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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Albino
Varieties Of The Jaguar Have Been Seen In Paraguay:
For the spots of
these animals, which may be called the beautiful panthers of America,
are sometimes so pale as to be scarcely distinguishable on a very
white ground.
In the black jaguars, on the contrary, it is the colour
of the ground which renders the spots indistinct. It requires to
reside long in those countries, and to accompany the Indians of
Esmeralda in the perilous chase of the tiger, to decide with certainty
upon the varieties and the species. In all the mammiferae, and
particularly in the numerous family of the apes, we ought, I believe,
to fix our attention less on the transition from one colour to another
in individuals, than on their habit of separating themselves, and
forming distinct bands.
We left our resting place before sunrise on the 24th of May. In a
rocky cove, which had been the dwelling of some Durimundi Indians, the
aromatic odour of the plants was so powerful, that although sleeping
in the open air, and the irritability of our nervous system being
allayed by the habits of a life of fatigue, we were nevertheless
incommoded by it. We could not ascertain the flowers which diffused
this perfume. The forest was impenetrable; but M. Bonpland believed
that large clumps of pancratium and other liliaceous plants were
concealed in the neighbouring marshes. Descending the Orinoco by
favour of the current, we passed first the mouth of the Rio
Cunucunumo, and then the Guanami and the Puriname. The two banks of
the principal river are entirely desert; lofty mountains rise on the
north, and on the south a vast plain extends far as the eye can reach
beyond the sources of the Atacavi, which lower down takes the name of
the Atabapo. There is something gloomy and desolate in this aspect of
a river, on which not even a fisherman's canoe is seen. Some
independent tribes, the Abirianos and the Maquiritares, dwell in the
mountainous country; but in the neighbouring savannahs,* bounded by
the Cassiquiare, the Atabapo, the Orinoco, and the Rio Negro, there is
now scarcely any trace of a human habitation. (* They form a
quadrilateral plot of a thousand square leagues, the opposite sides of
which have contrary slopes, the Cassiquiare flowing towards the south,
the Atabapo towards the north, the Orinoco towards the north-west, and
the Rio Negro towards the south-east.) I say now; for here, as in
other parts of Guiana, rude figures representing the sun, the moon,
and different animals, traced on the hardest rocks of granite, attest
the anterior existence of a people, very different from those who
became known to us on the banks of the Orinoco. According to the
accounts of the natives, and of the most intelligent missionaries,
these symbolic signs resemble perfectly the characters we saw a
hundred leagues more to the north, near Caycara, opposite the mouth of
the Rio Apure. (See Chapter 2.18 above.)
In advancing from the plains of the Cassiquiare and the Conorichite,
one hundred and forty leagues further eastward, between the sources of
the Rio Blanco and the Rio Essequibo, we also meet with rocks and
symbolical figures.
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