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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"Of Cannibals That Do Each Other Eat:
Of Anthropophagi, And Men Whose Heads
Do Grow Beneath Their Shoulders.")
An old Indian, whom we met at Carichana, and who boasted of having
often eaten human flesh, had seen these acephali "with his own eyes."
These absurd fables are spread as far as the Llanos, where you are not
always permitted to doubt the existence of the Raya Indians.
In every
zone intolerance accompanies credulity; and it might be said that the
fictions of ancient geographers had passed from one hemisphere to the
other, did we not know that the most fantastic productions of the
imagination, like the works of nature, furnish everywhere a certain
analogy of aspect and of form.
We landed at the mouth of the Rio Vichada or Visata to examine the
plants of that part of the country. The scenery is very singular. The
forest is thin, and an innumerable quantity of small rocks rise from
the plain. These form massy prisms, ruined pillars, and solitary
towers fifteen or twenty feet high. Some are shaded by the trees of
the forest, others have their summits crowned with palms. These rocks
are of granite passing into gneiss. At the confluence of the Vichada
the rocks of granite, and what is still more remarkable, the soil
itself, are covered with moss and lichens. These latter resemble the
Cladonia pyxidata and the Lichen rangiferinus, so common in the north
of Europe. We could scarcely persuade ourselves that we were elevated
less than one hundred toises above the level of the sea, in the fifth
degree of latitude, in the centre of the torrid zone, which has so
long been thought to be destitute of cryptogamous plants. The mean
temperature of this shady and humid spot probably exceeds twenty-six
degrees of the centigrade thermometer. Reflecting on the small
quantity of rain which had hitherto fallen, we were surprised at the
beautiful verdure of the forests. This peculiarity characterises the
valley of the Upper Orinoco; on the coast of Caracas, and in the
Llanos, the trees in winter (in the season called summer in South
America, north of the equator) are stripped of their leaves, and the
ground is covered only with yellow and withered grass. Between the
solitary rocks just described arise some high plants of columnar
cactus (Cactus septemangularis), a very rare appearance south of the
cataracts of Atures and Maypures.
Amid this picturesque scene M. Bonpland was fortunate enough to find
several specimens of Laurus cinnamomoides, a very aromatic species of
cinnamon, known at the Orinoco by the names of varimacu and of
canelilla.* (* The diminutive of the Spanish word canela, which
signifies cinnamon.) This valuable production is found also in the
valley of the Rio Caura, as well as near Esmeralda, and eastward of
the Great Cataracts. The Jesuit Francisco de Olmo appears to have been
the first who discovered the canelilla, which he did in the country of
the Piaroas, near the sources of the Cataniapo. The missionary Gili,
who did not advance so far as the regions I am now describing, seems
to confound the varimacu, or guarimacu, with the myristica, or
nutmeg-tree of America.
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