Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 388 of 777 - First - Home
We Found Forests Of Them
Mingled With Crotons, Covering A Great Space Of Arid Land To The East
Of The Andes, In The Province Of Bracamoros, Towards The Upper
Maranon.
The arborescent ferns seem to fail entirely near the
cataracts of the Orinoco; we found no species as far as San Fernando
de Atabapo, that is, to the confluence of the Orinoco and the
Guaviare.
Having now examined the vicinity of the Atures, it remains for me to
speak of the rapids themselves, which occur in a part of the valley
where the bed of the river, deeply ingulfed, has almost inaccessible
banks. It was only in a very few spots that we could enter the Orinoco
to bathe, between the two cataracts, in coves where the waters have
eddies of little velocity. Persons who have dwelt in the Alps, the
Pyrenees, or even the Cordilleras, so celebrated for the fractures and
the vestiges of destruction which they display at every step, can
scarcely picture to themselves, from a mere narration, the state of
the bed of the river. It is traversed, in an extent of more than five
miles, by innumerable dikes of rock, forming so many natural dams, so
many barriers resembling those of the Dnieper, which the ancients
designated by the name of phragmoi. The space between the rocky dikes
of the Orinoco is filled with islands of different dimensions; some
hilly, divided into several peaks, and two or three hundred toises in
length, others small, low, and like mere shoals.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 388 of 777
Words from 104924 to 105177
of 211397
