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
Missionary Of The Place, Father Morillo, With Whom We Spent Some
Hours, Received Us With Great Hospitality.
He even offered us Madeira
wine, but, as an object of luxury, we should have preferred wheaten
bread.
The want of bread becomes more sensibly felt in length of time
than that of a strong liquor. The Portuguese of the Amazon carry small
quantities of Madeira wine, from time to time, to the Rio Negro; and
the word madera, signifying wood in the Castilian language, the monks,
who are not much versed in the study of geography, had a scruple of
celebrating mass with Madeira wine, which they took for a fermented
liquor extracted from the trunk of some tree, like palm-wine; and
requested the guardian of the missions to decide, whether the vino de
madera were wine from grapes, or the juice of a tree. At the beginning
of the conquest, the question was agitated, whether it were allowable
for the priests, in celebrating mass, to use any fermented liquor
analogous to grape-wine. The question, as might have been foreseen,
was decided in the negative.
At Davipe we bought some provisions, among which were fowls and a pig.
This purchase greatly interested our Indians, who had been a long
while deprived of meat. They pressed us to depart, in order to reach
the island of Dapa, where the pig was to be killed and roasted during
the night. We had scarcely time to examine in the convent (convento)
the great stores of mani resin, and cordage of the chiquichiqui palm,
which deserves to be more known in Europe. This cordage is extremely
light; it floats upon the water, and is more durable in the navigation
of rivers than ropes of hemp. It must be preserved at sea by being
often wetted, and little exposed to the heat of the tropical sun. Don
Antonio Santos, celebrated in the country for his journey in search of
lake Parima, taught the Indians of the Spanish Rio Negro to make use
of the petioles of the chiquichiqui, a palm-tree with pinnate leaves,
of which we saw neither the flowers nor the fruit. This officer is the
only white man who ever came from Angostura to Grand Para, passing by
land from the sources of the Rio Carony to those of the Rio Branco. He
had studied the mode of fabricating ropes from the chiquichiqui in the
Portuguese colonies; and, on his return from the Amazon, he introduced
this branch of industry into the missions of Guiana. It were to be
wished that extensive rope-walks could be established on the banks of
the Rio Negro and the Cassiquiare, in order to make these cables an
article of trade with Europe. A small quantity is already exported
from Angostura to the West Indies; and it costs from fifty to sixty
per cent less than cordage of hemp. Young palm-trees only being
employed, they must be planted and carefully cultivated.
A little above the mission of Davipe, the Rio Negro receives a branch
of the Cassiquiare, the existence of which is a very remarkable
phenomenon in the history of the branchings of rivers.
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