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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Such Is The Remembrance Annexed To This Fatal Rock, The Piedra De La
Madre.
In this relation of my travels I feel no desire to dwell on
pictures of individual suffering - evils which
Are frequent wherever
there are masters and slaves, civilized Europeans living with people
in a state of barbarism, and priests exercising the plenitude of
arbitrary power over men ignorant and without defence. In describing
the countries through which I passed, I generally confine myself to
pointing out what is imperfect, or fatal to humanity, in their civil
or religious institutions. If I have dwelt longer on the Rock of the
Guahiba, it was to record an affecting instance of maternal tenderness
in a race of people so long calumniated; and because I thought some
benefit might accrue from publishing a fact, which I had from the
monks of San Francisco, and which proves how much the system of the
missions calls for the care of the legislator.
Above the mouth of the Guasucavi we entered the Rio Temi, the course
of which is from south to north. Had we continued to ascend the
Atabapo, we should have turned to east-south-east, going farther from
the banks of the Guainia or Rio Negro. The Temi is only eighty or
ninety toises broad, but in any other country than Guiana it would be
a considerable river. The country exhibits the uniform aspect of
forests covering ground perfectly flat. The fine pirijao palm, with
its fruit like peaches, and a new species of bache, or mauritia, its
trunk bristled with thorns, rise amid smaller trees, the vegetation of
which appears to be retarded by the continuance of the inundations.
The Mauritia aculeata is called by the Indians juria or cauvaja; its
leaves are in the form of a fan, and they bend towards the ground.
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