Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 110 of 208 - First - Home
So Great A Uniformity Led Me To
Believe That The Aspect Of The Cavern Of Caripe Would Differ Little
From What I Had Observed In My Preceding Travels.
The reality far
exceeded my expectations.
If the configuration of the grottoes, the
splendour of the stalactites, and all the phenomena of inorganic
nature, present striking analogies, the majesty of equinoctial
vegetation gives at the same time an individual character to the
aperture of the cavern.
The Cueva del Guacharo is pierced in the vertical profile of a
rock. The entrance is towards the south, and forms an arch eighty
feet broad and seventy-two high. The rock which surmounts the
grotto is covered with trees of gigantic height. The mammee-tree
and the genipa,* (* Caruto, Genipa americana. The flower at Caripe,
has sometimes five, sometimes six stamens.) with large and shining
leaves, raise their branches vertically towards the sky; whilst
those of the courbaril and the erythrina form, as they extend, a
thick canopy of verdure. Plants of the family of pothos, with
succulent stems, oxalises, and orchideae of a singular structure,*
(* A dendrobium, with a gold-coloured flower, spotted with black,
three inches long.) rise in the driest clefts of the rocks; while
creeping plants waving in the winds are interwoven in festoons
before the opening of the cavern. We distinguished in these
festoons a bignonia of a violet blue, the purple dolichos, and for
the first time, that magnificent solandra,* (* Solandra scandens.
It is the gousaticha of the Chayma Indians.) which has an
orange-coloured flower and a fleshy tube more than four inches
long.
But this luxury of vegetation embellishes not only the external
arch, it appears even in the vestibule of the grotto. We saw with
astonishment plantain-leaved heliconias eighteen feet high, the
praga palm-tree, and arborescent arums, following the course of the
river, even to those subterranean places. The vegetation continues
in the cave of Caripe as in those deep crevices of the Andes,
half-excluded from the light of day, and does not disappear till,
penetrating into the interior, we advance thirty or forty paces
from the entrance. We measured the way by means of a cord; and we
went on about four hundred and thirty feet without being obliged to
light our torches. Daylight penetrates far into this region,
because the grotto forms but one single channel, keeping the same
direction, from south-east to north-west. Where the light began to
fail, we heard from afar the hoarse sounds of the nocturnal birds;
sounds which the natives think belong exclusively to those
subterraneous places.
The guacharo is of the size of our fowls. It has the mouth of the
goat-suckers and procnias, and the port of those vultures whose
crooked beaks are surrounded with stiff silky hairs. Suppressing,
with M. Cuvier, the order of picae, we must refer this
extraordinary bird to the passeres, the genera of which are
connected with each other by almost imperceptible transitions. It
forms a new genus, very different from the goatsucker, in the
loudness of its voice, in the vast strength of its beak (containing
a double tooth), and in its feet without the membranes which unite
the anterior phalanges of the claws. It is the first example of a
nocturnal bird among the Passeres dentirostrati. Its habits present
analogies both with those of the goatsuckers and of the alpine
crow.* (* Corvus Pyrrhocorax.) The plumage of the guacharo is of a
dark bluish grey, mixed with small streaks and specks of black.
Large white spots of the form of a heart, and bordered with black,
mark the head, wings, and tail. The eyes of the bird, which are
dazzled by the light of day, are blue, and smaller than those of
the goatsucker. The spread of the wings, which are composed of
seventeen or eighteen quill feathers, is three feet and a half. The
guacharo quits the cavern at nightfall, especially when the moon
shines. It is almost the only frugiferous nocturnal bird yet known;
the conformation of its feet sufficiently shows that it does not
hunt like our owls. It feeds on very hard fruits, like the
nutcracker* (* Corvus caryocatactes, C. glandarius. Our Alpine crow
builds its nest near the top of Mount Libanus, in subterranean
caverns, nearly like the guacharo. It also has the horribly shrill
cry of the latter.) and the pyrrhocorax. The latter nestles also in
clefts of rocks, and is known by the name of the night-crow. The
Indians assured us that the guacharo does not pursue either the
lamellicornous insects or those phalaenae which serve as food to
the goatsuckers. A comparison of the beaks of the guacharo and the
goatsucker serves to denote how much their habits must differ. It
would be difficult to form an idea of the horrible noise occasioned
by thousands of these birds in the dark part of the cavern. Their
shrill and piercing cries strike upon the vaults of the rocks, and
are repeated by the subterranean echoes. The Indians showed us the
nests of the guacharos by fixing a torch to the end of a long pole.
These nests were fifty or sixty feet high above our heads, in holes
in the shape of funnels, with which the roof of the grotto is
pierced like a sieve. The noise increased as we advanced, and the
birds were scared by the light of the torches of copal. When this
noise ceased a few minutes around us, we heard at a distance the
plaintive cries of the birds roosting in other ramifications of the
cavern. It seemed as if different groups answered each other
alternately.
The Indians enter the Cueva del Guacharo once a year, near
midsummer. They go armed with poles, with which they destroy the
greater part of the nests. At that season several thousand birds
are killed; and the old ones, as if to defend their brood, hover
over the heads of the Indians, uttering terrible cries. The young,*
(* Called Los pollos del Guacharo.) which fall to the ground, are
opened on the spot.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 110 of 208
Words from 111194 to 112208
of 211363