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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It Was To Be
Dragged Over Land, Across An Isthmus Of Thirty-Six Thousand Feet; From
The Rio Tuamini To The Rio Negro, To Go Up By The Cassiquiare To The
Orinoco, And To Repass The Two Raudales.
When the traveller has passed the Great Cataracts, he feels as if he
were in a new world, and had overstepped the barriers which nature
seems to have raised between the civilized countries of the coast and
the savage and unknown interior.
Towards the east, in the bluish
distance, we saw for the last time the high chain of the Cunavami
mountains. Its long, horizontal ridge reminded us of the Mesa of the
Brigantine, near Cumana; but it terminates by a truncated summit. The
Peak of Calitamini (the name given to this summit) glows at sunset as
with a reddish fire. This appearance is every day the same. No one
ever approached this mountain, the height of which does not exceed six
hundred toises. I believe this splendour, commonly reddish but
sometimes silvery, to be a reflection produced by large plates of
talc, or by gneiss passing into mica-slate. The whole of this country
contains granitic rocks, on which here and there, in little plains, an
argillaceous grit-stone immediately reposes, containing fragments of
quartz and of brown iron-ore.
In going to the embarcadero, we caught on the trunk of a hevea* (* One
of those trees whose milk yields caoutchouc.) a new species of
tree-frog, remarkable for its beautiful colours; it had a yellow
belly, the back and head of a fine velvety purple, and a very narrow
stripe of white from the point of the nose to the hinder extremities.
This frog was two inches long, and allied to the Rana tinctoria, the
blood of which, it is asserted, introduced into the skin of a parrot,
in places where the feathers have been plucked out, occasions the
growth of frizzled feathers of a yellow or red colour.
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