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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The Passage From The Mouth Of The Rio Negro To Grand Para Occupying
Only Twenty Or Twenty-Five Days, It
Would not have taken us much more
time to have gone down the Amazon as far as the coast of
Brazil, than
to return by the Cassiquiare and the Orinoco to the northern coast of
Caracas. We were informed at San Carlos that, on account of political
circumstances, it was difficult at that moment to pass from the
Spanish to the Portuguese settlements; but we did not know till after
our return to Europe the extent of the danger to which we should have
been exposed in proceeding as far as Barcellos. It was known at
Brazil, possibly through the medium of the newspapers, that I was
going to visit the missions of the Rio Negro, and examine the natural
canal which unites two great systems of rivers. In those desert
forests instruments had been seen only in the hands of the
commissioners of the boundaries; and at that time the subaltern agents
of the Portuguese government could not conceive how a man of sense
could expose himself to the fatigues of a long journey, to measure
lands that did not belong to him. Orders had been issued to seize my
person, my instruments, and, above all, those registers of
astronomical observations, so dangerous to the safety of states. We
were to be conducted by way of the Amazon to Grand Para, and thence
sent back to Lisbon. But fortunately for me, the government at Lisbon,
on being informed of the zeal of its subaltern agents, instantly gave
orders that I should not be disturbed in my operations; but that on
the contrary they should be encouraged, if I traversed any part of the
Portuguese possessions.
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