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 190 of 406 - First - Home
In 1799
The Mortality Was Very Considerable At Carichana, On The Banks Of The
Meta, And At The Raudal Of Atures.
The Indian of the forest conceives
a horror of the life of the civilized man, when, I will not say any
misfortune befalls his family settled in the mission, but merely any
disagreeable or unforeseen accident.
Natives, who were neophytes, have
been known to desert for ever the Christian establishments, on account
of a great drought; as if this calamity would not have reached them
equally in their plantations, had they remained in their primitive
independence.
The fevers which prevail during a great part of the year in the
villages of Atures and Maypures, around the two Great Cataracts of the
Orinoco, render these spots highly dangerous to European travellers.
They are caused by violent heats, in combination with the excessive
humidity of the air, bad nutriment, and, if we may believe the
natives, the pestilent exhalations rising from the bare rocks of the
Raudales. These fevers of the Orinoco appeared to us to resemble those
which prevail every year between New Barcelona, La Guayra, and Porto
Cabello, in the vicinity of the sea; and which often degenerate into
adynamic fevers. "I have had my little fever (mi calenturita) only
eight months," said the good missionary of the Atures, who accompanied
us to the Rio Negro; speaking of it as of an habitual evil, easy to be
borne. The fits were violent, but of short duration. He was sometimes
seized with them when lying along in the boat under a shelter of
branches of trees, sometimes when exposed to the burning rays of the
sun on an open beach. These tertian agues are attended with great
debility of the muscular system; yet we find poor ecclesiastics on the
Orinoco, who endure for several years these calenturitas, or
tercianas: their effects are not so fatal as those which are
experienced from fevers of much shorter duration in temperate
climates.
I have just alluded to the noxious influence on the salubrity of the
atmosphere, which is attributed by the natives, and even the
missionaries, to the bare rocks. This opinion is the more worthy of
attention, as it is connected with a physical phenomenon lately
observed in different parts of the globe, and not yet sufficiently
explained. Among the cataracts, and wherever the Orinoco, between the
Missions of Carichana and of Santa Barbara, periodically washes the
granitic rocks, they become smooth, black, and as if coated with
plumbago. The colouring matter does not penetrate the stone, which is
coarse-grained granite, containing a few solitary crystals of
hornblende. Taking a general view of the primitive formation of
Atures, we perceive, that, like the granite of Syene in Egypt, it is a
granite with hornblende, and not a real syenite formation. Many of the
layers are entirely destitute of hornblende. The black crust is 0.3 of
a line in thickness; it is found chiefly on the quartzose parts. The
crystals of feldspar sometimes preserve externally their reddish-white
colour, and rise above the black crust.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 190 of 406
Words from 98435 to 98948
of 211397