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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Under
The Absolute And Sometimes Vexatious Government Of The Monks, The
Indian Seeks To Ameliorate His Condition By Those Little Artifices
Which Are The Weapons Of Physical And Intellectual Weakness.
Having arrived during the night at San Jose de Maypures we were
forcibly struck by the solitude of the place; the Indians were plunged
in profound sleep, and nothing was heard but the cries of nocturnal
birds, and the distant sound of the cataract.
In the calm of the
night, amid the deep repose of nature, the monotonous sound of a fall
of water has in it something sad and solemn. We remained three days at
Maypures, a small village founded by Don Jose Solano at the time of
the expedition of the boundaries, the situation of which is more
picturesque, it might be said still more admirable, than that of
Atures.
The raudal of Maypures, called by the Indians Quituna, is formed, as
all cataracts are, by the resistance which the river encounters in its
way across a ridge of rocks, or a chain of mountains. The lofty
mountains of Cunavami and Calitamini, between the sources of the
rivers Cataniapo and Ventuari, stretch toward the west in a chain of
granitic hills. From this chain flow three small rivers, which embrace
in some sort the cataract of Maypures. There are, on the eastern bank,
the Sanariapo, and on the western, the Cameji and the Toparo. Opposite
the village of Maypures, the mountains fall back in an arch, and, like
a rocky coast, form a gulf open to the south-east.
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