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 Left Bank Of The
River Is Generally Lower, But It Makes Part Of A Plane Which Rises
Again West Of Atures, Towards The Peak Of Uniana, A Pyramid Nearly
Three Thousand Feet High, And Placed On A Wall Of Rock With Steep
Slopes.
The situation of this solitary peak in the plain contributes
to render its aspect more imposing and majestic.
Near the Mission, in
the country which surrounds the cataract, the aspect of the landscape
varies at every step. Within a small space we find all that is most
rude and gloomy in nature, united with an open country and lovely
pastoral scenery. In the physical, as in the moral world, the contrast
of effects, the comparison of what is powerful and menacing with what
is soft and peaceful, is a never-failing source of our pleasures and
our emotions.
I shall here repeat some scattered features of a picture which I
traced in another work shortly after my return to Europe.* (* Views of
Nature page 153 Bohn's edition.) The savannahs of Atures, covered with
slender plants and grasses, are really meadows resembling those of
Europe. They are never inundated by the rivers, and seem as if waiting
to be ploughed by the hand of man. Notwithstanding their extent, these
savannahs do not exhibit the monotony of our plains; they surround
groups of rocks and blocks of granite piled on one another. On the
very borders of these plains and this open country, glens are seen
scarcely lighted by the rays of the setting sun, and hollows where the
humid soil, loaded with arums, heliconias, and lianas, manifests at
every step the wild fecundity of nature.
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