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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As The Sky Again Became Serene
In The Afternoon, We Lay Down To Rest That Night On A Vast Beach, On
The Southern Bank Of The Orinoco, Nearly In The Meridian Of The Little
Town Of Muitaco, Or Real Corona.
I found the latitude by three stars
to be 8 degrees 0 minutes 26 seconds, and the longitude 67 degrees 5
minutes 19 seconds.
When the Observantin monks in 1752 made their
first entradas on the territory of the Caribs, they constructed on
this spot a small fort. The proximity of the lofty mountains of
Araguacais renders Muitaco one of the most healthy places on the Lower
Orinoco. There Iturriaga took up his abode in 1756, to repose after
the fatigues of the expedition of the boundaries; and as he attributed
his recovery to this hot rather than humid climate, the town, or more
properly the village, of Real Corona took the name of Pueblo del
Puerto sano. Going down the Orinoco more to the east, we left the
mouth of the Rio Pao on the north, and that of the Arui on the south.
The latter river, which is somewhat considerable, is often mentioned
by Raleigh. The current of the Orinoco diminished in velocity as we
advanced. I measured several times a base along the beach, to
ascertain the time taken by floating bodies in traversing a known
distance. Above Alta Gracia, near the mouth of the Rio Ujape, I had
found the velocity of the Orinoco 2.3 feet in a second; between
Muitaco and Borbon it was only 1.7 foot. The barometric observations
made in the neighbouring steppes prove the small slope of the ground
from the longitude of 69 degrees to the eastern coast of Guiana. We
found in this country, on the right bank of the Orinoco, small
formations of primitive grunstein, superimposed on granite (perhaps
even embedded in the rock). We saw between Muitaco and the island of
Ceiba a hill entirely composed of balls with concentric layers, in
which we perceived a close mixture of hornblende and feldspar, with
some traces of pyrites. The grunstein resembles that in the vicinity
of Caracas; but it was impossible to ascertain the position of a
formation which appeared to me to be of the same age as the granite of
Parima. Muitaco was the last spot where we slept in the open air on
the shore of the Orinoco: we proceeded along the river two nights more
before we reached Angostura, which terminated our voyage.
It would be difficult for me to express the satisfaction we felt on
landing at Angostura, the capital of Spanish Guiana. The
inconveniences endured at sea in small vessels are trivial in
comparison with those that are suffered under a burning sky,
surrounded by swarms of mosquitos, and lying stretched in a canoe,
without the possibility of taking the least bodily exercise. In
seventy-five days we had performed a passage of five hundred leagues
(twenty to a degree) on the five great rivers, Apure, Orinoco,
Atabapo, Rio Negro, and Cassiquiare; and in this vast extent we had
found but a very small number of inhabited places.
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