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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We Had The
Opportunity Of Viewing This Extraordinary Sight Longer Than We Wished.
Our Boat Was To Coast The Eastern Bank Of A Narrow Island, And To Take
Us In Again After A Long Circuit.
We passed an hour and a half in vain
expectation of it.
Night approached, and with it a tremendous storm.
It rained with violence. We began to fear that our frail bark had been
wrecked against the rocks, and that the Indians, conformably to their
habitual indifference for the evils of others, had returned tranquilly
to the mission. There were only three of us: we were completely wet,
and uneasy respecting the fate of our boat: it appeared far from
agreeable to pass, without sleep, a long night of the torrid zone amid
the noise of the Raudales. M. Bonpland proposed to leave me in the
island with Don Nicolas Soto, and to swim across the branches of the
river that are separated by the granitic dikes. He hoped to reach the
forest, and seek assistance at Atures from Father Zea. We dissuaded
him with difficulty from undertaking this hazardous enterprise. He
knew little of the labyrinth of small channels, into which the Orinoco
is divided. Most of them have strong whirlpools, and what passed
before our eyes while we were deliberating on our situation, proved
sufficiently that the natives had deceived us respecting the absence
of crocodiles in the cataracts. The little monkeys which we had
carried along with us for months were deposited on the point of our
island.
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