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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This
Aspect Of Animated Nature, In Which Man Is Nothing, Has Something In
It Strange And Sad.
To this we reconcile ourselves with difficulty on
the ocean, and amid the sands of Africa; though in scenes where
nothing recalls to mind our fields, our woods, and our streams, we are
less astonished at the vast solitude through which we pass.
Here, in a
fertile country, adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the
traces of the power of man; we seem to be transported into a world
different from that which gave us birth. These impressions are the
more powerful in proportion as they are of long duration. A soldier,
who had spent his whole life in the missions of the Upper Orinoco,
slept with us on the bank of the river. He was an intelligent man,
who, during a calm and serene night, pressed me with questions on the
magnitude of the stars, on the inhabitants of the moon, on a thousand
subjects of which I was as ignorant as himself. Being unable by my
answers to satisfy his curiosity, he said to me in a firm tone of the
most positive conviction: "with respect to men, I believe there are no
more up there than you would have found if you had gone by land from
Javita to Cassiquiare. I think I see in the stars, as here, a plain
covered with grass, and a forest (mucho monte) traversed by a river."
In citing these words I paint the impression produced by the
monotonous aspect of those solitary regions. May this monotony not be
found to extend to the journal of our navigation, and weary the reader
accustomed to the description of the scenes and historical memorials
of the old continent!
CHAPTER 2.23.
THE RIO NEGRO.
BOUNDARIES OF BRAZIL.
THE CASSIQUIARE.
BIFURCATION OF THE ORINOCO.
The Rio Negro, compared to the Amazon, the Rio de la Plata, or the
Orinoco, is but a river of the second order. Its possession has been
for ages of great political importance to the Spanish Government,
because it is capable of furnishing a rival power, Portugal, with an
easy passage into the missions of Guiana, and thereby disturbing the
Capitania general of Caracas in its southern limits. Three hundred
years have been spent in vain territorial disputes. According to the
difference of times, and the degree of civilization among the natives,
resource has been had sometimes to the authority of the Pope, and
sometimes the support of astronomy; and the disputants being generally
more interested in prolonging than in terminating the struggle, the
nautical sciences and the geography of the New Continent, have alone
gained by this interminable litigation. When the affairs of Paraguay,
and the possession of the colony of Del Sacramento, became of great
importance to the courts of Madrid and Lisbon, commissioners of the
boundaries were sent to the Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Rio Plata.
The little that was known, up to the end of the last century, of the
astronomical geography of the interior of the New Continent, was owing
to these estimable and laborious men, the French and Spanish
academicians, who measured a meridian line at Quito, and to officers
who went from Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres to join the expedition of
Malaspina.
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