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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The Pimichin, Which Is Called A
Rivulet (Cano) Is Tolerably Broad; But Small Trees That Love The Water
Narrow The Bed So Much That There Remains Open A Channel Of Only
Fifteen Or Twenty Toises.
Next to the Rio Chagres this river is one of
the most celebrated in America for the number of its windings:
It is
said to have eighty-five, which greatly lengthen it. They often form
right angles, and occur every two or three leagues. To determine the
difference of longitude between the landing-place and the point where
we were to enter the Rio Negro, I took by the compass the course of
the Cano Pimichin, and noted the time during which we followed the
same direction. The velocity of the current was only 2.4 feet in a
second; but our canoe made by rowing 4.6 feet. The embarcadero of the
Pimichin appeared to me to be eleven thousand toises west of its
mouth, and 0 degrees 2 minutes west of the mission of Javita. This
Cano is navigable during the whole year, and has but one raudal, which
is somewhat difficult to go up; its banks are low, but rocky. After
having followed the windings of the Pimichin for four hours and a half
we at length entered the Rio Negro.
The morning was cool and beautiful. We had now been confined
thirty-six days in a narrow boat, so unsteady that it would have been
overset by any person rising imprudently from his seat, without
warning the rowers. We had suffered severely from the sting of
insects, but we had withstood the insalubrity of the climate; we had
passed without accident the great number of waterfalls and bars, which
impede the navigation of the rivers, and often render it more
dangerous than long voyages by sea. After all we had endured, it may
be conceived that we felt no little satisfaction in having reached the
tributary streams of the Amazon, having passed the isthmus that
separates two great systems of rivers, and in being sure of having
fulfilled the most important object of our journey, namely, to
determine astronomically the course of that arm of the Orinoco which
falls into the Rio Negro, and of which the existence has been
alternately proved and denied during half a century. In proportion as
we draw near to an object we have long had in view, its interest seems
to augment. The uninhabited banks of the Cassiquiare, covered with
forests, without memorials of times past, then occupied my
imagination, as do now the banks of the Euphrates, or the Oxus,
celebrated in the annals of civilized nations. In that interior part
of the New Continent one may almost accustom oneself to regard men as
not being essential to the order of nature. The earth is loaded with
plants, and nothing impedes their free development. An immense layer
of mould manifests the uninterrupted action of organic powers.
Crocodiles and boas are masters of the river; the jaguar, the peccary,
the dante, and the monkeys traverse the forest without fear and
without danger; there they dwell as in an ancient inheritance.
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