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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On The 10th Of May, Our Canoe Being Ready Before Sunrise, We Embarked
To Go Up The Rio Negro As Far As The Mouth Of The Cassiquiare, And To
Devote Ourselves To Researches On The Real Course Of That River, Which
Unites The Orinoco To The Amazon.
The morning was fine; but, in
proportion as the heat augmented, the sky became obscured.
The air is
so saturated by water in these forests, that the vesicular vapours
become visible on the least increase of evaporation at the surface of
the earth. The breeze being never felt, the humid strata are not
displaced and renewed by dryer air. We were every day more grieved at
the aspect of the cloudy sky. M. Bonpland was losing by this excessive
humidity the plants he had collected; and I, for my part, was afraid
lest I should again find the fogs of the Rio Negro in the valley of
the Cassiquiare. No one in these missions for half a century past had
doubted the existence of communication between two great systems of
rivers; the important point of our voyage was confined therefore to
fixing by astronomical observations the course of the Cassiquiare, and
particularly the point of its entrance into the Rio Negro, and that of
the bifurcation of the Orinoco. Without a sight of the sun and the
stars this object would be frustrated, and we should have exposed
ourselves in vain to long and painful privations. Our fellow
travellers would have returned by the shortest way, that of the
Pimichin and the small rivers; but M. Bonpland preferred, like me,
persisting in the plan of the voyage, which we had traced for
ourselves in passing the Great Cataracts.
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