cor-
rupted into cobi, signifies in the Mongol tongue a naked desert. It ii
equivalent to the scha-mo or khan-hai of the Chinese. A steppe, of
plain covered with herbs, is in Mongol, kudah ; in Chinese, koucma

f Expedition to explore the river Zahir, 1818.

TOL. H. H

98 INFLUENCE ON THE INHABITANTS.

These physical considerations on the steppes of tie New
World are linked with others more interesting, inasmuch aa
t'hey are connected with the history of our speeies. The
great sea of sand in Africa, the deserts without water, are
frequented only by caravans, that take fifty days to traverse
them.* Separating the Negro race from the Moors, and
the Berber and Kabyle tribes, the Sahara is inhabited only
in the oases. It affords pasturage only in the eastern
part, where, from the effect of the trade-winds, the layer of
sand being less thick, the springs appear at the surface of the
earth. In America, the steppes, less vast, less scorching,
fertilized by fine rivers, present fewer obstacles to the inter-
course of nations. The Llanos separate the chain of the
coast of Caracas and the Andes of New Grenada from
the region of forests ; from that woody region of the Orinoco
which, from the first discovery of America, has been inha-
bited by nations more rude, and farther removed from
civilization, than the inhabitants of the coast, and still more
than the mountaineers of the Cordilleras. The steppes,
however, were no more heretofore the rampart of civiliza-
tion than they are now the rampart of the liberty of the
hordes that live in the forests. They have not hindered the
nations of the Lower Orinoco from going up the little
rivers and making incursions to the north and the west.
If, according to the various distribution of animals on the
globe, the pastoral life could have existed in the New
World, — if, before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Llanos
and the Pampas had been filled with those numerous herds
of cows and horses that graze there, Columbus would have
found the human race in a state quite different. Pastoral
nations living on milk and cheese, real nomad races, would
have spread themselves over those vast plains which com-
municate with each other. They would have been seen at
the period of great droughts, and even at that of inunda-
tions, fighting for the possession of pastures ; subjugating
one another mutually ; and, united by the common tie of
manners, language, and worship, they would have risen
to that state of demi-civilization which we observe with
surprise in the nations of the Mongol ana Tartar race.

* This is the maximum of the time, according to Major ReunelL
/Traveia of Mungo Park, voL ii. )

JOURNEY ACROSS THE LLANOS. 99

America would then, like the centre of Asia, haTe had its
conquerors, who, ascending from the plains to the table-
lands of the Cordilleras, and abandoning a wandering life,
would have subdued the civilized nations of Peru and New
Grenada, overturned the throne of the Incas and of the
Zaque,* and substituted for the despotism which is the
fruit of theocracy, that despotism which arises from the
patriarchal government of a pastoral people. In the New
World the human race has not experienced these great
moral and political changes, because the steppes, though
more fertile than those of Asia, have remained without
herds ; because none of the animals that furnish milk in
abundance are natives of the plains of South America ; and
because, in the progressive unfolding of American civiliza-
tion, the intermediate link is wanting that connects the
hunting with the agricultural nations.

We have thought proper to bring together these general
notions on the plains of the New Continent, and the con-
trast they exhibit to the deserts of Africa and the fertile
steppes of Asia, in order to give some interest to the nar-
rative of a journey across lands of so monotonous an aspect.
Having now accomplished this task, I shall trace the route
by which we proceeded from the volcanic mountains of Para-
para and the northern side of the Llanos, to the banks of
the Apure, in the province of Varinas.

After having passed two nights on horseback, and sought
m vain, by day, for some shelter from the heat of the
sun beneath the tufts of the moriche palm-trees, we arrived
before night at the little Hato del Cayman,f called also La
Guadaloupe. It was a solitary house in the steppes, sur-
rounded by a few small huts, covered with reeds and skins.
The cattle, oxen, horses, and mules are not penned, but
wander freely over an extent of several square leagues
There is nowhere any enclosure ; men, naked to the waist and
armed with a lance, ride over the savannahs to inspect the
animals ; bringing back those that wander too far from the
pastures of the farm, and branding all that do not already bear
the mark of their proprietor. These mulattos, who are known

* The Zaque was the secular chief of Cundinamarca. His power was
lhared with the high priest (lama) of Iraca.

f The Farm of the Alligator.

H 2

100 HALT AT THE HATO.

by the name of peones llaneros, are partly freed- men and
partly slaves. They are constantly exposed to the burn-
ing heat of the tropical sun. Their food is meat, dried in
the air, and a little salted; and of this even their horses
sometimes partake. Being always in the saddle, they fancy
they cannot make the slightest excursion on foot. We
found an old negro slave, who managed the farm in the
absence of his master. He told us of herds composed of
several thousand cows, that were grazing in the steppes; yet
we asked in vain for a bowl of milk. "We were offered, in a
calabash, some yellow, muddy, and fetid water, drawn from a
neighbouring pool. The indolence of the inhabitants of the
Llanos is such that they do not dig wells, though they know
that almost everywhere, at ten feet deep, fine springs are
found in a stratum of conglomerate, or red sandstone.
After suffering during one half of the year from the effect
of inundations, they quietly resign themselves, during the
other half, to the most distressing deprivation of water.
The old negro advised us to cover the cup with a linen
cloth, and drink as through a filter, that we might not be
incommoded by the smell, and might swallow less of the
yellowish mud suspended in the water. We did not then
think that we should afterwards be forced, during whole
months, to have recourse to this expedient. The waters of
the Orinoco are always loaded with earthy particles ; they
are even putrid, where dead bodies of alligators are found
in the creeks, lying on banks of sand, or half-buried in the
mud.

No sooner were our instruments unloaded and safely
placed, than our mules were set at liberty to go, as they
say here, para luscar agua, that is, "to search for water."-
There are little pools round the farm, which the animals
find, guided by their instinct, by the view of some scattered
tufts of mauritia, and by the sensation of humid coolness,
caused by little currents of air amid an atmosphere which to
us appears calm and tranquil. When the pools of water
are far distant, arid the people of the farm are too lazy to
load the cattle to these natural watering-places, they confine
them during five or six hours in a very hot stable before
they let them loose. Excess of thirst then augments their
sagacity, sharpening as it were their senses and theii

SEARCH FOE WATER. 101

Instinct. No sooner is the stable opened, than the horses
and mules, especially the latter (for the penetration of these
animals exceeds the intelligence of the horses), rush info
the savannahs. With upraised tails and heads thrown bad:
they run against the wind, stopping from time to time as
if exploring space ; they follow less the impressions of sight
than of smell ; and at length announce, by prolonged neigh-
ings, that there is water in the direction of their course.
All these movements are executed more promptly, and with
readier success, by horses born in the Llanos, and which
have long enjoyed their liberty, than by those that come
from the coast, and descend from domestic horses. In
animals, for the most part, as in man, the quickness of the
senses is diminished by long subjection, and by the habits
that arise from a fixed abode and the progress of culti-
vation.

We followed our mules in search of one of those pools,
whence the muddy water had been drawn, that so ill
quenched our thirst. We were covered with dust, ana
tanned by the sandy wind, which burns the skin even more
than the rays of the sun. We longed impatiently to take
a bath, but we found only a great pool of feculent water,
surrounded with palm-trees. The water was turbid, though,
to our great astonishment, a little cooler than the air.
Accustomed during our long journey to bathe whenever we
6ad an opportunity, often several times in one day, we
hastened to plunge into the pool. We had scarcely begun
to enjoy the coolness of the bath, when a noise which we
heard on the opposite bank, made us leave the water preci-
pitately. It was an alligator plunging into the mud.

We were only at the distance of a quarter of a league
from the farm, yet we continued walking more than an hour
without reaching it. We perceived too late that we had
taken a wrong direction. Having left it at the decline of
day, before the stars were visible, we had gone forward into
^ie plain at hazard. We were, as usual, provided with
i compass, and it might have been easy for us to steer our
course from the position of Canopus and the Southern
Cross; but unfortunately we were uncertain whether, on
\eaving the farm, we had gone towards the east or the south.
We attempted to return to the spot where we had bathed,

102 DANGEBOUS SITUATION.

and we again walked three quarters of an hour without
finding the pool. We sometimes thought we 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, we resolved to seat ourselves beneath the trunk
of a palm-tree, in a spot perfectly dry, surrounded by short
grass ; for the fear of water-snakes is always greater than
that of jaguars among Europeans recently disembarked.
We could not natter ourselves that our guides, of whom we
knew the insuperable indolence, would come in search of us
in the savannah before they had prepared their food and
finished their repast. Whust somewhat perplexed by the
uncertainty of our situation, we were agreeably affected by
hearing from afar the sound of a horse advancing towards us.
The rider was an Indian, armed with a lance, who had just
made the rodeo, or round, in order to collect the cattle
within a determinate space of ground. The sight of two
white men, who said they had lost their way, led him at
first to suspect some trick. We found it difficult to inspire
him with confidence ; he at last consented to guide us to
the farm of the Cayman, but without slackening the gentle
trot of his horse. Our guides assured us that " they had
already begun to be uneasy about us;" and, to justify this
inquietude, they gave a long enumeration of persons who,
having lost themselves in the Llanos, had been found nearly
exhausted. It may be supposed that the danger is immi-
nent only to those who lose themselves far from any habi-
tation, or who, having been stripped by robbers, as has
happened of late years, have been fastened by the body and
hands to the trunk of a palm-tree.

In order to escape as much as possible from the heat of
the day, we set off at two in the morning, with the hope of
reaching Calabozo before noon, 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 spot the southern sky en-
lighten, 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 blows over the plain during
the night : — the waving motion of the grass, wherever it has
attained any height ; everything recalled to our minds the

EFFECTS OP THE MIEAOE. 103

iurface of the ocean. The illusion was augmented when
the disk of the sun appearing on the horizon, repeated its
image by the effects of refraction, and, soon losing its
flattened form, ascended rapidly and straight towards the
zenith.

Sunrise in the plains is the coolest moment of the day ;
but this change of temperature does not make a very lively
impression on the organs. We did not find the thermo-
meter in general sink below 27*5 ; while near Acapulco, at
Mexico, and in places equally low, the temperature at noon
is often 32°, and at sunrise only 17° or 18°. The level surface
of the ground in the Llanos, which, during the day, is never
in the shade, absorbs so much heat that, notwithstanding
the nocturnal radiation toward a sky without clouds, the
earth and air have not time to cool very sensibly from mid-
night to sunrise.

In proportion as the sun rose towards the zenith, and the
earth and the strata of superincumbent air took different
temperatures, the phenomenon of the mirage displayed
itself in its numerous modifications. This phenomenon
is so common in every zone, that I mention it only
because we stopped to measure with some precision the
breadth of the aerial distance between the horizon and the
suspended object. There was a constant suspension, with-
out inversion. 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. The aerial distance was, according to the distance of
the animal, from 3' to 4'. Where tufts of the moriche palm
were found growing in long ranges, the extremities of these
green rows were suspended like the capes which were, for
so long a time, the subject of my observations at Cumana.
A well-informed person assured us, that he had seen, be-
tween Calabozo and Uritucu, the image of an animal in-
verted, without there being any direct image. Niebuhr
made a similar observation in Arabia. We several times
thought we saw on the horizon the figures of tumuli and
towers, which disappeared at intervals, without our being
ible to discern the real shape of the objects. They were
j-erhaps hillocks, or small eminences, situated beyond the

1O4 HEEDS OF WILD A1TLMAL8

ordinary visual horizon. I need not mention those tracts
destitute of vegetation, which appear like large lakes with
an undulating surface. This phenomenon, observed in very
remote times, has occasioned the mirage to receive in
Sanscrit the expressive name of desire of the antelope. We
admire the frequent allusions in the Indian, Persian, and
Arabic poets, to the magical effects of terrestrial refraction.
It was scarcely known to the Greeks and Romans. Proud
of the riches of their soil, and the mild temperature of the
air, they would have felt no envy of this poetry of the
desert. It had its birth in Asia; and the oriental poets
found its source in the nature of the country they in-
habited. They were inspired with the aspect of those vast
solitudes, interposed like arms of the sea or gulfs, between
lands which nature had adorned with her most luxuriant
fertility.

The plain assumes 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 live here free,
rather than wild, without settled habitations, and disdaining
the care and protection of man. In these hot climates,
the oxen, though of Spanish breed, like those of the cold
table-lands of Quito, are of a gentle disposition. A
traveller runs no risk of being attacked or pursued, as we
often were in our excursions on the back of the Cordilleras,
where the climate is rude, the aspect of the country more
wild, and food less abundant. As we approached Calabozo,
we saw herds of roebucks browsing peacefully in the midst
of horses and oxen. They are called matacani; their flesh
is good ; they are a little larger than our roes, and resemble
deer with a very sleek skin, of a fawn-colour, spotted with
white. Their horns appear to me to have single points.
They had little fear of the presence of man : and in herds
of thirty or forty we observed several that were entirely
white. This variety, common enough among the large stags
of the cold climates of the Andes, swprised us in these low
and burning plains. I have since learned, that even the
jaguar, in the hot regions of Paraguay, sometimes affords
albino varieties, the skin of which is of such uniform white-

VEGETATION OF THE PLAIKS. 105

ness that the spots or rings can be distinguished only in the
sunshine. The number of matacani, or little deer,* is so
considerable in the Llanos, that a trade might be carried on
with their skins.f A skilful hunter could easily kill more
than twenty in a day; but such is the indolence of the
inhabitants, that often they will not give themselves the
trouble of taking the skin. The same indifference is evinced
in the chase of the jaguar, a skin of which fetches only one
piastre in the steppes of Varinas, while at Cadiz it costs
four or five.

The steppes that we traversed are principally covered
with grasses of the genera Killingia, Cenchrus, and Pas-
palum.| At this season, near Calabozo and San Jerome
del Pirital, these grasses scarcely attain the height of nine
or ten inches. Near the banks of the Apure and the Por-
tuguesa they rise to four feet in height, so that the jaguar
can conceal himself among them, to spring upon the mulea
and horses that cross the plain. Mingled with these gra-
mina some plants of the dicotyledonous class are found ; as
turneras, malvacese, and, what is very remarkable, little
mimosas with irritable leaves, || called by the Spaniards
dormideras. The same breed of cows, which fatten in
Europe on sainfoin and clover, find excellent nourishment
in the herbaceous sensitive plants. The pastures where
these shrubs particularly abound are sold at a higher price
than others. To the east, in the llanos of Cari and Bar-
celona, the cypura and the craniolaria,§ the beautiful white
flower of which is from six to eight inches long, rise soli-
tarily amid the gramina. The pastures are richest not only
around the rivers subject to inundations, but also wherever
the trunks of palm-trees are near each other. The least
fertile spots are those destitute of trees ; and attempts to
cultivate them would be nearly fruitless. We cannot attri-

* They are called in the country ' Venados de tierrag calientes' (deer
of the warm land*.)

f This trade is carried on, but on a very limited scale, at Carora and
at Barques! m eto.

J Killingia monocephala, K. odorata, Cenchrus pilosus, Vilfa tenacis-
sima, Andropogon plumosum, Panicum micranthum, Poa repens, Paspa-
lum leptostachyum, P. conjugatum, Aristida recurvata. (Nova Genera
et Species Plantarum, vol. i, pp. 84-243.)

|| The sensitive. plant (Mimosa dormiens).

| Cypura grammea. Craniolaria annua (the scorzonera of the natives).

106 PALMS OF THE LLANOS.

bute this difference to the shelter afforded by the palnvfcrees,
in preventing the solar rays from drying and burning up
the soil. I have seen, it is true, trees of this family, in the
forests of the Orinoco, spreading a tufted foliage ; but we
cannot say much for the shade of the palm-tree of the llanos,
the palma de cobija* which has but a few folded and palmate
leaves, like those of the chamaerops, and of which the lower-
most are constantly withered. We were surprised to see
that almost all these trunks of the corypha were nearly of
the same size, viz., from twenty to twenty-four feet high,
and from eight to ten inches diameter at the foot. Nature
has produced few species of palm-trees in such prodigious
numbers. Amidst thousands of trunks loaded with olive-
shaped fruits we found about one hundred without fruit.
May we suppose that there are some trees with flowers
purely monoecious, mingled with others furnished with her-
maphrodite flowers ?

The Llaneros, or inhabitants of the plains, believe that
all these trees, though so low, are many centuries old.
Their growth is almost imperceptible, being scarcely to be
noticed in the lapse of twenty or thirty years. The wood
of the palma de cobija is excellent for building. It is so
hard, that it is difficult to drive a nail into it. The leaves,
folded like a fan, are employed to cover the roofs of the huts
scattered through the Llanos; and these roofs last more
than twenty years. The leaves are fixed by bending the
extremity of the footstalks, which have been beaten before-
hand between two stones, so that they may bend without
breaking.

Beside the solitary trunks of this palm-tree, we find dis-
persed here and there in the steppes a few clumps, real
groves (palmares), in which the corypha is intermingled
with a tree of the proteaceous family, called chaparro by the
natives. It is a new species of rhopala,t with hard and
resonant leaves. The little groves of rhopala are called
chaparales; and it may be supposed that, in a vast plain,
where only two or three species of trees are to be found,

* The roofing palm-tree (Corypha tectorum).

f Resembling the Embothrium, of which we found no species in Soutk
America. The embothriums are represented in American vegetation by
the genera Lomatia and Oreocallis.

UTILITY OF THE PALM-TREK. 107

the chaparro, which affords shade, is considered a highly
valuable plant. The coiypha spreads through the Llanos of
Caracas from Mesa de Peja as far as Guayavol; farther
north and north-west, near Guanare and San Carlos, its
place is taken by another species of the same genus, with
leaves alike palmate but larger. It is called the 'royal
palm of the plains' (palma real de los Llanos).* Other
palm-trees rise south of Guayaval, especially the piritu with
pinnate leaves,t and the moriche (Mauritia flexuosa), cele-
brated by Father Gumilla under the name of arbol de la vida,
or tree of life. It is the sago-tree of America, furnishing
flour, wine, thread for weaving hammocks, baskets, nets,
and clothing. Its fruit, of the form of the cones of the
pine, and covered with scales, perfectly resembles that of
the Calamus rotang. It has somewhat the taste of the
apple. When arrived at its maturity it is yellow within and
red without. The araguato monkeys eat it with avidity;
and the nation of the Guaraounos, whose whole existence, it
may be said, is closely linked with that of the moriche palm-
tree, produce from it a fermented liquor, slightly acid, and
extremely refreshing. This palm-tree, with its large shining
leaves, folded like a fan, preserves a beautiful verdure at the
period of the greatest drought. The mere sight of it pro-
auces an agreeable sensation of coolness, and when loaded
with scaly fruit, it contrasts singularly with the mournful
aspect of the palma de cobija, the foliage of which is always
grey and covered with dust. The Llaneros believe that the
former attracts the vapours in the air ; J and that for this
reason, water is constantly found at its foot, when dug for
to a certain depth. The effect is confounded with the cause.
The moriche grows best in moist places ; and it may rather
be said that the water attracts the tree. The natives of the
Orinoco, by analogous reasoning, admit, that the great
serpents contribute to preserve humidity in a province.
" lou would look in vain for water-serpents," said an old

* This palm-tree of the plains must not be confounded with the palma
real of Caracas and of Curiepe, with pinnate leaves.

t Perhaps an Aipkanes.

j If the head of the moriche were better furnished with leaves than it
generally is, we might perhaps admit that the soil round the tree pre-
serves its humidity through the influence of the shade.

108 OKIGIN OF TUE LLANO8.

Indian of Javita to us gravely, " where there are nc marshes j
because the water ceases to collect when you imprudently
kill the serpents that attract it."

We suffered greatly from the heat in crossing the Mesa
de Calabozo. The temperature of the air augmented sensibly
every time that the wind began to blow. The air was
loaded with dust ; and during these gusts the thermometer
rose to 40° or 41°. We went slowly forward, for it would
have been dangerous to leave the mules that carried our
instruments. Our guides advised us to fill our hats with
the leaves of the rhopala, to diminish the action of the solar
rays on the hair and the crown ol the head. We found
relief from this expedient, which was particularly agreeable,
when we could procure the thick leaves of the pothos or
some other similar plant.

It is impossible to cross these burning plains, without
inquiring whether they have always been in the same state ;
or whether they have been stripped of their vegetation by
some revolution of nature. The stratum of mould now
found on them is in fact very thin. The natives believe
that the palmares and the cJiaparales (the little groves of
palm-trees and rhopala) were more frequent and more exten-
sive before the arrival of the Spaniards. Since the Llanos
have been inhabited and peopled with cattle become wild,
the savannah is often set on fire, in order to ameliorate
the pasturage. Groups of scattered trees are accidently
destroyed with the grasses. The plains were no doubt less
bare in the fifteenth century, than they now are ; yet the
first Conquistadores, who came from Coro, described them
then as savannahs, where nothing could be perceived but
the sky and the turf, generally destitute of trees, and dif-
ficult to traverse on account of the reverberation of heat
from the soiL Why does not the great forest of the Orinoco
extend to the north, on the left bank of that river ? Why
does it not fill that vast space that reaches as far as the
Cordillera of the coast, and which is fertilized by numerous
rivers ? These questions are connected with all that relates
to the history of our planet. If, indulging in geologica/
reveries, we suppose that the steppes of America, and the
desert of Sahara, have been stripped of their vegetation bj
an irruption of the ocean, or that they formed originally tm

FTTMBERS OF THE WILD CATTLE. 109

bottom of an inland sea, we may conceive that thousands of
years have not sufficed for the trees and shrubs to advance
from the borders of the forests, from the skirts of the plains
either naked or covered with turf, toward the centre, and
darken so vast a space with their shade. It is more difficult to
explain the origin of bare savannahs, encircled by forests,
than to recognize the causes that maintain forests and savan-
nahs within their ancient limits, like continents and seas.

We found the most cordial hospitality at Calabozo, in the
house of the superintendent of the royal plantations, Don
Miguel Cousin. The town, situated between the banks of
the Guarico and the Uritucu, contained at this period only
five thousand inhabitants; but everything denoted increasing
prosperity. The wealth of most of the inhabitants consists
in herds, under the management of farmers, who are called
hater os, from the word hato, which signifies in Spanish a
house or farm placed in the midst of pastures. The scat-
tered population of the Llanos being accumulated on certain
points, principally around towns, Calabozo reckons already
five villages or missions in its environs. It is computed,
that 98,000 head of cattle wander in the pastures nearest
to the town. It is very difficult to form an exact idea
of the herds contained in the Llanos of Caracas, Barce-
lona, Cumana, and Spanish Guiana. M. Depons, who lived
in the town of Caracas longer than I, and whose statis-
tical statements are generally accurate, reckons in those
Vhst plains, from the mouths of the Orinoco to the lake of
Maracaybo, 1,200,000 oxen, 180,000 horses, and 90,000
mules. He estimates the produce of these herds at 5,000,000
francs ; adding to the value of the exportation the price of
the hides consumed in the country. There exist, it is
believed, in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, 12,000,000 cows,
and 3,000,000 horses, without comprising in this enume-
meration the cattle that have no acknowledged proprietor.

1 shall not hazard any general estimates, which from their
nature are too uncertain; but shall only observe that, in
the Llanos of Caracas, the proprietors of the great hatos are
entirely ignorant of the number of the cattle they possess.
They only know that of the young cattle, which are branded
every year with a letter or mark peculiar to each herd. The
richest proprietors mark as many as 14,000 head every

110 EXPORTATION OF HIJ>EB.

year; and sell to the number of five or six thousand
According to official documents, the exportation of hides
from the whole capitania-general of Caracas amounted
annually to 174,000 skins of oxen, and 11,500 of goats.
When we reflect, that these documents are taken from
the books of the custom-houses, where no mention is made
of the fraudulent dealings in hides, we are tempted to
believe that the estimate of 1,200,000 oxen wandering in
the Llanos, from the Rio Carony and the Guarapiche to the
lake of Maracaybo, is much underrated. The port of La
Gruayra alone exported annually from 1789 to 1792, 70,000
or 80,000 hides, entered in the custom-house books, scarcely
one-fifth of which was sent to Spain. The exportation from
Buenos Ayres, at the end of the eighteenth century, was,
according to Don Felix de Azara, 800,000 skins. The hides
of Caracas are preferred in the Peninsula to those of Buenos
Ayres; because the latter, on account of a longer passage,
undergo a loss of twelve per cent, in the tanning. The
southern part of the savannahs, commonly called the Upper
Plains (Llanos de arriba), is very productive in mules and
oxen ; but the pasturage being in general less good, these
animals are obliged to be sent to other plains to be fattened
before they are sold. The Llano de Monai, and all the
Lower Plains (Llanos de abaxo), abound less in herds, but
the pastures are so fertile, that they furnish meat of an
excellent quality for the supply of the coast. The mules,
which are not fit for labour before the fifth year, are pur-
chased on the spot at the price of fourteen or eighteen pias-
tres. The horses of the Llanos, descending from the fine
Spanish breed, are not very large ; they are generally of a
uniform colour, brown bay, like most of the wild animals.
Suffering alternately from drought and floods, tormented by
the stings of insects and the bites of the large bats, they
lead a sorry life. After having enjoyed for some months
the care of man, their good qualities are developed. Here
there are no sheep : we saw flocks only on the table-land of
Quito.

The Tiatos of oxen have suffered considerably of late from
troops of marauders, who roam over the steppes killing the
animals merely to take their hides. This robbery has in-
creased since the trade of the Lower Orinoco has become

5TJMBEB OF EUBOPEAtf CATTLE. Ill

more flourishing. For half a century, the banks of that
great river, from the mouth of the Apure as far as Angostura,
were known only to the missionary-monks. The exportata-
tion of cattle took place from the ports of the northern coast
only, viz. from Cumana, Barcelona, Burburata, and Porto
Cabello. This dependence on the coast is now much dimi-
nished. The southern part of the plains has established an
internal communication with the Lower Orinoco ; and this
trade is the in ore brisk, as those who devote themselves to it
easily escape the trammels of the prohibitory laws.

The greatest herds of cattle in the Llanos of Caracas are
those of the Jiatos of Merecure, La Cruz, Belen, Alta Gracia,
and Pavon. The Spanish cattle came from Coro and Tocuyo
into the plains. History has preserved the name of the
colonist who first conceived the idea of peopling these pas-
turages, inhabited only by deer, and a large species of cavy.
Christoval Kodriguez sent the first horned cattle into the
Llanos, about the year 1548. He was an inhabitant of the
town of Tocuyo, and had long resided in New Grenada.

When we hear of the ' innumerable quantity ' of oxen,
horses, and mules, that are spread over the plains of Ame-
rica, we seem generally to forget that in civilized Europe,
on lands of much less extent, there exist, in agricultural
countries, quantities no less prodigious. France, accord-
ing to M. Peuchet, feeds 6,000,000 large horned cattle, of
which 3,500,000 are oxen employed in drawing the plough.
In the Austrian monarchy, the number of oxen, cows,
and calves, has been estimated at 13,400,000 head. Paris
alone consumes annually 155,000 horned cattle. Germany
receives 150,000 oxen yearly from Hungary. Domestic
animals, collected in small herds, are considered by agrici J-
tural nations as a secondary object in the riches of the state.
Accordingly they strike the imagination much less than
those wandering droves of oxen and horses which alone fill
the uncultivated tracts of the New World. Civilization and
social order favour alike the progress of population, and the
multiplication of animals useful to man.

We found at Calabozo, in the midst of the Llanos, an
electrical machine with large plates, electrophori, batteries,

* The thick-nosed tapir, or river cavy (C»iia capyban J, ealtad
tkiy*irt in those countries.

112 A. SCIENTIFIC NATIVE.

electrometers; an apparatus nearly as complete as our
first scientific men in Europe possess. All these articles
had not been purchased in the United States; they were
the work of a man who had never seen any instrument,
who had no person to consult, and who was acquainted with
the phenomena of electricity only by reading the treatise of
De Lafond, and Franklin's Memoirs. Sefior Carlos del
Pozo, the name of this enlightened and ingenious man, had
begun to make cylindrical electrical machines, by employing
large glass jars, after having cut off the necks. It was only
within a few years he had been able to procure, by way of
Philadelphia, two plates, to construct a plate machine, and
fco obtain more considerable effects. It is easy to judge
what difficulties Sefior 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 hia
own industry, all that he had seen described in his books.
Till now he had enjoyed only the astonishment and admi-
ration produced by his experiments on persons destitute of
all information, and who had never quitted the solitude of
the Llanos; our abode 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. I had brought
with me electrometers mounted with straw, pith-balls, and
gold-leaf; also a small Ley den jar which could be charged
by friction according to the method of Ingenhousz, and
which served for my physiological experiments. Sefior 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. "We also showed him the effect of
the contact of heterogeneous metals on the nerves of frogs.
The name of Gralvani and Volta had not previously been
heard in those vast solitudes.

Next to his electrical apparatus, th* work of the industry
and intelligence of an inhabitant of the Llanos, nothing at
Calabozo excited in us so great an interest as the gymnoti,
which are animated electrical apparatuses. I was impatient,
from the time of my arrival at Cuinana, to procure electrical
eels. We had been promised them often, but our ho oca
had always been disappointed Money loses its value aa

ETJBCTRICJLL FISHES. 118

you with di aw from the coast; and how is the imperturbablo
apathy of the ignorant people to be vanquished, when they
are not excited by the desire of gain ?

The Spaniards confound all electric fishes under the name
of tembladores* There are some of these in the Caribbean
Sea, on the coast of Cumana. The Guayquerie Indians,
who are the most skilful and active fishermen in those
parts, brought us a fish, which, they said, benumbed their
nands. This fish ascends the little river Manzanares. It
is a new species of ray, the lateral spots of which are
scarcely visible, and which much resembles the torpedo.
The torpedos, which are furnished with an electric organ ex-
ternally visible, on account of the transparency of the skin,
form a genus or subgenus different from the rays properly
BO called.f The torpedo of Cumana was very lively, very
energetic in its muscular movements, and yet the electric
shocks it gave us were extremely feeble. They became
stronger on galvanizing the animal by the contact of zinc
and gold. Other tembladores, real gymnoti or electric eels,
inhabit the Rio Colorado, the Guarapiche, and several little
streams which traverse the Missions of the Chayma Indians.
They abound also in the large rivers of America, the Ori-
noco, the Amazon, and the Meta; but the force of the
cm-rents and the depth of the water, prevent them from
being caught by the Indians. They see these fish less fre-
quently than they feel shocks from them when swimming or
bathing in the river. In the Llanos, particularly in the
environs of Calabozo, between the farms of Morichal and
the Upper and Lower Missions, the basins of stagnant
water and the confluents of the Orinoco (the Rio Guarico
and the caTws Rastro, Berito, and Paloma) are filled with
electric eels. We at first wished to make our experiments
in the house we inhabited at Calabozo ; but the dread of the
ihocks caused by the gymnoti is so great, and so exag-

• Literally " tremblers," or "producers of trembling."
t Cuvier, Regne Animal, vol. ii. The Mediterranean contains, ac-
cording to M. Risso, four species of electrical torpedos, all formerly
confounded under the name of Raia torpedo ; these are Torpedo narke,
T. unimaculata, T. galvanii, and T. marmorata. The torpedo of the
Cape of Good Hope, the subject of the recent experiments of Mr. Todd,
it, no doubt, a nondescript species.

VOL n. t

114 SUPPOSED PREVENTIVE OF THE SHOCK.

geraioi among the common people, that during three days
we could not obtain one, though they are easily caught, and
we had promised the Indians two piastres for every strong
and vigorous fish. This fear of the Indians is the more
2xtrordinary, as they do not attempt to adopt precautions
in which they profess to have great confidence. When
interrogated on the effect of the tembladores, they never fail
to tell the Whites, that they may be touched with impunity
while you are chewing tobacco. This supposed influence of
tobacco on animal electricity is as general on the continent
of South America, as the belief among mariners of the effect
of garlic and tallow on the magnetic needle.

Impatient of waiting, and having obtained very uncertain
results from an electric eel which had been brought to us
alive, but much enfeebled, we repaired to the Carlo de Bera,
to make our experiments in the open air, and at the edge
of the water. We set off on the 19th of March, at a
very early hour, for the village of Rastro ; thence we were
conducted by the Indians to a stream, which, in the time
of drought, forms a basin of muddy water, surrounded by
fine trees,* the clusia, the amyris, and the mimosa with
fragrant flowers. To catch the gymnoti with nets is very
difficult, on account of the extreme agility of the fish, which
bury themselves in the mud. We would not employ the
barbasco, that is to say, the roots of the Piscidea erithyrna,
the Jacquinia armillaris, and some species of phyllanthus,
which thrown into the pool, intoxicate or benumb the eels.
These methods have the effect of enfeebling the gymnoti.
The Indians therefore told us that they would "fish with
horses," (embarbascar con cuballos.t) We found it difficult
to form an idea of this extraordinary manner of fishing; but
we soon saw our 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 extraordinary noise caused by the horses' hoofs,
makes the fish issue from the mud, and excites them to the
attack. These yellowish and livid eels, resembling large

* Amyris lateriflora, A. coriacea, I.aurus pichurin, Myroxylon secun-
dum, Malpighia reticulata.

f Meaning tc excite the fish by horses.

8INQULAB MET1IOD OF FI8HIW3. 115

aquatic serpents, swim on the surface of the water, and
crowd under the bellies of the horses and mules. A contest
between animals of so different an organization presents
a very striking spectacle. The Indians, provided with
harpoons and long slender reeds, surround the pool closely ;
ana some climb up the trees, the branches of which extend
horizontally over the surface of the water. By their wild
cries, and the length of their reeds, they prevent the horses
from running away and reaching the bank of the pool.
The eels, stunned by the noise, defend themselves by the
repeated discharge of their electric batteries. For a long
interval they seem likely to prove victorious. Several horses
sink beneath the violence of the invisible strokes which they
receive from all sides, in organs the most essential to life ;
and stunned by the force and frequency of the shocks, they
disappear under the water. Others, panting, with mane
erect, and haggard eyes expressing anguish and dismay,
raise themselves, and endeavour to nee from the storm
by which they are overtaken. They are driven back by
the Indians into the middle of the water; but a small
number succeed in eluding the active vigilence of the
fishermen. These regain the shore, stumbling at every
step, and stretch themselves on the sand, exhausted with
fitigue, and with limbs benumbed by the electric shocks
of the gymnoti.

In less than five minutes two of our horses were drowned.
The eel being five feet long, and pressing itself against the
belly of the horses, makes a discharge along the whole extent
of its electric organ. It attacks at once the heart, the in-
testines, and the caeliac fold of the abdominal nerves. It is
natural that the effect felt by the horses should be more
powerful than that produced upon man by the touch of the
same fish at only one of his extremities. The horses are
probably not killed, but only stunned. They are drowned
from the impossibility of rising amid the prolonged struggle
between the other horses and the eels.

We had little doubt that the fishing would terminate by
killing successively all the animals engaged ; but by degivtf
the impetuosity of this unequal combat diminished, and the
wearied gymnoti dispersed. They require a long rest, ami
Abundant nourishment, to repair the galvanic force which

i a

116 SIZE OF THE GYMITOTUa.

they have lost.* The mules and horses appear less fright-
ened; their manes are no longer bristled, and their eyes
express less dread. The gymnoti approach timidly the edge
of the marsh, where they are taken by means of small
harpoons fastened to long cords. When the cords are very
dry the Indians feel no shock in raising the fish into the
air. In a few minutes we had five large eels, most of which
were but slightly wounded. Some others were taken, by
the same means, towards evening.

The temperature of the waters in which the gymnoti
habitually Hve, is from 26° to 27°. Their electric force
diminishes it is said, in colder waters ; and it is remarkable
that, in general, animals endowed with electromotive organs,
the effects of which are sensible to man, are not found in
the air, but in a fluid that is a conductor of electricity. The
gymnotus is the largest of electrical fishes. I measured
some that were from five feet to five feet three inches long ;
and the Indians assert that they have seen them still larger.
We found that a fish of three feet ten inches long weighed
twelve pounds. The transverse diameter of the body, with-
out reckoning the anal fin, which is elongated in the form
of a keel, was three inches and a half. The gymnoti of the
Cano de Bera are of a fine olive-green. The under part of
the head is yellow mingled with red. Two rows of small
yellow spots are placed symmetrically along the back, from
the head to the end of the tail. Every spot contains an
excretory aperture. In consequence, the skin of the animal
is constantly covered with a mucous matter, which, as Volta
has proved, conducts electricity twenty or thirty times
better than pure water. It is in general somewhat remark-
able, that no electric fish yet discovered in the different
parts of the world, is covered with scales.f

* The Indiana assured us that when the horses are made to run two
days successively into the same pool, none are killed the secoud day.
See, on the fishing for gymnoti, " Views of Nature." (Bohn's ed., p. 18.)

f We yet know with certainty only seven electrir fishes ; Torpedo
narke, Risso, T. unimaculata, T. marmorata, T. gaivanii, Silurus elec-
tricus, Tetraodon electricus, Gymnotus electricus. It appears uncertain
whether the Trichiurus indicus has electrical properties or not. (See
Cuvier's Regne Animal, vol. ii.) But the genus Torpedo, very different
from that of the rays properly so called, has numerous species in the
equatorial seas; and it is probable that there exist several gyu.noti

RESPIRATION OF FISHES. 117

The gymnoti, like our eels, are fond of swallowing and
breathing air on the surface of the water ; but we must not
thence conclude that the fish would perish if it could not
come up to breathe the air. The European eel will creep
during the night upon the grass ; but I have seen a very
vigorous gymnotus that had sprung out of the water, die on
the ground. M. Proven9al and myself have proved by our
researches on the respiration of fishes, that their humid
bronchia) perform the double function of decomposing the
atmospheric air, and of appropriating the oxygen contained
in water. They do not suspend their respiration in the
air; but they absorb the oxygen like a reptile furnished
with lungs. It is known that carp may be fattened by being
fed, out of the water, if their gills are wet from time to
time with humid moss, to prevent them from becoming dry.
Fish separate their gill-covers wider in oxygen gas than in
water. Their temperature however, does not rise ; and they
dve the same length of time in pure vital air, and in a
mixture of ninety parts nitrogen and ten oxygen. We
found that tench placed under inverted jars filled with air,
absorb half a cubic centimetre of oxygen in an hour. This
action takes place in the gills only ; for fishes on which a
collar of cork has been fastened, and leaving their head out
of the jar filled with air, do not act upon the oxygen by the
rest of their body.

The swimming-bladder of the gymnotus is two feet five
inches long in a fish of three feet ten inches.f It is sepa-
rated by a mass of fat from the external skin ; and rests upon
the electric organs, which occupy more than two-thirds of

specifically different. The Indians mentioned to us a black and very
powerful species, inhabiting the marshes of the Apure, which never
attains a length of more than two feet, but which we were not able to
procure. The raton of the Rio de la Magdalena, which I have described
under the name of Gymnotus aequilabiatus (Observations de Zoologie,
vol. i.) forms a particular sub-genus. This is a Carapa, not scaly, and
without an electric organ. This organ is also entirely wanting in the
Brazilian Carapo, and iu all the rays which were carefully examined bf
Cuvier.

f Cuvier has shown that in the Gymnotus electricus there exists,
oesides the large swimming-bladder, another situated before it, and much
smaller. It looks like the bifuicated swimming-bladder in the Gymnotui

118 DAJTGEEOrS EFFECTS OF THE SHOCK.

the animal's body. The same vessels which penetrate be-
tween the plates or leaves of these organs, and which cover
them with blood when they are cut transversely, also send
out numerous branches to the exterior surface of the air-
bladder. I found in a hundred parts of the air of the swim-
ming-bladder four of oxygen and ninety-six of nitrogen.
The medullary substance of the brain displays but a feeble
analogy with the albuminous and gelatinous matter of the
electric organs. But these two substances have in common
the great quantity of arterial blood which they receive, and
which is deoxidated in them. We may again remark, on
this occasion, that an extreme activity in the functions of
the brain causes the blood to flow more abundantly towards
the head, as the energy of the movement of the muscles
accelerates the deoxidation of the arterial blood. What a
contrast between the multitude and the diameter of the
blood-vessels of the gynmotus, and the small space occupied
by its muscular system ! This contrast reminds the observer,
that three functions of animal life, which appear in other re-
spects sufficiently distinct, — the functions of the brain, those
of the electrical organ, and those of the muscles, all require
the afflux and concourse of arterial or oxygenated blood.

It would be temerity to expose ourselves to the first
shocks of a very large and strongly irritated gymnotus. If
by chance a stroke be received before the fish is wounded
or wearied by long pursuit, the pain and numbness are so
violent that it is impossible to describe the nature of the
feeling they excite. 1 do not remember having ever received
from the mscharge of a large Leyden jar, a more dreadful
shock than that which I experienced by imprudently placing
both my feet on a gymnotus just taken out of the water.
I was affected during the rest of the day with a violent pain
in the knees, and in almost every joint. To be aware of the
difference that exists between the sensation produced by the
Voltaic battery and an electric fish, the latter should be
touched when they are in a state of extreme weakness. The
gymnoti arid the torpedos then cause a twitching of the
muscles, which is propagated from the part that rests on the
electric organs, as far as the elbow. We seem to feel, at
every stroke, an internal vibration, which lasts two or three
seconds, and is followed by a painful numbness. Accord-

SUPPOSED REMEDIAL VIRTUES. 119

ingly, the Tamanac Indians call the gymnotus, in their
expressive language, arimna, which means ' something that
deprives of motion.'

The sensation caused bv the feeble shocks of an electric
eel appeared to me analogous to that painful twitching
with which I have been seized at each contact of two
heterogeneous metals applied to wounds which I had made
on my back by means of cantharides. This difference of
sensation between the effects of electric fishes and those
of a Voltaic battery or a Leyden jar feebly charged has
etruck every observer; there is, however, nothing in this
contrary to the supposition of the identity of electricity and
the galvanic action of fishes. The electricity may be the
same; but its effects will be variously modified by the dis-
position of the electrical apparatus, by the intensity of the
fluid, by the rapidity of the current, and by the particular
mode of action.

In Dutch Guiana, at Demerara for instance, electric
eels were formerly employed to cure paralytic affections.
At a time when the physicians of Europe had great confi-
dence in the effects of electricity, a surgeon of Essequibo,
named Van der Lott, published in Holland a treatise on
the medical properties of the gymnotus. These electric
remedies are practised among the savages of America, as
they were among the Greeks. We are told by Scribonius
Largus, Galen, and Dioscorides, that torpedos cure the head-
ache and the gout. I did not hear of this mode of treat-
ment in the Spanish colonies which I visited ; and I can
assert that, after having made experiments during four hours
successively with gymnoti, M. Bonpland and myself felt, till
the next day, a debility in the muscles, a pain in the joints,
and a general uneasiness, the effect of a strong irritation of
the nervous system.

The gymnotus is neither a charged conductor, nor a
battery, nor an electromotive apparatus, the shock of which
is received every time they are touched with one hand, or
when both hands are applied to form a conducting circle
between the opposite poles. The electric action of the fish
depends entirely on its will; because it does not keep ita
rlectric organs always charged, or whether by the secretion
of some fluid, or by any other means alike mysterious to us,

120 EXPERIMENTS ON THE GYMNOTUS.

it be capable of directing the action of its organs to an
external object. We often tried, both insulated and other-
wise, to touch the fish, without feeling the least shock.
When M. Bonpland held it by the head, or by the middle of
the body, while I held it by the tail, and, standing on the
moist ground, did not take each other's hand, one of us
received shocks, which the other did not feel. It depends
upon the gymnotus to direct its action towards the point
where it finds itself most strongly irritated. The discharge
is then made at one point only, and not at the neighbouring
points. If two persons touch the belly of the fish with their
fingers, at an inch distance, aud press it simultaneously,
sometimes one, sometimes the other, will receive the shock.
In the same manner, when one insulated person holds the
tail of a vigorous gymnotus, and another pinches the gills or
pectoral fin, it is often the first only by whom the shock is
received. It did not appear to us that these differences
could be attributed to the dryness or moisture of our hands,
or to their unequal conducting power. The gymnotus
seemed to direct its strokes sometimes from the whole sur-
face of its body, sometimes from one point only. This
effect indicates less a partial discharge of the organ com-
posed of an innumerable quantity of layers, than the faculty
which the animal possesses, (perhaps by the instantaneous
secretion of a fluid spread through the cellular membrane,)
of establishing the communication between its organs and
the skin only, in a very limited space.

Nothing proves more strongly the faculty, which the
gymnotus possesses, of darting and directing its stroke
at will, than the observations made at Philadelphia and
Stockholm,* on gymnoti rendered extremely tame. When

* By MM. Williamson and Fahlberg. The following account is given
by the latter gentleman. " The gymnotus sent from Surinam to M.
Norderhng, at Stockholm, lived more than four months in a state of
perfect health. It was twenty-seven inches long ; and the shocks it gave
were so violent, especially in the open air, that I found scarcely any
means of protecting myself by non-conductors, in transporting the fish
from one place to another. Its stomach being very small, it ate little
at a time, but fed often. It approached living fish, first sending them
fronn afar a shock, the energy of which was proportionate to the size ot
the prey. The gymnotus seldom failed in its aim ; one single stroke
was almost alwaj 3 sufficient to overcome the resistance which the strata

HABITS OF THE ELECTlilC EEL. 121

they had been made to fast a long time, they killed small
fishes put into the tub. They acted from a distance ; that
is to say, their electrical shock passed through a very thick
stratum of water. We need not be surprised that what waa
observed in Sweden, on a single gymnotus only, we could
Dot perceive in a great number of individuals in their native
country. The electric action of animals being a vital action,
and subject to f;heir will, it does not depend solely on their
state ot health and. vigour. A gymnotus that has been
kept a long time in captivity, accustoms itself to the im-
prisonment to which is is reduced; it resumes by degrees
the same habits in the tub, which it had in the rivers and
marshes. An electrical eel was brought to me at Calabozo :
it had been taken in a net, and consequently having no
wound. It ate meat, and terribly frightened the little tor-
toises and frogs which, not aware of their danger, placed
themselves on its back. The frogs did not receive the stroke
till the moment when they touehed the body of the
gymnotus. When they recovered, they leaped out of the
tub ; and when replaced near the fish, they were frightened
at the mere sight of it. We then observed nothing that
indicated an action at a distance ; but our gymnotus, recently
taken, was not yet sufficiently tame to attack and devour
frogs. On approaching the finger, or the metallic points,
very close to the electric organs, no shock was felt. Perhaps
the animal did not perceive the proximity of a foreign body ;
or, if it did, we must suppose that in the commencement of
its captivity, timidity prevented it from darting forth its
energetic strokes except when strongly irritated by an
immediate contact. The gymnotus being immersed in water,
I placed my hand, both armed and unarmed with metal,
within a very small distance from the electric organs; yet
the strata of water transmitted no shock, while M. Bonpland
irritated the animal strongly by an immediate contact, and

of water, more or leas thick according to the distance, opposed to the
electrical current. When very much pressed by hunger, it sometimes
directed the shocks against the person who daily brought its food of
boiled meat. Persons afflicted with rheumatism rame to touch it in hopes
of being cured. They took it at once by the neck and tail : the shocks
were in this case stronger than when touched with one hand only. It
Almost entirely lost its electrical power a short time before its death.'

122 SIMILAEITT OF THE ELECTRIC ACTIOW.

received some very violent shocks. Had we placed a very
delicate electroscope in the contiguous strata of water, it
might possibly have deen influenced at the moment when
the gymnotus seemed to direct its stroke elsewhere, Pre-
pared frogs, placed immediately on the body of a torpedo,
experience, according to Galvani, a strong contraction at
every discharge of the fish.

The electrical organ of the gymnoti acts only under the
immediate influence of the brain and the heart. On cutting
a very vigorous fish through the middle of the body, the
fore part alone gave shocks. These are equally strong in
whatever part of the body the fish is touched; it is most
disposed, however, to emit them when the pectoral fin, the
electrical organ, the lips, the eyes, or the gills, are pinched.
Sometimes the animal struggles violently with a person
holding it by the tail, without communicating the least
shock. Nor did I feel any when I made a slight incision
near the pectoral fin of the fish, and galvanized the wound
by the contact of two pieces of zinc and silver. The gym-
notus bent itself convulsively, and raised its head out of the
water, as if terrified by a sensation altogether new ; but I
felt no vibration in the hands which held the two metals.
The most violent muscular movements are not always ac-
companied by electric discharges.

The action of the fish on the human organs is transmitted
and intercepted by the same bodies, that transmit and inter-
cept the electrical current of a conductor charged by a
Leyden jar, or Voltaic battery. Some anomalies, which we
thought we observed, are easily explained, when we recollect
that even metals (as is proved from their ignition when
exposed to the action of the battery) present a slight
obstacle to the passage of electricity ; and that a bad con-
ductor annihilates the eifect, on our organs, of a feeble
electric charge, whilst it transmits to us the effect of a
very strong one. The repulsive force which zinc and silver
exercise together being far superior to that of gold and
silver, I have found that when a frog, prepared and armed
with silver, is galvanized under water, the conducting arc
of zinc produces contraction as soon as one of its extre-
mities approaches the muscles within three lines distance ;
while an arc :? gold does not excite the organs, when the

TEAN8MI8SION OF THE SHOCK. 125

stratum of water between the gold and the muscles? is more
than half a Hue thick. In the same manner, by employing
a conducting arc composed of two pieces of zinc and silver
soldered together endways; and resting, as before, one of
the extremities of the metallic circuit on the femoral nerve,
it is necessary, in order to produce contractions, to bring
the other extremity of the conductor nearer a ad nearer to
the muscles, in proportion as the irritability of the organs
diminishes. Toward the end of the experiment the slightest
stratum of water prevents the passage of the electrical cur-
rent, and it is only by the immediate contact of the arc with
the muscles, that the contractions take place. These effects
are, however, dependent on three variable circumstances;
the energy of the electromotive apparatus, the conducti-
bility of tlie medium, and the irritability of the organs which
receive the impressions: it is because experiments have
not been sufficiently multiplied with a view to these three
variable elements, that, in the action of electric eels and
torpedos, accidental circumstances have been taken for
absolute conditions, without which the electric shocks are
not felt.

In wounded gymnoti, which give feeble but very equal
shocks, these shocks appeared to us constantly stronger on
touching the body of the fish with a hand armed with metal,
than with the naked hand. They are stronger also, when,
instead of touching the fish with one hand, naked, or armed
witli metal, we press it at once with both hands, either
naked or armed. These differences become sensible only
when one has gymnoti enough at disposal to be able to
choose the weakest ; and when the extreme equality of the
electric discharges admits of distinguishing between the sen-
sations felt alternately by the hand naked or armed with a
nu-tal, by one or both hands naked, and by one or both
hands armed with metal. It is also in the case only of
small shocks, feeble and uniform, that they are more sen-
sible on touching the gymnotus with one hand (without
forming a chain) with zinc, than with copper or iron.

Resinous substances, glass, very dry wood, horn, and even
bones, which are generally believed to be good conductors,
prevent the action of the gymnoti from being transmitted to
man. I was surprised at no*: feeling the least shock o-

124 ABSENCE OF ATTRACTION.

pressing wet sticks of sealing-wax against the organs of the
fish, while the same animal gave me the most violent
strokes, when excited bv means of a metallic rod. M. Bon-
pland received shocks, when carrying a gymnotus on two
cords of the fibres of the palm-tree, which appeared to us
extremely dry. A strong discharge makes its way tli rough
very imperfect conductors. Perhaps also the obstacle which
the conductor presents renders the discharge more painful.
I touched the gymnotus with a wet pot of brown clay,
without effect ; yet I received violent shocks when 1 carried
the gymnotus in the same pot, because the contact was
greater.

When two persons, insulated or otherwise, hold each
other's hands, and only one of these persons touches the
fish with the hand, either naked or armed with metal, the
shock is most commonly felt by both at once. However, it
sometimes happens that, in the most severe shocks, the
person who comes into immediate contact with the fish
alone feels them. "When the gymnotus is exhausted, or in
a very reduced state of excitability, and will no longer emit
strokes on being irritated with one hand, the shocks are
felt in a very vivid manner, on forming the chain, and em-
ploying both hands. Even then, however, the electric shock
takes place only at the will of the animal. Two persons,
one of whom holds the tail, and the other the head, cannot,
by joining hands and forming a chain, force the gymnotus to
dart his stroke.

Though employing the most delicate electrometers ic
various ways, insulating them on a plate of glass, and receiv-
ing very strong shocks which passed through the electro-
meter, I could never discover any phenomenon of attraction
or repulsion. The same observation was made by M. Fahl-
berg at Stockholm. That philosopher, however, has seen
an electric spark, as Walsh and Irigenhousz had ^ before
him, in London, by placing the gymnotus in the air, and
interrupting the conducting chain by two gold leaves pasted
upon glass, and a line distant from each other. No person,
on the contrary, has ever perceived a spark issue from the
body of the fish itself. We irritated it for a long time
during the night, at Calabozo, in perfect darkness, without
observing any luminous appearance. Having placed four

1XPEKIMENTS ON THE TORPEDO. 125

gymnoti, of unequal strength, in such a manner as to receive
the shocks of the most vigorous fish by contact, that is to
say, by touching only one of the other fishes, I did not
observe that these last were agitated at the moment when
the current passed their bodies. Perhaps the current
did not penetrate below the humid surface of the skin.
"We will not, however, conclude from this, that the gymnoti
are insensible to electricity ; and that they cannot fight with
each other at the bottom of the pool's. Their nervous
system must be subject to the same agents as the nerves of
other animals. I have indeed seen, that, on laying open
their nerves, they undergo muscular contractions at the
mere contact of two opposite metals ; and M. Fahlberg, of
Stockholm, found that his gymnotus was convulsively agi-
tated when placed in a copper vessel, and feeble discharges
from a Leyden jar passed through its skin.

After the experiments I had made on gymnoti, it became
highly interesting to me, on my return to Europe, to ascer-
tain with precision the various circumstances in which
another electric fish, the torpedo of our seas, gives or does
not give shocks. Though this fish had been examined by
numerous men of science, I found all that had been pub-
lished on its electrical effects extremely vague. It has been
very arbitrarily supposed, that this fish acts like a Leyden
jar, which may be discharged at will, by touching it with
Doth hands; and this supposition appears to have led into
error observers who have devoted themselves to researches
of this kind. M. Gay-Lussac and myself, during our journey
to Italy, made a great number of experiments on torpedoa
•n in the gulf of Naples. These experiments furnish
many results somewhat different from those I collected on
the gymnoti. It is probable that the cause of these anoma-
lies is owing rather to the inequality of electric power in
the two fishes, than to the different disposition of their
organs.

Though the power of the torpedo cannot be compared
with that of the gymnotus, it is sufficient to cause very
painful sensations. A person accustomed to electric shocks
can with difficulty hold in his hands a torpedo of twelve or
fourteen inches, and in possession of all its vigour. When
the torpedo gives only very feeble strokes under water,

126 THE SHOCJy A VITAL ACTION.

they become more sensib'e if the animal be raised above the
surface. I have often observed the same phenomenon in
experimenting on frogs.

The torpedo moves the pectoral fins convulsively every
time it emits a stroke; and this stroke is more or lesa
painful, according as the immediate contact takes place
by a greater or less surface. We observed that the
gymnotus gives the strongest shocks without making any
movement with the eyes, head, or fins.* Is this difference
caused by the position of the electric organ, which is not
double in the gymnoti? or does the movement of the
pectoral fins of the torpedo directly prove that the fish
restores the electrical equilibrium by its own skin, dis-
charges itself by its own body, and that we generally feel
only the effect of a lateral shock ?

We cannot discharge at will either a torpedo or a gym
notus, as we discharge at will a Leyden jar or a Voltaic
battery. A shock is not always felt, even on touching the
electric fish with both hands. We must irritate it to make
it give the shock. This action in the torpedos, as well as in
the gymnoti, is a vital action ; it depends on the will only
of the animal, which perhaps does not always keep its elec-
tric organs charged, or does not always employ the action
of its nerves to establish the chain between the positive and
Degative poles. It is certain that the torpedo gives a long
series of shocks with astonishing celerity ; whether it is that
the plates or Iamina3 of its organs are not wholly exhausted,
or that the fish recharges them instantaneously.

The electric stroke is felt, when the animal is disposed to
give it, whether we touch with a single finger only one of
the surfaces of the organs, or apply both hands to the two
surfaces, the superior and inferior, at once. In either case
it is altogether indifferent whether the person who touches
the fish with one finger or both hands be insulated or not.
All that has been said on the necessity of a communication
with the damp ground to establish a circuit, is founded on
inaccurate observations.

M. Gay-Lussac made the important observation that
when an insulated person touches the torpedo with one

* The anal fin of the gymnoti only has a sensible motion when these
fishes are excited under the belly, where the electric organ is placed.

EFFECTS OT TABULATORS. 127

linger, it is indispensible that the contact be direct. The
fish may with impunity be touched with a key, or any
other metallic instrument; no shock is felt when a con-
ducting or non-conducting body is interposed between the
finger and the electrical organ of the torpedo. This cir-
cumstance proves a great difference between the torpedo
and the gymnotus, the latter giving his strokes through an
iron rod several feet long.

When the torpedo is placed on a metallic plate of very
little thickness, so that the plate touches the inferior surface
of the organs, the hand that supports the plate never feels
any shock, though another, insulated person may excite the
animal, and the convulsive movement of the pectoral fins
may denote the strongest and most reiterated discharges.

If, on the contrary, a person support the torpedo placed
upon a metallic plate, with the left hand, as in the foregoing
experiment, and the same person touch the superior surface
of the electrical organ with the right hand, a strong shock
is then felt in both arms. The sensation is the same when
the fish is placed between two metallic plates, the edges of
which do not touch, and the person applies both hands at
once to these plates. The interposition of one metallic
plate prevents the communication if that plate be touched
with one hand only, while the interposition of two metallic
plates does not prevent the shock when both hands are
applied. In the latter case it cannot be doubted that the
circulation of the fluid is established by the two arms.

If, in this situation of the fish between two plates, there
exist any immediate communication between the edges of
these two plates, no shock takes place. The chain between
the two surfaces of the electric organ is then formed by
the plates, and the new communication, established by the
contact of the two hands with the two plates, remains with-
out effect. \Ve carried the torpedo with impunity between
two plates of metal, and felt the strokes it gave only at the
instant who- they ceased to touch each other at the

Nothin-r in the torpedo or in the gymnotus indicates that
the animal modifies the electrical state of the bodies by
tthirh it is surrounded. The most delicate electrometer is
no way affected in whatever manner it is employed, whether

128 ACTION OF THE BRAIN AND NEBVES.

bringing it near the organs or insulating the fish, covering
it with a metallic plate, and causing the plate to communi-
cate by a conducting wire with the condenser of Volta,
We were at great pains to vary the experiments by which
we sought to render the electrical tension of the torpedo
sensible ; but they were constantly without effect, and per-
fectly confirmed what M. Bonpland and myself had observed
respecting the gymnoti, during our abode in South America.

Electrical fishes, when very vigorous, act with equal
energy under water and in the air. This observation led us
to examine the conducting property of water ; and we found
that, when several persons form the chain between the
superior and inferior surface of the organs of the torpedo,
the shock is felt only when these persons join hands. The
action is not intercepted if two persons, who support the
torpedo with their right hands, instead of taking one
another by the left hand, plunge each a metallic point into
a drop of water placed on an insulating substance. On
substituting flame for the drop of water, the communication
is interrupted, and is only re-established, as in the gym-
notus, when the two points immediately touch each other in
the interior of the flame.

We are, doubtless, very far from having discovered all
the secrets of the electrical action of fishes which is modified
by the influence of the brain and the nerves ; but the
experiments we have just described are sufficient to prove
that these fishes act by a concealed electricity, and by elec-
tromotive organs of a peculiar construction, which are
recharged with extreme rapidity. Yolta admits that the
discharges of the opposite electricities in the torpedos and
the gymnoti are made by their own skin, and that when we
touch them with one hand only, or by moans of a metallic
point, we feel the effect of a lateral shock, the electrical
current not being directed solely the shortest way. When
a Leyden jar is placed on a wet woollen cloth (which is a
bad conductor), and the jar is discharged in such a manner
that the cloth makes part of the chain, prepared frogs,
placed at different distances, indicate by their contractions
that the current spreads itself over the whole cloth in a
thousand different ways. According to this analogy, the
most violent shock givei* by the gymnotus at a distance

SUPPOSED MAGNETIC PHENOMENA. 129

would be but a feeble part of the stroke which re-establishea
the equilibrium in the interior of the fish.* As the gym-
notus directs its stroke wherever it pleases, it must also be
admitted that the discharge is not made by the whole skin
at once, but that the animal, excited perhaps by the motion
of a fluid poured into one part of the cellular membrane,
establishes at will the communication between its organs
and some particular part of the skin. It may be conceived
that a lateral stroke, out of the direct current, must become
imperceptible under the two conditions of a very weak
discharge, or a very great obstacle presented by the nature
and length of the conductor. Notwithstanding these con-
siderations, it appears to me very surprising that shocks
of the torpedo, strong in appearance, are not propagated
to the hand when a very thin plate of metal is interposed
betweeu it and the fish.

Schilling declared that the gymnotus approached the
magnet involuntarily. We tried in a thousand ways this
supposed influence of the magnet on the electrical organs,
without having ever observed any sensible effect. The fish
no more approached the magnet, than a bar of iron not
magnetic. Iron-filings, thrown on its back, remained motion-
less.

The gymnoti, which are objects of curiosity and of the
the deepest interest to the philosophers of Europe, are #t
once dreaded and detested by the natvies. They famish,
indeed, in their muscular flesh, pretty good aliment; but
the electric organ fills the greater part of their body, and
this organ is slimy, and disagreeable to the taste; it is

* The heterogeneous poles of the double electrical organs must
exist ia each organ. Mr. Todd has recently proved, by experiments
made on torpedos at the Cape of Good Hope, that the animal continues
to give violent shocks when one of these organs is extirpated. On the
contrary, all electrical action is stopped (and this point, as elucidated by
Galvani, is of the greatest importance) if injury be inflicted on the
brain, or if the nerves which supply the plates of the electrical organs be
divided. In the latter case, the nerves being cut, and the brain left un-
touched, the torpedo continues to live, and perform every muscular
movement. A fish, exhausted by too numerous electrical discharges,
iuffered much more than another fish deprived, by dividing the nerves,
of any communication between the brain and the electromotive apparatus.
(Philosophical Transactions, 1816).

VOL. II. X

130 SHOCKS OF THE

accordingly separated with care from the rest of the ep,l.
The presence of gymnoti is alsc considered as the principal
cause of the want of fish in the ponds and pools of the
Llanos. They, however, kill many more than they devour :
and the Indians told us, that when young alligators and
gymnoti are caught at the same time in very strong nets,
the latter never show the slightest trace of a wound,
because they disable the young alligators before they are
attacked by them. All the inhabitants of the waters dread
the society of the gymnoti. Lizards, tortoises, and frogs,
seek pools where they are secure from the electric action.
It became necessary to change the direction of a road
near Uritucu, because the electric eels were so numerous
in one river, that they every year killed a great number of
mules, as they forded the water with their burdens.

Though in the present state of our knowledge we may
natter ourselves with having thrown some light on the
extraordinary effects of electric fishes, yet a vast number of
physical and physiological researches still remain to be made.
The brilliant results which chemistry has obtained by means
of the Voltaic battery, have occupied all observers, and turned
attention for some time from the examinations of the phe-
nomena of vitality. Let us hope that these phenomena, the
most awful and the most mysterious of all, will in their turn
occupy the earnest attention of natural philosophers. This
hope will be easily realized if they succeed in procuring
anew living gymnoti in some one of the great capitals of
Europe. The discoveries that will be made on the electro-
motive apparatus of these fish, much more energetic, and
more easy of preservation, than the torpedos,* will extend

* In order to investigate the phenomena of the living electromotive
apparatus in its greatest simplicity, and not to mistake for general
conditions circumstances which depend on the degree of energy of the
electric organs, it is necessary to perform the experiments on those
electrical fishes most easily tamed. If the gymnoti were not known, we
might suppose, from the observations made on torpedos, that fishes can-
not give their shocks from a distance through very thick strata of water,
Or through a bar of iron, without forming a circuit. Mr. Williamson has
felt strong shocks when he held only one hand in the water, and this
band, without touching the gymnotus, was placed between it and the
small fish towards which the stroke was directed from ten or fifteei
incites distance. (Philosophical Transactions, vol. Ixv, pp. 99 and 108)

DEPAUTUUJC FBOM CALABOZO. 131

to all the phenomena of muscular motion subject to voli-
tion. It will perhaps be found that, in most animals, every
contraction of the muscular fibre is preceded by a discharge
from the nerve into the muscle ; and that the mere simple
contact of heterogeneous substances is a source of move-
ment and of life in all organized beings. Did an ingenious
and lively people, the Arabians, guess from remote antiquity,
that the same force which inflames the vault of Heaven in
storms, is the living and invisible weapon of inhabitants of
the waters? It is said, that the electric fish of the Nile
bears a name in Egypt, that signifies thunder*

"We left the town of Calabozo on the 24th of March,
highly satisfied with our stay, and the experiments we had
made on an object so worthy of the attention of physio-
logists. I had besides obtained some good observations of
the stars ; and discovered with surprise, that the errors of
maps amounted here also to a quarter of a degree of lati-
tude. No person had taken an observation before me on
this spot ; and geographers, magnifying as usual the distance
from the coast to the islands, have carried back beyond
measure all the localities towards the south.

As we advanced into the southern part of the Llanos, we
found the ground more dusty, more destitute of herbage,
and more cracked by the effect of long drought. The palm-
trees disappeared by degrees. The thermometer kept, from
eleven in the morning till sunset, at 34° or 35°. The calmer
the air appeared at eight or ten feet high, the more we were
enveloped in those whirlwinds of dust, caused by the little
currents of air that sweep the ground. About four o'clock
in the afternoon, we 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. Ex-
hausted with fatigue and thirst, her eyes, nostrils, and mouth

When the gymnotus was enfeebled by bad health, the lateral shock
was imperceptible ; and in order to feel the shock, it was necessary to
form a chain, and touch the fish with both hands at once. Cavendish,
in his ingenious experiments on an artificial torpedo, had well remarked
these differences, depending on the greater or less energy of the charge.
(Philosophical Transactions, 1776, p. 212).

* It appears, however, that a distinction is to be made between rahd.
thunder, and rzhadh, the electrical fish; and that this latter word meant
•itni'lj ' that w'lich causes trembling.'

K 2

132 DANGEES OF TRAVELLING.

filled with dust, she breathed with a rattling jn her throat,
and "was unable to answer our questions. A pitcher, over-
turned, and half filled with sand, was lying at her side.
Happily one of our mules was laden with water ; and we
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 herself surrounded by so many per-
sons ; but by degrees she took courage, and conversed with
our guides. She judged, from the position of the sun, that
she must have remained during several hours in that state
of lethargy. We could not prevail on her to mount one of
our 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 sickness
she was less able to work than before. Our menaces and
prayers were alike fruitless ; insensible to suffering, like the
rest of her race, she persisted in her resolution of going to
one of the Indian Missions near the city of Calabozo. We
removed the sand from her pitcher, and filled it with water.
She resumed her way along the steppe, before we had re-
mounted our horses, and was soon separated from us by a
cloud of dust. During the night we forded the Rio Uritucu,
which abounds with a breed of crocodiles remarkable for
their ferocity. We were advised to prevent our dogs from
going to drink in the rivers, for it often happens that the
crocodiles of Uritucu come out of the water, and pursue
dogs upon the shore. This intrepidity is so much the more
striking, as at eight leagues distance, the crocodiles of the
Rio Tisnao are extremely timid, and little dangerous. The
manners of animals vary in the same species according to
local circumstances difficult to be determined. We were
shown a hut, or rather a kind of shed, in which our host of
Calabozo, Don Miguel Cousin, had witnessed a very extra-
ordinary scene. Sleeping with one of his friends on a bench
or couch covered with leather, Don Miguel was awakened
early in the morning by a violent shaking and a horrible
noise. Clods of earth 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 impetuosity
of his spring, ran towards the beach to gain the river. On

8UMMEU-SLEEP OF SNAKES. 133

examining the spot where the barbacoa, or 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 crocodile 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.
The Indians often find enormous boas, which they call uji,
or water-serpents,* in the same lethargic state. To reanimate
them, they must be irritated, or wetted with water. Boas
are killed, and immersed in the streams, to obtain, by means
of putrefaction, the tendinous parts of the dorsal muscles,
of which excellent guitar-strings are made at Galabozo,
preferable to those furnished by the intestines of the alouate
monkeys.

The drought and heat of the Llanos act like cold upon
animals and plants. Beyond the tropics the trees lose their
leaves in a very dry air. Reptiles, particularly crocodiles
and boas, having very indolent habits, leave with reluctance
the basins in which they have found water at the period of
great inundations. In proportion as the pools become
dry, these animals penetrate into the mud, to seek that
degree of humidity which gives flexibility to their skin and
integuments. In this state of repose they are seized with
stupefaction; but possibly they preserve a communication
with the external air ; and, however little that communica-
tion may be, it possibly suffices to keep up the respiration of
an animal of the saurian family, provided with enormous
pulmonary sacs, exerting no muscular motion, and in which
almost all the vital functions are suspended. It is probable
that the mean temperature of the dried mud, exposed to
the solar rays, is more than 40°. When the north of Egypt,
where the coolest month does not fall below L3'4°, was
inhabited by crocodiles, they were often found torpid with
cold. They were subject to a winter-sleep, like the Euro-

* Oulcbra de ayua, named by the common people traga-venado, 'the
•wallower of stags.' The word vji belongs to the Tamanac language

131 TrLTURES Of TUB LLANOS.

peaii frog, lizartl, sand- martin, and marmot. If the hibernal
lethargy be observed, both in cold-blooded and in hot-
blooded animals, we shall be less surprised to learn, that
these two classes furnish alike examples of a summer-sleep.
In the same manner as the crocodiles of South America,
the tanrecs, or Madagascar hedgehogs, in the midst of the
torrid zone, pass three months of the year in lethargy.

On the 25th of March we traversed the smoothest part
of the steppes of Caracas, the Mesa de Pavones. It is
entirely destitute of the corypha and moriche palm-trees.
As far as the eye can reach, not a single object fifteen
inches high can be discovered. The air was clear, and the
sky of a very deep blue ; but the horizon reflected a livid
and yellowish light, caused no doubt by the quantity of
sand suspended in the atmosphere. "We met some large
herds of cattle, and with them flocks of birds of a black
colour with an olive shade. They are of the genus Croto-
phaga,* and follow the cattle. We had often seen them
perched on the backs of cows, seeking for gadflies and other
insects. Like many birds of these desert places, they fear
so little the approach of man, that children often catch them
in their hands. In the valleys of Aragua, where they are
very common, we have seen them perch upon the hammocks
on which we were reposing, in open day.

We discover, between Calabozo, Uritucu, and the Mesa
de Pavones, wherever there are excavations of some feet
deep, the geological constitution of the Llanos. A formation
of red sandstone (ancient conglomerate) covers an extent
of several thousand square leagues. We shall find it again
in the vast plains of the Amazon, on the eastern boundary
of the province of Jaen de Bracamoros. This prodigious
extension of red sandstone in the low grounds stretching
along the east of the Andes, is one of the most striking
phenomena I observed during my examination of rocks in
the equinoctial regions.

The red sandstone of the Llanos of Caracas lies in a
concave position, between the primitive mountains of the
shore and of Parime. On the north it is backed by the

* The Spanish colonists call the Crotophaga ani, zamurito (little car-
rion vulture, — Vultur aura minuta), or garapatero, ' the eater of ^ara-
p».as/ insects of the Acarus family.

ROCKS OF T1IE PLAIKS. 136

transition-slates,* and on the south it rests immediately on
the granites of the Orinoco. We observed in it rounded
fragments of quartz (kieselschiefer), and Lydian stone,
cemented by an olive-brown ferruginous clay. The cement
is sometimes of so bright a red that the people of the
country take it for cinnabar. We met a Capuchin monk at
Calabozo, who was in vain attempting to extract mercury
from this red sandstone. In the Mosa de Paja this rock con-
tains strata of another quartzose sandstone, very fine-grained ;
more to the south it contains masses of brown iron, and
fragments of petrified trees of the monocotyledonous family,
but we did not see in it any shells. The red sandstone,
called by the Llaneros, the stone of the reefs (piedra de
arrecifes), is everywhere covered with a stratum of clay.
This clay, dried and hardened in the sun, splits into separate
prismatic pieces with five or six sides. Does it belong to
the trap-formation of Parapara ? It becomes thicker, and
mixed with sand, as we approach the Bio Apure ; for near
Calabozo it is one toise thick, near the mission of Gruayaval
five toises, which may lead to the belief that the strata of
red sandstone dips towards the south. We gathered in the
Mesa de Pavones little nodules of blue iron-ore disseminated
in the clay.

A dense whitish-gray limestone, with a smooth fracture,
somewhat analogous to that of Caripe, and consequently
to that of Jura, lies on the red sandstone between Tisnao
and Calabozo.f In several other places, for instance in the
Mesa de San Diego, and between Ortiz and the Mesa de
Paja,J we find above the limestone lamellar gypsum alter-
nating with strata of marl. Considerable quantities of this
gypsum are sent to the city of Caracas,§ which is situated
amidst primitive mountains.

This gypsum generally forms only small beds, and is
mixed with a great deal of fibrous gypsum. Is it of the

* At Malpaso and Piedras Azules.

f Does this formation of secondary limestone of the Llanos contain
galena ? It has been found in strata of black marl, at Barbacoa, between
Tmxillo and Barquesimeto, north-west of the Llanos.

J Also near Cachipe and San Joacquim, in the Llanos of Barcelona.

§ This trade is carried on at Parapara. A load of eight arrobas sell* at
Caracas for twenty* four piastres.

136 HATO DE ALT A GBACIA.

same formation as that of Guire, on the coast of Paria,
which contains sulphur? or do the masses of this latter
substance, found in the valley of Buen Pastor and on the
banks of the Orinoco, belong, with the argillaceous gyp-
sum of the Llanos, to a secondary formation much more
recent.

These questions are very interesting in the study of the
relative antiquity of rocks, which is the principal basis of
geology. I know not of any salt-deposits in the Llanos.
Horned cattle prosper here without those famous bareros,
or muriatiferous lands, which abound in the Pampas of
Buenos Ayres.*

After having wandered for a long time, and without any
traces of a road, in the desert savannahs of the Mesa de
Pavones, we were agreeably surprised when we came to a
solitary farm, the Hato de Alfa Gracia, surrounded with
gardens and basins of limpid water. Hedges of bead-trees
encircled groups of icacoes laden with fruit. Farther on
we passed the night near the small village of San Geronymo
del Guayaval, founded by Capuchin missionaries. It is
situated near the banks of the Rio Guarico, which falls
into the Apure. I visited the missionary, who had no other
habitation than his church, not haying yet built a house.
He was a young man, and he received us in the most
obliging manner, giving us all the information we desired.
His village, or to use the word established among the
monks, his Mission, was not easy to govern. The founder,
who had not hesitated to establish for his own profit a
pulperia, in other words, to sell bananas and guarapo in the
church itself, had shown himself to be not very nice in the
choice of the new colonists. Many marauders of the Llanoa
had settled at Ghiayaval, because the inhabitants of a Mis-
sion are exempt from the authority of secular law. Here,
aa in Australia, it cannot be expected that good colonists
\\ ill be formed before the second or third generation.

"We passsd the Guarico, and encamped in the savannahs
south of G-uayaval. Enormous bats, no doubt of the tribe
of Phyllostomas, hovered as usual over our hammocks
during a great part of the night. Every moment they
•eemed to be about to fasten on our faces. Early in the
* Known in North America under the name of ' salt-licks.'

BAN FERNANDO Ut APUEE. 137

morning we pursued our way over low grounds, often in-
undated. Tu the season of rains, a boat may be navigated,
as on a lake, between the Guarico and the Apure. "We
arrived on the 27th of March at the Villa de San Fer-
nando, the capital of the Mission of the Capuchins in the
province of Varinas. This was the termination of our
journey over the Llanos ; for we passed the three months
of April, May, and June on the rivers.

CHAPTER XVIII.

San Fernando de Apure. — Intertwinings and Bifurcations of the Rivera
Apure and Arauca. — Navigation on the Rio Apure.

TILL the second half of the eighteenth century the names
of the great rivers Apure, Arauca, and Meta were scarcely
known in Europe : certainly less than they had been in the
two preceding centuries, when the valiant Felipe de Urre
and the conquerors of Tocuyo traversed the Llanos, to seek,
beyond the Apure, the great legendary city of El Dorado,
an'd the rich country of the Omeguas, the Timbuctoo of the
New Continent. Such daring expeditions could not be car-
ried out without all the apparatus of war ; and the weapons,
which had been destined for the defence of the new colo-
nists, were employed without intermission against the
unhappy natives. When more peaceful times succeeded
to those of violence and public calamity, two powerful
Indian tribes, the Cabres and the Caribs of the Orinoco,
made themselves masters of the country which the Con-
quistadores had ceased to ravage. None but poor monks
were then permitted to advance to the south of the steppes.
Beyond the TJritucu an unknown world opened to the
Spanish colonists; and the descendants of those intrepid
warriors who had extended their conquests from Peru to
the coasts of New Grenada and the mouth of the Amazon,
knew not the roads that lead from Coro to the Rio Meta.
The shore of Venezuela remained a separate country ; and
the slow conquests of the Jesuit missionaries were success-
ful only by skirting the banks of the Orinoco. These

138 SITUATION OF THE TOWS.

fathers had already penetrated beyond the great cataracts of
Atures and Maypures, when the Andalusian Capuchins had
scarcely reached the plains of Calabozo, from the coast and
the valleys of Aragua. It would be difficult to explain these
contrasts by the system according to which, the different
monastic orders are governed ; for the aspect of the country
contributes powerfully to the more or less rapid progress of
the Missions. They extend but slowly into the interior of
the land, over mountains, or in steppes, wherever they do
not follow the course of a particular river. It will scarcely
be believed, that the Villa de Fernando de Apure, only fifty
leagues distant in a direct line from that part of the coast
of Caracas which has been longest inhabited, was founded
at no earlier a date than 1789. "We were shown a parch-
ment, full of fine paintings, containing the privileges of this
little town. The parchment was sent from Madrid at the
solicitation of the monks, whilst yet only a few huts of reeds
were to be seen around a great cross raised in the centre of
the hamlet. The missionaries and the secular governments
being alike interested in exaggerating in Europe what they
have done to augment the culture and population of the
provinces beyond sea, it often happens that names of towns
and villages are placed on the list of new conquests, long
before their foundation.

The situation of San Fernando, on a large navigable river,
near the mouth of another river which traverses the whole
province of Varinas, is extremely advantageous for trade.
Every production of that province, hides, cacao, cotton, and
the indigo of Mijagual, which is of the first quality, passes
through this town towards the mouths of the Orinoco.
During the season of rains large vessels go from Angostura
as far as San Fernando de Apure, and by the Bio Santo
Domingo as far as Torufios, the port of the town of Varinas.
At that period the inundations of the rivers, which form a
labyrinth of branches between the Apure, the Arauca, the
Capanaparo, and the Sinaruco, cover a country of nearly
four hundred square leagues. At this point, the Orinoco,
turned aside from its course, not by neighbouring moun-
tains, but by the rising of counterslopes, runs eastward
instead of following its previous direction in the line of
the meridian. Considering the surface of the globe as a

TLOODS IN T1IE SAVANNAHS. 132

poly hedron, formed of planes variously inclined, we may
conceive by the mere inspection of the maps, that the inter-
section of these slopes, rising towards the north, the west,
and south,* between San Fernando de Apure, Caycara, and
the mouth of the Meta, must cause a considerable depres-
sion. The savannahs in this basin are covered with twelve
or fourteen feet of water, and present, at the period of
rains, the aspect of a great lake. The farms and villages
which seem as if situated on shoals, scarcely rise two
or three feet above the surface of the water. Everything
here calls to mind the inundations of Lower Egypt, and the
lake of Xarayes, heretofore so celebrated among geogra-
phers, though it exists only during some months of the year.
The swellings of the rivers Apure, Meta, and Orinoco, are
also periodical. In the rainy season, the horses that wander
in the savannah, and have not time to reach the rising
grounds of the Llanos, perish by hundreds. The mares are
seen, followed by their colts,t swimming during a part of
the day to feed upon the grass, the tops of which alone
wave above the waters. In this state they are pursued by
the crocodiles, and it is by no means uncommon to find the
prints of the teeth of these carnivorous reptiles on their
thighs. The carcases of horses, mules, and cows, attract an
innumerable quantity of vultures. The zamuros are the
ibisis of this country, and they render the same service to
the inhabitants of the Llanos as the Vultur percnopterus
to the inhabitants of Egypt.

We cannot reflect on the effects of these inundations
without admiring the prodigious pliability of the organiza-
tion of the animals which man has subjected to his sway.
In Greenland the dog eats the refuse of the fisheries ; and
when fish are wanting, feeds on seaweed. The ass and the

* The risings towards the north and west are connected with two lines
of ridgea, the mountains of Villa de Cura and of Merida. The third
•lope, running from north to south, is that of the land-strait between
the Andes and the chain of Parime. It determines the general inclina-
tion of the Orinoco, from the mouth of the Guaviare to that of tht
Apure.

f The colts are drowned everywhere in large numbers, because they
we sooner tired of swimming, and strive to follow the mares in places
where the latter alone can touch the ground.

140 PEKIODICAL INUNDATIONS.

horse, originally natives of the cold and barren plains of
Upper Asia, follow man to the New World, return to the
wild state, and lead a restless and weary life in the
burning climates of the tropics. Pressed alternately by
excess of drought and of humidity, they sometimes seek a
pool in the midst of a bare and dusty plain, to quench their
thirst ; and at other times flee from water, and the over-
flowing rivers, as menaced by an enemy that threatens them
on all sides. Tormented during the day by gadflies and
mosquitos, the horses, mules, and cows find themselves
attacked at night by enormous bats, which fasten on their
backs, and cause wounds that become dangerous, because
fchey are filled with aearidae and other hurtful insects. In
the time of great drought the mules gnaw even the thorny
cactus* in order to imbibe its cooling juice, and draw it forth
as from a vegetable fountain. During the great inunda-
tions these same animals lead an amphibious life, surrounded
by crocodiles, water-serpents, and manatis. Yet, such are
the immutable laws of nature, that their races are preserved
in the struggle with the elements, and amid so many suffer-
ings and dangers. When the waters retire, and the rivers
return again into their beds, the savannah is overspread
with a beautiful scented grass ; and the animals of Europe
and Upper Asia seem to enjoy, as in their native climes,
the renewed vegetation of spring.

During the time of great floods, the inhabitants of these
countries, to avoid the force of the currents, and the danger
arising from the trunks of trees which these currents bring
down, instead of ascending the beds of rivers in their boats,
cross the savannahs. To go from San Fernando to the
villages of San Juan de Payara, San Raphael de Atamaica,
or San Francisco de Capanaparo, they direct their course
due south, as if they were crossing a single river of twenty
leagues broad. The junctions of the Gruarico, the Apure,
the Cabullare, and the Arauca with the Orinoco, form, at a
hundred and sixty leagues from the coast of G-uiana, a kind
of interior Delta, of which hydrography furnishes few ex-
amples in the Old Woild. According to the height of the

* The asses are particularly adroit in extracting the moisture con-
tained in the Cactus melocatus. They push aside the thorns with theit
hoofs ; but sometimes lame themselves in performing this feat.

HOT WINDS OF THE LLANOS. 141

mercury in the barometer, the waters of the Apure have
only a fall of thirty-four toises from San Fernando to the
sea. The fall from the mouths of the Osage and the
Missouri to the bar of the Mississippi is not more con-
siderable. The savannahs of Lower Louisiana everywhere
remind us of the savannahs of the Lower Orinoco.

During our stay of three days in the little town of San
Pernando, we lodged with the Capuchin missionary, who
lived much at his ease. We were recommended to him by
the bishop of Caracas, and he showed us the most obliging
attention. He consulted me on the works that had been
undertaken to prevent the flood from undermining the shore
on which the town was built. The flowing of the Portuguesa
into the Apure gives the latter an impulse towards south-
east ; and, instead of procuring a freer course for the river^
attempts were made to confine it bv dykes and piers. It
was easy to predict that these would be rapidly destroyed
by the sweD of the waters, the shore having been weakened
by taking away the earth from behind the dyke to employ
it in these hydraulic constructions.

San Fernando is celebrated for the excessive heat which
prevails there the greater part of the year; and before I
begin the recital of our long navigation on the rivers, I
shall relate some facts calculated to throw light on the
meteorology of the tropics. We went, provided with ther-
mometers, to the flat shores covered with white sand which
border the river Apure. At two in the afternoon I found
the sand, wherever it was exposed to the sun, at 52'5°.
The instrument, raised eighteen inches above the sand,
marked 42'8°, and at six feet high 38'7°. The temperature
of the air under the shade of a ceiba was 36'2°. These
observations were made during a dead calm. As soon as
the wind began to blow, the temperature of the air rose 3°
higher, yet we were not enveloped by a wind of sand, but
the strata of air had been in contact with a soil more
strongly heated, or through which whirlwinds of sand had
passed. This western part of the Llanos is the hottest,
because it receives air that has already crossed the rest of
the barren steppe. The same difference has been observed
between the eastern and western parts of the deserts of
Africa, where the trade-winds blow.

112 RIVER PORPOISES.

The heat augments sensibly in the Llanos during the
rainy season, particularly in the month of July, when the
sky is cloudy, and reflects the radiant heat toward the earth.
During this season the breeze entirely ceases ; and, accord-
ing to good thermometrical observations made by M. Pozo,
the thermometer rises in the shade to 39° and 39 '5°, though
kept at the distance of more than fifteen feet from the
ground. As we approached the banks of the Portuguesa,
the Apure, and the Apurito, the air became cooler from the
evaporation of so considerable a mass of water. This effect
is more especially perceptible at sunset. During the day
the shores of the rivers, covered with white sand, reflect
the heat in an insupportable degree, even more than the
yellowish brown clayey grounds of Calabozo and Tisnao.

On the 28th of March I was on the shore at sunrise to
measure the breadth of the Apure, which is two hundred
and six toises. The thunder rolled in all directions around.
It was the first storm and the first rain of the season. The
river was swelled by the easterly wind ; but it soon became
calm, and then some great cetacea, much resembling the
porpoises of our seas, began to play in long files on the
surface of the water. The slow and indolent crocodiles
seem to dread the neighbourhood of these animals, so noisy
and impetuous in their evolutions, for we saw them dive
whenever they approached. It is a very extraordinary phe-
nomenon to find cetacea at such a distance from the coast.
The Spaniards of the Missions designate them, as they do
the porpoises of the ocean, by the name of toninas. The
Tamanacs call them orinucna. They are three or four feet
,ong; and bending their back, and pressing with their tail
on the inferior strata of the water, they expose to view a
part of the back and of the dorsal fin. I did not succeed
in obtaining any, though I often engaged Indians to
shoot at them with their arrows. Father Gili asserts
that the Gumanos eat their flesh. Are these cetacea
peculiar to the great rivers of South America, like the
manati, which, according to Cuvier, is also a fresh water
cetaceous animal ? or must we admit that they go up from
the sea against the current, as the beluga sometimes does in
the rivers of Asia ? What would lead me to doubt this last
supposition is, that we saw toninas above the great cataracts

ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY. 113

of the Orinoco, in the Kio Atabapo* Did they penetrate
into the centre of equinoctial America from the mouth of
the Amazon, by the communication of that river with the
Rio Negro, the Cassiquiare, and the Orinoco ? They are
found here at all seasons, and nothing seems to denote
that they make periodical migrations like salmon.

While the thunder rolled around us, the sky displayed
only scattered clouds, that advanced slowly toward the
zenith, and in an opposite direction. The hygrometer of
Deluc was at 53°, tne centigrade thermometer 23'7°, and
Saussure's hygrometer 87*5°. The electrometer gave no
sign of electricity. As the storm gathered, the blue of the
sky changed at first to deep azure and then to grey. The
vesicular vapour became visible, and the thermometer rose
three degrees, as is almost always the case, within the
tropics, from a cloudy sky which reflects the radiant heat of
the soil. A heavy rain fell. Being sufficiently habituated
to the climate not to fear the effect of tropical rains, we
remained on the shore to observe the electrometer. I held
it more than twenty minutes in my hand, six feet above the
ground, and observed that in general the pith-balls separated
only a few seconds before the lightning was seen. The
separation was four lines. The electric charge remained
the same during several minutes ; and having time to deter-
mine the nature of the electricity, by approaching a stick of
sealing-wax, I saw here what I had often observed on the
ridge of the Andes during a storm, that the electricity of
the atmosphere was first positive, then nil, and then ne-
gative. These oscillations from positive to negative were
often repeated. Tet the electrometer constantly denoted, a
little before the lightning, only E., or + E., and never — E.
Towards the end of the storm the west wind blew very
strongly. The clouds dispersed, and the thermometer sunk
to 22° on account of the evaporation from the soil, and the
freer radiation towards the sky.

I have entered into these details on the electric charge
of the atmosphere because travellers in general confine
themselves to the description of the impressions produced
on a European newly arrived by the solemn spectacle of a
tropical storm. In a country where the year is diyidod into

144 ELECTRIC PHENOMENA.

great seasons of drought and wot, or, as the Indians eay in
their expressive language, of sun* and rain,f it is highly
interesting to follow the progress of meteorological pheno-
mena in the transition from one season to another We
had already observed, in the valleys of Aragua, from the
18th and 19th of February, clouds forming at the com-
mencement of the night. In the beginning of the month
of March the accumulation of the vesicular vapours, visible
to the eye, and with them signs of atmospheric electricity,
augmented daily. We saw flashes of heat-lightning to the
south ; and the electrometer of Yolta constantly displayed,
at sunset, positive electricity. The pith balls, unexcited
during the day, separated to the width of three or four lines
at the commencement of the night, which is triple what I
generally observed in Europe, with the same instrument, in
calm weather. Upon the whole, from the 26th of May, the
electrical equilibrium of the atmosphere seemed disturbed.
During whole hours the electricity was nil, then it became
very strong, and soon after was again imperceptible. The
hygrometer of Deluc continued to indicate great dryness
(from 33° to 35°), and yet the atmosphere appeared no
longer the same. Amidst these perpetual variations of the
electric state of the air, the trees, divested of their foliage,
already began to unfold new leaves, and seemed to feel the
approach of spring.

The variations which we have just described are not
peculiar to one year. Everything in the equinoctial zone
has a wonderful uniformity of succession, because the active
powers of nature limit and balance each other, according to
laws that are easily recognized. I shall here note the
progress of atmospherical phenomena in the islands to the
east of the Cordilleras of Merida and of New Grenada, in
the Llanos of Venezuela and the Bio Meta, from four to ten
degrees of north latitude, wherever the rains are constant

* In the Maypure dialect camoti, properly "the heat [of the sun]."
The Tamanacs call the season of drought uamu, "the time of grass-
hoppers."

f In the Tamanac language canepo. The year is des'gnated, among
•ersral nations, by the name of one of the two seasons. The Maypurea
•»y, "so many suns," (or rather "so many heats;") the Tamanac*,
"«o many rains."

APPROACH OF THE RAINY SEASO1C. 145

from May to October, and comprehending consequently the
periods of the greatest heats, which occur in July and
August.*

Nothing can equal the clearness of the atmosphere from
the month of December to that of February. The sky is
then constantly without clouds; and if one should appear,
it is a phenomenon that engages the whole attention ot the
inhabitants. A breeze from the east, and from east-north-
east, blows with violence. As it brings with it air always of
the same temperature, the vapours cannot become visible by
cooling.

About the end of February and the beginning of Marcii,
the blue of the sky is less intense, the hygrometer indicates
by degrees greater humidity, the stars are sometimes veiled
by a slight stratum of vapour, and their light is no longer
steady and planetary ; they are seen twinkling from time to
time when at 20° above the horizon. The breeze at this
period becomes less strong, less regular, and is often inter-
rupted by dead calms. The clouds accumulate towards
south-south-east, appearing like distant mountains, with
outlines strongly marked. From time to time they detach
themselves from the horizon, and traverse the vault of the
sky with a rapidity which little corresponds with the feeble
wind prevailing in the lower strata of the air. At the end
of March, the southern region of the atmosphere is illumined
by small electric explosions. They are like phosphorescent
gleams, circumscribed by vapour. The breeze then shifts
from time to time, and for several hours together, to the
west and south-west. This is a certain sign of the approach
of the rainy season, which begins at the Orinoco about the
end of April. The blue sky disappears, and a grey tint
spreads uniformly over it. At the same time the heat of the
atmosphere progressively increases; and soon the heavens
are no longer obscured by clouds, but by condensed vapours.
The plaintive cry of the howling apes begins to be heard
before sunrise. The atmospheric electricity, which, during

* The maximum of the heat is not felt on the coast, at Cumana, at La
Guayra, and in the neighbouring island of Margareta, before the month of
September; and the rains, if the name can be given to a few d'ops
that fall at intervals, are observed only in the months of October and
November.

VOL. II. L

146 PBOPAGATION OF AEBIAL ACTION.

the season of drought, from December to March, had been
constantly, in the day-time, from 1-7 to 2 lines, becomes
extremely variable from the month of March. It appears
nil during whole days ; and then for some hours the pith-
balls diverge three or four lines. The atmosphere, which
is generally, in the torrid as well as in the temperate
zone, in a state of positive electricity, passes alternately,
for eight or ten minutes, to the negative state. The season
of rains is that of storms; and yet a great number of
experiments made during three years, prove to me that it
is precisely in this season of storms we find the smallest
degree of electric tension in the lower regions of the atmo-
sphere. Are storms the effect of this unequal charge of
the different superincumbent strata of air? "What pre-
vents the electricity from descending towards the earth, in
air which becomes more humid after the month of March ?
The electricity at this period, instead of being diffused
throughout the whole atmosphere, appears accumulated on
the exterior envelope, at the surface of the clouds. Accor-
ding to M. Gray-Lussac it is the formation of the cloud itself
that carries the fluid toward its surface. The storm rises in
the plains two hours after the sun has passed the meridian ;
consequently a short time after the moment of the maxi-
mum of diurnal heat within the tropics. It is extremely rare
in the islands to hear thunder during the night, or in the
morning. Storms at night are peculiar to certain valleys of
rivers, having a pecul:ar climate.

"What then are the causes of this rupture of the equili-
brium in the electric tension of the air ? of this continual
condensation of the vapours into water ? of this interruption
of the breezes ? of this commencement and duration of the
rainy seasons? I doubt whether electricity have any in-
fluence on the formation of vapours. It is rather the for-
mation of these vapours that augments and modifies the
electrical tension. North and south of the equator, storms
or great explosions take place at the same time in the
temperate and in the equinoctial zone. Is there an action
propagated through the great aerial ocean from the tem-
perate zone towards the tropics 1 How can it be con-
ceived, that in that zone where the sun rises constantly
to so great a height above the horizon, its passage through

ATMOSPHERIC CUBBLHTTB. 147

the zeiiith can have so powerful an influence on the meteo-
rological variations ? 1 am of opinion that no local cause
determines the commencement of the rains within the tro-
pics ; and that a more intimate knowledge of the higher
currents of air will elucidate these problems, so complicated
in appearance. We can observe only what passes in the
lower strata of the atmosphere. The Andes are scarcely
inhabited beyond the height of two thousand toises ; and at
that height the proximity of the soil, and the masses of moun
tains, which form the shoals of the aerial ocean, have a sen-
sible influence on the ambient air. What we observe on
the table-land of Antisana is not what we should find at the
same height in a balloon, hovering over the Llanos or the
surface of the ocean.

We have just seen that the season of rains and storms in
the northern equinoctial zone coincides with the passage of
the sun through the zenith of the place,* with the ces-
sation of the north-east breezes, and with the frequency
of calms and bendavales, which are stormy winds from
south-east and south-west, accompanied by a cloudy sky.
I believe that, in reflecting on the general laws of the
equilibrium of the gaseous masses constituting our atmo-
sphere, we may find, in the interruption of the current that
blows from an homonymous pole, in the want of the renewal
of air in the torrid zone, and in the continued action of
an ascending humid current, a very simple cause of the
coincidence of these phenomena, While the north-easterly
breeze blows with all its violence north of the equator, it
prevents the atmosphere which covers the equinoctial lands
and seas from saturating itself with moisture. The hot and
moist air of the torrid zone rises aloft, and flows off" again
towards the poles; while inferior polar currents, bringing
drier and colder strata, are every instant taking the place of
the columns of ascending air. By this constant action of
two opposite currents, the humidity, far from being accumu-
lated in the equatorial region, is carried towards the cold
and temperate regions. During this season of breezes,
which is that when the sun is m the southern signs, the

• These passages take place, in the fifth and tenth degrees of north lat.
between the 3rd and the 16th of April, and between the 27th of August
And the 8th of September.

L 2

148 CHANGE OF THE SEASONS.

»ky in the northern equinoctial zone is constantly serene,
The vesicular vapours are not condensed, because the air,
unceasingly renewed, is far from the point of saturation.
In proportion as the sun, entering the northern signs, rises
towards the zenith, the breeze from the north-east moderates,
and by degrees entirely ceases. The diiference of tempera-
ture between the tropics and the temperate northern zone is
then the least possible. It is the summer of the boreal pole ;
and, if the mean temperature of the winter, between 42° and
52° of north latitude, be from 20° to 26° of the centigrade
thermometer less than the equatorial heat, the diiference in
summer is scarcely from 4° to 6°. The sun being in the
zenith, and the breeze having ceased, the causes which pro-
duce humidity, and accumulate it in the northern equinoc-
tial zone, become at once more active. The column of
air reposing on this zone, is saturated with vapours,
because it is no longer renewed by the polar current.
Clouds form in this air saturated and cooled by the com-
bined effects of radiation and the dilatation of the ascending
air. This air augments its capacity for heat in proportion
as it rarefies. With the formation and collection of the
vesicular vapours, electricity accumulates in the higher re-
gions of the atmosphere. The precipitation of the vapours is
continual during the day ; but it generally ceases at night,
and frequently even before sunset. The showers are regu-
larly more violent, and accompanied with electric explosions,
a short time after the maximum of the diurnal heat. This
state of things remains unchanged, till the sun enters into the
southern signs. This is the commencement of cold in the
northern temperate zone. The current from the north-pole
is then re-established, because the difference between the
heat of the equinoctial and temperate regions augments
daily. The north-east breeze blows with violence, the air of
the tropics is renewed, and can no longer attain the degree
of saturation. The rains consequently cease, the vesicular
?apour is dissolved, and the sky resumes its clearness and
its azure tint. Electrical explosions are no longer heard,
doubtless because electricity no longer comes in contact with
the groups of vesicular vapours in the high regions of the
air, I had almost said the coating of clouds, on which the
fluid can accumulate.

EQUATORIAL BAINS. 149

We have nere considered the cessation of the breezes as
khe principal cause of the equatorial rains. These rains in
each hemisphere last only as long as the sun has its decli-
nation in that hemisphere. It is necessary to observe, that
the absence of the breeze is not always succeeded by a dead
calm ; but that the calm is often interrupted, particularly
along the western coast of America, by bendavalrs, or south-
west and south-east winds. This phenomenon seems to
demonstrate that the columns of humid air which rise in the
northern equatorial zone, sometimes flow off toward the
south pole. In fact, the countries situated in the torrid
zone, both north and south of the equator, furnish, during
their summer, while the sun is passing through their zenith,
the maximum of difference of temperature with the air of the
opposite pole. The southern temperate zone has its winter,
while it rains on the north of the equator; and while a mean
heat prevails from 5° to 6° greater than in the time of
drought, when the sun is lower.* The continuation of the
rains, while the bendavales blow, proves that the currents
from the remoter pole do not act in the northern equi-
noctial zone like the currents of the nearer pole, on account
of the greater humidity of the southern polar current. The
air, wafted by this current, comes from a hemisphere consist-
ing almost entirely of water. It traverses all the southern
equatorial zone to reach the parallel of 8° north latitude ;
and is consequently less dry, less cold, less adapted to act as
a counter-current to renew the equinoctial air and prevent
its saturation, than the northern polar current, or the breeze
from the north-east.f We may suppose that the bendavales
are impetuous winds which, on some coasts, for instance on
that ol Gruatimala, (because they are not the effect of a
regular and progressive descent of the air of the tropics
towards the south pole, but they alternate with calms), are
accompanied by electrical explosions, and are in fact squalls,

* From the equator to 10* of north lat. the mean temperatures of the
summer and winter months scarcely differ 2° or 3° ; but at the limits of
the torrid zone, toward the tropic of Cancer, the difference amounts
to 8° or 9°.

t In the two temperate zones the air loses its transparency every time
that the wind blows from the opposite pole, that is to say, from the pole
that has not the same denomination as the hemisphere in which the wind
blows.

150 PREPARATIONS FOE OUR YOYAGE.

that indicate a reflux, an abrupt and instantaneous rapture,
of equilibrium in the aerial ocean.

We have here discussed one of the most important phe-
nomena of the meteorology of the tropics, considered in its
most general view. In the same manner as the limits of the
trade-winds do not form circles parallel with the equator, the
action of the polar currents is variously felt in different
meridians. The chains of mountains and the coasts in the
same hemisphere have often opposite seasons. There are
several examples of these anomalies ; but, in order to dis-
cover the laws of nature, we must know, before we examine
into the causes of local perturbations, the average state of
the atmosphere, and the constant type of its variations.

The aspect of the sky, the progress of the electricity, and
the shower of the 28th of March, announced the commence-
ment of the rainy season ; we were still advised, however, to
go from San Fernando de Apure by San Francisco de Capa-
naparo, the Rio Sinaruco, and the Hato de San Antonio, to
the village of the Ottomacs, recently founded near the
banks of the Meta, and to embark on the Orinoco a little
above Carichana. This way by land lies across an unhealthy
and feverish country. An old farmer named Francisco San-
chez obligingly offered to conduct us. His dress denoted
the great simplicity of manners prevailing in those distant
countries. He had acquired a fortune of more than 100,000
piastres, and yet he mounted on horseback with his feet bare,
and wearing large silver spurs. We knew by the experience
of several weeks the dull uniformity of the vegetation of the
Llanos, and preferred the longer road, which leads by the
Rio Apure to the Orinoco. We chose one of those very large
canoes called lanchas by the Spaniards. A pilot and four
Indians were sufficient to manage it. They constructed,
near the stern, in the space of a few hours, 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. I mention these mi-
nute circumstances, to prove that our accommodations on
the Eio Apure were far different from those to which we
were afterwards reduced in the narrow boats of the Orinoco.
We loaded the canoe with provision for a month. Fowls,
frggs, plantains, cassava, and cacao, are found in abundance

DEPARTURE FROM SAN FERNA1TDO. 151

at San Fernando. The good Capuchin, Fray Jose Mafia de
Malaga, gave us sherry wine, oranges, and tamarinds, tc
make cooling beverages. We could easily foresee that a
roof constructed of palm-tree leaves would become exces-
sively hot on a large river, where we were almost always
exposed to the perpendicular rays of the sun. The Indians
relied less on the provision we had purchased, than on their
hooks and nets. We took also some fire-arms, which we
found in general use as far as the cataracts; but farther
south the great humidity of the air prevents the mission-
aries from using them. The Rio Apure abounds in fish,
manatis, and turtles, the eggs of which afford an aliment
more nutritious than agreeable to the taste. Its banks are
inhabited by an innumerable quantity of birds, among which
the pauxi and the guacharaca, which may be called the tur-
keys and pheasants of those countries, are found to be the
most useml. Their flesh appeared to be harder and less
white than that of the gallinaceous tribe in Europe, because
they use much more muscular exercise. We did not forget
to add to our provision, fishing-tackle, fire-arms, and a few
casks of brandy, to serve as a medium of barter with the
Indians of the Orinoco.

We departed from San Fernando on the 30th of March,
at four in the afternoon. The weather was extremely hot ;
the thermometer rising in the shade to 34°, though the
breeze blew very strongly from the south-east. Owing to
this contrary wind we could not set our sails. We were
accompanied, in the whole of this voyage on the A pure, the
Orinoco, and the Rio Negro, by the brother-in-law of the
governor of the province of Varinas, Don Nicolas Soto,
who had recently arrived from Cadiz. Desirous of visiting
countries so calculated to excite the curiosity of a Euro-
pean, .he did not hesitate to confine himself with us during
seventy-four days in a narrow boat infested with mosquitos.
His amiable disposition and gay temper often helped to
make us forget the sufferings of a voyage which was not
wholly exempt from danger. We passed the mouth of the
Apurito, and coasted the island of the same name, formed
by the Apure and the Gruarico. This island is in fact only
a very low spot of ground, bordered by two great rivers,
both of which, at a little distance from each other, fall uito

152 TAHURO INDIANS.

the Orinoco, after having formed a junction below San Fer-
nando by the first bifurcation of the Apure. The Isla del
Apurito is twenty-two leagues in length, and two or three
leagues in breadth. It is divided by the Cano de la Tigrera
and the Cano del Manati into three parts, the two extremes
of which bear the names of Isla de Blanco and Isla de los
(xarzitas. The right bank of the Apure, below the Apurito,
is somewhat better cultivated than the left bank, where the
Yaruros, or Japuin Indians, have constructed a few huts
with reeds and stalks of palm-leaves. These people, who
live by hunting and fishing, are very skilful in killing
jaguars. It is they who principally carry the skins, known
in Europe by the name of tiger-skins, to the Spanish vil-
lages. Some of these Indians have been baptized, but they
never visit the Christian churches. They are considered as
savages because they choose to remain independent. Other
tribes of Yaruros live under the rule of the missionaries, in
the village of Achaguas, situated south of the Bio Payara.
The individuals of this nation, whom I had an opportunity
of seeing at the Orinoco, have a stern expression of counte-
nance ; and some features in their physiognomy, erroneously
called Tartarian, belong to branches of the Mongol race,
the eye very long, the cheekbones high, but the nose pro-
minent throughout its whole length. They are taller,
browner, and less thick-set than the Chayma Indians. The
missionaries praise the intellectual character of the Yaruros,
who were formerly a powerful and numerous nation en the
banks of the Orinoco, especially in the environs of Cuycara,
below the mouth of the G-uarico. We passed the night at
Diamante, a small sugar-plantation formed opposite the
island of the same name.

During the whole of my voyage from San Fernando to
San Carlos del Bio Negro, and thence to the town of
Angostura, I noted down day by day, either in the boat or
where we disembarked at night, all that appeared to me
worthy of observation. Violent rains, and the prodigious
quantity of mosquitos with which the air is filled on the
banks of the Orinoco and the Cassiquiare, necessarily occa-
sioned some interruptions ; but I supplied the omission by
notes taken a few days after. I here subjoin some extracts
from my journal. Whatever is written while the objects we

BIVEE SCENERY. 153

describe are before our eyes bears a character of truth and
individuality which gives attraction to things the least
important.

On the 31st March a contrary wind obliged us to remain
on shore till noon. "We saw a part of some cane-fields laid
waste by the effect of a conflagration which had spread from
a neighbouring forest. The wandering Indians everywhere
set fire to the forest where they have encamped at night ;
and during the season of drought, vast provinces would be
the prey of these conflagrations if the extreme hardness of
the wood did not prevent the trees from being entirely
consumed. We found trunks of desmanthus and mahogany
which were scarcely charred two inches deep.

Having passed the Diamante we entered a land inhabited
only by tigers, crocodiles, and chiguires; the latter are a
large species of the genus Cavia of Linnasus. We saw flocks
of birds, crowded so closely together as to appear against the
sky like a dark cloud which every instant changed its form.
The river widens by degrees. One of its banks is generally
barren and sandy from the effect of inundations ; the other
is higher, and covered with lofty trees. In some parts the
river is bordered by forests on each side, and forms a
straight canal a hundred and fifty toises broad. The
manner in which the trees are disposed is very remarkable.
We first find bushes of SCMSO* forming a kind of hedge
four feet high, and appearing as if they had been clipped
by the hand of man. A copse of cedar, brazilletto, and
lignum-vit«, rises behind this hedge. Palm-trees are rare ;
we saw only a few scattered trunks of the thorny piritu
and corozo. The large quadrupeds of those regions, the
jaguars, tapirs, and peccaries, have made openings in the
hedge of sauso which we have just described. Through
these the wild animals pass when they come to drink at the
river. As they fear but little the approach of a boat, we
had the pleasure of viewing them as they 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. These scenes, which were often re-
peated, had ever for me a peculiar attraction. The pleasure

* Hermesia castaneifolia. This is a new genus, approaching tha
•khornea of Swartz.

154 GEOUPS or CROCODILES.

they excite is not owing solely to the interest which the
naturalist takes in the objects of his study, it is connected
with a feeling common to all men who have been brought
up in the habits of civilization. You find yourself in a new
world, in the midst of untamed and savage nature. Now
the jaguar, — the beautiful panther of America, — appears
upon the shore; and now the hocco,* with its black
plumage and tufted head, moves slowly along the sausos.
Animals of the most different classes succeed each other.
" Esse como en el Paradiso" "It is just as it was in
Paradise," said our pilot, an old Indian of the Missions.
Everything, indeed, in these regions recalls to mind the
state of the primitive world with its innocence and felicity.
But in carefully observing the manners of animals among
themselves, we see that they mutually avoid and fear each
other. The golden age has ceased ; and in this Paradise of
the American forests, as well as everywhere else, sad and
long experience has taught all beings that benignity is
seldom found in alliance with strength.

When the shore is of considerable breadth, the hedge of
sauso remains at a distance from the river. In the inter-
mediate space we see crocodiles, sometimes to the number
of eight or ten, stretched on the sand. Motionless, with
their jaws wide open, they repose by each other, without
displaying any of those marks of affection observed in other
animals living in society. The troop separates as soon as
they quit the shore. It is, however, probably composed of
tne male only, and many females; for as M. Descourtils,
who has so much studied the crocodiles of St. Domingo,
observed to me, the males are rare, because they kill one
another in fighting during the season of their loves. These
monstrous creatures are so numerous, that throughout the
whole course of the river we had almost at every instant five
or six in view. Yet at this period the swelling of the Bio
Apure was scarcely perceived ; and consequently hundreds
of crocodiles were still buried in the mud of the savannahs.
About four in the afternoon we stopped to measure a dead
crocodile which had been cast ashore. It was only sixteen
feet eight inches long ; some days after M. Bonpland found
another, a male, twenty-two feet three inches long. In

* Ceyx alector, the peacock-pheasant ; C. pauxi, the cashew-bird.

THEIR FEROCITY. 135

every zone, in America as in Egypt, this animal attains the
same size. The species so abundant in the Apure, the
Orinoco,* and the Rio de la Magdalena, is not a cayman,
but a real crocodile, analagous to that of the Nile, having
feet dentated at the external edges. When it is recollected
that the male enters the age of puberty only at ten years,
and that its length is then eight feet, we may presume that
the crocodile measured by M. Bonpland was at least twenty-
eight years old. The Indians told us, that at San Fernando
scarcely a year passes, without two or three grown-up
persons, particularly women who fetch water from the river,
oeing drowned by these carnivorous reptiles. They related
to us 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 the crocodile to let her
go, after having bitten off the lower part of her left arm.
The girl, notwithstanding the enormous quantity of blood she
lost, reached the shore, swimming with the hand that still
remained to her. In those desert countries, where man is
ever wrestling with nature, discourse daily turns on the best
means that may be employed to escape from a tiger, a boa, or
a crocodile ; every one prepares himself in some sort for the
dangers that may await him. "I knew," said the
girl of Uritucu coolly, "that the cayman lets go his hold,
you push your fingers into his eyes." Long after my
return to Europe, I learned that in the interior of Africa the
negroes know and practise the same means of defence. Who
does not recollect, with lively interest, Isaac, the guide of
the unfortunate Mungo Park, who was seized twice 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
American girl, owed their safety to the same presence of
mind, and the same combination of ideas.

The movements of the crocodile of the Apure are sudden
and rapid when it attacks any object ; but it moves with
the slowness of a salamander, when not excited by rage

* It is the arva of the Tamanac Indians, the amana of the Maypurf
Indians, the Crocudilus acutus of Cuvier.

young
, if

150 HABITS OF THE CAYMAJf.

or hunger. The animal hi running makes a rustling noise,
which seems to proceed from the rubbing of the scales of its
skin one against another. In this movement it bends its
back, and appears higher on its legs than when at rest. "We
often heard this rattling of the scales very near us on the
shore ; but it is not true, as the Indians pretend, that, like
the armadillo, the old crocodiles "can erect their scales, and
every part of their armour." The motion of these animals
is no doubt generally in a straight line, or rather like that of
an arrow, supposing it to change its direction at certain
distances. However, notwithstanding the little apparatus of
false ribs, which connects the vertebra of the neck, and
seems to impede the lateral movement, crocodiles can turn
easily when they please. I often saw young ones biting
their tails ; and other observers have seen the same action in
crocodiles at their full growth. If their movements almost
always appear to be straight forward, it is because, like our
small lizards, they move by starts. Crocodiles are excellent
swimmers; they go with facility against the most rapid
current. It appeared to me, however, that in descending
the river, they had some difficulty in turning quickly about.
A large dog, which had accompanied us in our journey
from Caracas to the Bio JSTegro, was one day pursued
in swimming by an enormous crocodile. The latter had
nearly reached its prey, when the dog escaped by turn-
ing round suddenly and swimming against the current.
The crocodile performed the same movement, but much
more slowly than the dog, which succeeded in gaining the
shore.

The crocodiles of the Apure find abundant food in the
chiguires (thick-nosed tapirs),* which live fifty or sixty
together in troops on the banks of the river. These animals,
as large as our pigs, have no weapons of defence ; they swim
somewhat better than they run : yet they become the prey

* Cavia capybara, Linn. The word chigmre belongs to the language
of the Palenkas and the Cumanagotos. The Spaniards call this animal
guardatinaja ; the Caribs, capigua; the Tamanacs, cappiva; and the
Maypures, chiato. According to Azara, it is known at Buenos Ayres by
the Indian names of capiyyua and capiguara. These various denomi-
nations show a striking analogy between the languages of the Orinoco
and those of the Rio de la Plata.

CAWO DE LA TIGRERA. 157

of the crocodiles in the water, and of the tigers on land.
It is difficult to conceive, how, being thus persecuted by
two powerful enemies, they become so numerous ; but they
breed with the same rapidity as the little cames or guinea-
pigs, which come to us from Brazil.

We stopped below the mouth of the Cafio de la Tigrera,
in a sinuosity called la Vuelta del Joval, to measure the
velocity of the water at its surface. It was not more than
3'2 feet* in a second, which gives 2'56 feet for the mean velo-
city. The height of the barometer indicated barely a slope of
seventeen inches in a mile of nine hundred and fifty toises.
The velocity is the simultaneous effect of the slope of the
ground, and the accumulation of the waters by the swelling
of the upper parts of the river. We were again surrounded
by chiguires, which swim like dogs, raising their heads and
necks above the water. We saw with surprise a large
crocodile on the opposite shore, motionless, and sleeping in
the midst of these nibbling animals. It awoke at the ap-
proach of our canoe, and went into the water slowly, without
frightening the chiguires. Our Indians accounted for this
indifference by the stupidity of the animals, but it is more
probable that the chiguires know by long experience, that
the crocodile of the Apure and the Orinoco does not attack
upon land, unless he finds the object he would seize imme-
diately in his way, at the instant when he throws himself
into the water.

Near the Joval nature assumes an awful and extremely wild
aspect. We there saw the largest jaguar we had ever met
with. The natives themselves were astonished at its pro-
digious length, which surpassed that of any Bengal tiger I
had ever seen in the museums of Europe. The animal lay
stretched beneath the shade of a large zamang.* It had
just killed a chiguire, 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 presented the most curious spectacle,

* In order to measure the velocity of the surface of a river, I generally
measured on the beach a base of 250 feet, and observed with the chrono-
meter the time that a floating body, abandoned to the current, required
to reach this distance.

t A species of mimosa.

158 EXOEMOUS JAGFAB.

by a singular mixture of boldness and timidity. They ad»
vanced within the distance of two feet from the animal, but at
the least movement he made they drew back. In order to
observe more nearly the manners of these creatures, we
went into the little skiff that accompanied our canoe. Tigers
very rarely attack boats by swimming to them ; and never
but when their ferocity is heightened by a long privation of
food. The noise of our 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 chiguire ; but the tiger, notwith-
standing the proximity of our boat, leaped into the midst of
them, and in a fit of rage, expressed by his gait and the
movement of his tail, carried off his prey to the forest.
The Indians regretted that they were not provided with
their lances, in order to go on shore and attack the tiger.
They are accustomed to this weapon, and were right in
not trusting to our fire-arms. In so excessively damp an
atmosphere muskets often miss fire.

Continuing to descend the river, we met with the great
herd of chiguires which the tiger had put to flight, and from
which he had selected his prey. These animals saw us land
very unconcernedly ; some of them were seated, and gazed
upon us, moving the upper lip like rabbits. They seemed
not to be afraid of man, but the sight of our dog put them
to flight. Their hind legs being longer than their fore legs,
their pace is a slight gallop, but with so little swiftness that
we succeeded in catching two of them. The chiguire, which
swims with the greatest agility, utters a short moan in
running, as if its respiration were impeded. It is the largest
of the family of rodentia or gnawing animals. It defends
itself only at the last extremity, when it is surrounded and
wounded. Having great strength in its grinding teeth,*
particularly the hinder ones, which are pretty long, it can
tear the paw of a tiger, or the leg of a horse, with its bite.

* We counted eighteen on each side. On the hind feet, at the upper
end of the metatarsus, there is a callosity three inches long and three
quarters of an inch broad, destitute of hair. The animal, when seated,
rests upon this part. No tail is visible externally ; but on putting aside
the hair we discover a tubercle, a mass of naked and wrinkled flesh, of a
conical figure, and half an inch long.

A WHITE CABALLEBO. 159

Its flesh has a musky smell somewhat disagreeable; jet
hams are made of it in this country, a circumstance which
almost justifies the name of 'water-hog,' given to the
chiguire by some of the older naturalists. The missionary
monks do not hesitate to eat these hams during Lent.
According to their zoological classification they place the
armadillo, the thick-nosed taper, and the manati, near the
tortoises; the first, because it is covered with a hard ar-
mour like a sort of shell ; and the others because they are
amphibious. The chiguires are found in such numbers on
the banks of the rivers Santo Domingo, Apure, and Arauca,
in the marshes and in the inundated savannahs* of the
Llanos, that the pasturages suffer from them. They browze
the grass which fattens the horses best, and which Dears the
name of chiguirero, or chiguire-grass. They feed also upon
fish ; and we saw with surprise, that, when scared by the
approach of a boat, the animal in diving remains eight or
ten minutes under water.

We passed the night as usual, 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 pre-
vent his classing himself amongst 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 respecting " those
never-ending wars, and everything down yonder (todas las
cosas de alia)." 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."
I had brought with me a chiguire, which I had intended tc
have roasted; but our host assured us, that such 'Indian
game' was not food fit for "nos otros caballeros llancos"
(white gentlemen like ourselves and him). Accordingly he
offered us some venison, which he had killed the day before
with an arrow, for he had neither powder nor fire-arms.

• Near Uritucu, in the Caflo del Ravanal, we saw a flock of eighty o
»ne hundred of these animals.

160 LUDICBOTJS

"We supposed that a small wood of plantain-trees con«
cealed from us 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 an ajoupa, or hut of palm-
leaves. He invited us to have our hammocks hung near
his own, between two trees ; and he assured us, with an
air of complacency, that, if we came up the river in the
rainy season, we should find him beneath a roof (baxo
techo). We soon had reason to complain of a system of
philosophy which is indulgent to indolence, and renders a
man indifferent to the conveniences of life. A furious wind
arose after midnight, lightnings flashed over the horizon,
thunder rolled, and we were wet to the skin. During this
storm a whimsical incident served to amuse us for a moment.
Dona Isabella's cat had perched upon the tamarind-tree,
at the foot of which we lay. It fell into the hammock of
one of our 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. We ran
to him on hearing his cries, and had some trouble to con-
vince him of his error. While it rained in torrents on our
hammocks and on our instruments which we had brought
ashore, Don Ignacio congratulated us on our good fortune
in not sleeping on the strand, but finding ourselves in his
domain, among whites and persons of respectability (entre
gente blanca y de trato) . Wet as we were, we could not
easily persuade ourselves of the advantages of our situation,
and we listened with some impatience to the long narrative
our host gave us of his pretended expedition to the Rio
Meta, of the valour he had displayed in a sanguinary com-
bat with the Gruahibo Indians, and "the services that he
had rendered to God and his king, in carrying away Indian
children (los Indiecitos) from their parents, to distribute
them in the Missions." We were struck with the singu-
larity of finding in that vast solitude a man believing him-
self to be of European race and knowing no other shelter
than the shade of a tree, and yet having all the vain pre-
tensions, hereditary prejudices, and errors of long-standing
civilization !

On the 1st of April, at sunrise, we quitted Sefior Don
Ignacio and Senora Dona Isabella his wife. The weather

THE GUAMO INDIANS 101

was cooler, for the thermometer (which generally kept up
in the daytime to 30° or 35°) had sunk to 24°. The tempera-
ture of the river was little changed : it continued constantly
at 26° or 27°. The current carried with it an enormous
number of trunks of trees. It might be imagined that on
ground entirely smooth, and where the eye cannot dis-
tinguish the least hill, the river would have formed by the
force of its current a channel in a straight line; but a
glance at the map, which I traced by the compass, will
prove the contrary. The two banks, worn by the waters,
do not furnish an equal resistance; and almost impercep-
tible inequalities of the level suffice to produce great sinuo-
sities. Yet below the Joval, where the bed of the river
enlarges a little, it forms a channel that appears perfectly
straight, and is shaded on each side by very tall trees.
This part of the river is called Cano Rico. I found it to
be one hundred and thirty-six toises broad. We passed
a low island, inhabited by thousands of flamingos, rose-
coloured spoonbills, herons* and moorhens, which displayed
plumage of the most various colours. These birds were
BO close together that they seemed to be unable to stir.
The island they frequent is called Isla de Aves, or Bird
Island. Lower down we passed the point where the Bio
Arichuna, an arm of the Apure, branches off to the Cabu-
lare, carrying away a considerable body of its waters. We
stopped, on the right bank, at a little Indian mission, inha-
bited by the tribe of the Guamos, called the village of
Santa Barbara de Arichuna.

The Guamos* are a race of Indians very difficult to fix
on a settled spot. They have great similarity of manners
with the Achaguas, the Guajibos,f and the Ottomacs, par-
taking their disregard of cleanliness, their spirit of ven-
geance, and their taste for wandering ; but their language
differs essentially. The greater part of these four tribes
live by fishing and hunting, in plains often inundated,
situated between the Apure, the Meta, and the Guaviare.
The nature of these regions seems to invite the natives to
a wandering life. On entering the mountains of the Cata-

• Father Gili observes that their Indian name is Uamtt and Pau, aad
that they originally dwelt on the Upper Apure.
f Their Indian name is Guahiva.
TOL. II. M

162 THE WOODS AT NIGHT.

facts of the Orinoco, we shall soon find, among the Piraoas,
the Macos, and the Maquiritaras, milder manners, a love
of agriculture, and great cleanliness in the interior of their
huts. On mountain ridges, in the midst of impenetrable
forests, man is compelled to fix himself, and cultivate a
small spot of land. This cultivation requires little care;
while, in a country where there are no other roads than
rivers, the life of the hunter is laborious and difficult. The
Q-uamos of the mission of Santa Barbara could not furnish
us with the provision we wanted. They cultivate only a
little cassava. They appeared hospitable; and when we
entered their huts, they offered us dried fish, and water
cooled in porous vessels.

Beyond the Vuelta del Cochino Roto, in a spot where
the river has scooped itself a new bed, we passed the night
on a bare and very extensive strand. The forest being
impenetrable, we had the greatest difficulty to find dry
wood to light fires, near which the Indians believe them-
selves in safety from the nocturnal attacks of the tiger.
Our own experience seems to bear testimony in favour of
this opinion; but Azara asserts that, in his time, a tiger
in Paraguay carried off" a man who was seated near a fire
lighted in the savannah.

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. We thought we observed that its blaze attracted
them, as it attracts fishes, crayfish, and other inhabitants of
the water. The Indians showed us 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 on the strand, we stuck our oars in the,
ground, and to these we fastened our hammocks. Every-
thing passed tranquilly till eleven at night ; and then a noise
so terrific arose in the neighbouring forest, that it was
almost impossible to close our eyes. Amid the cries of so
many wild beasts howling at once, the Indians discriminated
such only 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

NOCIUBNAL DISTURBANCES. lt>3

parraka, and other gallinaceous birds. When the jaguaru
approached the skirt of the forest, our dog, which till then
had never ceased barking, began to howl and seek for
shelter beneath our hammocks. 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 appeared to flee from the danger
that threatened them. We heard the same noises repeated,
during the course of whole months, whenever the forest
approached the bed of the river. The security evinced by
the Indians inspires confidence in the minds of travellers,
who readily persuade themselves that the tigers are afraid of
fire, and that they do not attack a man lying in his ham-
mock. These attacks are in fact extremely rare; and,
during a long abode in South America, I remember only
one example, of a llanero, who was found mutilated in his
hammock opposite the island of Achaguas.

When the natives are interrogated on the causes of the
tremendous noise made by the beasts of the forest at certain
hours of the night, the answer is, " They are keeping the
feast of the full moon."

I believe this agitation is most frequently the effect of
some conflict that has arisen in the depths of the forest.
The jaguars, for instance, pursue the peccaries and the
tapirs, which, having no defence but in their numbers, flee
in close troops, and break down the bushes they find in their
way. Terrified at this struggle, the timid and mistrustful
monkies answer, from the tops of the trees, the cries of the
large animals. They awaken the birds that live in society,
and by degrees the whole assembly is in commotion. It is
not always in a fine moonlight, but more particularly at the
time of a storm and violent showers, that this tumult takes
place among the wild beasts. " May Heaven grant them a
quiet night and repose, and us also !" said the monk who
accompanied us to the Rio Negro, when, sinking with
fatigue, he assisted in arranging our accommodations for the
night. It was indeed strange, to find no silence in the
solitude of woods. In the inns of Spain we dread the scund
of guitars from the next apartment ; on the Orinoco, where
the traveller's resting-place is- the open beach, or beneath

M 2

164 EIYEE-SCKNEBY.

the shelter of a solitary tree, his slumbers are disturbed by
a serenade from the forest.

"We set sail before sunrise, on the 2nd of April. The
morning was beautiful and cool, according to the feelings of
those who are accustomed to the heat of these climates.
The thermometer rose only to 28° in the air, but the dry
and white sand of the beach, notwithstanding its radiation
towards a cloudless sky, retained a temperature of 36°. The
porpoises (toninas) ploughed the river in long files. The
shore was covered with fishing-birds. Some of these perched
on the floating wood as it passed down the river, and
surprised the fish that preferred the middle of the stream.
Our canoe was aground several times during the morning.
These shocks are sufficiently violent to split a light bark.
"We struck on the points of several large trees, which remain
for years in an oblique position, sunk in the mud. These
1rees descend from Sarare, at the period of great inun-
dations, and they so fill the bed of the river, that canoes in
going up find it difficult sometimes to make their way over
the shoals, or wherever there are eddies. We reached a
spot near the island of Carizales, where we 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 anhinga, or white bellied darter. These
birds perch in files, like pheasants and parrakas, and the^
remain for hours entirely motionless, with their beaks raised
toward the sky.

Below the island of Carizales we observed a diminution of
the waters of the river, at which we were the more sur-
prised, as, after the bifurcation at la Boca de Arichuna, there
is no branch, no natural drain, which takes away water froi^
the Apure. The loss is solely the effect of evaporation, and
of filtration on a sandy and wet shore. Some idea of the
magnitude of these effects may be formed, from the fact
that we found the heat of the dry sands, at different hours of
the day, from 36° to 52°, and that of sands covered with
three or four inches of water 32°. The beds of rivers are
heated as far as the depth to which the solar rays can
penetrate without undergoing too great an extinction in
their passage through the si^erincumbent strata of water.

GREAT EXTENT OF IVAPOBATiOW. 1G5

Besides, filtration extends in a lateral direction far beyond
the bed of the river. The shore, which apears dry to us,
imbibes water as far up as to the level of the surface of
the river. "We saw water gush out at the distance of fifty
toises from the shore, every time that the Indians struck
their oars into the ground. Now these sands, wet below,
but dry above, and exposed to the solar rays, act like
sponges, and lose the infiltrated water every instant by
evaporation. The vapour that is emitted, traverses the
upper stratum of sand strongly heated, and becomes sensible
to the eye when the air cools towards evening. As the beach
dries, it draws from the river new portions of water ; and it
may be easily conceived that this continual alternation of va-
porization and lateral absorption must cause an immense
loss, difficult to submit to exact calculation. The increase
of these losses would be in proportion to the length of the
course of the rivers, if from their source to their mouth they
were equally surrounded by a flat shore ; but these shores
being formed by deposits from the water, and the water
having less velocity in proportion as it is more remote from
its source, throwing down more sediment in the lower than
in the upper part of its course, many rivers in hot climates
undergo a diminution in the quantity of their water, as they
approach their outlets. Mr. Barrow observed these curioua
effects of sands in the southern part of Africa, on the banks
of the Orange River. They have also become the subject
of a very important discussion, in the various hypotheses
that have been formed respecting the course of the Niger.*

Near the Vuelta de Basilio, where we landed to collect
plants, we saw on the top of a tree two beautiful little
monkeys, black as jet, of the size of the sai, with prehensile
tails. Their physiognomy and their movements sufficiently
showed that they were neither the quato (Simia beelzebub)

• Geographers supposed, to* a long period, that the Niger was entirely
absorbed by the sands, and evaporated by the heat of the tropical sun, as
no embouchure could be found on the western coast of Africa to meet
the requirements of so enormous a river. It was discovered, however,
by the Landers, in 1830, that it does really flow into the Atlantic; yet
the cause mentioned above is so powerful, that of all the numerous
branches into which it separates at its mouth, only one (the Nun River)
is navigable even for light ships, and for half the year even those art
unable to enter.

166 THE IGUAFA.

nor the chcutnek^ nor any of the Ateles. Our Indians them-
selves had never seen any that resembled them. Monkeys,
especially those living in troops, make long emigrations
at certain periods, and consequently it happens that at the
beginning of the rainy seasons the natives discover round
their huts different kinds which they have not before
observed. On this same bank our guides showed us a
nest of young iguanas only four inches long. It was
difficult to distinguish them from common lizards. There
was no distinguishing mark yet formed but the dewlap
below the throat. The dorsal spines, the large erect scales,
all those appendages that render the iguana so remarkable
when it attains its full growth, were scarcely traceable.

The flesh of this animal of the saurian family appeared to
us to have an agreeable taste in every country where the
climate is very dry ; we even found it so at periods when we
were not in want of other food. It is extremely white, and
next to the flesh of the armadillo, one of the best kinds of
food to be found in the huts of the natives.

It rained toward evening, and before the rain fell, swal-
lows, exactly resembling our own, skimmed over the surface
of the water. We saw also a flock of paroquets pursued by
little goshawks without crests. The piercing cries of these
paroquets contrasted singularly with the whistling of the
birds of prey. We passed the night in the open air, upon
the beach, near the island of Carizales. There were several
Indian huts in the neighbourhood, surrounded with plan-
tations. Our pilot assured us beforehand that we should
not hear the cries of the jaguar, which, when not extremely
pressed by hunger, withdraws from places where he does
not reign unmolested. " Men put him out of humour"
(los hombres lo enfadan), say the people in the Missions. A
pleasant and simple expression, that marks a well-observed
fact.

Since our departure from San Fernando we had not met
a single boat on this fine river. Everything denoted the
most profound solitude. On the morning of the 3rd of
April our Indians caught with a hook the fish known in the
country by the name of caribe* or caribito, because no other
fish has such a thirst for blood. It attacks bathers and
* Caribe in the Spanish language signifies cannibal.

THE CAKTBE FISH. 1G7

swimmers, from whom it often bites away considerable
pieces of flesh. The Indians dread extremely these caribes ;
and several of them showed us the scars of deep wounds in
the calf of the leg and in the thigh, made by these little
animals. They swim at the bottom of rivers ; but if a few
drops of blood be shed on the water, they rise by thou-
sands to the surface, so that if a person be only slightly
bitten, it is difficult for him to get out of the water without
receiving a severer wound. When we reflect on the numbers
of these fish, the largest and most voracious of which are
only four or five inches long, on the triangular form of their
sharp and cutting teeth, and on the amplitude of their re-
tractile mouths, we need not be surprised at the fear which
the caribe excites in the inhabitants of the banks of the
A pure and the Orinoco. In places where the river was
very limpid, where not a fish appeared, we threw into the
water little morsels of raw flesh, and in a few minutes a
perfect cloud of caribes had come to dispute their prey.
The belly of this fish has a cutting edge, indented like
a saw, a characteristic which may be also traced in the
serra-salmes, the myletes, and the pristigastres. The pre-
sence of a second adipous dorsal fin, and the form of the
teeth, covered by b'ps distant from each other, and largest
in the lower jaw, place the caribe among the serra-salmes .
Its mouth is much wider than that of the myletes of Cuvier.
Its body, toward the back, is ash-coloured with a tint of
green, but the belly, the gill-covers, and the pectoral, anal,
and ventral fins, are of a fine orange hue. Three species are
known in the Orinoco, and are distinguished by their size.
The intermediate appears to be identical with the medium
species of the piraya, or piranha, of Marcgrav.* The can-
bito has a very agreeable flavour. As no one dares to
bathe where it is found, it may be considered as one of the
greatest scourges of those climates, in which the sting of
the mosquitos and the general irritation of the skin render
the use of baths so necessary.

We stopped at noon in a desert spot called Algodonal.

I left my companions while they drew the boat ashore and

were occupied in preparing our dinner. I went along the

beach to get a n?ar view of a group of crocodiles sleeping in

* Salmo rhombeui, Linn.

168 ALARMING RENCONTRE.

the sun, and lying in such a manner as to have their tails,
which were furnished with broad plates, resting on one an-
other. 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 grey, half
covered with dried mud ; from their colour and immobility
they might have been taken for statues of bronze. This ex-
cursion had nearly proved fatal to me. I had kept my eyea
constantly turned towards the river ; but, whilst picking up
some spangles of mica agglomerated together in the sand, I
discovered the recent footsteps of a tiger, easily distinguish-
able from their form and size. The animal had gone towards
the forest, and turning my eyes on that side, I found myself
within eighty paces of a jaguar that was lying under the
thick foliage of a ceiba. No tiger had ever appeared to me
so large.

There are accidents in life against which we may seek
in vain to fortify our reason. I was extremely alarmed, yet
sufficiently master of myself and of my motions to enable
me to follow the advice which the Indians had so often
given us as to how we ought to act in such cases. I con-
tinued to walk on without running, avoided moving my arms,
and I thought I observed that the jaguar's attention waa
fixed on a herd of capybaras which was crossing the river. I
then began to return, making a large circuit toward the edge
of the water. As the distance increased, I thought I might
accelerate my pace. How often was I tempted to look back
in order to assure myself that I was not pursued ! Happily
I yielded very tardily to this desire. The jaguar had re-
mained motionless. These enormous cats with spotted robes
are so well fed in countries abounding in capybaras, pecaries,
and deer, that they rarely attack men. 1 arrived at the
boat out of breath, and related my adventure to the Indians.
They appeared very little interested by my story ; yet, after
having loaded our guns, they accompanied us to the ceiba

*r Garzon chico. It is believed, in Upper Egypt, that herons
have an affection for crocodiles, because they take advantage in fishing
of the terror that monstrous animal causes among the fishes, which
he drives from the bottom to the surface of the water ; but on the banki
of the Nile, the heron keeps prudently at some distance from the cro-
codile.

THE MANATI 169

beneath which the jaguar had lain. He was there no longer,
and it would have been imprudent to have pursued him into
the forest, where we must have dispersed, or advanced in
single file, amidst the intertwining lianas.

In the evening we passed the mouth of the Cafio del
Manati, thus named on account of the immense quantity of
manatis caught there every year. This herbivorous animal
of the cetaceous family, is called by the Indians apcia and
avia* and it attains here generally ten or twelve feet in
length. It usuaDv weighs from five hundred to eight hun-
dred pounds, but it is asserted that one has been taken of
eight thousand pounds weight. The manati abounds in the
Orinoco below the cataracts, in the Bio Meta, and in the
A pure, between the two islands of Carizales and Coiiserva.
"We found no vestiges of nails on the external surface or
the edges of the fins, which are quite smooth ; but little
rudiments of nails appear at the third phalanx, when the
skin of the fins is taken off. "We dissected one of these
animals, which was nine feet long, at Carichana, a Mission
of the Orinoco. The upper lip was four inches longer than
the lower one. It was covered with a very fine skin, and served
as a proboscis. The inside of the mouth, which has a sensi-
ble warmth in an animal newly killed, presented a very
singular conformation. The tongue was almost motionless ;
but in front of the tongue there was a fleshy excrescence in
each jaw, and a cavity lined with a very hard skin, into which
the excrescence fitted. The manati eats such quantities of
grass, that we have found its stomach, which is divided into
several cavities, and its intestines, (one hundred and eight
feet long,) filled with it. On opening the animal at the
back, we were struck with the magnitude, form, and situa-
tion of its lungs. They have very large cells, and resemble
immense swimming-bladders. They are three feet long.
Filled with air, they have a bulk of more than a thousand
cubic inches. I was surprised to see that, possessing such

* The first of these words belongs to the Tamanac language, and the
second to the Ottomae. Father Gili proves, in opposition to Oviedo,
that the manati (fish with hands) is not Spanish, but belongs to the
languages of Hayti (St. Domingo) and the Maypurec. I believe also
that, according to the genius of the Spanish tongue, the anizva! would
have been called manudo or manon, but not manati.

170 THE MAJTATT.

considerable receptacles for air, the manati comos so cften
to the surface of the water to breathe. Its flesh is very
savoury, though, from what prejudice I know not, it is con-
sidered unwholesome and apt to produce fever. It ap-
peared to me to resemble pork rather than beef. It is most
esteemed by the Gruamos and the Ottomacs ; and these two
nations are particularly expert in catching the manati. Its
flesh, when salted and dried in the sun, can be preserved a
whole year; and, as the clergy regard this mammiferous
animal as a fish, it is much sought during Lent. The
vital principal is singularly strong in the manati ; it is tied
after being harpooned, but is not killed till it has been
taken into the canoe. This is effected, when the animal is
very large, in the middle of the river, by filling the canoe
two-thirds with water, sliding it under the animal, and then
baling out the water by means of a calabash. This fishery
is most easy after great inundations, when the manati has
passed from the great rivers into the lakes and surrounding
marshes, and the waters diminish rapidly. At the period
when the Jesuits governed the Missions of the Lower
Orinoco, they assembled every year at Cabruta, below the
mouth of the Apure, to have a grand fishing for manatis,
with the Indians of their Missions, at the foot of the moun-
tain now called El Capuchino. The fat of the animal,
known by the name of manati-butter (manteca de manati,)
is used for lamps in the churches ; and is also employed in
preparing food. It has not the fetid smell of whale-oil,
or that of the other cetaceous animals which spout water.
The hide of the manati, which is more than an inch and half
thick, is cut into slips, and serves, like thongs of ox-leather,
to supply the place of cordage in the Llanos. When im-
mersed in water, it has the defect of undergoing a slight
degree of putrefaction. "Whips are made of it in the Spa-
nish colonies. Hence the words latigo and manati are
synonymous. These whips of manati-leather are a cruel
instrument of punishment for the unhappy slaves, and even
for the Indians of the Missions, though, according to the
laws, the latter ought to be treated like freemen.

"We passed the night opposite the island of Conserva. In
skirting the forest we were surprised by the sight of an enor-
mous trunk of a tree seventy feet high, and thickly set witb

THE TAMPIBE-BAT. 171

branching thorns. It is called hy the natives barba de twre.
It was perhaps a tree of the berberideous family.* The
Indians nad kindled fires at the edge of the water. We
again perceived, that their light attracted the crococ'Jles,
and even the porpoises (toninas), the noise of which inter-
rupted our sleep, till the fire was extinguished. A female
jaguar approached our station whilst taking her young one
to drink at the river. The Indians succeeded in chasing her
away, but we heard for a long time the cries of the little
jaguar, which mewed like a young cat. Soon after, our great
dog was bitten, or, as the Indians say, stung, at the point
of the nose, by some enormous bats that hovered around
our hammocks. These bats had long tails, like the Mo-
losses : I believe, however, that they were Phyllostomes, the
tongue of which, furnished with papillae, is an organ of
suction, and is capable of being considerably elongated.
The dog's wound was very small and round ; and though he
uttered a plaintive cry when he felt himself bitten, it was
not from pain, but because he was frightened at the sight of
the bats, which came out from beneath our hammocks.
These accidents are much more rare than is believed even
in the country itself. In the course of several years, not-
withstanding we slept so often in the open air, in climates
where vampire-bats, t and other analagous species are so
common, we were never wounded. Besides, the puncture
is no-way dangerous, and in general causes so little pain,
that it often does not awaken the person till after the bat
has withdrawn.

The 4th of April was the last day we passed on the Bio
^ipure. The vegetation of its banks became more and more
uniform. During several days, and particularly since we
had left the Mission of Arichuna,, we had suffered cruelly
from the stings of insects, which covered our faces and
hands. They were not mosquitos, which have the appear-

* We found, on the banks of the Apure, Ammania apurensis, Cordia
cordifolia, C. grandiflora, Mollugo sperguloUes, Myosotis lithosper-
motdes, Spermacocce diffusa, Coronilla occidentalis, Bignonia apurensis,
Pisonia pubescens, Ruellia viscosa, some new species of Jussieua, at d a
new genus of the composite family, approximating to Rolandra, tie
Trichoipira menthoides of M. Kunth.

f Verspertilio spectrum.

172 CLOUDS OF M08QUITO8.

ance of little flics, or of the genus Simulium, but zancudos,
which are really gnats, though very different fioin our Euro-
pean species.* These insects appear only after sunset. Their
proboscis is so long that, when they fix on the lower surface
of a hammock, they pierce through it and the thickest gar-
ments with their sting.

"We had intended to pass the night at the Vuelta del
Palmito, but the number of jaguars at that part of the
Apure is so great, that our Indians found two hidden
behind the trunk of a locust-tree, at the moment when they
were going to sling our hammocks. We were advised to
re-embark, and take our station in the island of Apurito,
near its junction with the Orinoco. That portion of the
island belongs to the province of Caracas, while the right
banks of the Apure and the Orinoco form a part, the one of
the province of Varinas, the other of Spanish Gruiana. We
found no trees to which we could suspend our hammocks,
and were obliged to sleep on ox-hides spread on the ground.
The boats were too narrow and too full oizancudos to permit
us to pass the night in them.

In the place where we had landed our instruments, the
banks being steep, we saw new proofs of the indolence of
the gallinaceous birds of the tropics. The curassaos and
cashew-birds f have the habit of going down several times
a-day to the river to allay their thirst. They drink a great
deal, and at short intervals. A vast number of these birds
had joined, near our station, a flock of parraka pheasants.
They had great difficulty in climbing up the steep banks ;
they attempted it several times without using their wings.
We drove them before us, as if we had been driving sheep.
The zamuro vultures raise themselves from the ground with
great reluctance.

We were singularly struck at the small quantity of water
which the Bio Apure furnishes at this season to the Ori-
noco. The Apure, which, according to my measurements,
was still one hundred and thirty-six toises broad at the Cano
Bico, was only sixty or eighty at its mouth.* Its depth

* M. Latreille has discovered that the mosquitos of South Ca: olina are
of the genus Simulium (Atractocera meigen.)

•*• The latter (Crax pauxi) is less common than the former.

Not quite so broad as the Seine at the Pont Royal, opposite th«

JUNCTION WITH THE OBINOCO. 173

here was only three or four toiaes. It loses, no doubt, a
part of its waters by the Rio A-richuna and the Cafio del
Manati, two branches of the Apure that flow into the
Fayara and the Guarico ; but its greatest loss appears to
be caused by nitrations on the beach, of which we have
before spoken. The velocity of the Apure near its mouth,
was only 3'2 feet per second ; so that I could easily have
calculated the whole quantity of the water if I had taken,
by a series of proximate soundings, the whole dimensions
of the tranverse section.

"We touched several times on shoals before we entered
the Orinoco. The ground gained from the water is immense
towards the confluence of the two rivers. We were obliged
to be towed along by the bank. What a contrast between
this state of the river immediately before the entrance of
the rainy season, when all the effects of dryness of the air
and of evaporation have attained their maximum, and that
autumnal state when the Apure, like an arm of the sea,
covers the savannahs as far as the eye can reach! We
discerned towards the south the lonely hills of Coruato;
while to the east the granite rocks of Curiquima, the Sugar
Loaf of Caycara, and the mountains of the Tyrant* (Cerros
del Tirano) began to rise on the horizon. It was not without
emotion that we beheld for the first time, after long ex-
pectation, the waters of the Orinoco, at a point so distant
from the coast.

palace of the Tuileries, and a little more than half the width of tb«
Thames at Westminster Bridge.

* This name alludes, no doubt, to the expedition of Antonio Sedeno.
The port of Caycara, opposite Cabruta, still bears the name ot th*t Con-
quistador.

MOUT1I OF TUB

CHAPTEK XIX.

Junction of the Apure and the Orinoco. — Mountains of Encaramada. —
Uruana. — Baraguan. — Carichana. — Mouth of the Meta. — Island uf
Panuruana.

ON leaving the Rio Apure we found ourselves in a coun-
try presenting a totally different aspect. An immense plain
of' water stretched before us like a lake, as far as we 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,
flamingos, and spoonbills, crossing in long files from one
shore to the other. Our eyes sought in vain those water-
fowls, the habits of which vary in each tribe. All nature
appeared less animated. Scarcely could we 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 bare as the shores of the sea, resembled at a distance,
from the effect of the mirage, pools of stagnant water.
These sandy shores, far from fixing the limits of the river,
render them uncertain, by enlarging or contracting them
alternately, according to the variable action of the solar
rays.

In these scattered features of the landscape, in this cha-
racter of solitude and of greatness, we recognize the course
of the Orinoco, one of the most majestic rivers of the New
World. The water, like the land, displays everywhere a
characteristic and peculiar aspect. The bed of the Orinoco
resembles not the bed of the Meta, the Guaviare, the Rio
Negro, or the Amazon. These differences do not depend
altogether on the breadth or the velocity of the current;
they are connected with a multitude of impressions which
it is easier to perceive upon the spot than to define with
precision. Tl.us, the mere form of the waves, the tint of

OEEAT BR1ADTH OF THE EIYEB. 175

th3 waters, the aspect of the sky and the clouds, would lead
an experienced navigator to guess whether he were in the
Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, or in the equinoctial part of
the Pacific.

The wind blew fresh from east-north-east. Its direc-
tion was favourable for sailing up the Orinoco, towards the
Mission of Encaramada; but our canoes were so ill calcu-
lated to resist the shocks of the waves, that, from the
violence of the motion, those who suffered habitually at sea
were equally incommoded on the river. The short, broken
waves are caused by the conflict of the waters at the junc-
tion of the two rivers. This conflict is very violent, but far
from being so dangerous as Father Grumilla describes. We
passed the Punta Curiquima, which is an isolated mass of
quartzose granite, a small promontory composed of rounded
blocks. There, on the right bank of the Orinoco, Father
Kotella founded, in the time of the Jesuits, a Mission of
the Palenka and Viriviri or Gruire Indians. But during
inundations, the rock Curiquima and the village at its foot
were entirely surrounded by water ; and this serious incon-
venience, together the sufferings of the missionaries and In-
dians from the innumerable quantity of mosquitos and niguas*
led them to forsake this humid spot. It is now entirely
deserted, while opposite to it, on the right bank of the river,
the little mountains of Coruato are the retreat of wandering
Indians, expelled either from the Missions, or from tribes
that are not subject to the government of the monks.

Struck with the extreme breadth of the Orinoco, between
the mouth of the Apure and the rock Curiquima, I ascer-
tained it by means oi a base measured twice on the western
beach. The bed of the Orinoco, at low water, was 1906
toises broad; but this breadth increases to 5517 toises,
when, in the rainy season, the rock Curiquima, and the farm
of Capuchino near the hill of Pocopocori, become islands.
The swelling of the Orinoco is augmented by the impulse of
the waters of the Apure, which, far from forming, like other
rivers, an acute angle with the upper part of that into which
it flows, meets it at right angles.

We first proceeded south-west, as far as the shore inhabited

• The chego \Pulcx penetrans), whicn penetrates under the nails of th«
toes in men and monkeys, and there deposits it* eggs.

17G SINGULAR MOUNTAIN.

by the Gruaricoto Indians on the left bank of the Orinoco,
and then we advanced straight toward the south. The river,
is so broad that the mountains of Encaramada appear to ri ..TO
from the water, as if seen above the horizon of the sea. They
form a continued chain from east to wesu. These mountains
are composed of enormous blocks of granite, cleft and piled
one upon another. Their division into blocks is the effect
of decomposition. What contributes above all to embellish
the scene at Encaramada is the luxuriance of vegetation
that covers the sides of the rocks, leaving bare only their
rOunded summits. They look like ancient ruins rising in
the midst of a forest. The mountain immediately at the
back of the Mission, the Tepupano* of the Tamanac Indians,
is terminated by three enormous granitic cylinders, two of
which are inclined, while the third, though worn at its base,
and more than eighty feet high, has preserved a vertical
position. This rock, which calls to mind the form of the
Schnarcher in the Hartz mountains, or that of the Organs
of Actopan in Mexico,t composed formerly a part of tho
rounded summit of the mountain. In every climate, un-
stratified granite separates by decomposition into blocks of
prismatic, cylindric, or columnar figures.

Opposite the shore of the Gluaricotos, we drew near
another heap of rocks, which is very low, and three or four
toises long. It rises in the midst of the plain, and has less
resemblance to a tumulus than to those masses of granitic
stone, which in North Holland and Germany bear the name
of kunenbette, beds (or tombs) of heroes. The shore, at this

Eart of the Orinoco, is no longer of pure and quartzose sand ;
ut is composed of clay and spangles of mica, deposited in
very thin strata, and generally at an inclination of forty or
fifty degrees. It looks like decomposed mica-slate. This
change in the geological configuration of the shore extends

* Tepu-pano, 'place of stones,' in which we recognize tepu 'stone,
rock,' as in tepu-iri ' mountain.' We here perceive that Lesgian Oigour-
Tartar root tep ' stone* (found in America among the Americans, in
teptl: among the Caribs, in tebou; among the Tamanacs, in tepuiri) ;
a striking analogy between the languages of Caucasus and Upper Asia
and those of the banks of the Orinoco.

•f* In Captain Tuckey's Voyage on the river Congo, we find repre-
sented a granitic rock, Taddi Ensazi, which bears a striking resemblance
to the mountain of Encaramada.

SA» LUIS DEL ENCAEAM1DA. 177

far beyond the mouth of the Apure. TVe had begun to
observe it in this latter river as far off as Algodonal and the
Cano del Manati. The spangles of mica come, no doubt,
from the granite mountains of Curiquima and Encaramada ;
since further north-east we find only quartzose sand, sand-
stone, compact limestone, and gypsum. Alluvial earth car-
ried successively from south to north need not surprise us
in the Orinoco; but to what shall we attribute the same
phenomenon in the bed of the Apure, seven leagues west of
its mouth ? In the present state of things, notwithstanding
the swellings of the Orinoco, the waters of the Apure never
retrograde so far ; and, to explain this phenomenon, we are
forced to admit that the micaceous strata were deposited at
a time when the whole of the very low country lying be-
tween Caycara, Algodonal, and the mountains of Encara-
mada, formed the basin of an inland lake.

We stopped some time at the port of Encaramada, which
is a sort of embarcadero, a place where boats assemble. A
rock of forty or fifty feet hign forms the shore. It is com-
posed of blocks of granite, heaped one upon another, as
at the Schneeberg in Franconia, and in almost all the
granitic mountains of Europe. Some of these detached
masses have a spheroidal form; they are not balls with
concentric layers, but merely rounded blocks, nuclei se-
parated from their envelopes by the effect of decompo-
sition. This granite is of a greyish lead-colour, often black,
as if covered with oxide of manganese ; but this colour does
not penetrate one fifth of a line into the rock, which is of a
reddish white colour within, coarse-grained, and destitute of
hornblende.

The Indian names of the Mission of San Luis del Encara-
mada, are Guaja and Caramana* This wnall village was

* All the Missions of South America have names composed of two
words, the first of which is necessarily the name of a saint, the patron of
the church, and the second an Indian name, that of the nation, or the
spot where the establishment is placed. Thus we say, San Jose de
Maypures, Santa Cruz de Cachipo, San Juan Nepomuceno de los Atures,
&c. These compound names appear only in official documents r the
inhabitants adopt but one of the two names, and generally, provided it
be sonorous, the Indian. As the names of saints are several times
repeated in neighbouring places, great confusion in geography arises from
these repetitions. The names of San Juau, San Diego, and San Pedro*

VOL. II. IT

178 A CAEIB CHIEF.

founded in 1749 by Father Gili, the Jesuit, author of the
Storia delV Orinoco, published at Rome. This missionary
learned in the Indian tongues, lived in these solitudes during
eighteen years, till the expulsion of the Jesuits. To form a
precise idea of the savage state of these countries it must be
recollected that Father Gili speaks of Carichana,* which
is forty leagues from Encaramada, as of a spot far
distant; and that he never advanced so far as the first
cataract in the river of which he ventured to undertake the
description.

In the port of Encaramada we met with some Caribs of
Panapana. A cacique was going up the Orinoco in his
canoe, to join in the famous fishing of turtles' eggs. His
canoe was rounded toward the bottom like a bongo, and
followed by a smaller boat called a cu/riara. He was seated
beneath a sort of tent, constructed, like the sail of palm-
leaves. His 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, which is the colouring fecula of the Bixa orellana.
The chief, the domestics, the furniture, the boat, and the
sail, were all painted red. These Caribs are men of an
almost athletic stature; they appeared to us much taller
than any Indians we 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.
Having till then seen only the skulls of some Caribs of the
"West India Islands preserved in the collections of Europe,
we were surprised to find that these Indians, who were of
pure race, had foreheads much more rounded than they are
described. The women, who were very tall, and disgusting

are scattered in our maps as if by chance. It is pretended that the
Mission of Guaja affords a very rare example of the composition of two
Spanish words. The word Encaramada means things raised one upon
another, from encaramar, ' to raise up.' It is derived from the figure
of Tepupano and the neighbouring rocks : perhaps it is only an Indian
word caramana, in which, as in manati, a Spanish signification was
believed to be discovered.

* Saggio di Storia Americana, vol. i. p. 122.

CROCODILES. 179

from their want of cleanliness, carried their infants on their
backs. The thighs and legs of the infants were bound at
certain distances by broad strips of cotton cloth, and the
flesh, strongly compressed beneath the ligatures, was swelled
in the interstices. It is generally to be observed, that the
Caribs are as attentive to their exterior and their ornaments,
as it is possible for men to be, who are naked and painted
red. They attach great importance to certain configurations
of the body ; and a mother would be accused of culpable
indifference toward her children, if she did not employ arti-
ficial means to shape the calf of the leg after the fashion of
the country. As none of our Indians of A pure understood
the Caribbee language, we could obtain no information from
the cacique of Panama respecting the encampments that are
made at this season in several islands of the Orinoco for
collecting turtles' eggs.

Near Encaramada a very long island divides the river
into two branches. "We passed the night in a rocky creek,
opposite the mouth of the Rio Cabullare, which is formed by
the Payara and the Atamaica, and is sometimes considered
as one of the branches of the Apure, because it commu-
nicates with that river by the Rio Arichuna. The evening
was beautiful. The moon illumined the tops of the granite
rocks. The heat was so uniformly distributed, that, not-
withstanding the humidity of the air, no twinkling of the
stars was observable, even at four or five degrees above the
horizon. The light of the planets was singularly dimmed ;
and if, on account of the smallness of the apparent diameter
of Jupiter, I had not suspected some error in the observation,
I should say, that here, for the first time, we thought we
distinguished the disk of Jupiter with the naked eye.
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 us fear for the safety of our canoe. During
this whole day we had seen very few crocodiles, but all of
an extraordinary size, from twenty to twenty-four feet. The
Indians assured us that the young crocodiles prefer the
marshes, and the rivers that are less broad, and less deep.
They crowd together particularly in the Caftos, and we may
•ay of tlnm, what Abdallatif says of the crocodiles of the

> 2

180

MOUNTAINS OF ENCARAMADA.

Nile,* "that they swarm like worms in the shallow waters of
the riyer, and in the shelter of uninhabited islands."

On the 6th of April, whilst continuing to ascend the
Orinoco, first southward and then to south-west, we perceived
the southern side of the Serrania, or chain of the mountains
of Encaramada. The part nearest the river is only one
hundred and forty or one hundred and sixty toises high ;
but from its abrupt declivities, its situation in the midst of
a savannah, and its rocky summits, cut into shapeless prisms,
the Serrania appears singularly elevated. Its greatest
breadth is only three leagues. According to information
given me by the Indians of the Pareka nation, it is con-
siderably wider toward the east. The summits of Encara-
mada form the northernmost link of a group of mountains
which border the right bank of the Orinoco, between the la-
titudes of 5° and 7° 30' from the mouth of the Bio Zama to
that of the Cabullare. The different links into which this
group is divided are separated by little grassy plains. They
do not preserve a direction perfectly parallel to each other ;
for the most northern stretch from west to east, and the
most southern from north-west to south-east. This change
of direction sufficiently explains the increase of breadth
observed in the Cordillera of Parime towards the east,
between the sources of the Orinoco and of the Bio Paruspa.
On penetrating beyond the great cataracts of Atures and
of Maypures, we shall see seven principal links, those of
Encaramada or Sacuina, of Chaviripa, of Baraguan, of Cari-
chana, of Uniama, of Calitamini, and of Sipapo, successively
appear. This sketch may serve to give a general idea of
the geological configuration of the ground. We recognize
everywhere on the globe a tendency toward regular forms,
in those mountains that appear the most irregularly grouped.
Every link appears, in a transverse section, like a distinct
summit, to those who navigate the Orinoco ; but this divi-
sion is merely in appearance. The regularity in the direc-
tion and separation of the links seems to diminish in pro-
portion as we advance towards the east. The mountains of
Encaramada join those of Mato, which give birth to the
Bio Asiveru or Cuchivero; those of Chaviripe are pro-
longed by the granite chain of the Corosal, of Amoco, and
* Description de 1'Egypte, translated by De Secy.

THE FABLED EL DORADO. 181

of Murcielago, towards the sources of tho Erevato and the
Ventuari.

It was across these mountains, which are inhabited
by Indians of gentle character, employed in agriculture,*
that, at the time of the expedition for settling boundaries,
General Iturriaga took some horned cattle for the supply
of the new town of San Fernando de Atabapo. The in-
habitants of Encaramada then showed the Spanish soldiers
the way by the Rio Manapiari,f which falls into the Ven-
tuari. By descending these two rivers, the Orinoco and the
A tabapo may be reached without passing the great cataracts,
which present almost insurmountable obstacles to the con-
veyance of cattle. The spirit of enterprise which had so
eminently distinguished the Castilians at the period of the
discovery of America, was again roused for a time in the
middle of the eighteenth century, when Ferdinand VI was
desirous of knowing the true limits of his vast possessions ;
and in the forests of Gruiana, that land of fiction and
fabulous tradition, the wily Indians revived the chimerical
idea of the wealth of El Dorado, which had so much occu-
pied the imagination of the first conquerors.

Amidst the mountains of Encaramada, which, like most
coarse-grained granite rocks, are destitute of metallic veins,
we cannot help inquiring whence came those grains of gold
which Juan Martinez J and Raleigh profess to have seen in
such abundance in the hands of the Indians of the Orinoco.
From what I observed in that part of America, I am led to
think that gold, like tin,|| is sometimes disseminated in an

* The Mapoyes, Parecag, Javaranas, and Curacicanas, who possess
fine plantations (conucos) in the savannahs by which these forests are
bounded.

f Between Encarmada and the Rio Manapiare, Don Miguel Sanchez,
chief of this little expedition, crossed the Rio Guainaima, which flows
into the Cuchivero. Sanchez died, from the fatigue of this journey, on
the borders of the Ventuari.

J The companion of Diego Ordaz.

|| Thus tin is found in granite of recent formation, at Geyer ; in hya-
lomicte or yraisen, at Zinnwald ; and in syenitic porphyry, at Altenberg,
in Saxony, as well as near Naila, in the Fichtelgebirge. I have also seen,
in the Upper Palatinate, micaceous iron, and black earthy cobalt, far from
any kind of vein* disseminated in a granite destitute of mica, aa magnetic
iron-sand is in roicanie rocks

182 TRADITIOHS OF THE DELUGE.

almost imperceptible manner in the very mass of granite
rocks, without our being able to perceive that there is a
ramification and an intertwining of small veins. Not long
a^o the Indians of Encaramada found in the Quebrada del
Tigre* a piece of native gold two lines in diameter. It was
rounded, and appeared to have been washed along by the
waters. This discovery excited the attention of the mis-
sionaries much more than of the natives ; it was followed by
no other of the same kind.

1 cannot quit this first link of the mountains of Enca-
ramada without recalling to mind a fact that was not un-
known to Father Gili, and which was often mentioned to
ine during our abode in the Missions of the Orinoco. The
natives of those countries have 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 is not confined to one nation singly, the Tama-
ntcs ; it makes part of a system :of historical tradition, of
which we find scattered notions among the Maypures of the
great cataracts ; among the Indians of the Bio Erevato, which
runs into the Caura ; and among almost all the tribes of the
Upper Orinoco. When the Tamanacs are asked how the
human race survived this great deluge, the ' age of water,'
of the Mexicans, they say, "a man and a woman saved
themselves on a high mountain, 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 contained in those fruits produce men and women,
who repeopled the earth." Thus we find in all its simpli-
city, among nations now in a savage state, a tradition which
the Greeks embellished with all the charms of imagination !
A few leagues from Encaramada, a rock, called Tcpu-mereme,
or ' the painted rock,' rises in the midst of the savannah.
Upon it are traced representations of animals, and symbolic
figures resembling those we saw in going down the Orinoco,
at a small distance below Encaramada, near the town Cay-
cara. Similar rocks in Africa are called by travellers fetis h
stones. I shall not make use of this term, because fetishism
does not prevail among the natives of the Orinoco ; and the
* The Tiger-ravine.

BIMILABITY OF THE LEGENDS. 183

figures of stars, of the sun, of tigers, and of crocodiles, which
we found traced upon the rocks in spots now uninhabited,
appeared to me in no way to denote the objects of worship
of those nations. Between the banks of the Cassiquiare
and the Orinoco, between Encaramada, the Capuchino, and
Caycara, these hieroglyphic figures are often seen at great
heights, on rocky cliffs which could be accessible only by
constructing very lofty scaffolds. When the natives are
asked how those figures could have been sculptured, they
answer with a smile, as if relating a fact of which only a
white man could be ignorant, that "at the period of the
great waters, their fathers went to that height in boats."

These ancient traditions of the human race, which we find
dispersed over the whole surface of the globe, like the relics
of a vast shipwreck, are highly interesting in the philo-
sophical study of our own species. Like certain families of
the vegetable kingdom, which, notwithstanding the diversity
of climates and the influence of heights, retain the impres-
sion of a common type, the traditions of nations respecting
the origin of the world, display everywhere the same phy-
siognomy, and preserve features of resemblance that fill us
with astonishment. How many different tongues, belonging
to branches that appear totally distinct, transmit to us the
same facts ! The traditions concerning races that have been
destroyed, and the renewal of natnre, scarcely vary in
reality, though every nation gives them a local colouring.
In the great continents, as in the smallest islands of the
Pacific Ocean, it is always on the loftiest and nearest moun-
tain that the remains of the human race have been saved ;
and this event appears the more recent, in proportion as the
nations are uncultivated, and as the knowledge they have
of their own existence has no very remote date. After
having studied with attention the Mexican monuments
anterior to the discovery of the New "World ; after havLi»
penetrated into the forests of the Orinoco, and obsened
the diminutive size of the European establishments, their
solitude, and the state of the tribes that have remained
•'ndependent ; we cannot allow ourselves to attribute the
analogies just cited to the influence exercised by the mis-
sionaries, and by Christianity, on the national traditions.
Nor IB it more probable, that the d.scovery of eea-shellfl on

184 INDIAN ENCAMPMEHT.

the summit of mountains gave birth, among the nations of
the Orinoco, to the tradition of some great inundation
which extinguished for a time the germs of organic life on
our globe. The country that extends from the right bank
of the Orinoco to the Cassiquiare and the Eio Negro, is a
country of primitive rocks. I saw there one small formation
of sandstone or conglomerate ; but no secondary limestone,
and no trace of petrifactions.

A fresh north-east breeze carried us full-sail towards the
Boca de la Tortnga. We landed, at eleven in the morn-
ing, on an island which the Indians of the Missions of Uru-
ana considered as their property, and whicli lies in the
middle of the river. This island is celebrated for the turtle
fishery, or, as they say here, the cosecha, l the harvest [of
eggs,]' that takes place annually. "We here found an
assemblage of Indians, encamped under huts made of
palm-leaves. This encampment contained more than three
hundred persons. Accustomed, since we had left San
Fernando de Apure, to see only desert shores, we were
singularly struck by the bustle that prevailed here. We
found, besides the Guamos and the Ottomacs of Uruana,
who are both considered as savage races, Caribs and other
Indians of the Lower Orinoco. Every tribe was separately
encamped, and was distinguished by the pigments with whicK
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 us, and he was extremely astonished
at seeing us. After having admired our instruments, he
gave us an exaggerated picture of the sufferings to which
we should be necessarily exposed in ascending the Orinoco
beyond the cataracts. The object of our 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 ? " We were happily furnished with
recommendations from the Superior of the Franciscan Mis-
sions, and the brother-in-law of the governor of Varinas,
who accompanied us, soon dissipated the doubts to which
our dress, our accent, and our arrival in this sandy island,

HABYE8T OF Tl RTLE-EGG8. 185

had given rise among the Whites. The missionary invited
us to partake a frugal repast of fish and plantains. He told
us 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
(renublica de Indies y Castellanos) in which every one
wished to profit singly by what God had granted to all."

We made the tour of the island, accompanied by the
missionary and by a pulpero, who boasted of having, for ten
successive years, visited the camp of the Indians, and at-
tended the turtle-fishery. We were on a plain of sand per-
fectly smooth ; and were told that, as far as we 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 us, that by means of this pole, the extent of the
stratum of eggs could be determined 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 shows that the
cavity or layer of loose earth containing the eggs, has been
reached. We saw that the stratum is generally spread with
so much uniformity, that the pole finds it everywhere in a
radius of ten toises around any given spot. Here they talk
continually of square perches of eggs ; it is like a mining-
country, divided into lots, and worked with the great-
est regularity. The stratum of eggs, however, is far from
covering the whole island : they are not found wherever the
ground rises abruptly, because the turtle cannot mount
heights. I related to my guides the emphatic description
of Father G-umilla, who asserts, that the shores of the
Orinoco contain fewer grains of sand than the river con-
tains turtles ; and that these animals would prevent vessels
from advancing, if men and tigers did not annually destroy
so great a number.* " Son cuentos de frailes" " they are

* " It would be as difficult to count the grains of sand on the shores of
the Orinoco, as to count the immense number of tortoises which inhabit
its margins and waters. Were it not for the vast consumption of tor-
toises and their eggs, the river Orinoco, despite its great magnitude,
would be unnavigable, for vessels would be impeded by the enormous
multitude of the tortoises." — Gumilla, Orinoco Illustrata, vol L pp.
331-336.

186 DIFFERENT SPECIES OF TORTOISES.'

monkish legends," said the pulpero of Angostura, in a low
roice ; for the only travellers in this country being the
missionaries, they here call ' monks' stories,' what we call
1 travellers' tales,' in Europe.

The Indians assured us that, in going up the Orinoco
from its mouth to its junction with the Apure, not one island
or one beach is to be found, where eggs can be collected in
abundance. The great turtle (arrau)* dreads places inha-
bited 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 shores where
almost all the turtles of the Orinoco appear to assemble
annually, are situated between the junction of the Ori-
noco with the Apure, and the great cataracts ; that is to
say, between Cabruta and the Mission of Atures. There
are found the three famous fisheries ; those of Encaramada,
or Boca del Cabullare ; of Cucuruparu, or Boca de la Tor-
tuga ; and of Pararuma, a little below Carichana. It seems
that the arrau does not pass beyond the cataracts ; and we
were assured, that only the turtles called terekay, (in Spanish
terecayas,} are found above Atures and Maypures.

The arrau, called by the Spaniards of the Missions simply
tortuga, is an animal whose existence is of great importance
to the nations on the Lower Orinoco. It is a large fresh-
water tortoise, with palmate and membraneous feet; the
head very flat, with two fleshy and acutely-pointed append-
ages under the chin ; five claws to the fore feet, and four to
the hind feet, which are furrowed underneath. The upper
shell has five central, eight lateral, and twenty-four marginal
plates. The colour is darkish grey above, and orange
beneath. The feet are yellow, and very long. There is a
deep furrow between the eyes. The claws are very strong
and crooked. The anus is placed at the distance of one-filth
from the extremity of the tail. The full-grown animal
weighs from forty to fifty pounds. Its eggs are much larger
than those of pigeons, and less elongated than the eggs of the
terekay. They are covered with a calcareous crust, and, it is

* This word belongs to the Maypure language, and must not be con-
founded with arua, which means a crocodile, among the Tamanacs,
neighbours of the Maypures. The Ottomacs call the turtle of Uruana,
achea ; the Tamanacs, peje.

SEASON OF LAYING. 187

paid, they have sufficient firmness for the children of the
Ottomac Indians, who are great players at ball, to throw them
into the air from one to another. If the arrau inhabited
the bed of the river above the cataracts, the Indians of the
Upper Orinoco would not travel so far to procure the flesh
and the eggs of this tortoise. Yet, formerly, whole tribea
from the Atabapo and the Cassiquiare have been known to
pass the cataracts, in order to take part in the fishery at
Uruana.

The terekay is less than the arrau. It is in general only
fourteen inches in diameter. The number of plates in the
upper shell is the same, but they are somewhat differently
arranged. I counted three in the centre of the disk, and
five hexagonal on each side. The margins contain twenty-
four, all quadrangular, and much curved. The upper shell
is of a black colour inclining to green ; the feet and claws
are like those of the arrau. The whole animal is of an
olive-green, but it has two spots of red mixed with yellow on
the top of the head. The throat is also yellow, and fur-
nished with a prickly appendage. The terekays do not
assemble in numerous societies like the arraus, to lay tneir
eggs in common, and deposit them upon the same shore.
The eggs of the terekay have an agreeable taste, and are
much sought after by the inhabitants of Spanish Guiana.
They are found in the Upper Orinoco, as well as below the
cataracts, and even in the A pure, the Uritucu, the Guarico,
and the small rivers that traverse the Llanos of Caracas.
The form of the feet and head, the appendages of the chin
and throat, and the position of the anus, seem to indicate
that the arrau, and probably the terekay also, belong to a
new subdivision of the tortoises, that may be separated from
the emydes. The period at which the large arrau tortoise
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 Ja-
nuary till the 20th or 25th of March. The arrau tor-
toises collect in troops in the month of January, then issue
from the water, and warm themselves in the sun, reposing
on the sands. The Indians belieye that great heat is in-
dispensable to the health of the animal, and that its expo-

188 METHOD OF DEPOSITING THE EGGS.

eure to the sun favours the laying of the eggs. The arram
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 num-
ber of islands on which they habitually deposit their eggs.
It is probable that the same tortoise returns every year to
the same locality. At this period, a few days before they
lay their eggs, thousands of these animals may be seen
ranged in long files, on the borders of the islands of Cucu-
ruparu, Uruana, and Pararuma, stretching out their necks
and holding their heads above water, to see whether they
have anything to dread. The Indians, who are anxious that
the bands when assembled should not separate, that the
tortoises should not disperse, and that the laying of the
eggs should be performed tranquilly, place sentinels at cer-
tain distances along the shore. The people who pass in
boats are told to keep in the middle of the river, and not
frighten the tortoises by cries. The laying of the eggs
takes place always during the night, and it begins soon after
sunset. "With its hind feet, which are very long, and fur-
nished with crooked claws, the animal digs a hole of three
feet in diameter and two in depth. These tortoises 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 us, by removing the sand
in several places, that this loss probably amounts to a fifth
of the whole quantity. The yolk of the broken eggs con-
tributes, in drying, to cement the sand ; and we found very
large concretions of grains of quartz and broken shells.
The number 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 tortoises that thus
remain too late are insensible to their own danger. They
work in the presence of the Indians, who visit the beach

THEIR ENORMOUS ABUNDANCE. 189

at a very early hour, and who call them ' inad tortoises.'
Notwithstanding the rapidity of their movements, they are
then easily caught with the hand.

The three encampments formed by the Indians, in the
places indicated above, begin about the end of March or
commencement of April. The gathering of the eggs is con-
ducted in a uniform manner, and with that regularity which
characterises all monastic institutions. Before the arrival of
the missionaries on the banks of the river, the Indians pro-
fited much less from a production which nature has sup-
plied in such abundance. Every tribe searched the beach
in its own way; and an immense number of eggs were use-
lessly broken, because they were not dug up with precau-
tion, and more eggs were uncovered than could be carried
away. It was like a mine worked by unskilful hands. The
Jesuits have the merit of having reduced this operation to
regularity; and though the Franciscan monks, who suc-
ceeded the Jesuits in the Missions of the Orinoco, boast of
having followed the example of their predecessors, they
unhappily do not effect all that prudence requires. The
Jesuits cud not suffer the whole beach to be searched ; they
left a part untouched, from the fear of seeing the breed of
arrau tortoises, if not destroyed, at least considerably dimi-
nished. The whole beach is now dug up without reserve ;
and accordingly it seems to be perceived that the gathering
is less productive from year to year.

When the camp is formed, the missionary of Uruana
names his lieutenant, or commissary, who divides the ground
where the eggs are found into different portions, according
to the number of the Indian tribes who take part in the
gathering. They are all ' Indians of Missions,' as naked
and rude as the * Indians of the woods ;' though they are
called reducidos and neqfitos, because they go to church at
the sound of the bell, and have learned to kneel down
during the consecration of the host.

The lieutenant (commissionado del Padre) begins his
operations by sounding. He examines by means of a long
wooden pole or a cane of bamboo, how far the stratum of
eggs extends. This stratum, according to our measurements,
extended to the distance of one hundred and twenty feet from
the shore. Its average depth is three feet. The commit-

190

PRODUCE OF TIIE ISLAND.

sionado places marks to indicate the point where each tribe
should stop in its labours. We were surprised to hear this
* harvest of eggs ' estimated like the produce of a well-
cultivated field. An area accurately measured of one hun-
dred and twenty feet long, and thirty feet wide, has been
known to yield one hundred jars of oil, valued at about
forty pounds sterling. The Indians remove the earth
with their hands ; they place the eggs they have collected
in small baskets, carry them to their encampment, and
throw them into long troughs of wood filled with water.
In these troughs the eggs, broken and stirred with shovels,
remain exposed to the sun till the oily part, which swims on
the surface, has time to inspissate. As fast as this collects
on the surface of the water, it is taken off and boiled over
a quick fire. This animal oil, called tortoise butter (manteca
de tortugas)* keeps the better, it is said, in proportion as it
has undergone a strong ebullition. When well prepared,
it is limpid, inodorous, and scarcely yellow. The missiona-
ries compare it to the best olive oil, and it is used not
merely for burning in lamps, but for cooking. It is not
easy, however, to procure oil of turtles' eggs quite pure. It
has generally a putrid smell, owing to the mixture of eggs
in which the young are already formed.

I acquired some general statistical notions on the spot, by
consulting the missionary of Uruana, his lieutenant, and the
traders of Angostura. The shore of Uruana furnishes one
thousand botijas, or jars of oil, annually. The price of each
jar at Angostura varies from two piastres to two and a half.
We may admit that the total produce of the three shores,
where the cosecha, or gathering of eggs, is annually made, is
five thousand botijas. Now as two hundred eggs yield oil
enough to fill a bottle (limeta), it requires five thousand
eggs for a jar or botija of oil. Estimating at one hundred,
or one hundred and sixteen, the number of eggs that one
tortoise produces, and reckoning that one third of these is
broken at the time of laying, particularly by the 'mad
tortoises,' we may presume that, to obtain annually fiv°
thousand jars of oil, three hundred and thirty thousand
arrau tortoises, the weight of which amounts to one hundred

* The Tamaiac Indians give it the name of carapa ; the MaypuroF
eaU if timi.

i:

CONGREGATION CF THE NATIVES. 191

and sixty-five thousand quintals, must lay thirty-three
millions of eggs on the three shores where this harvest
is gathered. The results of these calculations are much
below the truth. Many tortoises lay only sixty or seventy
eggs ; and a great number of these animals are devoured by
jaguars at the moment they emerge from the water. The
Indians bring away a great number of eggs to eat them
dried in the sun; and they break a considerable number
through carelessness during the gathering. The number of
eggs that are hatched before the people can dig them up is
so prodigious, that near the encampment of Uruana I saw
the whole shore of the Orinoco swarming with little tor-
toises an inch in diameter, escaping with difficulty from the
pursuit of the Indian children. If to these considerations
be added, that all the arraus do not assemble on the three
shores of the encampments ; and that there are many which
lay their eggs in solitude, and some weeks later,* between
the mouth of the Orinoco and the confluence of the Apure ;
we must admit that the number of turtles which annually
deposit their eggs on the banks of the Lower Orinoco, is
near a million. This number is very great for so large an
animal. In general large animals moltiply less considerably
than the smaller ones.

The labour of collecting the eggs, and preparing the oil,
occupies three weeks. It is at this period only that the mis-
sionaries have any communication with the coast and the
civilized neighbouring countries. The Franciscan monks
who live south of the cataracts, come to the 'harvest of
eggs' less to procure oil, than to see, as they say, 'white
faces ;' and to learn whether the king inhabits the Escurial
or San Ildefonso, whether convents are still suppressed
in France, and above all, whether the Turks continue to
keep quiet. On these subjects, (the only ones interesting

* The arraus, which lay their eggs before the beginning of March,
(for in the same species the more or less frequent basking in the sun, the
food, and the peculiar organization of each individual, occasion differ-
ences,) come out of the water with the terekays, which lay in January and
February. Father Gurrilla believes them to be arraus that were not
able to lay their eggs the preceding year. It is difficult to find the eggs
of the terekays, because these animals, far from collecting in thousand!
on the same beach, de-posit their eggs as they are scattered about.

192 ENEMIES OF THE TOETOISB.

to a monk of the Orinoco), the small traders rf Angostura,
who visit the encampments, can give, unfortunately, no very
exact information. But in these distant countries no doubt
is. ever entertained of the news brought by a white man
from the capital. The profit of the traders in oil amounts
to seventy or eighty per cent. ; for the Indians sell it them
at the price of a piastre a jar or botija, and the expense of
carriage is not more than two-fifths of a piastre per jar.
The Indians bring away also a considerable quantity of eggs
dried in the sun, or slightly boiled. Our rowers had baskets
or little bags of cotton-cloth filled with these eggs. Their
taste is not disagreeable, when well preserved. We were
shown large shells of turtles, which had been destroyed by
the jaguars. These animals follow the arraus towards those
places on the beach where the eggs are laid. They surprise
the arraus on the sand; and, in order to devour them at
their ease, turn them in such a manner that the under shell
is uppermost. In this situation the turtles cannot rise ;
and as the jaguar turns many more than he can eat in one
night, the Indians often avail themselves of his cunning and
avidity.

When we reflect on the difficulty experienced by the
naturalist in getting out the body of the turtle without
separating the upper and under shells, we cannot sufficiently
wonder at the suppleness of the tiger's paw, which is able to
remove the double armour of the arrau, as if the adhering
parts of the muscles had been cut by a surgical instrument.
The jaguar pursues the turtle into the water when it is not
very deep. It even digs up the eggs; and together with
the crocodile, the heron, and the galinazo vulture, is the
most cruel enemy of the little turtles recently hatched. The
island of Pararuma had been so much infested with croco-
diles the preceding year, during the egg-harvest, that the
Indians in one night caught eighteen, of twelve or fifteen
feet long, by means of curved pieces of iron, baited with the
flesh of the manati. Besides the beasts of the forests we
have just named, the wild Indians also very much diminisl
the quantity of the oil. Warned by the first slight rains,
which they call 'turtle-rains' (peje canepori),* they hastei
to the banks of the Orinoco, and kill the turtles with poi •

* In the Tamanac language, from peje, a tortoise, and canepo, rain.

THE TO UNO TORTOISES. 193

soned arrows, whilst, with upraised heads and paws ex-
tcmled. the animals are wanning themselves in the sun.

Though the little turtles (tortuguillos) may have burst
the shells of their eggs during the day, they are never seen to
come out of the ground but at night. The Indians assert
that the young animal fears the heat of the sun. They
tried also to show us, that when the tortuguillo is carried in
a bag to a distance from the shore, and placed in such a
manner that its tail is turned to the river, it takes without
hesitation the shortest way to the water. I confess, that
this experiment, of which Father Gumilla speaks, does not
always succeed equally well : yet in general it does appear
that at great distances from the shore, and even in an
island, these little animals feel with extreme delicacy in
what direction the most humid air prevails.

Reflecting on the almost uninterrupted layer of eggs that
extends along the beach, and on the thousands of little
turtles that seek the water as soon as they are hatched, it
is difficult to admit that the many turtles which have made
their nests in the same spot, can distinguish their own
young, and lead them, like the crocodiles, to the lakes in
the vicinity of the Orinoco. It is certain, however, that
the animal passes the first years of its life in pools where
the water is shallow, and does not return to the bed of the
threat river till it is full-grown. How then do the tortuguillos
find these pools ? Are they led thither by female turtles,
which adopt the young as by chance ? The crocodiles, less
numerous, deposit their eggs in separate holes; and, in this
family of saurians, the female returns about the time when
the incubation is terminated, calls her young, which answer
to her voice, and often assists them to get out of the ground.
The arrau tortoise, no doubt, like the crocodile, knows the
spot where she has made her nest; but, not daring to
return to the beach on which the Indians have formed their
encampment, how can she distinguish her own young from
those which do not belong to her? On the other hand,
the Ottomac Indians declare that, at the period of inun-
dation, they have met with female turtles followed by a
great number of young ones. These were perhaps arraus
whose eggs had been deposited on a desert beach to which
they could return. Mules are extremely rare among these

VOL. IJ O

104 DANGEROUS ACCIDENT.

animals. Scarcely 18 one male found among several hun-
dred females. The cause of this disparity cannot be the
same as with the crocodiles, which fight in the coupling
season.

Our pilot had anchored at the Playa de huevos, to pur-
chase some provisions, our store having began to run short.
We found there fresh meat, Angostura rice, and even biscuit
made of wheat-flour. Our Indians 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 us with great kindness, we set sail about four
in the afternoon. The wind was fresh, and blew in squalls.
Since we had entered the mountainous part of the country,
we had discovered that our 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 hia
dexterity, and the boldness of his manoeuvre, the force of
the wind upon the sail became so great that we 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 our knees. It washed over a little table at which I was
writing at the stern of the boat. I had some difficulty to
save my journal, and in an instant we saw our books, papers,
and dried plants, all afloat. M. 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 the
danger of our situation, whilst he maintained that coolness
which he always displayed in the most difficult circumstances.
The lee-side righting itself from time to time during the
squall, he did not consider the boat as lost. He thought
that, were we even forced to abandon it, we might save our-
selves by swimming, since there was no crocodile in sight.
Amidst this uncertainty the cordage of the sail suddenly
gave way. The same gust of wind, that had thrown us on
our beam, served also to right us. "We laboured to bale the
water out of the boat with calabashes, the sail was again set,
and in less than half an hour we were in a state to proceed.
The wind now abated a little. Squalls alternating with
dead calms are common in that part of the Orinoco which

BOLDNESS OP JAGUARS. 195

IB bordered by mountains. They are very dangerous for
boats deeply laden, and without decks. We had escaped
as if by miracle. To the reproaches that were heaped on
our 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." We lost only one book — the first
volume of the ' Genera Plantarum ' of Schreber — which had
fallen overboard. At nightfall we landed on a barren island
in the middle of the river, near the Mission of Uruana.
We supped in a clear moonlight, seating ourselves on
some large turtle-shells that were found scattered about
the beach. What satisfaction we felt on finding ourselves
thus comfortably landed! We figured to ourselves the
situation of a man who had been saved alone from ship-
wreck, wandering on these desert shores, meeting at every
step with other rivers which fall into the Orinoco, and which
it is dangerous to pass by swimming, on account of the
multitude of crocodiles and caribe fishes. We pictured to
ourselves such a man, alive to the most tender affections
of the soul, ignorant of the fate of his companions, and
thinking more of them than of himself. If we love to
indulge such melancholy meditations, it is because, when
just escaped from danger, we seem to feel as it were the
necessity of strong emotions. Our minds were full of what
we had just witnessed. There are periods in life when, with-
out being discouraged, the future appears more uncertain.
It was only three days since we had entered the Orinoco,
and there yet remained three months for us to navigate
rivers encumbered with rocks, and in boats smaller than that
in which we had so nearly perished.

The night was intensely hot. We lay upon skins spread
on the ground, there being no trees to which we could
fasten our hammocks. The torments of the mosquitos
increased every day; and we were surprised to find that
on this spot our fires did not prevent trie approach of the
jaguars. They swam across the arm of the river that sepa-
rated us from the mainland. Towards morning we heard
their cries very near. They had come to the island when
we passed the night. The Indians told us that, during the
collecting of the turtles' eggs, tigers are always more fre«

o 2

196 coircEPCioir DE URBANA.

quent in those regions, and display at that period the
greatest intrepidity.

On the following day, the 7th, we passed, on our right, the
mouth of the great Bio Auraca, celebrated for the immense
number of birds that frequent it; and, on our left, the
Mission of Uruana, commonly called La Concepcion de Ur-
lana. This small village, which contains five hundred souls,
was founded by the Jesuits, about the year 1748, by the
union of the Ottomac and Cavere Indians. It lies at the
foot of a mountain composed of detached blocks of granite,
which, I believe, bears the name of Saraguaca. Masses of
rock, separated one from the other by the effect of decom-
position, form caverns, in which we find indubitable proofs
of the ancient civilization of the natives. Hieroglyphic
figures, and even characters in regular lines, are seen sculp-
tured on their sides; though I doubt whether they bear
any analogy to alphabetic writing. We visited the Mission
of Uruana on our return from the Bio Negro, and saw with
our own eyes those heaps of earth which the Ottomacs eat,
and which have become the subject of such lively discussion
in Europe.*

On measuring the breadth of the Orinoco between the
islands called Isla de Uruana and Isla de la Manteca, we
found it, during the high waters, 2674 toises, which make
nearly four nautical miles. This is eight times the breadth
of the Nile at Manfalout and Syout, yet we were at the
distance of a hundred and ninety-four leagues from the
mouth of the Orinoco.

The temperature of the water at its surface was 27' 8° of
the centigrade thermometer, near Uruana. That of the
river Zaire, or Congo, in Africa, at an equal distance from
the equator, was found by Captain Tuckey, in the months
of July and August, to be only from 23'9° to 25'6°.

The western bank of the Orinoco remains low farther

* This earth is a greasy kind of clay, which, in seasons of scarcity, the
natives use to assuage the cravings of hunger ; it having been proved by
their experience as well as by physiological researches, that want of food
can be more easily borne by filling the cavity of the stomach with some
substance, even although it may be in itself very nearly or totally innu-
tritions. The Indian hunters of North America, for the same purpose,
tie boards tightly across the abdomen ; and most savage races are found
to have recourse to expedients that answer the same end.

BUMMER-SLEEP OF CROCODILES. 197

than the mouth of the Meta; while from the Mission of
Uruana t ic mountains approach the eastern bank more and
•more. As the strength of the current increases in propor-
tion as the river grows narrower, the progress of our boat
became much slower. We continued to ascend the Orinoco
under sail, but the high and woody grounds deprived us of
the wind. At other times the narrow passes between the
mountains by which we sailed, sent us violent gusts, but of
short duration. The number of crocodiles increased below
the junction of the Bio Arauca, particularly opposite the
great lake of Capanaparo, which communicates with the
Orinoco, as the Laguna de CabuUarito communicates at the
same time with the Orinoco and the Eio Arauca. The
Indians told us that the crocodiles came from the inlands,
where they had been buried in the dried mud of the
savannahs. As soon as the first showers arouse them from
their lethargy, they crowd together in troops, and hasten
toward the river, there to disperse again. Here, in the
equinoctial zone, it is the increase of humidity that recalls
them to life ; while in Georgia and Florida, in the temperate
zone, it is the augmentation of heat that rouses these
animals from a state of nervous and muscular debility,
during which the active powers of respiration are suspended
or singularly diminished. The season of great drought, im-
properly called the summer of the torrid zone, corresponds
with the winter of the temperate zone ; and it is a curious
physiological phenomenon to observe the alligators of North
America plunged into a winter-sleep by excess of cold, at
the same period when the crocodiles of the Llanos begin
their siesta or summer-sleep. If it were probable that
these animals of the same family had heretofore inhabited
the same northern country, we might suppose that, in ad-
vancing towards the equator, they feel the want of repose
after having exercised their muscles for seven or eight months,
and that they retain under a new sky the habits which appear
to be essentially linked with their organization.

Having passed the mouths of the channels communicat-
ing with the lake of Capanaparo, we entered a part of the
Orinoco, where the bed of the river is narrowed by the
mountains of Baraguan. It is a kind of strait, reaching

198 PASSAGE OF B/.RA GUAff.

nearly to the confluence of the Rio Suapure. From these
granite mountains the natives heretofore gave the name of
Baraguan to that part of the Orinoco comprised between
the mouths of the Arauca and the Atabapo. Among
savage nations great rivers bear different denominations
in the different portions of their course. The Passage
of Baraguan presents a picturesque scene. The granite
rocks are perpendicular. They form a range of mountains
lying north-west and south-east ; and the river cutting this
dyke nearly at a right angle, the summits of the mountains
appear like separate peaks. Their elevation in general does
not surpass one hundred and twenty toises ; but their situa-
tion in the midst of a small plain, their steep declivities, and
their flanks destitute of vegetation, give them a majestic
character. They are composed of enormous masses of
granite of a parallelopipedal figure, but rounded at the
edges, and heaped one upon another. The blocks are often
eighty feet long, and twenty or thirty broad. They would
seem to have been piled up by some external force, if the
proximity of a rock identical in its composition, not sepa-
rated into blocks but filled with veins, did not prove that
the parallelopipedal form is owing solely to the action of
the atmosphere. These veins, two or three inches thick,
are distinguished by- a fine-grained quartz-granite crossing a
coarse-grained granite almost porphyritic, and abounding in
fine crystals of red feldspar. I sought in vain, in the
Cordillera of Baraguan, for hornblende, and those steatitic
masses that characterise several granites of the Higher Alps
in Switzerland.

We landed in the middle of the strait of Baraguan to
measure its breadth. The rocks project so much towards
the river that I measured with difficulty a base of eighty
toises. I found the river eight hundred and eighty-nine
toises broad. In order to conceive how this passage bears
the name of a strait, we must recollect that the breadth of
the river from Uruana to the junction of the Meta is in
general from 1500 to 2500 toises. In this place, which is
extremely hot and barren, I measured two granite summits,
much rounded : one was only a hundred and ten, and the
other eighty-five, toises. There are higher summits in the

NOON IN TUB TEOPIC8. 199

interior of the group, but in general these mountains, of so
wild an aspect, have not the elevation that is assigned to
them by the missionaries.

We looked in vain for plants in the clefts of the rocks,
which are as steep as walls, and furnish some traces of
stratification. We found only an old trunk of aubletia,*
with large apple-shaped fruit, and a new species of the
family of the apocyneaB.t All the stones were covered with
:tn innumerable quantity of iguanas and geckos with spread-
ing and membranous fingers. These lizards, motionless,
with heads raised, and mouths open, seemed to suck in the
heated air. The thermometer placed against the rock rose
to 5O2°. The soil appeared to undulate, from the effect of
mirage, without a breath of wind being felt. The sun was
near the zenith, and its dazzling light, reflected from the sur-
face of the river, contrasted with the reddish vapours that
enveloped every surrounding object. How vivid la *he im-
pression produced by the calm of nature, at noon, in these
burning climates ! The beasts of the forests retire to the
thickets ; the birds hide themselves beneath the foliage of
the trees, or in the crevices of the rocks. Yet, amidst tliis
apparent silence, when we lend an attentive ear to the most
feeble sounds transmitted through the air, we hear a dull
vibration, a continual murmur, a hum of insects, filling, if
we may use the expression, all the lower strata of the air.
Nothing is better fitted to make man feel the extent and
power of organic life. Myriads of insects creep upon the
soil, and nutter round the plants parched by the heat of the
sun. A confused noise issues from every bush, from the
decayed trunks of trees, from the clefts of the rocks, and
from the ground undermined by lizards, millepedes, and
cecilias. These are so many voices proclaiming to us that
all nature breathes; and that, under a thousand different
forms, life is diffused throughout the cracked and dusty soil,
as well as in the bosom of the waters, and in the air that
circulates around us.

The sensation* which I here recall to mind are not

unknown to those who, without having advanced to the

enuator, have visited Italy, Spain, or Egypt. That contrast

ot motion and silence, that aspect of nature at once cabn ana

• Aabletia tiburba. f Allamanda

200 FETID RITER- WATER

animated, strikes the imagination of the traveller when
enters the basin of the Mediterranean, within the zone of
olives, dwarf palms, and date-trees.

We passed the night on the eastern bank of the Orinoco,
at the foot of a granitic hill. Near this desert spot was
formerly seated the Mission of San Regis. "We could have
wished to find a spring in the Baraguan, for the water of
the river had a smell of musk, and a sweetish taste ex-
tremely disagreeable. In the Orinoco, as well as in the
Apure, we are struck with the difference observable in the
various parts of the river near the most barren shore. The
water is sometimes very drinkable, and sometimes seems to
be loaded with a slimy matter. " It is the bark (meaning
the coriaceous covering) of the putrified cayman that is the
cause," say the natives. " The more aged the cayman, the
more Utter is his bark" I have no doubt that the carcasses
of these large reptiles, those of the manatis, which weigh five
hundred pounds, and the presence of the porpoises (toninas)
with their mucilaginous skin, may contaminate the water,
especially in the creeks, where the river has little velocity.
Yet the spots where we found the most fetid water, were
not always those where dead animals were accumulated on
the beach. When, in such burning climates, where we are
constantly tormented by thirst, we are reduced to drink the
water of a river at the temperature of 27° or 28°, we cannot
help wishing at least that water so hot, and so loaded with
sand, should be free from smell.

On the 8th of April we passed the mouths of the Suapure
or Sivapuri, and the Caripo, on the east, and the outlet of
the Sinaruco on the west. This last river is, next to the
Rio Arauca, the most considerable between the Apure and
the Meta. The Suapure, full of little cascades, is celebrated
among the Indians for the quantity of wild honey obtained
from the forests in its neighbourhood. The melipones there
suspend their enormous hives to the branches of trees.
Father Grili, in 1766, made an excursion on the Suapure, and
on the Turiva, which falls into it. He there found tribes
of the nation of Areverians. We passed the night a little
below the island Macapina.

Early on the following morning we arrived at the beach
tf Pararuma, where we found an encampment of Indian^

YOUNG CROCODILES. 201

similar to that we had seen at the Boca de la Tortuga.
They had assembled to search the sands, for collecting the
turtles* eggs, and extracting the oil ; bat they had unfortu-
nately made a mistake of several days. The young turtles
had come out of their shells before the Indians had formed
their camp ; and consequently the crocodiles and the garzes,
a species of large white herons, availed themselves of the
delay. These animals, alike fond of the flesh of the young
turtles, devour an innumerable quantity. They fish during
the night, for the tortuguillos do not come out of the earth
to gain the neighbouring 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 is curious
to see the address with which these little animals defend
themselves for a time against the vultures. As soon as they
perceive the enemy, they raise themselves on their fore
paws, bend their backs, and lift up their heads, opening
their wide jaws. They turn continually, though slowly,
toward their assailant to show him their teeth, which, even
when the animal has but recently issued from the egg, are
very long and sharp. Often while the attention of a young
crocodile is wholly engaged by one of the zamuros, another
seizes the favourable opportunity for an unforeseen attack.
He pounces on the crocodile, grasps him by the neck, and
bears him off to the higher regions of the air. We had
an opportunity of observing this manoeuvre during several
mornings, at Mompex, on the banks of the Magdalena, where
we had collected more than forty very young crocodiles, in a
spacious court surrounded by a wall.

We found among the Indians assembled at Pararuma
some white men, who had come from Angostura to purchase
the tortoise-butter. After having wearied us 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 conducted us beneath an
ajoupa, that rose in the centre of the Indian camp. We
tnere found the missionary-monks of Carichana and tvje

202 HUMiDirT or THE CLIMATE.

Cataracts seated on the ground, playing at cards, and
smoking tobacco in long pipes. Their ample blue garments,
their shaven heads, and their long beards, might have led us
to mistake them for natives of the East. These poor priests
received us in the kindest manner, giving us every informa-
tion necessary for the continuation of our voyage. They
had suffered from tertian fever for some months ; and their
pale and emaciated aspect easily convinced us that the
countries we were about to visit were not without danger to
the health of travellers.

The Indian pilot, who had brought us from San Fernando
de Apure as far as the shore of Pararuma, was unacquainted
with the passage of the rapids* of the Orinoco, and would
not undertake to conduct our bark any farther. We were
obliged to conform to his will. Happily for us, the mis-
sionary of Carichana consented to sell us a fine canoe at a
very moderate price: and Father Bernardo Zea, missionary
of the Atures and Maypures near the great cataracts,
offered, though still unwell, to accompany us as far as the
frontiers of Brazil. The number of natives who can assist in
guiding boats through the Haudales is so inconsiderable that,
but for the presence of the monk, we should have risked
spending whole weeks in these humid and unhealthy
regions. On the banks of the Orinoco, the forests of the
Bio Negro are considered as delicious spots. The air is
indeed cooler and more healthful. The river is free from
crocodiles; one may bathe without apprehension, and by
night as well as by day there is less torment from the sting
of insects than on the Orinoco. Father Zea hoped to re-
establish his health by visiting the Missions of Eio Negro.
He talked of those places with that enthusiasm which is felt
in all the colonies of South America for everything far off.

The assemblage of Indians at Pararuma again excited
in us that interest, which everywhere attaches man in a
cultivated state to the study of man in a savage condition,
and the successive development of his intellectual faculties.
How difficult io recognize in this infancy of society, in this
assemblage of dull, silent, inanimate Indians, the primitive
character of our species ! Human nature does not here
manifest those features of artless simplicity, of whicb
* Little cascades (chorros raudalitoa).

PIQMEXTS. 203

poets in every language have drawn such enchanting
pictures. The savage of the Orinoco appeared to us to be
as hideous as the savage of the Mississippi, described by
that philosophical traveller Volney, who so well knew how
to paint man in different climates. We are eager to persuade
ourselves that these natives, crouching before the fire, or
seated on large turtle-shells, their bodies covered with earth
and grease, their eyes stupidly fixed for whole hours on the
beverage they are preparing, far from being the primitive
type of our species, are a degenerate race, the feeble remains
of nations who, after having been long dispersed in the
forests, are replunged into barbarism.

Bed paint oeing in some sort the only clothing of the
Indians, two kinds may be distinguished among them,
according as they are more or less affluent. The common
decoration of the Caribs, the Ottomacs, and the Jaruros,
is onoto* called by the Spaniards achote, and by the planters
of Cayenne, rocou. It is the colouring matter extracted
from the pulp of the Bixa orellana.t The Indian women
prepare the anaio by throwing the serds of the plant into a
tub filled with water. They beat tnis water for an hour,
and then leave h ro deposit the colouring fecula, which is of
an intense brick-red. After having separated the water,
they take out the fecula, dry it between their hands, knead
it with oil of turtles' eggs, and form it into round cakes of
three or four ounces weight. When turtle oil is wanting,
some tribes mix with the anato the fat of the crocodile.

Another pigment, much more valuable, is extracted from
a plant of the family of the bignonise, which M. Bonpland
has made known by the name of Bignonia chica. It climbs
up and clings to the tallest trees by the aid of tendrils. Its
bilabiate flowers are an inch long, of a fine violet colour,
and disposed by twos or threes. The bipinnate leaves
become reddish in drying. The fruit is a pod, filled with
winged seeds, and is two feet long. This plant grows

* Properly anoto. This word belongs to the Tamanac Indians. The
Maypures call it majepa. The Spanish missionaries say onotarse, ' to
rub the skin with anato.'

t The word bixa, adopted by botanists, is derived from the ancie*
language of Hayti (the island of St. Domingo). Rocou, the term com-
nonly used by the French, is derived from the Brazilian word, tr*r«.

204 INDIAN PIGMENTS.

spontaneously, and in great abundance, near Muypures fand
in going up the Orinoco, beyond the mouth of the Ghia-
viare, from Santa Barbara to the lofty mountain of Duida,
particularly near Esmeralda. We also found it on the banks
of the Cassiquiare. The red pigment of cJiica is not ob-
tained from the fruit, like the onoto, but from the leaves
macerated in water. The colouring matter separates in the
form of a light powder. It is collected, without being mixed
with turtle-oil, into little lumps eight or nine inches long,
and from two to three high, rounded at the edges. These
lumps, when heated, emit an agreeable smell of benzoin.
When the chica is subjected to distillation, it yields no
sensible traces of ammonia. It is not, like indigo, a sub-
stance combined with azote. It dissolves slightly in sul-
phuric and muriatic acids, and even in alkalis. Ground
with oil, the chica furnishes a red colour that has a tint of
lake. Applied to wool, it might be confounded with mad-
der-red. There is no doubt but that the chica, unknown in
Europe before our travels, may be employed usefully in the
arts. The nations on the Orinoco, by whom this pigment
is best prepared, are the Salivas, the Ghiipunaves,* the
Caveres, and the Piraoas. The processes of infusion and
maceration are in general very common among all the
nations on the Orinoco. Thus the Maypures carry on a
trade of barter with the little loaves of purtvma, which is a
vegetable fecula, dried in the manner of indigo, and yield-
ing a very permanent yellow colour. The chemistry of the
savage is reduced to the preparation of pigments, that of
poisons, and the dulcification of the amylaceous roots, which
the aro'ides and the euphorbiaceous plants afford.

Most of the missionaries of the tipper and Lower Ori-
noco permit the Indians of their Missions to paint their
skins. It is painful to add, that some of them speculate
on this barbarous practice of the natives. In their huts,
pompously called conventos,+ I have often seen 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, I must observe, that a man of large

* Or Guaypuflaves ; they call themselves Uipunavi.
f In the Missions, the priest's house bears the name of ' the con
rent.'

OHIO IN OF PAINTING THE SKIN. 205

stfiiure gains with difficulty enough by the labour of a forfc*
night, 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," you hear
the Indians of the Orinoco say, " that man is so poor, that
he has not enough to paint half his body." The little trade
in chica is carried on chiefly with the tribes of the Lower
Orinoco, whose country does not produce the plant which
furnishes this much-valued substance. The Caribs and the
Ottomacs paint only the head and the hair with chica, but
the Salives possess this pigment in sufficient abundance to
cover their whole bodies. When the missionaries send on
their own account small cargoes of cacao, tobacco, and
chiquichiqui* from the Rio Negro to Angostura, they always
add some cakes of chica, as being articles of merchandise
in great request.

The custom of painting is not equally ancient among all
the tribes of the Orinoco. It has increased since the time
when the powerful nation of the Caribs made frequent in-
cursions into those countries. The victors and the van-
quished were alike naked ; and to please the conqueror it
was necessary to paint like him, and to assume his colour.
The influence of the Caribs has now ceased, and they
remain circumscribed between the rivers Carony, Cuyuni,
and Paraguamuzi ; but the Caribbean fashion of painting
the whole body is still preserved. The custom has sur-
vived the conquest.

Does the use of the anato and chica derive its origin
from the desire of pleasing, and the taste for ornament, so
common among the most savage nations ? or must we sup-
pose it to be founded on the observation, that these colour-
ing and oily matters with which the skin is plastered,
preserve it from the sting of the mosquitos ? I have often
heard this question discussed in Europe ; but in the Mis-
sions of the Orinoco, and wherever, within the tropics,
the air is filled with venomous insects, the inquiry would
appear absurd. The Carib and the Salive, who are painted
red, are not less cruelly tormented by the mosquitoa
and the zancudos, than the Indians whose bodies are
plastered with no colour. The sting of the insect causei

* Ropes made with the petioles of a palm-ti \? ? ith pinnate leaves.

206 PLAGUE OF THTC MOSQtlTOS.

no swelling in either; and scarcely ever produces those
little pustules which occasion such smarting and itching
to Europeans recently arrived. But the native and the
"White suffer equally from the sting, till the insect has with-
drawn its sucker from the skin. After a thousand useless
essays, M. Bonpland and myself tried the expedient of
rubbing our hands and arms with the fat of the crocodile,
and the oil of turtle-eggs, but we never felt the least
relief, and were stung as before. I know that the Lap-
landers boast of oil and fat as the most useful preservatives ;
but the insects of Scandinavia are not of the same species
as those of the Orinoco. The smoke of tobacco drives
away our gnats, while it is employed in vain against the
zancudos. If the application of fat and astringent* sub-
stances preserved the inhabitants of these countries from
the torment of insects, as Father Grumilla alleges, why has
not the custom of painting the skin become general on these
shores? Why do so many naked natives paint only the
face, though living in the neighbourhood of those who
paint the whole bodypf

We are struck with the observation, that the Indians of
the Orinoco, like the natives of North America, prefer the
substances that yield a red colour to every other. Is this
predilection founded on the facility with which the savage
procures ochreous earths, or the colouring fecula of anato
and of chica ? I doubt this much. Indigo grows wild in a
great part of equinoctial America. This plant, like so many
other leguminous plants, would have furnished the natives
abundantly with pigments to colour themselves blue like the
ancient Britons.lt Yet we see no American tribe painted
with indigo. It appears to me probable, as I have already
hinted above, that the preference given by the Americans
to the red colour is generally founded on the tendency
which nations feel to attribute the idea of beauty to what-
ever characterises their national physiognomy. Men whose
skin is naturally of a brownish red, love a red colour. If

* The pulp of the anato, and even the chica, are astringent and
slightly purgative.

t The Caribs, the Salives, the Tamanacs, and the Maypures.

J The half-clad nations of the temperate zone often paint their skin ol
the same colour us that with which their clothes are dyed.

GENERAL USE OP PJGMLNT8. 20?

they be born with a forehead little raised, and the head flat,
they endeavour to depress the foreheads of their children.
If they be distinguished from other nations by a thin beard,
they try to eradicate the few hairs that nature has given
them. They think themselves embellished in proportion as
thev heighten the characteristic marks of their race, or of
their national conformation.

We were surprised to *ee, that, in the camp of Pararuma,
the women far advanced in years were more occupied with
their ornaments than the youngest women. We 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. We returned from
a very long herborization, and the painting was not half
finished. This research of ornament seems the more singu-
lar when we reflect that the figures and marks are not
produced by the process of tattooing, but that paintings
executed with so much care are effaced,* if the Indian ex-
poses himself imprudently to a heavy shower. There are
some nations who paint only to celebrate festivals ; others
are covered with colour during the whole year : and the latter
consider the use of anato as so indispensable, that both
men and women would perhaps be less ashamed to present
themselves without a guayuco^ than destitute of paint.
These guayucos of the Orinoco are partly bark of trees, and
partly cotton-cloth. Those of the men are broader than
those worn by the women, who, the missionaries say, have
in general a less lively feeling of modesty. A similar ob-
servation was made by Christopher Columbus. May \ve
not attribute this inoifference, this want of delicacy in

* The black and caustic pigment of the caruto (Genipa americana)
however, resists a long time the action of water, as we found with regret,
having one day, in sport with the Indians, caused our faces to be marked
with spots and strokes of caruto. When we returned to Angostura, in
the midst of Europeans, these marks were still visible.

•f A word of the Caribbean language. The perizoma of the Indirni
of the Orinoco b rather a band 'Jhan an apron.

208 SINGULAR METHODS OF EDDY-PAINTING.

women belonging to nations of which the manners are not
much depraved, to that rude state of slavery to which
the sex is reduced in South America by male injustice and
tyranny?

When we speak in Europe of a native of Gruiana, we
figure to ourselves a man whose head and waist are deco-
rated with the fine feathers of the macaw, the toucan, and the
humming-bird. Our painters and sculptors have long since
/egarded these ornaments as the characteristic marks of
an American. We were surprised at not finding in the
Chayma Missions, in the encampments of Uruana and of
Pararuma (I might almost say on all the shores of the
Orinoco and the Cassiquiare) those fine plumes, those fea-
thered aprons, which are so often brought by travellers
from Cayenne and Demerara. These tribes for the most
part, even those whose intellectual faculties are most ex-
panded, who cultivate alimentary plants, and know how to
weave cotton, are altogether as naked,* as poor, and as
destitute of ornaments as the natives of New Holland. The
excessive heat of the air, the profuse perspiration in which
the body is bathed at every hour of the day and a great part
of the night, render the use of clothes insupportable. Their
objects of ornament, and particularly their plumes of fea-
thers, are reserved for dances and solemn festivals. The
plumes worn by the Gruipufiavest are the most celebrated ;
being composed of the fine feathers of manakins and
parrots.

Tlie Indians are not always satisfied with one colour
uniformly spread; they sometimes imitate, in the most
whimsical manner, in painting their skin, the form of Euro-
pean garments. We saw some at Pararuma, who were
painted with blue jackets and black buttons. The mission-
aries related to us that the Gruaynaves of the Eio Caura
are accustomed to stain themselves red with anato, and to
make broad transverse stripes on the body, on which they
stick spangles of silvery mica. Seen at a distance, these

* For instance, the Macos and the Piraoas. The Carihs must be ex-
cepted, whose perizoma is a cotton cloth, so broad that it might cover
the shoulders.

f These came originally from the banks of thi Inirida, one of the
rivers that fall into the Guaviare.

PAINTED BODIES OF THE INDTAJfS. 200

naked men appear to be dressed in laced clothes. If painted
nations had been examined with the same attention as
those who are clothed, it would have been perceived that
the most fertile imagination, and the most mutable caprice,
have created the fashions of painting, as well as those oi
garments.

Painting and tattooing are not restrained, in either the
New or the Old World, to one race or one zone only. These
ornaments are most common among the Malays and Ame-
rican races ; but in the time of the Romans they were also
employed by the white race in the north of Europe. As the
most picturesque garments and modes of dress are found
in the Grecian Archipelago and western Asia, so the type of
beauty in painting and tattooing is displayed by the islanders
of the Pacific. Some clothed nations still paint their hands,
their nails, and their faces. It would seem that painting
is then confined to those parts of the body that remain
uncovered; and while rouge, which recalls to mind the
savage state of man, is disappearing by degrees in Europe,
in some towns of the province of Peru the ladies think
they embellish their delicate skins by covering them with
colouring vegetable matter, starch, wnite-of-egg, and flour.
After having lived a long time among men painted with
anato and chica, we are singularly struck with these re-
mains of ancient barbarism retained amidst all the usages
of civilization.

The encampment at Pararuma afforded us an opportunity
of examining several animals in their natural state, which,
till then, we had seen only in the collections of Europe.
These little animals form a branch of commerce for the
missionaries. They exchange tobacco, the resin called mani,
the pigment of chica, gallitos (rock-manakins), orange mon-
keys, capuchin monkeys, and other species of monkeys in
great request on the coast, for cloth, nails, hatchets, fish-
nook a, and pins. The productions of the Orinoco are bought
at a low pnce from the Indians, who live in dependence on
the monks; and these same Indians purchase ishing and
gardening implements from the monks at a very high
price, with the money they have gained at the egc-harvest.
We ourselves bought several animals, which we kept with

VOL. n. p

210 THE ROCK-MANAKIW.

as throughout the rest of our passage on the river, and
studied their manners.

The gallitos, or rock-manakins, are sold at Pararuma in
pretty little cages made of the footstalks of palm-leaves.
These birds are infinitely more rare on the banks of the Ori-
noco, and in the north and west of equinoctial America, than
in French Guiana. They have hitherto been found only near
the Mission of Encaramada, and in the Eaudales or cataracts
of Maypures. I say expressly in the cataracts, because
the gallitos choose for their habitual dwelling the hollows of
the little granitic rocks that cross the Orinoco and form
such numerous cascades. "We sometimes saw them appear
in the morning in the midst of the foam of the river, calling
their females, and fighting in the manner of our cocks,
folding the double moveable crest that decorates the crown
of the head. As the Indians very rarely take the full-grown
gallitos, and those males only are valued in Europe, which
from the third year have beautiful saffron-coloured plumage,
purchasers should be on their guard not to confound young
females with young males. Both the male and female
gallitos are of an olive-brown; but the polio, or young male,
is distinguishable at the earliest age, by its size and its
yellow feet. After the third year the plumage of the males
assumes a beautiful saffron tint; but the female remains
always of a dull dusky brown colour, with yellow only on
the wing-coverts and tips of the wings.* To preserve in
our collections the fine tint of the plumage of a male and
full-grown rock-manakin, it must not be exposed to the
light. This tint grows pale more easy than in the other
genera of the passerine order. The young males, as in most
other birds, have the plumage or livery of their mother.
1 am surprised to see that so skilful a naturalist as Le
Vaillant t can doubt whether the females always remain of
a dusky olive tint. The Indians of the Eaudales all assured
me that they had never seen a saffron-coloured female.

Among the monkeys, brought by the Indians to the fair
of Pararuma, we distinguished several varieties of the sai^

* Especially the part which ornithologists call the carpus.

•f Oiseaux de Paradis, vol. ii, p. 61.
J Simia capucina, (the capuchin monkey).

BABE SPECIES OF MONJLEYS. 211

belonging to the little groups of creeping monkeys called
matchi in the Spanish colonies ; marimcndes,* or ateles with
a red belly ; titis, and viuditas. The last two species parti-
cularly attracted our attention, and we purchased them to
send to Europe.

The titi of the Orinoco (Simia sciurea), well-known in our
collections, is called bititeni by the Maypure Indians. It is
very common on the south of the cataracts. Its face is
white; and a little spot of bluish-black covers the mouth
and the point of the nose. The titis of the most elegant
form, and the most beautiful colour (with hair of a golden
yellow), come from the banks of the Cassiquiare. Those
that are taken on the shores of the Guaviare are large and
difficult to tame. No other monkey has so much the phy-
siognomy of a child as the titi ; there is the same expression
of innocence, the same playful smile, the same rapidity in
the transition from joy to sorrow. Its large eyes are instantly
filled with tears, when it is seized with fear. It is ex-
tremely fond of insects, particularly of spiders. The saga-
city of this little animal is so great, that one of those we
brought in our boat to Angostura distinguished perfectly the
different plates annexed to Cuvier's 'Tableau elementaire
d'Histoire naturelle.' The engravings of this work are not
coloured ; yet the titi advanced rapidly its little hand in the
hope of catching a grasshopper or a wasp, every time that
we showed it the eleventh plate, on which these insects are
represented. It remained perfectly indifferent when it was
shown engravings of skeletons or heads of mammiferous
animals.t When several of these little monkeys, shut
up in the same cage, are exposed to the rain, and the
habitual temperature of the air sinks suddenly two or three
degrees, they twist their tail (which, however, is not pre-
hensile) round their neck, and intertwine their arms and
legs to warm one another. The Indian hunters told us, that

* Simia belzebuth.

f I may observe, that I have never heard of an instance in which a
picture, representing, in the greatest perfection, hares or deer of their
natural size, has made the least impression even on sporting dogs,
the intelligence of which appears the most improved. Is there any
authenticated instance of a dog having recognized a full length picture of
his master ? In all these cases, the sight is not assisted by the smell.

r 2

212 THE YIUDITA MONKEY.

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 amid 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 are found alive in the huts of the Indians have
been thus taken from the dead bodies of their mothers.
Those that are full grown, when cured of a slight wound,
commonly die before they can accustom themselves to a
domestic state. The titis are in general delicate and timid
little animals. It is very difficult to convey them from the
Missions of the Orinoco* to the coast of Caracas, or of Cu-
mana. They become melancholy and dejected in proportion
as they quit the region of the forests, and enter the Llanos.
This change cannot be attributed to the slight elevation of the
temperature ; it seems rather to depend on a greater inten-
sity of light, a less degree of humidity, and some chemical
property of the air of the coast.

The saimiri, or titi of the Orinoco, the atele, the sajou,
and other quadrumanous animals long known in Europe,
form a striking contrast, both in their gait and habits, with
the macavahu, called by the missionaries viudita, or ' widow
in mourning.' The hair of this little animal is soft, glossy,
and of a fine black. Its face is covered with a mask of a
square form and a whitish colour tinged with blue. This
mask contains the eyes, nose, and mouth. The ears have a
rim: they are small, very pretty, and almost bare. The
neck of the widow presents in front a white band, an inch
broad, and forming a semicircle. The feet, or rather the
hinder hands, are black like the rest of the body ; but the
fore paws are white without, and of a glossy black within.
In these marks, or white spots, the missionaries think they
recognize the veil, the neckerchief, and the gloves of a
widow in mourning. The character of this little monkey,
which sits up on its hinder extremities only when eating, is
but little indicated in its appearance. It has a wild and
timid air; it often refuses the food offered to it, even when
tormented by a ravenous appetite. It has little inclination

PREPARATIONS. 213

fur the society of other monkeys. The sight >f the smallest
saiiniri puts it to flight. Its eye denotes great vivacity.
We have seen it remain whole hours motionless without
sleeping, and attentive to everything that was passing
around. But this wildness and timidity are merely apparent.
The viudita, when alone, and left to itself, becomes furious
at the sight of a bird. It then climbs and runs with asto-
nishing rapidity ; darts upon its prey like a cat ; and kills
whatever it can seize. This rare and delicate monkey is
found on the right bank of the Orinoco, in the granite moun-
tains which rise behind the Mission of Santa Barbara. It
inhabits also the banks of the Ghiaviare, near San Fernando
de Atabapo.

The viudita accompanied us on our whole voyage on the
Cassiquiare and the E-io Negro, passing the cataracts twice.
In studying the manners of animals, it is a great advantage
to observe them during several months in the open air, and
not in houses, where they lose all their natural vivacity.

The new canoe intended for us was, like all Indian boats,
a trunk of a tree hollowed out partly by the hatchet and
partly by fire. It was forty feet long, and three broad.
Three persons could not sit in it side by side. These canoes
are so crank, and they require, from their instability, a cargo
so equally distributed, that when you want to rise for an
instant, you must warn the rowers to lean to the opposite
side. Without this precaution the water would necessarily
enter the side pressed down. It is difficult to form an idea
of the inconveniences that are suffered in such wretched
vessels.

The missionary from the cataracts made the preparations
for our voyage with greater energy than we wished. Lest
there might not be a sufficient number of the Maco and Gua-
hibe Indians, who are acquainted with the labyrinth of small
channels and cascades of which the Raudales or cataracts
are composed, two Indians were, during the night, placed in
the cepo — a sort of stocks in which they were made to lie
with their legs between two pieces of wood, notched and
fastened together by a chain with a padlock. Early in the
morning we were awakened by the cries of a young man,
mercilessly beaten with a whip of manati skin. His name
waa Zerepe, a very intelligent young Indian, who proved

214 SEVERE RULE OF THE MISSION AEIE8.

highly useful to us in the sequel, but who now refused to
accompany us. He was born in the Mission of Atures ; but
his father was a Maco, and his mother a native of the nation
of the Maypures. He had returned to the woods (al
monte), and having lived some years with the unsubdued
Indians, he had thus acquired the knowledge of several
languages, and the missionary employed him as an inter-
preter. We obtained with difficulty the pardon of this
young man. " Without these acts of severity," we were
told, ** you would want for everything. The Indians of the
ftaudales and the Upper Orinoco are a stronger and more
laborious race than the inhabitants of the Lower Orinoco.
They know that they are much sought after at Angostura.
If left to their own will, they would all go down the river to
sell their productions, and live in full liberty among the
whites. The Missions would be totally deserted."

These reasons, I confess, appeared to me more specious
than sound. Man, in order to enjoy the advantages of a
social state, must no doubt sacrifice a part of his natural
rights, and his original independence ; but, if the sacrifice
imposed on him be not compensated by the benefits of civi-
lization, the savage, wise in his simplicity, retains the wish
of returning to the forests that gave him birth. It is because
the Indian of the woods is treated like a person in a state
of villanage in the greater part of the Missions, because he
enjoys not the fruit of his labours, that the Christian esta-
blishments on the Orinoco remain deserts. A government
founded on the ruins of the liberty of the natives extin-
guishes the intellectual faculties, or stops their progress.

To say that the savage, like the child, can be governed
only by force, is merely to establish false analogies. The
Indians of the Orinoco have something infantine in the
expression of their joy, and the quick succession of their
emotions, but they are not great children ; they are as little
so as the poor labourers in the east of Europe, whom the
barbarism of our feudal institutions has held in the rudest
state. To consider the employment of force as the first ana
sole means of the civilization of the savage, is a principle as
far from being true in the education of nations as in the
education of youth. Whatever may be the state of weak-
ness or degradation in our species, no faculty is entirely

ACCOMMODATION ON BOARD. 215

annihilated. The human understanding exhibits only dif-
ferent degrees of strength and development. The savage,
like the child, compares the present with the past; he
directs his actions, not according to blind instinct, but
motives of interest. Reason can everywhere enlighten
reason ; and its progress will be retarded in proportion as
the men who are called upon to bring up youth, or govern
nations, substitute constraint and force for that moral
influence which can alone unfold the rising faculties, calm
the irritated passions, and give stability to social order.

We could not set sail before ten on the morning of the
10th. To gain something in breadth in our new canoe, a
sort of lattice-work had been constructed on the stern with
branches of trees, that extended on each side beyond the
gunwale. Unfortunately, the toldo or roof of leaves, that
covered this lattice-work, was so low that we were obliged
to lie down, without seeing anything, 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 toldo
higher, render this construction necessary for vessels that
go up towards the Bio Negro. The toldo was intended to
cover four persons, lying on the deck or lattice-work of
brush-wood ; but our legs reached far beyond it, and when it
rained half our bodies were wet. Our couches consisted of
ox-hides or tiger-skins, spread upon brandies 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 contain-
ing our birds and our monkeys, the number of which aug-
mented as we advanced, were hung some to the toldo
and others to the bow of the boat. This was our travelling
menagerie. Notwithstanding the frequent losses occasioned
by accidents, and above all by the fatal effects of exposure
to the sun, we had fourteen of these little animals alive at
our return from the Cassiquiare. Naturalists, who wish to
collect and bring living animals to Europe, might cause
to bo constructed expressly for this purpose at Ango»

210 UNCOMFORTABLE AEEANGEMENTS.

tura, or at Grand Para, the two capitals situated on the
banks of the Orinoco and the Amazon, the fore-deck oi
which boats might be fitted up with two rows of cages shel-
tered from the rays of the sun. Every night, when we esta-
blished our watch, our collection of animals and our instru-
ments occupied the centre ; around these were placed first
our hammocks, then the hammocks of the Indians ; and on
the outside were the fires which are thought indispensable
against the attacks of the jaguar. About sunrise the mon-
keys in our cages answered the cries of the monkeys of the
forest. These communications between animals of the same
species sympathizing with one another, though unseen, one
party enjoying that liberty which the other regrets, have
something melancholy and affecting.

In a canoe not three feet wide, and so incumbered, there
remained no other place for the dried plants, trunks, a
sextant, a dipping-needle, and the meteorological instru-
ments, than the space below the lattice-work of branches, on
which we were compelled to remain stretched the greater
part of the day. If we 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
toldo, and the heat radiated from the leaves of the palm-
trees, the upper surface of which was continually exposed to
the solar rays. We attempted every instant, but always
without success, to amend our situation. While one of us
hid himself under a sheet to ward off the insects, the other
insisted on having green wood lighted beneath the toldo, in
the hope of driving away the mosquitos by the smoke. The
iminful sensations of the eyes, and the increase of heat,
already stifling, rendered both these contrivances alike im-
Dracticable. With some gaiety of temper, with feelings of
mutual good-will, and with a vivid taste for the majestic
grandeur of these vast valleys of rivers, travellers easily
support evils that become habitual.

Our Indians showed us, on the right bank of the river,
the place which was formerly the site of the Mission of
Pararuma, founded by the Jesuits about the year 1733.
The mortality occasioned by the small-pox among the Salive
Indians was the principal cause of the dissolution of the

PHENOMENA OF HAILSTORMS. 217 ^*

<&ivi<i /*f

mission. The few inhabitants who survived this cruel epi-
demic, removed to the village of Carichana. It was at Pa-
raruma, that, according to the testimony of Father Roman,
hail was seen to fall during a great storm, about the middle
of the last century. This is almost the only instance of it
I know in a plain that is nearly on a level with the sea;
for hail falls generally, between the tropics, only at three
hundred toises of elevation. If it form at an equal height
over plains and table-lands, we must suppose that it melts
as it falls, in passing through the lowest strata of the atmo-
sphere, the mean temperature of which is from 27*5° to 24°
of the centigrade thermometer. I acknowledge it is very
difficult to explain, in the present state of meteorology, why
it hails at Philadelphia, at Rome, and at Montpelier, during
the hottest months, the mean temperature of which attains
25° or 26° ; while the same phenomenon is not observed at
Cumana, at La Guayra, and in general, in the equatorial
plains. In the United States, and in the south of Europe,
the heat of the plains (from 40° to 43° latitude) is nearly
the same as within the tropics ; and according to my re-
searches the decrement of caloric equally varies but little.
If then the absence of hail within the torrid zone, at the
level of the sea, be produced by the melting of the hail-
stones in crossing the lower strata of the air, we must
suppose that these hail-stones, at the moment of their for-
mation, are larger in the temperate than in the torrid zone.
AVe yet know so little of the conditions under which water
congeals in a stormy cloud in our climates, that we can-
not judge whether the same conditions be fulfilled on the
equator above the plains. The clouds in which we hear the
rattling of the hailstones against one another before they
fall, and which move horizontally, have always appeared to
me of b'ttle elevation ; and at these small heights we may
conceive that extraordinary refrigerations are caused by the
dilatation of the ascending air, of which the capacity for
caloric augments; by currents of cold air coming from a
higher latitude, and above all, according to M. Gay Lussac,
by the radiation from the upper surface of the clouds. I
shall have occasion to return to this subject when speaking
of the different forms under which hail and hoar-frost appear
on the Andes, at two thousand and two thousand six nun-

218 PEAK OF COCUTZA.

dred toisea of height; and when examining the queRtion
whether we may consider the stratum of clouds that enve-
lops the mountains as a horizontal continuation of the
stratum which we see immediately above us in the plains.

The Orinoco, full of islands, begins to divide itself into
several branches, of which the most western remain dry
during the months of January and February. The total
breadth of the river exceeds two thousand five hundred or
three thousand toises. "We perceived to the East, opposite
the island of Javanavo, the mouth of the Cafio Aujacoa.
Between this Cano and the Eio Paruasi or Paruati, the
country becomes more and more woody. A solitary rock,
of extremely picturesque aspect, rises in the midst of a
forest of palm-trees, not far from the Orinoco. It is a
pillar of granite, a prismatic mass, the bare and steep sides
of which attain nearly two hundred feet in height. Its
point, which overtops the highest trees of the forest, is
terminated by a shelf of rock with a horizontal and smooth
surface. Other trees crown this summit, which the mis-
sionaries call the peak, or Mogote de Cocwyza. This monu-
ment of nature, in its simple grandeur recalls to mind the
Cyclopean remains of antiquity. Its strongly-marked out-
lines, and the group of trees and shrubs by which it is
crowned, stand out from the azure of the sky. It seems a
forest rising above a forest.

Further on, near the mouth of the Paruasi, the Orinoco
narrows. On the east is perceived a mountain with a bare
top, projecting like a promontory. It is nearly three hun-
dred feet high, and served as a fortress for the Jesuits.
They had constructed there a small fort, with three batteries
of cannon, and it was constantly occupied by a military
detachment. We saw the cannon dismounted, and half-
buried in the sand, at Carichana and at Atures. This fort of
the Jesuits has been destroyed since the dissolution of their
society ; but the place is still called El Castillo. I find it
set down, in a manuscript map, lately completed at Caracas
by a member of the secular clergy, under the denomination
of "Trinchera del despotismo monacal."*

The garrison which the Jesuits maintained on this rock,
was not intended merely to protect the Missions' against
* Intrenchment of monachal despotism.

HELIGIOU8 WARS. 219

the incursions of the Caribs : it was employed also m an
offensive war, or, as they say here, in the conquest of souls
(conquista de almas). The soldiers, excited by the allure-
ment of gain, made military incursions (entradas) into the
lands of the independent Indians. They killed all those
who dared to make any resistance, burnt their huts, de-
stroyed their plantations, and carried away the women,
children, and old men, as prisoners. These prisoners were
divided among the Missions of the Meta, the Bio Negro,
and the Upper Orinoco. The most distant places were
chosen, that they might not be tempted to return to their
native country. This violent manner of conquering souls,
though prohibited by the Spanish laws, was tolerated by the
civil governors, and vaunted by the superiors of the society,
as beneficial to religion, and the aggrandizement of the
Missions. "The voice of the Gospel is heard only," said
a Jesuit of the Orinoco, very candidly, in the ' Cartas
Edifiantes,' " where the Indians have heard also the sound
of fire-arms (el eco de la polvora). Mildness is a very slow
measure. By chastising the natives, we facilitate their con-
version." These principles, which degrade humanity, were
certainly not common to all the members of a society which,
in the New World, and wherever education has remained
exclusively in the hands of monks, has rendered service to
letters and civilization. But the entradas, the spiritual con
quests with the assistance of bayonets, was an inherent vice
in a system, that tended to the rapid aggrandizement of the
Missions. It is pleasing to find that the same system is not
followed by the Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian
monks who now govern a vast portion of South America ; and
who, by the mildness or harshness of their manners, exert a
powerful influence over the fate of so many thousands of
natives. Military incursions are almost entirely abolished ;
and when they do take place, they are disavowed by the
superiors of the orders. We will not decide at present,
whether this amelioration of the monachal system be owing
to want of activity and cold indolence ; or whether it must be
attributed, as we would wish to believe, to the progress of
knowledge, and to feelings more elevated, and more conform-
able to the true spirit of Christianity.

Beyond the mouth of the Rio Paruasi, the Orinoco agaia

220 MISSION OF CARICHANA.

narrows. Pull of little islands and masses of granite rock,
it presents rapids, or small cascades (remolinos), which at
first sight may alarm the traveller by the continual eddies
of the water, but which at no season of the year are dan-
gerous for boats. A range of shoals, that crosses almost
the whole river, bears the name of the Randal de Marimara.
We passed it without difficulty by a narrow channel, in
which the water seems to boil up as it issues out impetu-
ously* below the Piedra de Marimara., a compact mass of
granite eighty feet high, and three hundred feet in cir-
cumference, without fissures, or any trace of stratification.
The river penetrates far into the land, and forms spacious
bays in the rocks. One of these bays, inclosed between
two promontories destitute of vegetation, is called the Port
of Carichana.f The spot has a very wild aspect. In the
evening the rocky coasts project their vast shadows over
the surface of the river. The waters appear black from
reflecting the image of these granitic masses, which, in the
colour of their external surface, sometimes resemble coal,
and sometimes lead-ore. We passed the night in the small
village of Carichana, where we were received at the priest's
house, or convento. It was nearly a fortnight since we had
slept under a roof.

To avoid the effects of the inundations, often so fatal to
health, the Mission of Carichana has been established at
three quarters of a league from the river. The Indians in
this Mission are of the nation of the Salives, and they have
a disagreeable and nasal pronunciation. Their language, of
which the Jesuit Anisson has composed a grammar still in
manuscript, is, with the Caribbean, the Tamanac, the May-
pure, the Ottomac, the Guahive, and the Jaruro, one of the
mother-tongues most general on the Orinoco. Father Gili
thinks that the Ature, the Piraoa, and the Quaqua or
Mapoye, are only dialects of the Salive. My journey was
much too rapid to enable me to judge of the accuracy of
this opinion ; but we shall soon see that, in the village of
Ature, celebrated on account of its situation near the great
cataracts, neither the Salive nor the Ature is now spoken,
but the language of the Maypures. In the Salive of Cari-

* These places are called chorreras in the Spanish colonies.
f Piedra y puerto de Carichana.

MUSICAL TASTE OF THE INDIANS. 221

chana, man is called cocco ; woman, gnacu; water, cagua;
fire, eyussa ; the earth, seke ; the sky, mwneseke (earth on
high) ; the jaguar, impii ; the crocodile, cuipoo ; maize,
giomu ; the plaintain, paratuna ; cassava, peibe. I may here
mention one of those descriptive compounds that seem to
characterise the infancy of language, though they are re-
tained in some very perfect idioms.* Thus, as iu the Bis-
cayan, thunder is called 'the noise of the cloud (pdotsa)'
the sun bears the name, in the Salive dialect, of mume-selce-
cocco, 'the man (cocco) of the earth (seke) above (mume).'

The most ancient abode of the Salive nation appears to
have been on the western banks of the Orinoco, between
the Rio Vichadaf and the Gruaviare, and also between the
Meta and the Rio Paute. Salives are now found not only
at Carichana, but in the Missions of the province of Casanre,
at Cabapuna, Guanapalo, Cabiuna, and Macuco. They are
a social, mild, almost timid people ; and more easy, I will
not say to civilize, but to subdue, than the other tribes on
the Orinoco. To escape from the dominion of the Caribs,
the Salives willingly joined the first Missions of the Jesuits.
Accordingly these fathers everywhere in their writings
praise the docility and intelligence of that people. The
Salives have a great taste for music : in the most remote
times they had trumpets of baked earth, four or five feet
long, with several large globular cavities communicating
with one another by narrow pipes. These trumpets send
forth most dismal sounds. The Jesuits have cultivated with
success the natural taste of the Salives for instrumental
music ; and even since the destruction of the society, the
missionaries of Rio Meta have continued at San Miguel de
Macuco a fine church choir, and musical instruction for the
Indian youth. Very lately a traveller was surprised to see
the natives playing on the violin, the violoncello, the tri-
angle, the guitar, and the flute.

We found among these Salive Indians, at Carichana, a
white woman, the sister of a Jesuit of New Grenada. It ia
difficult to define the satisfaction that is felt when, in the
midst of nations of whose language we are ignorant, we
meet with a being with whom we can converse without an

* See vol. i, p. 326.
f The Salive mission, on the Rio Vichada, was destroyed by the Caribt.

222 DIFFICULTY OF CONTEESATIOF.

interpreter. Every mission has at least two interpreters
(lenguarazes). They are Indians, a little less stupid than the
rest, through whose medium the missionaries of the Orinoco,
who now very rarely give themselves the trouble of studying
the idioms of the country, communicate with the neophytes.
These interpreters attended us in all our herborizations ;
but they rather understand than speak Castilian. With
their indolent indifference, they answer us by chance, but
always with an officious smile, "Yes, Father; no, Father,"
to every question addressed to them.

The vexation that arises from such a style of conversation
continued for months may easily be conceived, when you
wish to be enlightened upon objects in which you take the
most lively interest. We were often forced to employ several
interpreters at a time, and several successive translators, in
order to communicate with the natives.*

" After leaving my Mission," said the good monk of
Uruana, " you will travel like mutes." This prediction was
nearly accomplished; and, not to lose the advantage we
might derive from intercourse even with the rudest Indians,
we sometimes preferred the language of signs. When a
a native perceives that you will not employ an interpreter ;
when you interrogate him directly, showing him the objects ;
he rouses himself from his habitual apathy, and manifests an
extraordinary capacity to make himself comprehended. He
varies his signs, pronounces his words slowly, and repeats
them without being desired. The consequence conferred
upon him, in suffering yourself to be instructed by him,
natters his self-love. This facility in making himself com-
prehended is particularly remarkable in the independent
Indian. It cannot be doubted that direct intercourse with
the natives is more instructive and more certain than the
communication by interpreters, provided the questions be

* To form a just idea of the perplexity of these communications by
interpreters, we may recollect that, in the expedition of Lewis and
Clarke to the river Columbia, in order to converse with the Chopunnish
Indians, Captain Lewis addressed one of his men in English ; that man
translated the question into French to Chaboneau ; Chaboneau translated
it to his Indian wife in Minnetaree ; the woman translated it into
Shoshonee to a prisoner ; and the prisoner translated it into Chopunnish.
It may be feared that the sense of the question was a little altered bj
these successive translations.

DIYEBSITY OF DIALECTS. 223

simplified, and repeated to several individuals under dif-
ferent forms. The variety of idioms spoken on the banks of
the Meta, the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro,
is so prodigious, that a traveller, however great may be his
talent for languages, can never hope to learn enough to
make himself understood along the navigable rivers, from
Angostura to the small fort of San Carlos del Rio Negro.
In Peru and Quito it is sufficient to know the Quichua, or
the Inca language ; in Chile, the Araucan; and in Paraguay,
the Guarany; in order to be understood by most of the
population. But it is different in the Missions of Spanish
Guiana, where nations of various races are mingled in the
same village. It is not even sufficient to have learned the
Caribee or Carina, the Guamo, the Guahive, the Jaruro,
the Ottomac, the Maypure, the Salive, the Marivitan, the
Maquiritare, and the Guaica, ten dialects, of which there
exist only imperfect grammars, and which have less affinity
with each, other than the Greek, German, and Persian
languages.

The environs of the Mission of Carichana appeared to us
to be delightful. The little village is situated in one of
those plains covered with grass that separate all the links
of the granitic mountains, from Encaramada to beyond
the Cataracts of Maypures. The line of the forests is seen
only in the distance. The horizon is everywhere bounded
by mountains, partly wooded and of a dark tint, partly bare,
with rocky summits gilded by the beams of the setting sun.
What gives a peculiar character to the scenery of this coun-
try are banks of rock (laxas) nearly destitute of vege-
tation, and often more than eight hundred feet in circum-
ference, yet scarcely rising a few inches above the suroundiug
savannahs. They now make a part of the plain. We ask
ourselves with surprise, whether some extraordinary revolu-
tions may have carried away the earth and plants ; or whether
the granite nucleus of our planet shows itself bare, because
the germs of life are not yet developed on all its points.
The same phenomenon seems to be found also in the desert
of Shamo, which separates Mongolia from China. Those
banks of solitary rock in the desert are called tsy. I think
they would be real table-lands, if the surrounding plains
were stripped of the sand and mould that cover them, and
which the waters have accumulated in the lowest places.

224 CURIOUS J'LANTS.

On these stony flats of Carichana we observed with inte-
rest the rising vegetation in the different degrees of its
development. We there found lichens cleaving the rock,
and collected in crusts more or less thick ; little portions of
sand nourishing succulent plants ; and lastly layers of black
mould deposited in the hollows, formed from the decay of
roots and leaves, and shaded by tufts of evergreen shrubs.

At the distance of two or three leagues from the Mission,
we find, in these plains intersected by granitic hills, a vege-
tation no less rich than varied. On comparing the site of
Carichana with that of all the villages above the Great Ca-
taracts, we are surprised at the facility with which we tra-
verse the country, without following the banks of the rivers,
or being stopped by the thickness of the forests. M. Bon-
pland made several excursions on horseback, which fur-
nished him with a rich harvest of plants. I shall mention
only the paraguatan, a magnificent species of the macroc-
nemum, the bark of which yields a red dye ;* the guaricamo,
with a poisonous root ;f the Jacaranda obtusifolia ; and the
serrape, or jape$ of the Salive Indians, which is the Couma-
rouna of Aublet, so celebrated throughout Terra Firm a for
its aromatic fruit. This fruit, which at Caracas is placed
among linen, as in Europe it is in snuff, under the name of
tonca, or Tonquin beau, is regarded as poisonous. It is a
false notion, very gei.eral in the province of Cumana, that
the excellent liqueur fabricated at Martinique owes its pecu-
liar flavour to the jape. In the Missions it is called sima-
ruba ; a name that may occasion serious mistakes, the true
simaruba being a febrifuge species of the Quassia genus,
found in Spanish Guiana only in the valley of Rio Caura,
where the Paudacot Indians give it the name of acheccJiari.

I found the dip of the magnetic needle, in the great square
at Carichana, 33'7° (new division). The intensity of the
magnetic action was expressed by two hundred and twenty-
seven oscillations in ten minutes of time ; an increase of
force that would seem to indicate some local attraction.
Yet the blocks of the granite, blackened by the waters of the
Orinoco, have no perceptible action upon the needle.

The river had risen several inches during the day on the

* Macrocnemum tinctorium. "\" Ityania coccidea.

t Dipterix odorata, Willd. or Baryosma tongo of Gaertner. The jap(
frnishes Carichana with excellent timber.

4NCIENT WATEB-LEYEL. 225

10th of April ; this phenomenon surprised the natives so much
the more, as the first swellings are almost imperceptible,
and are usually followed in the month of April by a fall for
some days. The Orinoco was already three feet higher than
the level of the lowest waters. The natives showed us on a
granite wall the traces of the great rise of the waters of late
years. We found them to be forty-two feet high, which is
double the mean rise of the Nile. But this measure was
taken in a place where the bed of the Orinoco is singularly
hemmed in by rocks, and I could only notice the marks
shown me by the natives. It may easily be conceived that
the effect and the height of the increase differs according to
the profile of the river, the nature of the banks more or less
elevated, the number of rivers flowing in that collect the
pluvial waters, and the length of ground passed over. It is
an unquestionable fact that at Carichana, at San Borja, at
Atures, and at Maypures, wherever the river has forced its
way through the mountains, you see at a hundred* some-
times at a hundred and thirty feet, above the highest
present swell of the river, black bands and erosions, that
indicate the ancient levels of the waters. Is then this river,
which appears to us so grand and so majestic, only the
feeble remains of those immense currents of fresh water
which heretofore traversed the country at the east of the
Andes, like arms of inland seas ? What must have been
the state of those low countries of Guiana that now undergo
the effects of annual inundations ? What immense numbers
of crocodiles, manatis, and boas must have inhabited these
vast spaces of land, converted alternately into marshes of
stagnant water, and into barren and fissured plains ! The
more peaceful world which we inhabit has then succeeded
to a world of tumult. The bones of mastodons and
American elephants are found dispersed on the table-lands
<>t' the Andes. The megatherium inhabited the plains of
Uruguay. On digging deep into the ground, in high
valleys, where neither palm-trees nor arborescent ferns can
grow, strata of coal are discovered, that still show vestiges
of gigantic monocotyledonous plants.

There was a remote period then, in which the classes of
plants were otherwise distributed, when the animals were
larger, and the rivers broader aud of .greater depth. There

TOL. II. <

226 MYSTERIOUS SOUND?

end th )se records of nature, that it is in our power to con-
sult. "We are ignorant whether the human race, which at
the time of the discovery of America scarcely formed a few
feeble tribes on the east of the Cordilleras, had already
descended into the plains ; or whether the ancient tradition
of the ' great waters,' which is found among the nations of
the Orinoco, the Erevato, and the Caura, belong to other
climates, whence it has been propagated to this part of the
New Continent.

On the llth of April, we left Carichana at two in the
afternoon, and found the course of the river more and more
encumbered by blocks of granite rocks. "We passed on the
west the Cano Orupe, and then the great rock known by
the name of Piedra del Tigre. The river is there so deep,
that no bottom can 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 we lay, afforded but
little shelter. Happily these showers drove away the mos-
quitos, at least for some time. "We found ourselves before
the cataract of Cariven, and the impulse of the waters was
so strong, that we had great difficulty in gaining the land.
"We were continually driven back to the middle of the cur-
rent. At length two Salive Indians, excellent swimmers,
leaped into the water, and having drawn the boat to shore
by means of a rope, made it fast to the Piedra de Carichana
Vieja, a shelf of bare rock, on which we passed the night.
The thunder continued to roll during a part of the night ;
the swell of the river became considerable ; and we were
several times afraid that our frail bark would be driven from
the shore by the impetuosity of the waves.

The granitic rock on which we lay is one of those, where
travellers on the Orinoco have heard from time to time,
towards sunrise, subterraneous sounds, resembling those
of the organ. The missionaries call these stones laxas de
musica. ' It is witchcraft (cosa de bruxas),' said our young
Indian pilot, who could speak Spanish. "We never our-
selves heard these mysterious sounds, either at Carichana
Vieia, or in the Upper Orinoco ; but from information given
us by witnesses worthy of belief, the existence of a pheno-

THE STATUE OF MEMNOff. 227

menor that seems to depend on a certain state of the
atmosphere, cannot be denied. The shelves of rock are full
of very narrow and deep crevices. They are heated during
the day to 48° or 50°. I several times found their tempe-
rature at the surface, during the night, at 39°, the surround-
ing atmosphere being at 28°. It may easily be conceived,
that the difference of temperature between the subterranean
and the external air attains its maximum about sunrise, or
at that moment which is at the same time farthest from
the period of the maximum of the heat of the preced-
ing day. May not these organ-like sounds, which are
heard when a person lays his ear in contact with the
stone, be the effect of a current of air that issues out
through the crevices ? Does not the impulse of the air
against the elastic spangles of mica that intercept the
crevices, contribute to modify the sounds? May we not
abmit that the ancient inhabitants of Egypt, in passing
incessantly up and down the Nile, had made the same
observation on some rock of the Thebaid ; and that the
' music of the rocks' there led to the jugglery of the priests
in the statue of Memnon ? Perhaps, when ' the rosy-
fingered Aurora rendered her son, the glorious Memnon,
vocal,'* the voice was that of a man hidden beneath the
pedestal of the statue ; but the observation of the natives
of the Orinoco, which we relate, seems to explain in a
natural manner what gave rise to the Egyptian belief of a
stone that poured forth rounds at sunrise.

Almost at the same period at which I communicated these
conjectures to some of the learned of Europe, three French
travellers, MM. Jomard, Jollois, and Devilliers, were led
to analogous ideas. They heard, at sunrise, in a monument
of granite, at the centre of the spot on which stands the
palace of Karnak, a noise resembling that of a string break-
ing. Now this comparison is precisely that which the
ancients employed in speaking of the voice of Memnon.
The French travellers thought, like me, that the passage of

* These are the words of an inscription, which attests that sounds
were heard on the 13th of the month Pachon, in the tenth year of the
reign of Antoninus. See Mooumenta de 1'Egypte Ancienne.

228 BATJDAL DE CARIYEff.

rarefied air through the fissures of a sonorous stone might
have suggested to the Egyptian priests the invention of the
juggleries of the Memnonium.

We left the rock at four in the morning. The mission-
ary had told us that we should have great difficulty in
passing the rapids and the mouth of the Meta. The Indians
rowed twelve hours and a half without intermission, and
during all that time, they took no other nourishment than
cassava and plantains. When we consider the difficulty of
overcoming the force of the current, and of passing the
cataracts ; when we reflect on the constant employment of
the muscular powers during a navigation of two months ;
we are equally surprised at the constitutional vigour and
the abstinence of the Indians of the Orinoco and the
Amazon. Amylaceous and saccharine substances, some-
times fish and the fat of turtles' eggs, supply the place of
food drawn from the first two classes of the animal king-
dom, those of quadrupeds and birds.

We found the bed of the river, to the length of six hun-
dred toises, full of granite rocks. Here is what is called the
Maudal de Cariven. We passed through channels that were
not five feet broad. Our canoe was sometimes jammed
between two blocks of granite. We sought to avoid these

Passages, into which the waters rushed with a fearful noise ;
ut there is really little danger, in a canoe steered by a good
Indian pilot. When the current is too violent to be resisted
the rowers leap into the water, and fasten a rope to the
point of a rock, to warp the boat along. This manoeuvre is
very tedious ; and we sometimes availed ourselves of it, to
climb the rocks among which we were entangled. They are
of all dimensions, rounded, very black, glossy like lead, and
destitute of vegetation. It is an extraordinary phenomenon
to see the waters of one of the largest rivers on the globe in
some sort disappear. We 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 are more than twenty-five fathoms deep ; anc
are the more difficult to be observed, as the rocks are oftei .
narrow toward their bases, and form vaults suspended ove •
tl 3 surface of the river. We perceived no crocodiles in ths
raudal; these animals seem to shun the noise of cataracts.

THE RIO METJL. 229

From Cabruta to the mouth of the Kio Sinaruco, a
distance of nearly two degrees of latitude, the left bank of
the Orinoco is entirely uninhabited; but to the west of
the Randal de Cariven an enterprising man, Don Felix
Relinchon, had assembled some Jaruro and Ottomac Indiana
in a small village. It is an attempt at civilization, on which
the monks have had no direct influence. It is superfluous
to add, that Don Felix lives at open war with the mis-
sionaries on the right bank of the Orinoco.

Proceeding up the river we arrived, at nine in the morning,
before the mouth of the Meta, opposite the spot where the
Mission of Santa Teresa, founded by the Jesuits, was here-
tofore situated.

Next to the Guaviare, the Meta is the most considerable
river that flows into the Orinoco. It may be compared to
the Danube, not for the length of its course, but for the
volume of its waters. Its mean depth is thirty-six feet,
and it sometimes reaches eighty-four. The union of these
two rivers presents a very impressive spectacle. Lonely
rocks rise on the eastern bank. Blocks of granite, piled
upon one another, appear from afar like castles in ruins,
vast sandy shores keep the skirting of the forest at a distance
from the river ; but we discover amid them, in the horizon,
solitary palm-trees, backed by the sky, and crowning the
tops of the mountains. "We passed two hours on a large
rock, standing in the middle of the Orinoco, and called the
Piedra de la Pacien^ia, or the Stone of Patience, because
the canoes, in going up, are sometimes detained there two
days, to extricate themselves from the whirlpool caused by
this rock.

The Kio Meta, which traverses the vast plains of Casa-
nare, and which is navigable as far as the foot of the Andes
of New Grenada, will one day be of great political import-
ance to the inhabitants of Guiana and Venezuela. From
the Golfo Triste and the Boca del Drago a small fleet
may go up the Orinoco and the Meta to within fifteen or
twenty leagues of Santa Fe de Bogota. The flour of New
Grenada may be conveyed the same way. The Meta is like
a canal of communication between countries placed in tho
same latitude, but differing in their productions as much as
France and Senegal. The Meta has its source in the union

230 NAVIGATION OF THE EITEE.

of two rivers which descend from the paramos of Chingasa
and Suma Paz. The first is the Bio Negro, which, lower
down, receives the Pachaquiaro ; the second is the Bio de
Aguas Blancas, or Umadea. The junction takes place near
the port of Marayal. It is only eight or ten leagues
from the Passo de la Cabulla, where you quit the Eio
Negro, to the capital of Santa Fe. Prom the villages
of Xiramena and Cabullaro to those of Guanapalo and
Santa Rosalia de Cabapuna, a distance of sixty leagues, the
banks of the Meta are more inhabited than those of the
Orinoco. "We find in this space fourteen Christian settle-
ments, in part very populous ; but from the mouths of the
rivers Pauto and Casanare, for a space of more than fifty
leagues, the Meta is infested by the Guahibos, a race of
savages.*

The navigation of this river was much more active in the
time of the Jesuits, and particularly during the expedition
of Iturriaga, in 1756, than it is at present. Missionaries of
the same order then governed the banks of the Meta and of
the Orinoco. The villages of Macuco, Zurimena, and Casi-
mena, were founded by the Jesuits, as well as those of
Uruana, Encaramada, and Carichana.

These Fathers had conceived the project of forming a
series of Missions from the junction of the Casanare with
the Meta to that of the Meta with the Orinoco. A narrow
zone of cultivated land would have crossed the vast steppes
that separate the forests of Guiana from the Andes of jNew
Grenada.

At the period of the "harvest of turtles' eggs," not only
the flour of Santa Fe descended the river, but the salt of
Chita,f the cotton cloth of San Gil, and the printed coun-
terpanes of Socorro. To give some security to the little
traders who devoted themselves to this inland commerce,
attacks were made from time to time from the castillo or
fort of Carichana, on the Guahibos.

To keep these Guahibos in awe, the Capuchin mission-
aries, who succeeded the Jesuits in the government of the

* I find the word written Guajilos, Guahivos, and Guagivos. They
cull themselves Gua-iva.

t East of Labranza Grande, and the north-west of Pore, no*r the
capital of the province of Casanare.

BAFTS OF THE NATITKS. 231

Missions of the Orinoco, formed the project of founding a
city at the mouth of the Meta, under the name of the Villa
de San Carlos. Indolence, and the dread of tertian fevers,
have prevented the execution of this project ; and all that
has ever existed of the city of San Carlos,' is a coat of arms
painted on fine parchment, with an enormous cross erected
on the bank of the Meta. The Guahibos, who, it is said,
are some thousands in number, have become so insolent,
that, at the time of our passage by Carichana, they sent
word to the missionary that they would come on rafts, and
burn his village. These rafts (valzas), which we had an
opportunity of seeing, are scarcely three feet broad, and
twelve feet long. They carry only two or three Indians ;
but fifteen or sixteen of these rafts are fastened to each
other with the stems of the paullinia, the dolichos, and other
creeping plants. It is difficult to conceive how these small
craft remain tied together in passing the rapids. Many
fugitives from the villages of the Casanare and the Apure
have joined the Guahibos, and taught them the practice of
eating beef, and preparing hides. The farms of San Vicente,
Kubio, and San Antonio, have lost great numbers of their
horned cattle by the incursions of the Indians, who also
prevent travellers, as far as the junction of the Casanare,
from sleeping on the shore in going up the Meta. It often
happens, while the waters are low, that the traders of New
Grenada, some of whom still visit the encampment of Para-
ruma, are killed by the poisoned arrows of the Guahibos.

From the mouth of the Meta, the Orinoco appeared to us
to be freer of shoals and rocks. We navigated in a channel
five hundred toises broad. The Indians remained rowing m
the boat, without towing or pushing it forward with the^
arms, and wearying us with their wild cries. We passo^
the Can os of Uita and Endava on the west. It was night
when we reached the Randal de Tabaje. The Indians would
not hazard passing the cataract; and we 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. We heard the cries of the
jaguar very near us during the whole night. They were
answered by our great dog in lengthened bowlings. I
waited the appearance of the stars in vain: the sky waa

232 ASPECT OF THE ITTDTANS."

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 April we passed the
rapids of Tabaje, and again disembarked. Father Zea, who
accompanied us, desired to perform mass in the new Mission
of San Borja, established two years before. "We there found
six houses inhabited by uncatechised Gruahibos. They differ
in nothing from the wild Indians. Their eyes, which are
jarge and black, have more vivacity than those of the Indians
who inhabit the ancient missions. We in vain offered them
brandy ; 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
G-uahibos were not painted. Several of them had beards, of
which they seemed proud; and, taking us by the chin,
showed us by signs, that they were made like us. Their
shape was in general slender. I was again struck, as I had
been among the Salives and the Macos, with the little
uniformity of features to be found among the Indians of the
Orinoco. Their look is sad and gloomy ; but neither stern
nor ferocious. Without having any notion of the practices
of the Christian religion, they behaved with the utmost
decency at church. The Indians love to exhibit themselves ;
and will submit temporarily to any restraint or subjection,
provided they are sure of drawing attention. At the moment
of the consecration, they made signs to one another, to
indicate beforehand that the priest was going to raise the
chalice to his lips. With the exception of this gesture, they
remained motionless and in imperturbable apathy.

The interest with which we examined these poor savages
became perhaps the cause of the destruction of the mission.
Some among them, who preferred a wandering life to the
labours of agriculture, persuaded the rest to return to the
plains of the Meta. They told them, " that the white men
would come back to San Borja, to take them away in the
boats, and sell them as poitos, or slaves, at Angostura."
The Gruahibos awaited the news of our return from the Rio
Negro by the Cassiquiare; and when they heard that we
were arrived at the first great cataract, that of Atures, they
all deserted, and fled to the savannahs that border the

THEIR DISGCJSTING VORVCITT. 233

Orinoco on the vest. The Jesuit Fathers had already
formed a mission on this spot, and bearing the same name.
No tribe is more difficult to fix to the soil than the Gua-
hibos. They would rather feed on stale fish, scolopendras,
and worms, than cultivate a little spot of ground. The
other Indians say, that "a Guahibo eats everything that
exists, both on and under the ground."

In ascending the Orinoco more to the south, the heat, far
from increasing, became more bearable. The air in the day
was at 26° or 27'5° ; and at night, at 237°. The water of
the Orinoco retained its habitual temperature of 27*7°. The
torment of the mosquitos augmented severely, notwithstand-
ing the decrease of heat. We never suffered so much from
them as at San Borja. We could neither speak nor uncover
our faces without having our mouths and noses filled with
insects. We were surprised not to find the thermometer
at 35° or 36° ; the extreme irritation of the skin made ua
believe that the air was scorching. We passed the night on
the beach of Guaripo. The fear of the little caribe fish
prevented us from bathing. The crocodiles we had met
with this day were all of an extraordinary size, from twenty-
two to twenty-four feet.

Our sufferings from the zancudos made us depart at five
o'clock on the morning of the 14th. There are fewer insects
in the strata of air lying immediately on the river, than
near the edge of the forests. We stopped to breakfast
at the island of Guachaco, or Vachaco, where the granite is
immediately covered by a formation of sandstone, or con-
glomerate. This sandstone contains fragments of quartz,
and even of feldspar, cemented by indurated clay. It exhi-
bits little veins of brown iron-ore, which separate in laminae,
or plates, of one line in thickness. We had already found
these plates on the shores between Encaramada and Bara-
guan, where the missionaries had sometimes taken them for
an ore of gold, and sometimes for tin. It is probable, that
this secondary formation occupied formerly a larger space.
Having passed the mouth of the Rio Parueni, beyond which
the Maco Indians dwell, we spent the night on the island of
Panumana. I could with difficulty take the altitudes of
Can opus, in order to fix the longitude of the point, near
which the river suddenly turns towards the west. The

234 BAPLDS OF THE ATTJHES.

island of Panuinana is rich in plants. "We there again
found those shelves of bare rock, those tufts of melastomas,
those thickets of small shrubs, the blended scenery of which
had charmed us in the plains of Carichana. The mountains
of the Great Cataracts bounded the horizon towards the
south-east. In proportion as we advanced, the shores of
the Orinoco exhibited a more imposing and picturesque
aspect.

CHAPTER

The Mouth of the Rio Anaveni. — Peak of Uniana. — Mission of Atures.
— Cataract, or Raudal of Mapara. — Islets of Surupamana and
Uirapuri.

THE river of the Orinoco, in running from south to north,
is crossed by a chain of granitic mountains. Twice confined
in its course, it turbulently breaks on the rocks, that form
steps and transverse dykes. Nothing can be grander than
the aspect of this spot. Neither the fall of the Tequendama,
near Santa Fe de Bogota, nor the magnificent scenes of the
Cordilleras, could weaken the impression produced upon
my mind by the first view of the rapids of Atures and of
Maypures. When the spectator is so stationed that the
eye can at once take in the long succession of cataracts, the
immense sheet of foam and vapours illumined by the rays
of the setting sun, the whole river seeins as it were sus-
pended over its bed.

Scenes so astonishing must for ages have fixed the atten-
tion of the inhabitants of the New World. When Diego de
Todaz, Alfonzo de Herrera, and the intrepid Ealeigh, an-
chored at the mouth of the Orinoco, they were informed
by the Indians of the Great Cataracts, which they them-
selves had never visited, and which they even confounded
with cascades farther to the east. Whatever obstacles the
force of vegetation under the torrid zone may throw in the
way of intercourse among nations, all that relates to the
course of great rivers acquires a celebrity which extends to
vast distances. The Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Tin*
guay, traverse, like inland arms of seas, in different direr-*
tions, a land covered with forests, and inhabited by tribf 3

DISSEMINATION OF IDEAS. 235

part of whom are cannibals. It is not yet two hundred
years since civilization and the light of a more humane
religion have pursued their way along the banks of these
ancient canals traced by the hand of nature ; long, however,
before the introduction of agriculture, before communica-
tions for the purposes of barter were established among
these scattered and often hostile tribes, the knowledge of
extraordinary phenomena, of falls of water, of volcanic fires,
and of snows resisting all the ardent heat of summer, was
propagated by a thousand fortuitous circumstances. Three
hundred leagues from the coast, in the centre of South
America, among nations whose excursions do not extend to
three days' journey, we find an idea of the ocean, and words
that denote a mass of salt water extending as far as the eye
can discern. Various events, which repeatedly occur in
savage life, contribute to enlarge these conceptions. In
consequence of the petty wars between neighbouring tribes,
a prisoner is brought into a strange country, and treated as
a poito or mero, that is to say, as a slave. After being often
sold, he is dragged to new wars, escapes, and returns home ;
he relates what he has seen, and what he has heard from
those whose tongue he has been compelled to learn. As on
discovering a coast, we hear of great inland animals, so, on
entering the valley of a vast river, we are surprised to find
that savages, who are strangers to navigation, have acquired
a knowledge of distant things. In the infant state of
society, the exchange of ideas precedes, to a certain point,
the exchange of productions.

The two great cataracts of the Orinoco, the celebrity of
which is so far-spread and so ancient, are formed by the
passage of the river across the mountains of Parima. They
are called by the natives Mapara and Quittuna; but the
missionaries have substituted for these names those of
Atures and Maypures, after the names of the tribes which
were first assembled together in the nearest villages. On
the coast of Caracas, the two Great Cataracts are denoted
by the simple appellation of the two Raudales, or rapids ;
a denomination which implies that the other falls of water,
even the rapids of Camiseta and of Carichana, are not con-
sidered as worthy of attention when compared with the
cataracts of Atures and Maypures.

236 FABULOUS LEGENDS.

These last, situated between five and six degrees of north
latitude, and a hundred leagues west of the Cordilleras of
New Grenada, in the meridian of Porto Cabello, are only
twelve leagues distant from each other. It is surprising
lhat their existence was not known to D'Anville, who, in
his fine map of South America, marks the inconsiderable
cascades of Marimara and San Borja, by the names of the
rapids of Carichana and Tabaje. The Great Cataracts divide
the Christian establishments of Spanish Guiana into two
unequal parts. Those situated between the Randal of
Atures and the mouth of the river are called the Missions
of the Lower Orinoco ; the Missions of the Upper Orinoco
comprehend the villages between the Randal oi Maypures
and the mountains of Duida. The course of the Lower
Orinoco, if we estimate "the sinuosities at one-third of the
distance in a direct line, is two hundred and sixty nautical
leagues: the course of the Upper Orinoco, supposing ita
sources to be three degrees east of Duida, includes one hun-
dred and sixty-seven leagues.

Beyond the Great Cataracts an unknown land begins.
The country is partly mountainous and partly flat, receiving
at once the confluents of the Amazon and the Orinoco.
From the facility of its communications with the Bio Negro
and Grand Para, it appears to belong still more to Brazil
than to the Spanish colonies. None of the missionaries
who have described the Orinoco before me, neither Father
Gumilla, Gili, nor Caulin, had passed the Raudal of May-
pures. We found but three Christian establishments above
the Great Cataracts, along the shores of the Orinoco, in an
extent of more than a hundred leagues; and these three
establishments contained scarcely six or eight white persons,
that is to say, persons of European race. We cannot be
surprised that such a desert region should have been at
all times the land of fable and fairy visions. There, accord-
ing to the statements of certain missionaries, are found
races of men, some of whom have an eye in the centre of
the forehead, whilst others have dogs' heads, and mouths
below their stomachs. There they pretend to have found
all that the ancients relate of the Garamantes, of the Ari-
maspes, and of the Hyperboreans. It would be an error
to suppose that these simple and often rustic missioDariea

ISLAND OF PANUMANA. 237

had themselves invented all these exaggerated fictions ; the}'
derived them in great part from the recitals of the Indians.
A fondness for narration prevails in the Missions, as it does
at sea, in the East, and in every place where the mind
seeks amusement. A missionary, from his vocation, is not
inclined to scepticism; he imprints on his memory what
the natives have so often repeated to him ; and, when
returned to Europe, and restored to the civilized world, he
finds a pleasure in creating astonishment by a recital of
facts which he thinks he has collected, and by an animated
description of remote things. These stories, which the
Spanish colonists call 'tales of travellers and of monks'
(cuentos de viageros y frailes), increase in improbability in
proportion as you increase your distance from the forests
of the Orinoco, and approach the coasts inhabited by the
whites. "When, at Cumana, JSTueva Barcelona, and other
seaports which have frequent communication with the Mis-
sions, you betray any sign of incredulity, you are reduced
to silence by these few words : " The fathers have seen it,
but far above the Great Cataracts (mas arriba de los Kau»
dales)."

On the 15th of April, we left the island of Panumana at
four in the morning, two hours before sunrise. The sky
was in great part obscured, and lightnings flashed over dense
clouds at more than forty degrees of elevation. "We were
surprised at not hearing thunder; but possibly this was
owing to the prodigious height of the storm ? It appears
to us, that in Europe the electric flashes without thunder,
vaguely called heat-lightning, are seen generally nearer the
horizon. Under a cloudy sky, that sent back the radiant
caloric of the soil, the heat was stifling; not a breath oi
wind agitated the foliage of the trees. The jaguars, as
usual, had crossed the arm of the Orinoco by which we were
separated from the shore, and we heard their cries extremely
near. During the night the Indians had advised us to quit
our station in the open air, and retire to a deserted hut
belonging to the conucos of the inhabitants of Atures. They
had taken care to barricade the opening with planks, a
precaution which seemed to us superfluous; but near the
Cataracts tigers are very numerous, and two years before,
in these very conucos of Panuinaua, an Indian returning to

238 SAN JUAN DE LOS ATURES.

his hut, towards the close of the rainy season, found a tigress
settled in it with her two young. These animals had inha-
bited the dwelling for several months ; they wrere dislodged
from it with difficulty, and it was only after an obstinate
combat that the former master regained possession of his
dwelling. The jaguars are fond of retiring to deserted
ruins, and I believe it is more prudent in general for a
solitary traveller to encamp in the open air, between two
fires, than to seek shelter in uninhabited huts.

On quitting the island of Panumana, we perceived on
the western bank of the river the fires of an encampment of
G-uahibo savages. The missionary who accompanied us
caused a few musket-shots to be fired in the air, which he
said would intimidate them, and shew that we were in a
state to defend ourselves. The savages most likely had no
canoes, and were not desirous of troubling us in the middle
of the river. We passed at sunrise the mouth of the Rio
Anaveni, which descends from the eastern mountains. On
its banks, now deserted, Father Olmos had established, in
the time of the Jesuits, a small village of Japuins or Jaru-
ros. The heat was so excessive that we rested a long time
in a woody spot, to fish with a hook and line, and it was not
without some trouble that we carried away all the fish we
had caught. We did not arrive till very late at the foot of
the Great Cataract, in a bay called the lower harbour (puerto
de abaxo) ; and we followed, not without difficulty, in a dark
night, the narrow path that leads to the Mission of Atures,
a league distant from the river. "We crossed a plain covered
with large blocks of granite.

The little village of San Juan Nepomuceno de los Atures
was founded by the Jesuit Francisco Gronzales, in 1748. In
going up the river this is the last of the Christian mis-
sions that owe their origin to the order of St. Ignatius.
The more southern establishments, those of Atabapo, of
Cassiquiare, and of Bio Negro, were formed by the fathers
of the Observance of St. Francis. The Orinoco appears to
have flowed heretofore where the village of Atures now
stands, and the flat savannah that surrounds the village no
doubt formed part of the river. I saw to the east of the
mission a succession of rocks, which seemed to have been
the ancient shor? of the Orinoco. In the lapse of ages the

STATE OF T1IE MISSION. 239

river has been impelled westward, in consequence of the
accumulations of earth, which occur more frequently on the
side of the eastern mountains, that are furrowed by torrents.
The cataract bears the name of Mapara,* as we have men-
tioned above ; while the name of the village is derived from
that of the nation of Atures, now believed to be extinct.
I find on the maps of the seventeenth century, Island and
Cataract of Athule ; which is the word Atures written ac-
cording to the pronunciation of the Tamanacs, who con-
found, like so many other people, the consonants I and r.
This mountainous region was so little known in Europe,
even in the middle of the eighteenth century, that D' Anvilie,
in the first edition of his South America, makes a branch
issue from the Orinoco, near Salto de los Atures, and fall
into the Amazon, to which branch he gives the name of
Rio Negro.

Early maps, as well as Father Gumilla's work, place
the Mission in latitude 1° 30'. Abbe Grili gives it 3* 50'.
I found, by meridian altitudes of Canopus and a of the'
Southern Cross, 5° 38' 4" for the latitude ; and by the chro-
nometer 4h 41' 17" of longitude west of the meridian of
Paris.

"We found this small Mission in the most deplorable state.
It contained, even at the time of the expedition of Solano,
commonly called the 'expedition of the boundaries,' three
hundred and twenty Indians. This number had diminished,
at the time of our passage by the Cataracts, to forty-seven ;
and the missionary assured us that this diminution became
from year to year more sensible. He showed us, that in the

* I am ignorant of the etymology of this wor d, which I believe means
only a fall of water. Gili translates into Maypure a small cascade
(raudalilo) by uccamatisi mapara canacapatirri. Should we not
spell this word matpara ? mat being a radical of the Maypure tongue,
and meaning bad (Hervas, Saygio, N. 29). The radical par (para) is
found among American tribes more than five hundred leagues distant
from each other, the Caribs, Maypures, Brazilians, and Peruvians, in the
words sea, rain, water, lake. We must not confound mapara with mapaja ;
this last word signifies, in Maypure and Tamanac, the papaw or melon-
tree, no doubt on account of the sweetness of its fruit, for mapa means
in the Maypur », as well as in the Peruvian and Omagua tongues, ' the honej
of bees.' The Tamanacs call a cascade, or raudal, in general uatapurutpe
the Maypures, uca.

210 ANALOGY OF LANGUAGES.

space of thirty-two months only one marriage had been
entered in the registers of the parish church. Two others
had been contracted by uncatechised natives, and celebrated
before the Indian Gobernador. At the first foundation of
the Mission, the Atures, Maypures, Meyepures, Abanis, and
Quirupas, had been assembled together. Instead of these
tribes we found only Guahibos, and a few families of the
nation of Macos. The Atures have almost entirely disap-
peared ; they are no longer known, except by the tombs in
the cavern of Ataruipe, which recall to mind the sepulchres
of the Gruanches at Teneriffe. We learned on the spot, that
the Atures, as well as the Quaquas, and the Macos or
Piaroas, belong to the great stock of the Salive nations ;
while the Maypures, the Abanis, the Parenis, and the Guay-
punaves, are of the same race as the Cabres or Caveres,
celebrated for their long wars with the Caribs. In this
labyrinth of petty nations, divided from one another as the
nations of Latium, Asia Minor, and Sogdiana, formerly were,
we can trace no general relations but by following the
analogy of tongues. These are the only monuments that
have reached us from the early ages of the world ; the only
monuments, which, not being fixed to the soil, are at once
moveable and lasting, and have as it were traversed time
and space. They owe their duration, and the extent they
occupy, much less to conquering and polished nations, than
to those wandering and half-savage tribes, who, fleeing
before a powerful enemy, carried along with them in their
extreme wretchedness only their wives, their children, and
the languages of their fathers.

Between the latitudes of 4° and 8°, the Orinoco not only
separates the great forest of the Parime from the bare
savannahs of the Apure, Meta, and G-uaviare, but also forms
the boundary between tribes of very different manners.
To the westward, over treeless plains, wander the Gruahibos,
the Chiricoas, and the Gruamos; nations, proud of their
savage independence, whom it is difficult to fix to the soil,
or habituate to regular labour. The Spanish missionaries
characterise them well by the name of Indios andantes
(errant or vagabond Indians), because they are perpetually
moving from place to place. To the east of the Orinoco,
between the neighbouring sources of the Caura, Cataniapo,

OF IKDUTVg. 241

and Ventuari, live the Macos, the Salives, the Ciiracicanas,
Parecas, and Maquiritares, mild, tranquil tribes, addicted to
agriculture, and easily subjected to the discipline of the
Missions. The Indian of the plains differs from the Indian
of the forests in language as well as manners and mental
disposition ; both have an idiom abounding in spirited and
bold terms ; but the language of the former is harsher, more
concise, and more impassioned; that of the latter, softer,
more diffuse, and fuller of ambiguous expressions.

The Mission of Atures, like most of the Missions of the
Orinoco, situated between the mouths of the Apure and the
Atabapo, is composed of both the classes of tribes we have
just described. We there find the Indiana of the forests,
and the Indians heretofore nomadic* (Indios monteros ami
Indios llaneros, or andantes). We visited with the mis-
fiionary the huts of Macos, whom the Spaniards call Piraoas,
and those of the Guahibos. The first indicated more love
of order, cleanliness, and ease. The independent Macos (I
do not designate them by the name of savages) have their
rochelas, or fixed dwellings, two or three days' journey east
of Atures, toward the sources of the little river Cataniapo.
They are very numerous. Lijce most of the natives of the
woods, they cultivate, not maize, but cassava ; and they live
in great harmony with the Christian Indians of the mission,
The harmony was established and wisely cultivated by th*
Franciscan monk, Bernardo Zea. This alcalde of the re-
duced Macos quitted the village of Atures fbr a few months
every year, to live in the plantations which he possessed in
the midst of the forests near the hamlet of the independent
Macos. In consequence of this peaceful intercourse, many
of the Indios monteros came and established themselves some
time ago in the mission. They asked eagerly for knives,
fishing hooks, and those coloured glass-beads, which, not-
withstanding the positive prohibition of the priests, were
employed not as necklaces, but as ornaments of the guayuco
(perizoma). Having obtained what they sought, they re-

* I employ the word nomadic as synonymous with wandering, and not
in its primitive signification. The wandering nations of America (those of
ihe indigenous tribes, it is to be understood) are never shepherds ; th-;y
live by tibhing and hunting, on the fruit of a few treei, the farma.vom
pith of palm-trees, &c.

TOL. II. ft

242 PREVALENCE OF FEYERS.

turned to the woods, weary of the regulations of the mission.
Epidemic fevers, which prevailed with violence at the en-
trance of the rainy season, contributed greatly to this unex-
pected flight. In 1799 the mortality was very considerable
at Carichana, on the banks of the Meta, and at the Randal
of Atures. The Indian of the forest conceives a horror of
the life of the civilized man, when, I will not say any mis-
fortune befalls his family settled in the mission, but merely
any disagreeable or unforeseen accident. Natives, who were
neophytes, have been known to desert for ever the Christian
establishments, on account of a great drought; as if this
calamity would not have reached them equally in their plan-
tations, had they remained in their primitive independence.

The fevers which prevail during a great part of the year
in the villages of Atures and Maypures, around the two
Great Cataracts of the Orinoco, render these spots highly
dangerous to European travellers. They are caused by
violent heats, in combination with the excessive humidity of
the air, bad nutriment, and, if we may believe the natives,
the pestilent exhalations rising from the bare rocks of the
Eaudales. These fevers of the Orinoco appeared to us to
resemble those which prevail every year between New Bar-
celona, La Guayra, and Porto CabeUo, in the vicinity of the
sea ; and which often degenerate into adynamic fevers. " I
have had my little fever (mi calenturita) only eight months,"
said the good missionary of the Atures, who accompanied us
to the Bio Negro ; speaking of it as of an habitual evil, easy
to be borne. The fits were violent, but of short duration.
He was sometimes seized with them when lying along in
the boat under a shelter of branches of trees, sometimes
when exposed to the burning rays of the sun on an open
beach. These tertian agues are attended with great debility
of the muscular system ; yet we find poor ecclesiastics on
the Orinoco, who endure for several years these calentwritas,
or tercianas : their effects are not so fatal as those which are
experienced from fevers of much shorter duration in tem-
perate climates.

1 have just alluded to the noxious influence on the salu-
brity of the atmosphere, which is attributed by the natives,
and even the missionaries, to the bare rocks. This opinion
is the more worthy of attention, as it is connected with

BOCK-IXCRUSTATIOyS. 213

R physical phenomenon lately observed in differ 3iit parts
of the globe, and not yet sufficiently explained. Among
the cataracts, and wherever the Orinoco, between, the Mis-
sions of Carichana and of Santa Barbara, periodically washes
the granitic rocks, they become smooth, black, and as il
coated with plumbago. The colouring matter does not
penetrate the stone, which is coarse-grained granite, con-
taining a few solitary crystals of hornblende. Taking a
general view of the primitive formation of Atures, we per-
ceive, that, like the granite of Syene in Egypt, it is a granite
with hornblende, and not a real syenite formation. Many
of the layers are entirely destitute of hornblende. The black
crust is 0'3 of a line in thickness; it is found chiefly on the
quartzose parts. The crystals of feldspar sometimes pre-
serve externally their reddish-white colour, and rise above
the black crust. On breaking the stone with a hammer,
the inside is found to be white, and without any trace of de-
composition. These enormous stony masses appear some-
times in rhombs, sometimes under those hemispheric forms,
peculiar to granitic rocks when they separate in blocks.
They give the landscape a singularly gloomy aspect; their
colour being in strong contrast with that of the foam of the
river which covers them, and of the vegetation by which
they are surrounded. The Indians say, that the rocks are
'burnt' (or carbonized) 'by the rays of the sun.' We saw
them not only in the bed of the Orinoco, but in some spots
as far as five hundred toises from its present shore, on
heights which the waters now never reach even in their
greatest swellings.

What is this brownish black crust, which gives these
rocks, when they have a globular form, the appearance of
meteoric stones ? What idea can we form of the action of
the water, which produces a deposit, or a change of colour, so
extraordinary ? We must observe, in the first place, that
this phenomenon does not belong to the cataracts of the
Orinoco alone, but is found in both hemispheres. At my
return from Mexico in 1807, when I showed the granites of
Atures and Maypures to M. Koziere, who had travelled
over the valley ot Egypt, the coasts of the Bed Sea, and
Mount Sinai, this learned geologist pointed out to me tha*
the primitive rocka of the little cataracts )f Syene displq?

n 2

2 14 »OcK-I2f CKUSTATION8.

like the rocks of the Orinoco, a glossy surface, of a blackish*
\?rey, or almost leaden colour, and of which some of the
fragments seem coated with tar. Recently, in the un*
fortunate expedition of Captain Tuckey, the English natu-
ralists were struck with the same appearance in the yellalas
(rapids and shoals) that obstruct the river Congo or Zaire.
J)r. Koanig has placed in the British Museum, beside the
syenites of the Congo, the granites of Atures, taken from a
series of rocks which were presented by M. Bonpland and
myself to the illustrious president of the Royal Society of
London. "These fragments," says Mr. Koenig, "alike re-
semble meteoric stones ; in both rocks, those of the Orinoco
and of Africa, the black crust is composed, according to the
analysis of Mr. Children, of the oxide of iron and man-
ganese." Some experiments made at Mexico, conjointly with
Senor del Rio, led me to think that the rocks of Atures,
which blacken the paper in which they are wrapped,* contain,
besides oxide of manganese, carbon, and supercarburetted
iron. At the Orinoco, granitic masses of forty or fifty feet
thick are uniformly coated with these oxides ; and, howevei
thin these crusts may appear, they must nevertheless contain
pretty considerable quantities of iron and manganese, since
they occupy a space of above a league square.

It must be observed that all these phenomena of colora-
tion have hitherto appeared in the torrid zone only, in rivers
that have periodical overflowings, of which the habitual
temperature is from twenty-four to twenty-eight centesimal
degrees, and which flow, not over gritstone or calcareous
rocks, but over granite, gneiss, and hornblende rocks.
Quartz and feldspar scarcely contain five or six thousandths
of oxide of iron and of manganese ; but in mica and horn-
blende these oxides, and particularly that of iron, amount,
according to Klaproth and Herrmann, to fifteen or twenty
parts in a hundred. The hornblende contains also some
carbon, like the Lydian stone and kieselschiefer. Now, if
these black crusts were formed by a slow decomposition of

* I remarked the same phenomenon from spongy grains of platina one
or two lines in length, collected at the stream-works of Taddo, in the pro-
vince of Choco. Having been wrapped up in white paper during a journey
of several months, they left a black stain, like that of plumbago or super-
carburetted iron.

THEIR ORIGIN*. 5Mt">

the granitic rock, under the double influence of humidity
and the tropical sun, how is it to be conceived that these
oxides are spread so uniformly over the whole surface of
the stony masses, and are not more abundant round a
crystal of mica or hornblende than on the feldspar and
milky quartz? The ferruginous sandstones, granites, and
marbles, that become cinereous and sometimes brown in
damp air, have an aspect altogether different. In reflecting
upon the lustre and equal thickness of the crusts, we are
rather inclined to think that this matter is deposited by the
Orinoco, and that the water has penetrated even into the
clefts of the rocks. Adopting this hypothesis, it may be
asked whether the river holds the oxides suspended like
sand and other earthy substances, or whether they are
found in a state of chemical solution. The first supposition
is less admissible, on account of the homogeneity of the
crusts, which contain neither grains of sand, nor spangles
of mica, mixed with the oxides. We must then recur to
the idea of a chemical solution ; and this idea is no way at
variance with the phenomena daily observable in our labo-
ratories. The waters of great rivers contain carbonic acid ;
and, were they even entirely pure, they would still bo
capable, in very great volumes, of dissolving some portions
of oxide, or those metallic hydrates which are regarded as
the least soluble. The mud of the Nile, which is the
sediment of the matters which the river holds suspended,
is destitute of manganese ; but it contains, according to the
analysis of M. Eegnault, six parts in a hundred of oxide
of iron ; and its colour, at first black, changes to yellowish
brown by desiccation and the contact of air. The mud
consequently is not the cause of the black crusts on the
rocks of Syene. Berzelius, who, at my request, examined
these crusts, recognized in them, as in those of the gra-
nites of the Orinoco and Eiver Congo, the union of iron and
manganese. That celebrated chemist was of opinion that
the rivers do not take up these oxides from the soil over
which they flow, but that they derive them from their sub-
terranean sources, and deposit them on the rocks in the
Manner of cementation, by the action of particular aflini-
ties, perhaps by that of the potash of the feldspar. A long
residence at the cataracts of the Orinoco, the >ale, and the

246 POPITLAE PREJUDICE.

Rio Congo, and an examination of the circumstances atten-
dant on this phenomenon of coloration, could alone "lead to
the complete solution of the problem we have discussed.
Is this phenomenon independent of the nature of the rocks ?
I shall content myself with observing, in general, that
neither the granitic masses remote from the ancient bed of
the Orinoco, but exposed during the rainy season to the
alternations of heat and moisture, nor the granitic rocks
bathed by the brownish waters of the Eio Negro, assume
the appearance of meteoric stones. The Indians say, " that
the rocks are black only where the waters are white." They
ought, perhaps, to add, " where the waters acquire great swift-
ness, and strike with force against the rocks of the banks."
Cementation seems to explain why the crusts augment so
little in thickness.

I know not whether it be an error, but in the Missions
ef the Orinoco, the neighbourhood of bare rocks, and espe-
cially of the masses that have crusts of carbon, oxide of
iron, and manganese, are considered injurious to health.
In the torrid zone, still more than in others, the people
multiply pathogenic causes at will. They are afraid to
sleep in the open air, if forced to expose the face to the
rays of the full moon. They also think it dangerous to
sleep on granite near the river ; and many examples are
cited of persons, who, after having passed the night on
these black and naked rocks, have awakened in the morning
with a strong paroxysm of fever. Without entirely lending
faith to the assertions of the missionaries and natives, we
generally avoided the laxas negras, and stretched ourselves
on the beach covered with white sand, when we found no
tree from which to suspend our hammocks. At Carichana,
the village is intended to be destroyed, and its place changed,
merely to remove it from the ' black rocks,' or from a site
where, for a space of more than ten thousand square toises,
banks of bare granite form the surface. From similar
motives, which must appear very chimerical to the natu-
ralists of Europe, the Jesuits Olmo, Forneri, and Mellis,
removed a village of Jaruros to three different spots, be-
tween the Raudal of Tabaje and the Eio Anaveni. I merely
atate these facts as they were related to me, because we are
almost wholly ignorant of the nature of the gaseous mixtures

HEAT OF THE ROCKS. 247

which cause the insalubrity of the atmosphere. Can it be
admitted that, under the influence of excessive heat and of
constant humidity, the black crusts of the granitic rocks are
capable of acting upon the ambient air, and producing
miasmata with a triple basis of carbon, azote, and hydrogen ?
This I doubt. The granites of the Orinoco, it is true, often
contain hornblende; and those who are accustomed to
practical labour in mines are not ignorant that the most
noxious exhalations rise from galleries wrought in syenitic
and hornblende rocks : but in an atmosphere renewed every
instant by the action of little currents of air, the effect can-
not be the same as in a mine.

It is probably dangerous to sleep on the laxas negras,
only because these rocks retain a very elevated temperature
during the night. I have found their temperature in the
day at 48°, the air in the shade being at 29*7° ; during the
night the thermometer on the rock indicated 36°, the air
being at 26°. When the accumulation of heat in the stony
masses has reached a stationary degree, these masses be-
come at the same hours nearly of the same temperature.
What they have acquired more in the day they lose at night
by radiation, the force of which depends on the state of the
surface of the radiating body, the interior arrangement of
its particles, and, above all, on the clearness of the sky, that
is, on the transparency of the atmosphere and the absence
of clouds. When the declination of the sun varies very
little, this luminary adds daily nearly the same quantities
of heat, and the rocks are not hotter at the end than in
the middle of summer. There is a certain maximum which
they cannot pass, because they do not change the state of
their surface, their density, or their capacity for caloric.
On the shores of the Orinoco, on getting out of one's ham-
mock during the night, and touching with the bare feet the
rocky surface of the ground, the sensation of heat expe-
rienced is very remarkable. I observed pretty constantly,
in putting the bulb of the thermometer in contact with tlie
ledges of bare rocks, that the laxas negras are hotter during
the day than the reddish-white granites at a distance from
the river ; but the latter cori during the night less rapidly
than the former. It may be easily conceived that the
emission and loss of caloric is more rapid in masses with

248 THI^JCESS OF TUB POITLATION.

black crusts than in those which abound in lamina of silvery
mica. When walking between the hours of one and three
m the afternoon, at Carichana, Atures, or Maypures, among
those blocks of stone destitute of vegetable mould, and piled
up to great heights, one feels a sensation of suffocation, as
if standing before the opening of a furnace. The winds, if
ever felt m those woody regions, far from bringing coolness,
appear more heated when they have passed over beds of
stone, and heaps of rounded blocks of granite. This aug-
mentation of heat adds to the insalubrity of the climate.

Among the causes of the depopulation of the Eaudales,
I have not reckoned the small-pox, that malady which in
other parts of America makes such cruel ravages that the
natives, seized with dismay, burn their huts, kill their
children, and renounce every kind of society. This scourge
is almost unknown on the banks of the Orinoco, and should
it penetrate thither, it is to be hoped that its effects may
be immediately counteracted by vaccination, the blessings
if which are 'daily felt along the. coasts of Terra Firma.
The causes which depopulate the Christian settlements
are, the repugnance of the Indians for the regulations
of the missions, insalubrity of climate, bad nourishment,
want of care in the diseases of children, and the guilty
practice of preventing pregnancy by the use of deleterious
herbs. Among the barbarous people of Gluiana, as well as
those of the half-civilized islands of the South Sea, young
wives are fearful of becoming mothers. If they have chil-
dren, their offspring are exposed not only to the dangers
of savage life, but also to other dangers arising from the
strangest popular prejudices. When twins are born, false
notions of propriety and family honour require that one of
them should be destroyed. " To bring twins into the
world," say the Indians, " is to be exposed to public scorn ;
it is to resemble rats, opossums, and the vilest animals,
which bring forth a great number of young at a time.'*
Nay, more, they affirm that " twro children born at the same
tine cannot belong to the same father." This is an axiom
of physiology among the Salives ; and in every zone, and in
different states of society, when the vulgar seize upon an
axiom, they adhere to it with more stedfastness than the
better-informed men by whom it was first hazarded. To

ITS PROBABLE CAUSES. 240

avoid the disturbance of conjugal tranquillity, the old female
relations of the mother take care, that when twins axe born
one of them shall disappear. If a new-born infant, though
not a twin, have any physical deformity, the father instantly
puts it to death. They will have none but robust and well-
made children, for deformities indicate some influence of
the evil spirit loloquiamo, or the bird Tikitiki, the enemy
of the human race. Sometimes children of a feeble con-
stitution undergo the same fate. When the father is asked
what is become of one of his sons, he will pretend that he
has lost him by a natural death. He will disavow an action
that appears to him blameable, but not criminal. "The
")oor boy," he will tell you, "could not follow us; we must
have waited for him every moment ; he has not been seen
again ; he did not come to sleep where we passed the night."
Such is the candour and simplicity of manners — such the
boasted happiness — of man in the state of nature ! He kills
his son to escape the ridicule of having twins, or to avoid
journeying more slowly; in fact, to avoid a little incon-
venience.

These acts of cruelty, I confess, are less frequent than
they are believed to be ; yet they occur even in the Missions,
during the time when the Indians leave the village, to retire
to the conucos of the neighbouring forests. It would be
erroneous to attribute these actions to the state of polygamy
in which the uncatechized Indians live. Polygamy no doubt
diminishes the domestic happiness and internal union of
families; but this practice, sanctioned by Ismaelism, does
not prevent the people of the east from loving their children
with tenderness. Among the Indians of the Orinoco, the
father returns home only to eat, or to sleep in his hammock ;
he lavishes no caresses on his infants, or on his wives, whose
office it is to serve him. Parental affection begins to display
itself only when the son has become strong enough to take
a part in hunting, fishing, and the agricultural labours of the
plantations.

While our boat was unloading, we examined closely,
wherever the shore could be approached, the terrific spec-
tacle of a great river narrowed and reduced as it were to
foam. I shall endeavour to paint, not the sensations we felt,
but the aspect of a spot so celebrated among the scene* of

250 NATURAL RAFTS.

H

the New World. The more imposing and majestic the object*
we describe, the more essential it becomes to seize them in
their smallest details, to fix the outline of the picture we
would present to the imagination of the reader, and to
describe with simplicity what characterises the great and
imperishable monuments of nature.

The navigation of the Orinoco from its mouth as far as
the confluence of the Anaveni, an extent of 260 leagues, is
not impeded. There are shoals and eddies near Muitaco,
in a cove that bears the name of the Mouth of Hell (Boca
del Infierno) ; and there are rapids (raudalitos) near Cari-
chana and San Borja ; but in all these places the river ia
never entirely barred, as a channel is left by which boats
can pass up and down.

In all this navigation of the Lower Orinoco travellers
experience no other danger than that of the natural rafts
formed by trees, which are uprooted by the river, and swept
along in its great floods. "Woe to the canoes that during
the night strike against these rafts of wood interwoven with
lianas ! Covered with aquatic plants, they rest- ible here,
as in the Mississippi, floating meadows, the chinampas or
floating gardens of the Mexican lakes. The Indians, when
they wish to surprise a tribe of their enemies, bring
together several canoes, fasten them to each other with
cords, and cover them with grass and branches, to imitate
this assemblage of trunks of trees, which the Orinoco
sweeps along in its middle current. The Caribs are ac-
cused of having heretofore excelled in the use of this
artifice; at present the Spanish smugglers in the neigh-
bourhood of Angostura have recourse to the same expedient
to escape the vigilance of the custom-house officers.

After proceeding up the Orinoco beyond the .Rio Ana-
veni, we find, between the mountains of Uniana and Sipapu,
the Great Cataracts of Mapara and Quittuna, or, as they
are more commonly called by the missionaries, the Raudales
of Atures and Maypures. These bars, which extend from
one bank to the other, present in general a similar aspect :
they are composed of innumerable islands, dikes of rock,
and blocks of granite piled on one another and covered with
palm-trees. But, notwithstanding a uniformity of aspect,
each of these cataracts preserves an individual character.

OBIGIS Or THE AMAZON. 251

The first, the Atures, is most easily passable when the
waters are low. The Indians prefer crossing the second,
the Maypures, at the time of great floods. Beyond the
Maypures and the mouth of the Cano Cameji, the Orinoco
is again unobstructed for the length of more than one
hundred and sixty-seven leagues, or nearly to its source;
that is to say, as far as the Baudalito of Guaharibos, east of
the Cano Chiguire and the lofty mountains of Yurnariquin.

Having visited the basins of the two rivers Orinoco and
Amazon, I was singularly struck by the differences they
display in their course of unequal extent. The falls of the
Amazon, which is nearly nine hundred and eighty nautical
leagues (twenty to a degree) in length, aro pretty near its
source in the first sixth of its total length, and five-sixths
of its course are entirely free. "We find the great falls of
the Orinoco on a point far more unfavourable to navigation ;
if not at the half, at least much beyond the first third of its
length. In both rivers it is neither the mountains, nor the
different stages of flat lands lying over one another, whence
they take their origin, that cause the cataracts ; they are
produced by other mountains, other ledges which, after a
long and tranquil course, the rivers have to pass over,
precipitating themselves from step to step.

The Amazon does not pierce its way through the prin-
cipal chain of the Andes, as was affirmed at a period when
it was gratuitously supposed that, wherever mountains are
divided into parallel chains, the intermedial or central ridge
must be more elevated than the others. This great river
rises (and this is a point of some importance to geology)
eastward of the western chain, which alone in this latitude
merits the denomination of the high chain of the Andes.
It is formed by the junction of the river Aguamiros with
the Bio Chavinillo, which issues from the lake Llauricocha
in a longitudinal valley bounded by the western and the
intermedial chain of the Andes. To form an accurate idea
of these hydrographical relations, it must be borne in mind
that a division into three chains takes place in the colossal
group or knot of the mountains of Pasco and Huanuco.
The western chain, which is the loftiest, and takes the name
of the Cordillera Real de Nieve, directs its course (between
lluary and Caxatamba, Guamachuco and Luc-ma, Micui-

252 GEXEIIAL COUESE OF THE AMAZON.

pampa and Gruangamarca) by the Nevados of Viuda, Pela-
gatos, Moyopata, and Huaylillas, and by the Paramos of
(jriiamani and Gruaringa, towards the town of Loxa. The
intermedia! chain separates the waters of the Upper Mara-
fion from those of the Guallaga, and over a long space
reaches only the small elevation of a thousand toises; it
enters the region of perpetual snow to the south of
Huanuco in the Cordillera of Sasaguanca. It stretches at
first northward by Huacrachuco, Chachapoyas, Moyobamba,
and the Paramo of Piscoguannuna ; then it progressively
lowers toward Peca, Copallin, and the Mission of Santiago,
at the eastern extremity of the province of Jaen de Braca-
rnoros. The third, or easternmost chain, skirts the right
bank of the Bio Gruallaga, and loses itself in the seventh
degree of latitude. So long as the Amazon flows froo
south to north in the longitudinal valley, between twc
chains of unequal height (that is, from the farms of Qui-
villa and Gruancaybamba, where the river is crossed on
wooden bridges, as far as the confluence of the Rio Chin-
chipe), there are neither bars, nor any obstacle whatever to
the navigation of boats. The falls of water begin only
where the Amazon turns toward the east, crossing the
intermedia! chain of the Andes, which widens considerably
toward the north. It meets with the first rocks of red
sandstone, or ancient conglomerate, between Tambillo and
the Pongo of Rentema (near which I measured the breadth,
depth, and swiftness of the waters), and it leaves the rocks
of red sandstone east of the famous strait of Manseriche,
near the Pongo of Tayuchuc, where the hills rise no higher
than forty or fifty toises above the level of its waters. The
river does not reach the most easterly chain, which bounds
the Pampas del Sacramento. From the hills of Tayuchuc
as far as Grand Para, during a course of more than seven
hundred and fifty leagues, the navigation is free from
obstacles. It results from this rapid sketch, that, if the
Maranon had not to pass over the hilly country between
Santiago and Tomependa (which belongs to the central
chain of the Andes) it would be navigable from its mouth
as far as Pumpo, near Piscobamba in the province of Con-
chucos, forty-three leagues north of its source.

We have just seen that, in the Orinoco, as in the Amazon,

THE GHEAT CATARACTS. 253

the great cataracts are not found near the sources of the
rivers. After a tranquil course of more than one hundred
and sixty leagues from the little Raudal of Guaharibos, east
of Esmeralda, as far as the mountains of Sipapu, the river,
augmented by the waters of the Jao, the Ventuari, the
Atabapo, and the Guaviare, suddenly changes its primitive
direction from east to west, and runs from south to north :
then, in crossing the land-strait* in the plains of Meta,
meets the advanced buttresses of the Cordillera of Parima.
This obstacle causes cataracts far more considerable, and
presents greater impediments to navigation, than all the
Pongos of the Upper Marafion, because they are propor-
tionally nearer to the mouth of the river. These geogra-
phical details serve to prove, in the instances of the two
greatest rivers of the New World, 1st, that it cannot be
ascertained in an absolute manner that, beyond a certain
number of toises, or a certain height above the level of the
sea, rivers are not navigable ; 2ndly, that the rapids are not
always occasioned, as several treatises of general topography
affirm, by the height of the first obstacles, by the first lines
of lidges which the waters have to surmount near their
sources.

The most northern of the great cataracts of the Orinoco
is the only one bounded on each side by lofty mountains.
The left bank of the river is generally lower, but it makes
part of a plane which rises again west of Atures, towards the
Peak of Uniana, a pyramid nearly three thousand feet high,
and placed on a wall of rock with steep slopes. The situa-
tion of this solitary peak in the plain contributes to render
its aspect more imposing and majestic. Near the Mission,
in the country which surrounds the cataract, the aspect of
the landscape varies at every step. Within a small space
we find all that is most rude and gloomy in nature, united
with an open country and lovely pastoral scenery. In the
physical, as in the moral world, the contrast of effects, the
comparison of what is powerful and menacing with what ia
soft and peaceful, is a never-failing source of our pleasures
and our emotions.

J shall here repeat some scattered features of a picture

• This strait, which I have several times mentioned, is formed by th«
Cordilleras of ihe Andes of New Granada, and the Cordillera of Parima.

254 SAVAX^HS OF

whi-'h I traced in another work shortly after my return to
Europe.* The savannahs of Atures, covered with slender
plants and grasses, are really meadows resembling those of
Europe. They are never inundated by the rivers, and seem
as if waiting to be ploughed by the hand of man. Notwith-
standing their extent, these savannahs do not exhibit the
monotony of our plains ; they surround groups of rocks and
blocks of granite piled on one another. On the very bor-
ders of these plains and this open country, glens are seen
scarcely lighted by the rays of the setting sun, and hollows
where the humid soil, loaded with arums, heliconias, and
lianas, manifests at every step the wild fecundity of nature.
Everywhere, just rising above the earth, appear those
shelves of granite completely bare, which we saw at Cari-
chana, and which I have already described. "Where springs
gush from the bosom of these rocks, verrucarias, psoras, and
lichens are fixed on the decomposed granite, and have there
accumulated mould. Little euphorbias, peperomias, and
other succulent plants, have taken the place of the crypto-
gamous tribes ; and evergreen shrubs, rhexias, and purple-
flowered melastomas, form verdant isles amid desert and
rocky plains. The distribution of these spots, the clusters
of small trees with coriaceous and shining leaves scattered
in the savannahs, the limpid rills that dig channels across
the rocks, and wind alternately through fertile places and
over bare shelves of granite, all call to mind the most lovely
and picturesque plantations and pleasure-grounds of Europe.
We seem to recognise the industry of man, and the traces
of cultivation, amid this wild scenery.

The lofty mountains that bound the horizon on every
side, contribute also, by their forms and the nature of their
vegetation, to give an extraordinary character to the land-
scape. The average height of these mountains is not more
than seven or eight hundred feet above the surrounding
plains. Their summits are rounded, as for the most part in
granitic mountains, and covered with thick forests of the
laurel-tribe. Clusters of palm-trees,t the leaves of which,
curled like feathers, rise majestically at an angle of seventy
3, are dispersed amid trees with horizontal branches •

* Views of Nature, p. 153 (Bohn's edition).
f Elcucurito.

TROPICAL SCENERY. 256

and ilicir bare trunks, like columns of a hundred or a
hundred and twenty feet high, shoot up into the air, and
when seen in distinct relief against the azure vault of the
sky, they resemble a forest planted upon another forest.
When, as the moon was going down behind the mountains
of Uniana, her reddish disc was hidden behind the pinnated
foliage of the palm-trees, and again appeared in the aerial
zone that separates the two forests, I thought myself trans-
ported for a few moments to the hermitage which Bernardin
de Saint-Pierre has described as one of the most delicious
scenes of the Isle of Bourbon, and I felt how much the
aspect of the plants and their groupings resembled each
other in the two worlds. In describing a small spot of land
in an island of the Indian Ocean, the inimitable author of
Paul and Virginia has sketched the vast picture of the land-
scape of the tropics. He knew how to paint nature, not
because he had studied it scientifically, but because he felt
it in all its harmonious analogies of forms, colours, and
interior powers.

East of the Atures, near these rounded mountains crowned,
as it were, by two superimposed forests of laurels and
palms, other mountains of a very different aspect arise.
Their ridge is bristled with pointed rocks, towering like
pillars above the summits of the trees and shrubs. These
effects are common to all granitic table-lands, at the Harz,
in the metalliferous mountains of Bohemia, in Galicia, on
the limit of the two Castiles, or wherever a granite of new
formation appears above the ground. The rocks, which are
at distances from each other, are composed of blocks piled
together, or divided into regular and horizontal beds. On
the summits of those situated near the Orinoco, flamingos,
soldados* and other fishing-birds perch, and look like men
posted as sentinels. This resemblance is so striking, that
the inhabitants of Angostura, soon after the foundation of
their city, were one day alarmed by the sudden appearance
of soldados and garzas, on a mountain towards the south.
They believed they were menaced with an attack of Indios
monteros (wild Indians called mountaineers) ; and the people
Were not perfectly tranquillized, till they saw the birds soar-

* The ioldado (soldier) U a *arge species of heron.

256 LUXURIANCE OF VEGETATION.

ing in the air, and continuing their migration x wards thp
mouths of the Orinoco.

The fine vegetation of the mountains spreads over the
plains, wherever the rock is covered with mould. We
generally find that this black mould, mixed with fibrous
vegetable matter, is separated from the granitic rock by a
layer of white sand. The missionary assured us that verdure
of perpetual freshness prevails in the vicinity of the cataracts,
produced by the quantity of vapour which the river, broken
into torrents and cascades for the length of three or four
thousand toises, diffuses in the air.

We had not heard thunder more than once or twice at
Atures, and the vegetation everywhere displayed that vigorous
aspect, that brilliancy of colour, seen on the coast only at
the end of the rainy season. The old trees were decorated
with beautiful orchideas,* yellow bannisterias, blue-flowered
bignonias, peperomias, arums, and pothoses, A single trunk
displays a greater variety of vegetable forms than are con-
tained within an extensive space of ground in our countries.
Close to the parasite plants peculiar to very hot climates we
observed, not without surprise, in the centre of the torrid
zone, and near the level of the sea, mosses resembling in
every respect those of Europe. "We gathered, near the Great
Cataract of Atures, that fine specimen of Grimmiaf with
fontinaljs leaves, which has so much fixed the attention of
botanists. It is suspended to the branches of the loftiest
trees. Of the phanerogamous plants, those which prevail
in the woody spots are the mimosa, ficus, and laurinea.
This fact is the more characteristic as, according to the
observations of Mr. Brown, the Iaurinea3 appear to be almost
entirely wanting on the opposite continent, in the equinoctial
part of Africa. Plants that love humidity adorn the scenery
surrounding the cataracts. We there find in the plains groups
of heliconias and other scitamineaB with large and glossy
leaves, bamboos, and the three palm-trees, the murichi,

* Cymbidium violaceura, Habenaria angustifolia, &e.
i Grimmia fontinakndes. See Hooker's Musci Exotici, 1818, tab. ii.
The learned author of the Monography of the Jungermannise (Mr. Jackson
Hooker), with noble disinterestedness, published at his own expense, m
London, the whole collection of cryptogamous plants/brought by Bonpland
and Humboldt from the equinoctial regions of America.

STATELY PALM-TREES. 257

jaqua, and vadgiai, each of which forms a separate group.
The mwrichi, or mauritia with scaly fruits, is the celebrated
sago-tree of the G-uaraon Indians. It lias palmate leaves,
and has no relation to the palm-trees with pinnate and
curled leaves ; to ihejagua, which appears to be a species of
the cocoa-tree ; or to the vadgiat or cucurito, which may be
assimilated to the fine species Oreodoxa. The cucurito,
which is the palm most prevalent around the cataracts of
the Atures and Maypures, is remarkable for its stateliness.
Its leaves, or rather its palms, crown a trunk of eighty or
one hundred feet high ; their direction is almost perpen-
dicular when young, as well as at their full growth, the
points only being incurvated. They look like plumes of the
most soft and verdant green. The cucurito, the pirijao, the
fruit of which resembles the apricot, the Oreodoxa regia or
valma real of the island of Cuba, and the ceroxylon of the
high Andes, are the most majestic of all the palm-trees we
<saw in the New World. As we advance toward the tem-
perate zone, the plants of this family decrease in size and
beauty. What a difference between the species we have just
mentioned, and the date-tree of the East, which unfor-
tunately has become to the landscape painters of Europe the
type of a group of palm-trees !

It is not suprising that persons who have travelled only
in the north of Africa, in Sicily, or in Spain, cannot conceive
that, of all large trees, the palm is the most grand and beau-
tiful in form. Incomplete analogies prevent Europeans from
having a just idea of the aspect of the torrid zone. All the
world knows, for instance, that this zone is embellished by
the contrasts exhibited in the foliage of the trees, and
particularly by the great number of those with pinnate
leaves. The ash, the service-tree, the inga, the acacia of the
United States, the gleditsia, the tamarind, the mimosa, the
desmanthus, have all pinnate leaves, with foliolsD more or
less long, slender, tough, and shining. But can a group of
ash-trees, of service-trees, or of sumach, recall the picturesque
effect of tamarinds or mimosas, when the azure of the sky
appears through their small, slender, and delicately pinnated
iravcs? These considerations are more important than they
may at first seem. The forms of plants determine the phy-
siognomy of nature ; and this physiognomy influences the

VOL. n s

258 BAPIDS OF ATUEES.

moral dispositions of nations. Every type comprehends
species, which, while exhibiting the same general appear-
ance, differ in the varied development of the similar organs.
The palm-trees, the scitaminese, the malvacese, the trees with
pinnate leaves, do not all display the same picturesque
beauties ; and generally the most beautiful species of each
type, in plants as in animals, belong to the equinoctial zone.

The proteacese,* crotons, agaves, and the great tribe of
the cactuses, which inhabit exclusively the New World, dis-
appear gradually, as we ascend the Orinoco above the
Apure and the Meta. It is, however, the shade and humi-
dity, rather than the distance from the coast, which oppose
the migration of the cactuses southward. We found forests
of them mingled with crotons, covering a great space of arid
land to the east of the Andes, in the province of Bracamoros,
towards the Upper Marafion. The arborescent ferns seem
to fail entirely near the cataracts of the Orinoco ; we found
no species as far as San Eernando de Atabapo, that is, to
the confluence of the Orinoco and the Guaviare.

Having now examined the vicinity of the Atures, it re-
mains for me to speak of the rapids themselves, which occur
in a part of the valley where the bed of the river, deeply
ingulfed, has almost inaccessible banks. It was only in a
very few spots that we could enter the Orinoco to bathe,
between the two cataracts, in coves where the waters have
eddies of little velocity. Persons who have dwelt in the
Alps, the Pyrenees, or even the Cordilleras, so celebrated
for the fractures and the vestiges of destruction which
they display at every step, can scarcely picture to them-
selves, from a mere narration, the state of the bed of the
river. It is traversed, in an extent of more than live miles,
by innumerable dikes of rock, forming so many natural
dams, so many barriers resembling those of the Dnieper,
which the ancients designated by the name of phragmoi.
The space between the rocky dikes of the Orinoco is filled
with islands of different dimensions ; some hilly, divided into
several peaks, and two or three hundred toises in length,
others small, low, and like mere shoals. These islands
divide the river into a number of torrents, which boil up as

* Rh ipalas, which cnaracterise the vegetation of the Llanos.

BAUDAL OF CANUCAUI. 259

they break against the rocks. The jagttas and cucuritox
with plumy leaves, with which all the islands are covered,
seem like groves of palm-trees rising from the foamy surface
of the waters. The Indians, whose task it is to pass the boats
empty over the raudales, distinguish every shelf, and every
rock, by a particular name. On entering from the south you
find first the Leap of the Toucan (Salto del Piapoco) ; and
between the islands of Avaguri and Javariveni is the Eaudal
of Javariveni, where, on our return from Bio Negro, we
passed some hours amid the rapids, waiting for our boat. A
great part of the river appeared dry. Blocks of granite are
heaped together, as in the moraines which the glaciers of
Switzerland drive before them. The river is ingulfed in
caverns ; and in one of these caverns we heard the water roll
at once over our heads and beneath our feet. The Orinoco
seems divided into a multitude of arms or torrents, each of
which seeks to force a passage through the rocks. We
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.

Cuncta fremunt undis ; ac multo murmure mentis
Spumeus invictis canescit fluctibus amnis.*

Having passed the Baudal of Javariveni (I name here
only the principal falls) we come to the Eaudal of Canucari,
formed by a ledge of rocks uniting the islands of Surupa-
mana and Uirapuri. "When the dikes, or natural dams, are
only two or three feet high, the Indians venture to descend
them in boats. In going up the river, they swim on before,
and if, after many vain efforts, they succeed in fixing a rope
to one of the points of rock that crown the dike, they then,
by means of that rope, draw the bark to the top of the
raudal. The bark, during this arduous task, often fills with
water ; at other times it is stove against the rocks, and the
Indians, their bodies bruised and bleeding, extricate them-
selves with difficulty from the whirlpools, and reach, bj
swimming, the nearest island. When the steps or rocky
barriers are very high, and entirely bar the river, light boats
are carried on shore, and with the help of branches of tre<Ji

• Lucan, Pharsalia, lib. x, v. 132.

8 2

2GC NAVIGATION OF THI EAPIDS.

placed under them to serve as rollers, they are drawn as far
as the place where the river again becomes navigable. This
operation is seldom necessary when the water is high. "We
cannot speak of the cataracts of the Orinoco without recal-
ling to mind the manner heretofore employed for descending
the cataracts of the Nile, of which Seneca has left us a
description probably more poetical than accurate. I shall
cite the passage, which traces with fidelity what may be seen
every day at Atures, Maypures, and in some pongos of the
Amazon. " Two men embark in a small boat ; one steers,
and the other empties it as it fills with water. Long buffeted
by the rapids, the whirlpools, and the contrary currents,
they pass through the narrowest channels, avoid the shoals,
and rush down the whole river, guiding the course of the
boat in its accelerated faj.." *

In hydrographic descriptions of countries, the vague
names of cataracts, cascades, falls, and rapids,f denoting
those tumultuous movements of water which arise from
very different circumstances, are generally confounded witL
one another. Sometimes a whole river precipitating
itself from a great height, and by one single fall, renders
navigation impossible. Such is the majestic fall of the
Rio Tequendama, which I have represented in my " Views
of the Cordilleras;' such are the falls of Niagara and
of the Rhine, much less remarkable for their elevation,
than for the mass of water they contain. Sometimes stony
dikes of small height succeed each other at great distances,
and form distinct falls ; such are the cachoeiras of the Rio
Negro and the Rio Madeira, the saltos of the Rio Cauca,
and the greater part of the pongos that are found in the
Upper Marafion, from the confluence of the Chinchipe to
the village of San Borja. The highest and most formidable
of these pongos, which are descended on rafts, that of
Mayasi, is however only three feet in height. Sometimes
small rocky dikes are so near each other that they form
for several miles an uninterrupted succession of cascades
and whirlpools (chorros and remolinos) ; these are properly

* Nat. Qusest., lib. iv, cap. 2. (edit. Elzev., torn, ii, p. 609.)
•f The corresponding terms in use among the people of Soutb America,
re saltos, chorros, pongos, cachoeiras, and raudalea.

IMPEDIMENTS TO NAVIGATION. 261

srhat are called rapids (raudalcs). Such are the yellalas, or
rapids of the River Zaire,* or Congo, which Captain Tuckey
has recently made known to us ; the rapids of the Orange
liiver in Africa, above Fella ; and the falls of the Missouri,
which are four leagues in length, where the river issues
from the Rocky Mountains. Such also are the cataracts of
Atures and Mavpures; the only cataracts which, situated
in the equinoctial region of the New World, are adorned
M ith the noble growth of palm-trees. At aD seasons they
exhibit the aspect of cascades, and present the greatest
obstacles to the navigation of the Orinoco, while the rapids
of the Ohio and of Upper Egypt are scarcely visible at the
period of floods. A solitary cataract, like Niagara, or the
cascade of Terni, afibrds a grand but single picture, varying
only as the observer changes his place. Rapids, on the
contrary, especially when adorned with large trees, embel-
lish a landscape during a length of several leagues. Some-
times the tumultuous movement of the waters is caused
only by extraordinary contractions of the beds of the rivers.
Such is the angostura of Carare, in the river Magdalena,
a strait that impedes communication between Santa Fe do
Bogota and the coast of Carthagena; and such is thepongc
of Manseriche, in the Upper Maranon.

The Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and almost all the con-
fluents of the Amazon and the Maranon, have falls or rapids,
either because they cross the mountains where they take
rise, or because they meet other mountains in their course.
If the Amazon, from the pongo of Manseriche (or, to speak
with more precision, from the pongo of Tayucluu-) as far as
its mouth, a space of more than seven hundred and fifty
leagues, exhibit no tumultuous movement of the waters, the
river owes this advantage to the uniform direction of its
course. It flows from west to east in a vast plain, forming

* Voyage to explore the River Zaire, 1818, pp. 152, 327, 340. What
the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia call chelldl in the Nile, is called
yellala in the River Congo. This analogy between words signifying
rapids is remarkable, on account of the enormous distance of the yellalas
of the Congo from the chelldl and djenadel of the Nile. Did the word
chellal penetrate with the Moors into the west of Africa? If, with
Burckhardt, we consider the origin of this word as Arabic (Travels in
Nubia, 1819), it must be derived from the root chtUla, ' to disperse,' which
forms chelil, ' water falling through a narrow channel.'

202 ELEVATION OF THE RAIJDALES.

ft longitudinal valley between the mountains of Parima and
the great mass of the mountains of Brazil.

I was surprised to find by actual measurement that the
rapids of the Orinoco, the roar of which is heard at the
distance of more than a league, and which are so eminently
picturesque from the varied appearance of the waters, the
palm-trees and the rocks, have not probably, on their whole
length, a height of more than twenty-eight feet perpen-
dicular. In reflecting on this, we find that it is a great
deal for rapids, while it would be very little for a single
cataract. The Yellalas of the Bio Congo, in the contracted
part of the river from Banza Noki as far as Banza Inga,
furnish, between the upper and lower levels, a much more
considerable difference; but Mr. Barrow observes, that
among the great number of these rapids there is one fall,
which alone is thirty feet high. On the other hand, the
famous pongos of the river Amazon, so dangerous to go up,
the falls of Kentema, of Escurrebragas, and of Mayasi, are
but a few feet in perpendicular height. Those who are
engaged in hydraulic works know the effect that a bar of
eighteen or twenty inches' height produces in a great river.
The whirling and tumultuous movement of the water does
not depend solely on the greatness of partial falls ; what
determines the force and impetuosity is the nearness of
these falls, the steepness of the rocky ledges, the returning
sheets of water which strike against and surmount each
other, the form of the islands and shoals, the direction of
the counter-currents, and the contraction and sinuosity of
the channels through which the waters force a passage
between two adjacent levels. In two rivers equally large,
that of which the falls have least height may sometimes
present the greatest dangers and the most impetuous move-
ments.

It is probable that the river Orinoco loses part of
its waters in the cataracts, not only by increased evapo-
ration, caused by the dispersion of minute drops in the
atmosphere, but still more by filtrations into the subter-
raneous cavities. These losses, however, are not very per-
ceptible when we compare the mass of waters entering into
the raudal with that which issues out near the mouth of the
Itio Anaveni. It was by a similar comparison that the

OATITIE8 IF THE ROCK. 2G3

existence of subterraneous cavities in the yellalas or rapids
of the river Congo was discovered. The pongo of Manse-
riche, which ought rather to be called a strait than a fall,
ingulfs, in a manner not yet sufficiently explored, a part of
the waters and all the floating wood of the Upper Maranon.

The spectator, seated on the bank of the Orinoco, with
his eyes fixed on those rocky dikes, is naturally led to
inquire whether, in the lapse of ages, the falls change their
form or height. I am not much inclined to believe in such
effects of the shock of water against blocks of granite, and
in the erosion of siliceous matter. The holes narrowed
toward the bottom, the funnels that are discovered in the
raudales, as well as near so many other cascades in Europe,
are owing only to the friction of the sand, and the move-
ment of quartz pebbles. We saw many such, whirled per-
petually by the current at the bottom of the funnels, and
contributing to enlarge them in every direction. The
pongos of the river Amazon are easily destroyed, because
the rocky dikes are not granite, but a conglomerate, or red
sandstone with large fragments. A part of the pongo of
Rentema was broken down eighty years ago, and the course
of the waters being interrupted by a new bar, the bed of
the river remained dry for some hours, to the great astonish-
ment of the inhabitants of the village of Payaya, seven
leagues below the pongo. The Indians of Atures assert
(and in this their testimony is contrary to the opinion of
Caulin) that the rocks of the raudal preserve the same
aspect ; but that the partial torrents into which the great
river divides itself as it passes through the heaped blocks
of granite, change their direction, and carry sometimes
more, sometimes less water towards one or the other bank ;
but the causes of these changes may be very remote from
the cataracts, for in the rivers that spread life over the
surface of the globe, as in the arteries by which it is
diffused through organized bodies, all the movements are
propagated to great distances. Oscillations, that at first
seem partial, react on the whole liquid mass contained in
the trunk as well as in its numerous ramifications.

Some of the Missionaries in their writings have alleged
that the inhabitants of Atures and Maypures have been
•truck with deafiiess by the noise of the* Great Cataract*

264 KOCTUBffAL PEOPAOATION OF SOUNDS.

but this is untrue. When the noise is heard in the plain
that surrounds the mission, at the distance of more than a
league, you seem to be near a coast skirted by reefs and
breakers. The noise is three times as loud by night as by
day, and gives an inexpressible charm to these solitary
scenes. What can be the cause of this increased intensity
of sound, in a desert where nothing seems to interrupt
the silence of nature ? The velocity of the propagation of
sound, far from augmenting, decreases with the lowering of
the temperature. The intensity diminishes in air agitated
by a wind which is contrary to the direction of the sound ;
it diminishes also by dilatation of the air, and is weaker in
the higher than in the lower regions of the atmosphere,
where the number of particles of air in motion is greater in
the same radius. The intensity is the same in dry air, and
in air mingled with vapours ; but it is feebler in carbonic
acid gas than in mixtures of azote and oxygen. From these
facts, which are all we know with any certainty, it is
difficult to explain a phenomenon observed near every
cascade in Europe, and which, long before our arrival in
the village of Atures, had struck the missionary and the
Indians.

It may be thought that, even in places not inhabited by
man, the hum of insects, the song of birds, the rustling of
leaves agitated by the feeblest winds, occasicn during the
day a confused noise, which we perceive the less because it
is uniform, and constantly strikes the ear. Now this noise,
however slightly perceptible it may be, may diminish the
intensity of a louder noise ; and this diminution may cease
if during the calm of the night the song of birds, the hum
of i Qsects, and the action of the wind upon the leaves be
interrupted. But this reasoning, even admitting its just-
ness, can scarcely be applied to the forests of the Orinoco,
where the air is constantly filled by an innumerable quantity
of mosquitos, where the hum of insects is much louder by
night than by day, and where the breeze, if ever it be felt,
blows only after sunset.

I rather think that the presence of the sun acts upon the
propagation and intensity of sound by the obstacles met in
currents of air of different density, and by the partial un-
dulations of the atmosphere arising from the unequal heating

OBSTACLES TO THE SOUND-WAYE8. 2G5

of different parts of the soil. In calm air, whether dry or
mingled with vesicular vapours equally distributed, sound-
waves are propagated without difficulty. But when the air
is crossed in every direction by small currents of hotter
air, the sonorous undulation is divided into two undulations
where the density of the medium changes abruptly ; partial
echoes are formed that weaken the sound, because one of
the streams comes back upon itself; and those divisions of
undulations take place of which M. Poisson has developed
the theory with great sagacity.* It is not therefore the
movement of the particles of air from below to above in the
ascending current, or the small oblique currents that we
consider as opposing by a shock the propagation of the
sonorous undulations. A shock given to the surface of a
liquid will form circles around the centre of percussion,
even when the liquid is agitated. Several kinds of undu-
lations may cross each other in water, as in air, without
being disturbed in their propagation : little movements may,
as it were, ride over each other, and the real cause of the
less intensity of sound during the day appears to be the
interruption of homogeneity in the elastic medium. Durijig
the day there is a sudden interruption of density wherever
small streamlets of air of a high temperature rise over parts
of the soil unequally heated. The sonorous undulations are
divided, as the rays of light are refracted and form the
mirage wherever strata of air of unequal density are con-
tiguous. The propagation of sound is altered when a
stratum of hydrogen gas is made to rise in a tube closed
at one end above a stratum of atmospheric air; and M.
Biot has well explained, by the interposition of bubbles of
carbonic acid gas, why a glass filled with champagne is not
sonorous so long as that gas is evolved, and passing through
the strata of the liquid.

In support of these ideas, I might almost rest on the
authority of an ancient philosopher, whom the moderns do
not esteem in proportion to his merits, though the most dis-
tinguished zoologists have long rendered ample justice to the
Bugacity of his observations. " Why," says Aristotle in his
curious book of Problems, "why is sound better heard

* AnuaJas de Chimie, torn, vii, p. 293.

2GG HOMES or THE NATIVES.

during the night? Because there is more calmness on
account of the absence of caloric (of the hottest}.* This
absence renders every thing calmer, for the sun is the prin-
ciple of all movement." Aristotle had no doubt a vague
presentiment of the cause of the phenomenon ; but he attri-
butes to the motion of the atmosphere, and the shock of the
particles of air, that which seems to be rather owing to
abrupt changes of density in the contiguous strata of air.

On the 16th of April, towards evening, we received tidings
that in less than six hours our boat had passed the rapids,
and had arrived in good condition in a cove called el Puerto
de arriba, or the Port of the Expedition. "We were shown
in the little church of Atures some remains of the ancient
wealth of the Jesuits. A silver lamp of considerable weight
lay on the ground half-buried in the sand. Such an object,
it is true, would nowhere tempt the cupidity of a savage ;
yet T may here remark, to the honor of the natives of the
Orinoco, that they are not addicted to stealing, like the less
savage tribes of the islands in the Pacific. The former have
a great respect for property ; they do not even attempt to
steal provision, hooks, or" hatchets. At Maypures and
Atures, locks on doors are unknown : they will be introduced
only when whites and men of mixed race establish themselves
iu the missions.

The Indians of Atures are mild and moderate, and accus-
tomed, from the effects of their idleness, to the greatest pri-
vations. Formerly, being excited to labour by the Jesuits,
they did not want for food. The fathers cultivated maize,
French beans (frijoles), and other European vegetables;
they even planted sweet oranges and tamarinds round the
villages; and they possessed twenty or thirty thousand
head of cows and horses, in the savannahs of Atures and

* I have placed in a parenthesis, a literal version of the term employed
by Aristotle, to express in reality what we now term the matter of heat.
Theodore of Gaza, in his Latin translation, expresses in the shape ol
a doubt what Aristotle positively asserts. I may here remark, that,
notwithstanding the imperfect state of science among the ancients,
the works of the Stagirite contain more ingenious observations than those
of many later philosophers. It is in vain we look in Aristoxenes (De
Musica), in Theophylactus Simocatta (De Quaestionibus physicis), or in
the 5th Book of the Qusest. Nat. of Seneca, for an explanation of tua
nocturnal augmentation of sound.

DESTRUCTION OF TRE JESUIT MISSIONS. 207

Carichana. They had at their service a great number of
slaves and servants (peones), to tend their herds. Nothing
is now cultivated but a little cassava, and a few plantains.
Such however is the fertility of the soil, that at Atures I
counted on a single branch of a musa one hundred and eight
fruits, four or five of which would almost have sufficed for a
man's daily food. The culture of maize is entirely neglected,
tnd the horses and cows have entirely disappeared. Near
the raudal, a part of the village still bears the name ofPasso
del ganado (ford of the cattle), while the descendants of
those very Indians whom the Jesuits had assembled in a
mission, speak of horned cattle as of animals of a race now
lost. In going -up the Orinoco, toward San Carlos del Rio
Negro, we saw the last cow at Carichana. The Fathers of
the Observance, who now govern these vast countries, did
not immediately succeed the Jesuits. During an inter-
regnum of eighteen years, the missions were visited only
from time to time, and by Capuchin monks. The agents of
the secular government, under the title of Royal Coinrais-
sioners, managed the hatos or farms of the Jesuits with
culpable negligence. They killed the cattle for the sake
of selling the hides. Many heifers were devoured by the
jaguars, and a great number perished in consequence of
wounds made by the bats of the raudales, which, though
smaller, are far bolder than the bats of the Llanos. At the
time of the expedition of the boundaries, horses from Enca-
rainada, Carichana, and Atures, were conveyed as far as San
Jose de Maravitanos, where, on the banks of the Rio Negro,
the Portuguese could only procure them, after a long passage,
and of a very inferior quality, by the rivers Amazon and
Grand Para. Since the year 1795, the cattle of the Jesuits
have entirely disappeared. There now remain as monuments
of the ancient cultivation of these countries, and the active
industry of the first missionaries, only a few trunks of the
orange and tamarind, in the savannahs, surrounded by wild
trees.

The tigers, or jaguars, which are less dangerous for the
jattle than the bats, come into the village at Atures, and
devour the swine of the poor Indians. The missionary
related to us a striking instance of the familiarity of tTieso
animstU, usually so ferocious. Some months before GUI

268 PLAYFULNESS OP JL JAGUAB.

arrival, a jaguar, which was thought to be youn£, though
of a large size, had wounded a child in playing \vith him.
The facts of this case, which were verified to us on the spot,
are not without interest in the history of the manners of
animals. Two Indian children, a boy and a girl, about
eight and nine years of age, were seated on the grass near
the village of Atures, in the middle of a savannah, which
we several times traversed. At two o'clock in the after-
noon, 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 our cats. 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 then bounded off without making
the least show of resistance.

The little boy was brought to us, who appeared lively
and intelligent. The claw of the jaguar had torn away the
skin from the lower part of the forehead, and there was a
second scar at the top of the head. This was a singular
fit of playfulness in an animal which, though not diflicult to
be tamed in our menageries, nevertheless shows itself always
wild and ferocious in its natural state. If we admit that,
being sure of its prey, it played with the little Indian as
our cats play with birds whose wings have been clipped,
how shall we explain the patience of a jaguar of large size,
which finds itself attacked by a girl ? If the jaguar were
not pressed by hunger, why did it approach the children
at an? There is something mysterious in the affections
and hatreds of animals. We have known lions kill three
or four dogs that were put into their den, and instantly
caress a fifth, which, less timid, took the king of animals
by the mane. These are instincts of which we know not
the secret.

We have mentioned that domestic pigs are attacked by
the jaguars. There are in these countries, besides the

HEEDS Of WILD SWINE. 2G9

common swine of European race, several species of peccaries,
or pigs with lumbar glands, two of which only are known
to the naturalists of Europe. The Indians call the little
peccary (Dicotiles torquatus, Cuv.), in the Maypure tongue,
chacharo ; while they give the name of apida to a species of
pig which they say has no pouch, is larger, and oi a dark
brown colour, with the belly and lower jaw white. The
chacharo, reared in the houses, becomes tame like our sheep
and goats. It reminds us, by the gentleness of its manners,
of the curious analogies which anatomists have observed
between the peccaries and the ruminating animals. The
apida, which is domesticated like our swine in Europe,
wanders in large herds composed of several hundreds. The
presence of these herds is announced from afar, not only by
their hoarse gruntings, but above all bv the impetuosity
with which they break down the shrubs in their way. M.
Bonpland, in an herborizing excursion, warned by his
Indian guide to hide himself behind the trunk of a tree,
saw a number of these peccaries (cocUnos or puercos del
monte) pass close by him. The herd marched in a close
body, the males proceeding first ; and each sow was accom-
panied by her young. The flesh of the chacharo is flabby,
and not very agreeable; it affords, however, a plentiful
nourishment to the natives, who kill these animals with
small lances tied to cords. We were assured at Atures,
that the tiger dreads being surrounded in the forests by
these herds of wild pigs ; and that, to avoid being stifled,
he tries to save himself by climbing up a tree. Is this a
hunter's tale, or a fact that has really been observed ? In
several parts of America the hunters believe in the existence
of ajavali, or native boar with tusks curved outwardly. I
never saw one, but this animal is mentioned in the works
of the Spanish missionaries, a source too much neglected
by zoologists ; for amidst much incorrectness and extrava-
gance, they contain many curious local observations.

Among the monkeys which we saw at the mission of the
Atures, we found one new species, of the tribe of sais and
tajous, which the Creoles vulgarly call machis. It is the
ojuvapavi with grey hair and a bluish face. It has the
orbits of the eyes and the forehead as white as snow, a
peculiarity which at first sight distinguishes it from the

270 THE WILD MAS OF THE WOODS.

Simla capucina, the Simia ajiella, the Simia trepida, and the
other weeping monkeys hitherto so confusedly described.
This little animal is as gentle as it is ugly. A monkey of
this species, which was kept in the courtyard of the mis-
sionary, would frequently mount on the back of a pig, and
in this manner traverse the savannahs. "We have also seen
it upon the back of a large cat, which had been brought up
with it in Father Zea's house.

It was among the cataracts that we began to hear of the
hairy man of the woods, called salvaje, that carries off
women, constructs huts, and sometimes eats human flesh.
The Tamanacs call it achi, and the Maypures vasitri, or
'great devil.' The natives and the missionaries have no
doubt of the existence of this man-shaped monkey, of which
they entertain a singular dread. Father Grili 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 hunters to take her back, " because
she and her children (a little hairy also) were weary of
living far from the church and the sacraments." The same
author, notwithstanding his credulity, acknowledges that he
never knew an Indian who asserted positively that he had
seen the salvaje with his own eyes. This wild legend,
which the missionaries, the European planters, and the
negroes of Africa, have no doubt embellished with many
features taken from the description of the manners of the
orang-otaug,* the gibbon, the jocko or chimpanzee, and the
pongo, followed us, during five years, from the northern to
the southern hemisphere. "We were everywhere blamed,
in the most cultivated class of society, for being the only
persons to doubt the existence of the great anthropomorphous

* Simia satyrus. We must not believe, notwithstanding the assertions
of almost all zoological writers, that the word orang-otang is applied
exclusively in the Malay language to the Simia satyrus of Borneo. This
expression, on the contrary, means any very large monkey, that resembles
man in figure. (Marsden's Hist, of Sumatra, 3rd edit., p. 117.) Modern
zoologists have arbitrarily appropriated provincial names to certain species ;
And by continuing to prefer these names, strangely disfigured in their
orthography, to the Latin systematic names, the confusion of the nomen-
clature has been increased.

SINGULAR LEGENDS. 271

monkey of America. There are certain regions where this
belief is particularly prevalent among the people ; such are
the banks of the Upper Orinoco, the valley of TJpar near
the lake of Maracaybo, the mountains of Santa Martha and
of Merida, the provinces of Quixos, and the banks of the
Amazon near Tomependa. In all these places, so distant
one from the other, it is asserted that the salvage is easily
recognized by the traces of its feet, the toes of which are
turned backward. But if there exist a monkey of a large
size in the New Continent, how has it happened that for
three centuries no man worthy of belief has been able to
procure the skin of one ? Several hypotheses present them-
selves to the mind, in order to explain the source of so
ancient an error or belief. Has the famous capuchin mon-
key of Esmeralda (Simia chiropotes), with its long canine
teeth, and physiognomy much more like man's* than that
of the orang-otang, given rise to the fable of the salvage ?
It is not so large indeed as the coaita (Simia paniscus) ;
but when seen at the top of a tree, and the head only
visible, it might easily be taken for a human being. It may
be also (and this opinion appears to me the most probable)
that the * man of the woods ' was one of those large bears,
the footsteps of which resemble those of a man, and which
are believed in every country to attack women. The animal
killed in my time at the foot of the mountains of Merida,
and sent, by the name of salvaje, to Colonel Ungaro, the
governor of the province of Varinas, was in fact a bear with
black and smooth fur. Our fellow-traveller, Don Nicolas
Soto, had examined it closely. Did the strange idea of a
plantigrade animal, the toes of which are placed as if it
walked backward, take its origin from the haoit of the real
savages of the woods, the Indians of the weakest and most
timid tribes, of deceiving their enemies, when they enter
a forest, or cross a sandy shore, by covering the traces of
their feet with sand, or walking backward ?

Though I have expressed my doubts of the existence of
an unknown species of large monkey in a continent which
appears entirely destitute of quadrumanous animals of the
family of the orangs, cynocepnali, mandrils, and pongos ; yet

* The whole of the features— the expression of the physiognomy ; but
not the forehead.

272 PLAGUE OP MOBQTJITOB.

it should be remembered that almost all matters of populai
belief, even those most absurd in appearance, rest on real
facts, but facts ill observed. In treating them with disdain,
the traces of a discovery may often be lost, in natural philo-
sophy as well as in zoology. We will not then admit, with
a Spanish author, that the fable of the ' man of the woods '
was invented by the artifice of Indian women, who pre-
tended to have been carried off, when they had been long
absent unknown to their husbands. Travellers who may
hereafter visit the missions of the Orinoco will do well to
follow up our researches on the salvaje or great devil of the
woods ; and examine whether it be some unknown species
of bear, or some very rare monkey analogous to the Siinia
chiropotes, or Simia satanas, which may have given rise to
such singular tales.

After having spent two days near the cataract of Atures,
we were not sorry when our boat was reladen, and we were
enabled to leave a spot where the temperature of the air
is generally by day twenty-nine degrees, and by night
twenty-six degrees, of the centigrade thermometer. This
temperature seemed to us to be still much more elevated,
from the feeling of heat which we experienced. The want
of concordance between the instruments and the sensations
must be attributed to the continual irritation of the skin
excited by the mosquitos. An atmosphere filled with veno-
mous insects always appears to be more heated than it is
in reality. We were horribly tormented in the day by
mosquitos and the jejen, a small venomous fly (simulium),
and at night by the zancudos, a large species of gnat,
dreaded even by the natives. Our hands began to swell
considerably, and this swelling increased daily till our arrival
on the banks of the Temi. The means that are employed
to escape from these little plagues are very extraordinary.
The good missionary Bernardo Zea, who passed his life
tormented by mosquitos, had constructed near the church,
on a scaffolding of trunks of palm-trees, a small apartment,
in which we breathed more freely. To this we went up in
the evening, by means of a ladder, to dry our plants and
write our journal. The missionary had justly observed,
that the insects abounded more particularly in the lowest
strata of the atmosphere, that which reaches from the

*LAQA DE LAB MOftCAS. 27,1

ground to the height of twelve or fifteen feet. At May-
pnres the Indians quit the village at night, to go and sleep
on the little islets in the midst of the cataracts. There
they enjoy some rest; the mosquitos appearing to shun
air loaded with vapours. We found everywhere fewer in
the middle of the river than near its banks ; and thus less
is suffered in descending the Orinoco than in going up in a
boat.

Persons who have not navigated the great rivers of
equinoctial America, for instance, the Orinoco and the
Magdalena, can scarcely conceive how, at every instant,
without intermission, you may be tormented by insects
flying in the air; and how the multitude of these little
animals may render vast regions almost uninhabitable.
Whatever fortitude be exercised to endure pain without
complaint, whatever interest may be felt in the objects of
scientific research, it is impossible not to be constantly
disturbed by the mosquitos, zancudos, jejens, and tempra-
neros, that cover the face and hands, pierce the clothes
with their long needle-formed suckers, and getting into
the mouth and nostrils, occasion coughing and sneezing
whenever any attempt is made to speak in the open air.
In the missions of the Orinoco, in the villages on the banks
of the river, surrounded by immense forests, the plaga de las
moscas, or the plague of the mosquitos, affords an inex-
haustible subject of conversation. When two persons meet
in the morning, the first questions they address to each
other are : " How did. you find the zancudos during the
night? How are we to-day for the mosquitos?" * These
questions remind us of a Chinese form of politeness, whicli
indicates the ancient state of the country where it took
birth. Salutations were made heretofore in the Celestial
empire in the following words, vou-to-hou, " Have you been
incommoded in the night by the serpents ?"

The geographical distribution of i/he insects of the family
of tipuhe presents very remarkable phenomena. It does
not appear to depend solely on heat of climate, excess of
humidity, or the thickness of forests, but on local cir-

• Que lc hat parecido los saner: doa d« noche ? Como stamoi boy da
mosquitos ?

VOL. II. »

274 INTENSITY OF THE PLAQUE.

cumstances that are difficult to characterise. It may be
observed that the plague of mosquitos and zancudos is not
so general in the torrid zone as is commonly believed. On
the table-lands elevated more than four hundred toises
above the level of the ocean, in the very dry plains remote
from the beds of great rivers (for instance, at Cumana and
Calabozo), there are not sensibly more gnats than in the
most populous parts of Europe. They are perceived to
augment enormously at Nueva Barcelona, and more to the
west, on the coast that extends towards Cape Codera.
Between the little harbour of Higuerote and the mouth of
the Bio Unare, the wretched inhabitants are accustomed
to stretch themselves on the ground, and pass the night
buried in the sand three or four inches deep, leaving out
the head only, which they cover with a handkerchief. You
suffer from the sting of insects, but in a manner easy to
bear, in descending the Orinoco from Cabruta towards
Angostura, and in going up from Cabruta towards Uruana,
between the latitudes of 7° and 8°. But beyond the mouth
of the Bio Arauca, after having passed the strait of Bara-
guan, the scene suddenly changes. From this spot the
traveller may bid farewell to repose. If he have any
poetical remembrance of Dante, he may easily imagine he
has entered the citta dolente, and he will seem to read on
the granite rocks of Baraguan these lines of the Inferno : —

Noi sem venuti al luogo, ov' i* t'ho detto

Che tu vedrai le genti dolorose.

The lower strata of air, from the surface of the ground to
the height of fifteen or twenty feet, are absolutely filled with
venomous insects. If in an obscure spot, for instance in the
grottos of the cataracts formed by superincumbent blocks of
granite, you direct your eyes toward the opening enlightened
by the sun, you see clouds of mosquitos more or less thick.
At the mission of San Borja, the suffering from mosquitos is
greater than at Carichana ; but in the Raudales, at Atures,
and above all at Maypures, this suffering may be said to
attain its maximum. I doubt whether there be a country
upon earth where man is exposed to more cruel torments in
the rainy season. Having passed the fifth degree of latitude,
you are somewhat less stung; but on the Upper Orinoco
the stings are more painful, because the heat and the *bso

BLACK AND WIJTTE WATEBB. 27C

lute want of wind render the air more burning aud more
irritating in its contact with the skin.

" How comfortable must people be in the moon !" said a
Salive Indian to Father Gumilla ; " she looks so beautiful
and so clear, that she must be free from mosquitos." These
words, which denote the infancy of a people, are very remark-
able. The satellite of the earth appears to ail 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 Orinoco there beholds open savan-
nahs, where the inhabitants are never stung by mosquitos.

After proceeding further to the south, where the system
of yellowish-brown waters commences,* on the banks of the
Atabapo, the Tuni, the Tuamini, and the Bio Negro, we
enjoyed an unexpected repose. These rivers, like the
Orinoco, cross thick forests, but the tipulary insects, as well
as the crocodiles, shun the proximity of the Hack waters.
Possibly these waters, which are a little colder, and chemically
different from the white waters, are adverse to the larvae of
tipulary insects and gnats, which may be considered as real
aquatic animals. Some small rivers, the colour of which is
deep blue, or yellowish-brown (as the Toparo, the Mataveni,
and the Zaina), are exceptions to the almost general rule of
the absence of inosguitos over the black waters. These
three rivers swarm with them ; and the Indians themselves
fixed our attention on the problematic causes of this pheno-
menon. In going down the Rio Negro, we breathed freely
at Maroa, Daripe, and San Carlos, villages situated on the
boundaries of Brazil. But this improvement of our situation
was of short continuance; our sufferings recommenced as soon
as we entered the Cassiquiare. At Esmeralda, at the eastern
extremity of the Upper Orinoco, where ends the known
world of the Spaniards, the clouds of mosquitos are almost
as thick as at the Great Cataracts. At Mandavaca we found
an old missionary, who told us with an air of sadness, that
he had had "his twenty years of mosquitos"* in America.

* Generally called 'black waters' (agvat ntgrn*}.
f •' Yo tengo mis veinte afioi de mosquitos."

f 3

270 VARIOUS SPECIES OF MOSQUI1OS.

He desired us to look at his legs, " that we might be able to
tell one day, beyond sea (nor alia), what the poor monks
suffer in the forests of Cassiquiare." Every sting leaving a
small darkish brown point, his legs were so speckled that it
was difficult to recognize the whiteness of his skin through
the spots of coagulated blood. If the insects of the genus
Simulium abound in the Cassiquiare, which has white waters,
the culices or zancudos are so much the more rare; you
scarcely find any there ; while on the rivers of black waters,
in the Atabapo and the Eio, there are generally some zan
cudos and no mosquitos.

I have just shown, from my own observations, how much
the geographical distribution of venomous insects varies in
this labyrinth of rivers with white and black waters. It
Tvere to be wished that a learned entomologist could study
en the spot the specific differences of these noxious insects,*
which in the torrid zone, in spite of their minute size, act
an important point in the economy of nature. What ap-
peared to us veiy remarkable, and is a fact known to all the
missionaries, is, that the different species do not associate
together, and that at different hours of the day you are
stung by distinct species. Every time that the scene changes,
and, to use the simple expression of the missionaries, other
insects 'mount guard,' you have a few minutes, often a
quarter of an hour, of repose. The insects that disappear
have not their places instantly supplied by their successors.
From half-past-six in the morning till five in the afternoon,
the air is filled with mosquitos ; which have not, as some
travellers have stated, the form of our gnats,t but that
of a small fly. They are simuliums of the family Nemo-
cera of the system of Latreille. Their sting is as painful
as that of the genus Stomox. It leaves a little reddish
brown spot, which is extravased and coagulated blood, where
their proboscis has pierced the skin. An hour before sunset

* The mosquito bovo or tenbiguai ; the melero, which always settles
upon the eyes ; the tempranero, or putchiki; the jejen; the gnat rivau .
the great zancudo, or malchaki •, the cqfafi, &c.

•f Culex pipiens. This difference between mosquito (little fly, — sinmlium)
and zancudo (gnat, — culex) exists in all the Spanish colonies. The word
zancudo signifies 'longlegs/ — qui tiene las zancas largos. The mosquitos
of the Orinoco are the mowtiqnes ; the zancudos are the ntarinyouint of
French travellers.

PERIODS OF APPEARANCE ATH) DISAPPEARANCE. 277

ft species of small gnats, called tempraneros* because they
appear also at sunrise, take the place of the mosquito*
Their presence scarcely lasts an hour and a half ; they die.
appear between six and seven in the evening, or, as they
say here, after the Angelus (a la oracion). After a few mi-
nutes' repose, you feel yourself stung by zancudos, another
species of gnat with very long legs. The zancudo, the pro-
boscis of which contains a sharp-pointed sucker, causes the
most acute pain, and a swelling that remains several weeks.
Its hum resembles that of the European gnat, but is louder
and more prolonged. The Indians pretend to distinguish
the zancudos and the tempraneros " by their song ;" the
latter are real twilight insects, while the zaucudos are most
frequently nocturnal insects, and disappear toward sunrise.

In our way from Carthagena to Santa Fe de Bogota, we
observed that between Mompox and Honda, in the valley of
the Rio Magdalena, the zancudos darkened the air from
eight in the evening till midnight; that towards midnight
they diminished in number, and were hidden for three or
four hours ; and lastly that they returned in crowds, about
four in the morning. What is the cause of these alternations
of motion and rest ? Are these animals fatigued by long
flight ? It is rare on the Orinoco to see real gnats by day ;
while at the Rio Magdalena we were stung night and day,
except from noon till about two o'clock. The zancudos of
the two rivers are no doubt of different species.

We have seen that the insects of the tropics everywhere
follow a certain standard in the periods at which they alter-
nately arrive and disappear. At fixed and invariable hours,
in the same season, and the same latitude, the air is peopled
with new inhabitants, and in a zone where the barometer
becomes a clock,* where everything proceeds with such ad-
mirable regularity, we might ojuess blindfold the hour of the
day or night, by the hum of the insects, and by their stings,

* 'Which appear at an early hour* (temprano). Some persons say,
that the xancudo is the same as the tempranero, which returns at night,
after hiding itself for som ctime. I have doubts of this identity of the
species ; the pain caused by the sting of the two insects appeared to me
different.

f By the extreme regularity of the horary variations of the atmospheric
preMure.

278 EUROPEAN AND TROPICAL VARIETIES.

the pain of which differs according to the nature of the
poison that each species deposits in the wound.

At a period when the geography of animals and of plants
had not yet been studied, the analogous species of different
climates were often confounded. It was believed that the
pines and ranunculuses, the stags, the rats, and the tipulary
insects of the north of Europe, were to be found in Japan,
on the ridge of the Andes, and at the Straits of Magellan.
Justly celebrated naturalists have thought that the zancudo
of the torrid zone was the gnat of our marshes, become more
vigorous, more voracious, and more noxious, under the in-
fluence of a burning climate. This is a very erroneous
opinion. I carefully examined and described upon the spot
those zancudos, the stings of which are most tormenting. In
the rivers Magdalena and Guayaquil alone there are five dis-
tinct species.

The culices of South America have generally the wings,
corslet, and legs of an azure colour, ringed and variegated
with a mixture of spots of metallic lustre. Here as in
Europe, the males, which are distinguished by their feathered
antenna, are extremely rare ; you are seldom stung except
by females. The preponderance of this sex explains the
immense increase of the species, each female laying several
hundred eggs. In going up one of the great rivers of
America, it is observed, that the appearance of a new species
of culex denotes the proximity of a new stream flowing in.
I shall mention an instance of this curious phenomenon.
The Culex lineatus, which belongs to the Cafio Tamalamec,
is only perceived in the valley of the Hio Grande de la
Magdalena, at a league north of the junction of the two
rivers; it goes up, but scarcely ever descends the Rio
Grande. It is thus, that, on a principal vein, the appearance
of a new substance in the gangue indicates to the miner the
neighbourhood of a secondary vein that joins the first.

On recapitulating the observations here recorded, we see,
that within the tropics, the mosquitos and zancudos do not
rise on the slope of the Cordilleras* toward the temperate

* The yulex pipiens of Europe does not, like the culex of the torrid
zone, shun mountainous places. Giesecke suffered from these insects in
Greenland, at Disco, in latitude 70°. They are found in Lapland in
summer, a three or four hundred toises high, and at a temperature of

PREVALENCE OF THE PLAQUE OF MOSQUITOS. 279

region, where the mean heat is below 19* or 20° ; and that,
with few exceptions, they shun the black waters, and dry
and unwooded spots.* The atmosphere svrarms with them
much more in the Upper than in the Lower Orinoco,
because in the former the river is surrounded with thick
forests on its banks, and the skirts of the forests are not
separated from the river by a barren and extensive beach.
The mosquitos diminish on the New Continent with the
diminution of the water, and the destruction of the woods ;
but the effects of these changes are as slow as the progress
of cultivation. The towns of Angostura, Nueva Barcelona,
and Mompox, where from the want of police, the streets, the
great squares, and the interior of court-yards are overgrown
with brushwood, are sadly celebrated for the abundance of
zancudos.

People born in the country, whether whites, mulattoes,
negroes, or Indians, all suffer from the sting of these insects.
But as cold does not render the north of Europe uninha-
bitable, BO the mosquitos do not prevent men from dwelling
in the countries where they abound, provided that, by their
situation and government, they afford resources for agricul-
ture and industry. The inhabitants pass their lives in com-
plaining of the insufferable torment of the mosquitos, yet,
notwithstanding these continual complaints, they seek, and
even with a sort of predilection, the commercial towns of
Mompox, Santa Marta, and Rio de la Hacha. Such is the
force of habit in evils which we suffer every hour of the day,
that the three missions of San Borja, Atures, and Esmeralda,
where, to make use of an hyperbolical expression of the
monks, "there are more mosquitos than air,"* \vould no
doubt become nourishing towns, if the Orinoco afforded
planters the same advantages for the exchange of produce,
as the Ohio and the Lower Mississippi.

It is a curious fact, that the whites born in the torrid
zone may walk barefoot with impunity, in the same apart-

* Trifling modifications in the waters, or in the air, often appear to
prevent the development of the mosquitos. Mr. Bowdich remarks that
there are none at Coomassie, in the kingdom of the Ashantees, though the
town is surrounded by marshes, and though the thermometer keeps up
between seventeen and twenty-eight centesimal degrees, day and night.
t Mas moscas que aire.

280 EFFECTS OF THE MOSQUTTO-STISe.

ment where a European recently landed is exposed to the
attack of the nigua or chegoe (Pulex penetrans). This
animal, almost invisible to the eye, gets under the toe-nails,
and there acquires the size of a small pea, by the quick
increase of its eggs, which are placed in a bag under the
belly of the insect. The nigua therefore distinguishes what
the most delicate chemical analysis could not distinguish,
the cellular membrane and blood of a European from those
of a Creole white. The mosquitos, on the contrary, attack
equally the natives and the Europeans; but the effects of
the sting are different in the two races of men. The same
venomous liquid, deposited in the skin of a copper-coloured
man of Indian race, and in that of a white man newly
landed, causes no swelling in the former, while in the latter
it produces hard blisters, greatly inflamed, and painful for
several days; so different is the action on the epidermis,
according to the degree of irritability of the organs in
different races and different individuals !

I shall here recite several facts, which prove that the
Indians, and in general all the people of colour, at the
moment of being stung, suffer like the whites, although
perhaps with less intensity of pain. In the day-time, and
even when labouring at the oar, the natives, in order to
chase the insects, are continually giving one another smart
slaps with the palm of the hand. They even strike them-
selves and their comrades mechanically during their sleep.
The violence of their blows reminds one of the Persian tale
of the bear that tried to kill with his paw the insects on the
forehead of his sleeping master. Near Maypures we saw
some young Indians seated in a circle and rubbing cruelly
each others' 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 extract-
tracting, by means of a sharp bone, the little mass of coagu-
lated blood that forms the centre of every sting, and gives
the skin a speckled appearance. One of the most barbarous
nations of the Orinoco, that of the Ottomacs, is acquainted
with the use of mosquito-curtains (mosquiteros) woven
from the fibres of the moriche palm-tree. At Higuerote,
on the coast of Caracas, the copper-coloured people sleep
buried in the sand. In the villages of the Eio Magdalena

JTATTTE OOJTTBIVAirCES. 281

the Indians often invited us to stretch ourselves as they did
on ox-skins, near the church, in tbe middle of the plaza
grande., where they had assembled all the cows in the neigh-
bourhood. The proximity of cattle gives some repose to
mun. The Indians of the Upper Orinoco and the Cassi
quiare, seeing that M. Bonpland could not prepare his
herbal, owing to the continual torment of the mosquitos,
invited him to enter their ovens (hornitos). Thus they call
little chambers, without doors or windows, into which they
creep horizontally through a very low opening. "When they
have drheu away the insects Dy means of a fire of wet
brushwood, which emits a great deal of smoke, they close
the opening of the oven. The absence of the mosquitos is
purchased dearly enough by the excessive heat of the stag-
nated air, and the smoke of a torch of copal, which lights
the oven during your stay in it. M. Bonpland, with courage
and patience well worthy of praise, dried hundreds of plants,
shut up in these hornitos of the Indians.

These precautions of the Indians sufficiently prove that,
notwithstanding the different organization of the epidermis,
the copper-coloured man, like the white man, suffers from
the stings of insects ; but the former S6 -ms to feel less pain,
and the sting is not followed by those swellings which,
during several weeks, heighten the irritability of the skin,
and throw persons of a delicate constitution into that
feverish state which always accompanies eruptive maladies.
Whites born in equinoctial America, and Europeans who
have long sojourned in the Missions, on the borders of
forests and great rivers, suffer much more than the Indians,
but infinitely less than Europeans newly arrived. It is not,
therefore, as some travellers assert, the thickness of the
skin that renders the sting more or less painful at the
moment when it is received ; nor is it owing to the parti-
cular organization of the integuments, that in the Indians
the sting is followed by less of swelling and inflammatory
symptoms; it is on the nervous irritability of the epidermis
that the acuteness and duration of the pain depend. This
irritability is augmented by very warm clothing, by the use
of alcoholic liquors, by the habit of scratching the wounds,
and lastly, (and this physiological observation is the result of
my own experience,) that of baths repeated at too short

282 MTGEATIONS OF T1IE MOSQUITOS.

intervals. In places where the absence of crocodiles pennits
people to enter a river, M. Bonpland and myself observed
that the immoderate use of baths, while it moderated the
pain of old stings of zancudos, rendered us more sensible
to new stings. By bathing more than twice a day, the skin
is brought into a state of nervous irritability, of which no
idea can be formed in Europe. It would seem as if all
feeling were carried toward the integuments.

As the mosquito-2 and gnats pass two-thirds of their lives
in the water, it is not surprising that these noxious insects
become less numerous in proportion as you recede from the
banks of the great rivers which intersect the forests. They
seem to prefer the spots where their metamorphosis took
place, and where they go to deposit their eggs. In fact the
wild Indians (Indies monteros) experience the greater diffi-
culty in accustoming themselves to the life of the missions,
as they suffer in the Christian establishments a torment
which they scarcely know in their own inland dwellings.
The natives at Maypures, Atures, and Esmeralda, have been
seen fleeing to the woods, or, as they say, al monte, solely
from the dread of mosquitos. Unfortunately, all the Missions
of the Orinoco have been established too near the banks of
the river. At Esmeralda the inhabitants assured us that if
the village were situated in one of the five plains surrounding
the nigh mountains of Duida and Maraguaca, they should
breathe freely, and enjoy some repose. The great cloud of
mosquitos (la nube de moscas) to use the expression of the
monks, is suspended only over the Orinoco and its tributary
streams, and is dissipated in proportion as you remove from
the rivers. "We should form a very inaccurate idea of
Guiana and Brazil, were we to judge of that great forest four
hundred leagues wide, lying between the sources of the
Madeira and the Lower Orinoco, from the vailies of the
rivers by which it is crossed.

I learned that the little insects of the family of the nemo-
cerae migrate from time to time like the alouate monkeys,
which live in society. In certain spots, at the commence-
ment of the rainy season, different species appear, the sting
of which has not yet been felt. We were informed at the
Rio Magdalena, that at Simiti no other culex than the jejen
was formerly known j and it was then possible to enjoy a

TIIEIB VORACITY IN CERTAIN PLACES. 283

tranquil night's rest, for the jejen is not a nocturnal insect.
Since the year 1801, the great blue-winged gnat (Culex
cyanopterus) has appeared in such numbers, that the poor
inhabitnats of Simiti know not how to procure an undis-
turbed sleep. In the marshy channels (esteros) of the isle
of Baru, near Carthagena, is found a little white fly called
cafafi. It is scarcely visible to the naked eye, and causes
very painful swellings. The toldos or cottons used for
mosquito-curtains, are wetted to prevent the cafafi pene-
trating through the interstices left by the crossing threads.
This insect, happily rare elsewhere, goes up in January, by
the channel (dique) of Mahates, as far as Morales. When
we went to this village in the month of May, we found
there cimulice and zancudos, but nojejens.

The insects most troublesome at Orinoco, or as the Creoles
say, the most ferocious (los mas feroces), are those of the
great cataracts of Esmeralda and Mandavaca. On the Rio
Magdalena the Culex cyanopterus is dreaded, particularly at
Mom pox, Chiloa, and Tamalameca. At these places this
insect is larger and stronger, and its legs blacker. It is dif-
ficult to avoid smiling on hearing the missionaries dispute
about the size and voracity of the mosquitos at different
parts of the same river. In a region the inhabitants of which
are ignorant of all that is passing in the rest of the world,
this is the favourite subject of conversation. " How I pity
your situation !" said the missionary of the Baudales to the
missionary of Cassiquiare, at our departure ; " you are alone,
like me, in this country of tigers and monkeys ; with you
fish is still more rare, and the heat more violent ; but as for
my mosquitos (mias moscas) 1 can boast that with one of
mine I would beat three of yours."

This voracity of insects 'in certain spots, the fury with
which they attack man,* the activity of the venom varying
in the same species, are very remarkable facts ; which find
their analogy, however, in the classes of large animals. The
crocodile of Angostura pursues men, while at Neuva Barce-

* This voracity, this appetite for blood, seems surprising in little
insects, that live on vegetable juices, and in a country almost entirely
uninhabited. " What would these animals eat, if we did not pass this
way ?" say the Creoles, in going through countries where there are only
crocodiles covered with a scaly skin, and hairy monkeys.

284 SUPPOSED SALUTAEY EFFECT

lona you may bathe tranquilly in the Bio Never! amidst
these carnivorous reptiles. The jaguars of Maturin, Cuma-
nacoa, and the isthmus of Panama, are timid in comparison
of those of the Upper Orinoco. The Indians well know
that the monkeys of some valleys are easily tamed, while
others of the same species, caught elsewhere, will rather die
of hunger than submit to slavery.*

The common people in America have framed systems
respecting the salubrity of climates and pathological pheno-
mena, as well as the learned of Europe ; and their systems,
like ours, are diametrically opposed to each other, according
to the provinces into which the New Continent is divided.
At the Bio Magdalena the frequency of mosquitos is
regarded as troublesome, but salutary. These animals, say
the inhabitants, give us slight bleedings, and preserve us, in
a country excessively hot, from the scarlet fever, and other
inflammatory diseases. But at the Orinoco, the banks of
which are very insalubrious, the sick blame the mosquitos
for all their sufferings. It is unnecessary to refute the
fallacy of the popular belief that the action of the mosquitos
is salutary by its local bleedings. In Europe the inhabit-
ants of marshy countries are not ignorant that the insects
irritate the epidermis, and stimulate its functions by the
venom which they deposit in the wounds they make. Far
from diminishing the inflammatory state of the skin, the
stings increase it.

The frequency of gnats and mosquitos characterises un-
healthy climates only so far as the development and multi-
plication of these insects depend on the same causes that
give rise to miasmata. These noxious animals love a fertile
soil covered with plants, stagnant waters, and a humid air
never agitated by the wind ; they prefer to an open country
those shades, that softened day, that tempered degree of

* I might have added the example of the scorpion of Cumana, which
it is very difficult to distinguish from that of the island of Trinidad, Jamaica,
(Jarthagena, and Guayaquil ; yet the former is not more to be feared than
the Scorpio europseus (of the south of France), while the latter produces
consequences far more alarming than the Scorpio occitanus (of Spain and
Barbary). At Carthagena and Guayaquil, the sting of the scorpion
(alacran) instantly causes the loss of speech. Sometimes a singular
torpor of the tongue is observed for fifteen or sixteen hours. The patient,
when stung in the legs, stammers as if he had been struck with apoplexy.

PRODUCED BT THE MOSQUITOS. 285

lijjlit, heat, and moisture which, while it favours the action
ot chemical affinities, accelerates the putrefaction of organ-
ised substances. May not the mosquitos themselves in-
eivase the insalubrity of the atmosphere ? When we reflect
that to the height of three or four toises a cubic foot of air
is often peopled by a million of winged insects,* which
contain a caustic and venomous liquid ; when we recollect
that several species of culex are 1*8 line long from the head
to the extremity of the corslet (without reckoning the legs);
lastly, when we consider that in this swarm of mosquitos
and gnats, diffused in the atmosphere like smoke, there is
a great number of dead insects raised by the force of the
ascending air, or by that of the lateral currents which are
caused by the unequal heating of the soil, we are led to
inquire whether the presence of so many animal substances
in the air must not occasion particular miasmata. I think
that these substances act on the atmosphere differently from
jand and dust; but it will be prudent to affirm nothing
positively on this subject. Chemistry has not yet unveiled
the numerous mysteries of the insalubrity of the air ; it has
only taught us that we are ignorant of many things with
which a few years ago we believed we were acquainted.

Daily experience appears in a certain degree to prove the
fact that at the Orinoco, Cassiquiare, Rio Caura, and where-
ever the air is very unhealthy, the sting of the mosquito
augments the disposition of the organs to receive the im-
pression of miasmata. When you are exposed day and
night, during whole months, to the torment of insects, the
continual irritation of the skin causes febrile commotions ;
and, from the sympathy existing between the dermoid and
the gastric systems, injures the functions of the stomach.
Digestion first becomes difficult, the cutaneous inflamma-
tion excites profuse perspirations, an unquenchable thirst
succeds, and, in persons of a feeble constitution, increasing
impatience is succeeded by depression of mind, during
which all the pathogenic causes act with increased violence.
It is neither the dangers of navigating in small boats, the
eavage Indians, nor the serpents, crocodiles, or jaguars, that
make Spaniards dread a voyage on the Orinoco; it is, as

• It ii sufficient to nrention, that tbecuoic foot contains 2, 985, 981 cubic
ttt,

286 ABSENCE OF ANT BEMEDT.

they say with simplicity, " el sudar y las moscas," (the perspi-
ration and the flies). We have reason to believe that man-
kind, as they change the surface of the soil, will succeed in
altering by degrees the constitution of the atmosphere.
The insects will diminish when the old trees of the forest
have disappeared ; when, in those countries now desert,
the rivers are seen bordered with cottages, and the plains
covered with pastures and harvasts.

"Whoever has lived long in countries infested by mos-
quitos will be convinced, as we were, that there exists no
remedy for the torment of these insects. The Indians,
covered with anoto, bolar earth, or turtle oil, are not pro-
tected from their attacks. It is doubtful whether the
painting even relieves: it certainly does not prevent the
evil. Europeans, recently arrived at the Orinoco, the Hio
Magdalena, the river Guayaquil, or Bio Chagres (I mention
the four rivers where the insects are most to be dreaded) at
first obtain some relief by covering their faces and hands,
but they soon feel it difficult to endure the heat, are weary
of being condemned to complete inactivity, and finish with
leaving the face and hands uncovered. Persons who would
renounce all kind of occupation during the navigation of
these rivers, might bring some particular garment from
Europe in the form of a bag, under which they could
remain covered, opening it only every half-hour. This bag
should be distended by whalebone hoops, for a close mask
and gloves would be perfectly insupportable. Sleeping on
the ground, on skins, or in hammocks, we could not make
use of mosquito-curtains (toldos) while on the Orinoco.
The toldo is useful only where it forms a tent so well closed
around the bed that there is not the smallest opening by
which a gnat can pass. This is difficult to accomplish ; and
often when you succeed (for instance, in going up the Rio
Magdalena, where you travel with some degree of con-
venience), you are forced, in order to avoid being suffocated
by the heat, to come out from beneath your toldo, and walk
about in the open air. A feeble wind, smoke, and powerful
smells, scarcely afford any relief in places where the insects
are very numerous and very voracious. It is erroneously
affirmed that these little animals fly from the peculiar smell
emitted by the crocodile. We were fearfully stung at

SOURCE OF TUE STTSQ. 287

, in tlie road from Carthagena to Honda, while we
were dissecting a crocodile eleven feet long, the smell of
which infested all the surrounding atmosphere. The Indians
much commend the fumes of burnt cow-dung. When the
wind is very strong, and accompanied by rain, the mosquitos
disappear for some time: they sting most cruelly at the
approach of a storm, particularly when the electric explo-
sions are not followed by heavy showers.

Anything waved about the head and the hands contri-
butes to chase away the insects. " The more you stir your-
self, the less you will be stung," say the missionaries. The
zancudo makes a buzzing before it settles ; but, when it
has assumed confidence, when it has once begun to fix its
sucker, and distend itself, you may touch its wings without
its being frightened. It remains the whole time with its
two hind legs raised; and, if left to suck to satiety, no
swelling takes place, and no pain is left behind. We often
repeated this experiment on ourselves in the valley of the
Rio Magdalena. It may be asked whether the insect
deposits the stimulating liquid only at the moment of its
flight, when it is driven away, or whether it draws the
liquid up again when left to suck undisturbed. I incline to
this latter opinion; for on quietly presenting the back of
my hand to the Culex cyanopterus, I observed that the
pain, though violent in the beginning, diminishes in pro-
portion as the insect continues to suck, and ceases altogether
when it voluntarily flies away. I also wounded my skin
with a pin, and rubbed the pricks with bruised mosquitos,
and no swelling ensued. The irritating liquid, in which
chemists have not yet recognized any acid properties, is
contained, as in the ant and other hymenopterous insects,
in particular glands ; and is probably too much diluted, and
consequently too much weakened, if the skin be rubbed
with the whole of the bruised insect.

I have thrown together at the close of this chapter all
we learned during the course of our travels on phenomena
which naturalists have hitherto singularly neglected, though
they exercise a great influence on the welfare of the inha-
bitants, the salubrity of the climate, and the establishment
of new colonies on the rivers of equinoctial America. I
might justly have incurred the charge of having treated

288 RAVAGES or THE TEEMITBS.

this subject too much in detail, were it not connected v.llli
general physiological views. Our imagination is struck
only by what is great ; but the lover of natural philosophy
should reflect equally on little things. We have just seen
that winged insects, collected in society, and concealing in
their sucker a liquid that irritates the skin, are capable of
rendering vast countries almost uninhabitable. Other insects
equally small, the termites (comejen),* create obstacles to
the progress of civilization, in several hot and temperate
parts of the equinoctial zone, that are difficult to be sur-
mounted. They devour paper, pasteboard, and parchment
with frightful rapidity, utterly destroying records and libra-
ries. "Whole provinces of Spanish America do not possess
one written document that dates a hundred years back.
"What improvement can the civilization of nations acquire if
nothing link the present with the past ; if the depositaries
of human knowledge must be repeatedly renewed ; if the
records of genius and reason cannot be transmitted to
posterity ?

In proportion as you ascend the table-land of the Andes
these evils disappear. Man breathes a fresh and pure air.
Insects no more disturb the labours of the day or the
slumbers of the night. Documents can be collected in
archives without our having to complain of the voracity of
the termites. Mosquitos are no longer feared at a height
of two hundred toises; and the termites, still very frequent
at three hundred toises of elevation,* become very rare at
Mexico, Santa Fe de Bogota, and Quito. In these great
capitals, situated on the back of the Cordilleras, we find
libraries and archives, augmented from day to day by the
enlightened zeal of the inhabitants. These circumstances,
combined with others, insure a moral preponderance to the
Alpine region over the lower regions of the torrid zone. If
we admit, agreeably to the ancient traditions collected in
both the old and new worlds, that at the time of the catas-
trophe which preceded the renewal of our species, man
descended from the mountains into the plains, we may
admit, with still greater confidence, that these mountains,

* Literally, ' the eaters,' or * the devourers.'

t There are some at Popayan (height 910 toises; mean temperature
18' 7°), but they are species that gnaw wood only.

CAVEJIW OF ATARUIPE. 28C

the cradle of so many various nations, will for ever remain
ttie centre of human civilization in the torrid zone. From
these fertile and temperate table-lands, from these islets
scattered in the aerial ocean, knowledge and the blessings
of social institutions will be spread over those vast forests
extending along the foot of the Andes, now inhabited only
by savage tribes whom the very wealth of nature hag
retained in indolence and barbarism.

CHAPTEB XXI.

Raudal of Garcita. — Maypures. — Cataracts of Quituna. — Mouth of the
Vichada and the Zatna. — Rock of Aricagua. — Siquita.

WE directed our course to the Puerto de arriba, above
the cataract of Atures, opposite the mouth of the Kio
Cataniapo, where our boat was to be ready for us. In the
narrow path that leads to the embarcadero we beheld for
the last time the peak of Uniana. It appeared like a cloud
rising above the horizon of the plains. The Gruahibos
wander at the foot of the mountains, and extend their
course as far as the banks of the Vichada. We were
shown at a distance, on the right of the river, the rocks
that surround the cavern of Atai-uipe ; but we had not
time to visit that cemetery of the destroyed tribe of the
Atures. Father Zea had repeatedly described to us this
extraordinary cavern, the skeletons painted with anoto, the
large vases of baked earth, in which the bones of separate
families appear to be collected; and many other curious
objects, which we proposed to examine on our return from
the Eio Negro. "You will scarcely believe," said the
missionaries, "that these skeletons, these painted vases,
things which we believed were unknown to the rest of the
world, have brought trouble upon me and my neighbour,
the missionary of Carichana. You have seen the misery
in which I live in the raudales. Though devoured by mos-
qiutos, and often in want of plantains and cassava, yet I
have found envious people even in this country I A white
man, who inhabits the pastures between the Meta and the
Apure, denounced me recently in tl^e Audencia of Caracas,

VOL. n. u

SUPPOSED HIDDEN TBEASTTBE.

as concealing a treasure I had discovered, jointly with the
missionary of Cariehana, amid the tombs of the Indians.
It is asserted fciat the Jesuits of Santa Fe de Bogota were
apprised beforehand of the destruction of their company ;
and that, in order to save the riches they possessed m
money and precious vases, they sent them, either by t
Bio Meta or the Yichada, to the Orinoco, with orders to
have them hidden in the islets amid the raudales.
treasures I am supposed to have appropriated unknown t
my superiors. The Audencia of Caracas brought a com-
plaint before the governor of Guiana, and we were ordered
to appear in person. We uselessly performed a journey ot
one hundred and fifty leagues; and, although we declared
that we had found in the cavern only human bones, am
dried bats and polecats, commissioners were gravely no-
minated to come hither and search on the spot for the
supposed treasures of the Jesuits. We shall wait long tor
these commissioners. When they have gone up the Ori-
noco as far as San Borja, the fear of the mosquitos wiU
prevent them from going farther. The doud of flies which
envelopes us in the raudales is a good defence.

The account given by the missionary was entirely COT
formable to what we afterwards learned at Angostura iror
the governor himself. Fortuitous circumstances had give
rise to the strangest suspicions. In the caverns where the
mummies and skeletons of the nation of the Atures are
found even in the midst of the cataracts, and in the most
inacce'ssible islets, tie Indians long ago discovered boxes
bound with iron, containing various European tools, rei
nants of clothes, rosaries, and glass trinkets. These objects
are thought to have belonged to Portuguese traders of the
Bio Negro and Grand Para, who, before the establishment
of the Jesuits on the banks of the Orinoco, went up to
Atures by the portages and interior communications
rivers to trade with the natives. It is supposed thatttese
men sunk beneath the epidemic maladies so common in the
raudales, and that their chests became the property of the
Indians, the wealthiest of whom were usually buried wit!
aU they possessed most valuable during their lives, .broir
these very uncertain traditions the tale of hidden treasure;
Ua been fabricated. As in the Andes of Quito every ruine<

SUPPRESSION OF THE JESUITS. 291

building, not excepting the foundations of the pyramids
erected by the French savans for the measurement of the
meridian, is regarded as Inga pilca* that is, the work of
the Inca; BO on the Orinoco every hidden treasure can
belong only to the Jesuits, an order which, no doubt,
governed the missions better than the Capuchins and
the monks of the Observance, but whose riches and
success in the civilization of the Indians have been much
exaggerated. When the Jesuits of Santa Fe were arrested,
those heaps of piastres, those emeralds of Muzo, those bars
of gold of Choco, which the enemies of the company sup-

rsed they possessed, were not found in their dwellings,
can cite a respectable testimony, which proves ineon-
testibly, that the viceroy of New Granada had not warned
the Jesuits of Santa Fe of the danger with which they were
menaced. Don Vicente Orosco, an engineer officer in the
Spanish army, related to me that, being arrived at An-
gostura, with Don Manuel Centurion, to arrest the mis-
sionaries of Carichana, he met an Indian boat that was
going down the Rio Meta. The boat being manned with
Indians who could speak none of the tongues of the country,
gave rise to suspicions. After useless researches, a bottle
was at length discovered, containing a letter, in which the
Superior of the company residing at Srvnta F6 informed the
missionaries of the Orinoco of the persecutions to which
the Jesuits were exposed in New Grenada. This letter
recommended no measure of precaution ; it was short, with-
out ambiguity, and respectful towards the government,
whose orders were executed with useless and unreasonable
severity.

Eight Indians of Atures had conducted our boat through
the raudales, and seemed well satisfied with the slight re-
compence we gave them. They gain little by this employ-
ment; and in order to give a just idea of the poverty and
want of commerce in the missions of the Orinoco, I shall
observe that during three years, with the exception of the
boats sent annually to Angostura by the commander of
San Carlos du Bio Negro, to fetch the pay of the soldiers,
the missionary had seen but five canoes of the

• Pilca (properly in Quichua pirca), wall of the Inca,

U 2

292 THE MAOO INDIANS.

Orinoco pass the cataract, which were bound for the
harvest of turtles' eggs, and eight boats laden with mer-
chandize.

About eleven on the morning of the 17th of April we
reached our boat. Father Zea caused to be embarked, with
our instruments, the small store of provisions he had been
able to procure for the voyage, on which he was to accom-
pany us ; these provisions consisted of a few bunches of
plantains, some cassava, and fowls. Leaving the embar-
cadero, we immediately passed the mouth of the Cataniapo,
a small river, the banks of which are inhabited by the
Macos, or Piaroas, who belong to the great family of the
Salive nations.

Besides the Piaroas of Cataniapo, who pierce their ears,
and wear as ear-ornaments the teeth of caymans and pec-
caries, three other tribes of Macos are known : one, on the
Ventuari, above the Bio Mariata; the second, on the
Padamo, north of the mountains of Maraguaca; and the
third, near the Guaharibos, towards the sources of the
Orinoco, above the Bio Gehette. This last tribe bears the
name of Macos-Macos. I collected the following words from
a young Maco of the banks of the Cataniapo, whom we
met near the embarcadero, and who wore in his ears, instead
of a tusk of the peccary, a large wooden cylinder.*

Plantain, Paruru (in Tamanac also, parwu) .

Cassava, Elente (in Maco, cahig).

Maize, Niarne.

The sun, Jama (in Salive, mume-seke-cocco).

The moon, Jama (in Salive, vexio).

Water, Ahia (in Salive, cagua).

One, Nianti.

Two, Tajus.

Three, PercotaTiuja.

Four, Imontegroa.

The young man could not reckon as far as five, which cer -
tainly is no proof that the word five does not exist in the
Maco tongue. I know not whether this tongue be a dialect
of the Salive, as is pretty generally asserted; for idioms

* This custom is observed among the Cabres, the Maypures, and the
Pevas of the Amazon. These last, described by La Condamine, stretch
their ears by weights of a considerable size.

BATTDA.L OF OABCITA. 298

derived from one another, sometimes furnish words utterly
different for the most common and most important things.*
But in discussions on mother-tongues and derivative lan-
guages, it is not the sounds, the roots only, that are
decisive ; but rather the interior structure and grammatical
forms. In the American idioms, which are notwithstanding
rich, the moon is commonly enough called the sim of night
or even the sun of leep ; but the moon and sun very rarel
bear the same name, as among the Macos. I know onl^
a few examples in the most northerly part of America,
among the Woccons, the Ojibbeways, the Muskogulges,
and the Mohawks.f Our missionary asserted that jama,
in Maco, indicated at the same time the Supreme Being,
and the great orbs of night and day; while many other
American tongues, for instance the Tamanac, and the
Caribbee, have distinct words to denote Grod, the Moon,
and the Sun. We shall soon see how anxious the mission-
aries of the Orinoco are not to employ, in their translations
of the prayers of the church, the native words which denote
the Divinity, the Creator (Amanene}, the Great Spirit who
animates all nature. They choose rather to Indianize the
Spanish word Dios, converting it, according to the differ-
ences of pronunciation, and the genius of the different
dialects, into Dioso, Tiosu, or Piosu.

When we again embarked on the Orinoco, we found the
river free from shoals. After a few hours we passed the
Raudal of Grarcita, the rapids of which are easy of ascent,
when the waters are In'gh. To the eastward is seen a small
chain of mountains called the chain of Cumadamiuari, con-
sisting of gneiss, and not of stratified granite. We were
struck with a succession of great holes at more than one
hundred and eighty feet above the present level of the
Orinoco, yet which, notwithstanding, appear to be the effects
of the erosion of the waters. We shall see hereafter, that
this phenomenon occurs again nearly at the same height,
both in the rocks that border the cataracts of Maypures,
and fifty leagues to the east, near the mouth of the Rio Jao.

* The great family of the Esthonian (or Tschoudi) languages, and of
the Samoiede languages, affords numerous examples of these differences.

t Nipia-kmathwa in the Shawuiese (the idiom of Canada), from
to sleep, and kiaatlnra} the sun.

291 STBENGTH OF THE CUEBEWT.

"We slept in the open air, on the left bank of the riyer,
below the island of Tomo. The night was beautiful and
serene, but the torment of the mosquitos was so great near
the ground, that I could not succeed in levelling the artificial
horizon ; consequently I lost the opportunity of making an
observation.

On the 18th we set out at three in the morning, to be
more sure of arriving before the close of the day at the
cataract known by the name of the Randal de los GuaTiibos.
"We stopped at the mouth of the Rio Tomo. The Indians
went on shore, to prepare their food, and take some repose.
When we reached the foot of the raudal, 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 ol
gneiss several feet high. An Indian threw himself into the
water, to reach, by swimming, the rock that divides the
cataract into two parts. A rope was fastened to the point
of this rock, and when the canoe was hauled near enough,
our instruments, our dry plants, and the provision we had
collected at Atures, were lauded in the raudal itself. "We
remarked with surprise, that the natural dam over which the
river is precipitated, presents a dry space of considerable
extent ; where we stopped to see the boat go up.

The rock of gneiss exhibits circular holes, the largest ol
which are four feet deep, and eighteen inches wide. These
funnels contain quartz pebbles, and appear to have been
formed by the friction of masses rolled along by the impulse
of the waters. Our situation, in the midst of the cataract,
^ras singular enough, but unattended by the smallest danger.
The missionary, who accompanied us, had his fever-fit on
him. In order to quench the thirst by which he was tor-
mented, the idea suggested itself to us of preparing a re-
freshing beverage for him in one of the excavations of the
rock. We had taken on board at Atures an Indian basket
called a mapire, filled with sugar, limes, and those grenadillas,
or fruits of the passion-flower, to which the Spaniards give
the name of parchas. As we were absolutely destitute ot
large vessels for holding and mixing liquids, we poured the
water of the river, by means of a calabash, nto one of the
holes of the rock : to this we added sugar and lime-juice.
lu a few minutes we had an excellent beverage, which ie

ARRIVAL AT THTJ VILLAGE. 295

almost a refinement of luxury, in that wild spot ; but our
wants rendered us every day more and more ingenious.

After an hour of expetation, we saw the boat arrive above
the raudal, and we were soon ready to depart. After quit-
ting the rock, our passage was not exempt from danger.
The river is eight hundred toises broad, and must be crossed
obliquely, above the cataract, at the point where the waters,
impelled by the slope of their bed, rush with extreme
violence toward the ledge from which they are precipitated.
We were overtaken by a storm, accompanied happily by no
wind, but the rain fell in torrents. After rowing for twenty
minutes, the pilot declared, that, far from gaining upon the
current, we were again approaching the raudal. These mo-
ments of uncertainty appeared to us very long : the Indians
spoke only in whispers, as they do always when they think
their situation perilous. They redoubled their eiforts, and
we arrived at nightfall, without any accident, in the port of
Maypures.

Storms within the tropics are as short a they are violent.
The lightning had fallen twice near our boat, and had no
doubt struck the surface of the water. I mention this phe-
nomenon, because it is pretty generally believed in those
countries that the clouds, the surface of which is charged
with electricity, are at so great a height that the lightning
reaches the ground more rarely than in Europe. The night
was extremelv dark, and we could not in less than two
hours reach the village of Maypures. We were wet to the
skin. In proportion as the rain ceased, the zancudos re-
appeared, with that voracity which tipulary insects always
display immediately after a storm. My fellow-travellers
were uncertain whether it would be best to stop in the port
or proceed on our way on foot, in spite of the darkness of
the night. Father Zea was determined to reach his home,
lie 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." We followed the counsel jf
the missionary, who caused torches of copal to be lighted.

296 A NOCTURNAL JOTTENET.

These torches are tubes made of bark, three inches in
diameter, and filled with copai resin. "We walked at first
over beds of rock, which were bare and slippery, and then
we entered a thick grove of palm trees. We 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 woody substance which resembles
the wick surrounding the resin, they emit more smoke
than light, and are easily extinguished. The Indian pilot,
who expressed himself with some facility in Spanish, told us
of snakes, water-serpents, and tigers, by which we might" be
attacked. Such conversations may be expected as matters
of course, by persons who travel at night with the natives.
By intimidating the European traveller, the Indians imagine
they render themselves more necessary, and gain the con-
fidence of the stranger. The rudest inhabitant of the
missions fully understands the deceptions which everywhere
arise from the relations between men of unequal fortune
and civilization. Under the absolute and sometimes vexa-
tious government of the monks, the Indian seeks to ame-
liorate his condition by those little artifices which are the
weapons of physical and intellectual weakness.

Having arrived during the night at San Jose de Maypures
we were forcibly struck by the solitude of the place ; the
Indians were plunged in profound sleep, and nothing was
heard but the 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
has in it something sad and solemn. We remained three
days at Maypures, a small village founded by Don Jose
Solano at the time of the expedition of the boundaries, the
situation of which is more picturesque, it might be said still
more admirable, than that of Atures.

The raudal of Maypures, called by the Indians Quituna,
is formed, as all cataracts are, by the resistance which the
river encounters in its way across a ridge of rocks, or a
chain of mountains. The lofty mountains of Cunavami and
Calitannni, between the sources of the rivers Cataniapo and
Ventuari, stretch toward the west in a chain of granitic
hills. From this chain flow three small rivers, which em-
brace in some sort the cataract of Maypures. There arc, on

ALTERATION OF THE WATEB-LEVEL. 297

the eastern bank, the Sanariapo, and on the western, the
Cameji and the Toparo. Opposite the village of Maypures,
the mountains fall back in an arch, and, like a rocky coast,
form a gulf open to the south-east. The irruption of the
river is effected between the mouths of the Toparo and the
Sanariapo, at the western extremity of this majestic amphi
theatre.

The waters of the Orinoco now roll at the foot of the
eastern chain of the mountains, and have receded from the
west, where, in a deep valley, the ancient shore is easily
recognized. A savannah, scarcely raised thirty feet above
the mean level of the river, extends from this valley as far
as the cataracts. There the small church of Maypures has
been constructed. It is built of trunks of palm-trees, and
is surrounded by seven or eight huts. The dry valley, which
runs in a straight line from south to north, from the Cameji
to the Toparo, is filled with granitic and solitary mounds,
all resembling those found in the shape of islands and shoals
in the present bed of the river. I was struck with this
analogy of form, on comparing the rocks of Keri and Oco,
situated in the deserted bed of the river, west of Maypures,
with the islets of Ouivitari and Caminitamini, which rise
like old castles amid the cataracts to the east of the mission.
The geological aspect of these scenes, the insular form of
the elevations farthest from the present shore of the Orinoco,
the cavities which the waves appear to have hollowed in the
rock Oco, and which are precisely on the same level (twenty-
five or thirty toises high) as the excavations perceived oppo-
site to them in the isle of Ouivitari ; all these appearances
prove that the whole of this bay, now dry, was formerly
covered by water. Those waters probably formed a lake,
the northern dike preventing their running out : but, when
this dike was broken down, the savannah that surrounds
the mission appeared at first like a very low island, bounded
by two arms of the same river. It may be supposed that
the Orinoco continued for some time to fill the ravine, which
we shall call the valley of Keri, because it contains the rock
of that name ; and that the waters retired wholly toward
tho eastern chain, leaving dry the western arm of the river,
only as they gradually diminished. Coloured stripes, which
no doubt owe their black tint to the oxides of iron and

298 POSTAGES ON THE RIVERS.

manganese, seem to justify this conjecture. They are fcund
on all the stones, far from the mission, and indicate the
former abode of the waters. In going up the river all
merchandise is discharged at the confluence of the Bio
Toparo and the Orinoco. The boats are entrusted to the
natives, who have so perfect a knowledge of the raudal, that
they have a particular name for every step. They conduct
the boats as far as the mouth of the Cameji, where the
danger is considered as past.

I will here describe the cataract of Quituna or Maypurea
as it appeared at the two periods when I examined it, in
going down and up the river. It is formed, like that of
Mapara or Atures, by an archipelago of islands, which, to
the length of three thousand toises, fill the bed of the river ;
and by rocky dikes, which join the islands together. The
most remarkable of these dikes, or natural dams, are Pnri-
marimi, Manimi, and the Leap of the Sardine (Salto de la
Sardina). I name them in the order in which I saw them
in succession from south to north. The last of these three
stages is near nine feet high, and forms by its breadth a
magnificent cascade. I must here repeat, however, that the
turbulent shock of the precipitated and broken waters de-
pends not so much on the absolute height of each step or
dike, as upon the multitude of counter-currents, the group-
ing of the islands and shoals, that He at the foot of the
raudalitos or partial cascades, and the contraction of the
channels, which often do not leave a free navigable passage
of twenty or thirty feet. The eastern part of the cataract
of Maypures is much more dangerous than the western ;
and therefore the Indian pilots prefer the left bank of the
river to conduct the boats down or up. Unfortunately, in
the season of low waters, this bank remains partly dry, and
recourse must be had to the process of portage; that is, the
boats are obliged to be dragged on cylinders, or round logs.

To command a comprehensive view of these stupendous
scenes, the spectator must be stationed on the little moun-
tain of Manimi, a granitic ridge, which rises from the
savannah, north of the church of the mission, and is itself
only a continuation of the ridges of which the raudalito of
Manimi is composed. We often visited this mountain, foi
we were never weary of gazing on this astonishing spectacle.

SCESERY OF T1IE TALLS. 299

From the summit of the rock is descried a steet of foam,
extending the length of a whole mile. Enormous masses of
stone, black as iron, issue from its bosom. Some are paps
grouped in pairs, like basaltic hills; others resemble towers,
fortified castles, and ruined buildings. Their gloomy tint
contrasts with the silvery splendour of the foam. Every
rock, every islet is covered with vigorous trees, collected in
clusters. At the foot of those paps, far as the eye can reach,
a thick vapour is suspended over the river, and through this
whitish fog the tops of the lofty palm-trees shoot up. What
name shall we give to these majestic plants? I suppose
them to be the vadgiai, a new species of the genus Oreodoxa,
the trunk of which is more than eighty feet high. The fea-
thery leaves of this palm-tree have a brilliant lustre, and rise
almost straight toward the sky. At every hour of the day
the sheet of foam displays different aspects. Sometimes the
hilly islands and the palm-trees project their broad shadows ;
sometimes the rays of the setting sun are refracted in the
cloud that hangs over the cataract, and coloured arcs are
formed which vanish and appear alternately.

Such is the character of the landscape discovered from the
top of the mountain of Manimi, which no traveller has yet
described. I do not hesitate to repeat, that neither time,
nor the view of the Cordilleras, nor any abode in the tem-
perate vallies of Mexico, has effaced from my mind the
powerful impression of the aspect of the cataracts. When I
read a description of those places in India that are embel-
lished by running waters and a vigorous vegetation, my
imagination retraces a sea of foam and palm-trees, the tops
of which rise above a stratum of vapour. The majestic
scenes of nature, like the sublime works of poetry and the
arts, leave remembrances that are incessantly awakening,
and which, through the whole of life, mingle with all our
feelings of what is grand and beautiful.

The calm of the atmosphere, and the tumultuous move-
ment of the waters, produce a contrast peculiar to this zone.
Here no breath of wind ever agitates the foliage, no cloud
veils the splendour of the azure vault of heaven; a great
mass of light is diffused in the air, on the earth strewn with
plants with glossy leaves, and on the bed of the river, which
extends as far as the eye can reach. This appearance

300 THE PYTHON SERPENT.

prises the traveller born in the north of Europe. The idea
of wild scenery, of a torrent rushing from rock to rock, is
linked in his imagination with that of a climate where the
noise of the tempest is mingled with the sound of the cataract;
and where, in a gloomy and misty day, sweeping clouds seem
to descend into the valley, and to rest upon the tops of the
pines. The landscape of the tropics in the low regions of
the continents has a peculiar physiognomy, something of
greatness and repose, which it preserves even where one of
the elements is struggling with invincible obstacles. Near
the equator, hurricanes and tempests belong to islands only,
to deserts destitute of plants, and to those spots where parts
of the atmosphere repose upon surfaces from which the
radiation of heat is very unequal.

The mountain of Manimi forms the eastern limit of a
plain which furnishes for the history of vegetation, that is,
for its progressive development in bare and desert places,
the same phenomena which we have described above in
speaking of the raudal of Atures. During the rainy season,
the waters heap vegetable earth upon the granitic rock, the
bare shelves of which extend horizontally. These islands of
mould, decorated with beautiful and odoriferous plants,
resemble the blocks of granite covered with flowers, which
the inhabitants of the Alps call gardens or courtils, and
which pierce the glaciers of Switzerland.

In a place where we had bathed the day before, at the
foot of the rock of Manimi, the Indians killed a serpent
seven feet and a-half long. The Macos called it a camudu.
Its back displayed, upon a yellow ground, transverse bands,
partly black, and partly inclining to a brown green: under
the belly the bands were blue, and united in rhombic spots.
This animal, which is not venomous, is said by the natives to
attain more than fifteen feet in length. I thought at first,
that the camudu was a, boa; but I saw with surprise, that
the scales beneath the tail were divided into two rows. It
was therefore a viper, (coluber); perhaps a python of the
New Continent : I say perhaps, for great naturalists appear
to admit that all the pythons belong to the Old, and all
the boas to the New "World. As the boa of Pliny was a
serpent of Africa and of the south of Europe, it would have
been well if the boas of America had been named pythons,

WATElt SHAKES. 301

and the pythons of India been called boas. The first
notions of an enormous reptile capable of seizing man, and
even the great quadrupeds, came to us from India and the
coast of Guinea. However indifferent names may be, we
can scarcely admit the idea, that the hemisphere in which
Virgil described the agonies of Laocoon. (a fable which the
Greeks of Asia borrowed from much more southern nations)
does not possess the boa-constrictor. I will not augment
the confusion of zoological nomenclature by proposing new
changes, and shall confine myself to observing that at least
the missionaries and the latinized Indians of the missions,
if not the planters of Guiana, clearly distinguish the traga-
venados (real boas, with simple anal plates) from the culebras
de agua, or water-snakes, like the camudu (pythons with
double anal scales). The traga-venados have no transverse
bunds on the back, but a chain of rhombic or hexagonal
spots. Some species prefer the driest places; others love
the water, as the pythons, or culebras de agua.

Advancing towards the west, we find the hills or islets in
the deserted branch of the Orinoco crowned with the same
palm-trees that rise on the rocks of the cataracts. One of
these hills, called Keri, is celebrated in the country on
account of a white spot which shines from afar, and in
which the natives profess to see the image of the full moon.
I could not climb this steep rock, but I believe the white
spot to be a large nodule of quartz, formed by the union of
several of those veins so common in granites passing into
gneiss. Opposite Keri, or the Rock of the Moon, on the
twin mountain Ouivitari, which is an islet in the midst of
the cataracts, the Indians point out with mysterious awe a
similar white spot. It has the form of a disc; and they
say tin's is the image of the sun (Camosi). Perhaps the
geographical situation of these two objects has contributed
to their having received these names. Keri is on the side
of the setting, Camosi on that of the rising sun. Languages
being the most ancient historical monuments of nations,
some learned men have been singularly struck by the ana-
logy between the American word camosi and camosch, which
seems to have signified originally, the sun, in one of the
Semitic dialects. This analogy has given rise to hypotheses

302 THE MAYPU11E TONGUE.

which appear to me at least very problematical. The god
of the Moabites, Chemosh, or Camosch, who has so wearied
the patience of the learned; Apollo Chomens, cited by
Strabo and by Ammianus Marcellinus; Belphegor; Amun
or Haraon ; and Adonis : all, without doubt, represent the
sun in the winter solstice ; but what can we conclude from
si solitary and fortuitous resemblance of sounds in languages
that have nothing besides in common?

The Maypure tongue is still spoken at Atures, although
the mission is inhabited only by G-uahibos and Macos. A t
Maypures the Guareken and Pareni tongues only are now
spoken. Erom the Bio Anaveni, which falls into the
Orinoco north of Atures, as far as beyond Jao, and to the
mouth of the Guaviare (between the fourth and sixth
degrees of latitude), we everywhere find rivers, the termi-
nation of which, veni* recalls to mind the extent to which
the Maypure tongue heretofore prevailed. Veni, or weni,
signifies water, or a river. The words camosi and keri,
which we have just cited, are of the idiom of the Pareni
Indians,f who, I think I have heard from the natives,
lived originally on the banks of the Mataveni.J The Abbe
Gili considers the Pareni as a simple dialect of the May-
pure. This question cannot be solved by a comparison of
the roots merely. Being totally ignorant of the gram-
matical structure of the Pareni, I can raise but feeble
doubts against the opinion of the Italian missionary. The
Pareni is perhaps a mixture of two tongues that belong to
different families ; like the Maquiritari, which is composed
of the Maypure and the Caribbee ; or, to cite an example
better known, the modern Persian, which is allied at the
same time to the Sanscrit and to the Semitic tongues. The

* Anaveni, Mataveni, Maraveni, &c.

t Or Parenas, who must not be confounded either with the Paravenei
of the Rio Caura (Caulin, p. 69), or with the Parecas, whose languag
belongs to the great family of the Tamanac tongues. A young Indian ot-
Maypures, who called himself a Paragini, answered my questions almost
in the same words that M. Bonpland heard from a Pareni. I have
indicated the differences in the table, see pp. 303-4.

J South of the Rio Zanaa, We slept in the open air near the mouth
of the Mataveni on the 28th day of May, in our rsturo from the Rio

ANALOGY OF WOBDS.

308

following are Pareni words, which I carefully compared
with Maypure words.*

PARKX) TONGUE.

MAYPURE TONGUE.

The sun

Cainosi

Kie (Kiepurig)

The moon

Ken

Kejapi (Cagijapi)

A star

Ouipo

Urrupu

The devil

Amethami

Yasuri t

Water

Oueni (ut)

Oueni

Fire

Casi

Catti

Lightning

Eno

Eno-imaf

The head

Ossipo

Nuchibucu J

The hair

Nomao

Tlte eyes

Nopurizi

Nupuriki

The nose

Nosivi

Nukirri

The mouth

Nonoma

Nunumacu

The teeth

Nasi

Nati

The tongue

Notate

Nuare

The ear

Notasine

Nuakini

The cheek

Nocaco

The neck

Nono

Noinu

The arm

Nocano

Nuana

The hand

Nucavi

Nucapi

The breast

Notoroni

The back

Notoli

The thigh

Nocazo

The nipples

Nocini

The foot

Nocizi

Nukii

The toes

Nociziriani

The calf of the leg

Nocavua

A crocodile

Cazuiti

Amana

A fi>h

Cimasi

Timaki

Maize

Cana

Jomuki

Plantain

Paratana (Teot)§

Arata

* The words of the Maypure language have been taken from the worki
of Gili and Hervas. I collected the words placed between parentheses from
a young Maco Indian, who understood the Maypure language,

t I am ignorant of what ima signifies in this compound word. Eno
means in Maypure the sky and thunder. Ina signifies mother.

J The syllables no and nu, joined to the words that designate parts of
the body, might have been suppressed ; they answer to the possessive
pronoun my.

§ We may be surprised to find the word teot denote the eminently
nutritive substance that supplies the place of corn (the gift of a henr-
f» i HI ilivinityj, ana ou which the subsistence of man within the

304

RESEMBLANCE OF SOTTITDS.

PARENI TONGUE.

MAYPURE TONGUK.

Cacao
Tobacco
Pimento
Mimosa inga
Cecropia peltata
Agaric

Cacavua*

Jema

(Pumake)

(Caraba)

(Jocovi)

(Cajuli)

Puziana (Pagians)

Sinapa (Achinafe)

Meteuba (Meuteufafa)

Puriana vacavi

Puriana vacavi

uschanite
Puriassima vacavi

Jema

Papeta (Popetas)
Avanume (Avanome)
Apekiva Pejiiveji)
(Jaliva

(Javiji)

This comparison seems to prove that the analogies ob-
served in the roots of the Pareni and the Maypure tongues
are not to be neglected ; they are, however, scarcely more
frequent than those that have been observed between the
Maypure of the Upper Orinoco and the language of the
Moxos, which is spoken on the banks of the Marmora,
from 15° to 20° of south latitude. The Parenis have in
their pronunciation the English th, or tsa of the Arabians,
as I clearly heard in the word Amethami (devil, evil spirit).
I need not again notice the origin of the word camosi.
Solitary resemblances of sounds are as little proof of com-
munication between nations as the dissimilitude of a few
roots furnishes evidence against the affiliation of the
Gerniac from the Persian and the Greek. It is remarkable,
however, thac the names of the sun and moon are sometimes
found to be identical in languages, the grammatical con-
depends. I may here mention, that the word Teo, or Teot, which in
Aztec signifies God {Teotl, properly Teo, for tl is only a termination), is
found in the language of the Betoi of the Rio Meta. The name of the
moon, in this language so remarkable for the complication of its gram-
matical structure, is Teo-ro. The name of the sun is Teo-umasoi. The
particle ro designates a woman, umasoi a man. Among the Betoi, the
Maypures, and so many other nations of both continents, the moon is
believed to be the wife of the sun. But what is this root Teo ? It appears
to me very doubtful, that Teo-ro should signify God-woman, for Jifemelu
IB the name of the All-powerful Being in the Belol langnage.

* Has this word been introduced from a communication with Europeans?
It is almost identical with the Mexican (Aztec) word cacata.

NAM KB OF CONSTELLATlOfcB. 805

etri.ctiou of which is entirely different; I may cite as
examples the Guarany and th« Omagua,* languages of na-
tions formerly very powerful. It may be conceived that,
with the worship of tne stars and of the powers of nature,
words which have a relation to these objects might pass
from one idiom to another. I showed the constellation of
the Southern Cross to a Pareni Indian, who covered the
lantern while I was taking the circum-meridian heights of
the stars; and he called it Eahumehi, a name which the
caribe fish, or serra sakne, also bears in Pareni. He
was ignorant of the name of the belt of Orion ; but a Poig-
nave Indian,t who knew the constellations better, assured
me that in his tongue the belt of Orion bore the name of
Fuebot; he called the moon Zenquerot. These two words
have a very peculiar character for words of American origin.
As the names of the constellations may have been trans-
mitted to immense distances from one nation to another,
these Poignave words have fixed the attention of the learned,
who have imagined they recognize the Phoenician and
Moabite tongues in the word camosi of the Pareni. Fuelot
and zenquerot seem to remind us of the PhoBnician words
mot (clay), ardod (oak-tree), ephod, &c. But what can we
conclude from simple terminations which are most fre-
quently foreign to the roots? In Hebrew the feminine
plurals terminate also in oth. I noted entire phrases in
Poignave ; but the young man whom I interrogated spoke
so quick that I could not seize the division of the words,
and should have mixed them confusedly together had I
attempted to write them down .J

* Sun and Moon, in Guarany, Quarasi and Jasi; in Omagua, Huarassi
»nd Jase. I shall give, farther on, these same words in *he principal
languages of the old and new worlds. (See note at pp. 326-328.)

•f At the Orinoco the Puignaves, or Poignaves, are distinguished from the
Gttipu/iaves (Uipunavi). The latter, on account of their language, are
considered as belonging to the Maypure and Cabre nations ; yet water is
called in Poignave, as well as in Maypure, oueni.

£ For a curious example of this, see the speech of Artabanes in
Aristophanes, (Acharn. act 1, scene 3,) where a Greek has attempted to
t>ive a Persian oration. See also Gibbon's Roman Empire, chap, liii,
note 54, for a curious example of the way in which foreign languages
li..ve. been disfigured when it has been attempted to represent them in a
totally different tongue.

VOL. II. X

306 SOBEH HABITS OF THE INDIANS.

The Mission near the raudal of Maypures was very con-
siderable in the time of the Jesuits, when it reckoned sis
hundred inhabitants, among whom were several families
of whites. Under the government of the Fathers of the
Observance the population was reduced to less than sixty.
It must be observed that in this part of South America
cultivation has been diminishing for half a century, while
beyond the forests, in the provinces near the sea, we find
villages that contain from two or three thousand Indians.
The inhabitants of Maypures are a mild, temperate people,
and distinguished by great cleanliness. The savages of the
Orinoco for the most part have not that inordinate fondness
for strong liquors which prevails in North America. It is
true that the Ottomacs, the Jaruros, the Achaguas, and the
Oaribs, are often intoxicated by the immoderate use of chiza
and many other fermented liquors, which they know how to
prepare with cassava, maize, and the saccharine fruit of the
palm-tree; but travellers have as usual generalized what
belongs only to the manners of some tribes. We were
frequently unable to prevail upon the Gruahibos, or the
Maco-Piroas, to taste brandy while they were labouring for
us, and seemed exhausted by fatigue. It will require a
longer residence of Europeans in these countries to spread
there the vices that are already common among the Indians
on the coast. In the huts of the natives of Maypures we
found an appearance of order and neatness, rarely met with
in the houses of the missionaries.

These natives cultivate plantains and cavassa, but no
maize. Cassava, made into thin cakes, is the bread of the
country. Like the greater part of the Indians of the Ori-
noco, the inhabitants of Maypures have beverages which
maybe considered nourishing ; one of these, much celebrated
in that country, is furnished by a palm-tree which grows
wild in the vicinity of the mission on the banks of the Au-
vana. This tree is the seje : I estimated the number of
flowers on one cluster at forty-four thousand ; and that of
the fruit, of which the greater part fall without ripening,
at eight thousand. The fruit is a small fleshy drupe. It is
immersed for a few minutes in boiling water, to separate
the kernel from the parenchymatous part of the sarcocarp..
which has a sweet taste, and is pounded and bruised in a

NAilVE POTTERY. 307

large vessel rilled with water. The infusion yields a yellow-
ish liquor, which tastes like milk of almonds. Sometimes
papelon (unrefined sugar) is added. The missionary told us
that the natives become visibly fatter during the two or three
months in which they drink this seje, into which they dip
their cakes of cassava. The piaches, or Indian jugglers, go
into the forests, and sound the botuto (the sacred trumpet)
under the seje palm-trees, " to force the tree," they say, " to
yield an ample produce the following year." The people
pay for this operation, as the Mongols, the Arabs, and
nations still nearer to us, pay the cJiamans, the marabouts,
and other classes of priests, to drive away the white ants
and the locusts by mystic words or prayers, or to procure
a cessation of continued rain, and invert the order of the
seasons.

"I have a manufacture of pottery in my village," said
Father Zea, when accompanying us on a visit to an Indian
family, who were occupied in baking, by a fire of brush wood,
in the open air, large earthen vessels, two feet and a halt*
high. This branch of manufacture is peculiar to the various
tribes of the great family of Maypures, and they appear to
have followed it from time immemorial. In every part of
the forests, far from any human habitation, on digging the
earth, fragments of pottery and delf are found. The taste
for this kind of manufacture seems to have been common
heretofore to the natives of both North and South America.
To the north of Mexico, on the banks of the Rio Gila,
among the ruins of an Aztec city ; in the United States,
near the tumuli of the Miamis ; in Florida, and in every place
where any traces of ancient civilization are found, the soil
covers fragments of painted pottery ; and the extreme resem-
blance of the ornaments they display is striking. Savage
nations, and those civilized people* who are condemned by
their political and religious institutions always to imitate
themselves, strive, as if by instinct, to perpetuate the same
forms, to preserve a peculiar type or style, and to follow the
methods and processes which were employed by their ances-
tors. In North America, fragments of delf ware have been

• The Hindoos, the Tibetians, the Chinese, the ancient Egyptians, tLe
Aztecs, lihe Peruvians ; with whom the tendency toward civilization iu i
body has prevented the free development of the facvlties of individual).

x 2

308 PAINTED KEPHESENTATIONS OF ANIMALS.

discovered in places where there exist lines of fortification,
and the walls of towns constructed by some unknown na-
tion, now entirely extinct. The paintings on these fragments
have a great similitude to those which are executed in our
days on earthenware by the natives of Louisiana and Flo-
rida. Thus too, the Indians of Maypures often painted be-
fore our eyes the same ornaments as those we had observed
in the cavern of Ataruipe, on the vases containing human
bones. They were grecques, meanders, and figures of croco-
diles, of monkeys, and of a large quadruped which I could not
recognize, though it had always the same squat form. I might
hazard the hypothesis that it belongs to another country,
aud that the type had been brought thither in the great
migration of the American nations from the north-west to
the south and south-east ; but I am rather inclined to be-
lieve that the figure is intended to represent a tapir, and
that the deformed image of a native animal has become by
degrees one of the types that has been preserved.

The Maypures execute with the greatest skill grecques, or
ornaments formed by straight hnes variously combined,
similar to those that we find on the vases of Magna GTrecia,
on the Mexican edifices at Mitla, and in the works of so
many nations who, without communication with each other,
find alike a sensible pleasure in the symmetric repetition of
the same forms. Arabesques, meanders, and grecques,
please our eyes, because the elements of which their series is
composed, follow in rhythmic order. The eye finds in this
order, in the periodical return of the same forms, what the
ear distinguishes in the cadenced succession of sounds and
concords. Can we then admit a doubt that the feeling of
rhythm manifests itself in man at the first dawn of civiliza-
tion, and in the rudest essays of poetry and song ?

Among the natives of Maypures, the making of pottery
is an occupation principally confined to the women. They
purify the clay by repeated washings, form it into cylinders,
and mould the largest vases with their hands. The Ame-
rican Indian is unacquainted with the potter's wheel, which
was familiar to the nations of the east in the remotest anti-
quity. "We may be surprised that the missionaries have not
introduced this simple and useful machine among the natives
of the Orinoco, yet we must recollect that three centuries

COUIiSE OF CIVILIZATION.

ha ye not sufficed to make it known among the Indians of
the peninsula of Araya, opposite the port of Cumana. The
colours used by the Maypures are the oxides of iron arid
manganese, and particularly the yellow and red ochres that
are found in the hollows of sandstone. Sometimes the
fecula of the Bignonia chica is employed, after the pottery
has been exposed to a feeble fire. This painting is covered
with a varnish of algarobo, which is the transparent resin of
the Hymenaea courbaril. The large vessels in which the
chiza is preserved are called ciamacu; the smallest bear the
name of mucra, from which word the Spaniards of the coast
have framed mwrcwra. Not only the Maypures, but also the
Guaypunaves, the Caribs, the Ottomacs, and even the Gua-
mos, are distinguished at the Orinoco as makers of painted
pottery, and this manufacture extended formerly towards the
banks of the Amazon. Orellana was struck with the painted
ornaments on the ware of the Omaguas, who in his time were
a populous commercial nation.

The following facts throw some light on the history of
American civilization. In the United States, west of the
Alleghany mountains, particularly between the Ohio and
the great lakes of Canada, on digging the earth, frag-
ments of painted pottery, mingled with brass tools, are con-
stantly found. This mixture may well surprise us in r»
country where, on the first arrival of Europeans, the natives
were ignorant of the use of metals. In the forests of South
America, which extend from the equator as far as the
eighth degree of north latitude, from the foot of the Andes
to the Atlantic, this painted pottery is discovered in the
most desert places, but it is found accompanied by hatchets
of jade and other hard stones, skilfully perforated. No me-
tallic tools or ornaments have ever been discovered ; though
in the mountains on the shore, and at the back of the Cor-
dilleras, the art of melting gold and copper, and of mixing
the latter metal with tin to make cutting instruments, was
known. How can we account for these contrasts between tlu»
temperate and the torrid zone? The Incas of Peru had
pushed their conquests and their religious wars as far- as the
Dunks of the Napo and the Amazon, where their lan^ua-jc
extended over a small space of land ; but the civilization uf
the Peruvians, of the inhabitants of Quito, awl of the

310 CYCLOPEAN WALLS.

Muyscas of New Grenada, never appears to have had an/
Bensible influence on the moral state of the nations of
(3-uiana. It must be observed further, that in North
America, between the Ohio, Miami, and the Lakes, an un-
known people, whom systematic authors would make the
descendants of the Toltecs and Aztecs, constructed walls of
earth and sometimes of stone without mortar,* from ten to
fifteen feet high, and seven or eight thousand feet long.
These singular circumvallations sometimes enclosed a hun-
dred and fifty acres of ground. In the plains of the Orinoco,
as in those of Marietta, the Miami, and the Ohio, the centre
of an ancient civilization is found in the west on the back of
the mountains ; but the Orinoco, and the countries lying be-
tween that great river and the Amazon, appear never to
have been inhabited by nations whose constructions have re-
sisted the ravages of time. Though symbolical figures are
found engraved on the hardest rocks, yet further south than
eight degrees of latitude, no tumulus, no circumvallation, no
dike of earth similar to those that exist farther north in the
plains of Varinas and Canagua, has been found. Such is the
contrast that may be observed between the eastern parts of
North and South America, those parts which extend from the
table-land of Cundinamarcaf and the mountains of Cayenne
towards the Atlantic, and those which stretch from the Andes
of New Spain towards the Alleghanies. Nations advanced in
civilization, of which we discover traces on the banks of lake
Teguyo and in the Casas grandes of the Bio Grila, might have
sent some tribes eastward into the open countries of the
Missouri and the Ohio, where the climate differs little from
that of New Mexico ; but in South America, where the great
flux of nations has continued from north to south, those who
had long enjoyed the mild temperature of the back of the
equinoctial Cordilleras no doubt dreaded a descent into
burning plains bristled with forests, and inundated by the
periodical swellings of rivers. It is easy to conceive how
much the force of vegetation, and the nature of the soil and

* Of siliceous limestone, at Pique, on the Great Miami ; of sandstone
at Creek Point, ten lesgues from Chillakothe, where the wall is fifteen
hundred toises long.

^ This is the ancient name of the empire of the Zaques, founded by
Bochica or Idacanzas, the high priest of Iraca, in New Grenada.

DOMESTICATED BIKD8 AND AMMALB. 311

climate, within the torrid zone, embarrassed the natives in
regard to migration in numerous bodies, prevented settle-
ments requiring an extensive space, and perpetuated the
misery and barbarism of solitary hordes.

The feeble civilization introduced in our days by the
Spanish monks pursues a retrograde course. Father Gili
relates that, at the time of the expedition to the boundaries,
agriculture began to make some progress on the banks oi'
the Orinoco ; and that cattle, especially goats, had mul-
tiplied considerably at Maypures. "We found no goats,
either in the mission or in any other village of the Orinoco ;
they had all been devoured by the tigers. The black and
white breeds of pigs only, the latter of which are called
French pigs (puercos franceses), because they are believed
to have come from the Caribbee Islands, have resisted the
pursuit of wild beasts. We saw with much pleasure gua-
camayas, or tame macaws, round the huts of the Indians,
and flying to the fields like our pigeons. This bird is the
largest and most majestic species of parrot with naked
cheeks that we found in our travels. It is called in Mara-
tivitan, cahuei. Including the tail, it is two feet three
inches long. We had observed it also on the banks of the
Atabapo, the Temi, and the Eio Negro. The flesh of the
cahuei, which is frequently eaten, is black and somewhat
tough. These macaws, whose plumage glows with vivid
tints of purple, blue, and yellow, are a great ornament to
the Indian farm-yards ; they do not yield in beauty to the
peacock, the golden pheasant, the pauxi, or the alector.
The practice of rearing parrots, birds of a family so different
from the gallinaceous tribes, was remarked by Columbus.
When he discovered America he saw macaws, or large
parrots, which served as food to the natives of the Caribbee
Islands, instead of fowls.

A majestic tree, more than sixty feet high, which the

Elanters call fruta de biwro, grows in the vicinity of the
ttle village of Maypures. It is a new species of tho
unona, and has the stateliness of the Uvaria zeylanica of
Aublet. Its brandies are straight, and rise in a pyramid,
nearly like the poplar of the Mississippi, erroneously called
the Lombardy poplar. The tree is celebrated for its aro-
matic fruit, the infusion of which is a powerful febrifuge.

312 BEMEDIES FOE THE FEVEH.

The poor missionaries of the Orinoco, who are afflicted
with tertian fevers during a great part of the year, sel-
dom travel without a little bag filled with frutas de biwro.
I have already observed, that between the tropics, the
use of aromatics, for instance very strong coffee, the Croton
casearilla, or the pericarp of the Unona xylopioides, is
generally preferred to that of the astringent bark of cin-
chona, or of Bonplandia trifolatia, which is the Angostura
bark. The people of America have the most inveterate
prejudice against the employment of different kinds of
cinchona; and in the very countries where this valuable
remedy grows, they try (to use their own phrase) to cut
off the fever, by infusions of Scoparia dulcis, and hot lemon-
ade prepared with sugar and the small wild lime, the rind
of which is equally oily and aromatic.

The weather was unfavourable for astronomical obser-
vations. I obtained, however, on the 20th of April, a good
series of corresponding altitudes of the sun, according to
which the chronometer gave 70° 37' 33' for the longitude
of the mission of Maypures ; the latitude was found, by a
star observed towards the north, to be 5° 13' 57" ; and by a
star observed towards the south, 5° 13' 7". The error of
the most recent maps is half a degree of longitude and half
a degree of latitude. It would be difficult to relate the
trouble and torments which these nocturnal observations
cost us. Nowhere is a denser cloud of mosquitos to be
found. It formed, as it were, a particular stratum some
feet above the ground, and it thickened as we brought lights
to illumine our artificial horizon. The inhabitants of May-
pures, for the most part, quit the village to sleep in the
islets amid the cataracts, where the number of insects is
less; others make a fire of brushwood in their huts, and
suspend their hammocks in the midst of the smoke.

We spent two days and a half in the little village of
Maypures, on the banks of the great Upper Cataract, and
on the 21st April we embarked in the canoe we had ob-
tained from the missionary of Carichana. It was much
damaged by the shoals it had struck against, and the care-
lessness of the Indians ; but still greater dangers awaited
it. It was to be dragged over land, across an isthmus of
thirty-six thousand feet; from the Rio Tuamini to the

IfATlYE CURIOSITIES. 313

Rio Negro, to go up by the Cassiquiare tc the Orinoco, and
to repass the two raudales.

When the traveller has passed the Great Cataracts, he
feels as if he were in a new world, and had overstepped
the barriers which nature seems to have raised between the
civilized countries of the coast and the savage and unknown
interior. Towards the east, in the bluish distance, we saw
for the last time the high chain of the Cunavami mountains.
Its long, horizontal ridge reminded us of the Mesa of the
Brigantine, near Cumana ; but it terminates by a truncated
summit. The Peak of Calitamini (the name given to this
summit) glows at sunset as with a reddish fire. This
appearance is every day the same. No one ever approached
this mountain, the height of which does not exceed six
hundred toises. I believe this splendour, commonly reddish
but sometimes silvery, to be a reflection produced by large
plates of talc, or by gneiss passing into mica-slate. The
whole of this country contains granitic rocks, on which
here and there, in little plains, an argillaceous grit-stone
immediately reposes, containing fragments of quartz and of
brown iron -ore.

In going to the embarcadero, we caught on the trunk of
a hevea* a new species of tree-frog, remarkable for its
beautiful colours ; it had a yellow belly, the back and head
of a fine velvety purple, aud a very narrow stripe of white
1'rom the point of the nose to the hinder extremities. This
frog was two inches long, and allied to the Eana tiuctoria,
the blood of which, it is asserted, introduced into the skin
of a parrot, in places where the feathers have been plucked
out, occasions the growth of frizzled feathers of a yellow
or red colour. The Indians showed us on the way, what
is no doubt very curious in that country, traces of cart-
wheels in the rock. They spoke, as of an unknown animal,
of those beasts with large horns, which, at the time of the
expedition to the boundaries, drew the boats through the
valley of Keri, from the Rio Toparo to the Rio Cameji, to
avoid the cataracts, and save the trouble of unloading the
mer:handize. I believe these poor inhabitants of Maypuivs
would now be as much astonished at the sight of an ox
of the Spanish breed, as the Romans were at the sight of
* Oi»e of those trees whose milk yields caoutchouc.

314 EAFDAL DE CA.MEJI.

the ' Lucanian oxen,' as they called the elephants of the
army of Pyrrhus.

We embarked at Puerto de Arriba, and passed the
Raudal de Cameji with some difficulty. This passage is
reputed to be dangerous when the water is very high ; but
we found the surface of the river beyond the raudal as
smooth as glass. We passed the night in a rocky island
called Piedra Eaton, which is three-quarters of a league
long, and displays that singular aspect of rising vegetation,
those clusters of shrubs, scattered over a bare and rocky
soil, of which we have often spoken.

On the 22nd of April we departed an hour and a half
before sunrise. The morning was humid but delicious ; not
a breath of wind was felt ; for south of Atures and May-
piires a perpetual calm prevails. On the banks of the Rio
Negro and the Cassiquiare, at the foot of Cerro Duida, and
at the mission of Santa Barbara, we never heard that rust-
ling of the leaves which has such a peculiar charm in very hot
climates. The windings of rivers, the shelter of mountains,
the thickness of the forests, and the almost continual rains,
at one or two degrees of latitude north of the equator, con-
tribute no doubt to this phenomenon, which is peculiar to
the missions of the Orinoco.

In that part of the valley of the Amazon which is south
of the equator, but at the same distance from it, as the places
just mentioned, a strong wind always rises two hours after
mid-day. This wind blows constantly against the stream,
and is felt only in the bed of the river. Below San Borja it
is an easterly wind ; at Tomependa I found it between north
and north-north-east ; it is still the same breeze, the wind
of the rotation of the globe, but modified by slight local cir-
cumstances. By favour of this general breeze you may go up
the Amazon under sail, from Grand Para as far as Tefe, a
distance of seven hundred and fifty leagues. In the province
of Jaen de Bracamoros, at the foot of the western declivity
of the Cordilleras, this Atlantic breeze rises sometimes to a
tempest.

It is highly probable that the great salubrity of the
Amazon is owing to this constant breeze. In the stagnant
air of the Upper Orinoco the chemical affinities act more
powerfully, and more deleterious miasmata are formed,

BREEZES ON THE AMAZON. 8L5

The insalubrity of the climato would be the same OH the
woody banks of the Amazon, if that river, running like the
Niger from west to east, did not follow in its immense
length the same direction, which is that of the trade-winds.
The valley of the Amazon IB closed only at its western
extremity, where it approaches the Cordilleras of the Andes.
Towards the east, where the sea-breeze strikes the New
Continent, the shore is raised but a few feet above the level
of the Atlantic. The Upper Orinoco first runs from east to
west, and then from north to south. Where its course is
nearly parallel to that of the Amazon, a very hilly country
(the group of the mountains of Parima and of Dutch and
French Guiana) separates it from the Atlantic, and prevents
the wind of rotation from reaching EsmeraldJa. This wind
begins to be powerfully felt only from the confluence of the
Apure, where the Lower Orinoco runs from west to east in
a vast plain open towards the Atlantic, and therefore the
climate of this part of the river is less noxious than that of
the Upper Orinoco.

In order to add a third point of comparison, I may
mention the valley of the Rio Magdalena, which, like th«
Amazon, has one direction only, but unfortunately, instead
of being that of the breeze, it is from south to north.
Situated in the region of the trade-winds, the Eio Magda-
lena has the stagnant air of the Upper Orinoco. From the
canal of Mahates as far as Honda, particularly south of the
town of Mompox, we never felt the wind blow but at the
approach of the evening storms. When, on the contrary,
you proceed up the river beyond Honda, you find the at-
mosphere often agitated. The strong winds that are in-
gulied in the valley of Neiva are noted for their excessive
heat. We may be at first surprised to perceive that the
calm ceases as we approach the lofty mountains in the
upper course of the river, but this astonishment ends when
wi> recollect that the dry and burning winds of the Llanos
de Neiva are the effect of descending currents. The
columns of cold air rush from the top of the Nevados of
Quindiu and of Guanacas into the valley, driving before
tlu-m the lower strata of the atmosphere. Everywhere the
unequal heating of the soil, and the proximity of mountains
covered with perpetual snow, cause partial currents within

816 CERHOS L)E

the tropics, as well as in the temperate zone. The violent
winds of Neiva are not the effect of a repercussion of the
trade-winds ; they rise where those winds cannot penetrate ;
and if the mountains of the Upper Orinoco, the tops of which
are generally crowned with trees, were more elevated, they
would produce the same impetuous movements in the at-
mosphere as we observe in the Cordilleras of Peru, of
Abyssinia, and of Thibet. The intimate connection that
exists between the direction of rivers, the height and dis-
position of the adjacent mountains, the movements of the
atmosphere, and the salubrity of the climate, are subjects
well worthy of attention. The study of the surface and the
inequalities of the soil would indeed be irksome and useless
were it not connected with more general considerations.

At the distance of six miles from the island of Piedra
Raton we passed, first, on the east, the mouth of the Rio
Sipapo, called Tipapu by the Indians; and then, on the
west, the mouth of the Rio Vichada. Near the latter are
some rocks covered by the water, that form a small cascade
or raudalito. The Rio Sipapo, which Father Grili went up
in 1757, and which he says is twice as broad as the Tiber,
comes from a considerable chain of mountains, which in its
southern part bears the name of the river, and joins the
group of Calitamini and of Cunavami. Next to the Peak
of Duida, which rises above the mission of Esmeralda, the
Cerros of Sipapo appeared to me the most lofty of the whole
Cordillera of Parima. They form an immense wall of rocks,
shooting up abruptly from the plain, its craggy ridge of
running from S.S.E. to N.N.W. I believe these crags,
these indentations, which equally occur in the sandstone of
Montserrat in Catalonia,* are owing to blocks of granite
heaped together. The Cerros de Sipapo wear a different
aspect every hour of the day. At sunrise the thick vege-
tation with which these mountains are clothed is tinged
with that dark green inclining to brown, which is peculiar
to a region where trees with coriaceous leaves prevail.
Broad and strong shadows are projected on the neigh-
bouring plain, and form a contrast with the vivid light

* From them the name of Montserrat is derived, Monte Serrato
signifying a mountain ridged or jagged like a saw.

LEGENDS Or HEADLESS MEB. 317

diffused ovn- the grounid, in the air, and on the surface of
the waters. But towards noon, when the sun reaches its
.zenith, these strong shadows gradually disappear, and the
whole group is veiled by an aerial vapour of a much deeper
azure than that of the lower regions of the celestial vault.
These vapours, circulating around the rocky ridge, soften
its outline, temper the effects of the light, and give the
landscape that aspect of calmness and repose which in
nature, as m the works of Claude Lorraine and Poussin,
arises from the harmony of forms and colours.

Cruzero, the powerful chief of the Guaypunaves, long
resided behind the mountains of Sipapo, after having
quitted with his warlike horde the plains between the Rio
Inirida and the Chamochiquini. The Indians told us that
the forests which cover the Sipapo abound in the climbing
plant called vehuco de maimure. This species of liana is
celebrated among the Indians, and serves for making
baskets and weaving mats. The forests of Sipapo are
altogether unknown, and there the missionaries place the
nation of the Rayas,* whose mouths are believed to be in
their navels. An old Indian, whom we met at Carichana,
and who boasted of having often eaten human flesh, had
seen these acephah " with his own eyes." These absurd
fables are spread as far as the Llanos, where you are not
always permitted to doubt the existence of the Raya Indians.
In every zono intolerance accompanies credulity; and it
might be said that the fictions of ancient geographers had
passed from one hemisphere to the other, did we not know
that the most fantastic productions of the imagination, like
the works of nature, furnish everywhere a certain analogy
of aspect and of form.

We landed at the mouth of the Rio Vichada or Visata to
examine the plants of that part of the country. The scenery is
very singular. The forest is thin, and an innumerable quantity

• Rays, on account of the pretended analogy with the fish of this name,
the mouth of which seems as if forced downwards below the body. This
singular legend has been spread far and wide over the earth. Shakespeaw
has described Othello as recounting marvellous tales

" of cannibals that do each other eat :
Of Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."

318 1UE CINNAMON OF THE ORINOCO.

of small rocks rise from the plain. These form massy
prisms, ruined pillars, and solitary towers fifteen or twenty
feet high. Some are shaded by the trees of the forest,
others have their summits crowned with palms. These
rocks are of granite passing into gneiss. At the confluence
of the Vichada the rocks of granite, and what is still more
remarkable, the soil itself, are covered with moss and lichens.
These latter resemble the Cladonia pyxidata and the Lichen
rangiferinus, so common in the north of Europe. We could
scarcely persuade ourselves that we were elevated less than one
hundred toises above the level of the sea, in the fifth degree
of latitude, in the centre of the torrid zone, which has so
long been thought to be destitute of cryptogamous plants.
The mean temperature of this shady and humid spot pro-
bably exceeds twenty-six degrees of the centigrade thermo-
meter. Reflecting on the small quantity of rain which had
hitherto fallen, we were surprised at the beautiful verdure
of the forests. This peculiarity characterises the valley
of the Upper Orinoco ; on the coast of Caracas, and in the
Llanos, the trees in winter (in the season called summer in
South America, north of the equator) are stripped of their
leaves, and the ground is covered only with yellow and
withered grass. Between the solitary rocks just described
arise some high plants of columnar cactus (Cactus septem-
angularis), a very rare appearance south of the cataracts of
Atures and Maypures.

Amid this picturesque scene M. Bonpland was fortunate
enough to find several specimens of Laurus cinnamomoides,
a very aromatic species of cinnamon, known at the Orinoco
by the names of varimacu and of canelilla* This valuable
production is found also in the valley of the Bio Caura, as well
as near Esmeralda, and eastward of the Great Cataracts.
The Jesuit Francisco de Olmo appears to have been the
first who discovered the canelilla, which he did in the
country of the Piaroas, near the sources of the Cataniapo.
The missionary Grili, who did not advance so far as the
regions I am now describing, seems to confound the vari~
tnacu, or guari/macu, with the myristica, or nutmeg-tree of
America. These barks and aromatic fruits, the cinnamon,
fche nutmeg, the Myrtus pimenta, and the Laurus pucheri,
* The diminutive of the Spanish word canefa, which signifies ?iiinamon.

DI8TKIBUTIOK OF PLANTS AX- ANIMALS. 319

would have become important objects of trade, if Europe, at
the period of the discovery of the New World, had not
already been accustomed to the spices and aromatics of
India. The cinnamon of the Orinoco, and that of the
Aiidaquies missions, are, however, less aromatic than the
cinnamon of Ceylon, and would stiil be so even if dried and
prepared by similar processes.

Every hemisphere produces plants of a different species ;
and it is not by the diversity of climates that we can attempt
to explain why equinoctial Africa has no laurels, and the
New World no heaths ; why calceolaria are found wild only
in the southern hemisphere ; why the birds of the East
Indies glow with colours less splendid than those of the hot
parts of America; finally, why the tiger is peculiar to Asia,
and the ornithorynchus to Australia. In the vegetable as
well as in the animal kingdom, the causes of the distribution
of the species are among the mysteries which natural philo-
sophy cannot solve. The attempts made to explain the dis-
tribution of various species on the globe by the sole influence
of climate, take their date from a period when physical geo-
graphy was still in its infancy ; when, recurring incessantly
to pretended contrasts between the two worlds, it was ima-
gined that the whole of Africa and of America resembled the
deserts of Egypt and the marshes of Cayenne. At present,
when men judge of the state of things not from one type
arbitrarily chosen, but from positive knowledge, it is ascer-
tained that the two continents, in their immense extent, con-
tain countries that are altogether analagous. There are
i visions of America as barren and burning as the interior of
Africa. Those islands which produce the spices of India are
scarcely remarkable for their dryness; and it is not on
account of the humidity of the climate, as has been affirmed
in recent works, that the New Continent is deprived of those
fine species of Iaurinia3 and myristicsB, which are found united
in one little corner of the earth in the archipelago of India.
For some years past cinnamon has been cultivated with
success in several parts of the New Continent ; and a zone
that produces the coumarouna, the vanilla, the pucheri, the
pine-apple, the pimento, the balsam of tolu, the Myroxylon
peruvianum, the croton, the citroma, the pejoa, the

320 AMERICAN POISONS.

of the Silla of Caracas, the quereme, the pancratium, and
so many majestic liliaceous plants, cannot be considered as
destitute of aromatics. Besides, a dry air favours the deve-
lopment of the aromatic or exciting properties, only in cer-
tain species of plants. The most inveterate poisons are
produced in the most humid zone of America ; and it is
precisely under the influence of the long rains of the tropics,
that the American pimento, (Capsicum baccaturn), the
fruit of which is of often as caustic and fiery as In-
dian pepper, vegetates best. From all these considerations
it follows, 1st, that the New Continent possesses spices,
aromatics, and very active vegetable poisons, peculiar to
itself, and differing specifically from those of the Old World ;
2ndly, that the primitive distribution of species in the torrid
zone cannot be explained by the influence of climate solely,
or by the distribution of temperature, which we observe in
the present state of our planet ; but that this difference of
climates leads us to perceive why a given type of organization
developes itself more vigorously in such or such local cir-
cumstances. We can conceive that a small number of the
families of plants, for instance the musacea} and the palms,
cannot belong to very cold regions, on account of their
internal structure, and the importance of certain organs ;
but we cannot explain why no one of the family of the Me-
lastomacese vegetates north of the parallel of the thirtieth
degree of latitude, or why no rose-tree belongs to the southern
hemisphere. Analogy of climates is often found in the two
continents, without identity of productions.

The Rio Vichada, which has a small raudal at its conflu-
ence with the Orinoco, appeared to me, next to the Meta
and the Guaviare, to be the most considerable river coming
from the west. During the last forty years no European
has navigated the Vichada. I could learn nothing of its
sources ; they rise. I believe, with those of the Tomo, in the
plains that extend to the south of Casimena. Fugitive In-
dians of Santa Rosalia de Cabapuna, a village situate on the
banks of the Meta, have arrived even recently, by the Rio
Vichada,- at the cataract of Maypures ; which sufficiently
proves that the sources of this river are not very distant
from the Meta. Father Gumilla has preserved the namei

TJNEXPL3EED EEGIONb. 321

of several trerman and Spanish Jesuits, who in 173d feN
victims to their zeal for religion, by the hands of the Caribs
on the now desert banks of the Vichada.

Having passed the Cafio Pirajavi on the east, and then a
email river on the west, which issues, as the Indians say,
from a lake called Na,o, we rested for the night on the shore
of the Orinoco, at the mouth of the Zama, a very conside- \
rable river, but as little known as the Vichada. Notwithstand- !
ing the * black waters' of the Zama, we suffered greatly from .
insects. The night was beautifiL., without a breath of wind
in the lower regions of the atmosphere, but towards two in
the morning we saw thick clouds crossing the zenith rapidly
from east to west. When, declining toward the honzon,
they traversed the great nebulaB of Sagittarius and the Ship,
they appeared of a dark blue. The light of the nebulae is
never more splendid than when they are in part covered by
sweeping clouds. We observe the same phenomenon in
Europe in the Milky Way, in the aurora borealis when it
beams with a silvery light ; and at the rising and setting of
the sun in that part of the sky that is whitened* from causes
which philosophers have not yet sufficiently explained.

The vast tract of country lying between the Meta, the
Vichada, and the Ghiaviare, is altogether unknown a league
from the banks ; but it is believed to be inhabited by wild
Indians of the tribe of Chiricoas, who fortunately build no
boats. Formerly, when the Caribs, and their enemies the
Cabres, traversed these regions with their little fleets of
rafts and canoes, it would have been imprudent to have
passed the night near the mouth of a river running from the
west. The little settlements of the Europeans having now
caused the independent Indians to retire from the banks of
the Upper Orinoco, the solitude of these regions ia such,
that from Carichana to Javita, and from Esmeralda to San
Fernando de Atabapo, during a course of one hundred and
eighty leagues, we did not meet a single boat.

At the mouth of the Rio Zama we approach a class of
rivers, that merits great attention. The Zama, the Mata-
veni, the Atabapo, the Tuamini, the Temi, and the Guainia,
are aguas negras, that ia, their waters, seen in a large body,

* The dawn : ii French ««£« (alia, qlbente calo.)
VOL. II. I

322 WHITE AND BLACK WATEHS.

appear brown like coffee, or of a greenish black. These
waters, notwithstanding, are most beautiful, clear, and
agreeable to the taste. I have observed above, that the
crocodiles, and, if not the zancudos, at least the mos-
quitos, generally shun the black waters. The people
assert too, that these waters do not colour the rocks' ; and
that the white rivers have black borders, while the black
rivers have white. In fact, the shores of the Gruainia, known
to Europeans by the name of the Rio Negro, frequently
exhibit masses of quartz issuing from granite, and of a
dazzling whiteness. The waters of the Mataveni, when
examined in a glass, are pretty white ; those of the Atabapo
retain a slight tinge of yellowish-brown. "When the least
breath of wind agitates the surface of these ' black rivers'
they appear of a fine grass-green, like the lakes of Switzer-
land. In the shade, the Zama, the Atabapo, and the
G-uainia, are as dark as coffee-grounds. These phenomena
are so striking, that the Indians everywhere distinguish the
waters by the terms black and white. The former have
often served me for an artificial horizon; they reflect the
image of the stars with admirable clearness.

The colour of the waters of springs, rivers, and lakes,
ranks among those physical problems which it is difficult, if
not impossible, to solve by direct experiments. The tints of
reflected light are generally very different from the tints of
transmitted light ; particularly when the transmission takes
place through a great portion of fluid. If there were no
absorption of rays, the transmitted light would be of a colour
corresponding with that of the reflected light ; and in general
we judge imperfectly of transmitted light, by filling with water
a shallow glass with a narrow aperture. In a river, the
colour of the reflected light comes to us always from the
interior strata of the fluid, and not from the upper stratum.

Some celebrated naturalists, who have examined the purest
waters of the glaciers, and those which flow from mountains
covered with perpetual snow, where the earth is destitute of
the relics of vegetation, have thought that the proper colour
of water might be blue, or green. Nothing, in fact, proves,
that water is by nature white; and we must always admit
the presence of a colouring principle, when water viewed by
reflection is coloured. In the rivers that contain a colouring

GUPPOSED REASON OF THE COLOURS. 323

principle, that principle is generally so little in quantity, thnt
it eludes all chemical research. The tints of the ocean seem
often to depend neither on the nature of the bottom, nor on
the reflection of the sky on the clouds. Sir Humphrey Davy
was of opinion that the tints of different seas may very
likely be owing to different proportions of iodine.

On consulting the geographers of antiquity, we find that
the Greeks had noticed the blue waters of Thermopylae, the
red waters of Joppa, and the black waters of the hot-baths
of Astyra, opposite Lesbos. Some rivers, the Rhone for
instance, near Geneva, have a decidedly blue colour. It is
said, that the snow-waters of the Alps are sometimes of a
dark emerald green. Several lakes of Savoy and of Peru
have a brown colour approaching black. Most of these
phenomena of coloration are observed in waters that are
believed to be the purest; and it is rather from reasonings
founded on analogy, than from any direct analysis, that we
may throw any light on so uncertain a matter. In the vast
system of rivers near the mouth of the Bio Zama, a fact which
appears to me remarkable is, that the Hack waters are princi-
pally restricted to the equatorial regions. They begin about
five degrees of north latitude ; and abound thence to beyond
the equator as far as about two degrees of south latitude. The
mouth of the Eio Negro is indeed in the latitude of 3° 9' ;
but in this interval the black and white waters are so singu-
larly mingled in the forests and the savannahs, that we
know not to what cause the coloration must be attributed.
The waters of the Cassiquiare, which fall into the Rio Negro,
are as white as those oi the Orinoco, from which it issues.
Of two tributary streams of the Cassiquiare very near each
other, the Siapa and the Pacimbny, one is white, the other
black.

When the Indians are interrogated respecting the causes
of these strange colorations, they answer, as questions in
natural philosophy or physiology are sometimes answered in
Europe, oy repeating the fact in other terms. If you address
yourself to the missionaries, they reply, as if they had the
most convincing proofs of the fact, that " the waters are
coloured by washing the roots of the sarsaparilla." The
SmilacesB no doubt abound on the banks of the Rio Negro,
the Pacimony, and the Cababury ; their roots, macerated ir

I 2

324 COLOUR AT THE TIME OF INUNDATIONS.

the water, /ield an extractive matter, that is browr, bitter,
and mucilaginous ; but how many tufts of smilax have we
seen in places, where the waters were entirely white. In
the marshy forest which we traversed, to convey our canoe
from the Eio Tuamini to the Cafio Pimichin and the Rio
Negro, why, in the same soil, did we ford alternately rivulets
of black and white water? "Why did we find no river
white near its springs, and black in the lower part of its
course ? I know not whether the Bio Negro preserves its
yellowish brown colour as far as its mouth, notwithstanding
the great quantity of white water it receives from the Cassi-
quiare and the Eio Blanco.

Although, on account of the abundance of rain, vege-
tation is more vigorous close to the equator than eight or
ten degrees north or south, it cannot be affirmed, that the
rivers with black waters rise principally in the most shady
and thickest forests. On the contrary, a great number of
the aguas negras come from the open savannahs that extend
from the Meta beyond the Ghiaviare towards the Caqueta.
In a journey which I made with Senor Montufar from the
port of Guayaquil to theBodegas de Babaojo, at the period of
the great inundations, I was struck by the analogy of colour
displayed by the vast savannahs of the Invernadero del Oarzal
and of the Lagartero, as well as by the Eio Negro and the
Atabapo. These savannahs, partly inundated during three
months, are composed of paspalum, eriochloa, and several
species of cyperacese. "We sailed on waters that were from
four to five feet deep ; their temperature was by day from
33° 34° of the centigrade thermometer; they exhaled a
strong smell of sulphuretted hydrogen, to which no doubt
some rotten plants of arum and heliconia, that swam on the
surface of the pools, contributed. The waters of the Lagartero
were of a golden yellow by transmitted, and coffee-brown by
reflected light. They are no doubt coloured by a carburet
of hydrogen. An analogous phenomenon is observed in the
dunghill-waters prepared by our gardeners, and in the
waters that issue from bogs. May we not also admit, that
it is a mixture of carbon and hydrogen, an extractive vege-
table matter, that colours the black rivers, the Atabapo, the
Zama, the Mataveni, and the G-uainia? The frequency of
of the equatorial rains contributes no doubt to this colora-

PBEVALENCE OF THE PHENOMENON. 825

tion by fJtration through a thk I mass of grasses. I suggest
these ideas only in the form of a doubt. The colouring
principle seems to be in little abundance ; for I observed
that the waters of the Ghiaina or Rio Negro, when subjected
to ebullition, do not become brown like other fluids charged
with carburets of hydrogen.

It is also very remarkable, that this phenomenon of black
waters, which might be supposed to belong ouly to the low
regions of the torrid zone, is found also, though rarely, on
the table-lands of the Andes. The town of Cuenca in the
kingdom of Quito, is surrounded by three small rivers, the
Machangara, the Rio del Matadero, and the Yanuncai ; of
which the two former are white, and the waters of the last
are black (aguas negras). These waters, like those of the
Atabapo, are of a coffee-colour by reflection, and pale yellow
by transmission. They are very clear, and the inhabitants of
Cuenca, who drink them in preference to any other, attri-
bute their colour to the sarsaparilla, which it is said grows
abundantly on the banks of the Rio Tanun9ai.

We left the mouth of the Zama at five in the morning of
the 23rd of April. The river continued to be skirted on
both sides by a thick forest. The mountains on the east
seemed gradually to retire farther back. We passed first
the mouth of the Rio Mataveni, and afterward an islet of a
very singular form ; a square granitic rock that rises in the
middle of the water. It is called by the missionaries El
Castillito, or the Little Castle. Black bands seem to indi-
cate, that the highest swellings of the Orinoco do not rise
at this place above eight feet ; and that the great swellings
observed lower down are owing to the tributary streams
which flow into it north of the raudales of Atures and May-
pures. We passed the night on the right bank opposite the
mouth of the Rio Siucurivapu, near a rock called Aricagun.
During the night an innumerable quantity of bats issued
from the clefts of the rock, and hovered around our hum-
mocks.

On the 24th a violent rain obliged us early to return to our
boat. We departed at two o'clock, after having lost some
books, which we could not find in the darkness of the night,
on the rock of Aricagua. The river runs straight from
to north ; its banks are low, and shaded on both sides

326 ARRIVAL AT SAN IFERNAJS Lt,.

by thick forests. "We passed the mouths of the Ucata, the
Arapa, and the Caranaveni. About four in the afternoon
we landed at the Gonucos de Siquita, the Indian plantations
of the mission of San Fernando. The good people wished
to detain us among them, but we continued to go up against
the current, which ran at the rate of five feet a second,
according to a measurement I made by observing the time
that a floating body took to go down a given distance. We
entered the mouth of the Gruaviare on a dark night, passed
the point where the Bio Atabapo joins the Gruaviare, and
arrived at the mission after midnight. We were lodged as
usual at the Convent, that is, in the house of the missionary,
who, though much surprised at our unexpected visit, never-
theless received us with the kindest hospitality.

NOTE.

IF. in the philosophical study of the structure of languages, the analogy
of a few roots acquires value only when they can be geographically con-
nected together, neither is the want of resemblance in roots any very
strong proof against the common origin of nations. In the different
dialects of the Totonac language (that of one of the most ancient tribes of
Mexico) the sun and the moon have names which custom has rendered
entirely different. This difference is found among the Caribs between the
language of men and women ; a phenomenon that probably arises from
the circumstance that, among prisoners, men were oftener put to death
than women. Females introduced by degrees words of a foreign language
into the Caribbee; and, as the girls followed the occupations of the
women much more than the boys, a language was formed peculiar to the
women. I shall record in this note the names of the sun and moon in a
great number of American and Asiatic idioms, again reminding the reader
of the uncertainty of all judgments founded merely on the comparison cf
solitary words.

IN THE NEW WORLD.

SUN.

MOON.

Eastern Esquimaux
(^Greenland)
Western Esquimaux
(Kadjak)

Ajut, kaumat, saka-
nach
Tschingugak, mad-
schak

Anningat, kaumei,
tatcok
Igaluk, tangeik

NAMES OF THE SUN AND MOON.

327

Sim.

MOON.

Ojibbeway

Kissis

Debicot

Delaware

Natatane

Keyshocof

Nootka
Otomi

Opulszthl
Hindi

Omulszthl
Zana

Aztec or Mexican

Tonatiuh

Meztli

Cora

Taica

Maitsaca

Huasteca

Aquicha

Aytz

Muysca

Zuhe (sua)

Chia

Yaruro

H

Goppe

Caribbee and Tamanac

Velou (hueiou)

Nouno (nonum>

May pure

Kie

Kejapi

Lule

Inni

Allit

Vilela

Olo

Copi

Moxo

Sachi

Cohe

Chiquito

Suus

Copi

Guarani

Quarasi

Jasi

Tupi (Brasil)

Coaracy

lacy

Peruvian (Quichua)

Inti

Quilla

Araucan (Chili)

Antu

Cuyen.

IN THE OLD WOULD.

SON.

MOON.

_. .1

Mongol

Nara (naran)

Sara (saran)

Mantchou

Choun

Bia

Tschaghatai

Koun

Ay

Ossete (of Caucasus)

Khourr

Mai

Tibetan

Niyma

Rdjawa

Chinese

Jy

Yue

Japanese

Fi

Tsouki

Sanscrit

Surya, aryama, mitra,

Tschandra, tschau-

aditya, arka, hamsa

drama, soma, marf

Persian

Chor, chorschid,

Mah

afitab

Zend

Houere

Pehlvi

Schemschia, zabzoba,

Kokma

kokma

Phoenician

Schemesih

Hebrew

Schemesch

Yarea

Aramean or Chaldean

Schimscha

Yarha

Syrian

Schemscho

Yarho

Arabic

Schams

Kamar

Ethiopian

Trahay

Warha

828 MIGRATION OF THE BOOTS OF WOODS.

The American words are written according to the Spanish orthogiaphy.
I would not change the orthography of the Nootka word onulszth, taken
from Cook's Voyages, to show how much Volney's idea of introducing
an uniform notation of sounds is worthy of attention, if not applied to
the languages of the East written without vowels. In onuhzth there are
four signs for one single consonant. We have already seen that Ame-
rican nations, speaking languages of a very different structure, call the
sun by the same name ; that the moon is sometimes called sleeping sun,
sun of night, light of night; and that sometimes the two orbs have the
same denomination. These examples are taken from the Guarany, the
Omagua, Shawanese, Miami, Maco, and Ojibbeway idioms. Thus in the
Old World, the sun and moon are denoted in Arabic by niryn, the
luminaries;' thus, in Persian, the most common words, afitab and
chorschid, are compounds. By the migration of tribes from Asia to
America, and from America to Asia, a certain number of roots have
passed from one language into others ; and these roots have been trans-
ported, like the fragments of a shipwreck, far from the coast, into the
islands. (Sun, in New England, kone ; in Tschagatai, koun; in Yakout,
kouini. Star, in Huastec, ot; in Mongol, oddon; in Aztec, citlal, citl,
in Persian, sitareh. House, in Aztec, calli ; in Wogoul, kualla or kolla.
Water, in Aztec, atel (itels, a river, in Vilela) ; in Mongol, Tscheremiss,
and Tschouvass, atl, atelch, etel, or idel. Stone, in Caribbee, tebou ; in
the Lesgian of Caucasus, teb; in Aztec, tepetl; in Turkish, tepe. Food,
in Quichua, micunnan; in Malay, macannon. Boat, in Haytian, canoa ;
in Ayno, cahani ; in Greenlandish, kayak ; in Turkish, kayik ; in
Samoyiede, kayouk ; in the Germanic tongues, kahn.} But we must
distinguish from these foreign elements what belongs fundamentally
to the American idioms themselves. Such is the effect of time, and
communication among nations, that the mixture with an heterogenous
language has not only an influence upon roots, but most frequently ends
by modifying and denaturalizing grammatical forms. " When a language
resists a regular analysis," observes William von Humboldt, in his con-
siderations on the Mexican, Cora, Totonac, and Tarahumar tongues, " we
may suspect some mixture, some foreign influence ; for the faculties of
man, which are, as we may say, reflected in the structure of languages.
and in their grammatical forms, act constantly in a regular and uniform
manner. "

VOYAGE ON THE ATABAPO. 329

CHAPTER XXII.

Stn Fernando de Atabapo. — San Balthasar. — The riverg Temi and
Tuamini. — Javita. — Portage from the Tuamini to the Rio Negro.

DUEING the night, we had left, almost imperceived, the
waters of the Orinoco ; and at sunrise found ourselves as if
transported to a new country, on the banks of a river the
name of which we had scarcely ever heard pronounced, and
which was to conduct us, by the portage of Pimichin, to the
Rio Negro, on the frontiers of Brazil. " You will go up,"
said the president of the missions, who resides 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 inundated. Two monks only are settled in those desert
places, between the Orinoco and the Rio Negro ; 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 withDut 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
our passage, and we carried it into effect without danger,
though not without some suffering, in the space of thirty-
three days. The Orinoco runs from its source, or at least
from Esmeralda, as far as San Fernando de Atabapo, from
east to west ; from San Fernando, (where the junction of
the Gruaviare and the Atabapo takes place,) as far as the
mouth of the Rio Apure, it flows from south to north,
forming the Great Cataracts ; and from the mouth of the
Apure as far as Angostura and the coast of the Atlantic its
direction is from west to east. In the first part of its
course, where the river flows from east to west, it forms that
celebrated bifurcation so often disputed by geographers, of
which I was the Erst enabled to determine the situation by

330 SAU FERNANDO DE ATABAPO.

astronomical observations. One arm of the Orinoco, (the
Cassiquiare,) running from north to south, falls into the
Gruamia, or Bio Negro, which, in its turn, joins the Maranon,
or river Amazon. The most natural way, therefore, to go
from Angostura to Grand Para, would be to ascend the
Orinoco as far as Esmeralda, and then to go down the
Cassiquiare, the Eio Negro, and the Amazon ; but, as the
Rio Negro in the upper part of its course approaches very
near the sources of some rivers that fall into the Orinoco
near San Fernando de Atabapo (where the Orinoco abruptly
changes its direction from east to west to take that from
south to north), the passage up that part of the river between
San Fernando and Esmeralda, in order to reach the Eio
Negro, may be avoided. Leaving the Orinoco near the
mission of San Fernando, the traveller proceeds up the little
black rivers (the Atabapo, the Temi, and the Tuamini), and
the boats are carried across an isthmus six thousand toises
broad, to the banks of a stream (the Caiio Pimichin) which
flows into the Eio Negro. This was the course which we
took.

The road from San Carlos to San Fernando de Atabapo
is far more disagreeable, and is half as long again by the
Cassiquiare as by Javita and the Cano Pimichin. In this
region I determined, by means of a chronometer by Ber-
thoud, and by the meridional heights of stars, the situation
of San Balthasar de Atabapo, Javita, San Carlos del Eio
Negro, the rock Culimacavi, and Esmeralda. When no
roads exist save tortuous and intertwining rivers, when
little villages are hidden amid thick forests, and when, in a
country entirely flat, no mountain, no elevated object is
visible from two points at once, it is only in the sky that we
can read where we are upon the earth.

San Fernando de Atabapo stands near the confluence of
three great rivers; the Orinoco, the Gruaviare, and the
Atabapo. Its situation is similar to that of Saint Louis or of
New Madrid, at the junction of the Mississippi with the
Missouri and the Ohio. In proportion as the activity of
commerce increases in these countries traversed by immense
rivers, the towns situated at their confluence will necessarily
become bustling ports, depots of merchandise, and centre
points of civilization. Father Ghimilla confesses, that in

GEOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. 331

his time no person had any knowledge of the course of the
Or noco above the mouth of the Guaviare.

D'Anville, in the first edition of his great map of South
America, laid down the Rio Negro as an arm of the Orinoco,
that branched off from the principal body of the river between
the mouths of the Meta and the Yichada, near the cataract
of Atures. That great geographer was entirely ignorant of
the existence of the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo ; and he
makes the Orinoco or Bio Paragua, the Japura, and the
Putumayo, take their rise from three branchings of the
Caqueta. The expedition of the boundaries, commanded
by Iturriaga and Solano, corrected these errors. Solano,
who was the geographical engineer of this expedition, ad-
vanced in 1756 as far as the mouth of the Guaviare, after
having passed the Great Cataracts. He found that, to
continue to go up the Orinoco, he must direct his course
towards the east ; and that the river received, at the point
of its great inflection, in latitude 4° 4', the waters of
the Guaviare, which two miles higher had received those of
the Atabapo. Interested in approaching the Portuguese
possessions as near as possible, Solano resolved to proceed
onward to the south. At the confluence of the Atabapo
and the Guaviare he found an Indian settlement of the
warlike nation of the Guaypunaves. He gained their
favour by presents, and with their aid founded the mission of
San Fernando, to which he gave the appellation of villa, or
town.

To make known the political importance of this Mission,
we must recollect what was at that period the balance of
power between the petty Indian tribes of Guiana. The
banks of the Lower Orinoco had been long ensanguined
by the obstinate struggle between two powerful nations,
the Cabres and the Caribs. The latter, whose principal
abode since the close of the seventeenth century nas been
between the sources of the Carony, the Essequibo, the
Orinoco, and the Bio Parima, once not only held sway as
tar as the Great Cataracts, but made incursions also into
the Upper Orinoco, employing portages between the Pa-
ruspa* and the Caura, the Erevato and the Ventuari, the

* The Rio Paruspa falls into the Rio Paragua, and the latter toto the
Rio Carjny, which is one of the tributary streams of the Lower Orinoco.

332 MIGRATION OF THE CARIBS.

Conorichite and the Atacav% None knew better than the
Caribs the uitertwiriings of the rivers, the proximity of
the tributary streams, and the roads by which distances
might be diminished. The Caribs had vanquished and
almost exterminated the Cabres. Having made them-
selves masters of the Lower Orinoco, they met with re-
sistance from the G-uaypunaves, who had founded their
dominion on the Upper Orinoco ; and who, together with
the Cabres, the Manitivitanos, and the Parenls, are the
greatest cannibals of these countries. They originally inha-
bited the banks of the great river Inirida, at its confluence
with the Chamochiquini, and the hilly country of Mabicore.
About the year 1744, their chief, or as the natives call him,
their king (apoto), was named Macapu. He was a man no
less distinguished by his intelligence than his valour ; had
led a part of the nation to the banks of the Atabapo ; and
when the Jesuit E-oman made his memorable expedition
from the Orinoco to the Rio Negro, Macapu suffered that
missionary to take with him some families of the G-uay-
punaves to settle them at Uruana, and near the cataract
of Maypures. This people are connected by their language
with the great branch of the Maypure nations. They are
more industrious, we might also say more civilized, than the
other nations of the Upper Orinoco. The missionaries
relate, that the G-uaypunaves, at the time of their sway
in those countries, were generally clothed, and had con-
siderable villages. After the death of Macapu, the com-
mand devolved on another warrior, Cuseru, called by the
Spaniards El capitan Cusero. He established lines of de-
fence on the banks of the Inirida, with a kind of little fort,
constructed of earth and timber. The piles were more than
sixteen feet high, and surrounded both the house of the
apoto and a magazine of bows and arrows. These structures,

There is also an ancient portage of the Caribs between the Paruspa and
the Rio Chavaro, which flows into the Rio Caura above the mouth of the
Erevato. In going up the Erevato you reach the savannahs that are
traversed by the Rio Manipiare above the tributary streams of the
Veatuari. The Caribs in their distant excursions sometimes passed fron?
the Rio Caura to the Ventuari, thence to the Padaroo, and then by the
Upper Orinoco to the Atacavi, which, westward of Manuteso, takes the
name of the Atabtpo.

THE CHIEF t-OCTTT. 333

remarkable in a country in other respects so wild, have
been described by Father Forneri.

The Marepizanas and the Manitivitanos were the pre-
ponderant nations on the banks of the Rio Negro. The
former had for its chiefs, about the year 1750, two warriors
called Imu and Cajamu. The king of the Manitivitanos
was Cocuy, famous for his cruelty. The chiefs of the
Guaypunaves and the Manitivitanos fought with small
bodies of two or three hundred men; but in their pro-
tracted struggles they destroyed the missions, in some of
which the poor monks had only fifteen or twenty Spanish
soldiers at their disposal, When the expedition of Itur-
riaga and Solano arrived at the Orinoco, the missions had
no longer to fear the incursions of the Caribs. Cuseru,
the chief of the Guavpunaves, had fixed his dwelling behind
the granitic mountains of Sipapo. He was the friend of
the Jesuits ; but other nations of the Upper Orinoco and
the Eio Negro, led by Imu, Cajamu, and Cocuy, penetrated
from time to time to the north of the Great Cataracts
They had other motives for fighting than that of hatred ;
they hunted men, as was formerly the custom of the Caribs,
and is still the practice in Africa. Sometimes they fur-
nished slaves (poitos) to the Dutch (in their language,
Paranaquiri — inhabitants of the sea) ; sometimes they sold
them to the Portuguese (laranavi — sons of musicians).*
In America, as in Africa, the cupidity of the Europeaos
has produced the same evils, by exciting the natives to
make war, in order to procure slaves. Everywhere the
contact of nations, widely different from each other in the
scale of civilization, leads to the abuse of physical strength,
and of intellectual preponderance. The Phoenicians and
Carthaginians formerly sought slaves in Europe. Europe
now presses in her turn both on the countries whence she
gathered the first germs of science, and on those where she
now almost involuntarily spreads them by carrying thither
the produce of her industry.

I have faithfully recorded what I could collect on the

* The savage tribes designate every commercial nation of Europe by
surnames, the origin of which appears altogether accidental. The
Spaniards were called ' clothed men,' Font/heme or Uavemi, by way ol
distinction.

334 T1TE CHIEF CUSEEU.

state of these countries, where the vanquished nations
have become gradually extinct, leaving no other signs of theii
existence than a few worcs of their language, mixed with
that of the conquerors. In the north, beyond the cataracts,
the preponderant nations were at first the Caribs and the
Cabres; towards the south, on the Upper Orinoco, the
Gruaypunaves ; and on the Eio Negro, the Marepizanos and
the Manitivitanos. The long resistance which the Cabres,
united under a valiant chief, had made to the Caribs,
became fatal to the latter subsequently to the year ] 720.
They at first vanquished their enemies near the mouth of
the Eio Caura ; and a great number of Caribs perished in
a precipitate flight, between the rapids of Torno and the
Isla del Infierno. The prisoners were devoured; and, by
one of those refinements of cunning and cruelty which are
common to the savage nations of both North and South
America, the Cabres spared the life of one Carib, whom
they forced to climb up a tree to witness this barbarous
spectacle, and carry back the tidings to the vanquished.
The triumph of Tep, the chief of the Cabres, was but of
short duration. The Caribs returned in such great numbers
that only a feeble remnant of the Cabres was left on the
banks of the Cuchivero.

Cocuy and Cuseru were carrying on a war of extermin-
ation on the Upper Orinoco when Solano arrived at the
mouth of the Ghiaviare. The former had embraced the
cause of the Portuguese; the latter was a friend of the
Jesuits, and gave them warning whenever the Manitivitanos
were marching against the Christian establishments of
Atures and Carichana. Cuseru became a Christian only a
few days before his death ; but in battle he had for some
time worn en his left hip a crucifix, given him by the mis-
sionaries, and which he believed rendered him invulnerable
We were told an anecdote that paints the violence of hi'
character. He had married the daughter of an Indian chif
of the Eio Temi. In a paroxysm of rage against his father-
in-law, he declared to his wife that he was going to fight
against him. She reminded him of the courage and singular
strength of her father; when Cuseru, without uttering a
single word, took a poisoned arrow, and plunged it into
her bosora. The arrival rf a small body of Spaniards ir

EXPEDITION OF SOLAJfO.

1756, under the order of Solano, awakened suspicion in
this chief of the Guaypunaves. He was on the point of
attempting a contest with them, when the Jesuits made
him sensible that it would be his interest to remain at
peace with the Christians. Whilst dining at the table of
the Spanish general, Cuseru was allured by promises, and
the prediction of the approaching fall of his enemies. From
being a king he became the mayor of a village ; and con-
sented to settle with his people at the new mission of
San Fernando de Atabapo. Such is most frequently the
end of those chiefs whom travellers and missionaries style
Indian princes. " In my mission," says the honest father
Gili, " I had five reyecillos, or petty kings, those of the
Tamanacs, the Avarigotes, the Parecas, the Quaquas, and
the Maypures. At church I placed them in file on the same
bench ; but I took care to give the first place to Monaiti,
king of the Tamanacs, because he had helped me to found
the village; and he seemed quite proud of this prece-
dency.

When Cuseru, the chief of the Guaypunaves, saw the
Spanish troops pass the cataracts, he advised Don Jose
Solano to wait a whole year before he formed a settlement
on the Atabapo ; predicting the misfortunes which were not
slow to arrive. " Let me labour with my people in clearing
the ground," said Cuseru to the Jesuits; I will plant cassava,
and vou will find hereafter wherewith to feed all these
men/' Solano, impatient to advance, refused to listen to
the counsel of the Indian chief, and the new inhabitants of San
Fernando had to suffer all the evils of scarcity. Canoes
were sent at a great expense to New Grenada, by the Meta
and the Vichada, in search of flour. The provision arrived
too late, and many Spaniards and Indians perished of those
diseases which are produced in every climate by want ana
moral dejection.

Some traces of cultivation are still found at San Fernando.
Every Indian has a small plantation of cacao-trees, which
produce abundantly in the fifth year ; but they cease to bear
Fruit sooner than in the valleys of Aragua. There are some
savannahs and good pasturage round San Fernando, but
hardly seven or eight cows are to be found, the remains of a
herd which was brought into these countries at

THE PIRITU PAI/M.-TBEE.

the expedition for settling the boundaries. The Indians a.
a little more civilized here than in the rest of the missions •
and we found to our surprise a blacksmith of the native race.
In the mission of San Fernando, a tree which gives a pecu-
liar physiognomy to the landscape, is the piritu or pirijao
palm. Its trunk, armed with thorns, is more than sixty feet
high ; its leaves are pinnated, very thin, undulated, and
frizzled towards the points. The fruits of this tree are very
extraordinary; every cluster contains from fifty to eighty;
they are yellow like apples, grow purple in proportion as they
ripen, two or three inches thick, and generally, from abor-
tion, without a kernel. Among the eighty or ninety species
of palm-trees peculiar to the New Continent, which I
have enumerated in the * Nova Genera Plantarum JEqui-
noctialium,' there are none in which the sarcocarp is developed
in a manner so extraordinary. The fruit of the pirijao
furnishes a farinaceous substance, as yellow as the yolk of an
egg, slightly saccharine, and extremely nutritious. It is
eaten like plantains or potatoes, boiled or roasted in the
ashes, and aifords a wholesome and agreeable aliment. The
Indians and the missionaries are unwearied in their praises
of this noble palm-tree, which might be called the peach-
palm. We found it cultivated in abundance at San Fer-
nando, San Balthasar, Santa Barbara, and wherever we
advanced towards the south or the east along the banks of
the Atabapo and the Upper Orinoco. In those wild regions
we are involuntarily reminded of the assertion of Linnaeus,
that the country of palm-trees was the first abode of our
species, and that man is essentially palmivorous.* On
examining the provision accumulated in the huts of the
Indians, we perceive that their subsistence during several
months of the year depends as much on the farinaceous fruit
of the pirijao, as on the cassava and plantain. The tree bears
fruit but once a year, but to the amount of three clusters,
consequently from one hundred and fifty to two hundred
fruits,

* Homo habitat intra tropicos, vescitar palmis, lotophagus; hospitatur
extra tropicos sub novercante Cerere, carnivorus. — " Man dwells uatu.
rally within the tropics, and lives on the fruits of the palm-tree ; ha
eansts in other parts of the world, and there makes shift to feed on corn
and flesh." (Syst. Nai., vol. i, p. 24.)

BELIGIOUS nrcuBSicms. 337

San Fernando de Atabapo, San Carlos, and San Francisco
Solano, are the most considerable settlements among the
missions of the Upper Orinoco. At San Fernando, as well
as in the neighbouring villages of San Balthasar and 7 rvita,
the abodes of the priests are neatly-built houses, cove^r 1 by
lianas, and surrounded by gardens. The tall trunks of the
pirijao palms were the most beautiful ornaments of these
plantations. In our walks, the president of the mission
gave us an animated account of his incursions on the Bio
Guaviare. He related to us how much these journeys,
undertaken "for the conquest of souls," are desired by the
1 udians of the missions. All, even women and old men, take
part in them. Under the pretext of recovering neophytes
who have deserted the village, children above eight or ten
years of age are carried oif, and distributed among the
Indians of the missions as serfs, or poitos. According to the
astronomical observations I took on the banks of the Ata-
bapo, and on the western declivity of the Cordillera of tho
Andes, near the Paramo de la suma Paz, the distance is one
hundred and seven leagues only from San Fernando to the
first villages of the provinces of Caguan and San Juan de
los Llanos. I was assured also by some Indians, who dwelt
formerly to the west of the island of Amanaveni, beyond
the confluence of the Bio Supavi, that going in a boat on
the Guaviare (in the manner of the savages) beyond the
strait (angostura) and the principal cataract, they met, at
three days' distance, bearded and clothed men, who came in
search of the eggs of the terekay turtle. This meeting
alarmed the Indians so much, that they fled precipitately,
redescending the Guaviare. It is probable, that these
bearded white men came from the villages of Aroma and
San Martin, the Eio Guaviare being formed by the union of
the rivers Ariari and Guayavero. We must not be sur-
prised that the missionaries of the Orinoco and the Atabapfr
little suspect how near they live to the missionaries of
Mocoa, Bio Fragua, and Caguan. In these desert countries,
the real distances can be known only by observations of
the longitude. It was in consequence of astronomical
data, and the information I gathered in the convents of
Popayan and of Pasto, to the west of the Cordillera of
the Andes, that I formed an accurate idea of the respective

VOL. II. Z

338 THE RIO

situations of the Christian settlements on the Atabapo, the
Ohiayavsro, and the Caqueta.*

Everything changes on entering the Bio Atabapo ; the
constitution of the atmosphere, the colour of the waters, and
the form of the trees that cover the shore. You no longer
suffer during the day the torment of mosquitos ; and the long-
legged gnats (zancudos) become rare during the night. Be-
yond the mission of San Fernando these nocturnal insects
disappear altogether. The water of the Orinoco is turbid,
and loaded with earthy matter ; and in the coves, from the
accumulation of dead crocodiles and other putrescent sub-
stances, it diffuses a musky and faint smell. We were some-
times obliged to strain this water through a linen cloth before
we drank it. The water of the Atabapo, on the contrary, is
pure, agreeable to the taste, without any trace of smell, brown-
ish by reflected, and of a pale yellow by transmitted light.
The people call it light, in opposition to the heavy and
turbid waters of the Orinoco. Its temperature is generally
two degrees, and when you approach the mouth of the Rio
Temi, three degrees, cooler than the temperature of the Upper
Orinoco. After having been compelled during a whole year
to drink water at 27° or 28°, a lowering of a few degrees in
the temperature produces a very agreeable sensation. I
think this lowering of the temperature may be attributed
to the river being less broad, and without the sandy beach,
the heat of which, at the Orinoco, is by day more than 50°,
and also to the thick shade of the forests which are traversed
by the Atabapo, the Temi, the Tuamini, and the G-uainia, or
Bio Negro.

The extreme purity of the black waters is proved by their
limpidity, their transparency, and the clearness with which
they reflect the images and colours of surrounding objects.
The smallest fish are visible in them at a depth of twenty or
thirty feet ; and most commonly the bottom of the river
may be distinguished, which is not a yellowish or brownish
mud, like the colour of the water, but a quartzose and
granitic sand of dazzling whiteness. Nothing can be com-
pared to the beauty of the banks of the Atabapo. Loaded
with plants, among which rise the palms with feathery
leaves; the banks are reflected in the waters, and this
* The Caqueta bears, lower down, the name of the Yupurs.

OEOGBAPHICAL DOUBTS. 339

reflex verdure seems to hav< the same vivid hue as that
which clothes the real vegetation. The surface of the fluid
is homogeneous, smooth, and destitute of that mixture of
suspended sand and decomposed organic matter, which
roughens and streaks the surface of less limpid rivers.

On quitting the Orinoco, several small rapids must be
passed, but without any appearance of danger. Amid these
raudalitos, according to the opinion of the missionaries, the
Rio Atabapo falls into the Orinoco. I am however disposed
to think that the Atabapo falls into the Guaviare. The Rio
Guaviare, which is much wider than the Atabapo, has white
waters, and in the aspect of its banks, its fishing-birds, its
fish, and the great crocodiles which live in it, resembles the
Orinoco much more than that part of the Atabapo which
comes from the Esmeralda. When a river springs from the
junction of two other rivers, nearly alike in size, it is difficult
to judge which of the two confluent streams must be re-
garded as its source. The Indians of San Fernando affirm
that the Orinoco rises from two rivers, the Guaviare and
the Rio Paragua. They give this latter name to the Upper
Orinoco, from San Fernando and Santa Barbara to beyond
the Esmeralda, and they say that the Cassiquiare is not an
arm of the Orinoco, but of the Rio Paragua. It matters but
little whether or not the name of Orinoco be given to the
Rio Paragua, provided we trace the course of these rivera
as it is in nature, and do not separate by a chain of moun-
tains, (as was done previously to my travels,) rivers that
communicate together, and form one system. When we
would give the name of a large river to one of the two
branches by which it is formed, it should be applied to that
branch which furnishes most water. Now, at the two
seasons of the year when I saw the Guaviare and the Upper
Orinoco or Rio Paragua (between the Esmeralda and San
Fernando), it appeared to me that the latter was not
so large as the Guaviare. Similar doubts have been
entertained by geographers respecting the junction of the
Upper Mississippi with the Missouri and the Ohio, the
junction of the Marafion with the Guallaga and the Uca-
yale, and the junction of the Indus with the Chunab
(Hydaspes of (Cashmere) and the Gurra, or Sutlej.* To

* The Hydaspes is properly a tributary stream of the Chunab o*

E 2

310 VARIETIES OF WATER.

embroiling farther a nomenclature of rivers so arbi-
trarily fixed, I will not propose new denominations. I shall
continue, with Father Caulin and the Spanish geographers,
to call the river Esmeralda the Orinoco, or Upper Orinoco ;
but I must observe that if the Orinoco, from San Fernando
de Atabapo as far as the delta which it forms opposite the
island of Trinidad, were regarded as the continuance of
the Bio Cruaviare ; and if that part of the Upper Orinoco
between the Esmeralda and the mission of San Fernando
were considered a tributary stream; the Orinoco would
preserve, from the savannahs of San Juan de los Llanos
and the eastern declivity of the Andes to its mouth, a more
uniform and natural direction, that from south-west to
north-east.

The Bio Paragua, or that part of the Orinoco east of
the mouth of the G-uaviare, has clearer, more transparent,
and purer water than the part of the Orinoco below San
Fernando. The waters of the Guaviare, on the contrary,
are white and turbid ; they have the same taste, according
to the Indians, (whose organs of sense are extremely deli-
cate and well practised,) as the waters of the Orinoco near
the Great Cataracts. " Bring me the waters of three or
four great rivers of these countries," an old Indian of the
mission of Javita said to us ; " on tasting each of them I
will tell you, without fear of mistake, whence it was taken ;
whether it comes from a white or black river; the Orinoco
or the Atabapo, the Paragua or the Gruaviare." The great
crocodiles and porpoises (toninas) which are alike common
in the Bio Guaviare and the Lower Orinoco, are entirely
wanting, as we were told, in the Bio Paragua *or Upper
^riinoco, between San Fernando and the Esmeralda). These

are very remarkable differences in the nature of the waters,
and the distribution of animals. The Indians do not fail
to mention them, when they would prove to travellers that
the Upper Orinoco, to the east of San Fernando, is a
distinct river which falls into the Orinoco, and that the
real origin of the latter must be sought in the sources of
the G-uaviare.

Acesines. The Sutlej or Hysudrns forms, together with the Beyah 01

Gurra. These are the beautiful regions of the

brated from the time of Alexander to the

SUPPOSED MIWEBAL BICHEB. 341

The astronomical observations made in the n.ght of the
25th of April did not give me the latitude with satisfactory
precision. The latitude of the mission of San Fernando
appeared to me to be 4° 2' 48". In Father Caulin's map,
founded on the observations of Solano made in 1756, it is
4° 1'. This agreement proves the justness of a result which,
however, I could only deduce from altitudes considerably
distant from the meridian. A good observation of the stars
at Guapasoso gave me 4° 2' for San Fernando de Atabapo.
I was able to fix the longitude with much more precision
in my way to the Rio Negro, and in returning from that
river. It is 70° 30' 46" (or 4° 0' west of the meridian of
Cumana).

On the 26th of April we advanced only two or three
leagues, and passed the night on a rock near the Indian
plantations or conucos of Guapasoso. The river losing itself
by its inundations in the forests, and its real banks being
unseen, the traveller can venture to land only where a rock
or a small table-land rises above the water. The granite
of those countries, owing to the position of the thin
laminae of black mica, sometimes resembles graphic granite ;
but most frequently (and this determines the age of its for-
mation) it passes into a real gneiss. Its beds, very regularly
stratified, run from south-west to north-east, as in the Cor-
dillera on the shore of Caracas. The dip of the granite-
gneiss is 70° north-west. It is traversed by an infinite
number of veins of quartz, which are singularly transparent,
and three or four, and sometimes fifteen inches thick. I
found no cavity (druse), no crystallized substance, not even
rock-crystal ; and no trace of pyrites, or any other metallic
substance. I enter into these particulars on account of the
chimerical ideas that have been spread ever since the six*
teenth century, after the voyages of Berreo and Raleigh,*
" on the immense riches of the great and fine empire of
Guiana."

The river Atabapo presents throughout a peculiar aspect ;
you see nothing of its real banks formed by flat lands eight

* Raleigh's work bears the high sounding title of " The Discovery of
the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana." (Land. 1596.) Sec
also Raleghi admiranda Degcriptio Regni Guianae, auri abundantis&iaoi
(Homlius, Noriberya, 1599.)

312 WATEE-S5AKEB.

or ten feefc high ; they are concealed by a row of pal.ns, andf
small trees with slender trunks, the roots of which are bathed
by the waters. There are many crocodiles from the point
where you quit the Orinoco to the mission of San Fernando,
and their presence indicates that this part of the river be-
longs to the Eio Ghiaviare and not to the Atabapo. In the
real bed of the latter river, above the mission of San
Fernando, there are no crocodiles: we find there some
lavas, a great many fresh-ivater dolphins, but no manatis.
We also seek in vain on these banks for the thick-
nosed tapir, the araguato, or great howling monkey, the
zamuro, or Vultur aura, and the crested pheasant, known by
the name of guacharaca. Enormous water-snakes, in shape
resembling the boa, are unfortunately very common, and are
dangerous to Indians who bathe. "We saw them almost
from the first day we embarked, swimming by the side of
our -canoe ; they were at most twelve or fourteen feet long.
The jaguars of the banks of the Atabapo and the Temi are
large and well fed ; they are said, however, to be less daring
than the jaguars of the Orinoco.

The night of the 27th was beautiful ; dark clouds passed
from time to time over the zenith with extreme rapidity.
Not a breath of wind was felt in the lower strata of the
atmosphere ; the breeze was at the height of a thousand
toises. I dwell upon this peculiarity ; for the movement we
saw was not produced by the counter-currents (from west to
east) which are sometimes thought to be observed in the
torrid zone on the loftiest mountains of the Cordilleras ; it
was the effect of a real breeze, an east wind. We left
the conucos of Ghiapasoso at two o'clock ; and continued to
ascend the river toward the south, finding it (or rather that
part of its bed which is free from trees) growing more and
more narrow. It began to rain toward sunrise. In these
forests, which are less inhabited by animals than those of
the Orinoco, we no longer heard the howlings of the mon*
keys. The dolphins, or toninas, sported by the side of our
boat. According to the relation of Mr. Colebrooke, the
Delphinus gangeticus, which is the fresh-water porpoise of
the Old World, in like manner accompanies the boats that
go up towards Benares ; but from Benares to the point
w'aere the Ganges receives the salt waters is only two him

PIEDEA IjEL TIG RE. 340

dred leagues, while from the Atabapo to the mouth of the
Orinoco is more than three hundred and twenty.

About noon we passed the mouth of the little river Ipuricha-
pano on the east, and afterwards the granitic rock, known by
the name of Plectra del Tigre. Between the fourth and fifth
degrees of latitude, a little to the south of the mountains of
Sipapo, we reach the southern extremity of that chain of
cataracts, which I proposed, in a memoir published in 1800,
to call the Chain of Parima. At 4° 20' it stretches from thft
right bank of the Orinoco toward the east and east-south-
east. The whole of the land extending from the mountains
of the Parima towards the river Amazon, which is traversed
by the Atabapo, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, is an
immense plain, covered partly with forests, and partly with
grass. Small rocks rise here and there like castles. We
regretted that we had not stopped to rest near the Piedra
del Tigre ; for on going up the Atabapo we had great diffi-
culty to find a spot of dry ground, open and spacious enough
to light a fire, and place «ur instrument and our hammocks.

On the 28th of April, it rained hard after sunset, and we
were afraid that our collections would be damaged. The
poor missionary had his fit of tertian fever, and besought
us to re-embark immediately after midnight. "We passed at
day-break the Pied/ra and the Itattdalitos* of Guarinuma.
The rock is on the east bank ; it is a shelf of granite,
covered with psora, cladonia, and other lichens. I could have
fancied myself transported to the north of Europe, to the
ridge of the mountains of gneiss and granite between Frei-
berg and Marienberg in Saxony. The cladonias appeared to
me to be identical with the Lichen rangiferinus, the L. pixi-
datus, and the L. polymorphus of Linnaeus. After having
passed the rapids of Guarinuma, the Indians showed us in
the middle of the forest, on our right, the ruins of the mis-
sion of Mendaxari, winch has been long abandoned. On the
east bank of the river, near the little rock of Kemarumo, in
the midst of Indian plantations, a gigantic bombaxf attracted
our curiosity. We landed to measure it ; the height was
nearly one hundred and twenty feet, and the diameter
between fourteen and fifteen. This enormous specimen of
* The rock and little cascade*. f Borobax ceiba.

344 MISSION OF SAN BALTHASAB.

vegetation surprised us the more, as we had till then seen
on the banks of the Atabapo only small trees with slender
trunks, which from afar resembled young cherry-trees. The
Indians assured that these small trees do not form a very
extensive group. They are checked in their growth by the
inundations of the river ; while the dry grounds near the
Atabapo, the Temi, and the Tuamini, furnish excellent
timber for building. These forests do not stretch indefi-
nitely to the east and west, toward the Cassiquiare and the
Gruaviare ; they are bounded by the open savannahs of Ma-
nuteso, and the Bio Inirida. We found it difficult in the
evening to stem the current, and we passed the night in a
wood a little above Mendaxari ; which is another granitic rock
traversed by a stratum of quartz. We found in it a group
of fine crystals of black schorl.

On the 29th, the air was cooler. We had no zancudos,
but the sky was constantly clouded, and without stars. I began
to regret the Lower Orinoco. We still advanced but slowly
from the force of the current, and we stopped a great part
of the day to seek for plants. It was night when we arrived
at the mission of San Balthasar, or, as the monks style it,
the mission of la divina Pastor a de Balthasar de Aidbapo.
We were lodged with a Catalonian missionary, a lively and
agreeable man, who displayed in these wild countries the
activity that characterises his nation. He had planted a
garden, where the fig-tree of Europe was found in company
with the persea, and the lemon-tree with the mammee. The
village was built with that regularity which, in the north of
Grermany, and in protestant America, we find in the hamlets
of the Moravian brethren ; and the Indian plantations seemed
better cultivated than elsewhere. Here we saw for the first
time that white and fungous substance which I have made
known by the name of dapicho and zapis* We immediately
perceived that it was analogous to india-rubber ; but, as the
Indians made us understand by signs, that it was found
underground, we were inclined to think, till we arrived at
the mission of Javita, that the dapicho was a fossil caout-
chouc, though different from the elastic bitumen of Derby-
shire. A Poimisano Indian, seated by the fire in the hut of
* These two words belong to the Poimisano and Paragioi tongues.

PREPARATION OF DAPICHO. 345

the missionary, was employed in reducing tie dapicho into
black caoutchouc. He nad spitted several bits on a slendei
stick, and was roasting them like meat. The dapicho black-
ens in proportion as it grows soft, and becomes elastic.
The resinous and aromatic smell which filled the hut, seemed
to indicate that this coloration is the effect of the decom-
position of a carburet of hydrogen, and that the carbon
appears in proportion as the hyclrogen burns at a low heat.
The Indian beat the softened and blackened mass with a
piece of brazil-wood, formed at one end like a club ; he then
Kneaded the dapicho into balls of three or four inches in
diameter, and let it cool. These balls exactly resemble the
caoutchouc of the shops, but their surface remains in general
slightly viscous. They are used at San Balthasar in the
Indian game of tennis, which is celebrated among the inha-
bitants of Uruana and Encaramada ; they are also cut into
cylinders, to be used as corks, and are far preferable to
those made of the bark of the cork-tree.

This use of caoutchouc appeared to us the more worthy
notice, as we had been often embarrassed by the want of Euro-
pean corks. The great utility of cork is fully understood in
countries where trade has not supplied this bark in plenty.
Equinoctial America nowhere produces, not even on the
back of the Andes, an oak resembling the Quercus suber ;
and neither the light wood of the bombax, the ochroma, and
other malvaceous plants, nor the rhachis of maize, of which
the natives make use, can well supply the place of our corks.
The missionary showed us, before the Casa de los Solteros
(the house where the young unmarried men reside), a drum,
which was a hollow cylinder of wood, two feet long and
eighteen inches thick. This drum was beaten with great
masses of dapicho, which served as drumsticks; it had
openings which could be stopped by the hand at will, to
vary the sounds, and was fixed on two light supports. Sa-
vage notions love noisy music ; the drum and the botuto, or
trumpet of baked earth, in which a tube of three or four
feet long communicates with several barrels, are indis-
pensable instruments among the Indians for their grand
pieces of music.

The night of the 30th of April was sufficiently fine for
observing the meridian heights of x of the Southern Cross,

346 THE ROCK OF TilE GUA11IBA.

and the two large stars in the feet of the Centuar. I found
the latitude of San Balthasar 3° 14' 23". Horary angles of
the sun gave 70° 14" 21" for the longitude by the chrono-
meter. The dip of the magnetic needle was 27*8° (cent,
div.) "We left the mission at a late hour in the morning,
and continued to go up the Atabapo for five miles ; then,
instead of following that river to its source in the east,
where it bears the name of Atacavi, we entered the Rio
Temi. Before we reached its confluence, a granitic eminence
on the western bank, near the mouth of the Ghiasacavi, fixed
our attention : it is called Piedra de la Gruahiba, (Rock ot
the Gruahiba woman), or the Piedra de la Madre (Mother's
Rock.) We inquired the cause of so singular a denomina-
tion. Father Zea could not satisfy our curiosity ; but some
weeks after, another missionary, one of the predecessors of
that ecclesiastic, whom we found settled at San Fernando as
president of the missions, related to us an event which
excited in our minds the most painful feelings. If, in these
solitary scenes, man scarcely leaves behind him any trace of
his existence, it is doubly humiliating for a European to see
perpetuated by so imperishable a monument of nature as a
rock, the remembrance of the moral degradation of our
species, and the contrast between the virtue of a savage, and
the barbarism of civilized man !

In 1797 the missionary of San Fernando had led his
Indians to the banks of the Bio Guaviare, on one of those
hostile incursions which are prohibited alike by religion
and the Spanish laws. They found in an Indian hut a
Gruahiba women 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, who hunt human beings, like the
Whites and the Negroes in Africa. The mother and her chil-
dren 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
her, for everything is permitted for the sake of the conquest
of souls (la conquista espirituel), and it is particularly

AFFECTING INCIDENT. 347

desirable to capture children, who may be treated in the
mission as poitos, or slaves of the Christians. The prisoners
were carried to San Fernando, in the hope tl at the mother
would be unable to find her way back to her home by land.
Separated from her other children who had accompanied their
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 missionary ; and she fled with them
repeatedly from the village of San Fernando. But the
Indians never failed to recapture 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 con-
veyed 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 and farther 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. She landed and took shelter in the
woods, but the president of the missions ordered the
Indians to row to the shore, and follow the traces of the
G-uahiba. In the evening she was brought back. Stretched
upon the rock (la Piedra de la Madre) a cruel punishment
was inflicted on her with those straps of manati leather,
which serve for whips in that country, and with which the
alcaldes are always furnished. This unhappy woman, her
hands tied behind her back with strong stalks of mavacure,
was then dragged to the mission of Javita.

She was there thrown into one of the caravanserais,
called las Casas del Hey. 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 Fernando, which was twenty-five leagues distant in
a straight line. No other route is 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 Guahfta vraa

34:8 AFFECTING INCIDENT.

carelessly giarded in the caravanserai. Her arms being
wounded, the Indians of Javita bad loosened ber bonds,
unknown to tbe missionary and tbe alcaldes. Having suc-
ceeded by tbe belp of ber teeth in breaking tbem entirely,
sbe disappeared during the nigbt ; and at tbe 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 ua
this sad narrative, " the most robust Indian would no*u
have ventured to undertake!" She traversed the woods at
a season when the sky is constantly covered with clouds,
and the sun during whole days appears but for a few
minutes. Did the course of the waters direct her way?
The inundations of the rivers forced her to go far from the
banks of the main stream, through the midst of woods
where the movement of the water is almost imperceptible.
How often must she have been stopped by the thorny
lianas, that form a network around the trunks they en-
twine ! How often must she have swum across the millets
that run into the Atabapo ! This unfortunate woman was
asked how she had sustained herself during four days. She
said that, exhausted with fatigue, she could find no other
nourishment than those great black ants called vachacos,
which climb the trees in long bands, to suspend on them
their resinous nests. "We pressed the missionary to tell
us whether the G-uahiba had peacefully enjoyed the hap-
piness of remaining with her children ; and if any repen-
tance had followed this excess of cruelty. He would not
satisfy our curiosity; but at our return from the Bio
Negro we learned that the Indian mother was again sepa-
rated from her children, and sent to one of the missions of
the Upper Orinoco. There she died, refusing all kind of
nourishment, as savages frequently do in great calamities.

Such is the remembrance annexed to this fatal rock, the
Piedra de la Madre. In this relation of my travels I feel
no desire to dwell on pictures of individual suffering —
evils which are frequent wherever there are masters and
slaves, civilized Europeans living with people in a state of
barbarism, and priests exercising the plenitude of arbitrary
power over men ignorant and without defence. In describing
the countries through which I passed, I generally confine

THJS P1EIJAO PALM-TEEE.. 3-49

myself to pointing out what is imperfect, or fatal to huma-
nity, in their civil or religious institutions. If I ha.e dwelt
longer on the Rock of the Gudhiba, it was to record an
affecting instance of maternal tenderness in a race of people
so long calumniated ; and because I thought some benefit
might accrue from publishing a fact, which 1 had from the
monks of San Francisco, and which proves how much the
system of the missions calls for the care of the legislator.

Above the mouth of the Guasucavi we entered the Rio
Temi, the course of which is from south to north. Had
we continued to ascend the Atabapo, we should have turned
to east-south-east, going farther from the banks of the
Q-uainia or Kio Negro. The Temi is only eighty or ninety
toises broad, but in any other country than Guiana it would
be a considerable river. The country exhibits the uniform
aspect of forests covering ground perfectly flat. The fine
pirijao palm, with its fruit like peaches, and a new species
of bache, or mauritia, its trunk bristled with thorns, rise
amid smaller trees, the vegetation of which appears to be
retarded by the continuance of the inundations. The
Mauritia aculeata is called by the Indians jwria or cauvaja ;
its leaves are in the form of a fan, and they bend towards
the ground. At the centre of every leaf, no doubt from
the effect of some disease of the parenchyma, concentric
circles of alternate blue and yellow appear, the yellow pre-
vailing towards the middle. We were singularly struck by
this appearance; the leaves, coloured like the peacock's
tail, are supported by short and very thick trunks. The
thorns are not slender and long like those of the corozo
and other thorny palm-trees; but on the contrary, very
woody, short, ana broad at the base, like the thorns of the
Hura crepitans. On the banks of the Atabapo and the
Temi, this palm-tree is distributed in groups ol twelve or
fifteen stems, close together, and looking as if they rose
from the same root. These trees resemble in their appear-
ance, form, and scarcity of leaves, the fan-palms and pal-
mettos of the Old World. We remarked that some plants
of the juria were entirely destitute of fruit, and others
exhibited a considerable quantity ; this circumstance seems
to indicate a palm-tree of separate sexes.

Wherever the llio Temi forms coves, the forest is inun-

350 EXTBAOBDLNABY BEJTCOMRE.

dated to tlie extent of more tKan half a square league. To
avoid the sinuosities of the river and shorten the passage,
the navigation is here performed in a very extraordinary
manner. The Indians made us leave the bed of the river ;
and we proceeded southward across the forest, through
paths (sendas), that is, through open channels of four or
five feet broad. The depth of the water seldom exceeds
half a fathom. These sendas are formed in the inundated
forest like paths on dry ground. The Indians, in going
from one mission to another, pass with their boats as much
as possible by the same way ; but the communications not
being frequent, the force of vegetation sometimes produces
unexpected obstacles. An Indian, furnished with a machete
(a great knife, the blade of which is fourteen inches long),
stood at the head of our boat, employed continually in
chopping off" the branches that crossed each other from the
two sides of the channel. In the thickest part of the
forest we were astonished by an extraordinary noise. On
beating the bushes, a shoal of toninas (fresh-water dolphins)
four feet long, surrounded our boat. These animals had
concealed themselves beneath the branches of afromager,
or 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
Ajnazon ! I am aware that the pleuronectes (dabs) of the
Atlantic go up the Loire as far as Orleans; but I am,
nevertheless, of opinion that the dolphins of the Temi,
like those of the Ganges, and like the skate (raia) of the
Orinoco, are of a species essentially different from the
dolphins and skates of the ocean. In the immense rivers
of South America, and the great lakes of North America,
nature seems to repeat several pelagic forms. The Nile
has no porpoises:* those of the sea go up the Delta no
farther than Biana and Metonbis towards Selamoun.

At five in the evening we regained with some difficulty

* Those dolphins that enter the mouth of the Nile, did not escape the
observation of the ancients. In a bust in syenite, preserved in the
museum at Paris, the sculptor has represented them half concealed in Ih?
u adulatory beard of the god of the river.

BAIT ANTONIO DE JAVITA. 351

tLe bed of the river. Our canoe remained fast for some
minutes between two trunks of trees ; and it was no sooner
disengaged than we reached a spot where several paths, or
small channels, crossed each other, so that the pilot was
puzzled to distinguish the most open path. We navigated
through a forest so thick that we could guide ourselves
neither by the sun nor by the stars. We were again struck
during this day by the want of arborescent ferns in that
country ; they diminish visibly from the sixth degree of north
latitude, while the palm-trees augment prodigiously towards
the equator. Pern-trees belong to a climate less hot, and
a soil but little mountainous. It is only where there are
mountains that these majestic plants descend towards the
plains ; they seem to avoid perfectly flat grounds, as those
through which run the Cassiquiare, the Temi, Inirida, and
the Bio Negro. We passed in the night near a rock, called
the Piedra de Astor by the missionaries. The ground from
the mouth of the Gruaviare constantly displays the same
geological formation. It is a vast granitic plain, in which
from league to league the rock pierces the soil, and forms,
not hillocks, but small masses, that resemble pillars or
ruined buildings.

On the 1st of May the Indians chose to depart long
before sunrise. We were stirring before them, however,
because I 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 we drew
nearer to the Rio Negro and the interior of Brazil. We
remained in the bed of the river till daybreak, being afraid
of losing ourselves among the trees. At sunrise we again
entered the inundated forest, to avoid the force of the
current. On reaching the junction of the Temi with an-
other little river, the Tuamini, the waters of which are
equally black, we proceeded along the latter to the south-
west. This direction led us near the mission of Javita,
which is founded on the banks of the Tuamini; and at
this Christian settlement we were to find the aid necessary
for transporting our canoe by land to the Eio Negro. We
did not arrive at San Antonio de Javita till near eleven in
the morning. An accident, unimportant in itself, but
which shows the excessive timidity of the little sagoina

.352 TUB ARAJ>OEE8.

detained us some fcime at the mouth of the Tuamini. The
noise of the blowers had frightened our monkeys, and one
of them fell into the water. Animals of this species, per-
haps on account of their extreme meagreness, swim badly ;
and consequently it was saved with some difficulty.

At Javita we had the pleasure of finding a very intelligent
and obliging monk, at whose mission we were forced to
remain four or five days, the time required for transporting
our boat across the portage of Pimichin. This delay enabled
us to visit the surrounding country, as also to relieve our-
selves from an annoyance which we had suffered for two
days. We felt an extraordinary irritation on the joints of
our fingers, and on the backs of our hands. The missionary
told us it was caused by the aradores* which get under the
skin. We could distinguish with a lens nothing but streaks,
or parallel and whitish furrows. It is the form of these
furrows, that has obtained for the insect the name of * plough-
man.' A mulatto woman was sent for, who professed to be
thoroughly acquainted with all the little insects that burrow
in the human skin ; the chego, the nuche, the coy a, and the
arador ; she was the cwrandera, or surgeon of the place.
She promised to extirpate, one by one, the insects which
caused this smarting irritation, Having heated at a lamp
the point a little bit of hard wood, she dug with it into
the furrows that marked the skin. After long examina-
tion, she announced with the pedantic gravity peculiar to the
mulatto race, that an arador was found. I saw a little
round bag, which I suspected to be the egg of an acarus. I
was to find relief when the mulatto woman had succeeded in
taking out three or four of these aradores. Having the skin
of both hands filled with acari, I had not the patience to wait
the end of an operation, which had already lasted till late at
night. The next day an Indian of Javita cured us radically,
and with surprising promptitude. He brought us the
branch of a shrub, called uzao, with small leaves like those
of cassia, very coriaceous and glossy. He made a cold
infusion of the bark of this shrub, which had a bluish colour,
and the taste of liquorice. When beaten, it yields a great
deal of froth. The irritation of the aradores ceased by using
simple lotions of this uzao-water. We could not find thii
* Literally, ' the plcughers.'

THE CHIEF JAVTTA.

shrub in flower, or bearing fruit; it appears to belong to the
family of the leguminous plants, the chemical properties of
which are singularly varied. We dreaded so much the
sufferings to which we had been exposed, that we constantly
kept some branches of the uzao in our boat, till we reached
San Carlos. This shrub grows in abundance on the banks
of the Pimichin. Why has no remedy been discovered for
the irritation produced by the sting of the zancudos, as well
as for that occasioned by the aradores or microscopic acari ?
In 1755, before the expedition for fixing the boundaries,
better known by the name of the expedition of Solaiio, the
whole country between the missions of Javita and San Bal-
thasar was regarded as dependent on Brazil. The Portuguese
had advanced from the liio Negro, by the portage of the Cano
Pimichin, as far as the banks of the Term. An Indian chief
of the name of Javita, celebrated for his courage and his
spirit of enterprise, was the ally of the Portuguese. He
pushed his hostile incursions from the Kio Jupura, or
Caqueta, one of the great tributary streams of the Amazon,
by the rivers Uaupe and Xie, as far as the black waters of
the Temi and the Tuamini, a distance of more than a
hundred leagues. He was furnished with letters patent,
which authorised him " to bring the Indians from the forest,
for the conquest of souls." He availed himself amply of
this permission ; but his incursions had an object which was
not altogether spiritual, that of making slaves to sell to the
Portuguese. When Solano, the second chief of the expedi-
tion of the boundaries, arrived at San Fernando de Atabapo,
he had Javita seized, in one of his incursions to the banks of
the Temi. He treated him with gentleness, and succeeded
in gaining him over to the interests of the Spanish govern-
ment by promises that were not fulfilled. The Portuguese,
who had already formed some stable settlements in these
countries, were oriven back as far as the lower part of the
Itio Negro ; and the mission of San Antonio, ot which the
more usual name is Javita, so called after its Indian founder,
was removed farther north of the sources of the Tuamini, to
the spot where it is now established. This captain, Javita,
was still living, at an advanced age, when we proceeded to the
Rio Negro. He was an Indian of great vigour of mind an<J
body. He spoke Spanish with facility, and preserved a certain

VOL. II, 2 A

354 CANNIBAL TRIBES.

influence over the neighbouring nations. As he attended
us in all our herborizations, we obtained from his own
mouth information so much the more useful, as the mis-
sionaries have great confidence in his veracity. He assured
us, that in his youth he had seen almost all the Indian
tribes, that inhabit the vast regions between the Upper
Orinoco, the Bio Negro, the Inirida, and the Jupura, eat
human flesh. The Daricavanas, the Puchirinavis, and the
Manitivitanos, appeared to him to be the greatest cannibals
among them. He believes that this abominable practice is
with them the effect of a system of vengeance ; they eat
only enemies who are made prisoners in battle. The
instances where, by a refinement of cruelty, the Indian eats
his nearest relations, his wife, or an unfaithful mistress, are
extremely rare. The strange custom of the Scythians and
Massagetes, the Capanaguas of the Rio Ucayale, and the
ancient inhabitants of the West Indian Islands, of honour-
ing the dead by eating a part of their remains, is unknown
on the banks of the Orinoco. In both continents this trait
of manners belongs only to nations that hold in horror the
flesh of a prisoner. The Indian of Hayti (Saint Domingo)
would think himself wanting in regard to the memory of a
relation, if he did not throw into his drink a small portion of
the body of the deceased, after having dried it like one of
the mummies of the G-uanches, and reduced it to powder.
This gives us just occasion to repeat with an eastern poet,
" of all animals man is the most fantastic in his manners,
and the most disorderly in his propensities."

The climate of the mission of San Antonio de Javita is
extremely rainy. "When you have passed the latitude of
three degrees north, and approach the equator, you have
seldom an opportunity of observing the sun or the stars.
It rains almost the whole year, and the sky is constantly
cloudy. As the breeze is not felt in these immense forests
of Ghiiana, and the refluent polar currents do not penetrate
them, the column of air which reposes on this wooded zone
is not renewed by dryer strata. It is saturated with vapours
which are condensed into equatorial rains. The missionary
assured us that it often rains here four or five months
without cessation.

The temperature of Javita is cooler than that of Mayyures,

THE INDIAN CANOES. 355

but considerably hotter than that of the Gkminia or Rio
Negro. The centigrade thermometer kept up in the day to
twenty-six or twenty-seven degrees; and in the night to
twenty-one degrees.

From the 30th of April to the llth of May, I had not
been able to see any star in the meridian so as to determine
the latitude of places. I watched whole nights in order to
make use of the method of double altitudes ; but all my
efforts were useless. The fogs of the north of Europe are
not more constant than those of the equatorial regions of
Guiana. On the 4th of May, I saw the sun for some
minutes; and found by the chronometer and the horary
angles the longitude of Javita to be 70° 22', or 1° 15' farther
west than the longitude of the junction of the Apure with
the Orinoco. This result is interesting for laying down on
our maps the unknown country lying between the Xie and
the sources of the Issana, situated on the same meridian
with the mission of Javita.

The Indians of Javita, whose number amounts to one
hundred and sixty, now belong for the most part to the na-
tions of the Pohnisanos, the Echinavis, and the Paraganis.
They are employed in the construction of boats, formed
of the trunks of sassafras, a large species of laurel, hol-
lowed by means of fire and the hatchet. These trees are
more than one hundred feet high ; the wood is yellow,
resinous, almost incorruptible in water, and has a very agree-
able smell. We saw them at San Fernando, at Javita, and
more particularly at Esmeralda, where most of the canoes of
the Orinoco are constructed, because the adjacent forests
furnish the largest trunks of sassafras.

The forest between Javita and the Cafio Pimichin, contains
an immense quantity of gigantic trees, ocoteas, and laurels,
the Amasonia arborea,* the Retiniphyllum secundiflorum,
the curvana, the jacio, the iacifate, of which the wood is red
like the brazilletto, the guamufate, with its fim leaves of

* This is a new species of the genus taligalea of Aublet. On the same
•pot grow the Bignonia magnoliaefolia, B. jasminifolia, Solanum topiro,
Juaticia pectoralis, Faramea cymosa, Piper javitense, Scleria hirtella,
Echites javitensis, Lindsea javitensis, and that curious plant of the family
of the verbenaceae, which I have dedicated to the illustrious Leopold vou
Buch, in whose early labours I participated.

2 A 2

356 DIFFICULTIES IN HEBBORIZATIOH.

calophyllum from seven to eight inches long, the Amyrw
earana, and the mani. All these trees (with the exception
of our new genus Retiniphyllum) were more than one hun-
dred or one hundred and ten feet high. As their trunks
throw out branches only toward the summit, we had some
trouble in procuring both leaves and flowers. The latter
were frequently strewed upon the ground at the foot of the
trees; but, the plants of different families being grouped
together in these forests, and every tree being covered with
lianas, we could not, with any degree of confidence, rely on
the authority of the natives, when they assured us that a
flower belonged to such or such a tree. Amid these riches of
nature heborizations caused us more chagrin than satis-
faction. "What we could gather appeared to us of little
interest, compared to what we could not reach. It rained
unceasingly during several months, and M. Bonpland lost
the greater part of the specimens which he had been com-
pelled to dry by artificial heat. Our Indians distinguished
%e leaves better than the corollsa or the fruit. Occupied
ji seeking timber for canoes, they are inattentive to
flowers. "All those great trees bear neither flowers nor
fruits," they repeated unceasingly. Like the botanists of
antiquity, they denied what they had not taken the
trouble to observe. They were tired with our questions, and
exhausted our patience in return.

We have already mentioned that the same chemical pro-
perties being sometimes found in the same organs of dif-
ferent families of plants, these families supply each other's
places in various climates. Several species of palms* furnish
the inhabitants of equinoctial America and Africa with the
oil which we derive from the olive. "What the coniferse are
to the temperate zone, the terebinthacese and the guttiferae
are to the torrid. In the forests of those burning climates,

* I.u Africa, the elais or maba; in America the cocoa-tree. In the
cocoa-tree it is the perisperm ; and in the elais (as in the olive, and the
oleinese iu general) it is the sarcocarp, or the pulp of the pericarp, that
yields oil. This difference, observed in the same family, appears to me
very remarkable, though it is in no way contradictory to the results
obtained by De Candolle in his ingenious researches on the chemical pro-
perties of plants. If our Alfonsia oleifera belong to the genus Elais, (a«
Hrown, with great reason believes,) it follows, that in the same genus tht
oil is found in the sarcocarp and in the perisperm.

I

GUMS AND BESIXS. 357

(where there is neither pine, thuya, taxodium, nor even a
podocarpus,) resins, balsams, and aromatic gums, are fur.
nished oy the maronobea, the icica, and the amyris. Th&
collecting of these gummy and resinous substances is a
trade in the village of Javita. The most celebrated resin
bears the name of mani; and of this we saw masses of
several hundred-weight, resembling colophony and mastic.
The tree called mani by the Paraginis, which M. Bonpland
believes to be the Moronobsea coccinea, furnishes out a
small quantity of the substance employed in the trade with
Angostura. The greatest part comes from the mararo or
caragna, which is an amyris. It is remarkable enough, that
the name mani, which Aublet heard among the Gralibis* of
Cayenne, was again heard by us at Javita, three hundred
leagues distant from French Gruiana. The moronobaea or
symphonia of Javita yields a yellow resin; the caragna, a
resin strongly odoriferous, and white as snow; the latter
beomes yellow where it is adherent to the internal part of
old bark.

We went every day to see how our canoe advanced on
the portages. Twenty-three Indians were employed in
dragging it by land, placing branches of trees to serve
as rollers. In this manner a small boat proceeds in a
day or a day and a half, from the waters of the Tuamini
to those of the Cano Pimichin, which flow into the
Bio Negro. Our canoe being very large, and having to
pass the cataracts a second time, it was necessary to avoid
with particular care any friction on the bottom; conse-
quently the passage occupied more than four days. It is only
since 1795 that a road has been traced through the forest.
By substituting a canal for this portage, as I proposed to
the ministry of king Charles IV, the communication between
the Bio Negro and Angostura, between the Spanish Orinoco
and the Portuguese possessions on the Amazon, would be
singularly facilitated.

In this forest we at length obtained precise information

* The Galibis or Caribi* (the r has been changed into /, as often
happens) are of the great stock of the Carib nations. The products use-
ful in commerce and in domestic life hi ?e received the same denomina-
tion in every part of America which this wa-v.ke and commercial peoplt
have overrun.

358 THE UAP1C110.

respecting the pretended fossil caoutchouc, called dapicho by
the Indians. The old chief Javita led us to the brink of a
rivulet which runs into the Tuamini ; and showed us that,
after digging two or three feet deep, in a marshy soil, thia
aubstance was found between the roots of two trees known
by the name of the jacio and the curvana. The first is the
hevea of Aublet, or siphonia of the modern botanists, known
to furnish the caoutchouc of commerce in Cayenne and
Grand Para ; the second has pinnate leaves, and its juice ia
milky, but very thin, and almost destitute of viscosity. The
dapicho appears to be the result of an extravasation of the sap
from the roots. This extravasation takes place more espe-
cially when the trees have attained a great age, and the inte-
rior of the trunk begins to decay. The bark and alburnum
crack ; and thus is effected naturally, what the art of man
performs for the purpose of collecting the milky juices of
the hevea, the castilloa, and the caoutchouc fig-tree. Aublet
relates, that the Galibis and the G-aripons of Cayenne begin
by making a deep incision at the foot of the trunk, so as to
penetrate into the wood ; soon after they join with this hori-
zontal notch others both perpendicular and oblique, reaahing
from the top of the trunk nearly to the roots. All thet-e
incisions conduct the milky juice towards one point, where
the vase of clay is placed, in which the caoutchouc is to be
deposited. We saw the Indians of Carichana operate nearly
in the same manner.

If, as I suppose, the accumulation and overflowing of the
milk in the jacio and the ciwvana be a pathological pheno-
menon, it must sometimes take place at the extremity of
the longest roots, for we found masses of dapicho two feet
in diameter and four inches thick, eight feet distant from
the trunks. Sometimes the Indians dig in vain at the foot
of dead trees ; at other times the dapicho is found beneath
the hevea or jacio still green. The substance is white, corky,
fragile, and resembles by its laminated structure and undu-
lating edge, the Boletus ignarius. The dapicho perhaps
takes a long time to form ; it is probably a juice thickened!
by a particular disposition of the vegetable organs, diffused
and coagulated in a humid soil secluded from the contact of
light ; it is caoutchouc in a particular state, I may almost

ITS TOBMATIOV 359

§ay an etiolated caoutchouc. The humidity of the soil seema
to* account for the undulating form of the edges of the
dapicho, and its division into layers.

I often observed in Peru, that on pouring slowly the
milky juice of the hevea, or the sap of the carica, into a
large quantity of water, the coagulum forms undulating
outlines. The dapicho is certainly not peculiar to the
forest that extends from Javita to Pimichin, although that
is the only spot where it has hitherto been found. I have
no doubt, that on digging in French Guiana beneath the
roots and the old trunks of the hevea, those enormous
masses of corky caoutchc'ic,* which I have just described,
would from time to time be found. As it is observed in
Europe, that at the fall of the leaf the sap is conveyed
towards the root, it would be curious to examine whether,
within the tropics, the milky juices of the urticese, the
euphorbiacea3, and the apocyneae, descend also at certain
seasons. Notwithstanding a great equality of temperature,
the trees of the torrid zone follow a cycle of vegetation ;
they undergo changes periodically returning. The existence
of the dapicho is more interesting to physiology than to
vegetable chemistry. A yellowish-white caoutchouc is now
to be found in the shops, which may be easily distinguished
from the dapicho, because it is neither dry like cork, nor
friable, but extremely elastic, glossy, and soapy. I lately saw
considerable quantities of it in London. This caoutchouc,
white, and greasy to the touch, is prepared in the East
Indies. It exhales that animal and fetid smell which I
have attributed in another place to a mixture of cascuiu
and albumen.f When we reflect on the immense variety

* Thus, at five or six inches depth, between the roots of the Hymene»
rourbaril, masses of the resin antme (erroneously called copal) are dis-
covered, and are sometimes mistaken for amber in inland places. This
phenomenon seems to throw some light on the origin of those large masses
of amber which are picked up from time to time on the coast of Prussia.

•f- The pellicles deposited by the milk of heavea, in contact with the
atmospheric oxygen, become brown on exposure to the sun. If the
dapicho grow black as it is softened before the fire, it is owing to a slight
combustion, to a change in the proportion of its elements I aw
surprised that some chemists consider the black caoutchouc of com mem
as being mixed with soot, blackened by the smoke to which it has beep
exacted.

300 DISTRIBUTION OF NATITE HORDES

of plants in the equinoctial regions that are capable of
furnishing caoutchouc, it is to be regretted that this sub-
stance, so eminently useful, is not found among us at a
lower price. Without cultivating trees with a milky sap,
a sufficient quantity of caoutchouc might be collected in
the missions of the Orinoco alone for the consumption of
civilized Europe.* In the kingdom of New Grenada some
successful attempts have been made to make boots and
shoes of this substance without a seam. Among the
American nations, the Omaguas of the Amazon best under-
stand how to manufacture caoutchouc.

Four days had passed, and our canoe had not yet arrived
at the landing-place of the Bio Pimichin. " You want for
nothing in my mission," said Father Cereso ; "you have
plantains and fish ; at night you are not stung by mos-
quitos; and the longer you stay, the better chance you
will have of seeing the stars of my country. If your boat
be destroyed in the portage, we will give you another;
and I shall have had the satisfaction of passing some weeks
con gente llanca y de razon" * Notwithstanding our im-
patience, we listened with interest to the information given
us by the worthy missionary. It confirmed all we had
already heard of the moral state of the natives of those
countries. They live, distributed in hordes of forty or
fifty, under a family government ; and they recognise a
common chief (apoto, sibierene) only at times when they
make war against their neighbours. The mistrust of these
hordes towards one another is increased by the circum-
stance that those who live in the nearest neighbourhood
speak languages altogether different. In the open plains,
in the countries with savannahs, the tribes are fond of
choosing their habitations from an affinity of origin, and
a resemblance of manners and idioms. On the table-land
of Tartary, as in North America, great families of nations
have been seen, formed into several columns, extending their
migrations across countries thinly-wooded, and easily tra •

* We saw in Guiana, besides thejacio and tkecurvana, two othei trees
that yield caoutchouc in abundance ; on the banks of the Atabapo, tLe
unamagni with jatropha leaves, and at Maypures the time.

" With white and rational people/' European self-love usuallj
opposes the gente de razon to the yvnte pat-da, or coloured people.

MIGRATION OF TRIBES. 361

fersed. Such were the journeys of the Toltec and Aztt*
race in the high plains of Mexico, from the sixth to the
eleventh century of our era; such probably was also the
movement of nations by which the petty tribes of Canada
were grouped together. As the immense country between
the equator and the eighth degree of north latitude forms one
continue us forest, the hordes were there dispersed by follow-
ing the branchings of the rivers, and the nature of the land
compelled them to become more or less agriculturists.
Such is the labyrinth of these rivers, that families settled
themselves without knowing what race of men lived nearest
the spot. In Spanish Guiana a mountain, or a forest half a
league broad, sometimes separates hordes who could not meet
in less than two days by navigating rivers. In open coun-
tries, or in a state of advanced civilization, communication
by rivers contributes powerfully to generalize languages,
manners, and political institutions ; but in the impenetrable
forests of the torrid zone, as in the first rude condition
of our species, rivers increase the dismemberment of great
nations, favour the transition of dialects into languages that
appear to us radically distinct, and keep up national hatred
and mistrust. Between the banks of the Caura and the
Padamo everything bears the stamp of disunion and weak-
ness. Men avoid, because they do not understand each
other; they mutally hate, because they mutually fear.

When we examine attentively this wild part of America,
we fancy ourselves transported to those primitive times
when the earth was peopled by degrees, and we seem to be
present at the birth of human societies. In the old world
we see that pastoral life has prepared the hunting nations
for agriculture. In the New World we seek in vain these
progressive developments of civilization, these intervals of
repose, these stages in the life of nations. The luxurv of
vegetation embarrasses the Indians in the chase; and in
their rivers, resembling arms of the sea, the depth of the
waters prevents fishing during whole months. Those
species of ruminating animals, that constitute the wealth
of the nations of the Old World, are wanting in the New
The bison and the musk-ox have never been reduced to a
domestic state; the breeding of llamas and guanacos haa
not created the habits of pastoral life. In the temperate

302 IDEAS OF A DEITY.

zone, on the banks of the Missouri, as well as on the table*
land of New Mexico, the American is a hunter; but in
the torrid zone, in the forests of G-uiana, he cultivates
cassava, plantains, and sometimes maize. Such is the
admirable fertility of nature, that the field of the native
is a little spot of land, to clear which requires only setting
fire to the brambles ; and putting a few seeds or slips into
the ground is all the husbandry it demands. If we go
back in thought to the most remote ages, in these thick
forests we must always figure to ourselves nations deriving
the greater part of their nourishment from the earth ; but,
as this earth produces abundance in a small space, and
almost without toil, we may also imagine these nations
often changing their dwellings along the banks of the same
river. Even now the native of the Orinoco travels with his
seeds; and transports his farm (conuco) as the Arab
transports his tent, and changes his pasturage. The num-
ber of cultivated plants found wild amid the woods, proves
the nomad habits of an agricultural people. Can we bo
surprised, that by these habits they lose almost all tho
advantages that result in the temperate zone from station-
ary culture, from the growth of corn, which requires exten-
sive lands and the most assiduous labour ?

The nations of the Upper Orinoco, the Atabapo, and the
Inirida, like the ancient Germans and the Persians, have no
other worship than that of the powers of nature. They caill
the good principle Cachimana ; it is the Manitou, the Great
Spirit, that regulates the seasons, and favours the harvests.
Along with Cachimana there is an evil Drinciple, lolokiawo,
less powerful, but more artful, and in particular more
active. The Indians of the forest, when they occasionally
risit the missions, conceive with difficulty the idea of a
temple or an image. "These good people," said the mis-
sionary, " like only processions in the open air. "When I
last celebrated the festival of San Antonio, the patron of
my village, the Indians of Inirida were present at mass.
* Tour God,' said they to me, ' keeps himself shut up in a
house, as if he were old and infirm ; ours is in the forest, in
the fields, and on the mountains of Sipapu, whence the rains
come.' " Among the more numerous, and on this account
less barbarous tribes, religious societies of a singular kind

THE SACKED TRUMPET. 363

are formed. Some oM Indians pretend to be better in-
structed than others on points regarding divinity; and to
them is confided the famous botuto, of which I have spoken,
and which is sounded under the palm-trees that they
may bear abundance of fruit. On the banks of the Orinoco
there exists no idol, as among all the nations who hare
remained faithful to the first worship of nature, but the
botuto, the sacred trumpet, is an object of veneration. To
be initiated into the mysteries of the botuto, it is requisite to
be of pure morals, and to have lived single. The initiated
are subjected to flagellations, fastings, and other painful ex-
ercises. There are but a small number of these sacred
trumpets. The most anciently celebrated is that upon a
hill near the confluence of the Tomo and the Guainia. It
is pretended, that it is heard at once on the banks of the
Tuamini, and at the mission of San Miguel de Davipe, a dis-
tance of ten leagues. Father Cereso assured us, that the
Indians speak of the botuto of Tomo as an object of worship
common to many surrounding tribes. Fruit and intoxica-
ting liquors are placed beside the sacred trumpet. Some-
times the Great Spirit himself makes the botuto resound ;
sometimes he is content to manifest his will through him to
whom the keeping of the instrument is entrusted. These
juggleries being very ancient (from the fathers of our fathers,
say the Indians), we must not be surprised that some un-
believers are already to be found ; but they express their
disbelief of the mysteries of the botuto only in whispers.
Women are not permitted to see this marvellous instru-
ment ; and are excluded from all the ceremonies of this wor-
ship. If a woman have the misfortune to see the trumpet,
she is put to death without mercy. The missionary related
to us, that in 1798 he was happy enough to save a young
girl, whom a jealous and vindictive lover accused of having
followed, from a motive of curiosity, the Indians who sounded
the botuto in the plantations. " They would not have mur-
dered her publicly," said father Cesero, "but how was she to
be protected from the fanatacism of the natives, in a country
where it is so easy to give poison ? The young girl told me
of her fears, and I sent her to one of the missions of the
Lower Orinoco." If the people of Guiana had remained

864 ANTIDOTE AGAINST SNAKE-BITES.

masters of that vast country; if, without having been impe-
ded by Christian settlements, they could follow freely the
development of their barbarous institutions; the worship
of the botuto would no doubt become of some political im-
portance. That mysterious society of the initiated, those
guardians of the sacred trumpet, would be transformed into
a ruling caste of priests, and the oracle of Tomo would gra-
dually form a link between the bordering nations.

In the evening of the 4th of May we were informed, that an
Indian, who had assisted in dragging our bark over the por-
tage of Piniichin, had been stung by a viper. He was a tall
strong man, and was brought to the mission in a very
alarming state. He had dropped down senseless; and
nausea, vertigo, and congestions in the head, had succeeded
the fainting. The liana called vejuco de guaco* which M.
Mutis has rendered so celebrated, and which is the most
certain remedy for the bite of venomous serpents, is yet un-
known in these countries. A number of Indians hastened
to the hut of the sick man, and he was cured by an infu-
sion of raiz de mato. We cannot indicate with certainty
what plant furnishes this antidote; but I am inclined to
think, that the raiz de mato is an apocynea, perhaps the
Cerbera thevetia, called by the inhabitants of Cumana lingua
de mato or contra-culebra, and which they also use against
the bite of serpents. A genus nearly allied to the cer-
beraf is employed in India for the same purpose. It is
common enough to find in the same family of plants vege-
table poisons, and antidotes against the venom of reptiles.
AJ any tonics and narcotics are antidotes more or less active ;
and we find these in families very different;}; from each other,
in the aristolochiae, the apocyneae, the gentianae, the polygalae,

* This is a mikania, which was confounded for some time in Europe with
the ayapana. De Candolle thinks that the guaco may be the Eupatorium
satureiajfolium of Lamarck ; but this Eupatorium differs by its lineary
leaves, while the Mikania guaco has triangular, oval, and very large leaves.

t Ophioxylon serpentinum.

t 1 shall mention as examples of these nine families ; Aristolochia
tnguicida, Cerbera thevetia, Ophoiorhiza mungos, Polygala senega,
Nicotiana tabacum, (one of the remedies most used in Spanish America).
Mikanua guaco, Hibiscus abelmoschus (the seeds of which are ven
ac ive), Lanpujum rumphii, and Kunthia monfana 'Cafia de la Vibora).

SUBSTITUTE FOB SALT. 365

the solanese, the composite, the malvaceaj, the drymyrhizese,
and, which is still more surprising, even in the palm-trees.

In the hut of the Indian who had been BO dangerously
bitten by the viper, we found balls two or three inches in
diameter, of an earthy and impure salt called chivi, which is
prepared with great care by the natives. At Maypures a
conferva is burnt, which is left by the Orinoco on the neigh-
bouring rocks, when, after high swellings, it again enters its
bed. At Javita a salt is fabricated by the incineration of
the spadix and fruit of the palm-tree seje or chimu. This
fine palm-tree, which abounds on the banks of the Auvana,
near the cataract of Gruarinumo, and between Javita and
the Cano Pimichin, appears to be a new species of cocoa-
tree. It may be recollected, that the fluid contained in the
fruit of the common cocoa-tree is often saline, even when
the tree grows far from the sea shore. At Madagascar
salt is extracted from the sap of a palm-tree called ciro.
Besides the spadix and the fruit of the seje palm, the
Indians of Javita lixiviate also the ashes of the famous
liana called cupana, which is a new species of the genus
paullinia, consequently a very different plant from the cu-
pania of Linnaeus. I may here mention, that a missionary
seldom travels without being provided with some prepared
seeds of the cupana. This preparation requires great care.
The Indians scrape the seeds, mix them with flour of
cassava, envelope trie mass in plantain leaves, and set it to
ferment in water, till it acquires a saffron-yellow colour.
This yellow paste dried in the sun, and diluted in water, is
taken in the morning as a kind of tea. The beverage is
bitter and stomachic, but it appeared to me to have a very
disagreeable taste.

On the banks of the Niger, and in a great part of the in-
terior of Africa, where salt is extremely rare, it is said of a
rich man, "he is so fortunate as to eat salt at his meals."
This good fortune is not too common in the interior of Gui-
ana. The whites only, particularly the soldiers of the little
fort of San Carlos, know how to procure pure salt, either
from the coast of Caracas, or from Chita* by the Eic

* North of Morocote, at the eastern declivity of the Cordilleia of New
Grenada. The salt of the coasts, which the Indians call ynquira, costi
two piastres the almuda at San Carlos.

3GG bTECIES OF BEABB.

Meta. Here, as throughout America, the Indianb jat little
meat, and consume scarcely any salt. The chivi of Javita is
a mixture of muriate of potash and of soda, of caustic lime,
and of several other earthy salts. The Indians dissolve a
few particles in water, fill with this solution a leaf of
heliconia folded in a conical form, and let drop a little, as
from the extremity of a filter, on their food.

On the 5th of May we set off, to follow on foot our canoe,
which had at length arrived, by the portage, at the Cano
Pimichin. "We had to ford a great number of streams ; and
these passages require some caution on account of the vipers
with which the marshes abound. The Indians pointed out
to us on the moist clay the traces of the little black bears so
common on the banks of the Temi. They differ at least in
size from the Ursus americanus. The missionaries call them
osso carnicero, to distinguish them from the osso palmero or
tamanoir (Myrmecophaga jubata), and from the osso kor-
tnigero, or anteater (tamandua). The flesh of these animals
is good to eat ; the first two defend themselves by rising on
their hind feet. The tamanoir of Buffon is called uaraca by
the Indians ; it is irascible and courageous, which is extra-
ordinary in an animal without teeth. We found, as we ad-
vanced, some vistas in the forest, which appeared to us the
richer, as it became more accessible. "We here gathered
some new species of coffee (the American tribe, with flowers
in panicles, forms probably a particular genus) ; the Gralega
piscatorum, of which the Indians make use, as they do of
jacquinia, and of a composite plant of the Bio Temi, as a kind
of barbasco, to intoxicate fish ; and finally, the liana, known
in those countries by the name of vejuco de mavacure, whicX
yields the famous curare poison. It is neither a phyllanthus,
nor a coriaria, as M. "Willdenouw conjectured, but, as M.
Kunth's researches show, very probably a strychnos. "We
shall have occasion, farther on, to speak of this venomous
substance, which is an important object of trade among the

The trees of the forest of Pimichin have the gigantic
height of from eighty to a hundred and twenty feet. In
these burning climates the laurineae and amyris* furnish

* The great white and red cedars of these countries are not the Cedrela
odo.rata, but tho Amyris altissima, which is an icica of Aublet.

DEEAD OF WABP-S1WO8. 3(57

that fine timber for building, which, on the north-west coast
of America, on mountains where the thermometer falls in
winter to 20° cent, below zero, we find in the family of the
conifer®. Such, in every zone, and in all the families of
American plants, is the prodigious force of vegetation, that,
in the latitude of fifty-seven degrees north, on the same
isothermal line with St. Petersburgh and the Orknevs, the
Pinus canadensis displays trunks one hundred and fifty feet
high, and six feet in diameter.* Towards night we arrived
at a small farm, in the puerto or landing place of Pimichin.
We were shown a cross near the road, which marked the
spot " where a poor capuchin missionary had been killed by
wasps." I state this on the authority of the monks of Ja-
vita and the Indians. They talk much in these countries of
wasps and venomous ants, but we saw neither one nor the
other of these insects. It is well known that in the torrid
zone slight stings often cause fits of fever almost as violent
as those that with us accompany severe organic injuries. The
death of this poor monk was probably the effect of fatigue
and damp, rather than of the venom contained in the stings
of wasps, which the Indians dread extremely. We must not
confound the wasps of Javita with the melipones bees, called
by the Spaniards .angelitos (little angels) which covered our
faces and hands on the summit of the Silla de Caracas.

The landing place of Pimichin is surrounded by a small
plantation of caaco-trees ; they are very vigorous, and here,
as on the banks of the Atabapo and the Guainia, they are
loaded with flowers and fruits at all seasons. They begin
to bear from the fourth year ; on the coast of Caracas they
do not bear till the sixth or eighth year. The soil of these
countries is sandy, wherever it is not marshy ; but the light
lands of the Tuamini and Pimichin are extremely produc-
tivef. Around the conucos of Pimichin grows, in its wild

* Langsdorf informs us that the inhabitants of Norfolk Sound make
boats of a single trunk, fifty feet long, four feet and a half broad, and
three high at the Bides. They contain thirty persons. These boats remind
us of the canoes of the Rio Chagres in the isthmus of Panama, in the
torrid zone. The Populua balsamifera also attains an immense height, on
the mountains that border Norfolk Sound.

t At Javita, an extent of fifty feet square, planted with Jatrophi
manihot (yucca) yields in two years, in the worst soil, a harvest of six
tor las of cassava : the same extent on a middling soil yields in fourteen

868 .VEGETABLE MILK.

state, the igua, a tree resembling the Caryocar nuciferuia.
which is cultivated in Dutch and French Guiana, and which,
with the almendron of Mariquita (Caryocar amygdaliferum),
the juvia of the Esmeralda (Bertholletia excelsa), and the
Geoffrcea of the Amazon, yields the finest almonds of all
South America. No commercial advantage is here made
of the igua ; but I saw vessels arrive on the coast of Terra
Firma, that came from Demerara laden with the fruit of the
Caryocar tomentosum, which is the Pekea tuberculosa of
Aublet. These trees reach a hundred feet in height, and
present, by the beauty of their corolla, and the multitude of
their stamens, a magnificent appearance. I should weary
the reader by continuing the enumeration of the vegetable
wonders which these vast forests contain. Their variety
depends on the coexistence of such a great number of fami-
lies in a small space of ground, on the stimulating power of
light and heat, and on the perfect elaboration of the juices
that circulate in these gigantic plants.

We 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 composes the household furniture of that
careless race of men, little attached to property. A great
store of mani (a mixture of the resin of the moronoboea
and the Amyris carana) was accumulated round the house.
This is used by the Indians here, as at Cayenne, to pitch
their canoes, and fix the bony spines of the ray at the points
of their arrows. We found in the same place jars filled wit~j
a vegetable milk, which serves as a varnish, and is celebrated
in the missions by the name of leche para pintar* (milk for
painting). They coat with this viscous juice those articles

months a produce of nine tortas. In an excellent soil, around clumps of
mauritia, there is every year from fifty feet square a produce of thirteen
or fourteen tortas. A torta weighs three quarters of a pound, and three
tortas cost generally in the province of Caracas one silver rial, or one-
eighth of a piastre. These statements appear to me to be of some
importance, when we wish to compare the nutritive matter which man
can obtain from the same extent of soil, by covering it, in different
climates, with bread-trees, plantains, jatropha, maize, potatoes, rice, and
corn. The tardiness of the harvest of jatropha has, I believe, a beneficiaJ
influence on the manners of the natives, by fixing them to the soil, an*1
compelling them to sojourn long on the same s»ot

ABUNDANCE OF SERPENTS. 300

of furniture to which they wish to give a tine white colour.
It thickens by the contact of the air, without growing yel-
low, and it appears singularly glossy. We have already
mentioned that the caoutchouc is the oily part, the butter
of all vegetable milk. It is, no doubt, a particular modifica-
tion of caoutchouc that forms this coagulum, this white and
glossy skin, that seems as if covered with copal varnish. If
different colours could be given to this milky varnish, a
very expeditious method would be found of painting and
varnishing our carriages by one process. The more we study
vegetable chemistry in the torrid zone, the more we shall
discover, in remote spots, and half-prepared in the organs of
plants, products which we believe belong only to the animal
kingdom, or which we obtain by processes which are often
tedious and difficult. Already we have found the wax that
coats the palm-tree of the Andes of Quindiu, the silk
of the palm-tree of Mocoa, the nourishing milk of the
palo de vaca, the butter-tree of Africa, and the caseous sub-
stances obtained from the almost animalized sap of the
Carica papaya. These discoveries will be multiplied, when,
as the political state of the world seems now to indicate,
European civilization shall flow in a great measure toward
the equinoctial regions of the New Continent.

The marshy tract between Javita and the embarcadero
of Pimichin is infested with great numbers of vipers.
Before we took possession of the deserted hut, the Indiana
killed two great mapanare serpents.* These grow to tour
or five feet long. They appeared to me to be the same
species as those I saw in the Kio Magdalena. This serpent
is a beautiful animal, but extremely venomous, white on the
belly, and spotted with brown and red on the back. As
the inside of the hut was filled with grass, and we were
lying on the ground, there being no means of suspending
our hammocks, we were not without inquietude during the
night. In the morning a large viper was found on lifting
the jaguar-skin upon which one of our domestics had slept.

* This name is given in the Spanish colonies to very different species.
The Coluber mapanare of the province of Caracas has one hundred and
forty-two ventral plates, and thirty. eight double caudal scales. The
Coluber mapanare of the Rio Magdalena has two hundred and eigbl
ventral plates, and sixty-four double caudal scales.

TOL. II. 2 B

370 THE CANO PIMICHIW.

The Indians say that these reptiles, slow in their move-
ments when they are not pursued, creep near a man
because they are fond of heat. In fact, on the banks of
the Magdalena a serpent entered the bed of one of our
fellow-travellers, and remained there a part of the night,
without injuring him. Without wishing to take up the
defence of vipers and rattlesnakes, I believe it may be
affirmed that, if these venomous animals had such a dis-
position for offence as is supposed, the human species
would certainly not have withstood their numbers in some
parts of America ; for instance, on the banks of the Orinoco
and the humid mountains of Choco.

We embarked on the 8th of May at sunrise, after having
carefully examined the bottom of our canoe. It had be-
come thinner, but had received no crack in the portage.
We reckoned that it would still bear the voyage of three
hundred leagues, which we had yet to perform, in going
down the Bio Negro, ascending the Cassiquiare, and re-
descending the Orinoco as far as Angostura. The Pimichin,
which is called a rivulet (cario) is tolerably broad; but
small trees that love the water narrow the bed so much
that there remains open a channel of only fifteen or twenty
toises. Next to the Bio Chagres this river is one of the
most celebrated in America for the number of its windings :
it is said to have eighty-five, which greatly lengthen it. They
often form right angles, and occur every two or three
leagues. To determine the difference of longitude between
the landing-place and the point where we were to enter
the Bio Negro, I took by the compass the course of the
Cano Pimichin, and noted the time during which we
followed the same direction. The velocity of the current
was only 2'4 feet in a second; but our canoe made by
rowing 4*6 feet. The embarcadero of the Pimichin appeared
to me to be eleven thousand toises west of its mouth, and
0° 2' west of the mission of Javita. This Cano is navigable
during the whole year, and has but one raudal, which is
somewhat difficult to go up ; its banks are low, but rocky.
After having followed the windings of the Pimichin for foul
hours and a half we at length entered the Bio Negro.

The morning was cool and beautiful. We had now been
confined thirty-six days in a narrow boat, BO unsteady tliat

BANKS OF THE CA.BSIQUIARE. 371

it would have been overset by any person rising impru-
dently from his seat, without warning the rowers. We
had suffered severely from the sting of insects, but we had
withstood the insalubrity of the climate; we had passed
without accident the great number of waterfalls ana bars,
which impede the navigation of the rivers, and often render
it more dangerous than long voyages by sea. After all we
had endured, it may be conceived that we felt no little
satisfaction in having reached the tributary streams of the
Amazon, having passed the isthmus that separates two great
systems of rivers, and in being sure of having fulfilled the
most important object of our journey, namely, to deter-
mine astronomically the course of that arm of the Orinoco
which falls into the Bio Negro, and of ^hich the existence
has been alternately proved and denied during half a cen-
tury. In proportion as we draw near to an object we have
long had in r.ew, its interest seems to augment. The
uninhabited banks of the Cassiquiare, covered with forests,
without memorials of times pnst, then occupied my imagi-
nation, 8-s do now the banks of the Euphrates, or the Oxua,
celebrated in the annals of civilized nations. In that in-
terior part of the New Continent one may almost accustom
one self to regard men as not be/^ig essential to the order
of nature. The earth is loaded writh plants, and nothing
impedes their free development. An immense layer of
mould manifests the uninterrupted action of organic
powers. Crocodiles and boas are masters of the river ; the
jaguar, the peccary, the dante, and the monkeys traverse
the forest without fear and without danger; there they
dwell as in an ar"ier.t inheritance. THs aspect of animated
nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange
and sad. To this ^o reconcile ourselves with difficulty
on the ocean, and amid tiie sands of Africa; though in
scenes where nothing recalls to mind o~r fields, our woods,
and our streams, we are less astonished at the vast solitude
through which we pass. Here, in a fertile country, adorned
with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the
power of man ; we seem to be transported into a world
different from that which gave us birth. These impres-
sions are the more powerful in proportion as they are
of long duration. A soldier, who had spent his whole

2 B 2

372 Till BIO 1TEGEO.

life in the missions of the Upper Orinoco, slept with us
on the bank of the river. He was an intelligent man, who,
during a calm and serene night, pressed me with questions
on the magnitude of the stars, on the inhabitants of the
moon, on a thousand subjects of which I was as ignorant
as himself. Being unable by my answers to satisfy his
curiosity, he said to me in a firm tone of the most positive
conviction : " with respect to men, I believe there are no
more up there than you would have found if you had gone
by land from Javita to Cassiquiare. I think I see in the
stars, as here, a plain covered with grass, and a forest (mucho
moiite) traversed by a river." In citing these words I
paint the impression produced bv the monotonous aaspect
of those solitary regions. May this monotony not be found
to extend to the journal of our navigation, and weary the
reader accustomed to the description of the scenes and his-
torical memorials of the old continent !

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Rio Negro. — Boundaries of Brazil. — The Cassiquiare. — Bifurcation of
the Orinoco.

THE Rio Negro, compared to the Amazon, the Bio de la
Plata, or the Orinoco, is but a river of the second order.
Its possession has been for ages of great political importance
to the Spanish Government, because it is capable of furnish-
ing a rival power, Portugal, with an easy passage into the
missions of Guiana, and thereby disturbing the Capitania
general of Caracas in its southern limits. Three hundred
years have been spent in vain territorial disputes. Accord-
ing to the difference of times, and the degree of civilization
among the natives, resource has been had sometimes to
the authority of the Pope, and sometimes the support of
astronomy ; and the disputants being generally more inte-
rested in Prolonging than in terminating the struggle, the
nautical sciences and the geography of the New Continent,
have alone gained by this interminable litigation. "WTien
the affairs of Paraguay, and the possession of the colony
pt' Del Sacramento, became of great importance to the courts

BOTTWDA-BIEC OF BRAZIL. 373

of Madrid and Lisbon, commissioners of the boundaries
were sent to the Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Rio Plata.

The little that was known, up to the end of the last cen-
tury, of the astronomical geography of the interior of the
New Continent, was owing to these estimable and laborious
men, the French and Spanish academicians, who measured a
meridian line at Quito, and to officers who went from Val-
paraiso to Buenos Ayres to join the expedition of Malaspina.
Those persons who know the inaccuracy of the maps of
South America, and have seen those uncultivated lands
between the Jupura and the Rio Negro, the Madeira and
the TJcayale, the Rio Branco and the coasts of Cayenne,
which up to our own days have been gravely disputed in
Europe, can must not a little surprised at the perse-
verance with which the possession of a few square leagues is
litigated. These disputed grounds are generally separated
from the cultivated part of the colonies by deserts, the
extent of which is unknown. In the celebrated con-
ferences of Puente de Caya the question was agitated,
whether, in fixing the line of demarcation three hundred and
seventy Spanish leagues to the west of the Cape Verde
Islands, the pope meant that the first meridian snould be
reckoned from the centre of the island of St. Nicholas, or
(as the court of Portugal asserted) from the western extre-
mity of the little island of St. Antonio. In the year 1754,
the time of the expedition of Iturriaga and Solano, negotia-
tions were entered into respecting the possession of the
then desert banks of the Tuamini, and of a marshy tract
which we crossed in one evening going from Javita to Cano
Pimichin. The Spanish commissioners very recently would
have placed the divisional line at the point where the
Apoporis falls into the Jupura, while the Portuguese astro-
nomers carried it back as far as Salto Grande.

The Rio Negro and the Jupuro are two tributary streams
of the Amazon, and may be compared in length to the
Danube. The upper parts belong to the Spaniards, while
the lower are occupied by the Portuguese. The Christian
settlements are very numerous from Mocoa to the mouth of
the Caguan; while on the Lower Jupura the Portuguese
have founded only a few villages. On the Rio Negro,
on the contrary, the Spaniards have not been able to rival

874 nioxTiER POSTS.

t heir neighbours. Steppes and forests nearly desert sepa-
rate, at a distance of one hundred and sixty leagues, the
cultivated part of the coast from the four missions of Marsa,
Tomo, Davipe, and San Carlos, which are all that the Spanish
Franciscans could establish along the Bio Negro. Among
the Portuguese of Brazil the military system, that of presides
and ccvpitanes pobladores, has prevailed over the government
of the missionaries. Grand Para is no doubt far distant
from the mouth of the Bio Negro : but the facility of
navigation on the Amazon, which runs like an immense
canal in one direction from west to east, has enabled the
Portuguese population to extend itself rapidly along the
river. The banks of the Lower Maranon, from Vistoza as
far as Serpa, as well as those of the Bio Negro from Fort da
Bara to San Jose da Maravitanos, are embellished by rich
cultivation, and by a great number of large villages and
towns.

These local considerations are combined with others,
suggested by the moral position of nations. The north-
west coast of America furnishes to this day no other stable
settlements but Bussian and Spanish colonies. Before the
inhabitants of the United States, in their progressive move-
ment from east to west, could reach the shore between the
latitude 41° and 50°, which long separated the Spanish
monks and the Siberian hiinWs,* the latter had established
themselves south of the Ov**"J»o River. Thus in New
California the Franciscan missionaries, men estimable for
their morals, and their agricultural activity, learnt with
astonishment, that Greek priests had arrived in their neigh-
bourhood; and that two nations, who inhabit the eastern
and western extremities of Europe, were become neighbours
on a coast of America opposite to China. In Gruiana cir-
cumstances were very different: the Spaniards found on
their frontiers those very Portuguese, who, by their
language, and their municipal institutions, form with them
one of the most noble remains of Boman Europe; but
whom mistrust, founded on unequal strength, and too great

* The hunters connected with military posts, and dependent on the
Russian Company, of which the principal shareholders live at Irkutsk.
In 1804 the little fortress (krepost) at the bay of Jakutal was still six
hundred leagues distant from the most northern Mexican possessions.

MUTUAL DISTRUST. 375

proximity, has converted into an often hostile, and always
rival power.

If two nations adjacent to each other in Europe, the
Spaniards and the Portuguese, have alike become neigh-
bours in the New Continent, they are indebted for that
circumstance to the spirit of enterprise and active courage
which both displayed at the period of their military glory
and political greatness. The Castilian language is now
spoken in North and South America throughout an extent
of more than one thousand nine hundred leagues in length ;
if, however, we consider South America apart, we there find
the Portuguese language spread over a larger space of
ground, and spoken by a smaller number of individuals than
the Castilian. It would seem as if the bond that so
closely connects the fine languages of Camoens and Lope de
Vega, had served only to separate two nations, who have
become neighbours against their will. National hatred is
not modified solely by a diversity of origin, of manners, and
of progress in civilization ; whenever it is powerful, it must
be considered as the effect of geographical situation, and
the conflicting interests thence resulting. Nations detest
each other the less, in proportion as they are distant ; and
when, their languages being radically different, they do not
even attempt to combine together. Travellers who have
passed through New California, the interior provinces of
Mexico, and the northern frontiers of Brazil, have been
struck by these shades in the moral dispositions of border-
ing nations.

When I was in the Spanish Bio Negro, the divergent
politics of the courts of Lisbon and Madrid had augmented
that system of mistrust which, even in calmer times, the
commanders of petty neighbouring forts love to encourage.
Boats went up from Barcelos as far as the Spanish missions,
but the communications were of rare occurrence. A com-
mandant with sixteen or eighteen soldiers wearied 'the
garrison' by measures of safety, which were dictated ' by the
important stale of affairs;' if he were attacked, he hoped
to * surround the enemy.' When we spoke of the indif-
ference with which the Portuguese government doubtless
regarded the four little villages founded by the monks of
Saint Francisco, on the Upper Guainia, the inhabitant

870 NATIONAL JLKIM08ITIE8.

were hurt by the motives which we alleged with the view
to give them confidence. A people who have preserved in
vigour, through the revolutions of ages, a national hatred,
like occasions of giving it vent. The mind delights in every-
thing impassioned, in the consciousness of an energetic
feeling, in the affections, and in rival hatreds that are
founded on antiquated prejudices. Whatever constitutes
the individuality of nations flows from the mother-country
to the most remote colonies ; and national antipathies are
not effaced where the influence of the same languages
ceases. We know, from the interesting narrative of Kru-
senstern's voyage, that the hatred of two fugitive sailors, one
a Frenchman and the other an Englishman, was the cause
of a long war between the inhabitants of the Marquesas
Islands. On the banks of the Amazon and the Bio Negro,
the Indians of the neighbouring Portuguese and Spanish
villages detest each other. These poor people speak only
the native tongues ; they are ignorant of what passes ' on
the other bank of the ocean, beyond the great salt-pool ;'
but the gowns of their missionaries are of a different colour,
and this displeases them extremely.

I have stopped to paint the effects of national animosi-
ties, which wise statesmen have endeavoured to calm, but
have been unable entirely to set at rest. This rivalry has
contributed to the imperfection of the geographical know-
ledge hitherto obtained respecting the tributary rivers of
the Amazon. When the communications of the natives
are impeded, and one nation is established near the mouth,
and another in the upper part of the same river, it is
difficult for persons who attempt to construct maps to
acquire precise information. The periodical inundations,
and still more the portages, by which boats are passed from
one stream to another, the sources of which are in the same
neighbourhood, have led to erroneous ideas of the bifur-
cations and branchings of rivers. The Indians of the Por-
tuguese missions, for instance, enter (as I was informed
upon the spot) the Spanish Kio Negro on one side by the
Rio Gruainia and the Kio Tomo ; and the Upper Orinoco
on the other, by the portages between the Cababuri, the
Pncimoni, the Idapa, and the Macava, to gather the aro-
matic seeds of the pichero laurel beyond the Esmeralda.

OOirUSIOF OF NAMES. 377

Tlio Indians, I repeat, are excellent geographers; they
outflank the enemy, notwithstanding the limits traced upon
the maps, in spite of the forts and the estacamentos ; and
when the missionaries see them arrive from such distances,
and in different seasons, they begin to frame hypotheses of
supposed communications of rivers. Each party has an
interest in concealing what it knows with certainty; and
that love of the mysterious, so general among the ignorant,
contributes to perpetuate the doubt. It may also be
observed that the various Indian nations, who frequent
this labyrinth of rivers, give them names entirely different ;
and that these names are disguised and lengthened by
terminations that signify * water,' ' great water,' and ' cur-
rent.' How often have I been perplexed by the necessity
of settling the synonymes of rivers, when I have sent fop
the most intelligent natives, to interrogate them, through
an interpreter, respecting the number of tributary streams,
the sources of the rivers, and the portages. Three or four
languages being spoken in the same mission, it is difficult
to make the witnesses agree. Our maps are loaded with
names arbitrarily shortened or perverted. To examine how
far they may be accurate, we must be guided by the geo-
graphical situation of the confluent rivers, I might almost
say by a certain etymological tact. The Rio Uaupe, or
Uapcs of the Portuguese maps, is the Gruapue of the
Spanish maps, and the Ucayari ot the natives. The Anava
of the old geographers is the Anauahu of Arrowsmith,
and the Uauauhau or Guanauhu of the Indians. The
desire of leaving no void in the maps, in order to give
them an appearance of accuracy, has caused rivers to be
created, to which names have been applied that have not
been recognized as synonymous. It is only lately that
travellers in America, in Persia, and in the Indies, have
felt the importance of being correct in the denomination of
places. When we read the travels of Sir Walter Raleigh,
it is difficult indeed to recognise in the ' lake of Mrecabo '
the laguna of Maracaybo, and in the 'Marquis Paraco'
the name of Pizarro, the destroyer of the empire of the
Incas.

The great tributary streams of the Amazon are desig-
nated by the missionaries by different names in their uppei

378 LOCATION OF EL DORADO.

and lower course. The Iza is called, higher up, Ptitumayo t
the Jupura towards its source bears the name of Caqueta.
The researches made in the missions of the Andaquies on
the real origin of the Rio Negro have been the more
fruitless because the Indian name of the river was un-
known. I heard it called Gruainia at Javita, Maroa, and
San Carlos. Southey, in his history of Brazil, says ex-
pressly that the Eio Negro, in the lower part of its course,
is called Gruiani, or Curana, by the natives ; in the upner
part, Ueneya. It is the word Gmeneya, instead of Ghiainia ;
for the Indians of those countries say indifferently Gruara-
nacua or Ouaranacua, Gluarapo or Uarapo.

The sources of the Eio Negro have long been an object
of contention among geograpers. The interest we feel in
this question is not merely that which attaches to the
origin of all great rivers, but is connected with a crowd of
other questions, that comprehend the supposed bifurcations
of the Caqueta, the communications between the Rio Negro
and the Orinoco, and the local fable of El Dorado, for-
merly called Enim, or the empire of the Grand Paytiti.
When we study with, care the ancient maps of these
countries, and the history of their geographical errors, \ve
see how by degrees the fable of El Dorado has been trans-
ported towards the west with the sources of the Orinoco.
It was at first fixed on the eastern declivity of the Andes,
to the south-west of the Eio Negro. The valiant Philip
de Urre sought for the great city of Manoa by traversing
the Gruaviare. Even now the Indians of San Jose de
Maravitanos relate that, " on sailing to the north-east for
fifteen days, on the Gruape or Uaupe, you reach a famous
lagu/na de oro, surrounded by mountains, and so large that
the opposite shore cannot be discerned. A ferocious nation,
the Guanes, do not permit the collecting of the gold of a
sandy plain that surrounds the lake. Father Acunha places
the lake Manoa, or Tenefiti, between the Jupura and the
Rio Negro. Some Manoa Indians brought Eather Eritz,
in 1687, several slips of beaten gold. This nation, the
name of which is still known on the banks of the Urarira,
between Lamalongo and Moreira, dwelt on the Turubesh.
La Condamine is right in saying that this Mesopotamia,
between the Caqueta, the Rio Negro, the Yurubesh, and

SOUBCES OF THE RIO NEGRO. 379

the 1 }uiare, was the first scene of El Dorado. But where
shall we find the names of Yurubesh and Iquiare, given
by the Fathers Acunha and Fritz ? I think I recognise
them in the rivers Urubaxi and Iguari,* on some manu-
script Portuguese maps which I possess. I have long and
assiduously studied the geography of South America, north
of the Amazon, from ancient maps and unpublished mate-
rials. Desirous that my work should preserve the character
of a scientific performance, I ought not to hesitate about
treating of subjects on which I flatter myself that I can
throw some light ; namely, on the questions respecting the
sources of the Rio Negro and the Orinoco, the commu-
nication between these rivers and the Amazon, and the
problem of the auriferous soil, which has cost the inhabi-
tants of the New World so much suffering and so much
blood.

In the distribution of the waters circulating on the sur-
face of the globe, as well as in the structure of organic
bodies, nature lias pursued a much less complicated plan
than has been believed by those who have suffered them-
selves to be guided by vague conceptions and a taste
for the marvellous. VVe find, too, that all anomalies,
all the exceptions to the laws of hydrography, which the
interior of America displays, are merely apparent ; that the
course of running waters furnishes phenomena equally ex-
traordinary in the old world, but that these phenomena,
from their littleness, have less struck the imagination of
travellers. "When immense rivers may be considered as com-
posed of several parallel furrows of unequal depth; when
these rivers are not enclosed in valleys ; and when the inte-
rior of the great continent is as flat as the shores of the sea
with us ; the ramifications, the bifurcations, and the inter-
lacings in the form of net-work, must be infinitely multipied.
From what we know of the equilibrium of the seas, I cannot
think that the New World issued from the waters later
than the Old, and that organic life is there younger, or
more recent ; but without admitting oppositions between the

* It may be written Urubaji. The.; and the x were the same as the
German ch to Father Fritz. The Urubaxi, or Hyurubaxi (Yurubesh),
falls into the Rio Negro near Santa Isabella ; the Iguari (Iquiare ?) runt
into the Issana, which is also a tributary oC the Rio Negro.

380 CHANGE OF RIYER-COUKSES.

two hemispheres of the same planet, we may conceive that
in the hemisphere most abundant in waters the different
systems of rivers required more time to separate themselves
from one another, and establish their complete indepen-
dence. The deposits of mud, which are formed wherever
the running waters lose somewhat of their swiftness, con-
tribute, no doubt, to raise the beds of the great confluent
streams, and augment their inundations ; but at length
these deposits entirely obstruct the branches of the rivers
and the narrow channels that connect the neighbouring
streams. The substances washed down by rain-waters form
by their accumulation new bars, isthmuses of deposited
earth, and points of division that did not before exist. It
hence results that these natural channels of communication
are by degrees divided into two tributary streams, and from
the effect of a transverse rising, acquire two opposite slopes ;
a part of their waters is turned back towards the principal
recipient, and a buttress rises between the two parallel
basins, which occasions all traces of their ancient communi-
cation to disappear. From this period the bifurcations no
longer connect different systems of rivers ; and, where they
continue to take place at the time of great inundations, we
see that the waters diverge from the principal recipient only
to enter it again after a longer or shorter circuit. The
limits, which at first appeared vague and uncertain, begin to
be fixed ; and in the lapse of ages, from the action of what-
ever is moveable on the surface of the globe, from that of
the waters, the deposits, and the sands, the basins of rivers
separate, as great lakes are subdivided, and as inland seas
lose their ancient communications.*

The certainty acquired by geographers since the sixteenth
century, of the existence of several bifurcations, and the
mutual dependence of various systems of rivers in South
America, have led them to admit an intimate connection

* The geological constitution of the soil seems to indicate that, not
withstanding the actual difference of level in their waters, the Black Sea,
the Caspian, and lake Aral, communicated with eadi other in an era
anterior to historic times. The overflowing of the Aral into the Caspian
Sea seems even to be partly of a more recent date, and independent of the
bifurcation of the Gihon (Oxus), on which one of the most learned geo-
graphers of our day, M. Ritter, has thrown new light.

SOURCE Of THX GREAT STREAMS. 381

between the five great tributary streams of the Orinoco and
the Amazon ; the Guaviare, the Inirida, the Eio Negro, the
Caqueta or Hyapura, and the Putumayo or Iza.

The Meta, the Guaviare, the Caqueta, and the Putumayo,
are the only great rivers that rise immediately from the
eastern declivity of the Andes of Santa Fe, Popayan, and
Pasto. The Vichada, the Zama, the Inirida, the Eio Negro,
the TJaupe, and the Apoporis, which are marked in our maps
as extending westward as far as the mountains, take rise at
a great distance from them, either in the savannahs between
the Meta and the Guaviare, or in the mountainous country
which, according to the information given me by the natives,
begins at four or five days' journey westward of the missions
of Javita and Maroa, and extends through the Sierra Tuhuny,
beyond the Xie, towards the banks of the Issana.

It is remarkable that this ridge of the Cordilleras, which
contains the sources of so many majestic rivers, (the Meta,
the Guaviare, the Caqueta, and the Putumayo,) is as little
covered with snow as the mountains of Abyssinia from
which flow the waters of the Blue Nile ; but, on the con-
trary, on going up the tributary streams which furrow the
plains, a volcano is found still in activity, before you reach
the Cordillera of the Andes. This phenomenon was disco-
vered by the Franciscan monks, who go down from Ceja by
the Eio Fragua to Caqueta. A solitary hill, emitting smoke
night and day, is found on the north-east of the mission
of Santa Eosa, and west of the Puerto del Pescado. This
is the effect of a lateral action of the volcanos of Popayan
and Pasto ; as Guacamayo and Sangay, situated also at the
foot of the eastern declivity of the Ajides. are the effect
of a lateral action produced by the system of the volcanos
of Quito. After having closely inspected the banks of the
Orinoco and the Eio Negro, where the granite everywhere
pierces the soil ; when we reflect on the total absence of
volcanos in Brazil, Guiana, on the coast of Venezuela, and
perhaps in all that part of the continent lying eastward of
the Andes ; we contemplate with interest the three burning
volcanoa situated near the sources of the Caqueta, the Napof
and the Eio de Macas or Morona.

The little group of mountains with which we became ao

382 THE QOLD-COUNTKIIE,

quainted at the sources of the Guainia, is remarkable from
its being isolated in the plain that extends to the south-west
of the Orinoco. Its situation with regard to longitude
might lead to the belief that it stretches into a ridge, which
forms first the strait (angostura) of the Guaviare, and then
the great cataracts (saltos, cachoeiras) of the Uaupe and
the Jupura. Does this ground, composed probably of pri-
mitive rocks, like that which I examined more to the east,
contain disseminated gold ? Are there any gold-washinga
more to the south, toward the Uaupe, on the Iquiare
(Iguiari, Iguari), and on the Yurubesh (Turubach, Uru-
baxi) ? It was there that Philip von Huten first sought El
Dorado, and with a handful of men fought the battle of
Omaguas, so celebrated in the sixteenth century. In sepa-
rating what is fabulous from the narratives of the Conquis-
tadores, we cannot fail to recognize in the names preserved
on the same spots a certain basis of historic truth. "We
follow the expedition of Huten beyond the Guaviare and the
Caqeta ; we find in the Guaypes, governed by the cacique of
Macatoa, the inhabitants of the river of Uaupe, which also
bears the name of Guape, or Guapue ; we call to mind, that
Father Acunha calls the Iquiari (Quiquiare) ' a gold river' ;
and that fifty years later Father Fritz, a missionary of great
veracity, received, in the mission of Turimaguas, the Manaos
(Manoas), adorned with plates of beaten gold, coming from
the country between the Uaupe and the Caqueta, or
Jupura. The rivers that rise on the eastern declivity of the
Andes (for instance the Napo) carry along with them a
great deal of gold, even when their sources are found in
trachytic soils. "Why may there not be an alluvial aurife-
rous soil to the east of the Cordilleras, as there is to the
west, in the Sonoro, at Choco, and at Barbacoas ? I am
far from wishing to exaggerate the riches of this soil;
but I do not think myself authorized to deny the exist-
ence of precious metals in the primitive mountains of
Guiana, merely because in our journey through that country
we saw no metallic veins. It is somewhat remarkable that
the natives of the Orinoco have a name in their languages
for gold (carucwru in CaribDee, caricwi in Tamanac, cavitta
in Maypure), while the word they use to denote silver,

EXHAUSTION OF ANCIENT MINES. 383

, is manifestly borrowed from the Spanish.* The
notions collected by Acunha, Father Fritz, and La Conda-
mine, on the gold-washings south and north of the river
Uaupe, agree with what I learnt of the auriferous soil of
those countries. However great we may suppose the com-
munications that took place between the nations of the
Orinoco before the arrival of Europeans, they certainly
did not draw their gold from the eastern declivity of the
Cordilleras. This declivity is poor in mines, particularly in
mines anciently worked; it is almost entirely composed of
volcanic rocks in the provinces of Popayan, Pasto, and
Quito. The gold of Guiana probably came from the country
east of the Andes. In our days a lump of gold has been
found in a ravine near the mission of Encaramada, and
we must not be surprised if, since Europeans settled
in these wild spots, we hear less of the plates of gold,
gold-dust, and amulets of jade-stone, which could heretofore
be obtained from the Caribs and other wandering nations
by barter. The precious metals, never very abundant on
the banks of the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the Amazon,
disappeared almost entirely when the system of the missions
caused the distant communications between the natives to
cease.

The banks of the Upper G-uainia in general abound much
less in fishing-birds than those of Oassiquiare, the Meta,
and the Auraca, where ornithologists would find suffi-
cient to enrich immensely the collections of Europe. This
scarcity of animals arises, no doubt, from the want of
shoals and flat shores, as well as from the quality of the
black waters, which (on account of their very purity) fur-
nish less aliment to aquatic insects and fish. However,
the Indians of these countries, during two periods of the
year, feed on birds of passage, which repose in their long

* The Parecas say, instead of prata, rata. It is the Castilian word
jilnta ill-pronounced. Near the Yurubesh there is another inconsiderable
tributary stream of the Rio Negro, the Curicur-iari. It is easy to
recognize in this name the Caribbee word carucur, gold. The Caribs
extended their incursions from the mouth of the Orinoco south-west
toward the Rio Negro ; and it was this restless people who carried the
fable of El Dorado, by the same way, but in an opposite direction (from
south-west to north-east), from the Mesopotamia between the Rio Negro
wid the Jupura to the sources of the Rio Branco.

884 BIEDS OF PASSAGE.

migrations on the waters of the Rio Negro. When the
Orinoco begins to swell* after the vernal equinox, an innu-
merable quantity of ducks (patos careteros) remove from
the eighth to the third degree of north latitude, to the first and
fourth degree of south latitude, towards the south-south-east.
These animals then abandon the valley of the Orinoco, no
doubt because the increasing depth of waters, and the inun-
dations of the shores, prevent them from catching fish, in-
sects, and aquatic worms. They are killed by thousands in
their passage across the Bio Negro. When they go towards
the equator they are very fat and savoury ; but in the month
of September, when the Orinoco decreases and returns into
its bed, the ducks, warned either by the voices of the most
experienced birds of passage, or by that internal feeling
tvhich, not knowing how to define, we call instinct, return
from the Amazon and the Rio Branco towards the north.
At this period they are too lean to tempt the appetite of the
Indians of the Rio Negro, and escape pursuit more easily from
being accompanied by a species of herons (gavanes) which
are excellent eating. Thus the Indians eat ducks in March,
and herons in September. We could not learn what becomes
of the gavanes during the swellings of the Orinoco, and why
they do not accompany the patos careteros in their migration
from the Orinoco to the Bio Branco. These regular mi-
grations of birds from one part of the tropics towards
another, in a zone which is during the whole year of the
same temperature, are very extraordinary phenomena. The
southern coasts of the West India Islands receive also every
year, at the period of the inundations of the great rivers of
Terra Firma, numerous flights of the fishing-birds of the
Orinoco, and of its tributary streams. We must presume
that the variations of drought and humidity in the equinoc-
tial zone have the same influence as the great changes of
temperature in our climates, on the habits of animals. The
heat of summer, and the pursuit of insects, call the hum-
ming-birds into the northern parts of the United States, and
into Canada as far as the parallels of Paris and Berlin : in

* The swellings of the Nile take place much later than those of the
Orinoco; after the summer solstice, below Syene; and at Cairo in the
beginning of July. The Nile begins to sink near that city generally
about the 15th of October, and continues sinking till the 20th of May.

WATITE SUPERSTITIONS. .385

the same manner a greater facility for fishing draws the web-
footed and long-legged birds from the north to the south,
from the Orinoco towards the Amazon. Nothing is more
marvellous, and nothing is yet known less clearly in a geo-
graphical point of view, than the direction, extent, and term
of the migrations of birds.

After having entered the Eio Negro by the Pimichin, and
passed the small cataract at the confluence of the two rivers,
\ve discovered, at the distance of a quarter of a league, the
in ission of Maroa. This village, containing one hundred and
fifty Indians, presented an appearance of ease and prosperity.
We purchased some fine specimens of the toucan alive;
a courageous bird, the intelligence of which is developed like
that of our domestic ravens. We passed on the right, above
Maroa, first the mouth of the Aquio,* then that of the Tomo.f
On the banks of the latter river dwell the Cheruvichahenas,
some families of whom I have seen at San Francisco Solano.
The Tomo lies near the Rio Gruaicia (Xie), and the mission
of Tomo receives by that way fugitive Indians from the
Lower Gruainia. We did not enter the mission, but Father
Zea related to us with a smile, that the Indians of Tomo and
Maroa had been one day in full insurrection, because an
attempt was made to force them to dance the famous " dance
of the devils." The missionary had taken a fancy to have
the ceremonies by which the piaches (who are at once priests,
physicians, and conjurors) evoke the evil spirit lolokiamo,
represented in a burlesque manner. He thought that the
"dance of the devils" would be an excellent means of prov-
ing to the neophytes that lolokiamo had no longer any
power over them. Some young Indians, confiding in the
promises of the missionary, consented to act the devils, and
were already decorated with black and yellow plumes, and
jaguar-skins with long sweeping tails. The place where the
church stands was surrounded by the soldiers who are dis-
tributed in the missions, in order to add more effect to the
counsels of the monks ; and those Indians who were not
entirely satisfied with respect to the consequences of the
dance, and the impotency of the evil spirit, were brought to

* Aqui, Aaqui, Ake, of the most recent maps.

f Tomui, Temujo, Tomon.
TOL. II. 2 0

386 THE SACBF,!) DANCES.

the festivity. The oldest and most timid of the Indians,
however, imbued all the rest with a superstitious dread;
all resolved to flee al monte, and the missionary ad-
journed his project of turning into derision the demon of
the natives. What extravagant ideas may sometimes
enter the imagination of an idle monk, who passes his life
in the forests, far from everything that can recall hu-
man civilization to his mind. The violence with which
the attempt was made to execute in public at Tomo the
mysterious dance of the devils is the more strange, as
all the books written by the missionaries relate the efforts
they have used to prevent the fumereal dances, the dances of
the sacred trumpet, and that ancient dance of serpents, the
Queti, in wrhich these wily animals are represented as issuing
from the forests, and coming to drink with the men in order
to deceive them, and carry off the women.

After two hours' navigation from the mouth of the Tomo
we arrived at the little mission of San Miguel de Davipe,
founded in 1775, not by monks, but by a lieutenant of mi-
litia, Don Francisco Bobadilla. The missionary of the place,
Father Morillo, with whom we spent some hours, received
us with great hospitality. He even offered us Madeira
wine, but, as an object of luxury, we should have preferred
wheaten bread. The want of bread becomes more sensibly
felt in length of time than that of a strong liquor. The
Portuguese of the Amazon carry small quantities of Madeira
wine, from time to time, to the Bio Negro ; and the word
madera signifying wood in the Castilian language, the monks,
who are not much versed in the study of geography, had a
scruple of celebrating mass with Madeira wine, which they
took for a fermented liquor extracted from the trunk of some
tree, like palm-wine ; and requested the guardian of the
missions to decide, whether the vino de madera were wine
from grapes, or the juice of a tree. At the beginning of the
conquest, the question was agitated, whether it were allow-
able for the priests, in celebrating mass, to use any fer-
mented liquor analogous to grape- wine. The question, as
might have been foreseen, was decided in the negative.

At Davipe we bought some provisions, among which were
fowls and a pig. This purchase greatly interested our In-
dians, who had been a long while deprived of meat. They

PALM-CORDAG*,. 387

pressed us to depart, in order to reach the island of Dapa,
where the pig was to be killed and roasted during the
night. We had scarcely time to examine in the convent (con-
vento) the great stores of mani resin, and cordage of the
chiquichiqui palm, which deserves to be more known in
Europe. This cordage is extremely light; it floats upon
the water, and is more durable in the navigation of rivers
than ropes of hemp. It must be preserved at sea by being
often wetted, and little exposed to the heat of the tropical
sun. Don Antonio Santos, celebrated in the country for his
journey in search of lake Parima, taught the Indians of the
Spanish Rio Negro to make use of the petioles of the chiqui-
chiqui, a palm-tree with pinnate leaves, of which we saw
neither the flowers nor the fruit. This officer is the only
white man who ever came from Angostura to Grand Para,
passing by land from the sources of the Eio Carony to
those of the Eio Branco. He had studied the mode of
fabricating ropes from the chiquichiqui in the Portuguese
colonies ; and, on his return from the Amazon, he introduced
this branch of industry into the missions of Gruiana. It
were to be wished that extensive rope-walks could be estab-
lished on the banks of the Eio Negro and the Cassiquiare,
in order to make these cables an article of trade with Eu-
rope. A small quantity is already exported from Angostura
to the "West Indies ; and it costs from fifty to sixty per
cent less than cordage of hemp. Young palm-trees only
being employed, they must be planted and carefully culti-
vated.

A little above the mission of Davipe, the Eio Negro
receives a branch of the Cassiquiare, the existence of which is
a very remarkable phenomenon in the history of the branch-
ings of rivers. This branch issues from the Cassiquiare,
north of Vasiva, bearing the name of the Itinivini ; and,
after flowing for the length of twenty-five leagues through a
flat and almost uninhabited country, it falls into the Eio
Negro under the name of the Eio Conorichite. It appeared
to me to be more than one hundred and twenty toises broad
near its mouth. Although the current of the Conorochite
is very rapid, this natural canal abridges by three days the
passage from Davipe to Esmeralda. We cannot be sur-
prised at a double communication between the Cassiquiare

2 o 2

388 CABIB SLAVE-DEALERS.

and the Bio Negro, when we recollect that so many of the
rivers of America form, as it were, deltas at their con-
fluence with other rivers. Thus the Bio Branco and the
Bio Jupura enter by a great number of branches into the
Bio Negro and the Amazon. At the confluence of the
Jupura there is a much more extraordinary phenomenon.
Before this river joins the Amazon, the latter, which is the
principal recipient, sends oft7 three branches called Uaranapu,
Manhama, and Avateparana, to the Jupura, which is but a
tributary stream. The Portuguese astronomer, Bibeiro, has
proved this important fact. The Amazon gives waters to
the Jupura itself, before it receives that tributary stream.

The Bio Conorichite, or Itinivini, formerly facilitated the
trade in slaves carried on by the Portuguese in the Spanish
territory. The slave-traders went up by the Cassiquiare
and the Cano Mee to Conorichite; and thence dragged
their canoes by a portage to the roclielas of Manuteso, in
order to enter the Atabapo. This abominable trade lasted
till about the year 1756 ; when the expedition of Solanor
and the establishment of the missions on the banks of the
Bio Negro, put an end to it. Old laws of Charles V
and Philip III* had forbidden under the most severe penal-
ties (such as the being rendered incapable of civil employ-
ment, and a fine of two thousand piastres), "the conversion
of the natives to the faith by violent means, and sending
armed men against them;" but notwithstanding these wise
and humane laws, the Bio Negro, in the middle of the last
century, was no further interesting in European politics,
than as it facilitated the entradas, or hostile incursions, and
favoured the purchase of slaves. The Caribs, a trading and
warlike people, received from the Portuguese and the Dutch,
knives, fish-hooks, small mirrors, and all sorts of glass
beads. They excited the Indian chiefs to make war against
each other, bought their prisoners, and carried off, them-
selves, by stratagem or force, all whom they found in their
way. These incursions of the Caribs comprehended an in>
mense extent of land; they went from the banks of the
Essequibo and the Carony, by the Bupunuri and the Pa-
raguamuzi on one side, directly south towards the Bio
Branco ; and on the other, to the south-west, following the
* 26 Jan. 1523 : and 10 Oct. 1618.

TT8E OP AKTB AS POOD. 889

portages between the Bio Paragua, the Caura, and tlie
Ventuario. The Caribs, when they arrived amid the nu-
merous tribes of the Upper Orinoco, divided themselves into
several bands, in order to reach, by the Cassiquiare, the
Cababury, the Itinivini, and the Atabapo, on a great many
points at once, the banks of the Gruiaima or Bio Negro, and
carry on the slave-trade with the Portuguese. Thus the
unhappy natives, before they came into immediate contact
with the Europeans, suffered from their proximity. The
same causes produce everywhere the same effects. The bar-
barous trade which civilized nations have carried on, and
still partially continue, on the coast of Africa, extends its
fatal influence even to regions where the existence of white
men is unknown.

Having quitted the mouth of the Conorichite and the
mission of Bavipe, we reached at sunset the island of Dapa,
lying in the middle of the river, and very picturesquely
situated. "We were astonished to find on this spot some
cultivated ground, and on the top of a small hill an Indian
hut. Four natives were seated round a fire of brushwood,
and they were eating a sort of white paste with black spots,
which much excited our curiosity. These black spots
proved to be vachacos, large ants, the hinder parts of which
resemble a lump of grease. They had been dried, and
blackened by smoke. We saw several bags of them sus-
pended above the fire. These good people paid but little
attention to us ; 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. The military are in
greater numbers on the banks of the Bio Negro than on
those of the Orinoco, owing to the necessity of guarding
the frontiers; and wherever soldiers and monks dispute
for power over the Indians, the latter are most attached to
the monks. Two young women came down from their
hammocks, to prepare for us cakes of cassava. In answer
to some enquiries which we put to them through an inter-
preter, they answered that cassava grew poorly on the
island, but that it was a good land for ants, ana food was
not wanting. In fact, these vachacos furnish subsistence
to the Indians of the Bio Negro and the Guainia. Tbey

390 WAKEFUL HABITS OF THE INDIAHS.

do iiot eat the ants as a luxury, but because, according to
the expression of the missionaries, IHP fat of ants (the white
part of the abdomen) is a very substantial food. When
the cakes of cassava were prepared, Father Ze&, whose fever
seemed rather to sharpen than to enfeeble his appetite,
ordered a little bag to be brought to him filled with smoked
vachacos. He mixed these bruised insects with flour of cas-
sava, which he pressed us 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 our joining in the praises bestowed by the good
missionary on what he called * an excellent ant paste.'

The violence of the rain obliged us to sleep in this
crowded hut. The Indians slept only from eight till two
in the morning; the rest of the time they employed 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 21°. This custom of being awake, and even on foot,
four or five hours before sunrise, is general among the
Indians of Guiana. When, in the entradas, an attempt is
made to surprise the natives, the hours chosen are those
of the first sleep, from nine till midnight.

We left the island of Dapa long before daybreak ; and
notwithstanding the rapidity of the current, and the acti-
vity of our rowers, our passage to the fort of San Carlos
del Bio Negro occupied twelve hours. We passed, on the
left, the mouth of the Cassiquiare, and, on the right, the
small island of Cumarai. The fort is believed in the
country to be on the equatorial line ; but, according to the
observations which I made at the rocks of Culimacari, it
;s in 1° 54' 11".

We lodged at San Carlos with the commander of the
/ort, a lieutenant of militia. From a gallery in the upper
part of the house we enjoyed a delightful view of three
islands of great length, and covered with thick vegetation.
The river runs in a straight line from north to south, as
if its bed had been dug by the hand of man. The sky
being constantly cloudy gives these countries a solemn and
gloomy character. We found in the village a fewjuvia-
trees which furnish the triangular nuts called in Europ*

A TRONTIEB-POST. 391

the almonds of the Amazon, or Brazil-nuts. We ha\e made
it known by the name of Bertholletia excelsa. The trees
attain after eight years' growth the height of thirty feet.

The military establishment of this frontier consisted of
seventeen soldiers, ten of whom were detached for the secu-
rity of the neighbouring missions. Owing to the extreme
humidity of the air there are not four muskets in a con-
dition to be fired. The Portuguese have from twenty-five
to thirty men, better clothed and armed, at the little fort
of San Jose de Maravitanos. We found in the mission of
San Carlos but one garita* a square house, constructed
with unbaked bricks, and containing six field-pieces. The
little fort, or, as they think proper to call it here, the
Oastillo de San Felipe, is situated opposite San Carlos, on
the western bank or the Rio Ne^rp.

The banks of the Upper Gruainia will be more productive
when, by the destruction of the forests, the excessive
humidity of the air and the soil shall be diminished. In
their present state of culture maize scarcely grows, and
the tobacco, which is of the finest quality, and much cele-
brated on the coast of Caracas, is well cultivated only on
spots amid old ruins, remains of the huts of the pueblo viejo
(old town). Indigo grows wild near the villages of Maroa,
Davipe, and Tomo. Under a different system from that
which we found existing in these countries, the Rio Negro
will produce indigo, coffee, cacao, maize, and rice, in abun-
dance.

The passage from the mouth of the Rio Negro to Grand
Para occupying only twenty or twenty-five days, it would
not have taken us much more time to have gone down the
Amazon as far as the coast of Brazil, than to return by the
Cassiquiare and the Orinoco to the northern coast 01 Ca-
racas. We 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 we did not know till after our return to Europe the
extent of the danger to which we should have been exposed
in proceeding as far as Barcellos. It was known at Brazil,
possibly through the medium of the newspapers, that I was

* This word literally signifies a sentry-box ; but it is here employed ia
the sense of store-house or arsenal.

392 THE GLOE1E1A J>£ COCITT.

going to visit the missions of the Rio Negro, and ( xamine
the natural canal which unites two great systems of rivers.
In those desert forests instruments had been seen only in the
hands of the commissioners of the boundaries ; and at that
time the subaltern agents of the Portuguese government
could not conceive how a man of sense could expose hli.iself
to the fatigues of a long journey, " to measure lands that
did not belong to him." Orders had been issued to seize
my person, my instruments, and, above all, those registers
of astronomical observations, so dangerous to the safety of
states. We were to be conducted by way of the Amazon
to Grand Para, and thence sent back to Lisbon. Bub
fortunately for me, the government at Lisbon, on being
informed of the zeal of its subaltern agents, instantly gave
orders that I should not be disturbed in my operations;
but that on the contrary they should be encouraged, if I
traversed any. part of the Portuguese possessions.

In going down the G uainia, or llio Negro, you pass on
the right the Cano Maliapo, and on the left the Canoa
Dariba and Eny. At five leagues distance, nearly in 1° 38'
of north latitude, is the island of San Josef. A little below
that island, in a spot where there are a great number of
orange-trees now growing wild, the traveller is shown a
small rock, two hundred feet high, with a cavern called by
the missionaries the Glorieta de Cocuy. This summer-
house (for such is the signification of the word glorieta in
Spanish) recalls remembrances that are not the most agree-
able. It was here that Cocuy, the chief of the Manitivi-
tanos,* had his harem of women, and where he devoured
the finest and fattest. The tradition of the harem and the
orgies of Cocuy is more current in the Lower Orinoco than
on the banks of the Guainia. At San Carlos the very idea
that the chief of the Maiiitivitanos could be guilty of
cannibalism is indignantly rejected.

The Portuguese government has established many settle-
ments even in this remote part of Brazil. Below the
Glorieta, in the Portuguese territory, there are eleven
Tillages in an extent of twenty-five leagues. I know of

* At San Carlos there is still preserved an instrument of music, a
kind of large drum, ornamented with very rude Indian paintings, which
relute to the exploits of Cocuy.

TEIBUTAKIES OF TILL IUO NEGRO. 393

nineteen more as far as the mouth of the Bio Negro, beside
the six towns of Thomare, Moreir-a (near the Bio Deme-
nene, or Uaraca, where dwelt anciently the Guiana Indians)
Barcellos, San Miguel del Bio Branco, near the river of the
same name (so well known in the fictions of El Dorado),
Moura, and Villa do Bio Negro. The banks of this tri-
butary stream of the Amazon alone are consequently ten
times more thickly peopled than all the shores 01 the U pper
and Lower Orinoco, the Gassiquiare, the Atabapo, and the
Spanish Bio Negro.

Among the tributary streams which the Bio Negro receives
from the north, three are particularly deserving of attention,
because on account of their branchings, their portages, and
the situation of their sources, they are connected with the
often-discussed problem of the origin of the Orinoco. The
most southern of these tributary streams are the Bio Branco,*
which was long believed to issue conjointly with the Orinoco
from lake Parime, and the Bio Padaviri, which communicates
by a portage with the Mavaca, and consequently with the
Upper Orinoco, to the east of the mission of Esmeralda.
We shall have occasion to speak of the Bio Branco and the
Padaviri, when we arrive in that mission; it suffices here to
pause at the third tributary stream of the Bio Negro, the
Cababury, the interbranchings of which with the Cassiquiare
are alike important in their connexion with hydrography,
and with the trade in sarsaparilla.

The lofty mountains of the Parime, which border the
northern bank of the Orinoco in the upper part of its
course above Esmeralda, send off a chain towards the south,
of which the Cerro de Unturan forms one of the principal
summits. This mountainous country, of small extent but
rich in vegetable productions, above all, in the mavacure
liana, employed in preparing the wowrali poison, in almond-

* The Portuguese name, Rio Branco, signifies White River. Rio
Parime is a Caribbean name, signifying Great Water. These names
having also been applied to different tributary streams, have caused many
errors in geography. The great Rio Branco, or Parime, often mentioned
in this work, is formed by the Urariquera and the Tacutu, and flows,
between Carvoeyro and Villa de Moura, into the Rio Negro. It is the
Quecuene of the natives ; and forms at its confluence with the Ilio Negro
a very narrow delta, between the principal trunk and the Amayauhau,
which is a little branch more to the west.

394 VARIETIES OF SARSAPARILLA.

trees (the^wwa, or Bertholletia excelsa), in aromatic puclic-
ries, and in wild cacao-trees, forms a point of division
between the waters that flow to the Orinoco, the Cassi-
quiare, and the Bio Negro. The tributary streams on the
north, or those of the Orinoco, are the Mavaca and the
Daracapo ; those on the west, or of the Cassiquiare, are the
Idapa and the Pacimoni; and those on the south, or of the
Rio Negro, are the Padaviri and the Cababuri. The latter
is divided near its source into two branches, the western-
most of which is known by the name of Baria. The Indians
of the mission of San Francisco Solano gave us the most
minute description of its course. It aifords the very rare
example of a branch by which an inferior tributary stream,
instead of receiving the waters of the superior stream, sends
to it a part of its own waters in a direction opposite to that
of the principal recipient.

The Cababuri runs into the Eio Negro near the mission
of Nossa Senhora das Caldas; but the rivers Ta and
Dimity, which are higher tributary streams, communicate
also with the Cababuri ; so that, from the little fort of San
Gabriel de Cachoeiras as far as San Antonio de Castanheira
the Indians of the Portuguese possessions can enter the
territory of the Spanish missions by the Baria and the
Pacimoni.

The chief object of these incursions is the collection of
sarsaparilla and the aromatic seeds of the puchery-laurel
(Laurus pichurim). The sarsaparilla of these countries is
celebrated at Grand Para, Angostura, Cumana, Nueva Bar-
celona, and in other parts of Terra Pirma, by the name of
zarza del Rio Negro. It is much preferred to the zarza of
the province of Caracas, or of the mountains of Merida ; it
is dried with great care, and exposed purposely to smoke, in
order that it may become blacker. This liana grows in pro-
fusion on the humid declivities of the mountains of Unturan
and Achivaquery. Decandolle is right in suspecting that
different species of smilax are gathered under the name of
sarsaparilla. We found twelve new species, among wnicn
the Smilax siphylitica of the Cassiquaire, and the Smilax
officinalis of the river Magdalena, are most esteemed on
account of their diuretic properties. The quantity of sar-
aaparilla employed in the Spanish colonies as a domestic

THE AMAZON dTOJTE. 895

medicine ia very considerable. "We see by the works of
Clusius, that at the beginning of the Conouista, Europe
obtained this salutary medicament from the Mexican coast
of Honduras and the port of Guayaquil. The trade in zarza
is now more active in those ports which have interior
communications with the Orinoco, the Bio Negro, and the
Amazon.

The trials made in several botanical gardens of Europe
prove that the Smilax glauca of Virginia, which it is pre-
tended is the S. sarsaparilla of Linnaeus, may be cultivated
in the open air, wherever the mean winter temperature
rises above six or seven degrees of the centigrade ther-
mometer*: but those species that possess the most active
virtues belong exclusively to the torrid zone, and require a
much higher degree of heat. In reading the works of Clu-
sius, it can scarcely be conceived why our writers on the
Materia Medica persist in considering a plant of the United
States as the most ancient type of the officinal species of the
genus smilax.

We found in the possession of the Indians of the Rio
Negro some of those green stones, known by the name of
"Amazon stones," because the natives pretend, according to
an ancient tradition, that they come from the country " of the
women without husbands (Gougnantainsecouvma), or women
living alone (Aikecmbenaiw\)" We were told at San Carlos,
and in the neighbouring villages, that the sources of the
Orinoco, which we found east of the Esmeralda, and in the
missions of the Carony and at Angostura, that the sources
of the Bio Branco are the native spots of the green stones.
These statements confirm the report of an old soldier of the

• The winter temperature at London and Paris is 4'2° and 3'7e; at
Montpelier, 6'7° ; at Rome, 7'7°. In that part of Mexico, and the Terra
Firrra, where we saw the most active species of the sarsaparilla growing,
(that which supplies the trade of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies)
the temperature is from twenty to twenty-six degrees. The roots of
another family of monocotyledons (of some cyperaceee) possess also dia-
phoretic and resolvent properties. The Carex arenaria, the C. hirta, 8tc.
furnish the German sarsaparilla of druggists. According to Clusim,
Europe received the first sarsaparilla from Yucatan, and the island of
Puna, opposite Guayaquil.

•*• This word is of the Tamanac language ; these women are the toto
Donne of the Italian

396 THE AMAZON-STONE.

garrison of Cayenne (mentioned by La Condamine), whc
affirmed that these mineral substances were obtained from
the "country of women," west of the rapids of the Oyapoc.
The Indians who inhabit the fort of Topayos on the Amazon,
five degrees east of the mouth of the Bio Negro, possessed
formerly a great number of these stones. Had they received
them from the north, that is, from the country pointed out
by the Indians of the Bio Negro, which extends from the
mountains of Cayenne towards the sources of the Essequibo,
the Carony, the Orinoco, the Parime, and the Bio Trom-
betas ? or did they come from the south by the Bio Topayos,
which descends from the vast table-land of the Campos
Parecis? Superstition attaches great importance to these
mineral substances : they are worn suspended from the neck
as amulets, because, according to popular belief, they pre-
serve the wearer from nervous complaints, fevers, and the
stings of venomous serpents. They have consequently been
for ages an article of trade among the natives, both north
and south of the Orinoco. The Caribs, who may be con-
sidered as the Bucharians of the New World, made them
known along the coasts of Guiana ; and the same stones,
like money in circulation, passed successively from nation
to nation in opposite directions : their quantity is perhaps
not augmented, and the spot which produces them is pro-
bably unknown rather than concealed. In the midst of en-
lightened Europe, on occasion of a warm contest respecting
native bark, a few years ago, the green stones of the Orinoco
were gravely proposed as a powerful febrifuge. After this
appeal to the credulity of Europeans, we cannot be sur-
prised to learn that the Spanish planters share the predilec-
tion of the Indians for these amulets, and that they are sold
at a very considerable price. The form given to them most
frequently is that of the Babylonian cylinders,* longitudi-
nally perforated, and loaded with inscriptions and figures.
But this is not the work of the Indians of our days, the na-
tives of the Orinoco and the Amazon, whom we find in the
last degree of barbarism. The Amazon stones, like the per-
forated and sculptured emeralds, found in the Cordilleras of
New Grenada and Quito, are vestiges of anterior civilization.

* The price of a cylinder two inches long is from twelve to fifteen
piastres.

THE AMAZON-STONE. 307

The present inhabitants of those countries, particularly in
the hot region, so little comprehend the possibility of cut-
ting hard stones, (the emerald, jade, compact feldspar and
rock-crystal,) that they imagine the green stone is solt when
taken out of the earth, and that it hardens after having been
moulded by the hand.

The natural soil of the Amazon-stone is not in the valley
of the river Amazon. It does not derive its name from the
river, but like the river itself, the stone has been named after
a nation of warlike women, whom Father Acunha, and
Oviedo, in his letter to cardinal Bembo, compare to the
Amazons of the ancient world. What we see in our cabinets
under the false denomination of Amazon-stone, is neither
jade, nor compact feldspar, but a common feldspar of an
apple-green colour, that comes from the Ural mountains
and on lake Onega in Russia, but which I never saw in the
granitic mountains of Guiana. Sometimes also this very
rare and hard Amazon-stone is confounded with the hatchet-
nephrite (beilstein)* of Werner, which has much less tena-
city. The substance which I obtained from the hands of
the Indians, belongs to the sattssurite^ to the real jade,
which resembles compact feldspar, and which forms one of
the constituent parts of the verde de Corsica, or gabbro.J It
takes a fine polish, and passes from apple-green to emerald-
green ; it is translucent at the edges, extremely tenacious,
and in a high degree sonorous. These Amazon stones were
formerly cut by the natives into very thin plates, perforated
at the centre, and suspended by a thread, and these plates
yield an almost metallic sound if struck by another hard
body. 1 1 This fact confirms the connection which we find,
notwithstanding the difference of fracture and of specific
gravity between the saussurite and the siliceous basis of the
porphyrschiefer, which is the phonolite (klingstein). I have

* Punamustein (jade axinien). The stone hatchets found in America,
tor instance in Mexico, are not of beilstein, but of compact feldspar.

t Jade of Saussure, according to the system of Brongniart ; tenacious
jade, and compact tenacious feldspar of Hatty ; some varieties of the
rarioJithf of Werner.

J Euphotide of Hauy, or schillerfels of Raumer.

|| M. Brongniart, to whom 1 showed these plates on my return U
Europe, very justly compared these jades of Parime to the sonorou*
•tones employed by the Chinese in their musical instruments called king

338 WORSHIP or ROCKS AND STONES

already observed, that, as it is very rare to find IL America
nephrite, jade, or compact feldspar, in its native place, we
may well be astonished at the quantity of hatchets which
are everywhere discovered in digging the earth, from the
banks of the Ohio as far as Chile. We saw in the
mountains of Upper Orinoco, or of Parime, only granular
granites containing a little hornblende, granites passing into
gneiss, and schistoid hornblendes. Has nature repeated on
the east of Esmeralda, between the sources of the Carony,
the Essequibo, the Orinoco, and the Eio Branco, the tran-
sition-formation of Tucutunemo reposing on mica-schist?
Does the Amazon-stone come from the rocks of euphotide,
which form the last member of the series of primitive rocks?
"We find among the inhabitants of both hemispheres, at
the first dawn of civilization, a peculiar predilection for cer-
tain stones ; not only those which, from their hardness, may
be useful to man as cutting instruments, but also for mine-
ral substances, which, on account of their colour and their
natural form, are believed to bear some relation to the orga-
nic functions, and even to the propensities of the soul.
This ancient worship of stones, these benign virtues attri-
buted to jade and haematite, belong to the savages of Ame-
rica as well as to the inhabitants of the forests of Thrace,
The human race, when in an uncultivated state, believes itself
to have sprung from the ground; and feels as if it were
enchained to the earth, and the substances contained in her
bosom. The powers of nature, and still more those which
destroy than those which preserve, are the first objects of
its worship. It is not solely in the tempest, in the sound
that precedes the earthquake, in the fire that feeds the vol-
cano, that these powers are manifested ; the inanimate rock ;
stones, by their lustre and hardness ; mountains, by their
mass and their solitude ; act upon the untaught mind with
a force which, in a state of advanced civilization, can no
longer be conceived. This worship of stones, when once
established, is preserved amidst more modern forms of wor-
ship ; and what was at first the object of religious homage,
becomes a source of superstitious confidence. Divine stones
are transformed into amulets, which are believed to preserve
the wearer from every ill, mental and corporeal. Although a
distance of five hundred leagues separates the banks of tha

TRADITION OF THE AMAZONS.

Amazon and the Orinoco from the Mexican table-land ;
although history records no fact that connects the savage
nations of Guiana with the civilized nations of Anahuac, the
monk Bernard de Sahagun, at the beginning of the conquest,
found preserved as relics at Cholula, certain green stonea
which had belonged to Quetzalcohuatl. This mysterious per-
sonage is the Mexican Buddha ; he appeared in the time or the
Toltecs, founded the first religious associations, and estab-
lished a government similar to that of Meroe and of Japan.

The history of the jade, or the green stones of Gruiana, ia
intimately connected with that of the warlike women whom
the travellers of the sixteenth century named the Amazons
of the New World. La Condamine has produced many
testimonies in favour of this tradition. Since my return
from the Orinoco and the river Amazon, I have often been
asked, at Paris, whether I embraced the opinion of that
learned man, or beb'eved, like several of his contemporaries,
that he undertook the defence of the Cougncmtainsecouima,
(the independent women who received men into their society
only in the month of April), merely to fix, in a public
sitting of the Academy, the attention of an audience some-
what eager for novelties. I may take this opportunity of
expressing my opinion on a tradition which has so romantic
an appearance ; and I am farther led to do this as La Conda-
mine asserts that the Amazons of the Kio Cayame* crossed

* Orellana, arriving at the Marafion by the Rio Coca and the Napo,
fought with the Amazons, as it appears, between the mouth of the Rio
Negro and that of the Xingu. La Condamine asserts, that in the
seventeenth century they passed the Maraflon between Tefe and the
mouth of the Rio Puruz, near the Caflo Cuchivara, which is a western
branch of the Puruz. These women therefore came from the banks of
the Rio Cayame, or Cayambe, consequently from the unknown country
which extends south of the Maraflon, between the Ucayale and the
Madeira. Raleigh also places them on the south of the Marafion, but in
the province of Topayos, and on the river of the same name. He says
they were " rich in golden vessels, which they had acquired in exchange
for the famous green stones, or piedras hijadas." (Raleigh means, no
doubt, piedras del higado, stones that cure diseases of the liver.) It is
remarkable enough, that, one hundred and forty-eight years after, La
Condamine still found those green stones (divine stones}, which differ
neither in colour nor in hardness from oriental jade, in greater numbers
among the Indians who live near the mouth of the Rio Topayos, than
elsewhere. The Indians said that they inherited these stones, which curt

100 THE "GOLDEIT KIIfQ."

the Maranon to establish themselves on the Rio Negro. A
taste for the marvellous, and a wish to invest the (Descrip-
tions of the New Continent with some of the colouring of
classic antiquity, no doubt contributed to give great import-
ance to the first narratives of Orellana. In perusing the
works of Vespucci, Fernando Columbus, Greraldini, Oviedo,
and Pietro Martyr, we recognize this tendency of the writers
of the sixteenth century to find among the newly discovered
nations all that the Greeks have related to us of the first
age of the world, and of the manners of the barbarous Scy-
thians and Africans. But if Oviedo, in addressing his letters
to cardinal Bembo, thought fit to flatter the taste of a man
so familiar with the study of antiquity, Sir "Walter Raleigh
had a less poetic aim. He sought to fix the attention of
Queen Elizabeth on the great empire of Guiana, the con-
quest of which he proposed. He gave a description of the
rising of that gilded king (el dorado}* whose chamberlains,
furnished with long tubes, blew powdered gold every morn-
ing over his body, after having rubbed it over with aromatic
oils : but nothing could be better adapted to strike the ima-
gination of queen Elizabeth, than the warlike republic of
women without husbands, who resisted the Castilian heroes.
Such were the motives which prompted exaggeration on the
part of those writers who have given most reputation to the
Amazons of America ; but these motives do not, I think,
suffice for .entirely rejecting a tradition, which is spread
among various nations having no communications one with
another.

Thirty years after La Condaniine visited Quito, a Portu-
guese astronomer, Ribeiro, who has traversed the Amazon,
and the tributary streams which run into that river on the
northern side, has confirmed on the spot all that the learned
Frenchman had advanced. He found the same traditions
among the Indians; and he collected them with the greater
impartiality as he did not himself believe that the Amazons

the nephritic colic and epilepsy, from their fathers, who received them
from the women without husbands."

* The term el dorado, which signifies the gilded, was not originally
the name of the country. The territory subsequently distinguished by
that appellation WHS at tirst known as the country of "el Rey Dorada*'
(the. Glided King).

LEGEND OF THE AMAZONS. 401

formed a separate horde. Not knowing any of the tonguea
spoken on the Orinoco and the Eio Negro, I could learn
nothing certain respecting the popular traditions of the
women without husbands, or the origin of the green stones,
which are believed to be intimately connected with them. 1
shall, however, quote a modern testimony of some weight,
that of Father Grili. " Upon inquiring," says this well-
informed missionary, of a Quaqua Indian, what nations
inhabited the Bio Cuchivero, he named to me the Achiri-
gotos, the Pajuros, and the Aikeambenanos.* Being well
acquainted," pursues he, " with the Tamanac tongue, I
instantly comprehended the sense of this last word, which is
a compound, and signifies ' women living alone.' The Indian
confirmed my observation, and related that the Aikeambe-
nanos were a community of women, who manufactured blow-
tubes,t and other weapons of war. They admit, once a
year, the men of the neighbouring nation of Vokearos into
their society, and send them back with presents. All the
male children born in this horde of women are killed in their
infancy." This history seems framed on the traditions
which circulate among the Indians of the Maranon, and
among the Caribs; yet the Quaqua Indian, of whom Father
Gili speaks, was ignorant of the Castilian language; he had
never had any communication with white men; and certainly
knew not, that south of the Orinoco there existed another
river, called the river of the * Aikeambenanos,' or ' Amazons.'
What must we conclude from this narration of the old
missionary of Encaramada? Not that there are Amazons on
the banks of the Cuchivero, but that women in different
parts of America, wearied of the state of slavery in which
they were held by the men, united themselves together; that
the desire of preserving their independence rendered them
warriors; and that they received visits from a neighbouring
and friendly horde. This society of women may have
acquired some power in one part of Gruiana. The Caribs of
the continent held intercourse with those of the islands; and
no doubt in this way the traditions of the Maranon and the
Orinoco were propagated toward the north. Before the

* In Italian, Acchirecolti, Paj*ri, and Aicheam-benar>o.
t Long tubes made from a hollow cane, which the natives use to propel
their poisoned arrows.

VOL. II. 2 D

402 PROBABLE OK1G1H OJf T1IE LEGEND.

voyage of Orellana, Christopher Columbus imagined he had
found the Amazons in the Caribbee Islands. This great
man was told, that the small island of Madanino (Mont-
serrat) was inhabited by warlike women, who lived the
greater part of the year separate from men. At other times
also, the conquistadores imagined that the women, who
defended their huts in the absence of their husbands, were
republics of Amazons ; and, by an error less excusable,
formed a like supposition respecting the religious congrega-
tions, the convents of Mexican virgins, who, far from admit-
ing men at any season of the year into their society, lived
according to the austere rule of Quetzalcohuatl. Such was
the disposition of men's minds, that in the long succession
of travellers, who crowded on each other in their discoveries
and in narrations of the marvels of the New World, every
one readily declared he had seen what his predecessors had
announced.

We passed three nights at San Carlos del Bio Negro. 1
count the nights, because I watched during the greater part
of them, in the hope of seizing the moment of the passage of
some star over the meridian. That I might have nothing to
reproach myself with, I kept the instruments always ready
for an observation. I could not even obtain double altitudes,
to calculate the latitude by the method of Douwes. What
a contrast between two parts of the same zone; between the
sky of Cumana, where the air is constantly pure as in
Persia and Arabia, and the sky of the Bio Negro, veiled like
that of the Feroe islands, without sun, or moon, or stars!

On the 10th of May, our canoe being ready before sun-
rise, we embarked to go up the Bio Negro as far as the
mouth of the Cassiquiare, and to devote ourselves to re-
searches on the real course of that river, which unites the
Orinoco to the Amazon. The morning was fine; but, in
proportion as the heat augmented, the sky became obscured.
The air is so saturated by water in these forests, that the
vesicular vapours become visible on the least increase of
evaporation at the surface of the earth. The breeze being
never felt, the humid strata are not displaced and renewed
by dryer air. We were every day more grieved at the
aspect of the cloudy sky. M. Bonpland was losing by this
excessive humidity the plants he had collected; and I, for

MISTtXESS O¥ THE ATMOSPHERE. 403

my part, was afraid lest I should again find the fogs of the
Rio Negro in the valley of the Cassiquiare. No one in
these missions for half a century past had doubted the
existence of communication between two great systems of
rivers; the important point of our voyage was confined there-
fore to fixing by astronomical observations the course of the
Cassiquiare, and particularly the point of its entrance into
the Eio Negro, and that of the bifurcation of the Orinoco.
Without a sight of the sun and the stars this object would
be frustrated, and we should have exposed ourselves in vain
to long and painful privations. Our fellow travellers would
have returned by the shortest way, that of the Pimichin and
the small rivers; but M. Bonpland preferred, like me, per-
sisting in the plan of the voyage, which we had traced for
ourselves in passing the Great Cataracts. We 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, the Terni, the Tuamini, and the Rio
Negro. In again entering the Orinoco by the Cassiquiafe
we had to navigate three hundred and twenty leagues, from
San Carlos to Angostura. By this way we had 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 to have suffered ourselves to be
discouraged by the fear of a cloudy sky, and by the mos-
quitos of the Cassiquiare. Our Indian pilot, who had been
recently at Mandavaca, promised us the sun, and "those
great stars that eat the clouds," as soon as we should have
left the black waters of the Ghiaviare. We therefore carried
out our first project of returning to San Fernando de Ata-
bapo by the Cassiquiare ; and, fortunately for our researches,
the prediction of the Indian was verified. The white waters
brought us by degrees a more serene sky, stars, mosquitos,
and crocodiles.

We passed between the islands of Zaruma and Mini, or
Mibita, covered with thick vegetation; and, after having
ascended the rapids of the Piedra de Uinumane, we entered
the Rio Cassiquiare at the distance of eight miles from the
small fort of San Carlos. The Piedra, or granitic rock
which forms the little cataract, attracted our attention, on
account of the numerous veins of quartz by which it ia

2 D 2

£04 THE RIO CA8STQUIAKE.

traversed. These veins jure several inches broad, and then
masses proved that their date and formation are very
different. I saw distinctly that, wherever they crossed each
other, the veins containing mica and black schorl traversed
and drove out of their direction those which contained only
white quartz and feldspar. According to the theory of
Werner, the black veins were consequently of a more recent
formation than the white. Being a disciple of the school of
Freyberg, I could not but pause with satisfaction at the
rock of Uinumane, to observe the same phenomena near the
equator, which I had so often seen in the mountains of my
own country. I confess that the theory which considers
veins as clefts filled from above with various substances,
pleases me somewhat less now than it did at that period ;
but these modes of intersection and driving aside, observed
in the stony and metallic veins, do not the less merit the
attention of travellers as being one of the most general and
constant of geological phenomena. On the east of Javita,
all along the Cassiquiare, and particularly in the mountains
of Duida, the number of veins in the granite increases.
These veins are full of holes and druses; and their frequency
seems to indicate that the granite of these countries is not
of very ancient formation.

We found some lichens on the rock Uinumane, opposite
the island of Chamanare, at the edge of the rapids ; and as
the Cassiquiare near its mouth turns abruptly from east to
south-west, we saw for the first time this majestic branch of
the Orinoco in all its breadth. It much resembles the Eio
Xegro in the general aspect of the landscape. The trees of
the forest, as in the basin of the latter river, advance as far
as the beach, and there form a thick coppice ; but the Cassi-
quiare has white waters, and more frequently changes its
direction. Its breadth, near the rapids of Uinumane, almost
surpasses that of the Eio Negro. . I found it everywhere
from two hundred and fifty to two hundred and eighty
toises, as far as above Yasiva. Before we passed the island
of Grarigave, we perceived to the north-east, almost at the
horizon, a little hill with a hemispheric summit ; the form
which in every zone characterises mountains of granite.
Continually surrounded by vast plains, the solitary rocks
and hills excite the attention of the traveller. Contiguom

MISSION OF 8AK FIIANCISCO. 405

mountains are only found more to the east, towards the
sources of the Pacimoni, Siapa, and Mavaca. Having
arrived on the south of the Eaudal of Caravine, we per-
ceived that the Cassiquiare, by the windings of its course,
again approached San Carlos. The distance from this fort
to the mission of San Francisco Solano, where we slept, is
only two leagues and a half by land, but it is reckoned
seven or eight by the river. I passed a part of the night in
the open air, waiting vainly for stars. The air was misty,
notwithstanding the agiuis blancas, which were to lead us
beneath an ever-starry sky.

The mission of San Francisco Solano, situated on the left
bank of the Cassiquiare, was founded, as were most of the
Christian settlements south of the Great Cataracts of the
Orinoco, not by monks, but by military authority. At the
time of the expedition of the boundaries, villages were built
in proportion as a subteniente, or a corporal, advanced with
his troops. Part of the natives, in order to preserve their
independence, retired without a struggle ; others, of whom
the most powerful chiefs had been gained, joined the mis-
sions. Where there was no church, they contented them-
selves with erecting a great cross of red wood, close to
which they constructed a casa fuerte, or block-house, the
walls of which were formed of large beams resting hori-
zontally upon each other. This house had two stories ; in
the upper story two cannon of small calibre were placed;
and two soldiers lived on the ground-floor, and were served
by an Indian family. Those of the natives with whom they
were at peace cultivated spots of land round the casa fuerte.
The soldiers called them together by the sound of the horn,
or a botuto of baked earth, whenever any hostile attack was
dreaded. Such were the pretended nineteen Christian
settlements founded by Don Antonio Santos in the way
from Esmeralda to the Erevato. Military posts, which had
no influence on the civilization of the natives, figured on the
maps, and in the works of the missionaries, as villages
(pueblos) and reducciones apostolicas* The preponderance
of the military was maintained on the banks of the Orinoco
till 1785, when the system of the monks of San Francisco

* Signifying apostolic conquests or convenient.

406 CUE TEATELI.IWO MENAGERIE.

began. The small number of missions founded, or rather
re-established, since that period, owe their existence to the
Fathers of the Observance ; for the soldiers now distributed
among the missions are dependent on the missionaries, or
at least are reputed to be so, according to the pretensions
Df the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

The Indians whom we found at San Francisco Solano
were of two nations; Pacimonales and Cheruvichahenas.
The latter being descended from a considerable tribe settled
on the Bio Tomo, near the Manivas of the Upper Guainia, I
tried to gather from them some ideas respecting the upper
course and the sources of the Rio Negro ; but the interpreter
whom I employed could not make them comprehend my
questions. Their continually-repeated answer was, that the
sources of the Rio Negro and the Inirida were as near to
each other as "two fingers of the hand." In one of the
huts of the Pacimonales we purchased two fine large birds,
a toucan (piapoco) and an ana, a species of macaw, seven-
teen inches long, having the whole body of a purple colour.
We had already in our canoe seven parrots, two manakins
(pipa), a motmot, two guans, orpavas de monte, two mana-
viris (cercoleptes or Viverra caudivolvula), and eight mon-
keys, namely, two ateles,* two titis,t one viudita,^ two
douroucoulis or nocturnal monkey s,|| and a short-tailed
cacajao. § Father Zea whispered some complaints at the
daily augmentation of this ambulatory collection. The
toucan resembles the raven in manners and intelligence.
tt is a courageous animal, 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 we had bought was very young; yet it took
delight, during the whole voyage, in teasing the cusicusis,
or nocturnal monkeys, which are melancholy and irritable.
I did not observe what has been related in some works of
natural history, that the toucan is forced, from the structure

* Marimonda of the Great Cataracts, (Simla belzebuth, Brisson.)
•f- Simla sciurea, the saimiri of Buffon.

% Simia lugens.

|| Cusiensi, or Simia trivirgata.

I Simla melanocephala, (mono/eo.) These last three species are new.

PLAN Or OUE ENCAMPMENT. 407

of its beak, to swallow its food by throwing it up into the
air. It raises it indeed with some difficulty from the
ground, but, having once seized it with the point of its
enormous beak, it has only to lift it up by throwing back
its head, and holding it perpendicularly whilst in the act of
swallowing. This bird makes extraordinary gestures when
preparing to drink. The monks say that it makes the sign
of the cross upon the water; and this popular belief has
obtained for the toucan, from the Creoles, the singular name
of diostede*

Most of our 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 (the titis) went in search of Father Zea, to take
shelter in the large sleeves of his Franciscan habit. These
incidents sometimes amused us so much that we forgot the
torment of the mosquitos. At night we placed a leather
case (petaca), containing our provisions, in the centre; then
our instruments, and the cages of our animals ; our ham-
mocks were suspended around the cages, and beyond were
those of the Indians. The exterior circle was formed by the
fires which are lighted to keep off the jaguars. Such was the
order of our encampment on the banks of the Cassiquiare.
The Indians often spoke to us of a little nocturnal animal,
with a long nose, which surprises the young parrots in their
nests, and in eating makes use of its hands like the monkeys
and the maniveris, or kinkajous. They call it theguachi;
it is, no doubt, a coati, perhaps the Viverra nasua, which I
saw wild in Mexico. The missionaries gravely prohibit the
natives from eating the flesh of the guachi, to which,
according to far-spread superstitious ideas, they attribute
the same stimulating qualities which the people of the East
believe to exist in the skink, and the Americans in the flesh
of the alligator.

On the llth of May, we left the mission of San Fran-
cisco Solano at a late hour, to make but a short day's
journey. The uniform stratum of vapours began to be
divided into clouds with distinct outlines : and there was a

• DIM if di, God give* it thee.

i08 BlffGCLARLY-FOEMED KOCKS.

light east wind in the upper regions of the air. We recog-
nized in these signs an approaching change of the weather ;
find were unwilling to go far from the mouth of the Cassi-
quiare, in the hope of observing during the following night
the passage of some star over the meridian. "We descried
the Cafio Daquiapo to the south, the Guachaparu to the
north, and a few miles further, the rapids of Cananivaeari.
The velocity of the current being 6' 3 feet in a second, we
had to struggle against the turbulent waves of the Baudal.
We went on shore, and M. Bonpland discovered within a
few steps of the beach a majestic almendron, or Bertholletia
excelsa. The Indians assured us, that the existence of this
valuable plant of the banks of the Cassiquiare was unknown
at San Francisco Solano, "Vasiva, and Esmeralda. They did
not think that the tree we saw, which was more than sixty
feet high, had been sown by some passing traveller. Expe-
riments made at San Carlos have shown how rare it is to
succeed in causing the bertholletia to germinate, on account
of its ligneous pericarp, and the oil contained in its nut,
which so readily becomes rancid. Perhaps this tree denoted
the existence of a forest of bertholletia in the inland country
on the east and north-east. We know, at least, with cer-
tainty, that this fine tree grows wild in the third degree of
latitude, in the Cerro de Guanaya. The plants that live in
society have seldom marked limits, and it happens, that
before we reach a palmar or apinar* we find solitary palm-
trees and pines. They are somewhat like colonists that
have advanced in the midst of a country peopled with diffe-
rent vegetable productions.

Four miles distant from the rapids of Cunamvacari, rocks
of the strangest form rise in the plains. First appears a
narrow wall eighty feet high, and perpendicular ; and at the
southern extremity of this wall are two turrets, the courses
of which are of granite, and nearly horizontal. The grouping
of the rocks of Guanari is so symmetrical that they might
be taken for the ruins of an ancient edifice. Are they the
remains of islets in the midst of an inland sea, that covered
the flat ground between the Sierra Parime and the Parecia

* Two Spanish words, which, according to a Latin form, denote I
forest of paloi-trees (paluietuaO and of pines

THE CHIEIVA PALM-TBEE. 409

mountains?* or have these walls of rock, these turrets of
granite, been upheaved by the elastic forces that still act in
the interior of our planet ? We may be permitted to medi-
tate a little on the origin of mountains, after having seen
the position of the Mexican volcanos, and of trachyte
summits on an elongated crevice; having found in the
Andes of South America primitive and volcanic rocks in a
straight line in the same cnain ; and when we recollect the
island, three miles in circumference, and of a great height,
which in modern times issued from the depths of the ocean
near Oonalaska.

The banks of the Cassiquiare are adorned with the chiriva
palm-tree with pinnate leaves, silvery on the under part. The
rest of the forest furnishes only trees with large, coriaceous,
glossy leaves, that have plain edges. This peculiar phvsiog-
nomy f of the vegetation of the Guainia, the Tuamini, and
the Cassiquiare, is owing to the preponderance of the families
of the guttiferae, the sapotae, and the laurinese, in the equa-
torial regions. The serenity of the sky promising us a fine
night, we resolved, at five ui the evening, to rest near the
Piedra de Culiwacari, a solitary granite rock, like all those
which I have described between the Atabapo and the Cassi-
<l inure. We found by the bearings of the sinuosities of the
river, that this rock is nearly in the latitude of the mission
of San Francisco Solano. In those desert countries, where
man has hitherto left only fugitive traces of his existence, I
constantly endeavoured to make my observations near the
mouth of a river, or at the foot of a rock distinguishable by
its form. Such points only as are immutable by their
nature can serve for the basis of geographical maps. I
• 'blamed, in the night of the 10th of May, a good observa-
tion of latitude by a of the Southern Cross ; the longitude
was determined, but with less precision, by the chronometer,

* The Sierra de la Parime, or of the Upper Orinoco, and the Sierra
(or Cainpos) dos Parecis, are part of the mountains of Matto Grosso,
and form the northern back of the Sierra de Chiquitos. I here name
the two chains of mountains running from east to west, and bordering the
plains or basins of the Cassiquiare, the Rio Negro, and the Amazon,
between 5° 30' north, and 14° south latitude.

f This physiognomy struck us forcibly, in the vast forests of Spanish
Guiana, only between the second and third degrees of north latitcde*.

410 THE RIO PACIMONI.

taking the altitudes of the two beautiful stars which shine
in the feet of the Centaur. This observation made known
to us at the same time, with sufficient precision for the
purposes of geography, the positions of the mouth of the
Pacunoni, of the fortress of San Carlos, and of the junction
of the Cassiquiare with the Bio Negro. The rock of Culi-
macari is precisely in latitude 2° 0' 42", and probably in
longitude 69° 33' 50".

Satisfied with our observations, we left the rock of Culi-
rnacari at half past one on the morning of the 12th. The
torment of mosquitos, to which we were exposed, augmented
in proportion as we withdrew from the Bio Negro. There
are no zancudos in the valley of Cassiquiare, but the simu-
lia, and all the other insects of the tipulary family, are the
more numerous and venomous. Having still eight nights to
pass in the open air in this damp and unhealthy climate,
Before we could reach the mission of Esmeralda, our pilot
sought to arrange our passage in such a manner as might
enable us to enjoy the hospitality of the missionary of
Mandavaca, and some shelter in the village of Vasiva. We
went up with difficulty against the current, which was nine
feet, and in some places (where I measured it with pre-
cision) eleven feet eight inches in a second, that is, almost
eight miles an hour. Our restirg-place was probably not
farther than three leagues in a right line from the mission
of Mandavaca ; yet, though we had no reason to complain
of inactivity on the part of our rowers, we were fourteen
hours in making this short passage.

Towards sunrise we passed the mouth of the Bio Paci-
moni, a river which I mentioned when speaking of the trade
in sarsaparilla, and which (by means of the Baria) inter-
twines in so remarkable a way with the Cababuri. The
Pacimoni rises in a hilly ground, from the confluence of
three small rivers,* not marked on the maps of the mission-
aries. Its waters are black, but less so than those of the
lake of Vasiva, which also communicates with the Cassi-
quiare. Between those two tributary streams coming from
the east, lies the mouth of the Bio Idapa, the waters of
which are white. I shall not recur again to the difficulty of

* The Rios Guajavaca, Moreje, and Cachevaynery .

TWSEOT-FOOD OF THE .NATIVES. 411

explaining this coexistence of rivers differently coloured,
within a small extent of territory, but shall merely observe,
that at the mouth of the Pacimoni, and on the borders of the
lake Vasiva, we were again struck with the purity and ex-
treme transparency of the brown waters. Ancient Arabian
travellers have observed, that the Alpine branch of the Nile,
which joins the Bahr el Abiad near Haltaja, has green
waters, which are so transparent, that the fish may be seen
at the bottom of the river.

We passed some turbulent rapids before we reached the
mission of Mandavaca. The village, which bears also the
name of Quirabuena, contains only sixty natives. The state
of the Christian settlements is in general so miserable, that,
in the whole course of the Cassiquiare, on a length of fifty
leagues, not two hundred inhabitants are found. The banks
of this river were indeed more peopled before the arrival of
the missionaries; the Indians have withdrawn into the
woods, toward the east; for the western plains are almost
deserted. The natives subsist during a part of the year on
those large ants of which I have spoken above. These
insects are much esteemed here, as spiders are in the south-
ern hemisphere, where the savages of Australia deem them
delicious. We found at Mandavaca the good old mission-
ary, who had already spent " twenty years of mosquitos in
the basques del Cassiquiare" and whose legs were so spotted
by the stings of insects, that the colour of the skin could
scarcely be perceived. He talked to us of his solitude, and
of the sad necessity which often compelled him to leave the
most atrocious crimes unpunished in the two missions of
Mandavaca and Vasiva. In the latter place, an Indian
alcalde had, a few years before, eaten one of his wives, after
having taken her to his conuco* and fattened her by good
feeding. The cannibalism of the nations of Gruiana is never
caused by the want of subsistence, or by the superstitions of
their rebgion, as in the islands of the South Sea; but is
generally the effect of the vengeance of a conqueror, and (as
the missionaries say) "of a vitiated appetite." Victory
over a hostile tribe is celebrated by a repast, in which some
parts of the body of a prisoner are devoured. Sometimes a

* A hut surrounded with cultivated ground ; a sort of country-house,
which the natives prefer to residing in the miaaiona.

412 ENMITY OF THE INDIAN TBJBES

defenceless family is surprised in the night ; or an enemy,
who is met with by chance in the woods, is killed by a
poisoned arrow. The body is cut to pieces, and carried as a
trophy to the hut. It is ciyilization only, that has made
man feel the unity of the human race ; which has revealed
to him, as we may say, the ties of consanguinity, by which
he is linked to beings to whose language and manners he is
a stranger. Savages know only their own family ; and a
tribe appears to them but a more numerous assemblage of
relations. When those who inhabit the missions see In-
dians of the forest, who are unknown to them, arrive, they
make use of an expression, which has struck us by its simple
candour ; " they are, no doubt, my relations : I understand
them when they speak to me." But these very savages
detest all who are not of their family, or their tribe ; and
hunt the Indians of a neighbouring tribe, who live at war
with their own, as we hunt game. They know the duties of
family ties and of relationship, but not those of humanity,
which require the feeling of a common tie with beings
framed like ourselves. No emotion of pity prompts them
to spare the wives or children of a hostile race ; and the
latter are devoured in preference, at the repast given at the
conclusion of a battle or warlike incursion.

The hatred which savages for the most part feel for men
who speak another idiom, and appear to them to be
of an inferior race, is sometimes rekindled in the missions,
after having long slumbered. A short time before our
arrival at Esmeralda, an Indian, born in the forest* behind
the Duida, travelled alone with another Indian, who, after
having been made prisoner by the Spaniards on the banks
of the Ventuario, lived peaceably in the village, or, as it is
expressed here, "within the sound of the bell," (debaxo de
la campafia.) The latter could only walk slowly, because he
was suffering from one of those fevers to which the natives
are subject, when they arrive in the missions, and abruptly
change their diet. Wearied by his delay, his fellow-traveller

• En el monte. The Indians born in the missions are distinguished
from those born in the woods. The word monte signifies more frequently,
in the colonies, a forest (bosque) than a mountain, and this circumstance
has led to great errors in our maps, on which chains of mountains (sierras)
we figured, where there are only thick forests, (monte espeso.)

CAITNIBALIGM AND HUMAN SACEIFICE8. 413

killed him, and hid the body behind a copse of thick trees,
near Esmeralda. This crime, like many others among the
Indians, would have remained unknown, if the murderer had
not made preparations for a feast on the following day. He
tried to induce his children, born in the mission and become
Christians, to go with him for some parts of the dead body.
They had much difficulty in persuading him to desist from
his purpose ; and the soldier who was posted at Esmeralda,
learned from the domestic squabble caused by this event,
what the Indians would have concealed from his knowledge.
It is known that cannibalism and the practice of human
sacrifices, with which it is often connected, are found to
exist in all parts of the globe, and among people of very
different races ;* but what strikes us more in the study of
history is to see human sacrifices retained in a state of
civilization somewhat advanced ; and that the nations who
hold it a point of honour to devour their prisoners are not
always the rudest and most ferocious. The painful facts
have not escaped the observation of those missionaries who
are sufficiently enlightened to reflect on the manners of
the surrounding tribes. The Cabres, the Gruipunaves, and
the Caribs, have always been more powerful and more
civilized than the other hordes of the Orinoco; and yet
the two former are as much addicted to anthropophagy as
the latter are repugnant to it. We must carefully distin-
guish the different branches into which the great family
of the Caribbee nations is divided. These branches are as
numerous as those of the Mongols, and the western Tartars,
or Turcomans. The Caribs of the continent, those who
inhabit the plains between the Lower Orinoco, the Rio
Branco, the Essequibo, and the sources of the Oyapoc,
hold in horror the practice of devouring their enemies.
This barbarous custom,f at the first discovery of America,

* Some casual instances of children carried off by the negroes in the
island of Cuba have led to the belief, in the Spanish colonies, that there
are tribes of cannibals in Africa. This opinion, though supported by
gome travellers, is not borne out by the researches of Mr. Barrow on the
interior of that country. Superstitious practices may have given rise to
imputations perhaps as unjust as those of which Jewish families were the
victims in the ages of intolerance and persecution.

f See Gerald i ni Itinerarium, p. 186, and the eloquent tract of cardinal
Bern bo on the discoveries of Columbus. ''Insularum parlem hominet

414 INNATE FEROCITY OF THE INDIANS.

existed only among the Caribs of the West Indies. It is
they who have rendered the names of cannibals, Caribbees,
ana anthropophagi, synonymous ; it was their cruelties that
prompted the law promulgated in 1504, by which the
Spaniards were permitted to make a slave of every indi-
vidual of an American nation which could be proved to be
of Caribbee origin. I believe, however, that the anthro-
pophagy of the inhabitants of the West India Islands was
much exaggerated by early travellers, whose stories Herrera,
a grave and judicious historian, has not disdained to repeat
in his Decades kistoricas. He has even credited that extra-
ordinary event which led the Caribs to renounce this bar-
barous custom. The natives of a little island devoured a
Dominican monk whom they had carried off from the coast
of Porto Rico ; they all fell sick, and would never again eat
monk or layman."

If the Caribs of the Orinoco, since the commencement
of the sixteenth century, have differed in their manners
from those of the West India Islands ; if they are unjustly
accused of anthropophagy; it is difficult to attribute this
difference to any superiority of their social state. The
strangest contrasts are found blended in this mixture ot
nations, some of whom live only upon fish, monkeys, and
ants; while others are more or less cultivators of the
ground, more or less occupied in making and painting
pottery, or weaving hammocks or cotton cloth. Several
of the latter tribes have preserved inhuman customs alto-
gether unknown to the former. " You cannot imagine,"
said the old missionary of Mandavaca, " the perversity of
this Indian race (familia de Indios). You receive men of
a new tribe into the village ; they appear to be mild, good,

incolebant feri trucesque, qui puerorum et virorum carnibus, quos aliia
in insulis bello aut latrociniis cepissent, vescebantur ; afeminis abstinebant;
Canibales appellati." — " Some of the islands are inhabited by a cruel and
savage race, called cannibals, who eat the flesh of men and boys, and
captives and slaves of the male sex, abstaining from that of females."
(Hist. Venet., 1551.) The custom of sparing the lives of female prisoners
confirms what I have previously said, p. 326, of the language of the
women. Does the word cannibal, applied to the Caribs of the West
India Islands, belong to the language of this archipelago (that of Hayti) ?
or must we seek for it in an idiom of Florida, which some tradition!
indicate as the first country of the Caribs ?

THETB OAITNIBAL TASTES. 415

tnd laborious ; but suffer them to take part in an incursion
(entrada) to bring in the natives, ana you can scarcely
prevent them from murdering all they meet, and hiding
some portions of the dead bodies." In reflecting on the
manners of these Indians, we are almost horrified at that
combination of sentiments which seem to exclude each other ;
that faculty of nations to become but partially humanized ;
that preponderance of customs, prejudices, and traditions,
over the natural affections of the neart. We had a fugitive
Indian from the Guaisia in our canoe, who had become
sufficiently civilized in a few weeks to be useful to us in
placing the instruments necessary for our observations at
night. He was no less mild than intelligent, and we had
some desire of taking him into our service. What was our
horror when, talking to him by means of an interpreter,
we learned, " that the flesh 01 the marimonde monkeys,
though blacker, appeared to him to have the taste of human
flesh." He told us "that his relations (that is, the people
of his tribe) preferred the inside of the hands in man, as
in bears." This assertion was accompanied with gestures
of savage gratification. We inquired of this young man,
so calm and so affectionate in the little services which he
rendered us, 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. Eeproaches addressed to the
natives on tne abominable practice which we here discuss,
produce no effect; it is as if a Brahmin, travelling in
Europe, were to reproach us with the habit of feeding on
the flesh of animals. In the eyes of the Indian of the
Guaisia, the Cheruvichahena was a being entirely different
from himself; and one whom he thought it was no more
unjust to kill than the jaguars of the forest. It was merely
from a sense of propriety that, whilst he remained in the
mission, he would only eat the same food as -the Fathers.
The natives, if they return to their tribe (al monte), or tind
themselves pressed by hunger, soon resume their old
habits of anthropophagy. And why should we be so much
astonished at this inconstancy in the tribes of the Orinoco,
when we are reminded, by terrible and well-ascertained
examples, of what has passed among civilized nations in

416 INTELLIGENCE OF CERTAIN TEIBES.

times of great scarcity ? In Egypt, in the thirteenth cen«
tury, the habit of eating human flesh pervaded all classes
of society ; extraordinary snares were spread for physicians
in particular. They were called to attend persons who
pretended to be sick, but who were only hungry ; and it
was not in order to be consulted, but devoured. An his-
torian of great veracity, Abd-allatif, has related how a
practice, which at first inspired dread and horror, soon occa-
sioned not even the slightest surprise."*

Although the Indians of the Cassiquiare readily return
to their barbarous habits, they evince, whilst in the missions,
intelligence, some love of labour, and, in particular, a great
facility in learning the Spanish language. The villages
being, for the most part, inhabited by three or four tribes,
who do not understand each other, a foreign idiom, which
is at the same time that of the civil power, the language of
the missionary, affords the advantage of more general means
of communication. I heard a Poinave Indian conversing
in Spanish with a G-uahibo, though both had come from
their forests within three months. They uttered a phrase
every quarter of an hour, prepared with difficulty, and in
which the gerund of the verb, no doubt according to the
grammatical turn of tbeir own languages, was constantly

* " When the poor begaa to eat human flesh, the horror and astonish-
ment caused by repasts so dreadful were such that these crimes furnished
the never-ceasing subject of every conversation. But at length the people
became so accustomed to it, and conceived such a taste for this detestable
food, that people of wealth and respectability were found to use it as their
ordinary food, to eat it by way of a treat, and even to lay in a stock of it.
This flesh was prepared in different ways, and the practice being once
introduced, spread into the provinces, so that instances of it were found
in every part of Egypt. It then no longer caused any surprise ; the
horror it had at first inspired vanished ; and it was mentioned as an
indifferent and ordinary thing. This mania of devouring one another
became so common among the poor, that the greater part perished in thi*
manner. These wretches employed all sorts of artifices, to seize men nj
surprise, or decoy them into their houses under false pretences. This
happened to three physicians among those who visited me ; and a book-
seller who sold me books, an old and very corpulent man, fell into their
snares, and escaped with great difficulty. All the facts which we relate
as eye-witnesses fell under our observation accidentally, for we generally
avoided witnessing spectacles which inspired us with so much horror."—
Account of Egypt by Abd-allatif, physician of Bagdad* translated into
French by De Sacy, p. 360—374.

8T7PERIOB ACTIVITY OF OTHERS. 417

employed. " Wlien I seeing Padre, Padre to me saying ;"*
instead of, " when I saw the missionary, he said to me."
1 have mentioned in another place, how wise it appeared
to me in the Jesuits to generalize one of the languages of
civilized America, for instance that of the Peruvians,f and
instruct the Indians in an idiom which is foreign to them
in its roots, but not in its structure and grammatical forms.
This was following the system which the Incas, or king-
priests of Peru had employed for ages, in order to humanize
the barbarous nations of the Upper Maranon, and maintain
them under their domination; a system somewhat more
reasonable than that of making the natives of America
speak Latin, as was gravely proposed in a provincial concilia
at Mexico.

We were told that the Indians of the Cassiquiare and
the Rio Negro are preferred on the Lower Orinoco, and
especially at Angostura, to the inhabitants of the other
missions, on account of their intelligence and activity.
Those of Mandavaca are celebrated among the tribes of
their own race for the preparation of the cware poison,
which does not yield in strength to the cwrare of Esmeralda.
Unhappily the natives devote themselves to this employ-
ment more than to agriculture. Yet the soil on the banks
of the Cassiquiare is excellent. We find there a granitic
sand, of a blackish-brown colour, which is covered in the
forests with thick layers of rich earth, and on the banks of
the river with clay almost impermeable to water. The soil
of the Cassiquiare appears more fertile than that of the
valley of the Rio Negro, where maize does not prosper.
Bice, beans, cotton, sugar, and indigo yield rich harvests,
wherever their cultivation has been tried.J We saw wild
indigo around the missions of San Miguel de Davipe, San
Carlos, and Mandavaca. No doubt can exist that several
nations of America, particularly the Mexicans, long before
the conquest, employed real indigo in their hieroglyphic

* " Qua ml o io mirando Padre, Padre me diciendo."
t The Quichua or Inca language (Lengua del Inga).
% M. Bonpland found at Mandavaca, in the huts of the natives, a plant
with tuberous roots, exactly like cassava (yucca). It is called cwnapana,
and is cooked by being baked on the ashes. It grows spontaneously on
«he banks of the Cassiquiare.

VOL. II. 2 E

118 HORTICULTURAL DIFflCUTIES.

paintings ; and that small cakes of this substance were
sold at the great market of Tenochtitlan. But a colouring
matter, chemically identical, may be extracted from plants
belonging to neighbouring genera; and I should not at
present venture to affirm that the native indigoferse of
America do not furnish some generic difference from the
Indigofera anil, and the Indigofera argentea of the Old
World. In the coffee-trees of both hemispheres this
difference has been observed.

Here, as at the Rio Negro, the humidity of the air, and
the consequent abundance of insects, are obstacles almost
invincible to new cultivation. Everywhere you meet with
those large ants that march in close bands, and direct their
attacks the more readily on cultivated plants, because they
are herbaceous and succulent, whilst the forests of these
countries afford only plants with woody stalks. If a mis-
sionary wishes to cultivate salad, or any culinary plant of
Europe, he is compelled as it were to suspend his garden in
the air. He nils an old boat with good mould, and, having
sown the seed, suspends it four feet above the ground with
cords of the chiquichiqui palm-tree; but most frequently
places it on a slight scaffolding. This protects the young
plants from weeds, worms, and those ants which pursue their
migration in a right line, and, not knowing what vegetates
above them, seldom turn from their course to climb up
stakes that are stripped of their bark. I mention this cir-
cumstance to prove how difficult, within the tropics, on the
banks of great rivers, are the first attempts of man to fctvoro-
priate to himself a little spot of earth in that vast domain
of nature, invaded by animalsy and covered by spontaneous
plants.

During the night of the 13th of May, I obtained some
observations of the stars, unfortunately the last at the Cas-
siquiare. The latitude of Mandavaca is 2° 4' 7" ; its longi-
tude, according to the chronometer, 69° 27'. I found the
magnetic dip 25'25C (cent, div.), showing that it had increased
considerably from the fort of San Carlos. Yet the sur-
rounding rocks are of the same granite, mixed with a little
hornblende, which we had found at Javita, and which as-
sumes a syenitic aspect. "We left Mandavaca at half-past
two in the morning. After six hours' voyage, we passed on

OF INSECTS. 419

the cast the mouth of the Idapa, or Siapa, which rises on
the mountain of Uuturan, and furnishes near its sources a
portage to the Bio Mavaca, one of the tributary streams of
the Orinoco. This river has white waters, and is not more
than half as broad as the Pacimoni, the waters of which are
black. Its upper course has been strangely misrepresented
on maps. I shall have occasion hereafter to mention the
hypotheses that have given rise to these errors, in speaking
of the source of the Orinoco.

We stopped near the raudal of Cunuri. The noise of the
little cataract augmented sensibly during the night, and our
Indians asserted that it was a certain presage of rain. I
recollected that the mountaineers of the Alps have great
confidence in the same prognostic.* It fell before sunrise ;
and the araguato monkeys had warned us, by their lengthened
howlings, of the approaching rain, long before the noise of
the cataract increased.

On the 14th, the mosquitos, and especially the ants, drove
us from the shore before two in the morning. We had
hitherto been of opinion that the ants did not crawl along
the cords by which the hammocks are usually suspended :
whether we were correct in this supposition, or whether
the ants fell on us from the tops of the trees, I cannot
say ; but certain it is that we had great difficulty to keep
ourselves free from these troublesome insects. The river
became narrower as we advanced, and the banks were so
marshy, that it was not without much labour M. Bonpland
could get to a Carolinea princeps loaded with large purple
flowers. This tree is the most beautiful ornament of these
forests, and of those of the Bio Negro. We examined
repeatedly, during this day, the temperature of the Cassi-

* "It is going to rain, because we hear the murmur of the torrents
nearer," say the mountaineers of the Alps, like those of the Andes. The
cause of the phenomenon is a modification of the atmosphere, which has
jm influence at once on the sonorous and on the luminous undulations.
The prognostic drawn from the increase and the intensity of sound is
intimately connected with the prognostic drawn from a less extinction of
light. The mountaineers predict a change of weather, when, the air being
calm, the Alps covered with perpetual snow seem on a sudden to be
nearer the observer, and their outlines are marked with great distinctnesi
on the azure sky. What is it that causes the want of homogeneity in tb«
vertical strata of the atmosphere to disappear instantaneously ?

2 B 2

420 RI6IOST OF BAMBOOS.

quiare. The water at the surface of the river was only 24"
t^when the air was at 25'6°). This is nearly the tempera-
ture of the Bio Negro, but four or five degrees below that
of the Orinoco. After having passed on the west the mouth
of the Cafio Caterico, which has black waters of extraordi-
nary transparency, we left the bed of the river, to land at
an island on which the mission of Vasiva is established.
The lake which surrounds this mission is a league broad, and
communicates by three outlets with the Cassiquiare. The
surrounding country abounds in marshes which generate
fever. The lake, the waters of which appear yellow by
transmitted light, is dry in the season of great heat, and the
Indians themselves are unable to resist the miasmata rising
from the mud. The complete absence of wind contributes
to render the climate of this country more pernicious.

From the 14th to the 21st of May we slept constantly in
the open air ; but I cannot indicate the spots where we
halted. These regions are so wild, and so little frequented,
that with the exception of a few rivers, the Indians were
ignorant of the names of all the objects which I set by the
compass. No observation of a star helped me to fix the
latitude within the space of a degree. After having passed
the point where the Itinivini separates from the Cassiquiare,
to take its course to the west towards the granitic hills
of Daripabo, we found the marshy banks of the river
covered with bamboos. These arborescent gramina rise to
the height of twenty feet ; their stem is constantly arched
towards the summit. It is a new species of Bambusa with
very broad leaves. M. Bonpland fortunately found one in
flower ; a circumstance I mention, because the genera Nastus
and Bambusa had before been very imperfectly distinguished,
and nothing is more rare in the New World, than to see these
gigantic gramina in flower. M. Mutis herborised during
twenty years in a country where the Bambusa guadua forms
marshy forests several leagues broad, without having ever
been able to procure the flowers. "We sent that learned
naturalist the first ears of Bambusa from the temperate val-
lifs of Popayan. It is strange that the parts of fructification
should develope themselves so rarely in a plant which ia
indigenous, and which vegetates with such extraordinary
vigour, from the level of the sea to the height of nine hundred

DIFFICULTY OF LANDING. 421

toiscg, that is, to a subalpine region the climate of which,
between the tropics, resembles that of the south of Spain.
The Bambusa latifolia seems to be peculiar to the basins of
the Upper Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Amazon ; it
is a social plant, like all the gramma of the family of the
uastoides ; but in that part of Spanish Guiana which wt;
traversed it does not grow in those large masses which the
Spanish Americans call yuadales, or forests of bamboos.

Our first resting-place above Vasiva was easily arranged.
A\re found a little nook of dry ground, free from shrubs, to
the south of the Cano Curamuni, in a spot where we saw
some capuchin monkeys.* They were recognizable by their
black beards and their gloomy and sullen air, and were
walking slowly on the horizontal branches of a genipa.
During the five following nights our passage was the more
troublesome in proportion as we approached the bifurcation
of the Orinoco. The luxuriance of the vegetation in-
creases in a manner of which it is difficult even for those
acquainted with the aspect of the forests between the tropics,
to form an idea. There is no longer a bank : a palisade of
tufted trees forms the margin of the river. You see a canal
two hundred toises broad, bordered by two enormous walls,
clothed with lianas and foliage. We often tried to land,
but without success. Towards sunset we sailed along for
an hour seeking to discover, not an opening (since none
exists), but a spot less wooded, where our 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 us during the day, accumulated toward
evening beneath the toldo covered with palm-leaves, which
served to shelter us from the rain. Our 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
the largest and fiercest (las mas feroces) mosquitos, at
length gradually acknowledged that the sting of the insects
of the Cassiquiare was the most painful he had ever felt.
AVe experien ~.ed great difficulty, amid a thick forest, in
finding wood i o make a fire, the branches of the trees in

* Simla cbiropote*.

422 PICTURESQUE ENCAMPMENT.

those equatorial regions where it always ruins, being so full
of sap, that they will scarcely burn. There being no bare
shore, it is hardly possible to procure old wood, which the
Indians call wood baked in the sun. However, fire was
necessary to us only as a defence against the beasts of the
forest; for we had such a scarcity of provision that we had
little need of fuel for the purpose of preparing our food.

On the 18th of May, towards evening, we discovered a
spot where wild cacao-trees were growing on the bank of the
river. The nut of these cacaos is small and bitter; the Indians
of the forest suck the pulp, and throw away the nut, which
is picked up by the Indians of the missions, and sold to
persons who are not very nice in the preparation of their
chocolate. "This is the Puerto del Cacao" (Cacao Port),
said the pilot; " it is here our Padres sleep, when they go to
Esmeralda to buy sarbacans* andijuvias (Brazil nuts). Not
five boats, however, pass annually by the Cassiquiare; and
since we left Maypures (a whole month previously), we had
not met one living soul on the rivers we navigated, except in
the immediate neighbourhood of the missions. To the south
of lake Duractumuni we slept in a forest of palm-trees. It
rained violently, but the pothoses, arums, and lianas, fur-
nished so thick a natural trellis, that we were sheltered as
under a vault of foliage. The Indians whose hammocks
were placed on the edge of the river, interwove the helico-
nias and other musaceae, so as to form a kind of roof over
them. Our fires lighted up, to the height of fifty or sixty
feet, the palm-trees, the lianas loaded with flowers, and the
columns of white smoke, which ascended in a straight line
toward the sky. The whole exhibited a magnificent spec-
tacle; but to have enjoyed it fully, we should have breathed
an air clear of insects.

The most depressing of all physical sufferings are those
which are uniform in their duration, and can be combated
only by long patience. It is probable, that in the exhala-
tions of the forests of the Cassiquiare M. Bonpland imbibed
the seeds of a severe malady, under which he nearly sunk on
our arrival at Angostura. Happily for him and for me,
nothing led us to presage the danger with which he was

* The bamboo tubes furnished by the Arundinaria, used for projecting
ioe poisoned arrows of the natives.— See Views of Nature p. 180.

DANGEHS OF EIVEE-NAVIOATIOW. 423

menaced. The view of the river, and the hum of the insects,
were a little monotonous; but some remains of our natural
cheerfulness enabled us to find sources of relief during our
wearisome passage. "We discovered, that by eating small
portions of dry cacao ground without sugar, and drinking a
large quantity of the river water, we succeeded in appeasing
our appetite for several hours. The ants and the mosquitos
troubled us more than the humidity and the want of food.
Notwithstanding the privations to which we were exposed
during our excursions in the Cordilleras, the navigation from
Mandavaca to Esmeralda has always appeared to us the
most painful part of our travels in America. I advise those
who are not very desirous of seeing the great bifurcation of
the Orinoco, to take the way of the Atabapo in preference to
that of the Cassiquiare.

Above the Cano Duractumuni, the Cassiquiare pursues a
uniform direction from north-east to south-west. We were
surprised to see how much the high steep banks of the
Cassiquiare had been undermined on each side by the
sudden risings of the water. Uprooted trees formed as it
were natural rafts; and being half-buried in the mud, they
were extremely dangerous for canoes. We passed the night
of the 20th of May, the last of our passage on the Cassi-
quiare, near the point of the bifurcation of the Orinoco.
We 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 we
concluded that the stratum of vapours must be very thin,
since meteors of this kind have scarcely ever been seen
below a cloud. Those we now beheld shot towards the
north, and succeeded each other at almost equal intervals.
The Indians, who seldom ennoble by their expressions the
wanderings of the imagination, name the falling-stars the
urine; and the dew the spittle of the stars. The clouds
thickened anew, and we discerned neither the meteors, nor
the real stars, for which we had impatienly waited during
several days.

We had been told, that we should find the insects at
Esmeralda "still more cruel and voracious," than in the
branch of the Orinoco which we were going up; nevertheless

«.J4 AUDACITY OF A JAGUAR,

we indulged the hope of at length sleeping in a spot that
\vas inhabited, and of taking some exercise in herbalizing.
This anticipation was, however, disturbed at our last resting-
place on the Cassiquiare. Whilst we were sleeping on
the edge of the forest, we were warned by the Indians,
in the middle of the night, that they heard very near us the
cries of a jaguar. These cries, they alleged, came from
the top of some neighbouring trees. Such is the thickness
of the forests in these regions, that scarcely any animals are
to be found there but such as climb trees; as, for instance,
the monkeys, animals of the weasel tribe, jaguars, and other
upecies of the genus Felis.

As our fires burnt brightly, we paid little attention to the
cries of the jaguars. They had been attracted by the smell
and noise of our dog. This animal (which was of the mastiff
breed) began at first to bark; and when the tiger drew
nearer, to howl, hiding himself below our hammocks. How
great was our grief, when in the morning, at the moment of
re-embarking, the Indians informed us that the dog had
disappeared! There could be no doubt that it had been
carried off by the jaguars.* Perhaps, when their cries had
ceased, it had wandered from the fires on the side of the
beach; and possibly we had not heard its moans, as we were
in a profound sleep. We have often heard the inhabitants
of the banks of the Orinoco and the Bio Magdalena affirm,
that the oldest jaguars will carry off animals from the midst
of a halting-place, cunningly grasping them by the neck so as
to prevent their cries. We waited part of the morning, in
the hope that our dog had only strayed. Three days after
we came back to the same place; we heard again the cries of
the jaguars, for these animals have a predilection for particu-
lar spots ; but all our search was vain. The dog, which had
accompanied us from Caracas, and had so often in swimming
escaped the pursuit of the crocodiles,f had been devoured in
the forest.

On the 2 1st May, we again entered the bed of the

Orinoco, three leagues below the mission of Esmeralda. It

was now a month since we had left that river near the

mouth of the Guaviare. We had still to proceed seven

* See Views of Nature, p. 195. t Ibid., p. 198.

1ABLT GEOGRAPHICAL DOUBTS. 425

hundred and fifty miles* before reaching Angostura, but we
should go with the stream ; and this consideration lessened
our discouragement. In descending great rivers, the rowers
take the middle of the current, where there are few mosqui-
tos; but in ascending, they are obliged, in order to avail them-
selves of the dead waters and counter-currents, to sail near
the shore, where the proximity of the forests, and the
remains of organic substances accumulated on the beach,
harbour the tipulary insects. The point of the celebrated
bifurcation of the Orinoco has a very imposing aspect. Lofty
granitic mountains rise on the northern bank ; and amidst
them are discovered at a distance the Maraguaca and the
Puida. There are no mountains on the left bank of the
Orinoco, west or east of the bifurcation, till opposite the
mouth of the Tamatama. On that spot stands the rock
Guaraco, which is said to throw out flames from time to
time in the rainy season. When the Orinoco is no longer
bounded by mountains towards the south, and when it
reaches the opening of a valley, or rather a depression of the
ground, which terminates at the Rio Negro, it divides itself
into two branches. The principal branch (the Eio Paragua
of the Indians) continues its course west-north-west, turning
round the group of the mountains of Parime; the other branch
forming the communication with the Amazon runs into
plains, the general slope of which is southward, but of which
the partial planes incline, in the Cassiquiare, to south-west,
and in the basin of the Eio Negro, south-east. A pheno-
menon so strange in appearance, which I verified on the
spot, merits particular attention; the more especially as it
may throw some light on analogous facts, which are supposed
to have been observed in the interior of Africa.

The existence of a communication of the Orinoco with the
Amazon by the Eio Negro, and a bifurcation of the Caqueta,
was believed by Sanson, and rejected by Father Fritz and by
Blaeuw : it was marked in the first maps of De 1'Isle, but
abandoned by that celebrated geographer towards the end of
his days. Those who had mistaken the mode of this com-
munication hastened to deny the communication itself. It
is in fact well worthy of remark that, at the time when the

* Of nine hundred and fifty toiges each, or two hundred and fiffrj
lautica] leagues.

426 GEOGRAPHICAL EEBOR8.

Portuguese went up most frequently by tie Amazon, the
Kio Negro, and the Cassiquiare, and when Father Ghunilla's
letters were carried (by the natural interbranching of the
rivers) from the lower Orinoco to Grand Para, that verv
missionary made every effort to spread the opinion through
Europe that the basins of the Orinoco and the Amazon are
perfectly separate. He asserts that, having several times
gone up the former of these rivers as far as the Raudal of
Tabaje, situate in the latitude of 1° 4', he never saw a river
flow in or out that could be taken for the Rio Negro. He
adds further, that " a great Cordillera, which stretches from
east to west, prevents the mingling of the waters, and
renders all discussion on the supposed eommujieation of
the two rivers useless." The errors of Father Ghimilla
arose from his firm persuasion that he had reached the
parallel of 1° 4* on the Orinoco. He was in error by
more than 5° 10' of latitude ; for I found, by observation, at
the mission of Atures, thirteen leagues south of the rapids
of Tabaje, the latitude to be 5° 37' 34*. Grumilla having
gone but little above the confluence of the Meta, it is not
surprising that he had no knowledge of the bifurcation of
the Orinoco, which is found by the sinuosities of the river
to be one hundred and twenty leagues distant from the
Raudal of Tabaje.

La Condarnine, during his memorable navigation on the
river Amazon in 1743, carefully collected a great number of
proofs of this communication of the rivers, denied by the
Spanish Jesuit. The most decisive proof then appeared to
him to be the unsuspected testimony of a Cauriacani Indian
woman with whom he had conversed, and who had come in
a boat from the banks of the Orinoco (from the mission of
Pararuma) to Grand Para. Before the return of La Con-
damine to his own country, the voyage of Father Manuel
Roman, and the fortuitous meeting of the missionaries of
the Orinoco and the Amazon, left no doubt of this fact, the
knowledge of which was first obtained by Acunha.

The incursions undertaken from the middle of the seven-
teenth century, to procure slaves, had gradually led the
Portuguese from the Rio Negro, by the Cassiquiare, to the
bed of a great river, which they did not know to be the
Upper Orinoco. A flying camp, composed of the troop of

PORTUGUESE SLATE-TRADERS. 427

ransomers,* favoured this inhuman commerce. After having
excited the natives to make war, they ransomed the pri-
soners ; and, to give an appearance of equity to the traffic,
monks accompanied the troop of ransomers to examine
" whether those who sold the slaves had a right to do so, by
having made them prisoners in open war." From the year
1737 these visits of the Portuguese to the Upper Orinoco
became very frequent. The desire of exchanging slaves
(poitos) for hatchets, fish-hooks, and glass trinkets, induced
the Indian tribes to make war upon one another. The
Q-uipunaves, led on by their valiant and cruel chief Macapu,
descended from the banks of the Inirida towards the con-
fluence of the Atabapo and the Orinoco. "They sold,"
says the missionary Grili, " the slaves whom they did not
eat."t The Jesuits of the Lower Orinoco became uneasy
at this state of things, and the superior of the Spanish
missions, Father Eoman, the intimate friend of Grumilla,
took the courageous resolution of crossing the Great
Cataracts, and visiting the Ghiipunaves, without being
escorted by Spanish soldiers. He left Carichana the 4th of
February, 1744; and having arrived at the confluence of
the G-uaviare, the Atabapo, and the Orinoco, where the last
mentioned river suddenly changes its previous course from
east to west, to a direction from south to north, he saw from
afar a canoe as large as his own, and filled with men in
European dresses. He caused a crucifix to be placed at the
bow of his boat in sign of peace, according to the custom of
the missionaries when they navigate in a country unknown
to them. The whites, who were Portuguese slave-traders
of the Rio Negro, recognized with marks of joy the habit
of the order of St. Ignatius. They heard with astonishment
that the river on which this meeting took place was the
Orinoco; and they brought Father Eoman by the Cassi-
quiare to the Brazilian settlements on the Bio Negro. The

* Tropa de reseat e ; from reseat ar, to redeem.

t " I Guipunavi awentizj abitatori dell' Alto Orinoco, recavan de*
danni incredibili alle vicine mansuete nazioni ; altre mangiondone, altre
conducendone schiave ne' Portoghesi dominj." — " The Guipunaves, at
their first arrival on the Upper Orinoco, inflicted incredible injuries on the
other peaceable tribes who dwelt near them, devouring some, and selling
»thei« as slaves to the Portuguese." (Gili, torn, i, p. 31.)

428 BirUBCATION OF TliE ORINOCO.

tmperior of the Spanish missions was forced to remain near
the flying camp of the troop of ransomers till the arrival of
the Portuguese Jesuit Avogadri, who had gone upon busi-
ness to Grand Para. Father Manuel Boman returned with
his Salive Indians by the same way, that of the Cassiquiare
and the Upper Orinoco, to Pararuma,* a little to the north
of Carichana, after an absence of seven months. He was
the first white man who went from the Bio Negro, conse-
quently from the basin of the Amazon, without passing his
boats over any portage, to the basin of the Lower Orinoco.

The tidings of this extraordinary passage spread with
such rapidity that La Condamine was able to announce
itf at a public sitting of the Academy, seven months
after the return of Father Boman to Pararuma. "The
communication between the Orinoco and the Amazon," said
he, "recently averred, may pass so much the more for a
discovery in geography, as, although the junction of these
two rivers is marked on the old maps (according to the
information given by Acunha), it had been suppressed by
all the modern geographers in their new maps, as if in
concert. This is not the first time that what is positive fact
has been thought fabulous, that the spirit of criticism has
been pushed too far, and that this communication has been
treated as chimerical by those who ought to have been
better informed." Since the voyage of Father Boman in
1774, no person in Spanish G-uiana, or on the coasts
of Cumana and Caracas, has admitted a doubt of the
existence of the Cassiquiare and the bifurcation of the

* On the 15th of October, 1774. La Condamine quitted the town of
Grand Para December the 29th, 1743 ; it follows, from a comparison of
the dates, that the Indian woman of Pararuma, carried off by the
Portuguese, and to whom the French traveller had spoken, had not come
with Father Roman, as was erroneously affirmed. The appearance of this
woman on the banks of the Amazon is interesting with respect to the
researches lately made on the mixture of races and languages : it proves
the enormous distances through which the individuals of one tribe are
compelled to carry on intercourse with those of another.

•f1 The intelligence was communicated to him by Father John Ferreyro,
rector of the college of Jesuits at Para. (Voy. a 1'Amazone, p. 120.
Mem. de 1'Acad. 1745, p. 450. Caulin, p. 79.) See also, in the work ol
Gili, the fifth chapter of the first book, published in 1780, with the title:
"Delia scoperta delle communicazione dell' Orinoco col Maragnore."

•nrsrcnoN WITH THE RIO NEGUO. 429

Orinoco. Father Gun.illa himself, whom Bouguer met at
Carthagena, confessed that he had been deceived ; and he
read to Father Gili, a short time before his death, a supple-
ment to his history of the Orinoco, intended for a new
edition, in which he recounts pleasantly the manner in
which he had been undeceived. The expedition of the
boundaries, under Iturriaga and Solano, completed in
detail the knowledge of the geography of the Upper
Orinoco, and the intertwinings of this river with the Rio
Negro. Solano established himself in 1756 at the con-
fluence of the Atabapo; and from that time the Spanish
and Portuguese commissioners often passed in their canoes,
by the Cassiquiare, from the Lower Orinoco to the Rio
Negro, to visit each other at their head-quarters of Cabruta*
and Mariva. Since the year 1767, two or three canoes
come annually from the fort of San Carlos, by the bifur-
cation of the Orinoco to Angostura, to fetch salt and the
pay of the troops. These passages, from one basin of a
river to another, by the natural canal of the Cassiquiare,
excite no more attention in the colonists at present than
the arrival of boats that descend the Loire by the canal of
Orleans, awakens on the banks of the Seine.

Although, since the journey of Father Roman, in 1744,
precise notions have been acquired in the Spanish posses-
sions in America, both of the direction of the Upper Orinoco
from east to west, and of the manner of its communication
with the Rio Negro, this knowledge did not reach Europe
till a much later period. In 1750, La Condamine and
D'Anvillef were still of opinion that the Orinoco was a

* General Iturriaga, confined by illness, first at Muitaco, or Real
Corona, and afterward at Cabruta, received a visit in 1760 from the"
Portuguese colonel Don Gabriel de Souza y Figueira, who came from
Grand Pura, having made a voyage of nearly nine hundred leagues in his
boat. The Swedish botanist, Loeflinp, who was chosen to accompany
the expedition of the boundaries at the expense of the Spanish government,
so greatly multiplied in his ardent imagination the branchings of the
great rivers of South America, that he appeared well persuaded of being
able to navigate, by the Rio Negro and the Amazon, to the Rio de la
Plata. (//«•, p. 131.)

f See the classical memoir of this great geographer in the Journal deg
Savans, March 1750, p. 184. " One fact," says D'Anville, "n-hich can-
aot be conside;eJ as equivocal, after the proofs with winch we have be«i

180 CIVILIZATION PROMOTED BY RIVERS.

branch of the Caqueta coining from the south-east, an 1 that
the Eio Negro issued immediately from it. It was only in
the second edition of his South America, that D'Anville (with-
out renouncing that intercommunication of the Caqueta, by
means of the Iniricha (Inirida), with the Orinoco and the
Eio Negro) describes the Orinoco as taking its rise at the
east, near the sources of the Eio Branco, and marks the
Rio Cassiquiare as bearing the waters of the Upper Orinoco
to the Eio Negro. It is probable that this indefatigable a d
learned writer had obtained information on the manner of
the bifurcation from his frequent communications with the
missionaries,* who were then the only geographers of the
most inland parts of the continents.

Had the nations of the lower region of equinoctial America
participated in the civilization spread over the cold and
alpine region, that immense Mesopotamia between the
Orinoco and the Amazon would have favoured the develop-
ment of their industry, animated their commerce, and acce-
lerated the progress of social order. "We see everywhere
in the old world the influence of locality on the dawning
civilization of nations. The island of Meroe between the
Astaboras and the Nile, the Punjab of the Indus, the Douab
of the Granges, and the Mesopotamia of the Euphrates,
furnish examples that are justly celebrated in the annals of
the human race. But the feeble tribes that wander in the
savannahs and the woods of eastern America, have profited
little by the advantages of their soil, and the inter-
branchings of their rivers. The distant incursions of the
Caribs, who went up the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the

recently furnished, is the communication of 'the Rio Negro w'th the
Orinoco ; but we must not hesitate to admit, that we are not yet
sufficiently informed of the manner in which this communication takes
place." I was surprised to see in a very rare map, which I found at Rome
(Provincia Quitensis Soc. Jesu in America, auctore Carolo Brentano et
Nicolao de la Torre; Romae, 1745), that seven years after the discovery
of Father Roman, the Jesuits of Quito were ignorant of the existence of
the Cassiquiare. The Rio Negro is figured in this map as a branch of the
Orinoco.

* According to the Annals of Berredo, it would appear, that as early
as the year 1739, the military incursions from the Rio Negro to the
Cassiquiare had confirmed the Portuguese Jesuits in the opinion that
there was a cexzmunication between the Amazon and the Orinoco.
Southcy's Brazils, vol. i, p. 658.

FVTTRE ADYANTAGES TO COMMERCE. 431

Rio Negro, to carry off slaves and exercise pillage, com-
pelled some rude tribes to rouse themselves from theii
indolence, and form associations for their common defence •
I/he little good, however, which these wars with the Caribs
(the Bedouins of the rivers of Guiana) produced, was
but slight compensation for the evils that followed in
their train, by rendering the tribes more ferocious, and
diminishing their population. We cannot doubt, that the
physical aspect of Greece, intersected by small chains of
mountains, and mediterranean gulfs, contributed, at the
dawn of civilization, to the intellectual development of the
Greeks. But the operation of this influence of climate, and
of the configuration of the soil, is felt in all its force only
among a race of men who, endowed with a happy organi-
zation of the mental faculties, are susceptible of exterior
impulse. In studying the history of our species, we see, at
certain distances, these foci of ancient civilization dispersed
over the globe like luminous points ; and we are struck
by the inequality of improvement in nations inhabiting
analogous climates, and whose native soil appears equally
favoured by the most precious gifts of nature.

Since my departure from the banks of the Orinoco and
the Amazon, a new era has unfolded itself in the social
state of the nations of the West. The fury of civil disscu-
sions has been succeeded by the blessings of peace, and a
freer development of the arts of industry. The bifurcations
of the Orinoco, the isthmus of Tuamini, so easy to be made
passable by an artificial canal, will ere long fix the attention
of commercial Europe. The Cassiquiare, as broad as the
Rhine, and the course of which is one hundred and eighty
miles in length, will no longer form uselessly a navigable
canal between two basins of rivers which have a surface of one
hundred and ninety thousand square leagues. The grain of.
New Grenada will be carried to the banks of the Rio Negro '
boats will descend from the sources of the Napo and the
Ucuyabe, from the Andes of Quito and of Upper Peru, to
the mouths of the Orinoco, a distance which equals that
from Timbuctoo to Marseilles. A country nine or ten
times larger than Spain, and enriched with the most varied
productions, is navigable in every direction by the medium
of the natural canal of the Cassiquiare, and the bifurcation

132 THE UPPER ORINOCO.

of the rivers. This phenomenon, which will one day be so
important for the political connections of nations, unques-
tionably deserves to be carefully examined.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The Upper Orinoco, from Esmeralda to the confluence of the Guaviare. —
Second passage across the Cataracts of Atures and Maypures. — The
Lower Orinoco, between the mouth of the Rio Apure, and Angostura
the capital of Spanish Guiana.

OPPOSITE to the point where the Orinoco forms its bifur-
cation, the granitic group of Duida rises in an amphitheatre
on the right bank of the river. This mountain, which the
missionaries call a volcano, is nearly eight thousand feet
high. It is perpendicular on the south and west, and has
an aspect of solemn grandeur. Its summit is bare and
stony, but, wherever its less steep declivities are covered
with mould vast forests appear suspended on its flanks. At
the foot of Duida is the mission of Esmeralda, a little
hamlet with eighty inhabitants, surrounded by a lovely
plain, intersected by rills of black but limpid water. This
plain is adorned witli clumps of the mauritia palm, the sago-
tree of America. Nearer the mountain, the distance of
which from the cross of the mission I found to be seven
thousand three hundred toises, the marshy plain changes to
a savannah, and spends itself along the lower region of the
Cordillera. Large pine-apples are there found of a delicious
flavour; that species of bromelia always grows solitary
among the gramina, like our Colchicum autumnale, while
the B. karatas, another species of the same genus, is a social
plant, like our whortleberries and heaths. The pine-apples
of Esmeralda are cultivated throughout Gruiana. There are
certain spots in America, as in Europe, where different
fruits attain their highest perfection. The sapota-plmn
(achra) should be eaten at the Island of Margareta or at
Curnana: the chirimoya (very different from the custard-
apple and sweet-sop of the West India Islands) at Loxa in
Peru ; the grenadilla, or parcha, at Caracas ; and the pine-
apple at Esmeralda, or in the island of Cuba. The pino-

WILD PI1TE-APPLES. 433

apple forms the ornament of the fields near the Havannah,
where it is planted in parallel rows; on the sides of the
Duida it embellishes the turf of the savannahs, lifting its
yellow fruit, crowned with a tuft of silvery leaves, above
the setaria, the paspalum, and a few cyperaceae. This plant,
which the Indians of the Orinoco call ana-curtta, has been
propagated since the sixteenth century in the interior of
China,* and some English travellers found it recently, toge-
ther with other plants indubitably American (maize, cassava,
tobacco, and pimento), on the banks of the River Congo, in
Africa.

There is no missionary at Esmeralda ; the monk appointed
to celebrate mass in that hamlet is settled at Santa Barbara,
more than fifty leagues distant ; and he visits this spot but
five or six times in a year. "We were cordially received by
an old officer, who tock us for Catalonian shopkeepers, and
who supposed that trade had led to the missions. On seeing
packages of paper intended for drying our plants, he smiled
at our simple ignorance. " You come," said he, " to a country
where this kind of merchandise has no sale ; we write little
here ; and the dried leaves of maize, the platano (plantain-
tree), and the mjdho (heliconia), serve us, like paper in Eu-
rope, 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, I will not say the Catechism, but 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.

Notwithstanding the small extent of the mission, three
Indian languages are spoken at Esmeralda ; the Idapi-
nianare, the Catarapenno, and the Maquiritan. The last of
these prevails on the Upper Orinoco, from the confluence of

* No doubt remains of the American origin of the Bromelia ananas.
See Cayley's Life of Raleigh, vol. i, p. 61. Gili, vol. i, p. 210, 336.
Robert Brown, Geogr. Observ. on the Plants of the River Congo, 1818,
p. 50.

f The Arivirianos of the banks of the Ventuari speak a dialect of the
language of the Maquiritares. The latter live, jointly with a tribe of the
Mac-os, in the savannahs that are by the Padt.mo. They are so numerous,
that they have even given their name to this tributary stream of thf
Orinoco.

TOL. II. 2 F

.

ESMERALDA,

the Ventuari as far as that of the Padamo ; the Caribbee
prevails on the Lower Orinoco ; the Ottomac, near the
confluence of the Apure, at the Great Cataracts ; and the
Maravitan, on the banks of the Rio Negro. These are the
five or six languages most generally spoken. We were sur-
prised to find at Esmeralda many zambos, mulattos, and
copper-coloured people, who called themselves Spaniards
(Espanoles) and who fancy they are white, because they are
not so red as the Indians. These people live in the most
absolute misery ; they have for the most part been sent hither
in banishment (desterrados). Solano, in his haste to found
colonies in the interior of the country, in order to guard its
entrance against the Portuguese, assembled in the Llanos,
and as far as the island of Margareta, vagabonds and male-
factors, whom justice had vainly pursued, and made them go
up the Orinoco to join the unhappy Indians who had been
carried off from the woods. A mineralogical error gave cele-
brity to Esmeralda. The granites of Duida and Maraguaca
contain in open veins fine rock-crystals, some of them of great
transparency, others coloured by chlorite or blended with
actonite ; these were mistaken for diamonds and emeralds.

So near the sources of the Orinoco we heard of nothing in
these mountains but the proximity of El Dorado, the lake
Parima, and the ruins of the great city of Manoa. A man,
still known in the country for his credulity and his love of
exaggeration, Don Apollinario Diez de la Fuente, assumed the
pompous title of capitan poblador, and cabo militar (military
commander) of the fort of Cassiquiare. This fort consisted of
a few -trunks of trees, joined together by planks ; and to com-
plete the deception, a demand was made at Madrid for the
privileges of a villa for the mission of Esmeralda, which, but
a hamlet with twelve or fifteen huts. A colony composed of
elements altogether heterogeneous perished by degrees. The
vagabonds of the Llanos had as little taste for labour as
the natives, who were compelled to live " within the sound
of the bell." The former found a motive in their pride to
justify their indolence. In the missions, every mulatto who
is not decidedly black as an African, or copper-coloured as
an Indian, calls himself a Spaniard ; he belongs to the gente
de razon, — the race endued with reason ; and that reason
(sometimes, it must be admitted, arrogant and indolent)

OBIOIN or THE COLONY. 485

ferauaded the whites, and those who fancy they are so, that
to till the ground is a task fit only for slaves (poitos) and
the native neophytes. The colony of Esmeralda had be^n
founded on the principles of that of Australia ; but it was
far from being governed with the same wisdom. The Ame-
rican colonists, being separated from their native soil, not
by seas, but by forests and savannahs, dispersed; some
taking the road northward, towards the Caura and the
Carony ; others proceeding southward to the Portuguese
possessions. Thus the celebrity of this villa, and of the
emerald-mines of Duida, vanished in a few years ; and Esme-
ralda, on account of the immense number of insects that ob-
scure the air at all seasons of the year, was regarded by the
monks as a place of banishment. The superior of the mis-
sions, when ne would make the lay-brothers mindful of their
duty, threatens sometimes to send them to Esmeralda ;
" that is," say the monks, " to be condemned to the mos-
quitos ; to be devoured by those buzzing flies (zancudos gri-
tones), which God appears to have created for the torment
and chastisement of man."* These strange punishments
have not always been confined to the lay-brothers. There
happened in 1788 one of those monastic revolutions, of whicli
it is difficult to form a conception in Europe, according to
the ideas that prevail of the peaceful state of the Christian
settlements in the New World. For a long period the
Franciscan monks settled in Guiana had been desirous of
forming a separate republic, and rendering themselves inde-
pendent of the college of Piritu at Nueva Barcelona. Dis-
contented with the election of Fray Gutierez de Aguilera,
chosen by a general chapter, and confirmed by the king in
the important office of president of the missions, five or six
monks of the Upper Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio
Negro, assembled together at San Fernando de Atabapo ;
chose hastily a new superior from their own body; and
caused the old one, who, unfortunately for himself, had come
to visit those parts, to be arrested. They put him in irons,
threw him into a boat, and conducted him to Esmeralda, as

* " Estos mosquitos que Human zancudos gritones los parece cria la
naturaleza para castigo y tormento de los hombres." — " Those moequitoi
which are called buzzing zaucudos, Nature seems to have created for the
especial punishment and tor.ure of man." (Fray Pedro Simon.)

2 F 2

436 A. MONKISH REVOLUTION.

to a place of proscription. This great distance of the coast
from the scene of this revolution led the monks to hope that .
their crime would remain long unknown beyond the Great
Cataracts. They wished to gain time to intrigue, to negotiate,
to frame acts of accusation, and employ the little artifices by
which, in every country, the invalidity of a first election may
be proved. Pray Grutierez de Aguilera languished in his
prison at Esmeralda, and fell dangerously ill from the double
influence of the excessive heat, and the continual irritation of
the mosquitos. Happily for the fallen power the monks did
not remain united. A missionary of the Cassiquiare conceived
serious alarms respecting the issue of this affair ; he dreaded
being sent a prisoner to Cadiz, or, as they say in the colonies,
having his name on the list (baxo parti do de registro). Fear
overcame his resolution, and he suddenly disappeared.
Indians were placed on the watch at the mouth of the Ata-
bapo, at the Great Cataracts, and wherever the fugitive was
likely to pass on his way to the Lower Orinoco. Not-
withstanding these precautions, he arrived at Angostura,
and then reached the college of the missions of Piritu ; de-
nounced his colleagues ; and was appointed, in recompense
of this information, to arrest those with whom he had con-
spired against the president of the missions.* At Esme-
ralda, where the political events that have agitated Europe
for thirty years past have not yet been heard of, lively in-
terest is still felt in an event which is called " the sedition of
the monks," (el alboroto de los frailes.) In this country, as
in the East, no conception is formed of any other revolutions
than those that are made by rulers themselves ; and we have
just seen that the effects are not very alarming.

If the villa of Esmeralda, with a population of twelve or
fifteen families, be at present considered as a frightful place of
abode, this must be attributed to the want of cultivation, the
distance from every other inhabited country, and the exces-

* Two of the missionaries, considered as the leaders of the insurrection,
were embarked at Angostura, in order to be tried in Spain. The vessel
in which they were conveyed became leaky, and put into Spanish Harbour
in the island of Trinidad. The governor Chacon intereated himself in the
fate of the monks ; they were pardoned a violent proceeding somewhat
inconsistent with monastic discipline, and were again employed in the mis-
sions. I was acquainted with them both during my abode in South America,

SITUATION OF ESMERA.LI)i. 437

eive q .autity of moaquitos. The site of the mission is highly
picturesque ; the surrounding country is lovely, and of great
fertility. I never saw plantains of so large a size as these:
and indigo, sugar, and cacao might be produced in abun-
dance, if any trouble were taken for their cultivation. The
Cerro Duida is surrounded with fine pasturage ; and if the
Observantins of the college of Piritu partook a little of £he
industry of the Catalonian Capuchins settled on the banks
of the Carony, numerous herds would be seen wandering be-
tween the Cunucunumo and the Padamo. At present, not
a cow or a horse is to be found ; and the inhabitants, victims
of their own indolence, are often reduced to eat the flesh of
alouate monkeys, and flour made from the bones of fish, of
which I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. A little
cassava and a few plantains only are cultivated ; and when
the fishery is not abundant, the natives of a country so fa-
voured by nature are exposed to the most cruel privations.

The pilots of the small number of boats that go from the
Eio Negro to Angostura by the Cassiquiare are afraid to
ascend as far as Esmeralda, and therefore that mission would
have been much better placed at the point of the bifurcation
of the Orinoco. It is probable that this vast country will
not always be doomed to the desertion in which it has
hitherto been left, owing to the errors of monkish adminis-
tration and the spirit of monopoly that characterises cor-
porations. We may even predict on what points of the
Orinoco industry and commerce will become most active.
In every zone, population is concentred at the mouth of
tributary streams. The Eio Apure, by which the pro-
ductions of the provinces of Varinas and Merida are ex-
ported, will give great importance to the little town of
Cabruta, which will then be m rivalship with San Fernando
de Apure, where all commerce has hitherto centred. Higher
up, a new settlement will be fonned at the confluence of
the Meta, which communicates with New Grenada by the
Llanos of Casanare. The two missions of the Cataracts will
increase, from the activity to which the transport of boats
at those points will give rise; for an unhealthy and
damp camnte, and the swarming of mosquitos, will aa
little impede the progress of cultivation at tne Orinoco aa
at the Rio Magdalena, whenever a powerful mercantile

438 ^HE CTJRASE POISOff.

interest shall call new settlers thither. Habitual evils are
those which are least felt; and men born in America do
not suffer the same intensity of pain as Europeans recently
arrived. Perhaps, also, the destruction of forests round
the inhabited places, although slow, will somewhat tend to
diminish the torment of the tipulary insects. San Fer-
nando de Atabapo, Javita, San Carlos, and Esmeralda,
appear (from their situation at the mouth of the Guaviare,
the portage between Tuamini and the Bio Negro, the con-
fluence of the Cassiquiare, and the point of bifurcation of
the Upper Orinoco) to promise a considerable increase of
population and prosperity. The same improvement will
taKe place in the fertile but uncultivated countries through
which flow the Gruallaga, the Amazon, and the Orinoco;
as well as at the isthmus of Panama, the lake of Nicaragua,
and the Bio Huasacualco, which furnish a communication
between the two oceans. The imperfection of political
institutions may for ages have converted into deserts places
where the commerce of the world should be found cx> i-
centred; but the time approaches when these obstacles \till
exist no longer. A vicious administration cannot always
struggle against the united interest of men ; and civilization
will be carried insensibly into those countries, the great
destinies of which nature itself proclaims, by the physical
configuration of the soil, the immense windings of the rivers,
and the proximity of two seas, that bathe the shores of
Europe and of India.

Esmeralda is the most celebrated spot on the Orinoco for
the preparation of that active poison, which is employed in
war, in the chase, and, singularly enough, as a remedy for
gastric derangements. The poison of the ticunas of the
Amazon, the wpas-tieute of Java, and the cwrare of GKiiana,
are the most deleterious substances that are known. Ra-
leigh, about the end of the sixteenth century, had heard of
urari* as being a vegetable substance with which arrows
were envenomed ; yet no fixed notions of this poison had
reached Europe. The missionaries Grumilla and Grili had
not been able to penetrate into the country where the
cwrare is manufactured. Gumilla asserts that "this pre-

* In Tamanac marana in Maypure, macvri.

THE POISON-MASTEB. 439

panition was enveloped in great mystery; that its piuicipai
ingredient was furnished by a subterranean plant with a
tuberous root, which never puts forth leaves, and which is
called specially ' the root ' (raiz de si misma) ; that the
venomous exhalations which arise from the manufacture are
fatal to the lives of the old women who (being otherwise use-
less) are chosen to watch over this operation ; finally, that
these vegetable juices are never thought to be sufficiently
concentrated till a few drops produce at a distance a repulsive
action on the blood. An Indian wounds himself slightly ;
and a dart dipped in the liquid curare is held near the
wound. If it make the blood return to the vessels without
having been brought into contact with them, the poison is
judged to be sufficiently concentrated."

When we arrived at Esmeralda, the greater part of the
Indians were returning from an excursion which they had
made to the east, beyond the Bio Padamo, to gather juvias,
or the fruit of the bertholletia, and the liana which yields
the curare. Their return was celebrated by a festival,
which is called in the mission la fiesta de las juvias, and
which resembles our harvest-homes and vintage-feasts. The
women had prepared a quantity of fermented liquor ; and
during two days the Indians were in a state of intoxication.
Among nations who attach great importance to the fruit
of the palm, and of some other trees useful for the nourish-
ment of man, the period when these fruits are gathered is
marked by public rejoicings, and time is divided according
to these festivals, which succeed one another in a course
invariably regular. We were fortunate enough to find
an old Indian more temperate than the rest, who was
employed in preparing the curare poison from freshly-
gathered plants. He was the chemist of the place. We
found at his dwelling large earthen pots for boiling the
vegetable juice, shallower vessels to favour the evaporation
by a larger surface, and leaves of the plantain-tree rolled up
in the shape of our filters, and used to filtrate the liquids,
more or less loaded with fibrous matter. The greatest
order and neatness prevailed in this hut, wlwV.h was trans-
formed into a chemical laboratory. The old Indian was
known throughout the mission by the name of the poison-
master (amo del curare). He had that self-sufficient air

410 PREPARATION OF THE CURARE.

and tone of pedantry of which the pharmacopolists of
Europe were formerly accused. " I know," said he, " that
the whites have the secret of making soap, and manufac-
turing that black powder which has the defect of making a
noise when used in killing animals. The ciware, which we
prepare from father to son, is superior to anything you can
make down yonder (beyond sea) . It is the juice of an herb
which kills silently, without any one knowing whence the
stroke comes."

This chemical operation, to which the old man attached
so much importance, appeared to us extremely simple. The
liana (bejuco) used at Esmeralda for the preparation of the
poison, bears the same name as in the forests of Javita. It
is the bejuco de Mavacure, which is gathered in abundance
east of the mission, on the left bank of the Orinoco, beyond
the Bio Amaguaca, in the mountainous and rocky tracts of
Guanaya and Yumariquin. Although the bundles of bejuco
which we found in the hut of the Indian were entirely bare
of leaves, we had no doubt of their being produced by
the same plant of the strychnos family (nearly allied to the
rouhamon of Aublet) which we had examined in the forest
of Pimichin.* The mavacure is employed fresh or dried
indifferently during several weeks. The juice of the liana,
when it has been recently gathered, is not regarded as
poisonous; possibly it is so only when strongly concen-
trated. It is the bark and a part of the alburnum which
contain this terrible poison. Branches of the mavacure
four or five lines in diameter are scraped with a knife, and
the bark that comes off is bruised, and reduced into very
thin filaments on the stone employed for grinding cassava.
The venemous juice being yellow, the whole fibrous mass
takes that colour. It is thrown into a funnel nine inches

* I may here insert the description of the curare or bejuco de Mavacure,
taken from a manuscript, yet unpublished, of my learned fellow-labourer
M. Kunth, corresponding member of the Institute. " Ramuli lignosi,
oppositi, ramulo altero abortive, teretiusculi, fuscescenti-tomentosi, inter
petiolos lineola pilosa notati, gemmula aut processu filiformi (pedunculo ?)
terminati. FOLIA opposita, bereviter petiolata, ovato-oblonga, acuminata,
iutergerrima, reticulato-triplinervia, nervo medio subtus prominente,
membranacea, ciliata, utrinque glabra, nervo medio fusceseente-tomentoso,
lacte viridia, subtus pallidiora, H-2£ pollioes Jonga, 8-9 lineas lata.
PETIOLI liiieam longi, tomentosi, inarticuluti."

ITS COMPONENT HERBS. 441

high, with an opening four inches wide. This funnel was
of all the instruments of the Indian laboratory that of
which the poison-master seemed to be most proud. He
asked us repeatedly if, por alia (put yonder, meaning in
Europe), we had ever seen anything to be compared to this
funnel (em budo) . It was a leaf of the plantain-tree rolled up
in the form of a cone, and placed within another stronger
cone made of the leaves of the palm-tree. The whole of
this apparatus was supported by slight frame- work made of
the petioles and ribs of palm-leaves. A cold infusion is
first prepared by pouring water on the fibrous matter which
is the ground bark of the mavacure. A yellowish water
filters during several hours, drop by drop, through the leafy
funnel. This filtered water is the poisonous liquor, but it
acquires strength only when concentrated by evaporation,
)ike molasses, in a large earthen pot. The Indian from
time to time invited us to taste the h'quid ; its taste, more
or less bitter, decides when the concentration by fire has
been carried sufficiently far. There is no danger in tasting
it, the curare being deleterious only when it comes into
immediate contact with the blood. The vapours, therefore,
which are disengaged from the pans are not hurtful, notwith-
standing all that has been asserted on this point by the mis-
sionaries of the Orinoco. Eontana, in his experiments on
the poison of the ticuna of the Amazon, long since proved
that the vapours arising from this poison, when thrown
on burning charcoal, may be inhaled without danger;
and that the statement of La Condamine, that Indian
women, when condemned to death, have been killed by the
vapours of the poison of the ticuna, is incorrect.

The most concentrated juice of the mavacure is not thick
enough to stick to the darts ; and therefore, to give a bodv
to the poison, another vegetable juice, extremely gluti-
nous, drawn from a tree with large leaves, called kiracaguero,
is poured into the concentrated infusion. As this tree grows
at a great distance from Esmeralda, and was at that period
as destitute of flowers and fruits as the bejuco de mavacure,
we could not determine it botanically. I have several times
mentioned that kind of fatality which withholds the most
interesting plants from the examination of travellers, while
thousands oi others, of the chemical properties of which we

442 PREPARATION OF THE POISOlf.

are ignorant, are found loaded with flowers and fruits In
travelling rapidly, even within the tropics, where the ilower-
ing of the ligneous plants is of such long duration, scarcely
one-eighth of the trees can be seen furnishing the essential
parts of fructification. The chances of being able to deter-
mine, I do not say the family, but the genus and species, is
consequently as one to eight ; and it may be conceived that
this unfavourable chance is felt most powerfully when it
deprives us of the intimate knowledge of objects which
afford a higher interest than that of descriptive botany.

At the instant when the glutinous juice of the kiraca-
guero-tree is poured into the venomous liquor well concen-
tarted, and kept in a state of ebullition, it blackens, and
coagulates into a mass of the consistence of tar, or of a
thick syrup. This mass is the curare of commerce. When
we h^ar the Indians say that the kiracaguero is as necessary
as the bejuco de mavacure in the manufacture of the poison,
we may be led into error by the supposition that the former
also contains some deleterious principle, while it only servea
(as the algarrobo, or any other gummy substance would do)
to give more body to the concentrated juice of the curare.
The change of colour which the mixture undergoes is owing
to the decomposition of a hydruret of carbon ; the hydrogen
is burned, and the carbon is set free. The curare is sold in
little calabashes ; but its preparation being in the hands of
a few families, and the quantity of poison attached to each
dart being extremely small, the best curare, that of Esme-
ralda and Mandavaca, is sold at a very high price. This
substance, when dried, resembles opium; but it strongly
absorbs moisture when exposed to the air. Its taste is
an agreeable bitter, and M. Bonpland and myself have often
swallowed small portions of it. There is no danger in so
doing, if it be certain that neither lips nor gums bleed. In
experiments made by Mangili on the venom of the viper,
one of his assistants swallowed all the poison that could
be extracted from four large vipers of Italy, without being
affected by it. The Indians consider the curare, taken
internally, as an excellent stomachic. The same poison
prepared by the Piraoas and Salives, though it has some
celebrity, is not so much esteemed as that of Esmeralda.
The process of this preparation appears to be everywhere

DIFFERENT PROCESSES. 443

nearly the same; but there is no proof thtt the different
poisons sold by the same name at the Orinoco and the
Amazon are identical, and derived from the same plants.
Orfila, therefore, in his excellent work On Poisons, has very
judiciously separated the wourali of Dutch Guiana, the
eurare of the Orinoco, the ticuna of the Amazon, and all
those substances which have been too vaguely united under
the name of ' American poisons.' Possibly at some future
day, one and the same alkaline principle, similar to morphine
and strychnia, will be found in poisonous plants belonging
to different genera.

At the Orinoco the curare de raiz (of the root) is distin-
guished from the curare de bejuco (of lianas, or of the bark
of branches). We saw only the latter prepared ; the former
is weaker, and much less "esteemed. At the river Amazon
we learned to distinguish the poisons of the Ticuna, Yagua,
Peva, and Xibaro Indians, which being all obtained from
the same plant, perhaps differ only by a more or less careful
preparation. The Ticuna poison, to which La Condamine
has given so much celebrity in Europe, and which some-
what improperly begins to bear the name of ticuna, is
extracted from a liana which grows in the island of
Mormorote, on the Upper Maranon. This poison is em-
ployed partly by the Ticunas, who remain independent on
the Spanish territory near the sources of the Yacarique;
and partly by Indians of the same tribe, inhabiting the
Portuguese mission of Loreto. The poisons we have just
named differ totally from that of La Peca, and from the
poison of Lamas and of Moyobamba. I enter into these
details because the vestiges of plants which we were able to
examine, proved to us (contrary to the common opinion) that
the three poisons of the Ticunas, of La Peca, and of Moyo-
bamba are not obtained from the same species, probably not
even from congeneric plants. In proportion as the pre-
paration of the curare is simple, that of the poison of Moyo-
bamba is a long and complicated process. With the juice
of the bejuco de ambihuasca, which is the principal ingredient,
are mixed pimento, tobacco, barbasco (Jacquinia armillaris),
sanango (Tabernae montana), and the milk of some other
apocyne®. The fresh juice of the ambihuasca has a delete-
noas action when in contact with the blood ; the juice of the

444 ETFECTS OF THE POISON.

mavacwe is a mortal poison only when it is concentrated by
fire ; and ebullition deprives the juice of the root of Jatroplia
inanihot (the manioc) of all its baneful qualities. In nib-
bing a long time between my fingers the liana which yields
the potent poison of La Peca, when the weather was exces-
sively hot, my hands were benumbed; and a person who
was employed with me felt the same effects from this rapid
absorption by the uninjured integuments.

I shall not here enter into any detail on the physiological
properties of those poisons of the New World which kill
with the same promptitude as the strychneae of Asia,* but
without producing vomiting when they are received into the
stomach, and without denoting the approach of death by
the violent excitement of the spinal marrow. Scarcely a
fowl is eaten on the banks of the Orinoco which lias not
been killed with a poisoned arrow; and the missionaries
allege that the flesh of animals is never so good as when
this method is employed. Father Zea, who accompanied
us, though ill of a tertian fever, every morning had the live
fowls allotted for our food brought to his hammock together
with an arrow, and he killed them himself; for he would
not confide this operation, to which he attached great
importance, to any other person. Large birds, a guan
(pava de monte) for instance, or a curassao (alector), when
wounded in the thigh, die in two or three minutes; but
it is often ten or twelve minutes before life is extinct in a
pig or a peccary. M. Bonpland found that the same poison,
bought in different villages, varied much. We had pro-
cured at the river Amazon some real Ticuna poison which
was less potent than any of the varieties of the curare of the
Orinoco. Travellers, on arriving in the missions, frequently
testify their apprehension on learning that the fowls, mon-
keys, guanas, and even the fish which they eat, have been
killed with poisoned arrows. But these fears are ground-
less. Majendie has proved by his ingenious experiments
on transfusion, that the blood of animals on which the bitter
Btrychnos of India has produced a deleterious effect, has no
fatal action on other animals. A dog received a consider-
able quantity of poisoned blood into his veins without any
trace of irritation being perceived in the spinal marrow.

* The nux vrmica, th.3 upas tieute, and the bean of St. Ignatius,
OStrychnog Ignatia.)

ITS ACTION ON THE SYSTEM. 445

I placed the most active curare in contact with the crural
nerves of a frog, without perceiving any sensible change in
measuring the degree of irritability of the organs, by means
of an arc formed of heterogeneous metals. Galvanic experi-
ments succeeded upon birds, some minutes after I had killed
them with a poisoned arrow. These observations are not
uninteresting, when we recollect that a solution of the upas-
poison poured upon the sciatic nerve, or insinuated into the
texture of the nerve, produces also a sensible effect on the
irritability of the organs by immediate contact with the
medullary substance. The danger of the curare, as of most
of the other strychneae, (for we continue to believe that the
mavacure belongs to a neighbouring family,) results only from
the action of the poison on the vascular system. At May-
pures, a zambo descended from an Indian and a negro, pre-
pared for M. Bonpland some of those poisoned arrows, that
are shot from blowing-tubes to kill small monkeys or birds.
He was a man of remarkable muscular strength. Having had
the imprudence to rub the curare between his fingers after
being slightly wounded, he fell on the ground seized with a
vertigo, that lasted nearly half an hour. Happily the poison
was of that diluted kind which is used for very small animals,
that is, for those which it is believed can be recalled to life
by putting muriate of soda into the wound. During our
passage in returning from Esmeralda to Atures, I myself
narrowly escaped an imminent danger. The curare, having
imbibecl the humidity of the air, had become fluid,and was spilt
from an imperfectly closed jar upon our linen. The person
who washed the linen had neglected to examine the inside
of a stocking, which was filled with curare; and it was only
on touching this glutinous matter with my hand, that I was
warned not to draw on the poisoned stocking. The danger
was so much the greater, as my feet at that time were
bleeding from the wounds made by chegoes (Pulex pene-
trans), which had not been well extirpated. This circum-
stance may warn travellers of the caution requisite in the
conveyance of poisons.

An in Wresting chemical and physiological investigation
remains to be accomplished in Europe on the poisons of the
New World, when, oy more frequent communications, the
aurare de bejuco, the curare de raiz, and the various poisons o/

446 SUPPOSED REMEDIES.

the Amazon, Ghiailaga, and Brazil, can be procured, without
being confounded together, from the places where they are
prepared. Since the discovery of prussic acid,* and many
other new substances eminently deleterious, the introduc-
tion of poisons prepared by savage nations is less feared in
Europe; we cannot however appeal to ostrongly to the
vigilance of those who keep such noxious substances in the
midst of populous cities, the centres of civilization, misery,
and depravity. Our botanical knowledge of the plants
employed in making poison can be but very slowly acquired.
Most of the Indians who make poisoned arrows, are totally
ignorant of the nature of the venomous substances they use,
and which they obtain from other people. A mysterious veil
everywhere covers the history of poisons and of their anti-
dotes. Their preparation among savages is the monopoly
of the piaches, who are at once priests, jugglers, and physi-
cians; it is only from the natives who are transplanted to
the missions, that any certain notions can be acquired on
matters so problematical. Ages elapsed before Europeans
became acquainted through the investigation of M. Mutis,
with the bejuco del guaco (Mikania guaco), which is the most
powerful of all antidotes against the bite of serpents, and of
which we were fortunate enough to give the first botanical
description.

The opinion is very general in the missions that no cure
is possible, if the curare be fresh, well concentrated, and
have staid long in the wound, ito have entered freely
into the circulation. Among the specifics employed on the
banks of the Orinoco, and in the Indian Archipelago, the
most celebrated is muriate of soda.f The wound is rubbed

* First obtained by Scheele in the year 1 782. Gay-Lussac (to whom
we are indebted for the complete analysis of this acid) observes, that it
can never become very dangerous to society, because its peculiar smell
(that of bitter almonds) betrays its presence, and the facility with which
it is decomposed makes it difficult to preserve.

f Oviedo (Sommario delle Indie Orientali) recommends sea-water as an
antidote against vegetable poisons. The people in the missions never fail
to assure European travellers, that they have no more to fear from arrows
dipped in curare, if they have a little salt in their mouths, than from the
electric shocks of the gymnoti, when chewing tobacco. Raleigh recommends
as an antidote to the ourari (curare) the juice of garlick. [But later
experiments have completely proved that if the poison has once fairly

TTSTT^L SYMPTOMS 447

with this salt, which is also taken internally. I had myself
no direct and sufficiently convincing proof of the action of
this specific ; and the experiments of Delille and Majendie
rather tend to disprove its efficacy. On the banks of the
Amazon, the preference among the antidotes is given to
sugar ; and muriate of soda being a substance almost un-
known to the Indians of the forests, it is probable that the
honey of bees, and that farinaceous sugar which oozes
from plantains dried in the sun, were anciently employed
throughout Guiana. In vain have ammonia and eau-ae-luce
been tried against 'the curare ; it is now known that these
specifics are uncertain, even when applied to wounds caused
by the bite of serpents. Sir Everard Home has shown that
a cure is often attributed to a remedy, when it is owing only
to the slightness of the wound, and to a very circumscribed
action of the poison. Animals may with impunity be
wounded with poisoned arrows, if the wound be well laid
open, and the point imbued with poison be withdrawn imme-
diately after the wound is made. If salt or sugar be em-
ployed in these cases, people are tempted to regard them as
excellent specifics, Indians, who had been wounded in
battle by weapons dipped in the curare, described to us the
symptoms they experienced, which were entirely similar to
those observed in the bite of serpents. The wounded per-
son feels congestion in the head, vertigo, and nausea. He
is tormented by a raging thirst, and numbness pervades aD
the parts that are near the wound.

The old Indian, who was called the poison-master, seemed
flattered by the interest we took in his chemical processes.
He found us sufficiently intelligent to lead him to the be-
lief that we knew how to make soap, an art which, next to
the preparation of curare, appeared to him one of the finest
of human inventions. When the liquid poison had been
poured into the vessels prepared for their reception, we

entered into combination with the blood there is no remedy, either for
man or any of the inferior animals. The wourali and other poisons men-
tioned by Humboldt have, since the publication of this work, been care-
fully analysed by the first chemists of Europe, and experiments made on
their symptoms and supposed remedies. Artificial inflation of the lungs
was found the most successful, but in very few instances '\as «ny curt
cflVcted.]

448 FESTIVITIES OF THE SA.TA.GES.

accompanied the Indian to the festival of the juvias. The
harvest of jwviaSj or fruits of the Bertholletia excelsa,* was
celebrated by dancing, and by excesses of wild intoxica-
tion. The hut where the natives were assembled, displayed
during several days a very singular aspect. There was neither
table nor bench; but large roasted monkeys, blackened
by smoke, were ranged in regular order against the wall.
These were the marimondes (Ateles belzebuth), and those
bearded monkeys called capuchins, which must not be con-
founded with the weeper, or sai (Simia capucina of Buffon).
The manner of roasting these anthropomorphous animals
contributes to render their appearance extremely disagree-
able in the eyes of civilized man. A little grating or lattice
of very hard wood is formed, and raised one foot from the
ground. The monkey is skinned, and bent into a sitting
posture ; the head generally resting on the arms, which are
meagre and long ; but sometimes these are crossed behind
the back. When it is tied on the grating, a very clear fire
is kindled below. The monkey, enveloped in smoke and
name, is broiled and blackened at the same time. On seeing
the natives devour the arm or leg of a roasted monkey, it is
difficult not to believe that this habit of eating animals so
closely resembling man in their physical organization, has,
to a certain degree, contributed to diminish the horror of
cannibalism among these people. Boasted monkeys, par-
ticularly those which have very round heads, display a
hideous resemblance to a child ; and consequently Europeans
who are obliged to feed on them prefer separating the head
and the hands, and serve up only the rest of the animal at
their tables. The flesh of monkeys is so lean and dry, that
M. Bonpland has preserved in his collections at Paris an
arm and hand, which had been broiled over the fire at
Esmeralda; and no smell has arisen from them after the
lapse of a great number of years.

We saw the Indians dance. The monotony of their dancing
is increased by the women not daring to take part in it.
The men, young and old, form a circle, holding each others'
hands ; and turn sometimes to the right, sometimes to the
left, for whole hours, with silent gravity. Most frequently

* The Brawl- nut.

PRIM IT! TE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 449

tbe dancers themselves are the musicians. Feeble sounds,
drawn from a series of reeds of different lengths, form &
slow and plaintive accompaniment. The *irst dancer, to
mark the time, bends both knees in a kind of cadence.
Sometimes they all make a pause in their places, and
rxri-uu' little oscillatory movements, bending the body from
one side to the other. The reeds ranged in a line, and
fastened together, resemble the Pan's pipes, as we find them
represented in the bacchanalian processions on Grecian
vases. To unite reeds of different lengths, and make them
sound in succession by passing them before the lips, is a
simple idea, and has naturally presented itself to every
nation. We were surprised to see with what promptitude
the young Indians constructed and tuned these pipes, when
they found reeds on the bank of the river. Uncivih'zed
men, in every zone, make great use of these gramina with
high stalks. The Greeks, with truth, said that reeds had
contributed to subjugate nations by furnishing arrows, to
soften men's manners by the charm of music, and to unfold
their understanding by affording the first instruments for
tracing letters. These different uses of reeds mark in some
sort three different periods in the life of nations. We must
admit that the tribes of the Orinoco are in the first stage
of dawning civilization. The reed serves them only as an
instrument of war and of hunting ; and the Pan's pipes, of
which we have spoken, have not yet, on those distant shores,
yielded sounds capable of awakening mild and humane
"feelings.

We found in the hut allotted for the festival, several
vegetable productions which the Indians had brought from
the mountains of Guanaya, and which engaged our atten-
tion. I shall only here mention the fruit of the juvia,
reeds of a prodigious length, and shirts made of the bark
of marima. The almendron, or juvia, one of the most
majestic trees of the forests of the New World, was almost
unknown before our visit to the Eio Negro. It begins
to be found after a journey of four days east of Esmeralda,
between the Padamo and Ocamo, at the foot of the Cerro
Mapaya, on the right bank of the Orinoco. It is still more
abundant on the left bank, at the Cerro Guanaja, between
the Rio Amaguaca and the Gebjtte. The inhabitants of

VOL. II. 2 O

'ir)0 THE

Eameralda assured us, that in advancing above the Gehette
and the Chiguire, the juvia and cacao-trees become so com-
mon that the wild Indians (the Guaicas and Guaharibos)
do not disturb the Indians of the missions when gathering
in their harvests. They do not envy them the productions
with which nature has enriched their own soil. Scarcely
any attempt has been made to propagate the almendrones in
the settlements of the Upper Orinoco. To this the indolence
of the inhabitants is a greater obstacle than the rapidity
with which the oil becomes rancid in the amygdalifonn
seeds. We found only three trees of the kind at the mission
of San Carlos, and two at Esmeralda. These majestic trees
were eight or ten years old, and had not yet borne flowers.

As early as the sixteenth century, the seeds with ligneous
and triangular teguments (but not the great drwpe like a
cocoa-nut, which contains the almonds, were known in
Europe. I recognise them in an imperfect engraving of
Clusius.* This botanist designates them under the name
of almendras del Peru. They had no doubt been carried, as
a very rare fruit, to the Upper Maranon, and thence, by
the Cordilleras, to Quito and Peru. The ' JXTovus Orbis ' of
Laet, in which I found the first account of the cow-tree,
furnishes also a description and a figure singularly exact of
the fruit of the bertholletia. Laet calls the tree totocke,
and mentions the drupe of the size of the human head,
which contains the almonds. The weight of these fruits,
he says, is so enormous, that the savages dare not enter the
forests without covering their heads and shoulders with a
buckler of very hard wood. These bucklers are unknown
to the natives of Esmeralda, but they told us of the danger
incurred when the fruit ripens and falls from a height of
fifty or sixty feet. The triangular seeds of the juvia are
sold in Portugal under the vague appellation of chesnuts
(castanas) of the Amazon, and in England under the name

* Clusius distinguishes very properly the almendras del Peru, our
Bertholletia excelsa, or juvia, (fructus amygdalae -nucleo, triangularis,
dorso lato, in bina latera angulosa desinente, rugosus, paululum cunei-
for.nis) from the pekea, or Amygdala guayanica. Raleigh, who knevr
none of the productions of the Upper Orinoco, does not speak of thejuvuz;
but it appears that he first brought to Europe the fruit of the mauritis
palm, of which we have so often spo'ien. (Fructus elegantissimu«i
gquamosus, similk palmne-piui.)

GBO5VTH OF THE BEBTHOLiJKTIA. 451

of Brazil-nuts ; and it was long believed that, like the fruit
of the pekea, they grew on separate stalks. They have
furnished an article of trade for a century past to the
inhabitants of Grand Para, by whom they are sent either
directly to Europe, or to Cayenne, where they are called
touka. The celebrated botanist, Correa de Serra, told us
that this tree abounds in the forests in the neighbourhood
of Macapa, at the mouth of the Amazon ; that it there bears
the name of capucaya, and that the inhabitants gather the
almonds, like those of the lecvthis, to express the oil. A
rargo of almonds of the juvia, brought into Havre, captured
by a privateer, in 1807, was employed for the same pur-
pose.

The tree that yields the Brazil-nuts is generally not more
than two or three feet in diameter, but attains one hundred
or one hundred and twenty feet in height. It does not
resemble the mammee-tree, the star-apple, and several other
trees of the tropics, the branches of which (as in the laurel-
trees of the temperate zone) rise almost straight towards the
sky. The branches of the bertholletia are open, very long,
almost entirely bare towards the base, and loaded at their
summits with tufts of very close foliage. This disposition of
the semicoriaceous leaves, which are a little silvery on their
under part, and more than two feet long, makes the branches
bend down toward the ground, like the fronds of the palm-
tree. We did not see this majestic tree in blossom: it is not
loaded with flowers* till in its fifteenth year, and they
appear about the end of March and the beginning of April.
The fruits ripen towards the end of May, and some trees
retain them till the end of August. These fruits, which are
as large as the head of a child, often twelve or thirteen inches
in diameter, make a very loud noise in falling from the
tops of the trees. Nothing is more fitted to fill the mind
with admiration of the force of organic action in the equi-
noctial zone than the aspect of those great ligneous peri-
carps, for instance, the cocoa-tree (lodoicea) of the Maldives

• According to accounts somewhat vague, thsy are yellow, very large,
and have some similitude to those of the Bombax ceiba. M. Bonpland
says, however, in his botanical journal written on the banks of the Rio
Negro, " flos violaceus." It was thus the Indians of the river had
described to him the colour of the corolla.

2 'J 2

4.:2 ABUSDANSE OF THE FITTS.

among the monocotyledons, and the berthoiletia and the
lecythis among the dicotyledons. In our climates only the
cucurbitaceaB produce in the space of a few months fruits of
an extraordinary size ; but these fruits are pulpy and suc-
culent. Within the tropics, the berthoiletia forms in less
than fifty or sixty days a pericarp, the ligneous part of
which is half an inch thick, and which it is difficult to saw
with the sharpest instruments. A great naturalist has
observed, that the wood of fruits attains in general a hard-
ness which is scarcely to be found in the wood of the trunks
of trees. The pericarp of the berthoiletia has traces of four
cells, and I have sometimes found even five. The seeds
have two very distinct coverings, and this circumstance
renders the structure of the fruit more complicated than in
the lecythis, the peTcea or caryocar, and the saouvari. The
first tegument is osseous or ligneous, triangular, tubercu-
lated on its exterior surface, and of the colour of cinnamon.
Four or five, and sometimes eight of these triangular nuts,
are attached to a central partition. As they are loosened
in time, they move freely in the large spherical pericarp.
The capuchin monkeys (Simia chiropotes) are singularly
fond of the Brazil nuts ; and the noise made by the seeds,
when the fruit is shaken as it falls from the tree, excites the
appetites of these animals in the highest degree. I have
most frequently found only from fifteen to twenty-two nuts
in each fruit. The second tegument of the almonds is
membranaceous, and of a brown-yellow. Their taste is
extremely agreeable when they are fresh ; but the oil, with
which they abound, and which is so useful in the art?-
becomes easily rancid. Although at the Upper Orinoco
we often ate considerable quantities of these almonds for
want of other food, we never felt any bad effects from so
doing. The spherical pericarp of the berthoiletia, perforated
at the summit, is not dehiscent; the upper and swelled
part of the columella forms (according to M. Kunth) a
sort of inner cover, as in the fruit of the leojthis, but it
seldom opens of itself. Many seeds, from the decompo-
sition of the oil contained in the cotyledons, lose the faculty
of germination before the rainy season, in which the lig-
neous integument of the pericarp opens by the effect of
Outrefaction. A tale is very current on the banks of the

NATIVE BLOW-PIPES. 453

Lower Orinoco, that the capuchin and cacajao rnonkeya
(Simia chiropotes, and Simla melanocephala) place them-
selves in a circle, and, by striking the shell with a stone,
succeed in opening it, so as to take out the triangular nuts.
This operation must, however, be impossible, on account
of the extreme hardness and thickness of the pericarp.
Monkeys may have been seen roDing along the fruit of
the bertholletia, but though this fruit has a small hole
closed by the upper extremity of the columella, nature has
not furnished monkeys with the means of opening the
ligneous pericarp, as it has of opening the covercle of the
lecythis, called in the missions " the covercle of the monkeys*
cocoa."* According to the report of several Indians, only
the smaller rodentia, particularly the cavies (the acuri and
the lapa), by the structure of their teeth, and the inconceiv-
able perseverance with which they pursue their destructive
operations, succeed in perforating the fruit of the juvia.
As soon as the triangular nuts are spread on the ground,
all the animals of the forest, the monkeys, the manaviris,
the squirrels, the cavies, the parrots, and the macaws, hastily
assemble to dispute the prey. They have all strength
enough to break the ligneous tegument of the seed; they
get out the kernel, and carry it to the tops of the trees.
" It is their festival also," said the Indians wrho had r&
turned from the harvest ; and on hearing their complaints
of the animals, one may perceive that they think themselves
alone the lawful masters of the forest.

One of the four canoes, which had taken the Indians t<;
the gathering of the juvias, was filled in great part with
that species of reeds (carices), of which the blow-tubes are
made. These reeds were from fifteen to seventeen feet
long, vet no trace of a knot for the insertion of leaves and
branches was perceived. They were quite straight, smooth
externally, and perfectly cylindrical. These carices come
from the foot of the mountains of Yumariquin and Guanaja.
They are much sought after, even beyond the Orinoco, by
the name of * reeds of Esmeralda.' A hunter preserves the
same blow-tube during his whole life, and boasts of its
lightness and precision, as we boast of the same qualities in
* ' La tapa del coco de monoa."

454 NATURAL SHIHT8 1JTD CAPS.

our fire-arms. "What is the monocotyledonous ylant* that
furnishes these admirable reeds ? Did we see in fact the
mternodes (parts between the knots) of a gramen of the tribe
uf nastoides ? or may this carex be perhaps a cyperaceous
plantf destitute of knots ? I cannot solve this question, or
determine to what genus another plant belongs, which
furnishes the skirts of marima. We saw on the slope of
the Cerra Duida ' shirt-trees' fifty feet high. The Indians
cut off cylindrical pieces two feet in diameter, from which
they peel the red and fibrous bark, without making any
longitudinal incision. This bark affords them a sort of
garment, which resembles sacks of a very coarse texture, and
without a seam. The upper opening serves for the head ;
and two lateral holes are cut for the arms to pass through.
The natives wear these shirts of marima in the rainy
season : they have the form of the ponchos and ruanas of
cotton, which are so common in New Grenada, at Quito,
and in Peru. In these climates the riches and beneficence
of nature being regarded as the primary causes of the
indolence of the inhabitants, the missionaries say in show-
ing the shirts of marima, "in the forests of the Orinoco
garments are found ready-made on the trees." We may
also mention the pointed caps, which the spathes of certain
palm-trees furnish, and which resemble coarse network.

At the festival of which we were the spectators, the
womer, who were excluded from the dance, and every sort
of public rejoicing, were daily occupied in serving the
men with roasted monkey, fermented liquors, and palm-
cabbage. This last production has the taste of our cauli-
flowers, and in no other country had we seen specimens of
such an immense size. The leaves that are not unfolded
are united with the young stem, and we measured cylinders
of six feet long and five inches in diameter. Another
substance, which is much more nutritive, is obtained from
the animal kingdom: this is fish-flour (manioc de pescado).
The Indians throughout the Upper Orinoco fry fish, dry

* The smooth surface of these tubes sufficiently proves that they are
not furnished by a plant of the family of umbelliferse.

•f" The caricillo del manati, which grows abundantly on the banks of
the Orinoco, attains from eight to ten feet in height.

POLYGAMY OF THE NATIVES. 465

them in the sun, and reduce them to powder without
separating the bones. I have seen masses of fifty or sixty
pounds of this flour, which resembles that of cassava.
When it is wanted for eating, it is mixed with water, and
reduced to a paste. In every climate the abundance of fish
has led to the invention of the same means of preserving
them. Pliny and Diodorus Siculus have described the jish-
bread of the ichthyophagous nations, that dwelt on the
Persian Gulf and the shores of the Eed Sea.*

At Esmeralda, as everywhere else throughout the missions,
the Indians who will not be baptized, and who are merely
aggregated in the community, live in a state of polygamy.
The number of wives differs much in different tribes. It is
most considerable among the Caribs, and all the nations that
have preserved the custom of carrying off young girls from
the neighbouring tribes. How can we imagine domestic
happiness in so unequal an association ? The women live in
a sort of slavery, as they do in most nations which are in a
state of barbarism. The husbands being in the full enjoy-
ment of absolute power, no complaint is heard in their pre-
sence. An apparent tranquillity prevails in the household ;
the women are eager to anticipate the wishes of an imperious
and sullen master ; and they attend without distinction to
their own children and those of their rivals. The mission-
aries assert, what may easily be believed, that this domestic
peace, the effect of fear, is singularlv disturbed when the
husband is long absent. The wife who contracted the first
ties then applies to the others the names of concubines and
servants. The quarrels continue till the return of the
master, who knows how to calm their passions by the sound
of his voice, by a mere gesticulation, or, if he thinks it
necessary, by means a little more violent. A certain
inequality in the rights of the women is sanctioned by the
language of the Tamanacs. The husband calls the second
and third wife the companions of the first ; and the first
treats these companions as rivals and enemies (ipucjatoje),

* These nations, in a still ruder state than the natives of the Orinoco,
contented themselves with drying the raw fish in the sun. They made up
the fish-paste in the form of bricks, and sometimes mixed with it the
aromatic seed of paliurus (rhamnus), as in Germany, and some other
cuunt-ies, cummin and fennel-seed are mixed with whcaten bread.

456 EASTERN COURSE OF THE ORINOCO.

a term which truly expresses their position. The whole
weight of labour being supported by these unhappy women,
we must not be surprised if, in some nations, their number
is extremely small. Where this happens, a kind of poly
andry is formed, wrhich we find more fully displayed in
Thibet, and on the lofty mountains at the extremity of the
Indian peninsula. Among the Avanos and Maypures,
brothers have often but one wife. When an Indian, who
lives in polygamy, becomes a Christian, he is compelled by
the missionaries, to choose among his wives her whom he
prefers, and to reject the others. At the moment of separa-
tion the new convert sometimes discovers the most valuable
qualities in the wives he is obliged to abandon. One under-
stands gardening perfectly ; another knows how to prepare
chiza, an intoxicating beverage extracted from the root of cas-
sava ; all appear to him alike clever and useful. Sometimes
the desire of preserving his wives overcomes in the Indian
his inclination to Christianity ; but most frequently, in his
perplexity, the husband prefers submitting to the choice of
the missionary, as to a blind fatality.

The Indians, who from May to August take journeys to
the east of Esmeralda, to gather the vegetable productions
of the mountains of Yumariquin, gave us precise notions of
the course of the Orinoco to the east of the mission. This
part of my itinerary may differ entirely from the maps that
preceded it. I shall begin the description of this country
with the granitic group of Duida, at the foot of which we
sojourned. This group is bounded on the west by the Bio
Tamatama, and on the east by the Eio Guapo. Between
these two tributary streams of the Orinoco, amid the
morichales, or clumps of mauritia palm-trees, which sur-
round Esmeralda, the Eio Sodomoni flows, celebrated for
the excellence of the pine-apples that grow upon its banks.
I measured, on the 22nd of May, in the savannah at the
foot of Duida, a base of four hundred and seventy-five
metres in length; the angle, under which the summit of
the mountain appeared at the distance of thirteen thousand
three hundred and twenty-seven metres, was still nine
degrees. A trigonometric measurement, made with great
care, gave me for Duida (that is, for the most elevated peak,
which is south-west of the Cerro Maraguaea) two thousand

PEAK OP J1UIDA. 457

one hundred and seventy-nine metres, or one thousand one
hundred and eighteen toises, above the plain of Esmeralda.
The Cerro Duida thus yields but little in height (scarcely
eighty or one hundred toises) to the summit of St. Gotham,
or the Silla of Caracas on the shore of Venezuela. It is
indeed considered as a colossal mountain in those countries ;
and this celebrity gives a precise idea of the mean height of
Parima and of all the mountains of eastern America. To
the east of the Sierra Nevada de Merida, as well as to the
south-east of the Paramo de las Eosas, none of the chains
that extend in the same parallel line reach the height of the
central ridge of the Pyrenees.

The granitic summit of Duida is so nearly perpendicular
that the Indians have vainly attempted the ascent. It is
a well-known fact that mountains not remarkable for eleva-
tion are sometimes the most inaccessible. At the beginning
and end of the rainy season, small flames, which seem to
change their place, are seen on the top of Duida. This
phenomenon, the existence of which is borne out by con-
current testimony, has caused this mountain to be im-
properly called a volcano. As it stands nearly alone, it
might be supposed that lightning from time to time sets
fire to the brushwood ; but this supposition loses its pro-
bability when we reflect on the extreme difficulty with
which plants are ignited in these damp climates, it ntust
be observed also that these flames are said to appear often
where the rock seems scarcely covered with turf, and that
the same igneous phenomena are visible, on days entirely
exempt from storms, on the summit of Guaraco or Murcie-
lago, a hill opposite the mouth of the Eio Tamatama, on
the southern bank of the Orinoco. This hill is scarcely
elevated one hundred toises above the neighbouring plains.
If the statements of the natives be correct, it is probable
that some subterraneous cause producee these flames on the
Duida and the Guaraco ; for they never appear on the lofty
neighbouring mountains of Jao and Maraguaca, so often
wrapped in electric storms. The granite of the Cerro
Duida is full of veins, partly open, and partly filled with
crystals of quartz and pyrites. Gaseous and inflammable
emanations, either of hydrogen or of naphtha, maj psiss
through these veins. Of this the mountains of Cannnuiiitii

158 PEJLK OT DITTDA.

of Hind x)klio, and of Himalaya, furnish frequent examples,
We saw the appearance of flames in many parts of eastern
America subject to earthquakes, even from secondary rocks,
as at Cuchivero, near Cumanacoa. The fire shows itself
when the ground, strongly heated by the sun, receives the
first rains ; or when, after violent showers, the earth begins
to dry. The first cause of these igneous phenomena lies at
immense depths below the secondary rocks, in the primitive
formations : the rains and the decomposition of atmospheric
water act only a secondary part. The hottest springs of
the globe issue immediately from granite. Petroleum
gushes from mica-schist; and frightful detonations are
heard at Encaramada, between the rivers Arauca and
Cuchivero, in the midst of the granitic soil of the Orinoco
and the Sierra Parima. Here, as everywhere else on the
globe, the focus of volcanos is in the most ancient soils;
and it appears that an intimate connection exists between
the great phenomena that heave up and liquify the crust of
our planet, and those igneous meteors which are seen from
time to time on its surface, and which from their littleness
we are tempted to attribute solely to the influence of the
atmosphere.

Duida, though lower than the height assigned to it by
popular belief, is however the most prominent point of the
whole group of mountains that separate the basin of the
Lower Orinoco from that of the Amazon. These mountains
lower still more rapidly on the north-east, toward the Puru-
nama, than on the east, toward the Padamo and the Bio
Ocamo. In the former direction the most elevated summits
next to Duida are Cuneva, at the sources of the Rio Paru
(one of the tributary streams of the Ventuari), Sipapo,
Calitamini, which forms one group with Cunavami and the
peak of Uniana. East of Duida, on the right bank of the
Orinoco, Maravaca, or Sierra Maraguaca, is distinguished
by its elevation, between the Rio Caurimoni and the
Padamo; and 011 the left bank of the Orinoco rise the
mountains of Guanaja and Tumariquin, between the Rios
A.maguaca and Grehetto. It is almost superfluous to repeat
that the line which passes through these lofty summits
(like these of the Pyrenees, the Carpathian mountains, and
BO many other chains of the old continent) is very distinct

LUXURIANCE O* TUF TIMBER. 459

from the line that marks the partition of the waters. This
latter line, which separates the tributary streams of the
Lower and Upper Orinoco, intersects the meridian of 64°
in latitude 4°. After having separated the sources of the
Rio Branco and the Carony, it runs north-west, sending off
the waters of the Padamo, the Jao, and the Ventuari towards
the south, and the waters of the Arui, the Caura, and the
Cuchivero towards the north.

The Orinoco may be ascended without danger from
Esmeralda as far as the cataracts occupied by the Ghiaica
Indians, who prevent all farther progress of the Spaniards.
This is a voyage of six days and a half. In the first two
days you arrive at the mouth of the Bio Padamo, or
Patamo, having passed, on the north, the little rivers of
Tamatama, Sodomoni, Ghiapo, Caurimoni, and Simirimoni ;
and on the south the Cuca, situate between the rock of
Ghiaraco, which is said to throw out flames, and the Cerro
Canclilla. Throughout this course the Orinoco continues
to be three or four hundred toises broad. The tributary
streams are most frequent on the right bank, because on
that side the river is bounded by the lofty cloud-capped
mountains of Duida and Maraguaca, while the left bank on
the contrary is low and contiguous to a plain, the general
slope of which inclines to the south-west. The northern
Cordilleras are covered with fine timber. The growth of
plants is so enormous in this hot and constantly humid
climate, that the trunks of the Bombax ceiba are sixteen
feet in diameter. From the mouth of the Rio Padamo,
which is of considerable breadth, the Indians arrive, in a
day and a half, at the Eio Mavaca. The latter takes its
rise in the lofty mountains of Unturan, and communicates
with a lake, on the banks of which the Portuguese* of the
Rio Negro gather the aromatic seeds of the Laurus pucheri,
known in trade by the names of the pichwrvm lean, and

* The pichurim bean is the puckiri of La Condamine, which abounds
at the Rio Xingu, a tributary stream of the Amazon, and on the banks of
the Hyurubaxy, or Yurubesh, which runs into the Rio Negro. The
puchery, or pichurim, which is grated like nutmeg, differs from another
aromatic fruit (a laurel ?) known in trade at Grand Para by the names of
cucheri, cuchiri, or craro (clavus) do Maranhao, and winch* on account
of its odour, is compared with cloves.

460 SINUOSITIES OF THE RIVEK.

toda specie. Between the confluence of the Padamo and
that of the Mavaca, the Orinoco receives on the north the
Ocamo, into which the Bio Matacona falls. At the sources
of the latter live the Gruainares, who are much less copper-
coloured, or tawny, than the other inhabitants of those
countries. This is one of the tribes called by the mis-
sionaries 'fair Indians' (Indios blancos). Near the mouth
of the Ocamo, travellers are shown a rock, which is the
wonder of the country. It is a granite passing into gneiss,
and remarkable for the peculiar distribution of the black
mica, which forms little ramified veins. The Spaniards call
this rock Piedra Mapaya (the map-stone). The little frag
ment which I procured indicated a stratified rock, rich in
white feldspar, and containing, together with spangles of
mica, grouped in streaks, and variously twisted, some
crystals of hornblende. It is not a syenite, but probably a
granite of new formation, analagous to those to which the
stanniferous granites (hyalomictes) and the pegmatites, or
graphic granites, belong.

Beyond the confluence of the Macava, the Orinoco sud-
denly diminishes in breadth and depth, becoming extremely
sinuous, like an Alpine torrent. Its banks are surrounde'd
by mountains, and the number of its tributary streams
on the south augments considerably, yet the Cordillera on
the north remains the most elevated. It requires two days
to go from the mouth of the Macava, to the Rio Glehette,
the navigation being very difficult, and the boats, on account
of the want of water, being often dragged along the
shore. The tributary streams along this distance are, on
the south, the Daracapo and the Amaguaca ; which skirt on
the west and east the mountains of Gruanaya and Yumari-
quin, where the bertholletias are gathered. The Eio Mana-
viche flows down from the mountains on the north, the
elevation of which diminishes progressively from the Cerro
Maraguaca. As we advance further up the Orinoco, the
whirlpools and little rapids (chorros y remolinos) become
more and more frequent; on the north lies the Cano
Chiquire, inhabited by the Gruaicas, another tribe of white
Indians; and two leagues distant is the mouth of the
Grehette, where there is a great cataract. A dyke of gra-
nitic rocks crosses the Orinoco •, these rocks are, as it were,

BRIDGE OF LlAffJLS. 161

the columns of Hercules, beyond which no white man \ms
been able to penetrate. It appears, that this point, known
by the name of the great Raudal de Guaharibos, is three-
quarters of a degree west of Esmeralda, consequently in
longitude 67° 38'. A military expedition, undertaken by
the commander of the fort of San Carlos, Don Francisco
Bovadilla, to discover the sources of the Orinoco, led to some
information respecting the cataracts of the Gruaharibos.
Bovadilla had heard, that some fugitive negroes from Dutch
Guiana, proceeding towards the west (beyond the isthmus
between the sources of the Rio Carony and the Bio Branco),
had joined the independent Indians. He attempted an en-
trada (hostile incursion), without having obtained the per-
mission of the governor; the desire of procuring African
slaves, better fitted for labour than the copper-coloured
race, was a far more powerful motive than that of zeal for
the progress of geography. Bovadilla arrived without diffi-
culty as far as the little Eaudal* opposite the Gehette ; but
having advanced to the foot of the rocky dike that forms
the great cataract, he was suddenly attacked, while he was
breakfasting, by the Gruaharibos and Guaycas, two warlike
tribes, celebrated for the virulence of the curare with which
their arrows are empoisoned. The Indians occupied the
rocks that rise in the middle of the river, and seeing the
' Spaniards without bows, and having no knowledge of fire-
arms, they provoked the whites, whom they believed to be
without defence. Several of the latter were dangerously
wounded, and Bovadilla found himself forced to give the
signal for battle. A fearful carnage ensued among the
natives, but none of the Dutch negroes, who, as was be-
lieved, had taken refuge in those parts, were found. Not-
withstanding a victory so easily won, the Spaniards did not
dare to advance eastward in a mountainous country, and
along a river inclosed by very high banks.

These white Guaharibos have constructed a bridge of
lianas above the cataract, supported on rocks that rise, as
generally happens in the pongos of the Upper Marafion, in
the middle ot the river. The existence of this bridge,

* It is called Raudal de abaxo (Low Cataract), in opposition to the
great Raudal de Guaharibos, which is situated higher up toward th»
east.

402 LOCALITY OF THE AMAZON STONES

which is known to all the inhabitants of Esmeralda,* seems
to indicate that the Orinoco must be very narrow at this
point. It is generally estimated by the Indians to be only
two or three "hundred feet broaa. They say, that the
Orinoco, above the B-audal of the Grtiaharibos, is no longer a
river, but a brook (riachuelo) ; while a well informed eccle-
siastic, Fray Juan Gonzales, who had visited those countries,
assured me, that the Orinoco, in the part where its farther
course is no no longer known, is two-thirds of the breadth
of the Rio Negro near San Carlos. This opinion appears to
me hardly probable ; but I relate what I have collected, and
affirm nothing positively.

In the rocky dike that crosses the Orinoco, forming the
Baudal of the Guaharibos, Spanish soldiers pretend to have
found the fine kind of saussurite (Amazon-stone), of which
we have spoken. This tradition however is very uncertain ;
and the Indians, whom I interrogated on the subject, as-
sured me, that the green stones, called piedras de Macagua\
at Esmeralda, were purchased from the Guaicas and Gruaha-
ribos, who traffic with hordes much farther to the east.
The same uncertainty prevails respecting these stones, as
that which attaches to many other valuable productions of
the Indies. On the coast, at the distance of some hundred
leagues, the country where they are found is positively
named; but when the traveller with difficulty penetrates
into that country, he discovers that the natives are ignorant
even of the name of the object of his research. It might be
supposed that the amulets of saussurite found in the posses-
sion of the Indians of the Bio Negro, come from the Lower
Maranon, while those that are received by the missions of
the Upper Orinoco and the Bio Carony come from a
country situated between the sources of the Essequibo and
the Bio Branco. The opinion that this stone is taken in

* The Amazon also is crossed twice on bridges of wood near its source
in the lake Lauricocha ; first north of Chavin, and then below the con-
fluence of the Rio Aguamiras. These, the only two bridges that have
been thrown over the largest river we yet know, are called Puente de
Quivilla, and Puente de Guancaybamba.

t The etymology of this name, which is unknown to me, might lead to
the knowledge of the spot where these stones are found. I have sought
in vain the name of Macagua among the numerous tributary streams of
the Tacutu, the Maho, the Rupu-iury, and the Rio Trombetus.

WHITE AND DWABF TBIBES. 4G3

• soft state like paste from the little lake Anmcu, though
very prevalent at Angostura, is wholly •without foundation.
A curious geognostic discovery remains to be made in the
eastern part of America, that of finding in a primitive soil
a rock of euphotide containing the piedra de Macagua.

I shall here proceed to give some information respecting
the tribes of dwarf and fair Indians, which ancient traditions
have placed near the sources of the Orinoco. I had an op-
portunity of seeing some of these Indians at Esmeralda, and
can affirm, that the short stature of the Guaicas, and the fair
complexion of the Guaharibos, whom Father Caulin calls
Gitaribos blancos, have been alike exaggerated. The Gruaicas,
whom I measured, were in general from four feet seven
inches to four feet eight inches high (old measure of
France).* We were assured that the whole tribe were of this
diminutive size ; but we must not forget that what is called
a tribe constitutes, properly speaking, but one family, owing
to the exclusion of all foreign connections. The Indians of
the lowest stature next to the Guaicas are the Guainares and
the Poignaves. It is singular, that all these nations are
found in near proximity to the Caribs, who are remarkably
tall. They all inhabit the same climate, and subsist on the
same aliments. They are varieties in the race, which no
doubt existed previously to the settlement of these tribes,
(tall and short, fair and dark brown) in the same country.
The four nations of the Upper Orinoco, which appeared to
me to be the fairest, are the Gruaharibos of the Rio Gehette,
the Guainares of the Ocamo, the Guaicas of Caiio Chiguire,
and the Maquiritares of the sources of the Padamo, the Jao,
and the Ventuari. It being very extraordinary to see natives
with a fair skin beneath a burning sky, and amid nations of
a very dark hue, the Spaniards have attempted to explain
this phenomenon by the following hypotheses. Some assert,
that the Dutch of Surinam and the Rio Essequibo may have
intermingled with the Guaharibos and the Guainares;
others insist, from hatred to the Capuchins of the Carony,
and the Observantins of the Orinoco, that the fair Indians
are what are called in Dalmatia muso di frate, children
whose legitimacy is somewhat doubtful. In either case
the Indios blancos would be mestizos, that is to say, children
* About five feet three inches English measure.

464 MIXED

of an Indian woman and a white man. Now, having seen
thousands of mestizos, I can assert that this supposition is
altogether inaccurate. The individuals of the fair tribes,
whom we examined, have the features, the stature, and
the smooth, straight, black hair which characterises other
Indians. It would be impossible to take them for a mixed
race, like the descendants of natives and Europeans. Some
of these people are very little, others are of the ordinary
stature of the copper-coloured Indians. They are neither
feeble, nor sickly, nor are they albinos ; and they differ from
the copper-coloured races only by a much less tawny skin.
It would be useless, after these considerations, to insist on
the distance of the mountains of the Upper Orinoco from
the shores inhabited by the Dutch. I will not deny that
descendants of fugitive negroes may have been seen among
the Caribs, at the sources of the Essequibo ; but no white
man ever went from the eastern coast to the Bio Glehette
and the Ocamo, in the interior of GKiiana. It must also be
observed, although we may be struck with the singularity
of several fair tribes being found at one point to the east of
Esmeralda, it is no less certain, that tribes have been found
in other parts of America, distinguished from the neigh-
bouring tribes by the less tawny colour of their skin. Such
are the Arivirianos and Maquiritares of the Eio Yentuario
and the Padamo, the Paudacotos and Paravenas of the
Erevato, the Viras and Araguas of the Caura, the Mologagos
of Brazil, and the Gruayanas of the Uruguay.*

* The Cumangotos, the Maypures, the Mapojos, and some hordes of
the Tamanacs, are also fair, bat in a less degree than the tribes I have
just named. We may add to this list (which the researches of Sommering,
Blumenbach, and Pritchard, on the varieties of the human species, have
rendered so interesting) the Ojes of the Cuchivero, the Boanes (now
almost destroyed) of the interior of Brazil, and in the north of America,
far from the north-west coast, the Man dans and the Akanas (Walkenaer,
Geogr., p. 645. Gili, vol. ii, p. 34. Vater, Amerikan. Sprachen, p. 81.
Southey, vol. i, p. 603.) The most tawny, we might almost say the
blackest of the American race, are the Otomacs and the Guamos. These
have perhaps given rise to the confused notions of American negroes,
spread through Europe in the early times of the conquest. (Herrera, Dec.
i, lib. 3, cap. 9, vol, i, p. 79. Garcia, Origen de los Americanos, p. 259.\
Who are those Negros de Quareca, placed by Gomara, p. 277, in that
very isthmus of Panama, whence we received the first absurd tales cf an
albino American people ? In reading with attention the authors of the

DARK AND FATE 1BIBES. 4G5

These phenomena are so much the more worthy of attention
as they are observed in that great branch of the American
nations generally ranked in a class totally opposite to that
circumpolar branch, viz ; the Tschougaz-Esquimaux,* whose
children are fair, and who acquire the Mongol or yellowish
tint only from the influence of the air and the humidity.
In Guiana, the hordes who live in the midst of the thickest
forests are generally less tawny than those who inhabit
the shores of the Orinoco, and are employed in fishing.
But this slight difference, which is alike found in Europe
between the artisans of towns and the cultivators of the
fields or the fishermen on the coasts, in no way explains
the problem of the Indios blancos. They are surrounded by
other Indians of the woods (Indios del monte), who are
of a reddish-brown, although now exposed to the same
physical influences. The causes of these phenomena are
very ancient, and we may repeat with Tacitus, " est durans
originis vis."

The fair-complexioned tribes, which we had an opportu-
nity of seeing at the mission of Esmeralda, inhabit part of a
mountainous country lying between the sources of six tribu-
taries of the Orinoco ; that is to say, between the Padamo, the
Jao, the Ventuari, the Erevato, the Aruy, and the Para-
guay, t The Spanish and Portuguese missionaries are
accustomed to designate this country more particularly

beginning of the 16th century, we see, that the discovery of America,
and of a new race of men, had singularly awakened the interest of
travellers respecting the varieties of our species. Now, if a black
race had been mingled with copper-coloured men, as in the South-sea
Islands, the conguistadores would not have failed to speak of it in a
precise manner. Besides, the religious traditions of the Americans relate
the appearance, in the heroic times, of white and bearded men as priests
and legislators; but none of these traditions make mention of a black
race.

* The Chevalier Gieseke has recently confirmed all that Krantz re-
lated of the colour of the skin of the Esquimaux. That race (even in
the latitude of seventy-five and seventy. six degrees, where the climate is
fo rigorous) is not in general so diminutive as it was long believed to be.
Ross's Voyage to the A'or/A.

t They are six tributary streams on the right bank of the Orinoco ; the
first three run towards the south, or the Upper Orinoco ; the three othert
towards the north, or the Lower Orinoco.

VOL. II. 2 H

466 IKSUBHECTION OF THE

by the name of Parima.* Here, as in several other coun-
tries of Spanish America, the savages have reconquered
what had been wrested from them by civilization, or rather
by its precursors, the missionaries. The expedition of the
boundaries under Solano, and the extravagant zeal displayed
by a governor of Gruiana for the discovery of El Dorado,
partially revived in the latter half of the eighteenth century
that spirit of enterprise which characterised the Spaniards
at the period of the discovery of America. In going along
the Bio Padamo, a road was observed across the forests
and savannahs (the length of ten days' journey), from
Esrneralda to the sources of the Yentuari; and in two
days more, from those sources, by the Erevato, the mis-
sions on the Bio Caura were reached. Two intelligent
and enterprising men, Don Antonio Santos and Captain
Bareto, had established, with the aid of the Miquiritares,
a chain of military posts on this line from Esmeralda to
the Bio Erevato. These posts consisted of block-houses
(casas fuertes) , mounted with swivels, such as I have already
mentioned. The soldiers, left to themselves, exercised all
kinds of vexations on the natives (Indians of peace), who
had cultivated pieces of ground around the casas fuertes ;
and the consequence was that, in 1776, several tribes formed
a league against the Spaniards. All the military posts were
attacked on the same night, on a line of nearly fifty leagues
in length. The houses were burnt, and many soldiers
massacred ; a very small number only owing their preser-
vation to the pity of the Indian women. This nocturnal
expedition is still mentioned with horror. It was concerted
in the most profound secresy, and executed with that spirit
o< unity which the natives of America, skilled in con-
cealing their hostile passions, well know how to practise
in whatever concerns their common interests. Since 1776
no attempt has been made to re-establish the road which
leads by land from the Upper to the Lower Orinoco, and
no white man has been able to pass from Esmeralda to the

* The name Parima, which signifies water, great water, is applied
sometimes, and more especially, to the land washed by the Rio Parima,
or Rio Branco fRio de Aguas Blancas), a stream running into the Rio
Negro j sometimes to the mountains (Sierra Parima), which divide tlw
Upper and Lower Oriiwco.

HINDEANCE TO OUB JOTTBWET. 407

Brevato. It is certain, however, that in tbe mountainous
lands, Detween the sources of the Padamo and the Ventuari
(near the sites called by the Indians Aurichapa, Ichuana,
and Irique) there are many spots where the climate is
temperate, and where there are pasturages capable of feed-
ing numerous herds of cattle. The military posts were
very useful in preventing the incursions of the Caribs, who,
from time to time carried off slaves, though in very small
numbers, between the Erevato and the Padamo. They
would have resisted the attacks of the natives, if, instead
of leaving them isolated and solely to the control of the
soldiery, they had been formed into communities, and go-
verned like the villages of neophyte Indians.

We left the mission of Esmeralda on the 23rd of May.
Without being positively ill, we felt ourselves in a state
of languor and weakness, caused by the torment of in-
sects, bad food, and a long voyage, in narrow and damp
boats. We did not go up the Orinoco beyond the
mouth of the Rio Guapo, which we should have done, if
we could have attempted to reach the sources of the river.
There remains a distance of fifteen leagues from the Gruapo
to the Raudal of the Guaharibos. At this cataract, which is
passed on a bridge of lianas, Indians are posted armed with
bows and arrows, to prevent the whites, or those who come
from their territory from advancing westward. How could we
hope to pass a point where the commander of the Eio Negro,
Don Francisco Bovadilla, was stopped when, accompanied by
his soldiers, he tried to penetrate beyond the Grehette ?* The
carnage then made among the natiTes has rendered them
more distrustful, and more averse to the inhabitants of
the missions. It must be remembered that the Orinoco
had hitherto offered to geographers two distinct problems,
alike important, the situation of its sources, and the mode
of its communication with the Amazon. The latter problem
formed the object of the journey which I have described ;
with respect to the discovery of" its sources, that remains
to be done by the Spanish and Portuguese governments.

Our canoe was not ready to receive us till near three
o'clock in the afternoon, "it had been filled with innu«
* See p. 461.

2 H 2

4G8 OEOOiiApiiicAL EH nous.

mcrable swarms of ants during the navigation of the Cassi-
quiare ; and the toldo, or roof of palm-leaves, beneath which
we were again doomed to remain stretched out during
twenty-two days, was with difficulty cleared of these insects.
We employed part of the morning in repeating to the
inhabitants of Esmeralda the questions we had already put
to them, respecting the existence of a lake towards the
east. We showed copies of the maps of Surville and La
Cruz to old soldiers, who had been posted in the mission
ever since its first establishment. They laughed at the
supposed communication of the Orinoco with the Rio
Idapa, and at the ' White Sea,' which the former river waa
represented to cross. What we politely call geographical
fictions they termed "lies of the old world" (mentiras de
por alia). These good people could not comprehend how
men, in making the map of a country which they had never
visited, could pretend to know things in minute detail, of
which persons who lived on the spot were ignorant. The
lake Parima, the Sierra Mey, and the springs which separate
at the point where they issue from the earth, were entirely
unknown at Esmeralda. We were repeatedly assured that
no one had ever been to the east of the Baudal of the
Guaharibos; and that beyond that point, according to the
opinion of some of the natives, the Orinoco descends like a
small torrent from a group of mountains, inhabited by the
Coroto Indians. Father Grili, who was living on the banks
of the Orinoco when the expedition of the boundaries
arrived, says expressly, " that Don Apollinario Diez was
sent in 1765 to attempt the discovery of the source of the
Orinoco ; that he found the river, east of Esmeralda, full of
shoals ; that he returned for want of provision ; and that he
learned nothing, absolutely nothing, of the existence of a
lake." This statement perfectly accords with what I heard
myself thirty-five years later at Esmeralda. The probability
of a fact is powerfully shaken when it can be proved to be
totally unknown on the very spot where it ought to be
known best ; and when those by whom the existence of the
lake is affirmed contradict each other, not in the least
essential circumstances, but in all that are the most im-
portant.

DISAPPEARANCE OF MOSQUITOS. 400

When travellers judge only by their own sensations they
dilier from each other respecting the abundance of the
mosquitos as they do respecting the progressive inciease or
diminution of the temperature. The state of our organs,
the motion of the air, its degree of humidity or dryness, its
electric intensity, a thousand circumstances contribute afc
once to make us suffer more or less from the heat and tfae
insects. My fellow travellers were unanimously of opinion
that Esmeralda was more tormented by mosquitos than the
banks of the Cassiquiare, and even more than the two missions
of 'the Great Cataracts ; whilst I, less sensible than they of
the high temperature of the air, thought that the irritation
produced by the insects was somewhat less at Esmeralda
than at the entrance of the Upper Orinoco. On hearing
the complaints that are made of these tormenting insects in
hot countries it is difficult to believe that their absence, or
rather their sudden disappearance, could become a subject
of inquietude; yet such is the fact. The inhabitants of
Esmeralda related to us, that in the year 1795, an hour
before sunset, when the mosquitos usually form a very thick
cloud, the air was observed to be suddenly free from them.
During the space of twenty minutes, not one insect was
perceived, although the sky was cloudless, and no wind
announced rain. It is necessary to have lived in those
countries to comprehend the degree of surprise which the
sudden disappearance of the insects must have produced.
The inhabitants congratulated each other, and inquired
whether this state of happiness, this relief from pain (feli-
cidad y alivio), could be of any duration. But soon, instead
(( enjoying the present, they yielded to chimerical fears,
and imagined that the order of nature was perverted. Some
old Indians, the sages of the place, asserted that the disap-
pearance of the insects must be the precursor of a great
earthquake. Warm discussions arose ; the least noise amid
the foliage of the trees was listened to with an attentive
rar ; and when the air was again filled with mosquitos they
were almost hailed with pleasure. We could not guess
what modification of the atmosphere had caused this pheno-
menon, which must not be confounded with the periodical
replacing of one species of insects by another.

470 \ARTETIES OF THE JAGTJAB.

After four hours' navigation down the Orinoco we arrived
at the point of the bifurcation. Our resting place was on
the same beach of the Cassiquiare, where a few days pre-
viously our great dog had, as we believe, been carried oft
by the jaguars. All the endeavours of the Indians to dis-
cover any traces of the animal were fruitless. The cries of
the jaguars were heard during the whole night.* These
animals are very frequent in the tracts situated between
the Cerro Maraguaca, the Unturan, and the banks of the
Pamoni. There also is found that black species of tiger f
of which I saw some fine skins at Esmeralda. This animal
is celebrated for its strength and ferocity ; it appears to be
still larger than the common jaguar. The black spots are
scarcely visible on the dark-brown ground of its skin. The
Indians assert, that these tigers are very rare, that they
never mingle with the common jaguars, and that they " form
another race.' ' I believe that Prince Maximilian of Neuwied,
who has enriched American zoology by so many important
observations, acquired the same information farther to the
south, in the hot part of Brazil. Albino varieties of the
jaguar have been seen in Paraguay : for the spots of these
animals, which may be called the beautiful panthers of
America, are sometimes so pale, as to be scarcely distin-
guishable on a very white ground. In the black jaguars, on
the contrary, it is the colour of the ground which renders
the spots indistinct. It requires to reside long in those
countries, and to accompany the Indians of Esmeralda in
the perilous chace of the tiger, to decide with certainty upon
the varieties and the species. In all the mammiferae, and
particularly in the numerous family of the apes, we ought,

* This frequency of large jaguars is somewhat remarkable in a country
destitute of cattle. The tigers of the Upper Orinoco are far less bounti-
fully supplied with prey than those of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres and
the Llanos of Caracas, which are covered with herds of cattle. More
than four thousand jaguars are killed annually in the Spanish colonies,
several of them equalling the mean size of the royal tiger of Asia. Two
thousand skins of jaguars were formerly exported annually from Buenoi
Ayres alone.

•)• Gmelin, in his ' Synonyma,' seems to confound this animal, ucdei
the name of Felis discolor, witli the great American lion., (Felis concol'r,}
which is very different from the puma of the Andes of Quito.

DESOLATE APPEARANCE OF T1IE 111VEE. 471

I believe, to fix our attention less on the transitkn from
one colour to another in individuals, than on their habit o*
Bt'parating themselves, and forming distinct bands.

We left our resting place before sunrise on the 24th
of May. In a rocky cove, which had been the dwelling of
some Durimundi Indians, the aromatic odour of the plants
was so powerful, that although sleeping in the open air, and
the irritability of our nervous system being allayed by the
habits of a life of fatigue, we were nevertheless incommoded
by it. We could not ascertain the flowers which diffused this
perfume. The forest was impenetrable ; but M. Bonpland
believed that large clumps of pancratium and other liliaceous
plants were concealed in the neighbouring marshes. De-
scending the Orinoco by favour of the current, we passed
first the mouth of the Rio Cunucunumo, and then the
Gruanami and the Purinaine. The two banks of the prin-
cipal river are entirely desert ; lofty mountains rise on the
north, and on the south a vast plain extends far as the eye
can reach beyond the sources of the Atacavi, which lower
down takes the name of the Atabapo. There is something
gloomy and desolate in this aspect of a river, on which not
even a fisherman's canoe is seen. Some independant tribes,
the Abirianos and the Maquiritares, dwell in the moun-
tainous count ry ; but in the neighbouring savannahs,* boun-
ded by the Cassiquiare, the Atabapo, the Orinoco, and the
Rio Negro, there is now scarcely any trace of a human
habitation. I say now; for here, as in other parts of
Guiana, rude figures representing the sun, the moon, and
different animals, traced on the hardest rocks of granite,
attest the anterior existence of a people, very different from
those who became known to us on the banks of the Orinoco.
According to the accounts of the natives, and of the most
intelligent missionaries, these symbolic signs resemble per-
fectly the characters we saw a hundred leagues more to the
north, near Caycara, opposite the mouth of the Rio Apure.f

In advancing from the plains of the Cassiquiare and the

* They form a quadrilateral pioi of a thousand square leagues, the
opposite sides of which have contrary slopes, the Cassiquiare flowing
towards the south, the Atabapo towards the north, the Orinoco toward*
the north-west, and the Rio Negro towards the south-east.
t See p. 183.

472 HIEROGLYPHIC RCCK-M.LKKS.

Conoricliite, one hundred and forty leagues further eastward,
between the sources of the Rio Blanco and the Rio Esse-
quibo, we also meet with rocks and symbolical figures. I
have lately verified this curious fact, which is recorded in
the journal of the traveller Hortsman, who went up the
Rupunuvini, one of the tributary streams of the Essequibo.
Where this river, full of small cascades, winds between the
mountains of Macarana, he found, before he reached lake
Amucu, " rocks covered with figures," or (as he says in
Portuguese) with " varias letras." We must not take this
word letters in its real signification. We were also shewn,
near the rock Culimacari, on the banks of the Cassiquiare,
and at the port of Caycara in the Lower Orinoco, traces
which were believed to be regular characters. They were
however only misshapen figures, representing the heavenly
bodies, together with tigers, crocodiles, boas, and instru-
ments used for making the flour of cassava. It was impos-
sible to recognize in these ' painted rocks'* (the name by
which the natives denote those masses loaded with figures)
any symmetrical arrangement, or characters with regular
spaces. The traces discovered in the mountains of Uruana,
by the missionary Eray Ramon Bueno, approach nearer to
alphabetical writing ; but are nevertheless very doubtful.

Whatever may be the meaning of these figures, and with
whatever view they were traced upon granite, they merit
the examination 01 those who direct their attention to the
philosophic history of our species. In travelling from the
coast of Caracas towards the equator, we are at first led to
believe that monuments of this kind are peculiar to the
mountain-chain of Encaramada ; they are found at the port
of Sedefio, near Caycara,f at San Rafael del Capuchino,
opposite Cabruta, and in almost every place where the
granitic rock pierces the soil, in the savannah which extends
from the Cerro Curiquima towards the banks of the Caura.

* In Tamanac, tepumereme. (Tepu, a stone, rock ; as in Mexican,
tetl, a stone, and tepetl, a mountain ; in Turco-Tatarian, tepe.} The
Spanish Americans also call the rock covered with sculptured figures,
yiedras pintados ; those for instance, which are found on the summit of
the Paramo of Guanacas, in New Grenada, and which recall to mind ths
tepumereme of the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rupuauvini.

t In the Mountains of the Tyrant, (Cerros del Tirana.}

FATIVE LEGENDS OT A DELU61. 473

The Nations of the Tamanac race, the ancient inhabitants
of those countries, have a local mythology, and traditions
vonnected with these sculptured rocks. Amalivaca, the
father of the Tamanacs, that is, the creator of the human
race (for every nation regards itself as the root of all other
nations), arrived in a bark, at the time of the great inunda-
tion, which is called 'the age of water,'* when the billows
of the ocean broke against the mountains of Encamarada in
the interior of the land. All mankind, or, to speak more
correctly, all the Tamanacs, were drowned, with the exception
of one man and one woman, who saved themselves on a
mountain near the banks of the Asiveru, called Cuchivero
by the Spaniards. This mountain is the Ararat of the
Aram can or Semitic nations, and the Tlaloc or Colhuacan of
the Mexicans. Amalivaca, sailing in his bark, engraved the
figures of the moon and the sun on the Painted Eock
(Tepimereme) of Encaramada. Some blocks of granite
piled upon one another, and forming a kind of cavern, are
still called the house or dwelling of the great forefather of
the Tamanacs. The natives show also a large stone near
this cavern, in the plains of Maita, which they say was an
instrument of music, the drum of Amalivaca. AVe must
here observe, that this heroic personage had a brother,
Vochi, who helped him to give the surface of the earth its
present form. The Tamanacs relate, that the two brothers,
in their system of perfectibility, sought, at first, to arrange
the Orinoco in such a manner, that the current of the water
could always be followed either going down or going up the
river. They hoped by this means to spare men trouble
in navigating rivers ; but, however great the power of these
regenerators of the world, they could never contrive to give
a double slope to the Orinoco, and were compelled to
relinquish this singular plan. Amalivaca had daughters,
who had a decided taste for travelling. The tradition
states, doubtless with a figurative meaning, that he broke
their legs, to render them sedentary, and force them to
people the land of the Tamanacs. After having regulated
everything in America, on that side of the * great water,'
Amalivaca again embarked, and "returned to the other

•f The Atonal ink of the Mexicans, the fourth age, the fourth rcgcacrm*
don jf the world.

174 IDEAS OF A DIVIITITT.

shore," to the same place from whence he cr_me. Since the
natives have seen the missionaries arrive, they imagine, that
Europe is this ' other shore ;' and one of them inquired
with great simplicity, of Father Gili, whether he had there
seen the great Amalivaca, the father of the Tamanacs, who
had covered the rocks with symbolic figures.

These notions of a great convulsion of nature; of two
human beings saved on the submit of a mountain, and
casting behind them the fruits of the mauritia palm-tree,
to repeople the earth; of that national divinity, Amalivaca,
who arrived by water from a distant land, who prescribed
laws to nature, and forced the nations to renounce their
migrations ; these various features of a very ancient system
of belief, are well worthy of attention. "What the Tamanacs,
and the tribes whose languages are analogous to the
Tamanao tongue, now relate to us, they have no doubt
learned from other people, who inhabited before them the
some regions. The name of Amalivaca is spread over a
region of more than five thousand square leagues; he is
found designated as ' the father of mankind,' or ' our great
grandfather,' as far as to the Caribbee nations, whose idiom
approaches the Tamanac only in the same degree as the
German approaches the Greek, the Persian, and the Sans-
crit. Amalivaca is not originally the Great Spirit, the Aged
of Heaven, the invisible being, whose worship springs from
that of the powers of nature, when nations rise insensibly to
the consciousness of the unity of these powers ; he is rather a
personage of the heroic times, a man, who, coming from
afar, lived in the land of the Tamanacs and the Caribs,
sculptured symbolic figures upon the rocks, and disappeared
by going back to the country he had previously inhabited
beyond the ocean. The anthropomorphism of the divinity
has two sources diametrically opposite ; and this opposition
seems to arise less from the various degrees of intellectual
culture, than from the different dispositions of nations,
some of which are more inclined to mysticism, and others
more governed by the senses, and by external impressions.
Sometimes man makes the divinities descend upon earth,
charging them with the care of ruling nations, and giving
them laws, as in the fables of the East ; sometimes, as
among the Greeks and other nations of the West, trey are

BEOION OF SCULPTURED BOCKS. 475

fhe first monarchs, priest-kings, who are stripped of what is
human in their nature, to be raised co the rank of national
divinities. Amalivaca was a stranger, like Manco-Capac,
Bochica, and Quetzalcohuatl ; those extraordinary men,
who, in the alpine or civilized part of America, on the table-
lands of Peru, New Grenada, and Anahuac, organized civil
society, regulated the order of sacrifices, and founded reli-
gious congregations. The Mexican Quetzalcohuatl, whose
descendants Montezuma* thought he recognized in the
companions of Cortez, displays an additional resemblance to
Amalivaca, the mythologic personage of savage America or
the plains of the torrid zone. When advanced in age, the
high-priest of Tula left the country of Anahuac, which he
had filled with his miracles, to return to an unknown region,
called Tlalpallan. When the monk Bernard de Sahagun
arrived in Mexico, the same questions were put to him, as
those which were addressed to Father Grili two hundred
years later, in the forests of the Orinoco ; he was asked,
whether he came from 'the other shore' (del otro lado),
from the countries to which Quetzalcohuatl had retired.

The region of sculptured rocks, or of painted stones, ex-
tends far beyond the Lower Orinoco, beyond the country
(latitude 7° 5' to 7° 40', longitude 68° 50' to 69° 45') to
which belongs what may be called the ' local fables ' of the
Tamanacs. We again find these same sculptured rocks
between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo (lat. 2° 5' to
3° 2(X ; long. 69° to 70°) ; and between the sources of the
Essequibo and the Eio Branco (lat. 3° 50'; long. 62° 32').
I do not assert that these figures prove the knowledge of
the use of iron, or that they denote a very advanced degree
of culture; but even on the supposition that, instead of
being symbolical, they are the fruits of the idleness of
hunting nations, we must still admit an anterior race of
men, very different from those who now inhabit the banks
of the Orinoco and the E-upunuri. The more a country is
destitute of remembrances of generations that are extinct,
the more important it becomes to follow the least traces
of what appears to be monumental. The eastern plains of
North America display only those extraordinary circum-

* The second king of this name, of the race of Acamr pitiin, properly
called Montezuma -Ilhuicamina.

470 MISSION OF SANTA BARBARA.

vallations, that remind us of the fortified camps (the pro-
tended cities of vast extent) of the ancient and modern
nomad tribes of Asia. In the oriental plains of South
America, the force of vegetation, the heat of the climate,
and the too lavish gifts of nature, have opposed obstacles
still more powerful to the progress of human civilization.
Between the Orinoco and the Amazon I heard no mention
of any wall of earth, vestige of a dyke, or sepulchral
tumulus ; the rocks alone show us (and this through a great
extent of country), rude sketches which the hand of man
has traced in times unknown, and which are connected with
religious traditions.

Before I quitted the wildest part of the Upper Orinoco,
I thought it desirable to mention facts which are impor-
tant only when they are considered in their connection
with each other. AD. I could relate of our navigation from
Esmeralda to the mouth of the Atabapo would be merely
an enumeration of rivers and uninhabited places. From
the 24th to the 27th of May, we slept but twice on land ;
our first resting-place was at the confluence of the Bio
Jao, and our second below the mission of Santa Barbara,
in the island of Minisi. The Orinoco being free from
shoals, the Indian pilot pursued his course all night, aban-
doning the boat to the current of the river. Setting apart
the time which we spent on the shore in preparing the rice
and plantains that served us for food, we took but thirty-
five hours in going from Esmeralda to Santa Barbara. The
chronometer gave me for the longitude of the latter mission
70° 3' ; we had therefore made near four miles an hour,
a velocity which was partly owing to the current, and partly
to the action of the oars. The Indians assert, that the cro-
codiles do not go up the Orinoco above the mouth of the
Rio Jao, and that the manatis are not even found above the
cataract of Maypures.

The mission of Santa Barbara is situated a little to the
xvest of the mouth of the Bio V^entuari, or Yenituari, exa-
mined in 1800 by Father Francisco Valor. "We found in
this small village of one hundred and twenty inhabitants
some traces of industry ; but the produce of this industry ig
of little profit to the natives ; it is reserved for the monks, or,
as they say in these countries, for the church and the con-

MANUFACTURING TB1BE8. 477

We were assured that a great lamp of massive silver,
purchased at the expense of the neophytes, is expected from
Madrid. Let us hope that, after the arrival of this treasure,
they will think also of clothing the Indians, of procuring for
them some instruments of agriculture, and assembling their
children in a school. Although there are a few oxen in the
savannahs round the mission, they are rarely employed in
turning the mill (trapiche), to express the juice of the
sugar-cane ; this is the occupation of the Indians, who work
without pay here as they do everywhere when they are under-
stood to work for the church. The pasturages at the foot
of the mountains round Santa Barbara are not so rich as at
Esmeralda, but superior to those at San Fernando de Ata-
bapo. The grass is short and thick, yet the upper stratum
of earth furnishes only a dry and parched granitic sand.
The savannahs (far from fertile) of the banks of the Gua-
viare, the Meta, and the Upper Orinoco, are equally desti-
tute of the mould which abounds in the surrounding forests,
and of the thick stratum of clay, which covers the sandstone
of the Llanos, or steppes of Venezuela. The small herba-
ceous mimosas contribute in this zone to fatten the cattle,
but are very rare between the Rio Jao and the mouth of the
Guaviare.

During the few hours of our stay at the mission of Santa
Barbara, we obtained pretty accurate ideas respecting the
Rio Ventuari, which, next to the Guaviare, appeared to me
to be the most considerable tributary of the Orinoco. Its
banks, heretofore occupied by the Maypures, are still peo-
pled by a great number of independent nations. On going
up by the mouth of the Ventuari, which forms a delta
covered with palm-trees, you find in the east, after three
days' journey, the Cumaruita and the Paru, two streams
that rise at the foot of the lofty mountains of Cuneva.
Higher up, on the west, lie the Mariata and the Manipiare,
inhabited by theMacos and Curacicanas. The latter nation
is remarkable for their active cultivation of cotton. In a
hostile incursion (entrada) a large house was found contain-
ing more than thirty or forty hammocks of a very fine tex-
ture of spun cotton, cordage, and fishing implements. The
natives had fled ; and Father Valor informed us, that the
Indians of the mission who accompanied > im had set fire to

478 BOUTE8 OF THE SLATE TB-LDERS.

the house before he could save these productions of the
industry of the Curacicanas. The neophytes of Saiita Bar-
bara, who think themselves very superior to these supposed
savages, appeared to me far less industrious. The Rio Ma-
uipiare, one of the principal branches of the Ventuari, ap-
proaches near its source those lofty mountains, the northern
ridge of which gives birth to the Cuchivero. It is a pro-
longation of the chain of Baraguan ; and there Father Gili
places the table-land of Si:mmeu, of which he vaunts the
temperate climate. The upper course of the Eio Ventuari,
beyond the confluence of the Asisi, and the Great Baudales,
is almost unknown. I was informed only, that the Upper
Ventuari bends so much towards the east that the ancient
road from Esmeralda to the Eio Caura crosses the bed of
the river. The proximity of the tributary streams of the
Carony, the Caura, and the Ventuari, has facilitated for ages
the access of the Caribs to the banks of the Upper Orinoco.
Bands of this warlike and trading people went up from the
Bio Carony, by the Paragua, to the sources of the Paruspa.
A portage conducted them to the Chavarro, an eastern tri-
butary stream of the Eio Caura ; they descended with their
canoes first this stream, and then the Caura itself, as far as
the mouth of the Erevato. After having gone up this last
river south-west, and traversed vast savannahs for three
days, they entered by the Manipiare into the great Eio
Ventuari. I trace this road with precision, not only be-
cause it was that by which the traffic of native slaves was
carried on, but also to call the attention of those, who at
some future day may rule the destiny of Guiana, to the
high importance of this labyrinth of rivers.

It is by the four largest tributary streams, which the
majestic river of the Orinoco receives on the right, (the
Carony, the Caura, the Padamo, and the Ventuari,) that
European civilization will one day penetrate into this re-
gion of forests and mountains, which has a surface of ten
thousand six hundred square leagues, and which is bounded
by the Orinocn on the north, the west, and the south. The
Capuchins of Catalonia and the Observantins of Andalusia
and Valencia, have already made settlements in the vallies
of the Carony and the Caura. The tributary streams of the
Lower Orinoco, being the nearest to the coast and to the

BAW TIBNAHDO DE ATABAPO. 479

cultivated region of Venezuela, were naturally the first to
receive missionaries, and with them some germs of social
life. Corresponding to the Carony and the Caura, which
flow toward the north, are two great tributary streams
of the Upper Orinoco, that send their waters toward the
south ; these are the Padamo and the Yentuari. No village
has hitherto risen on their banks, though they offer advan-
tages for agriculture and pasturage, which would be sought
in vain in the valley of the immense river to which they are
tributary. In the centre of these wild countries, where
there wul long be no other road than the rivers, every pro-
ject of civilization should be founded on an intimate know-
ledge of the hydraulic features of the country, and the
relative importance of the tributary streams.

In the morning of the 26th of May we left the little
village of Santa Barbara, where we found several Indians of
Esmeralda, who had come reluctantly, by order of the
missionary, to construct for him a house of two stories.
During the whole day we enjoyed the view of the fine
mountains of Sipapo, which rise at a distance of more than
eighteen leagues in the direction of north-north-west. The
vegetation ot the banks of the Orinoco is singularly varied
in this part of the country ; the aborescent ferns* descend
from the mountains, and mingle with the palm-trees of the
plain. We rested that night on the island of Minisi ; and,
after having passed the mouths of the little rivers Queja-
muna, Ubua, and Masao, we arrived, on the 27th of May, at
San Fernando de Atabapo. We lodged in the same house
which we had occupied a month previously, when going up
the Rio Negro. We then directed our course towards
the south, by the Atabapo and the Temi; we were now
returning from the west, having made a long circuit by the
Cassiquiare and the Upper Orinoco.

We remained only one day at San Fernando de Atabapo,
although that village, adorned as it was by the pirijao palm-
tree, with fruit like peaches, appeared to us a delicioua

* The geographical distribution of these plants is extremely singular.
Scarcely any are found on the eastern coast of Brazil. (See the interest,
ing work of Prince Maximilian of Neuwied, " Rei-.e nach HnuUien," voL
I p. 274.)

• I

480 THE CAPAEEO MONKEY.

abode. Tamepawcis* surrounded the Indian huts; in ono
of which we saw a very rare monkey, which inhabits the
banks of the Guaviare. This monkey is the caparro, which
I have made known in my " Observations on Zoology and
comparative Anatomy;" it forms, as Geoffrey believes, a
new genus (Lagothrix) between the ateles and the alouates.
The hair of this monkey is grey, like that of the marten,
and extremely soft to the touch. The ca/parro is distin-
guished by a round head, and a mild and agreeable expres-
sion of countenance. I believe the missionary Gili is the
only author who has made mention before me of this
curious animal, around which zoologists begin to group
other monkeys of Brazil. Having quitted San Fernando on
the 27th of May, we arrived, by help of the rapid current
of the Orinoco, in seven hours, at the mouth of the Bio
Mataveni. We passed the night in the open air, under the
granitic rock El Castillito, which rises in the middle of the
river, and the form of which reminded us of the ruin called
the Mouse-tower (Mausethurm), on the Rhine, opposite
Bingen. Here, as on the banks of the Atabapo, we were
struck by the sight of a small species of drosera, having
exactly the appearance of the drosera of Europe.

The Orinoco had sensibly swelled during the night ; and
the current, strongly accelerated, bore us, in ten hours,
from the mouth of the Mataveni to the Upper Great
Cataract, that of Maypures, or Quituna. The distance
which we passed over was thirteen leagues. We recalled
to mind, with much satisfaction, the scenes where we had
reposed in going up the river. We again found the Indians
who had accompanied us in our herborizations ; and we
visited anew the fine spring that issues from a rock of
stratified granite behind the house of the missionary: its
temperature was not changed more than 0*3°. From the
mouth of the Atabapo as far as that of the Apure we
seemed to be travelling as through a country which we had
long inhabited. We were reduced to the same abstinence ;
we were stung by the same mosquitos; but the certainty
of reaching in a few weeks the term of our physical
Bufferings kept up our spirits.
* Not the ourax of Cuvier (Crax pauxi, Linn,), but the Crax alector

TTTE INDIAN 2EIIEPE.

j ,- '

The passage of the canoe through the Great
obliged us to stop two days at Maypures. Father Bernardo
Zea, missionary at the Raudales, who had accompanied us to
the Rio Negro, though ill, insisted on conducting us with
his Indians as far as Atures. One of these Indians, Zerepe,
the interpreter, who had been so unmercifully punished at
the beach of Pararuma, rivetted our attention by his ap-
pearance of deep sorrow. We learned that his grief was
caused by the loss of a young girl to whom he was engaged,
and that he had lost her in consequence of false intelli-
gence which had been spread respecting the direction of our
journey. Zerepe, who was a native of Maypures, had been
brought up in the woods by his parents, who were of the
tribe of the Macos. He had brought with him to the
mission a girl of twelve years of age, whom he intended to
marry at our return from the Cataracts. The Indian girl
was little pleased with the life of the missions, and she was
told that the whites would go to the country of the Portu-
guese (Brazil), and would take Zerepe with them. Disap-
pointed in her hopes, she seized a boat, and with another
girl of her own age, crossed the Great Cataract, and fled
al monte. The recital of this courageous adventure was the
great news of the place. The affliction of Zerepe, however,
was not of long duration. Born among the Christians,
having travelled as far as the foot of the Rio Negro, under-
standing Spanish and the language of the Macos, he thought
himself superior to the people of his tribe, and he no doubt
soon forgot his forest love.

On the 31st of May we passed the rapids of Guahibos
and Garcita. The islands which rise in the middle of the
waters of the river, were overspread with the purest verdure.
The rains of winter had unfolded the spathes of the vadgiai
palm-tree, the leaves of which rise straight toward the sky.
The eye is never wearied of the view of those scenes, where;
the trees and rocks give the landscape that grand and severe'
character which we admire in the background of the pic-
tures of Salvator Rosa. We landed before sunset on the1
eastern bank of the Orinoco, at the Puerto de la Expedition,
in order to visit the cavern of Ataruipe, which is the place of
sepulchre of a whole nation destroyed. I shall attempt to
describe this cavern, so celebrated among the natives.

VOL. n. 2 I

482 THE CAVEKN OF ATAEUIPE.

"We climbed witu difficulty, and not without some dange?,
a steep rock of granite, entirely bare. It would have been
almost impossible to fix the foot on its smooth and sloping
surface, if large crystals of feldspar, resisting decomposition,
did not stand out from the rock, and furnish points of
support. Scarcely had we attained the summit of the moun-
tain when we beheld with astonishment the singular aspect
of the surrounding country. The foamy bed of the waters
is filled with an archipelago 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 aug-
ment the majesty of the scene. Immediately below us lay
a deep valley, enclosed on every side. Birds of prey an'd
goatsuckers winged their lonely flight in this inaccessible
circus. We found a pleasure in following with the eye
their fleeting shadows, as they glided slowly over the flanks
of the rock.

A narrow ridge led us to a neighbouring mountain, the
rounded summit of which supported immense blocks of
granite. These masses are more than forty or fifty feet in
diameter; and their form is so perfectly spherical, that,
as they appear to touch the soil only by a small number of
points, it might be supposed, at the least shock of an earth-
quake, they would roll into the abyss. I do not remember
to have seen any where else a similar phenomenon, amid
the decompositions of granitic soils. If the balls rested on
a rock of a different nature, as in the blocks of Jura, we
might suppose that they had been rounded by the action of
water, or thrown out by the force of an elastic fluid ; but
their position on the summit of a hill alike granitic, makes
it more probable that they owe their origin to the progres-
sive decomposition of the rock.

The most remote part of the valley is covered by a thick
forest. In this shady and solitary spot, on the declivity of
a steep mountain, the cavern of Ataruipe opens to the view.
l*t is less a cavern than a jutting rock in which the waters
have scooped a vast hollow when, in tu^ Ancient revolutions

INTERIOR OF THE CATE1W. 483

of oiir planet, they attained that height.* In this tomb of
a whole extinct tribe we soon counted nearly eix hundred
skeletons well preserved, and regularly placed. Every
skeleton reposes in a sort of basket made of the petioles
of the palm-tree. These baskets, which the natives call
mapires, have the form of a square bag. Their size is pro-
portioned to the age of the dead ; there are some for infants
cut off at the moment of their birth. "We saw them from
ten inches to three feet four inches long, the skeletons in
them being bent together. They are all ranged near each
other, and are so entire that not a rib or a phalanx is
wanting. The bones have been prepared in three different
manners, either whitened in the air and the sun, dyed red
with anoto, or, like mummies, varnished with odoriferous
resins, and enveloped in leaves of the heliconia or of the
plantain-tree. The Indians informed us that the fresh
corpse is placed in damp ground, that the flesh may be
consumed oy degrees ; some months afterwards it is taken
out, and the flesh remaining on the bones is scraped off
with sharp stones. Several hordes in Gruiana still observe
this custom. Earthen vases half-baked are found near the
mapires or baskets. They appear to contain the bones of
the same family. The largest of these vases, or funeral
urns, are five feet high, and three feet three inches long.
Their colour is greenish-grey, and their oval form is pleasing
to the eye. The handles are made in the shape of croco-
diles or serpents; the edges are bordered with painted
meanders, 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,

* I saw no vein, no hole (four) filled with crystals. The decomposi-
tion of granitic rocks, and their separation into large masses, dispersed in
the plains and valleys in the form of blocks and balls with concentric
layers, appear to favour the enlarging of these natural excavations, which
resemble real cavern*.

2 i 2

ITS SUPPOSED ANTIQUITY.

the walls of the Mexican palace of Mitla, and the vases of
ancient Greece.

"We could not acquire any precise idea of the period to
which the origin of the mapires and the painted vases,
contained in the bone-cavern of Ataruipe, can be traced.
The greater part seemed not to be more than a century
old; but it may be supposed that, sheltered from all
humidity under the influence of a uniform temperature,
the preservation of these articles would be no less perfect,
if their origin dated from a period far more remote. A
tradition circulates among the Guahibos, that the warlike
Atures, pursued by the Caribs, escaped to the rocks that
rise in the middle of the Great Cataracts ; and there that
nation, heretofore so numerous, became gradually extinct,
as well as its language. The last families of the Atures still
existed in 1767, in the time of the missionary Gili. At
the period of our voyage an old parrot was shown at
Maypures, of which the inhabitants said, and the fact is
TCttuLhv of observation, that " they did not understand what
it said, because it e.^-. -V.« *he language of the Atures."

We opened, to the great concern. ^£ our guides, several
mapires, for the purpose of examining attend v^v the form
of the skulls. They were all marked by the char;;acterigticg
of the American race, with the exception of tw£ or t
which approached indubitably to the Caucasian! jn
middle of the Cataracts, in the most inaccessible
cases are found strengthened with iron bands, an(j
with European tools, vestiges of clothes, and gla? ,s trinkets.
These articles, which have given rise to the _mos •
reports of treasures hidden by the Jesuits,
belonged to Portuguese traders who had penetrate* j
these savage countries. May we suppose that the f^us
of European race, which we saw mingled with the skeletong
of the natives, and preserved with the same care, wer.e t|ie
remains of some Portuguese travellers who had die^ Qf
sickness, or had been killed in battle? The aver
evinced by the natives for whatever is not of then- c
race renders this hypothesis little probable. -P
fugitive mestizos of the missions of the Meta and
may have come and settled near the Cataracts,

CBAXIAL CONl7>RMATTOWS. 485

women of the tribe of the Atures. Such mixed marriages
sometimes take place in this zone, though they are more
rare than in Canada, and in the whole of North America,
where hunters of European origin unite themselves with
savages, assume their habits, and sometimes acquire great
political influence.

We took several skulls, the skeleton of a child of six
or seven years old, and two of full-grown men of the nation
of the Atures, from the cavern oi Ataruipe. All these
bones, partly painted red, partly varnished with odoriferous
resins, were placed in the baskets (mapires or canastos)
which we have just described. They made almost the whole
load of a mule ; and as we knew the superstitious feelings
of the Indians in reference to the remains of the dead after
burial, we carefully enveloped the canastos in mats recently
woven. Unfortunately for us, the penetration of the Indians,
and the extreme quickness of their sense of smelling, rendered
all our precautions useless. Wherever we stopped, in the
missions of the Caribbees, amid the Llanos, between An-
gostura and Nueva Barcelona, the natives assembled round
our mules to admire the monkeys which we had purchased
at the Orinoco. These good people had scarcely touched
our baggage, when they announced the approaching death
of the beast of burden " that carried the dead." In vain
we told them that 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." We were obliged to request that the
monks would interpose their authority, to overcome the
aversion of the natives, and procure for us a change of
mules.

One of the skulls, which we took from the cavern of
Ataruipe, has appeared in the fine work published by my
old master, Blumenbach, on the varieties of the human
species. The skeletons of the Indians were lost on the
coast of Africa, together with a considerable part of our
collections, in a shipwreck, in which perished our friend
and fellow-traveller, Fray Juan Gonzales, the young monk
of the order of Saint Francis.

We withdrew in s lence from the cavern of Ataruipe.

486 ANTIQUITY OF BACES.

It was one of those calm and serene nights which are so
cc -mon in the torrid zone. The stars shone with a mild
and planetary light. Their scintillation was scarcely sen-
sible at the horizon, which seemed illumined by the great
nebula? of the southern hemisphere. An innumerable mul-
titude 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 cavern we stopped
several times to admire the beauty of this singular scene.
The odoriferous vanilla and festoons 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. We descended towards the river, to take tho
road to the mission, where we arrived late in the night.
Our imagination was struck by all we had just seen.
Occupied continually by the present, in a country where
the traveller is tempted to regard human society as a new
institution, he is more powerfully interested by remem-
brances of times past. These remembrances were not
indeed of a distant date; but in all that is monumental
antiquity is a relative idea, and we easily confound what
is ancient with what is obscure and problematic. The
Egyptians considered the historical remembrances of the
Greeks as very recent. If the Chinese, or, as they prefer
calling themselves, the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire,
could have communicated with the priests of Heliopolis,
they would have smiled at those pretensions of the Egyp-
tians to antiquity. Contrasts not less striking are found
in the north of Europe and of Asia, in the New "World,
and in every region where the human race has not pre-
served a long consciousness of itself. The migration of
the Toltecs, the most ancient historical event on the table-
land of Mexico, dates only in the sixth century of our
era. The introduction of a good system of intercalation,
and the reform of the calendars, the indispensable basis of
an accurate chronology, took place in the year 1091. These
epochs, which to us appear so modern, fall on fabulous
times, when we reflect on the history of our species between
the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazon. We there see
symbolic figures sculptured on the rocks, but nc tradition

DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 487

throws light upon their origin. In the hot part of Ghiiana
we can go back only to the period when the Castilian and
Portuguese conquer m 's, and more recently peaceful monks,
penetrated amid so many barbarous nations.

It appears, that, to the north of the Cataracts, in the
strait oi Baraguan, there are caverns filled with bonea,
similar to those I have just described: but I was informed
of this fact only after my return; our Indian pilots did not
mention it when we landed at the strait. These tombs no
doubt have given rise to a fable of the Ottomacs, according
to which the granitic and solitary rocks of Baraguan, the
forms of which are very singular, are regarded as the ' grand-
fathers,' the ' ancient chiefs' of the tribe. The custom of
separating the flesh from the bones, very anciently practised
by the Massagetes, is still known among several hordes of
the Orinoco. It is even asserted, and with some probability,
that the Guaraons plunge their dead bodies under water
enveloped in nets; and, that the small caribe-fishes, of which
we saw everywhere an innumerable quantity, devour in a
few days the muscular flesh, and thus prepare the skeleton.
It may be supposed, that this operation can be practised
only in places where crocodiles are not common. Some
tribes, for instance the Tamanacs, are accustomed to lay
waste the fields of a deceased rektive, and cut down the
trees which he has planted. The% say, " that the sight of
objects, which belonged to their relation, makes them melan-
choly." They like better to efface than to preserve remem-
brances. These effects of Indian sensibility are very detri-
mental to agriculture, and the monks oppose with energy
these superstitious practices, to which the natives converted
to Christianity still adhere in the missions.

The tombs of the Indians of the Orinoco have not been
very closely examined, because they do not contain valuable
articles like those of Peru ; and even on the spot no faith is
now lent to the chimerical ideas, which were heretofore
formed of the wealth of the ancient inhabitants of El Dorado.
The thirst of gold everywhere precedes the desire of instruc-
tion, and a taste for researches into antiquity; in all the
mountainous part of South America, from Merida and Santa
Marta to the table-lands of Quito and Upper Peru, the
labours of absolute miuii^ have been undertaken to discover

488 ATTACHMENT TO BURIAL-PL A.CE8.

tombs, or, as the Creoles say, employing a word altered
from the Inca language, guacas. When in Peru, at Man-
cichi, I went into the ffuaca, from which, in the sixteenth
century, masses of gold of great value were extracted. !No
trace of the precious metals has been found in the caverns
which have served the natives of Guiana for ages as sepul-
chres. This circumstance proves, that, even at the period
when the Caribs, and other travelling nations, made incur-
sions to the south-west, gold had flowed in very small quan-
tities from the mountains of Peru towards the eastern plains.
Wherever the granitic rocks do not present any of those
large cavities caused by their decomposition, or by an accu-
mulation of their blocks, the Indians deposit their dead in
the earth. The hammock (chinch orro), a kind of net in
which the deceased had reposed during his life, serves for
a coffin. This net is fastened tight round the body, a hole
is dug in the hut, and there the body is laid. This is the
most usual method, according to the account of the mis-
sionary Gili, and it accords with what I myself learned from
Father Zea. I do not believe that there exists one tumulus
in Guiana, not even in the plains of the Cassiquiare and
the Essequibo. Some, however, are to be met with in the
savannahs of Yarinas, as in Canada, to the west of the
Alleghanies.* It seems remarkable enough that, notwith-
standing the extreme abundance of wood in those countries,
the natives of the Orinoco were as little accustomed as
the ancient Scythians to burn the dead. Sometimes they
formed funeral piles for that purpose; but only after a
battle, when the number of the dead was considerable. In
1748, the Parecas burned not only the bodies of their
enemies, the Tamanacs, but also those of their own
people who fell on the field of battle. The Indians of
South America, like all nations in a state of nature, are
strongly attached to the spots where the bones of their
fathers repose. This feeling, which a great writer has
beautifully painted in the episode of Atala, is cherished
in all its primitive ardour by the Chinese. These people,

* Mummies and skeletons contained in baskets were recently discovered
in a cavern in the United States. It is believed, they belong to a race oi
men analogous to that of the Sandwich Islands. The description of these
tombs has gome similitude with that of the tombs of Ataruipe.

RATTDAL OF ATFRES. 489

among whom everything is the produce of art, or rather of
the most ancient civilization, dc not change their dwelling
without carrying along with ohem the bones of their
ancestors. Coffins are seen deposited on the banks ot
great rivers, to be transported, with the furniture of the
family," to a remote province. These removals of bones,
heretofore more common among the savages of North
America, are not practised among the tribes of Guiana ; but
these are not nomad, like nations who live exclusively by
hunting.

We staid at the mission of Atures only during the time
necessary for passing the canoe through the Great Cataract.
The bottom of our frail bark had become so thin that it re-
quired great care to prevent it from splitting. We took leave
of the missionary, Bernardo Zea, who remained at Atures,
after having accompanied us during two months, and shared
all our 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 our second visit.
The greater part of the Indians could not leave their ham-
mocks, and we 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. We
had hitherto escaped these malignant fevers, which, I
believe to be always contagious.

We ventured to pass in our canoe through the latter half
of the Eaudal of Atures. We landed here and there, to
climb upon the rocks, which like narrow dikes joined the
islands to one another. Sometimes the waters force their
way over the dikes, sometimes they fall 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 solitary haunts the rock-manakin with
gilded plumage (Pipra rupicola), one of the most beautiful
birds of the tropics, builds its nest. The llaudalito of
Carucari is caused by an accumulation of enormous blocks
of granite, several of which are spheroids of five or six feet
in diameter, and they are piled together in such a manner,
as to form spacious caverns. We entered one of these
uiverns to gather the confervas that were spread over the

4-9C DAGGERS OF THE RIVER.

clefts and humid sides of the rock. This spot displayed on«
of the most extraordinary scenes of nature, that \ve had
contemplated on the banks of the Orinoco. The river rolled
its waters turbulently over our heads. It seemed b'ke the
sea dashing against reefs of rocks ; but at the entrance 01
the cavern we 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 successive filtrations. We 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 communicate at great distances with each other.

The cascades of Europe, forming only one fall, or several
falls close to each other, can never produce such variety in
the shifting landscape. This variety is peculiar to rapids,
to a succession of small cataracts several miles in length,
to rivers that force their way across rocky dikes and
accumulated blocks of granite. "We had the opportunity of
viewing this extraordinary sight longer than we wished.
Our boat was to coast the eastern bank of a narrow island,
and to take us in again after a long circuit. We passed an
hour and a half in vain expectation of it. Night approached,
and with it a tremendous storm. It rained with violence.
We began to fear that our frail bark had been wrecked
against the rocks, and that the Indians, conformably to
their habitual indifference for the evils of others, had
returned tranquilly to the mission. There were only three
of us : we were completely wet, and uneasy respecting the
fate of our boat : it appeared far from agreeable to pass,
without sleep, a long night of the torrid zone, amid the
noise of the Raudales. M. Bonpland proposed to leave me
in the island with Don Nicolas Soto, and to swim across the
branches of the river, that are separated by the granitic
dikes. He hoped to reach the forest, and seek assistance at
Atures from Father Zea. We dissuaded him with difficulty
from undertaking this hazardous enterprise. He knew
little of the labyrinth of small channels, into which the
Orinoco is divided. Most of them have strong whirlpools,
and what passed before our eyes, while we were deliberating
on our situation, proved sufficiently, that the natives had
decsived us respecting the absence of crocodiles in the

CABICIIANA. 491

cataracts. The little monkeys which we had carried along
with us for months, were deposited on the point of our
island. Wet by the rains, and sensible of the least lowering
of the temperature, these delicate animals sent forth
plaintive cries, and attracted to the spot two crocodiles, the
size and leaden colour of which denoted their great age.
Their unexpected appearance made us reflect on the danger
we had incurred by bathing, at our first passing by the
mission of Atures, in the middle of the Raudal. After long
waiting, the Indians at length arrived at the close of day.
The natural coffer-dam, by which they had endeavoured to
descend, 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 passage in this
labyrinth of rocks and islands. Happily our canoe was not
damaged, and in less than half an hour our instruments,
provision, and animals, were embarked.

We pursued our course during a part of the night, to
pitch our tent again in the island of Panumana. We recog-
nized with pleasure the spots where we had botanized when
going up the Orinoco. We examined once more on the
beach of Guachaco that small formation of sandstone, which
reposes directly on granite. Its position is the same as that
of the sandstone which Burckhardt observed at the entrance
of Nubia, superimposed on the granite of Syene. We passed,
without visiting it, the new mission of San Borga, where (as
we learned with regret a few days after) the little colony of
Guahibos had fled al monte, from the chimerical fear that we
should carry them off, to sell them as poitos, or slaves.
After having passed the rapids of Tabaje, and the Raudal of
Cariven, near the mouth of the great Kio Meta, we arrived
without accident at Carichana. The missionary received us
with that kind hospitality which he extended to us on our
first passage. The sky was unfavourable for astronomical ob-
servations ; we had obtained some new ones in the two Great
Cataracts ; but thence, as far as the mouth of the Apure,
we were obliged to renounce the attempt. M. Bonpland
had the satisfaction at Carichana of dissecting a manati more
than nine feet long. It was a female, and the flesh appeared
to us not unsavoury. I have epoken iu another place of tin

492 INDIAN PREJUDICES.

manner of catching this herbivorous ceiacea. The PiraoaSj
pome families of whom inhabit the mission of Carichana,
detest this animal to such a degree, that they hid them-
selves, to avoid being obliged to touch it, whilst it was
being conveyed to our hut. They said, that the people of
their tribe die infallibly, when they eat of it. This preju
dice is the more singular, as the neighbours of the Piraoas,
the Gruamos and the Ottomacs, are very fond of the flesh of
the manati. The flesh of the crocodile is also an object of
horror to some tribes, and of predilection to others.

The island of Cuba furnishes a fact little known in the
history of the manati. South of the port of Xagua, several
miles from the coast, there are springs of fresh water in the
middle of the sea. They are supposed to be owing to a
hydrostatic pressure existing in subterraneous channels,
communicating with the lofty mountains of Trinidad. Small
vessels sometimes take in water there ; and, what is well
worthy of observation, large manatis remain habitually in
those spots. I have already called the attention of natu-
ralists to the crocodiles which advance from the mouth of
rivers far into the sea. Analogous circumstances may have
caused, in the ancient catastrophes of our planet, that sin-
gular mixture of pelagian and fluviatile bones and petrifac-
tions, which is observed in some rocks of recent formation.

Our stay at Carichana was very useful in recruiting our
strength after our fatigues. M. Bonpland bore with him
the germs of a cruel malady ; he needed repose ; but as the
delta of the tributary streams included between the Horeda
and Paruasi is covered with a rich vegetation, he made long
herbalizations, and was wet through several times in a day.
"We found, fortunately, in the house of the missionary, the
most attentive care ; we were supplied with bread made
of maize flour, and even with milk. The cows yield milk
plentifully enough in the lower regions of the torrid zone,
wherever good pasturage is found. I call attention to this
fact, because local circumstances have spread through the
Indian Archipelago the prejudice of coisidering hot cli-
mates as repugnant to the secretion of milk. We may
conceive the indifference of the inhabitants of the New
World for £ milk diet, fchs country having been originally

SLIGHT SLOPE OF THE RIVER. 493

destitute of animals capable of furnishing it*; but hovv can
we avoid being astonished at this indifference in the
immense Chinese population, living in great part beyond
the tropics, and in the same latitude with the nomad and
pastoral tribes of central Asia ? If the Chinese have ever
been a pastoral people, how have they lost the tastes and
habits so intimately connected with that state, which
precedes agricultural institutions ? These questions are
interesting with respect both to the history of the nations
of oriental Asia, and to the ancient communications that
are supposed to have existed between that part of the world
and the north of Mexico.

We went down the Orinoco in two days, from Carichana
to the mission of Uruana, after having again passed the
celebrated strait of Baraguan. "We stopped several times to
determine the velocity of the river, and its temperature at
the surface, which was 27*4° . The velocity was found to
be two feet in a second (sixty-two toises in 3' 6"), in places
where the bed of the Orinoco was more than twelve thou-
sand feet broad, and from ten to twelve fathoms deep. The
slope of the river is in fact extremely gentle from the Great
Cataracts to Angostura ; and, if a barometric measurement
were wanting, the difference of height might be determined
by approximation, by measuring from time to time the
velocity of the stream, and the extent of the section in
breadth and depth. "We had some observations of the stars
at Uruana. I found the latitude of the mission to be 7°
8'; but the results from different stars left a doubt of
more than 1'. The stratum of mosquitos, which hovered
over the ground, was so thick that I could not succeed in
rectifying properly the artificial horizon. I tormented my-

* The rein deer are not domesticated in Greenland as they are in
Lapland ; and the Esquimaux care little for their milk. The bisons
taken very young, accustom themselves, on the west of the Alleghanies,
to graze with herds of European cows. The females in some districts of
India yield a little milk, but the natives have never thought of milking
them. What is the origin of that fabulous story related by Gotuara
(chap. 43, p. 36). according to which the first Spanish navigators saw, on
the coast of South Carolina, " stags led to the savannahs by herdsmen ?"
The female bisons, according to Mr. Buchanan and the philosophical
historian of the Indian Archipelago, Mr. Crawford, yield more milk than
common cows.

494 MAJESTIC BHTEE SCEITEET.

self in vain ; and regretted that I was not provided with a
mercurial horizon. On the 7th of June, good absolute alti-
tudes of the sun gave me 69° 40' for the longitude. "We
had advanced from Esmeralda 1° 17' toward the west, and
this chronometric determination merits entire confidence on
on account of the double observations, made in going and
returning, at the Great Cataracts, and at the confluence of
the Atabapo and of the Apure.

The situation of the mission of Uruana is extremely pic-
turesque. The little Indian vulage stands at the foot of a
lofty granitic mountain. Bocks everywhere appear in the
form of pillars above the forest, rising higher than the tops
of the tallest trees. The aspect of the Orinoco is nowhere
more majestic, than when viewed from the hut of the mis-
sionary, Fray Ramon Bueno. It is more than two thousand
six hundred toises broad, and it runs without any winding,
like a vast canal, straight toward the east. Two long and
narrow islands (Isla de Uruana and Isla vieja de la Manteca)
contribute to give extent to the bed of the river ; the two
banks are parallel, and we cannot call it divided into differ-
ent branches. The mission is inhabited by the Ottomacs,
a tribe in the rudest state, and presenting one of the most
extraordinary physiological phenomena. They eat earth;
that is, they swallow every day, during several months, very
considerable quantities, to appease hunger, and this practice
does not appear to have any injurious effect on their health.
Though we could stay only one day at Uruana, this short
space of time sufficed to make us acquainted with the pre-
paration of the poya, or balls of earth. I also found some
traces of this vitiated appetite among the Gruamos ; and be-
tween the confluence ol the Meta and the Apure, where
everybody speaks of dirt-eating as of a thing anciently
known. I shall here confine myself to an account of what
we ourselves saw or heard from the missionary, who had
been doomed to live for twelve years among the savage and
turbulent tribe of the Ottomacs.

The inhabitants of Uruana belong to those nations of the
savannahs called wandering Indians (Indios andantes), who,
more difficult to civilize than the nations of the forest
(Indios del monte), have a decided aversion to cultivate the
land, and live almost exclusively by hunting and fishing.

THE CrSTOM OF DIBT-EAT .KG. 405

Fhey are men of very robust constitution ; but ill-looking,
savage, vindictive, and passionately fond of fermented liquors.
They are omnivorous animals in the highest degree; and
therefore the other Indians, who consider them as barba-
rians, have a common saying, " nothing is so loathsome but
that an Ottomac will eat it." While the waters of the
Orinoco and its tributary streams are low, the Ottomaca
subsist on fish and turtles. The former they kill witli sur-
prising dexterity, by shooting them with an arrow when
they appear at the surface of the water. "When the rivera
swell fishing almost entirely ceases.* It is then very diffi-
cult to procure fish, which often fails the poor missionaries,
on fast-days as well as flesh-days, though all the young
Indians are under the obligation of " fishing for the con-
vent." During the period of these inundations, which last
two or three months, the Ottomacs swallow a prodigious
quantity of earth. We 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
l lie Ottomacs eat, is a very fine and unctuous clay, of a
yellowish grey colour; and, when being slightly baked at
the fire, the hardened crust has a tint inclining to red,
owing to the oxide of iron which is mingled with it. We
brought away some of this earth, which we took from the
winter-provision of the Indians; and it ia a mistake to
suppose that it is steatitic, and that it contains magnesia.
Ynuquelin did not discover any traces of that substance
in it : but he found that it contained more silex than alumina,
and three or four per cent of lime.

The Ottomacs do not eat every kind of clay indifferently ;
they choose the alluvial beds or strata, which contain the
most unctuous earth, and the smoothest to the touch. I
inquired of the missionary whether the moistened clay were
made to undergo that peculiar decomposition which is indi-
cated by a disengagement of carbonic acid and sulphuretted
hydrogen, and which is designated in every language by the
term of putrefaction ; but he assured us, that the natives
neither cause the clay to rot, nor do they mingle it with

* In South America, as in Egypt and Nubia, the swelling of the rivers,
which occurs periodically in every part of the torrid zone, is erroneous!)
attr.t.-uU d lo the melting of the snow*.

496 PREVALENCE OF THE PRACTICE.

tfour of maize, oil of turtle's eggs, or fat of the crccodile.
We ourselves examined, both at the Orinoco and after our
return to Paris, the balls of earth which we brought away
with us, and found no trace of the mixture of any organic
substance, whether oily or farinaceous. The savage regards
every thing as nourishing that appeases hunger: when,
therefore, you inquire of an Ottomac on what he subsists
during the two months when the river is at its highest flood
he shows you his balls of clayey earth. This he calls his
principal food at the period when he can seldom procure a
lizard, a root of fern, or a dead fish swimming at the surface
of the water. If necessity forte the Indians to eat earth
during two months (and from three quarters to five quarters
of a pound in twenty-four hours), he eats it from choice
during the rest of the year. Every day in the season of
drought, when fishing is most abundant, he scrapes his balls
of poya, and mingles a little clay with his other aliment.
It is most surprising that the Ottomacs do not become lean
by swallowing such quantities of earth: they are, on the
contrary, extremely robust. The missionary Fray Ramon
Bueno asserts, that he never remarked any alteration in the
health of the natives at the period of the great risings of the
Orinoco.

The Ottomacs during some months eat daily three-quarters
of a pound of clay slightly hardened by fire, but which they
moisten before swallowing it. It has not been possible to
verify hitherto with precision how much nutritious vegetable
or animal matter they take in a week at the same time; but
they attribute the sensation of satiety which they feel, to
the clay, and not to the wretched aliments which they take
with it occasionally.

No physiological phenomenon being entirely insulated, it
may be interesting to examine several analogous phenomena,
which I have been able to collect. I observed everywhere
within the torrid zone, in a great number of individuals,
children, women, and sometimes even full-gr wn men, an
inordinate and almost irresistible desire of swallowing earth ;
not an alkaline or calcareous earth, to neutralize (as it is said)
acid juices, but a fat clay, unctuous, and exhaling a strong
smell. It is often found necessary to tie the children's
hamls or to confine them, to prevent their eating earth.

THE CUSTOM IB AFRICA. 497

when the rain ceases to fall. At the viJage of Banco, on
the bank of the river Magdalena, I saw the Indian women
who make pottery continually swallowing great pieces of
clay. These women were not in a state of pregnancy; and
they affirmed, that earth is an aliment which they ao not
find hurtful. In other American tribes, people soon fall
sick, and waste away, when they yield too much to this
mania of eating earth. We found at the mission of San
Borja an Indian child of the Guahiba nation, who was as
thin as a skeleton. The mother informed us that the little
girl was reduced to this lamentable state of atrophy in conse-
quence of a disordered appetite, she having refused during four
months to take almost any other food than clay. Yet San
Borja is only twenty-five leagues distant from the mission of
Uruana, inhabited by that tribe of the Ottomacs, who, from
the effect no doubt of a habit progressively acquired, swallow
the poya without experiencing any pernicious effects. Father
Gumilla asserts, that the Ottomacs take as an aperient, oil,
or rather the melted fat of the crocodile, when they feel any
gastric obstructions; but the missionary whom we found
among them was little disposed to confirm this assertion.
It may be asked, why the mania of eating earth is much
more rare in the frigid and temperate than in the torrid
zones ; and why in Europe it is found only among women
in a state of pregnancy, and sickly children. This difference
between hot and temperate climates arises perhaps only
from the inert state of the functions of the stomach, caused
by strong cutaneous perspiration. It has been supposed
to be observed, that the inordinate taste for eating earth
augments among the African slaves, and becomes more
pernicious, when they are restricted to a regimen purely
vegetable and deprived of spirituous liquors.

The negroes on the coast of Guinea delight in eating a
yellowish earth, which they call caouac. The slaves who are
taken to America endeavour to indulge in this habit ; but it
proves detrimental to their health. They say, that the
earth of the West Indies is not so easy of digestion as that
of their country." Thibaut de Chanvalon, in his Voyage to
Martinico, expresses himself very judiciously on this patho-
logical phenomenon. "Another cause," he says, "of this
pain in the stomach is, that several of the negroes, who come

vor,. ii 2 K

498 EARTH-EATING lls" ASIA,

from the coast of Guinea, eat earth ; not from a depraved
taste, or in consequence of disease, but from a habit con-
tracted at home in Africa, where they eat, they say, a par-
ticular earth, the taste of which they find agreeable, without
suffering any inconvenience. They seek in our islands for
the earth most similar to this, and prefer a yellowish red
volcanic tufa. It is sold secretly in our public markets ;
but this is an abuse which the police ought to correct. The (
negroes who have this habit are so fond of caouac, that no
chastisement will prevent their eating it."

In the Indian Archipelago, at the island of Java, Labil-
lardiere saw, between Surabaya and Samarang, little square
and reddish cakes exposed for sale. These cakes called
tanaampo, were cakes of clay, slightly baked, which the
natives eat with relish. The attention of physiologists,
since my return from the Orinoco, having been powerfully
directed to these phenomena of geopTiagy, M. Leschenault,
(one of the naturalists of the expedition to the Antartic re-
gions under the command of captain Baudin) has published
some curious details on the tanaampo, or ampo, of the Java-
nese. "The reddish and somewhat ferruginous clay," lie
says " which the inhabitants of Java are fond of eating oc-
casionally, is spread on a plate of iron, and baked, after
having been rolled into little cylinders in the form of the
bark of cinnamon. In this state it takes the name of ampo»
and is sold in the public markets. This clay has a peculiar
taste, which is owing to the baking : it is very absorbent,
and adheres to the tongue, which it dries. In general it is
only the Javanese women who eat the ampo, either in the
time of pregnancy, or in order to grow thin ; the absence
of plumpness being there regarded as a kind of beauty.
The use of this earth is fatal to health ; the women lose
their appetite imperceptibly, and take only with relish a
very small quantity of food ; but the desire of becoming thin,
and of preserving a slender shape, induces them to brave
these dangers, and maintains the credit of the ampo." The
savage inhabitants of New Caledonia also, to appease their
hunger in times of scarcity, eat great pieces of a friable Lapis
ollaris. Vauquelin analysed this stone, and found in it,
beside magnesia and silex in equal portions, a small quantity
of oxide of copper. M. Groldberry had seen the negroes in

AND IN MANY OTHER PLACES. 4D9

Africa, in the islands of Bunck and Los Idolos, eat a earth
of which he had himself eaten, without being incommoded
by it, and which also was a white and friable steatite.
These examples of earth-eating in the torrid zone appear
very strange. We are struck by the anomaly of finding a
taste, which might seem to belong only to the inhabitants of
the most sterile regions, prevailing among races of rude
and indolent men, who live in the finest and most fertile
countries on the globe. "We saw at Popayan, and in several
mountainous parts of Peru, lime reduced to a very fine
powder, sold in the public markets to the natives among
other articles of food. This powder, when eaten, is mingled
with coca, that is, with the leaves of the Erythroxylon peru-
vianum. It is well known, that Indian messengers take no
other aliment for whole days than lime and coca : both
excite the secretion of saliva, and of the gastric jtice ; they
take away the appetite, without affording any nourishment
to the body. In other parts of South America, on the
coast of Rio de la Hacha, the Guajiros swallow lime alone,
without adding any vegetable matter to it. They carry with
them a little box filled with lime, as we do snuff-boxes, and
as in Asia people carry a betel-box. This American custom
excited the curiosity of the first Spanish navigators. Lime
blackens the teeth; and in the Indian Archipelago, a»
among several American hordes, to blacken the teeth is to-
beautify them. In the cold regions of the kingdom of
Quito, the natives of Tigua eat habitually from choice, and
without any injurious consequences, a very fine clay, mixed
with quartzose sand. This clay, suspended in water, renders
it milky. We find in their huts large vessels filled with
this water, which serves as a beverage, and which the In-
dians call agua or leche de llanka*

When we reflect on these facts, we perceive that the
appetite for clayey, magnesian, and calcareous earth is most
common among the people of the torrid zone ; that it is
not always a cause of disease ; and that some tribes eat earth
from choice, whilst others (as the Ottomacs in America,
and the inhabitants of New Caledonia, in the Pacific) eat
it from want, and to appease hunger. A great number of

* Water or milk of clay. Llanka is a word of the general language
rf the Incas, signifying fine clay.

2 K 2

500 "HYSiOLimY or UUJTGEB.

physiological phenomena prove that a temporary cessation
of 'hunger may be produced though the substances that aro
submitted to the organs of digestion may not be, properly
speaking, nutritive. The earth of the Ottomacs, composed
of alumine and silex, furnishes probably nothing, or almost
nothing, to the composition of the organs of man. These
organs contain lime and magnesia in the bones, in the
lymph of the thoracic duct, in the colouring matter of the
blood, and in white hairs ; they afford very small quantities
of silex in black hair; and, according to Vauquelin, but
a few atoms of alumine in the bones, though this is con-
tained abundantly in the greater part of those vegetable
substances which form part of our nourishment. It is not
the same with man as with animated beings placed lower
in the scale of organization. In the former, assimilation is
exerted only on those substances that enter essentially into
the composition of the bones, the muscles, and the medul-
lary matter of the nerves and the brain. Plants, on the
contrary, draw from the soil the salts that are found acci-
dentally mixed in it ; and their fibrous texture varies
according to the nature of the earths that predominate in
the spots which they inhabit. An object well worthy of
research, and which has long fixed my attention, is the
small number of simple substances (earthy and metallic)
that enter into the composition of animated beings, and
which alone appear fitted to maintain what we may call the
chemical movement of vitality.

We must not confound the sensations of hunger with
that vague feeling of debility which is produced by want of
nutrition, and by other pathologic causes. The sensation
of hunger ceases long before digestion takes place, or the
chyme is converted into chyle. It ceases either by a
nervous and tonic impression exerted by the aliments on
the coats of the stomach ; or, because the digestive appa-
ratus is filled with substances that excite the mucous mem-
branes to an abundant secretion of the gastric juice. To
this tonic impression on the nerves of the stomach the
prompt and salutary effects of what are called nutritive
medicaments may be attributed, such as chocolate, and
every substance that gently stimulates and nourishes at
the same time. It is the absence of a nervous stimulant

OTHER SUBSTANCES EMPLOYED. 501

that renders the solitary use of a nutritive substance (as
starch, gum, or sugar) less favourable to assimilation, and
to the reparation of the losses which the human body under-
goes. Opium, which is not nutritive, is employed with
success in Asia, in times of great scarcity; it acts as a
tonic. But when the matter which fills the stomach can
be regarded neither as an aliment, that is, as proper to be
assimilated, nor as a tonic stimulating the nerves, the
cessation of hunger is probably owing only to the secretion
of the gastric juice. We here touch upon a problem of
physiology which has not been sufficiently investigated.
Hunger is appeased, the painful feeling of inanition ceases,
when the stomach is filled. It is said that this viscus
stands in need of ballast; and every language furnishes
figurative expressions, which convey the idea that a mecha-
nical distension of the stomach causes an agreeable sen-
sation. Recent works of physiology still speak of the
painful contraction which the stomach experiences during
hunger, the friction of its sides against one another, and
the action of the gastric juice on the texture of the diges-
tive apparatus. The observations of Bichat, and more par-
ticularly the fine experiments of Majendie, are in contra-
diction to these superannuated hypotheses. After twenty-
four, forty-eight, or even sixty hours of abstinence, no
contraction of the stomach is observed ; it is only on the
fourth or fifth day that this organ appears to change in a
small degree its dimensions. The quantity of the gastric
juice diminishes with the duration of abstinence. It is
probable that this juice, far from accumulating, is digested
as an alimentary substance. If a cat or dog be made to
swallow a substance which is not susceptible of being
digested, a pebble for instance, a mucous and acid liquid
is formed abundantly in the cavity of the stomach, some-
what resembling in its composition the gastric juice of the
human body. It appears to me very probable, that when
the want of aliments compels the Ottomacs and the inha-
bitants of New Caledonia to swallow clay and steatite
during a part of the year, these earths occasion a powerful
secretion of the gastric and pancreatic juices in the digestive
apparatus of these people. The observations which I made
on the banks of the Orinoco, have been recently confirmed

AMOJTG ANIMALS.

by the direct experiments of two distinguished young phy-
siologists, MM. Cloquet and Breschet. After long fasting
they ate as much as five ounces of a silvery green and very
flexible laminar talc. Their h linger was completely satisfied,
and they felt no inconvenience from a kind of food to which
their organs were unaccustomed. It is known that great
use is still made in the East of the bolar and sigillated
earths of Lemnos, which are clay mingled with oxide of
iron. In Germany, the workmen employed in the quarries
of sandstone worked at the mountain of Kiffhauser spread a
very fine clay upon their bread, instead of butter, which they
call steinlutter* (stone-butter).

The state of perfect health enjoyed by the Ottomacs
during the time when they use little muscular exercise, and
are subjected to so extraordinary a regimen, is a pheno-
menon difficult to be explained. It can be attributed only
to a. habit, prolonged from generation to generation. The
structure of the digestive apparatus differs much in animals
that feed exclusively on flesh or on seeds ; it is even pro-
bable that the gastric juice changes its nature, according as
it is employed in effecting the digestion of animal or vege-
table substances ; yet we are able gradually to change the
regimen of herbivorous and carnivorous animals, to feed
the former with flesh, and the latter with vegetables. Man
can accustom himself to an extraordinary abstinence, and
find it but little painful, if he employ tonic or stimulating
substances (various drugs, small quantities of opium, betel,
tobacco, or leaves of coca) ; or if he supply his stomach, from
time to time, with earthy insipid substances, that are not
in themselves fit for nutrition. Like man in a savage state,
some animals, when pressed by hunger in winter, swallow
clay or friable steatites ; such are the wolves in the north-
east of Europe, the rein-deer, and, according to the testi-
mony of M. Patrin, the kids in Siberia. The Russian
hunters, on the banks of the Yenisei and the Amour, use
a clayey matter, which they call rock-butter, as a bait. The
animals scent this clay from afar, and are fond of the smell ;
as the clays of bucaro, known in Portugal and Spain by the

* This stein butter must not be confounded with the mountain butter
(bergbutter), which is a saline substance, produced by a decconipositiou
wl aluminous schists.

STONES SWALLOWED BY BIRDS. 503

fiaine of odoriferous earths (tierras olorosas), have an odour
agreeable to women.* Brown relates, in his History of
Jamaica, that the crocodiles of South America swallow
small stones and pieces of very hard wood, when the lakes
which they inhabit are dry, or when they are in want of
food. M. Bonpland and I observed in a crocodile, eleven
feet long, which we dissected at Batallez, on the banks of
the Bio Magdalena, that the stomach of this reptile con-
tained half-digested fish, and rounded fragments of granite
three or four inches in diameter. It is difficult to admit
that the crocodiles swallow these stony masses accidentally,
for they do not catch fish with their lower jaw resting on
the ground at the bottom of the river. The Indians have
framed the absurd hypothesis that these indolent animals
like to augment their weight, that they may have less
trouble in diving. I rather think that they load their
stomach with large pebbles, to excite an abundant secre-
tion of the gastric juice. The experiments of Majendie
render this explanation extremely probable. "With respect
to the habit of the granivorous birds, particularly the galli-
nacea3 and ostriches, of swallowing sand and small pebbles,
it has been hitherto attributed to an instinctive desire of
accelerating the trituration of the aliments in a muscular
and thick stomach.

We have mentioned, that tribes of Negroes on the
Gambia mingle clay with their rice. Some families of Otto-
macs were perhaps formerly accustomed to cause the maize
and other farinaceous seeds to rot in their poya, in order to
eat earth and amylaceous matter together : possibly it was a
preparation of this kind, that Father Gumilla described in-
distinctly in the first volume of his work, when he affirms,
" that the Guamos and the Ottomacs feed upon earth only
because it is impregnated with the sustancia del maiz, (sub-
stance of maize) and the fat of the cayman." I have already
observed that neither the present missionary of Uruana, nor
Pray Juan Gonzales, who lived long in those countries, knew
anything of this mixture of animal and vegetable substances

* Bttcaro (vas fictile odoriferum). People are fond of drinking out of
these vessels on account of the smell of the clay. The women of the
province of Alentejo acquire a habit of masticating the bucaro earth ; ai d
feel a great privation when they cannot indulge this vitiated taste.

50-1 INTOXICATING POWDERS

with the poya. Perhaps Father Q-umilla has confounded
the preparation of the earth, which the natives swallow, with
the custom they still retain (of which M, Bonpland acquired
the certainty on the spot) of burying in the ground the
beans of a species of uiimosacea,* to cause them to enter
into decomposition, so as to reduce them into a white
bread, savoury, but difficult of digestion. I repeat that the
balls of poya, which we took from the winter stores of the
Indians, contained no trace of animal fat, or of amylaceous
matter. Grumilla being one of the most credulous travellers
we know, it almost perplexes us to credit facts, which even
he has thought fit to reject. In the second volume of
his work, he however gainsays a great part of what he
advanced in the first ; he no longer doubts, that " half at
least (a lo menos) of the bread of the Ottomacs and the
Gruamos is clay." He asserts, "that children and full
grown persons not only eat this bread without suffering in
their health, but also great pieces of pure clay (muchos ter-
rones de pura greda.y He adds, that those who feel a
weight on the stomach physic themselves with the fat of the
crocodile, which restores their appetite, and enables them to
continue to eat pure earth. t It is certain, that the Gruamos
are very fond, if not of the fat, at least of the flesh of the
crocodile, which appeared to us white, and without any smell
of musk. In Sennaar, according to Burckhardt, it is equally
esteemed, and sold in the markets.

The little village of Uruana is more difficult to govern
than most of the other missions. The Ottomacs are a rest-
less, turbulent people, with unbridled passions. They are
not only fond to excess of the fermented liquors prepared from
cassava and maize, and of palm-wine, but they throw them-
selves into a peculiar state of intoxication, we might say of
madness, by the use of the powder of niopo. They gather
the long pods of a mimosacea, which we have made known
by the name of Acacia niopO, J cut them into pieces, moisten

* Of the genus Inga. f Gumilla, vol. ii, p. 260 .

J It is an acacia with very delicate leaves, and not an Inga. We
brought home another species of mimosacea (the chiga of the Ottomacs,
and the tepa of the Maypures), that yields seeds, the flour of which ia
eaten at Uruana like cassava. From this flour the chiga bread is pre-
paid, which is so common at Cunariche, and on the banks of the Lowei

r8£D BY TDE I1TDIANB. 505

them, and cause them to ferment. When the softened
seeds begin to grow black, they are kneaded like a paste,
mixed with some flour of cassava and lime procured from
the shell of a helix, and the whole mass is exposed to a very
brisk fire, on a gridiron made of hard wood. The hardened
paste takes the form of small cakes. When it is to be used,
it is reduced to a fine powder, and placed on a dish five or six
inches wide. The Ottomac holds this dish, which has a
handle, in his right hand, while he inhales the niopo by the
nose, through the forked bone of a bird, the two extremities of
which are applied to the nostrils. This bone, without which
the Ottomac believes that he could not take this kind of
snuff, is seven inches long : it appeared to me to be the leg-
bone of a large sort of plover. The niopo is so stimulating,
that the smallest portions of it produce violent sneezing in
those who are not accustomed to its nse. Father Gumilla
says, " This diabolical powder of the Ottomacs, furnished by
an arborescent tobacco-plant, intoxicates them through the
nostrils (emboracha por las narices), deprives them of reason
for some hours, and renders them furious in battle." How-
ever varied may be the family of the leguminous plants in the
chemical and medical properties of their seeds, juices, and
roots, we cannot believe, from what we know hitherto of the
group of mimosacese, that it is principally the pod of the
Acacia niopo, which imparts the stimulant power to the snuff
of the Ottomacs. This power is owing, no doubt, to the
freshly calcined lime. We have shown above, that the
mountaineers of the Andes of Popayan, and the Gruajiros,
who wander between the lake of Maracaybo and the Rio la
Hacha, are also fond of swallowing lime as a stimulant,
to augment the secretion of the saliva and the gastric
juice.

A custom analogous to the use of the niopo just de-
Bcribed, was observed by La Condaroine among the natives of
the Upper Maranon. The Omaguas, whose name is ren-
dered celebrated bv the expeditions attempted in search of
El Dorado, have like the Ottomacs, a dish, and the hollow
bone of a bird, by which they convey to their nostrils their
powder of curupa. The seed that yields this powder is
no doubt also a mimosacea ; for the Ottomacs, according to

Orinoco. The ohiga is a species of Inga, and I know of no otUts
imosacea that can supply the place of the cerealia.

506 TOBACCO

Father G-ili, designate even now, at the distance of one hun-
dred and sixty leagues from the Amazon, the Acacia niopo
by the name of curu^a. Since the geographical researches
which I have recently made on the scene of the exploits of
Philip von Huten, and the real situation of the province of
Papamene, or of the Omaguas, the probability of an ancient
communication between the Ottomacs of the Orinoco and
the Omaguas of the Maranon has become more interesting
and more probable. The former came from the Meta,
perhaps from the country between the Meta and the
Guaviare; the latter assert, that they descended in great
numbers to the Maranon by the Rio Jupura, coming from
the eastern declivity of the Andes of New Grenada. Now,
it is precisely between the Guayavero, (which joins the
Guaviare,) and the Caqueta, (which takes lower down the
name of Japura,) that the country of the Omagua appears
to be situate, of which the adventurers of Coro and Tocuyo
in vain attempted the conquest. There is no doubt a
striking contrast between the present barbarism of the
Ottomacs and the ancient civilization of the Omaguas ; but
all parts of the latter nation were not perhaps alike ad-
vanced in civilization, and the example of tribes fallen into
complete barbarism are unhappily but too common in the
history of our species. Another pojit of resemblance may
be remarked between the Ottomacs and the Omaguas.
Both of these nations are celebrated among all the tribes of
the Orinoco and the Amazon for their employment of caout-
chouc in the manufacture of various articles of utility.

The real herbaceous tobacco * (for the missionaries have

* The word tobacco (tabacco), like the words savannah, maize,
cacique, maguey (agave), aud manati, belongs to the ancient language
of Hayti, or St. Domingo. It did not properly denote the herb, but the
tube through which the smoke was inhaled. It seems surprising, that a
vegetable production so universally spread should have different names
among neighbouring people. The pete-ma of the Omaguas is, no doubt,
the pety of the Guaranos ; but the analogy between the Cabre and Al
gonkin (or Lenni-Lenape) woids, which denote tobacco, may be merely
accidental. The following are the synonymes in thirteen languages.

North America, Aztec or Mexican ; yetl: Algonkin ; sema: Huron;
oyngoua.

South America. Peruvian or Quichua ; sayri : Chiquito ; pais .
Guarany ; pety : Viiela ; tusvp : Mbaja, (west of the Paraguay) nalo-
dtigadi : Moxo (between the Rio Ucayale and the Rio Madeira) sabare .
Oinagua ; petema ; Tamanac ; cavat • Maypure ; jema . Cabre ; scema.

AS JL WATICOTIO 607

the habit of calling the niopo or curwpa tree-tobacco) haa
been cultivated from time immemorial by all the native
people of the Orinoco ; and at the period of the conquest
the nabit of smoking was found to be alike spread over Doth
North and South America The Tamanacs and the May-
pures of Guiana wrap maize-leaves round their cigars, as the
Mexicans did at the time of the arrival of Cortes. The
Spaniards have substituted paper for the leaves of maize, in
imitation of them. The poor Indians of the forests of the
Orinoco know as well as did the great nobles at the court of
Montezuma, that the smoke of tobacco is an excellent nar-
cotic ; and they use it not only to procure their afternoon nap,
but also to put themselves into that state of quiescence,
which they call dreaming with the eyes open, or day-dreaming.
The use of tobacco appears to me to be now very rare in
the missions ; and in New Spain, to the great regret of the
revenue-officers, the natives, who are almost all descended from
the lowest class of the Aztec people, do not smoke at all.
Father Gili affirms, that the practice of chewing tobacco is
unknown to the Indians of the Lower Orinoco. I rather
doubt the truth of this assertion, having been told that the
Sercucumas of the Erevato and the Caura, neighbours of
the whitish Taparitos, swallow tobacco chopped small, and
impregnated with some other very stimulant juices, to pre-
pare themselves for battle. Of the four species of nico-
tiana cultivated in Europe* we found only two growing
wild; but the Nicotiana loxensis, and the Nicotiana andi-
cola, which I found on the back of the Andes, at the height
of eighteen hundred and fifty toises (almost the height of
the Peak of Teneriffe), are very similar to the N. tabacum
and N. rustica. The whole genus, however, is almost exclu-
sively American, and the greater number of the species
appeared to me to belong to the mountainous and temperate
region of the tropics.

It was neither from Virginia, nor from South America,
but from the Mexican province of Yucatan, that Europe
received the first tobacco seeds, about the year 1559.f The

* Nicotiana tabacum, N. rustica, N. paniculata, and N. glutinosa.

f The Spaniards became acquainted with tobacco in the West India
Islands at the end of the loth century. I have already mentioned that
the cultivation of this narcotic plant preceded the cultivation of the

60S NATURAL STYPTIC.

celebrated Kaleigh contributed most to introduce the custom
of smoking among the nations of the north. As early, as the
end of the sixteenth century, bitter complaints were made
in England " of this imitation of the manners of a savage
people." It was feared that, by the practice of smoking
tobacco, " Englishmen would degenerate into a barbarous
state." *

When the Ottomacs of TJruana, by the use of niopo
(their arborescent tobacco), and of fermented liquors, have
thrown themselves into a state of intoxication, which lasts
several days, they kill one another without ostensibly fight-
ing. The most vindictive among them poison the nail of
their thumb with cwrare ; and, according to the testimony
of the missionary, the mere impression of this poisoned nail
may become a mortal wound, if the cwrare be very active,
and immediately mingle with the mass of the blood. When
the Indians, after a quarrel at night, commit a murder, they
throw the dead body into the river, fearing that some indi-
cations of the violence committed on the deceased may be
observed. " Every time," said Father Bueno, " that I see
the women fetch water from a part of the shore to which
they are not accustomed to go, I suspect that a murder has
been committed in my mission."

We found in the Indian huts at Uruana the vegetable
substance called " touchwood of ants," t with which we had
become acquainted at the Great Cataracts, and which is
employed to stop bleeding. This substance, which might

potato in Europe more than 120 or 140 years. When Raleigh brought
tobacco from Virginia to England in 1586, whole fields of it were already
Cultivated in Poitugal. It was also previously known in France, where
it was brought into fashion by Catherine de Medicis, from whom it
received the name of " herbe a la reine," — "the queen's herb."

* This remarkable passage of Camden is as follows, Annal. Elizabet.
p. 143 (1585); " ex illo sane tempore [tabacum] usu cepit esse creber-
rimo in Anglia et magno pretio dum quamplurimi graveolentem illius
fumum per tubulum testaceum hauriunt et mox e naribus efflant ; adeo
ut Anglorum corporum in barbarorum naturam degenerasse videantur,
quum iidem ac barbari delectentur." We may see from this passage
that they emitted the smoke through the nose ; but at the court of Mon-
tezuma the pipe was held in one hand, while the nostrils were stopped
with the other, in order that the smoke might be more easily swallowed.
(Life of Raleigh, vol. i, p. 82).

f Yesca de horrrigas.

8PECi£S OF INDIAN DOGS. 509

loss improperly be called ants' nests, is in much request in a
region whose inhabitants are of so turbulent a character.
A new species of ant, of a fine emerald-green (Formica
spinicollis), collects for its habitation a cotton-down, of a
yellowish-brown colour, and very soft to the touch, frou the
leaves of a melastomacea. I have no doubt that the yesca
or touchwood of ants of the Upper Orinoco (the animal is
found, we were assured, only south of Atures) will one day
become an article of trade. This substance is very superior
to the ants' nests of Cayenne, which are employed in the
hospitals of Europe, but can rarely be procured.

On the 7th of June we took leave with regret of Father
Eamon Bueno. Of the ten missionaries whom we had found
in different parts of the vast extent of GKiiana, he alone ap-
peared to me to be earnestly attentive to all that regarded
the natives. He hoped to return in a short time to Madrid,
where he intended to publish the result of his researches
on the figures and characters that cover the rocks of Uruana.

In the countries we had just passed through, between
the Meta, the Arauca, and the Apure, there were found, at
the time of the first expeditions to the Orinoco, in 1535,
those mute dogs, called by the natives maws, and auries.
This fact is curious in many points of view. We cannot
doubt that the dog, whatever Father Gili may assert, is
indigenous in South America. The different Indian lan-
guages furnish words to designate this animal, which are
scarcely derived from any European tongue. To this day
the word auri, mentioned three hundred years ago by
Alonzo de Herrera, is found in the Maypure. The dogs
we saw at the Orinoco may perhaps have descended from
those that the Spaniards carried to the coast of Caracas;
but it is not less certain that there existed a race of dogs
before the conquest, in Peru, in New Granada, and m
Guiana, resembling our shepherds' dogs. The allco of the
natives of Peru, and in general all the dogs that we found
in the wildest countries of South America, bark frequently.
The first historians, however, all speak of mute dogs (perroa
mudos). They still exist in Canada; and, what appears
to me worthy of attention, it was this dumb variety thai
was eaten in preference in Mexico,* and at the Orinoco.

• See, on the Mexican /ecAieAj, and on the numerous difficulties that

510 DOGS USED TIT DRAUGHT.

A. very well informed traveller, M. Giesecke, who resided
BIX years in Greenland, assured me that the dogs of the
Esquimaux, which pass their lives in the open air, and bury
themselves in winter beneath the snow, do not bark, but
howl like wolves.*

The practice of eating the flesh of dogs is now entirely
unknown on the banks of the Orinoco ; but as it is a
Tartar custom, spread through all the eastern part of Asia,
it appears to me highly interesting for the history of nations
to nave ascertained that it existed heretofore in the hot
regions of Guiana and on the table-lands of Mexico. I
must observe, also, that on the confines of the province
of Durango, at the northern extremity of New Spain, the
Comanches have preserved the habit of loading the backs
of the great dogs that accompany them in their migrations,
with their tents of buffalo-leather. It is well known that
employing dogs as beasts of burthen and of draught is
equally common near the Slave Lake and in Siberia. I
dwell on these features of conformity in the manners of
nations, which become of some weight when they are not
solitary, and are connected with the analogies furnished
by the structure of languages, the division of time, and
religious creeds and institutions.

We passed the night at the island of Cucuruparu, called
also Playa de la Tortuffa, because the Indians of TJruana
go thither to collect the turtles' eggs. It is one of the
best determined points of latitude along the banks of the
Orinoco. I was there fortunate enough to observe the
passage of three stars over the meridian. To the east of
the island is the mouth of the Cano de la Tortuga, which
descends from the mountains of Cerbatana, continually
wrapped in electric clouds. On the southern bank of the
Cano, between the tributary streams Parapara and Oche,

occur in the history of mute dogs, and dogs destitute of hair, the
"Views of Nature/' Bohn's edition, p. 85.

* They sit down in a circle j one of them begins to howl alone, and
the others follow in the same tone. The groups of alouate monkeys
howl in the same manner, and among them the Indians distinguish "the
leader of the band." It was the practice at Mexico to castrate the muta
dogs, in order to fatten them. This operation must have contributed t«
alter the orga of the voice.

LIZARDS AND OTTEHS. 511

lies the almost ruined mission of San Miguel de la Tortuga.
The Indians assured us that the environs of this little
mission ahound in otters with a very fine fur, called by the
Portuguese ' water-dogs ' (perritos de agua) ; and what ia
still more remarkable, in lizards (lagartos) with only two feet.
The whole of this country, which is very accessible between
the Kio Cuchivero and the strait of Baraguan, is worthy
of being visited by a well-informed zoologist. The layartc
destitute of hinder extremities, is perhaps a species of Siren,
different from the Siren lacertina of Carolina. If it were
a saurian, a real Bimanis (Chirotes, Cuv.), the natives
would not have compared it to a lizard. Besides the arrau
turtles, of which I have in a former place given a detailed
account, an innumerable quantity of land tortoises also,
called morocoi, are found on the banks of the Orinoco,
between Uruana and Eucaramada. During the great heats
of summer, in the time of drought, these animals remain
without taking food, hidden beneath stones, or in the holes
they have dug. They issue from their shelter and begin
to eat, only when the humidity of the first rains penetrates
into the earth. The terekay, or tajelu turtle which lives
in fresh water, has the same habits. I have already spoken
of the summer-sleep of some animals of the tropics. As
the natives know the holes in which the tortoises sleep
amidst the dried lands, they get out a great number at once,
by digging fifteen or eighteen inches deep. Father Grili
says that this operation, which he had seen, is not without
danger, because serpents often bury themselves in summer
with the terekaifs.

From, the island of Cucuruparu, to the capital of Guiana,
commonly called Angostura, we were but nine days on
the water. The distance is somewhat less than ninety-
five leagues. "We seldom slept on shore ; but the torment
of the mosquitos diminished in proportion as we advanced.
AVe landed on the 8th of June at a farm (Hato de San
Kafael del Capuchino) opposite the mouth of the Rio
Apure. I obtained some good observations of latitude and
longitude.* Having two months before taken horary angles

* I had found, on the 4th of April, for the Boca del Rio Apure (on
the western bank of the Orinoco), the latitude 7° 36' 30", the longitude
t»y° /' 30" ; on the 8th of June I found, for the Hat} del Capuchino (oa

512 DISTANT VIEW OF THE LLAITOS.

on the bank opposite Capuchino, these observations were
important for determining the rate of my chronometer, au'Ji
connecting the situations on the Orinoco with those on the
shore of Venezuela. The situation of this farm, being at the
point where the Orinoco changes its course, (which had pre-
viously been from south to north,) and runs from west to east,
is extremely picturesque. Granite rocks rise like islets amidst
vast meadows. From their tops we discerned towards the
north the Llanos of Calabozo bounding the horizon. We
had been so long accustomed to the aspect of forests, that
this view made a powerful impression on us. The steppes
after sunset assume a tint of greenish gray. The visual ray
being intercepted only by the rotundity of the earth, the
stars seemed to rise as from the bosom of the ocean, and the
most experienced mariner would have fancied himself placed
on a projecting cape of a rocky coast. Our host was a
Frenchman, who lived amidst his numerous herds. Though
he had forgotten his native language, he seemed pleased to
learn that we came from his country, which he had left forty
years before ; and he wished to retain us for some days at
his farm. The small towns of Caycara and Cabruta were
only a few miles distant from the farm ; but during part of
the year our host was in complete solitude. The Capuchino
becomes an island by the inundations of the Apure and the
Orinoco, and the communication with the neighbouring
farms can be kept up only by means of a boat. The horned
cattle then seek the higher grounds which extend on the
south toward the chain of the mountains of Encaramada.
This granitic chain is intersected by vallies, which contain
magnetic sands (granulary oxidulated iron), owing no doubt
to the decomposition of some amphibolic or chloritic
strata.

On the morning of the 9th of June we met a great number
of boats laden with merchandize sailing up the Orinoco, in
order to enter the Apure. This is a commercial road much
frequented between Angostura and the port of Torunos in
the province of of Varinas. Our fellow-traveller. Don
Nicolas Soto, brother in law of the governor of Varinas,
took the same course, to return to his family. At the

the eastern bank of the Orinoco), the latitude 7° 37' 45", the longitude
69° 5' 30'.

PUEBTO SEDENO. 613

period of the high waters, several months are lost in contend-
ing with the currents of the Orinoco, the Apure, and the Rio
de Santo Domingo. The boatmen are forced to carry out
ropes to the trunks of trees, and thus warp their canoes up.
In the great sinuosities of the river whole days are some-
times passed without advancing more than two or three
hundred toises. Since my return to Europe, the communi-
cations between the mouth of the Orinoco and the provinces
situated on the eastern slope of the mountains of Merida,
Pamplona, and Santa Fe de Bogota, have become more
active ; and it may be hoped that steamboats will facilitate
these long voyages on the Lower Orinoco, the Portuguesa,
the Bio Santo Domingo, the Orivante, the Meta, and the
Ghiaviare. Magazines of cleft wood might be formed, as on
the banks of the great rivers of the United States, shelter-
ing them under sheds. This precaution would be indispen-
sible, as, in the country through which we passed, it is not
easy to procure dry fuel fit to keep up a fire beneath the
boiler of a steam-engine.

We disembarked below San Eafael del Capuchino, on the
right, at the Villa de Caycara, near a cove called Puerto
Sedeiio. The Villa is merely a few houses grouped to-
gether. Alta Gracia, la Ciudad de la Piedra, Heal Corona,
Borbon, in short all the towns or villas lying between the
mouth of the Apure and Angostura, are equally miserable.
The presidents of the missions, and the governors of the pro-
vinces, were formerly accnstomed to demand the privileges of
villas and ciudades at Madrid, the moment the first founda-
tions of a church were laid. This was a means of persuading
the ministry, that the colonies were augmenting rapidly in
population and prosperity. Sculptured figures of the sun and
moon, such as I have already mentioned, are found near
Caycara, at the Cerro del Tirana* It is " the work of the old
people" (that is of our fathers), say the natives. On a rock

* The tyrant after whom these mountains are named is not Lope de
\guirre, but probably, as the name of the neighbouring cove seems to
prove, the celebrated conquistador Antonio Sedeno, who, after the expe-
dition of Herrera, sought to penetrate by the Orinoco to the Rio Meta.
He was in a state of rebellion against the audiencia of Santo Domingo.
I know not how Sedeno came to Caycara ; for historians relaf that b«
was poisoned on the banks of the Rio Tisnado, one of tbr tributar*'
fctrrams of the Portuguesa.

TOL. II. 2 I

514 ALIA GEACIA

more distant from the shore, and called Tecoma, the syn>
bolic figures are found, it is said, at the height of a hundred
feet. The Indians knew heretofore a road, that led by land
from Caycara to Demerara and Essequibo.

On the northern bank of the Orinoco, opposite Caycara,
is the mission of Cabruta, founded by the Jesuit Botella, in
1740, as an advanced post against the Caribs. An Indian
village, known by the name of Cabritu,* had existed on the
same spot for several ages. At the time when this little
place became a Christian settlement, it was believed to be
situate in 5° latitude, or two degrees forty minutes more to
the south than I found it by direct observations made at
San Rafael, SHu ac la Boca del Bio Apure. No idea was
then conceived of the direction of a road that could lead by
land to Nueva Valencia and Caracas, which were supposed
to be at an immense distance. The merit of having first
crossed the Llanos, to go to Cabruta, from the Villa de
San Juan Baptista del Pao belongs to a woman. Father
Grili relates, that Dona Maria Bargas was so devoted to the
Jesuits, that she attempted herself to discover the way to
the missions. She was seen with astonishment to arrive at
Cabruta from the north. She took up her abode near the
fathers of St. Ignatius, and died in their settlements on the
banks of the Orinoco. Since that period, the northern part
of the Llanos has been considerably peopled ; and the road
leading from the valleys of Aragua by Calabozo to San Fer-
nando de Apure and Cabruta, is much frequented. The
chief of the famous expedition of the boundaries made choice
of the latter place in 1754, to establish dock-yards for build-
ing the vessels necessary for conveying his troops intended for
the Upper Orinoco. The little mountain, that rises north-
east of Cabruta, can be discerned from afar in the steppes,
and serves as a landmark for travellers.

We embarked in the morning at Caycara; and driving
with the current of the Orinoco, we soon passed the mouth
of the Bio Cuchivero, which according to ancient tradition is
the country of the AiJceambenanos, or women without hus-
bands; and we there reached the paltry village of Alta Gracia,
which is called a Spanish town. It was near this place, that

* A. cacique of Cabritu received Alonzo de Herrera at his dwelling, on
the expedition undertaken by Herrera for ascending the Orinoco in 1535.

CRUELTY TO A SLAVE. 515

Jose de Iturriaga founded the Pueblo de Giudad Jieal^ which
still figures on the most modern maps, though it has not
existed for fifty years past, on account of the insalubrity of
its situation. Beyond the point where the Orinoco turns to
the east, forests are constantly seen on the right bank, and
the llanos or steppes of Venezuela on the left. The forests
which border the river, are not however so thick as those of
the Upper Orinoco. The population, which augments per-
ceptibly as you advance toward the capital, comprises but
few Indians, and is composed chiefly of whites, negroes, and
men of mixed descent. The number of the negroes is not
great; but here, as everywhere else, the poverty of their
masters does not tend to procure for them more humane
treatment. An inhabitant of Caycara had just been con-
demned to four years' imprisonment, and a fine of one hun-
dred piastres, for having, in a paroxysm of rage, tied a
negress by the legs to the tail of his horse, and dragged her
at full gallop through the savannah, till she expired. It is
gratifying to record that the Audiencia was generally blamed
in the country, for not having punished more severely so
atrocious an action. Yet some few persons, who pretended
to be the most enlightened and most sagacious 01 the com-
munity, deemed the punishment of a white contrary to sound
policy, at the moment when the blacks of St. Domingo were
in complete insurrection. Since I left those countries, civil
dissensions have put arms into the hands of the slaves; and
fatal experience has led the inhabitants of Venezuela to
regret that they refused to listen to Don Domingo Tovar,
and other right-thinking men, who, as early as the year
1795, lifted up their voices in the cabildo of Caracas, to pre-
vent the introduction of blacks, and to propose means that
might ammeliorate their condition.

After having slept on the 10th of June in an island in the
middle of the river, (I believe that called Acaru by Father
Caulin), we passed the mouth of the Rio Caura. This, the
Aruy and the Oarony, are the largest tributary streams
which the Orinoco receives on its right bank. All the
Christian settlements are near the mouth of the river; and
the villages of San Pedro, Aripao, Urbani, and Guaragua-
raico, succeed each other at the distance of a few leagues.
The first and the most populous, contains only about twc

2 i, 2

516 VALLEY OF CAURA.

hundred and fifty souls. San Luis de Guaraguaraico is A
colony of negroes, some freed and others fugitives from
Essequibo. This colony merits the particular attention of
the Spanish Government, for it can never be sufficiently
recommended to endeavour to attach the slaves to the soil,
and suffer them to enjoy as farmers the fruits of their agri-
cultural labours. The land on the Caura, for the most part
a virgin soil, is extremely fertile. There are pasturages for
more than 15,000 beasts; but the poor inhabitants have
neither horses nor horned cattle. More than five-sixths
of the banks of the Caura are either desert, or occupied by
independent and savage tribes. The bed of the river is
twice choked up by rocks: these obstructions occasion
the famous Raudales of Mura and of Para or Para, the
latter of which has a portage, because it cannot be passed
by canoes. At the time of the expedition of the boun-
daries, a small fort was erected on the northern cataract,
that of Mura; and the governor, Don Manuel Centurion,
gave the name of Ciudad de San Carlos to a few houses,
which some families consisting of whites and mulattoes,
had contructed near the fort. South of the cataract of
Para, at the confluence of the Caura and the Erevato,
the mission of San Luis was then situated; and a road
by land led thence to Angostura, the capital of the pro-
vince. All these attempts at civilization havo been fruit-
less. No village now exists above the Eaudal of Mura;
and here, as in many other parts of the colonies, the natives
may be said to have reconquered the country from the
Spaniards. The valley of Caura may become one day or
other highly interesting from the value of its productions,
and the communications which it affords with the Rio
Ventuari, the Carony, and the Cuyuni. I have shown above
the importance of the four tributary streams which the
Orinoco receives from the mountains of Parima. Near the
mouth of the Caura, between the villages of San Pedro de
Alcantara and San Francisco de Aripao, a small lake of four
hundred toises in diameter was formed in 1790, by the
sinking of the ground, consequent on an earthquake. It
was a portion of the forest of Aripao, which sunk to the
depth of eighty or a hundred feet below the level of tl?e
neighbouring land. The trees remained green for several

RAUDAL OF CAMI8ETA. 517

months ; and some of them, it was believed, continued to
push forth leaves beneath the water. This phenomenon is
the more worthy of attention, as the soil of these countries
is probably granitic. I doubt the secondary formations of
the Llanos being continued southward as far as the valley
of Caura.

On the llth of June we landed on the right bank of the
Orinoco at Puerto de los Frailes, at the distance of three
leagues above the Ciudad de la Piedra, to take altitudes of
the sun. The longitude of this point is 67° 26' 20", or
1° 41' east of the mouth of the Apure. Farther on, between
the towns of La Piedra and Muitaco, or Real Corona, are
the Torno and Boca del Infierno, two points formerly
dreaded by travellers. The Orinoco suddenly changes its
direction; it flows first east, then north-north-west, and
then again east. A little above the Cano Marapiche,
which opens on the northern bank, a very long island
divides the river into two branches. We passed on
the south of this island without difficulty; northward, a
chain of small rocks, half covered at high water, forms
whirlpools and rapids. This is la Boca del Infierno, and
the Eaudal de Camiseta. The first expeditions of Diego
Ordaz (1531) and Alonzo de Herrera (1535) have given
celebrity to this bar. The Great Cataracts of the Atures
and Maypures were then unknown ; and the clumsy vessels
(vergantwes) in which travellers persisted in going up the
river, rendered the passage through the rapids extremely
difficult. At present no apprehension is felt in ascending
or descending the Orinoco, at any season, from its mouth as
far as the confluence of the Apure and the Meta. The only
falls of water in this space are those of Torno or Camiseta,
Marimara, and Cariven or Carichana Vieja. Neither of
these three obstacles is to be feared with experienced Indian
pilots. I dwell on these hydrographic details, because a
great political and commercial interest is now connected
with the communications between Angostura and the banks
of the Meta and the Apure, two rivers that lead to the
eastern side of the Cordilleras of New Grenada. The navi-
gation from the mouth of the Lower Orinoco to the province
of Varinas is difficult only on account of the current. The
bed of the river no vhere presents obstacles more difficult to

TELOCITY OF THE CUHRE5T.

be surmounted than those of the Danube between Vienna
and Linz. We meet with no great bars, no real cataracts,
until we get above the Meta. The Upper Orinoco there-
fore, with the Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro, forms a parti-
cular system of rivers, where the active industry of Angos-
tura and the shore of Caracas will remain long unknown.

I obtained horary angles of the sun in an island in the
midst of the Boca del Inflerno, where we had set up our
instruments. The longitude of this point according to the
chronometer is 67° 10' 31*. I attempted to determine the
magnetic dip and intensity, but was prevented by a heavj
storm of rain. As the sky again became serene in the after-
noon, we lay down to rest that night on a vast beach, on the
southern bank of the Orinoco, nearly in the meridian of the
little town of Muitaco, or Real Corona. I found the latitude
by three stars to be 8° 0' 26", and the longitude 67° 5' 19".
When the Observantin monks in 1752 made their first
entradas on the territory of the Caribs, they constructed on
this spot a small fort. The proximity of the lofty moun-
tains of Araguacais renders Muitaco one of the most healthy
places on the Lower Orinoco. There Iturriaga took up his
abode in 1756, to repose after the fatigues of the expedition
of the boundaries ; and as he attributed his recovery to this
Hot rather than humid climate, the town, or more properly
the village, of Eeal Corona took the name of Pueblo del Puerto
sano. Going down the Orinoco more to the east, we left the
mouth of the Bio Pao on the north, and that of the Arui on
the south. The latter river, which is somewhat consider-
able, is often mentioned by Raleigh. The current of the
Orinoco diminished in velocity as we advanced. I measured
several times a base along the beach, to ascertain the time
taken by floating bodies in traversing a known distance.
Above Alta Gracia, near the mouth of the Rio Ujape,
I had found the velocity of the Orinoco 2*3 feet in a
second; between Muitaco and Borbon it was only T7
foot. The barometric observations made in the neighbour-
ing steppes prove the small slope of the ground from the
longitude of 69° to the eastern coast of G-uiana. We found
in this country, on the right bank of the Orinoco, small
formations of primitive grunstein, superimposed on granite
(perhaps even embedded in the rock). We saw between

ARRIVAL AT ANGOSTURA. 519

Muitaco and the island of Ceiba a hill entirely com-
posed of balls with concentric layers, in which we perceived
a close mixture of hornblende and feldspar, with some traces
of pyrites. The griinstein resembles that in the vicinity of
Caracas ; but it was impossible to ascertain the position of
a formation which appeared to me to be of the same age aa
the granite of Parima. Muitaco was the last spot where we
slept in the open air on the shore of the Orinoco : we pro-
ceeded along the river two nights more before we reached
Angostura, which terminated our voyage.

It would be difficult for me to express the satisfaction we
felt on landing at Angostura, the capital of Spanish Guiana.
The inconveniences endured at sea in small vessels are trivial
m comparison with those that are suffered under a burning
sky, surrounded by swarms of mosquitos, and lying stretched
in a canoe, without the possibility of taking the least bodily
exercise. In seventy-five days we had performed a passage
of five hundred leagues (twenty to a degree) on the five great
rivers, Apure, Orinoco, Atabapo, Bio Negro, and Cassi-
quiare; and in this vast extent we had found but a very
small number of inhabited places. After the life we had led
in the woods, our dress was not in the very best order, yet
nevertheless M. Bonpland and I hastened to present our-
selves to Don Felipe de Tnciarte, the governor of the pro-
vince of Guiana. He received us in the most cordial man-
ner, and lodged us in the house of the secretary of the Inten-
dencia. Coming from an almost desert country, we were
struck with the bustle of the town, though it contained only
six thousand inhabitants. We admired the conveniences
which industry and commerce furnish to civilized man.
Humble dwellings appeared to us magnificent; and every
person with whom we conversed, seemed to be endowed
with superior intelligence. Long privations give a value to
the smallest enjoyments ; and I cannot express the pleasure
we felt, when we saw for the first time wheaten bread on
the governor's table. Sensations of this sort are doubtless
familiar to all who have made distant voyages.

A painful circumstance obliged us to sojourn a whole
month in the town of Angostura. "We felt ourselves on the
first days after our arrival tired and enfeebled, but in perfect
health. M. Bonpland began to examine the small numbei

520 ATTACK OF ILLNESS,

of plants which he had been able to save from the influence
of the damp climate ; and I was occupied in settling by
astronomical observations the longitude and latitude of the
capital,* as well as the dip of the magnetic needle. These
labours were soon interrupted. We were both attacked
almost on the same day by a disorder, which with my fellow-
traveller took the character of a debilitating fever. At this
period the air was in a state of the greatest salubrity at An-
gostura ; and as the only mulatto servant we had brought
from Cumana felt symptoms of the same disorder, it was
suspected that we had imbibed the germs of typhus in
the damp forests of Cassiquiare. It is common enough for
travellers to feel no effects from miasmata till, on arriving
in a purer atmosphere, they begin to enjoy repose. A cer-
tain excitement of the mental powers may suspend for some
time the action of pathogenic causes. Our mulatto servant
having been much more exposed to the rains than we were,
his disorder increased with frightful rapidity. His prostra-
tion of strength was excessive, and on the ninth day his
death was announced to us. He was however only in a
state of swooning, which lasted several hours, and was fol-
lowed by a salutary crisis. I was attacked at the same
time with a violent fit of fever, during which I was made to
take a mixture of honey and bark (the cortex Angostura} :
a remedy much extolled in the country by the Capuchin
missionaries. The intensity of the fever augmented, but it
left me on the following day. M. Bonpland remained in a
very alarming state, which during several weeks caused us
the most serious inquietude. Fortunately he preserved suf-
ficient self-possession to prescribe for himself ; and he pre-
ferred gentler remedies, better adapted to his constitution.
The fever was continual; and, as almost always happens
within the tropics, it was accompanied by dysentery. M.
Bonpland displayed that courage and mildness of character,
which never forsook him in the most trying situations. I
was agitated by sad presages ; for I remembered that the
botanist Loefling, a pupil of Linnaeus, died not far from
Angostura, near the banks of the Carony, a victim of bis

* I found the latitude of Santo Tomas de la Nueva Guiana, commonly
called Angostura^ or the Strait, near the cathedral, 8° 8' II', the long.
66' 15' 21".

MELAKC1IOLY FOBEBODItfGS. 521

zeal for the progress of natural history. "We had not yet
passed a year in the torrid zone; and my too faithful
memory conjured up everything I had read in Europe on
the dangers of the atmosphere inhaled in the forests.
Instead of going up the Orinoco, we might have sojourned
some months in the temperate and salubrious climate of the
Sierra Nevada de Merida. It was I who had chosen the
path of the rivers ; and the danger of my fellow-traveller
presented itself to my mind as the fatal consequence of this
imprudent choice.

After having attained in a few days an extraordinary
degree of exacerbation, the fever assumed a less alarming
character. The inflammation of the intestines yielded to the
use of emollients obtained from malvaceous plants. The
sidas and the melochias have singularly active properties in
the torrid zone. The recovery of the patient however waa
extremely slow, as it always happens with Europeans who
are not thoroughly seasoned to the climate. The period of
the rains drew near; and in order to return to the coast of
Cumana, it was necessary again to cross the Llanos, where,
amidst half-inundated lands, it is rare to find shelter, or any
other food than meat dried in the sun. To avoid exposing
M. Bonpland to a dangerous relapse, we resolved to stay at
Angostura till the 10th of July. We spent part of this
time at a neighbouring plantation, where mango-trees and
bread-fruit trees* were cultivated. The latter had attained
in the tenth year a height of more than forty feet. "We
measured several leaves of the Artocarpus, that were three
feet long and eighteen inches broad, remarkable dimensions
in a plant of the family of the dicotyledons.

* Artocarpus incisa. Father Andujar, Capuchin missionary of the
province of Caracas, zealous in the pursuit of natural history, has intro-
duced the bread-fruit tree from Spanish Guiana at Varinas, and thence into
the kingdom of New Grenada. Thus the western coasts of America,
washed by the Pacific, receive from the English Settlements in the West
Indies a production of the Friendly Islands.

END OF VOL. II.

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