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 1799
The Mortality Was Very Considerable At Carichana, On The Banks Of The
Meta, And At The Raudal Of Atures.
The Indian of the forest conceives
a horror of the life of the civilized man, when, I will not say any
misfortune befalls his family settled in the mission, but merely any
disagreeable or unforeseen accident.
Natives, who were neophytes, have
been known to desert for ever the Christian establishments, on account
of a great drought; as if this calamity would not have reached them
equally in their plantations, had they remained in their primitive
independence.
The fevers which prevail during a great part of the year in the
villages of Atures and Maypures, around the two Great Cataracts of the
Orinoco, render these spots highly dangerous to European travellers.
They are caused by violent heats, in combination with the excessive
humidity of the air, bad nutriment, and, if we may believe the
natives, the pestilent exhalations rising from the bare rocks of the
Raudales. These fevers of the Orinoco appeared to us to resemble those
which prevail every year between New Barcelona, La Guayra, and Porto
Cabello, in the vicinity of the sea; and which often degenerate into
adynamic fevers. "I have had my little fever (mi calenturita) only
eight months," said the good missionary of the Atures, who accompanied
us to the Rio Negro; speaking of it as of an habitual evil, easy to be
borne. The fits were violent, but of short duration. He was sometimes
seized with them when lying along in the boat under a shelter of
branches of trees, sometimes when exposed to the burning rays of the
sun on an open beach.
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