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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Finding No Tree
On The Strand, We Stuck Our Oars In The Ground, And To These We
Fastened Our Hammocks.
Everything passed tranquilly till eleven at
night; and then a noise so terrific arose in the neighbouring forest,
that it was almost impossible to close our eyes.
Amid the cries of so
many wild beasts howling at once, the Indians discriminated such only
as were at intervals heard separately. These were the little soft
cries of the sapajous, the moans of the alouate apes, the howlings of
the jaguar and couguar, the peccary, and the sloth, and the cries of
the curassao, the parraka, and other gallinaceous birds. When the
jaguars approached the skirt of the forest, our dog, which till then
had never ceased barking, began to howl and seek for shelter beneath
our hammocks. Sometimes, after a long silence, the cry of the tiger
came from the tops of the trees; and then it was followed by the sharp
and long whistling of the monkeys, which appeared to flee from the
danger that threatened them. We heard the same noises repeated, during
the course of whole months, whenever the forest approached the bed of
the river. The security evinced by the Indians inspires confidence in
the minds of travellers, who readily persuade themselves that the
tigers are afraid of fire, and that they do not attack a man lying in
his hammock. These attacks are in fact extremely rare; and, during a
long abode in South America, I remember only one example, of a
llanero, who was found mutilated in his hammock opposite the island of
Achaguas.
When the natives are interrogated on the causes of the tremendous
noise made by the beasts of the forest at certain hours of the night,
the answer is, "They are keeping the feast of the full moon."
I believe this agitation is most frequently the effect of some
conflict that has arisen in the depths of the forest. The jaguars, for
instance, pursue the peccaries and the tapirs, which, having no
defence but in their numbers, flee in close troops, and break down the
bushes they find in their way. Terrified at this struggle, the timid
and mistrustful monkeys answer, from the tops of the trees, the cries
of the large animals. They awaken the birds that live in society, and
by degrees the whole assembly is in commotion. It is not always in a
fine moonlight, but more particularly at the time of a storm and
violent showers, that this tumult takes place among the wild beasts.
"May Heaven grant them a quiet night and repose, and us also!" said
the monk who accompanied us to the Rio Negro, when, sinking with
fatigue, he assisted in arranging our accommodations for the night. It
was indeed strange, to find no silence in the solitude of woods. In
the inns of Spain we dread the sound of guitars from the next
apartment; on the Orinoco, where the traveller's resting-place is the
open beach, or beneath the shelter of a solitary tree, his slumbers
are disturbed by a serenade from the forest.
We set sail before sunrise, on the 2nd of April. The morning was
beautiful and cool, according to the feelings of those who are
accustomed to the heat of these climates. The thermometer rose only to
28 degrees in the air, but the dry and white sand of the beach,
notwithstanding its radiation towards a cloudless sky, retained a
temperature of 36 degrees. The porpoises (toninas) ploughed the river
in long files. The shore was covered with fishing-birds. Some of these
perched on the floating wood as it passed down the river, and
surprised the fish that preferred the middle of the stream. Our canoe
was aground several times during the morning. These shocks are
sufficiently violent to split a light bark. We struck on the points of
several large trees, which remain for years in an oblique position,
sunk in the mud. These trees descend from Sarare, at the period of
great inundations, and they so fill the bed of the river, that canoes
in going up find it difficult sometimes to make their way over the
shoals, or wherever there are eddies. We reached a spot near the
island of Carizales, where we saw trunks of the locust-tree, of an
enormous size, above the surface of the water. They were covered with
a species of plotus, nearly resembling the anhinga, or white bellied
darter. These birds perch in files, like pheasants and parrakas, and
they remain for hours entirely motionless, with their beaks raised
toward the sky.
Below the island of Carizales we observed a diminution of the waters
of the river, at which we were the more surprised, as, after the
bifurcation at la Boca de Arichuna, there is no branch, no natural
drain, which takes away water from the Apure. The loss is solely the
effect of evaporation, and of filtration on a sandy and wet shore.
Some idea of the magnitude of these effects may be formed, from the
fact that we found the heat of the dry sands, at different hours of
the day, from 36 to 52 degrees, and that of sands covered with three
or four inches of water 32 degrees. The beds of rivers are heated as
far as the depth to which the solar rays can penetrate without
undergoing too great an extinction in their passage through the
superincumbent strata of water. Besides, filtration extends in a
lateral direction far beyond the bed of the river. The shore, which
appears dry to us, imbibes water as far up as to the level of the
surface of the river. We saw water gush out at the distance of fifty
toises from the shore, every time that the Indians struck their oars
into the ground. Now these sands, wet below, but dry above, and
exposed to the solar rays, act like sponges, and lose the infiltrated
water every instant by evaporation.
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