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 168 of 208 - First - Home
Our First Resting-Place Above Vasiva Was Easily Arranged.
We found a
little nook of dry ground, free from shrubs, to the south of the Cano
Curamuni, in
A spot where we saw some capuchin monkeys.* (* Simia
chiropotes.) They were recognizable by their black beards and their
gloomy and sullen air, and were walking slowly on the horizontal
branches of a genipa. During the five following nights our passage was
the more troublesome in proportion as we approached the bifurcation of
the Orinoco. The luxuriance of the vegetation increases in a manner of
which it is difficult even for those acquainted with the aspect of the
forests between the tropics, to form an idea. There is no longer a
bank: a palisade of tufted trees forms the margin of the river. You
see a canal two hundred toises broad, bordered by two enormous walls,
clothed with lianas and foliage. We often tried to land, but without
success. Towards sunset we sailed along for an hour seeking to
discover, not an opening (since none exists), but a spot less wooded,
where our Indians by means of the hatchet and manual labour, could
clear space enough for a resting-place for twelve or thirteen persons.
It was impossible to pass the night in the canoe; the mosquitos, which
tormented us during the day, accumulated toward evening beneath the
toldo covered with palm-leaves, which served to shelter us from the
rain. Our hands and faces had never before been so much swelled.
Father Zea, who had till then boasted of having in his missions of the
cataracts the largest and fiercest (las mas feroces) mosquitos, at
length gradually acknowledged that the sting of the insects of the
Cassiquiare was the most painful he had ever felt. We experienced
great difficulty, amid a thick forest, in finding wood to make a fire,
the branches of the trees in those equatorial regions where it always
rains, being so full of sap, that they will scarcely burn. There being
no bare shore, it is hardly possible to procure old wood, which the
Indians call wood baked in the sun. However, fire was necessary to us
only as a defence against the beasts of the forest; for we had such a
scarcity of provision that we had little need of fuel for the purpose
of preparing our food.
On the 18th of May, towards evening, we discovered a spot where wild
cacao-trees were growing on the bank of the river. The nut of these
cacaos is small and bitter; the Indians of the forest suck the pulp,
and throw away the nut, which is picked up by the Indians of the
missions, and sold to persons who are not very nice in the preparation
of their chocolate. "This is the Puerto del Cacao" (Cacao Port), said
the pilot; "it is here our Padres sleep, when they go to Esmeralda to
buy sarbacans* (* The bamboo tubes furnished by the Arundinaria, used
for projecting the poisoned arrows of the natives. See Views of Nature
page 180.) and juvias ( Brazil nuts). Not five boats, however, pass
annually by the Cassiquiare; and since we left Maypures (a whole month
previously), we had not met one living soul on the rivers we
navigated, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the missions. To
the south of lake Duractumuni we slept in a forest of palm-trees. It
rained violently, but the pothoses, arums, and lianas, furnished so
thick a natural trellis, that we were sheltered as under a vault of
foliage. The Indians whose hammocks were placed on the edge of the
river, interwove the heliconias and other musaceae, so as to form a
kind of roof over them. Our fires lighted up, to the height of fifty
or sixty feet, the palm-trees, the lianas loaded with flowers, and the
columns of white smoke, which ascended in a straight line toward the
sky. The whole exhibited a magnificent spectacle; but to have enjoyed
it fully, we should have breathed an air clear of insects.
The most depressing of all physical sufferings are those which are
uniform in their duration, and can be combated only by long patience.
It is probable, that in the exhalations of the forests of the
Cassiquiare M. Bonpland imbibed the seeds of a severe malady, under
which he nearly sunk on our arrival at Angostura. Happily for him and
for me, nothing led us to presage the danger with which he was
menaced. The view of the river, and the hum of the insects, were a
little monotonous; but some remains of our natural cheerfulness
enabled us to find sources of relief during our wearisome passage. We
discovered, that by eating small portions of dry cacao ground without
sugar, and drinking a large quantity of the river water, we succeeded
in appeasing our appetite for several hours. The ants and the
mosquitos troubled us more than the humidity and the want of food.
Notwithstanding the privations to which we were exposed during our
excursions in the Cordilleras, the navigation from Mandavaca to
Esmeralda has always appeared to us the most painful part of our
travels in America. I advise those who are not very desirous of seeing
the great bifurcation of the Orinoco, to take the way of the Atabapo
in preference to that of the Cassiquiare.
Above the Cano Duractumuni, the Cassiquiare pursues a uniform
direction from north-east to south-west. We were surprised to see how
much the high steep banks of the Cassiquiare had been undermined on
each side by the sudden risings of the water. Uprooted trees formed as
it were natural rafts; and being half-buried in the mud, they were
extremely dangerous for canoes. We passed the night of the 20th of
May, the last of our passage on the Cassiquiare, near the point of the
bifurcation of the Orinoco. We had some hope of being able to make an
astronomical observation, as falling-stars of remarkable magnitude
were visible through the vapours that veiled the sky; whence we
concluded that the stratum of vapours must be very thin, since meteors
of this kind have scarcely ever been seen below a cloud.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 168 of 208
Words from 170425 to 171457
of 211397