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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We Remained Only One Day At San Fernando De Atabapo, Although That
Village, Adorned As It Was By The Pirijao Palm-Tree, With Fruit Like
Peaches, Appeared To Us A Delicious Abode.
Tame pauxis* (* Not the
ourax of Cuvier, Crax pauxi Linn., but the Crax alector.) surrounded
the Indian huts; in one of which we saw a very rare monkey, which
inhabits the banks of the Guaviare.
This monkey is the caparro, which
I have made known in my Observations on Zoology and comparative
Anatomy; it forms, as Geoffroy believes, a new genus (Lagothrix)
between the ateles and the alouates. The hair of this monkey is grey,
like that of the marten, and extremely soft to the touch. The caparro
is distinguished by a round head, and a mild and agreeable expression
of countenance. I believe the missionary Gili is the only author who
has made mention before me of this curious animal, around which
zoologists begin to group other monkeys of Brazil. Having quitted San
Fernando on the 27th of May, we arrived, by help of the rapid current
of the Orinoco, in seven hours, at the mouth of the Rio Mataveni. We
passed the night in the open air, under the granitic rock El
Castillito, which rises in the middle of the river, and the form of
which reminded us of the ruin called the Mouse-tower (Mausethurm), on
the Rhine, opposite Bingen. Here, as on the banks of the Atabapo, we
were struck by the sight of a small species of drosera, having exactly
the appearance of the drosera of Europe.
The Orinoco had sensibly swelled during the night; and the current,
strongly accelerated, bore us, in ten hours, from the mouth of the
Mataveni to the Upper Great Cataract, that of Maypures, or Quituna.
The distance which we passed over was thirteen leagues. We recalled to
mind, with much satisfaction, the scenes where we had reposed in going
up the river. We again found the Indians who had accompanied us in our
herborizations; and we visited anew the fine spring that issues from a
rock of stratified granite behind the house of the missionary: its
temperature was not changed more than 0.3 degrees. From the mouth of
the Atabapo as far as that of the Apure we seemed to be travelling as
through a country which we had long inhabited. We were reduced to the
same abstinence; we were stung by the same mosquitos; but the
certainty of reaching in a few weeks the term of our physical
sufferings kept up our spirits.
The passage of the canoe through the Great Cataract obliged us to stop
two days at Maypures. Father Bernardo Zea, missionary at the Raudales,
who had accompanied us to the Rio Negro, though ill, insisted on
conducting us with his Indians as far as Atures. One of these Indians,
Zerepe, the interpreter, who had been so unmercifully punished at the
beach of Pararuma, rivetted our attention by his appearance of deep
sorrow.
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