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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We Shall Have Occasion To Speak
Of The Rio Branco And The Padaviri, When We Arrive In That Mission; It
Suffices here to pause at the third tributary stream of the Rio Negro,
the Cababury, the interbranchings of which with
The Cassiquiare are
alike important in their connexion with hydrography, and with the
trade in sarsaparilla.
The lofty mountains of the Parime, which border the northern bank of
the Orinoco in the upper part of its course above Esmeralda, send off
a chain towards the south, of which the Cerro de Unturan forms one of
the principal summits. This mountainous country, of small extent but
rich in vegetable productions, above all, in the mavacure liana,
employed in preparing the wourali poison, in almond-trees (the juvia,
or Bertholletia excelsa), in aromatic pucheries, and in wild
cacao-trees, forms a point of division between the waters that flow to
the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro. The tributary streams
on the north, or those of the Orinoco, are the Mavaca and the
Daracapo; those on the west, or of the Cassiquiare, are the Idapa and
the Pacimoni; and those on the south, or of the Rio Negro, are the
Padaviri and the Cababuri. The latter is divided near its source into
two branches, the westernmost of which is known by the name of Baria.
The Indians of the mission of San Francisco Solano gave us the most
minute description of its course. It affords the very rare example of
a branch by which an inferior tributary stream, instead of receiving
the waters of the superior stream, sends to it a part of its own
waters in a direction opposite to that of the principal recipient.
The Cababuri runs into the Rio Negro near the mission of Nossa Senhora
das Caldas; but the rivers Ya and Dimity, which are higher tributary
streams, communicate also with the Cababuri; so that, from the little
fort of San Gabriel de Cachoeiras as far as San Antonio de Castanheira
the Indians of the Portuguese possessions can enter the territory of
the Spanish missions by the Baria and the Pacimoni.
The chief object of these incursions is the collection of sarsaparilla
and the aromatic seeds of the puchery-laurel (Laurus pichurim). The
sarsaparilla of these countries is celebrated at Grand Para,
Angostura, Cumana, Nueva Barcelona, and in other parts of Terra Firma,
by the name of zarza del Rio Negro. It is much preferred to the zarza
of the Province of Caracas, or of the mountains of Merida; it is dried
with great care, and exposed purposely to smoke, in order that it may
become blacker. This liana grows in profusion on the humid declivities
of the mountains of Unturan and Achivaquery. Decandolle is right in
suspecting that different species of smilax are gathered under the
name of sarsaparilla. We found twelve new species, among which the
Smilax siphylitica of the Cassiquaire, and the Smilax officinalis of
the river Magdalena, are most esteemed on account of their diuretic
properties. The quantity of sarsaparilla employed in the Spanish
colonies as a domestic medicine is very considerable. We see by the
works of Clusius, that at the beginning of the Conquista, Europe
obtained this salutary medicament from the Mexican coast of Honduras
and the port of Guayaquil. The trade in zarza is now more active in
those ports which have interior communications with the Orinoco, the
Rio Negro, and the Amazon.
The trials made in several botanical gardens of Europe prove that the
Smilax glauca of Virginia, which it is pretended is the S.
sarsaparilla of Linnaeus, may be cultivated in the open air, wherever
the mean winter temperature rises above six or seven degrees of the
centigrade thermometer*: but those species that possess the most
active virtues belong exclusively to the torrid zone, and require a
much higher degree of heat. (* The winter temperature at London and
Paris is 4.2 and 3.7; at Montpelier, 6.7; at Rome, 7.7 degrees. In
that part of Mexico, and the Terra Firma, where we saw the most active
species of the sarsaparilla growing (that which supplies the trade of
the Spanish and Portuguese colonies), the temperature is from twenty
to twenty-six degrees. The roots of another family of monocotyledons
(of some cyperaceae) possess also diaphoretic and resolvent
properties. The Carex arenaria, the C. hirta, etc. furnish the German
sarsaparilla of druggists. According to Clusius, Europe received the
first sarsaparilla from Yucatan, and the island of Puna, opposite
Guayaquil.) In reading the works of Clusius, it can scarcely be
conceived why our writers on the Materia Medica persist in considering
a plant of the United States as the most ancient type of the officinal
species of the genus smilax.
We found in the possession of the Indians of the Rio Negro some of
those green stones, known by the name of Amazon stones, because the
natives pretend, according to an ancient tradition, that they come
from the country of the women without husbands (Cougnantainsecouima),
or women living alone (Aikeambenano*). (* This word is of the Tamanac
language; these women are the sole Donne of the Italian missionaries.)
We were told at San Carlos, and in the neighbouring villages, that the
sources of the Orinoco, which we found east of the Esmeralda, and in
the missions of the Carony and at Angostura, that the sources of the
Rio Branco are the native spots of the green stones. These statements
confirm the report of an old soldier of the garrison of Cayenne
(mentioned by La Condamine), who affirmed that those mineral
substances were obtained from the country of women, west of the rapids
of the Oyapoc. The Indians who inhabit the fort of Topayos on the
Amazon five degrees east of the mouth of the Rio Negro, possessed
formerly a great number of these stones. Had they received them from
the north, that is, from the country pointed out by the Indians of the
Rio Negro, which extends from the mountains of Cayenne towards the
sources of the Essequibo, the Carony, the Orinoco, the Parime, and the
Rio Trombetas?
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