Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 142 of 208 - First - Home
All These Trees (With
The Exception Of Our New Genus Retiniphyllum) Were More Than One
Hundred 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 satisfaction. 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 compelled to
dry by artificial heat. Our Indians distinguished the leaves better
than the corollae or the fruit. Occupied in 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 properties being
sometimes found in the same organs of different 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. (* In 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 oleineae in
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
properties of plants. If our Alfonsia oleifera belong to the genus
Elais (as Brown, with great reason believes), it follows, that in the
same genus the oil is found in the sarcocarp and in the perisperm.)
What the coniferae are to the temperate zone, the terebinthaceae and
the guttiferae are to the torrid. In the forests of those burning
climates, (where there is neither pine, thuya, taxodium, nor even a
podocarpus,) resins, balsams, and aromatic gums, are furnished by the
maronobea, the icica, and the amyris. The 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
Moronobaea coccinea, furnishes but 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 Galibis* of Cayenne, was
again heard by us at Javita, three hundred leagues distant from French
Guiana. (* The Galibis or Caribis (the r has been changed into l, as
often happens) are of the great stock of the Carib nations. The
products useful in commerce and in domestic life have received the
same denomination in every part of America which this warlike and
commercial people have overrun.) The moronobaea or symphonia of Javita
yields a yellow resin; the caragna, a resin strongly odoriferous, and
white as snow; the latter becomes 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 Rio 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; consequently 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 Rio 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 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, this substance 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 is 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 especially when the trees have attained a great age, and
the interior 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 Garipons 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 horizontal notch others both perpendicular and
oblique, reaching from the top of the trunk nearly to the roots.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 142 of 208
Words from 143921 to 144949
of 211397