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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In Some Parts The River Is
Bordered By Forests On Each Side, And Forms A Straight Canal A Hundred
And Fifty Toises Broad.
The manner in which the trees are disposed is
very remarkable.
We first find bushes of sauso,* (* Hermesia
castaneifolia. This is a new genus, approaching the alchornea of
Swartz.) forming a kind of hedge four feet high, and appearing as if
they had been clipped by the hand of man. A copse of cedar,
brazilletto, and lignum-vitae, rises behind this hedge. Palm-trees are
rare; we saw only a few scattered trunks of the thorny piritu and
corozo. The large quadrupeds of those regions, the jaguars, tapirs,
and peccaries, have made openings in the hedge of sauso which we have
just described. Through these the wild animals pass when they come to
drink at the river. As they fear but little the approach of a boat, we
had the pleasure of viewing them as they paced slowly along the shore
till they disappeared in the forest, which they entered by one of the
narrow passes left at intervals between the bushes. These scenes,
which were often repeated, had ever for me a peculiar attraction. The
pleasure they excite is not owing solely to the interest which the
naturalist takes in the objects of his study, it is connected with a
feeling common to all men who have been brought up in the habits of
civilization. You find yourself in a new world, in the midst of
untamed and savage nature.
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