Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Nevertheless We
Persisted In The Project We Had Formed.
We could rely upon the
interest and solicitude of the governor of Cumana, Don Vicente
Emparan, as well as on the recommendations of the Franciscan monks,
who are in reality masters of the shores of the Orinoco.
Fortunately for us, one of those monks, Juan Gonzales, was at that
time in Cumana. This young monk, who was only a lay-brother, was
highly intelligent, and full of spirit and courage. He had the
misfortune shortly after his arrival on the coast to displease his
superiors, upon the election of a new director of the Missions of
Piritu, which is a period of great agitation in the convent of New
Barcelona. The triumphant party exercised a general retaliation,
from which the lay-brother could not escape. He was sent to
Esmeralda, the last Mission of the Upper Orinoco, famous for the
vast quantity of noxious insects with which the air is continually
filled. Fray Juan Gonzales was thoroughly acquainted with the
forests which extend from the cataracts towards the sources of the
Orinoco. Another revolution in the republican government of the
monks had some years before brought him to the coast, where he
enjoyed (and most justly) the esteem of his superiors. He confirmed
us in our desire of examining the much-disputed bifurcation of the
Orinoco. He gave us useful advice for the preservation of our
health, in climates where he had himself suffered long from
intermitting fevers. We had the satisfaction of finding Fray Juan
Gonzales at New Barcelona, on our return from the Rio Negro.
Intending to go from the Havannah to Cadiz, he obligingly offered
to take charge of part of our herbals, and our insects of the
Orinoco; but these collections were unfortunately lost with himself
at sea. This excellent young man, who was much attached to us, and
whose zeal and courage might have rendered him very serviceable to
the missions of his order, perished in a storm on the coast of
Africa, in 1801.
The boat which conveyed us from Cumana to La Guayra, was one of
those employed in trading between the coasts and the West India
Islands. They are thirty feet long, and not more than three feet
high at the gunwale; they have no decks, and their burthen is
generally from two hundred to two hundred and fifty quintals.
Although the sea is extremely rough from Cape Codera to La Guayra,
and although the boats have an enormous triangular sail, somewhat
dangerous in those gusts which issue from the mountain-passes, no
instance has occurred during thirty years, of one of these boats
being lost in the passage from Cumana to the coast of Caracas. The
skill of the Guaiqueria pilots is so great, that accidents are very
rare, even in the frequent trips they make from Cumana to
Guadaloupe, or the Danish islands, which are surrounded with
breakers. These voyages of 120 or 150 leagues, in an open sea, out
of sight of land, are performed in boats without decks, like those
of the ancients, without observations of the meridian altitude of
the sun, without charts, and generally without a compass. The
Indian pilot directs his course at night by the pole-star, and in
the daytime by the sun and the wind. I have seen Guaiqueries and
pilots of the Zambo caste, who could find the pole-star by the
direction of the pointers alpha and beta of the Great Bear, and
they seemed to me to steer less from the view of the pole-star
itself, than from the line drawn through these stars. It is
surprising, that at the first sight of land, they can find the
island of Guadaloupe, Santa Cruz, or Porto Rico; but the
compensation of the errors of their course is not always equally
fortunate. The boats, if they fall to leeward in making land, beat
up with great difficulty to the eastward, against the wind and the
current.
We descended rapidly the little river Manzanares, the windings of
which are marked by cocoa-trees, as the rivers of Europe are
sometimes bordered by poplars and old willows. On the adjacent arid
land, the thorny bushes, on which by day nothing is visible but
dust, glitter during the night with thousands of luminous sparks.
The number of phosphorescent insects augments in the stormy season.
The traveller in the equinoctial regions is never weary of admiring
the effect of those reddish and moveable fires, which, being
reflected by limpid water, blend their radiance with that of the
starry vault of heaven.
We quitted the shore of Cumana as if it had long been our home.
This was the first land we had trodden in a zone, towards which my
thoughts had been directed from earliest youth. There is a powerful
charm in the impression produced by the scenery and climate of
these regions; and after an abode of a few months we seemed to have
lived there during a long succession of years. In Europe, the
inhabitant of the north feels an almost similar emotion, when he
quits even after a short abode the shores of the Bay of Naples, the
delicious country between Tivoli and the lake of Nemi, or the wild
and majestic scenery of the Upper Alps and the Pyrenees. Yet
everywhere in the temperate zone, the effects of vegetable
physiognomy afford little contrast. The firs and the oaks which
crown the mountains of Sweden have a certain family air in common
with those which adorn Greece and Italy. Between the tropics, on
the contrary, in the lower regions of both Indies, everything in
nature appears new and marvellous. In the open plains and amid the
gloom of forests, almost all the remembrances of Europe are
effaced; for it is vegetation that determines the character of a
landscape, and acts upon the imagination by its mass, the contrast
of its forms, and the glow of its colours. In proportion as
impressions are powerful and new, they weaken antecedent
impressions, and their force imparts to them the character of
duration.
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