Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The
Old Trees Were Decorated With Beautiful Orchideas,* (* Cymbidium
Violaceum, Habenaria Angustifolia, Etc.) Yellow Bannisterias,
Blue-Flowered Bignonias, Peperomias, Arums, And Pothoses.
A single
trunk displays a greater variety of vegetable forms than are contained
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 Grimmia* with
fontinalis leaves, which has so much fixed the attention of botanists.
(* Grimmia fontinaloides. See Hooker's Musci Exotici, 1818 tab. 2. The
learned author of the Monography of the Jungermanniae (Mr. Jackson
Hooker), with noble disinterestedness, published at his own expense,
in London, the whole collection of cryptogamous plants, brought by
Bonpland and Humboldt from the equinoctial regions of America.) It is
suspended to the branches of the loftiest trees. Of the phaenerogamous
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 laurineae 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
scitamineae with large and glossy leaves, bamboos, and the three
palm-trees, the murichi, jagua, and vadgiai, each of which forms a
separate group. The murichi, or mauritia with scaly fruits, is the
celebrated sago-tree of the Guaraon Indians. It has palmate leaves,
and has no relation to the palm-trees with pinnate and curled leaves;
to the jagua, which appears to be a species of the cocoa-tree; or to
the vadgiai 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 perpendicular 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 palma 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 temperate
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 unfortunately 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 beautiful 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 foliolae 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
leaves? These considerations are more important than they may at first
seem. The forms of plants determine the physiognomy of nature; and
this physiognomy influences the moral dispositions of nations. Every
type comprehends species, which, while exhibiting the same general
appearance, differ in the varied development of the similar organs.
The palm-trees, the scitamineae, the malvaceae, 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 proteaceae,* (* Rhopalas, which characterise the vegetation of the
Llanos.) crotons, agaves, and the great tribe of the cactuses, which
inhabit exclusively the New World, disappear gradually, as we ascend
the Orinoco above the Apure and the Meta. It is, however, the shade
and humidity, 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
Maranon. The arborescent ferns seem to fail entirely near the
cataracts of the Orinoco; we found no species as far as San Fernando
de Atabapo, that is, to the confluence of the Orinoco and the
Guaviare.
Having now examined the vicinity of the Atures, it remains 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 themselves, from a mere narration, the state of
the bed of the river. It is traversed, in an extent of more than five
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.
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