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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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 Maypures, 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 obtained from the missionary of Carichana. It was
much damaged by the shoals it had struck against, and the carelessness
of the Indians; but still greater dangers awaited it. It was to be
dragged over land, across an isthmus of thirty-six thousand feet; from
the Rio Tuamini to the Rio Negro, to go up by the Cassiquiare to the
Orinoco, and to repass the two 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* (* One
of those trees whose milk yields caoutchouc.) 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, and a very narrow
stripe of white from the point of the nose to the hinder extremities.
This frog was two inches long, and allied to the Rana tinctoria, 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 cartwheels 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 merchandize. I believe these poor inhabitants
of Maypures would now be as much astonished at the sight of an ox of
the Spanish breed, as the Romans were at the sight of 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 Raton, 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 Maypures 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
rustling 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, contribute 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 circumstances. 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. The insalubrity of the climate would be the same on 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.
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