CHAPTER 2.22.

SAN FERNANDO DE ATABAPO.

SAN BALTHASAR.

THE RIVERS TEMI AND TUAMINI.

JAVITA.

PORTAGE FROM THE TUAMINI TO THE RIO NEGRO.

During the night, we had left, almost unperceived, the waters of the

Orinoco; and at sunrise found ourselves as if transported to a new

country, on the banks of a river the name of which we had scarcely

ever heard pronounced, and which was to conduct us, by the portage of

Pimichin, to the Rio Negro, on the frontiers of Brazil. "You will go

up," said the president of the missions, who resides at San Fernando,

"first the Atabapo, then the Temi, and finally, the Tuamini. When the

force of the current of black waters hinders you from advancing, you

will be conducted out of the bed of the river through forests, which

you will find inundated. Two monks only are settled in those desert

places, between the Orinoco and the Rio Negro; but at Javita you will

be furnished with the means of having your canoe drawn over land in

the course of four days to Cano Pimichin. If it be not broken to

pieces you will descend the Rio Negro without any obstacle (from

north-west to south-east) as far as the little fort of San Carlos; you

will go up the Cassiquiare (from south to north), and then return to

San Fernando in a month, descending the Upper Orinoco from east to

west." Such was the plan traced for our passage, and we carried it

into effect without danger, though not without some suffering, in the

space of thirty-three days. The Orinoco runs from its source, or at

least from Esmeralda, as far as San Fernando de Atabapo, from east to

west; from San Fernando, (where the junction of the Guaviare and the

Atabapo takes place,) as far as the mouth of the Rio Apure, it flows

from south to north, forming the Great Cataracts; and from the mouth

of the Apure as far as Angostura and the coast of the Atlantic its

direction is from west to east. In the first part of its course, where

the river flows from east to west, it forms that celebrated

bifurcation so often disputed by geographers, of which I was the first

enabled to determine the situation by astronomical observations. One

arm of the Orinoco, (the Cassiquiare,) running from north to south,

falls into the Guainia, or Rio Negro, which, in its turn, joins the

Maranon, or river Amazon. The most natural way, therefore, to go from

Angostura to Grand Para, would be to ascend the Orinoco as far as

Esmeralda, and then to go down the Cassiquiare, the Rio Negro, and the

Amazon; but, as the Rio Negro in the upper part of its course

approaches very near the sources of some rivers that fall into the

Orinoco near San Fernando de Atabapo (where the Orinoco abruptly

changes its direction from east to west to take that from south to

north), the passage up that part of the river between San Fernando and

Esmeralda, in order to reach the Rio Negro, may be avoided. Leaving

the Orinoco near the mission of San Fernando, the traveller proceeds

up the little black rivers (the Atabapo, the Temi, and the Tuamini),

and the boats are carried across an isthmus six thousand toises broad,

to the banks of a stream (the Cano Pimichin) which flows into the Rio

Negro. This was the course which we took.

The road from San Carlos to San Fernando de Atabapo is far more

disagreeable, and is half as long again by the Cassiquiare as by

Javita and the Cano Pimichin. In this region I determined, by means of

a chronometer by Berthoud, and by the meridional heights of stars, the

situation of San Balthasar de Atabapo, Javita, San Carlos del Rio

Negro, the rock Culimacavi, and Esmeralda. When no roads exist save

tortuous and intertwining rivers, when little villages are hidden amid

thick forests, and when, in a country entirely flat, no mountain, no

elevated object is visible from two points at once, it is only in the

sky that we can read where we are upon the earth.

San Fernando de Atabapo stands near the confluence of three great

rivers; the Orinoco, the Guaviare, and the Atabapo. Its situation is

similar to that of Saint Louis or of New Madrid, at the junction of

the Mississippi with the Missouri and the Ohio. In proportion as the

activity of commerce increases in these countries traversed by immense

rivers, the towns situated at their confluence will necessarily become

bustling ports, depots of merchandise, and centre points of

civilization. Father Gumilla confesses, that in his time no person had

any knowledge of the course of the Orinoco above the mouth of the

Guaviare.

D'Anville, in the first edition of his great map of South America,

laid down the Rio Negro as an arm of the Orinoco, that branched off

from the principal body of the river between the mouths of the Meta

and the Vichada, near the cataract of Atures. That great geographer

was entirely ignorant of the existence of the Cassiquiare and the

Atabapo; and he makes the Orinoco or Rio Paragua, the Japura, and the

Putumayo, take their rise from three branchings of the Caqueta. The

expedition of the boundaries, commanded by Iturriaga and Solano,

corrected these errors. Solano, who was the geographical engineer of

this expedition, advanced in 1756 as far as the mouth of the Guaviare,

after having passed the Great Cataracts. He found that, to continue to

go up the Orinoco, he must direct his course towards the east; and

that the river received, at the point of its great inflection, in

latitude 4 degrees 4 minutes, the waters of the Guaviare, which two

miles higher had received those of the Atabapo. Interested in

approaching the Portuguese possessions as near as possible, Solano

resolved to proceed onward to the south. At the confluence of the

Atabapo and the Guaviare he found an Indian settlement of the warlike

nation of the Guaypunaves. He gained their favour by presents, and

with their aid founded the mission of San Fernando, to which he gave

the appellation of villa, or town.

To make known the political importance of this Mission, we must

recollect what was at that period the balance of power between the

petty Indian tribes of Guiana. The banks of the Lower Orinoco had been

long ensanguined by the obstinate struggle between two powerful

nations, the Cabres and the Caribs. The latter, whose principal abode

since the close of the seventeenth century has been between the

sources of the Carony, the Essequibo, the Orinoco, and the Rio Parima,

once not only held sway as far as the Great Cataracts, but made

incursions also into the Upper Orinoco, employing portages between the

Paruspa* (* The Rio Paruspa falls into the Rio Paragua, and the latter

into the Rio Carony, which is one of the tributary streams of the

Lower Orinoco. There is also an ancient portage of the Caribs between

the Paruspa and the Rio Chavaro, which flows into the Rio Caura above

the mouth of the Erevato. In going up the Erevato you reach the

savannahs that are traversed by the Rio Manipiare above the tributary

streams of the Ventuari. The Caribs in their distant excursions

sometimes passed from the Rio Caura to the Ventuari, thence to the

Padamo, and then by the Upper Orinoco to the Atacavi, which, westward

of Manuteso, takes the name of the Atabapo.) and the Caura, the

Erevato and the Ventuari, the Conorichite and the Atacavi. None knew

better than the Caribs the intertwinings of the rivers, the proximity

of the tributary streams, and the roads by which distances might be

diminished. The Caribs had vanquished and almost exterminated the

Cabres. Having made themselves masters of the Lower Orinoco, they met

with resistance from the Guaypunaves, who had founded their dominion

on the Upper Orinoco; and who, together with the Cabres, the

Manitivitanos, and the Parenis, are the greatest cannibals of these

countries. They originally inhabited the banks of the great river

Inirida, at its confluence with the Chamochiquini, and the hilly

country of Mabicore. About the year 1744, their chief, or as the

natives call him, their king (apoto), was named Macapu. He was a man

no less distinguished by his intelligence than his valour; had led a

part of the nation to the banks of the Atabapo; and when the Jesuit

Roman made his memorable expedition from the Orinoco to the Rio Negro,

Macapu suffered that missionary to take with him some families of the

Guaypunaves to settle them at Uruana, and near the cataract of

Maypures. This people are connected by their language with the great

branch of the Maypure nations. They are more industrious, we might

also say more civilized, than the other nations of the Upper Orinoco.

The missionaries relate, that the Guaypunaves, at the time of their

sway in those countries, were generally clothed, and had considerable

villages. After the death of Macapu, the command devolved on another

warrior, Cuseru, called by the Spaniards El capitan Cusero. He

established lines of defence on the banks of the Inirida, with a kind

of little fort, constructed of earth and timber. The piles were more

than sixteen feet high, and surrounded both the house of the apoto and

a magazine of bows and arrows. These structures, remarkable in a

country in other respects so wild, have been described by Father

Forneri.

The Marepizanas and the Manitivitanos were the preponderant nations on

the banks of the Rio Negro. The former had for its chiefs, about the

year 1750, two warriors called Imu and Cajamu. The king of the

Manitivitanos was Cocuy, famous for his cruelty. The chiefs of the

Guaypunaves and the Manitivitanos fought with small bodies of two or

three hundred men; but in their protracted struggles they destroyed

the missions, in some of which the poor monks had only fifteen or

twenty Spanish soldiers at their disposal. When the expedition of

Iturriaga and Solano arrived at the Orinoco, the missions had no

longer to fear the incursions of the Caribs. Cuseru, the chief of the

Guaypunaves, had fixed his dwelling behind the granitic mountains of

Sipapo. He was the friend of the Jesuits; but other nations of the

Upper Orinoco and the Rio Negro, led by Imu, Cajamu, and Cocuy,

penetrated from time to time to the north of the Great Cataracts. They

had other motives for fighting than that of hatred; they hunted men,

as was formerly the custom of the Caribs, and is still the practice in

Africa. Sometimes they furnished slaves (poitos) to the Dutch (in

their language, Paranaquiri--inhabitants of the sea); sometimes they

sold them to the Portuguese (Iaranavi--sons of musicians).* (* The

savage tribes designate every commercial nation of Europe by surnames,

the origin of which appears altogether accidental. The Spaniards were

called clothed men, Pongheme or Uavemi, by way of distinction.) In

America, as in Africa, the cupidity of the Europeans has produced the

same evils, by exciting the natives to make war, in order to procure

slaves. Everywhere the contact of nations, widely different from each

other in the scale of civilization, leads to the abuse of physical

strength, and of intellectual preponderance. The Phoenicians and

Carthaginians formerly sought slaves in Europe. Europe now presses in

her turn both on the countries whence she gathered the first germs of

science, and on those where she now almost involuntarily spreads them

by carrying thither the produce of her industry.

I have faithfully recorded what I could collect on the state of these

countries, where the vanquished nations have become gradually extinct,

leaving no other signs of their existence than a few words of their

language, mixed with that of the conquerors. In the north, beyond the

cataracts, the preponderant nations were at first the Caribs and the

Cabres; towards the south, on the Upper Orinoco, the Guaypunaves; and

on the Rio Negro, the Marepizanos and the Manitivitanos. The long

resistance which the Cabres, united under a valiant chief, had made to

the Caribs, became fatal to the latter subsequently to the year 1720.

They at first vanquished their enemies near the mouth of the Rio

Caura; and a great number of Caribs perished in a precipitate flight,

between the rapids of Torno and the Isla del Infierno. The prisoners

were devoured; and, by one of those refinements of cunning and cruelty

which are common to the savage nations of both North and South

America, the Cabres spared the life of one Carib, whom they forced to

climb up a tree to witness this barbarous spectacle, and carry back

the tidings to the vanquished. The triumph of Tep, the chief of the

Cabres, was but of short duration. The Caribs returned in such great

numbers that only a feeble remnant of the Cabres was left on the banks

of the Cuchivero.

Cocuy and Cuseru were carrying on a war of extermination on the Upper

Orinoco when Solano arrived at the mouth of the Guaviare. The former

had embraced the cause of the Portuguese; the latter was a friend of

the Jesuits, and gave them warning whenever the Manitivitanos were

marching against the christian establishments of Atures and Carichana.

Cuseru became a christian only a few days before his death; but in

battle he had for some time worn on his left hip a crucifix, given him

by the missionaries, and which he believed rendered him invulnerable.

We were told an anecdote that paints the violence of his character. He

had married the daughter of an Indian chief of the Rio Temi. In a

paroxysm of rage against his father-in-law, he declared to his wife

that he was going to fight against him. She reminded him of the

courage and singular strength of her father; when Cuseru, without

uttering a single word, took a poisoned arrow, and plunged it into her

bosom. The arrival of a small body of Spaniards in 1756, under the

order of Solano, awakened suspicion in this chief of the Guaypunaves.

He was on the point of attempting a contest with them, when the

Jesuits made him sensible that it would be his interest to remain at

peace with the Christians. Whilst dining at the table of the Spanish

general, Cuseru was allured by promises, and the prediction of the

approaching fall of his enemies. From being a king he became the mayor

of a village; and consented to settle with his people at the new

mission of San Fernando de Atabapo. Such is most frequently the end of

those chiefs whom travellers and missionaries style Indian princes.

"In my mission," says the honest father Gili "I had five reyecillos,

or petty kings, those of the Tamanacs, the Avarigotes, the Parecas,

the Quaquas, and the Maypures. At church I placed them in file on the

same bench; but I took care to give the first place to Monaiti, king

of the Tamanacs, because he had helped me to found the village; and he

seemed quite proud of this precedency."

When Cuseru, the chief of the Guaypunaves, saw the Spanish troops pass

the cataracts, he advised Don Jose Solano to wait a whole year before

he formed a settlement on the Atabapo; predicting the misfortunes

which were not slow to arrive. "Let me labour with my people in

clearing the ground," said Cuseru to the Jesuits; I will plant

cassava, and you will find hereafter wherewith to feed all these men."

Solano, impatient to advance, refused to listen to the counsel of the

Indian chief, and the new inhabitants of San Fernando had to suffer

all the evils of scarcity. Canoes were sent at a great expense to New

Grenada, by the Meta and the Vichada, in search of flour. The

provision arrived too late, and many Spaniards and Indians perished of

those diseases which are produced in every climate by want and moral

dejection.

Some traces of cultivation are still found at San Fernando. Every

Indian has a small plantation of cacao-trees, which produce abundantly

in the fifth year; but they cease to bear fruit sooner than in the

valleys of Aragua. There are some savannahs and good pasturage round

San Fernando, but hardly seven or eight cows are to be found, the

remains of a considerable herd which was brought into these countries

at the expedition for settling the boundaries. The Indians are a

little more civilized here than in the rest of the missions, and we

found to our surprise a blacksmith of the native race.

In the mission of San Fernando, a tree which gives a peculiar

physiognomy to the landscape, is the piritu or pirijao palm. Its

trunk, armed with thorns, is more than sixty feet high; its leaves are

pinnated, very thin, undulated, and frizzled towards the points. The

fruits of this tree are very extraordinary; every cluster contains

from fifty to eighty; they are yellow like apples, grow purple in

proportion as they ripen, two or three inches thick, and generally,

from abortion, without a kernel. Among the eighty or ninety species of

palm-trees peculiar to the New Continent, which I have enumerated in

the Nova Genera Plantarum Aequinoctialum, there are none in which the

sarcocarp is developed in a manner so extraordinary. The fruit of the

pirijao furnishes a farinaceous substance, as yellow as the yolk of an

egg, slightly saccharine, and extremely nutritious. It is eaten like

plantains or potatoes, boiled or roasted in the ashes, and affords a

wholesome and agreeable aliment. The Indians and the missionaries are

unwearied in their praises of this noble palm-tree, which might be

called the peach-palm. We found it cultivated in abundance at San

Fernando, San Balthasar, Santa Barbara, and wherever we advanced

towards the south or the east along the banks of the Atabapo and the

Upper Orinoco. In those wild regions we are involuntarily reminded of

the assertion of Linnaeus, that the country of palm-trees was the

first abode of our species, and that man is essentially palmivorous.*

(* Homo HABITAT intra tropicos, vescitur palmis, lotophagus;

HOSPITATUR extra tropicos sub novercante Cerere, carnivorus. Man

DWELLS NATURALLY within the tropics, and lives on the fruits of the

palm-tree; he EXISTS in other parts of the world, and there makes

shift to feed on corn and flesh. Syst. Nat. volume 1 page 24.) On

examining the provision accumulated in the huts of the Indians, we

perceive that their subsistence during several months of the year

depends as much on the farinaceous fruit of the pirijao, as on the

cassava and plantain. The tree bears fruit but once a year, but to the

amount of three clusters, consequently from one hundred and fifty to

two hundred fruits.

San Fernando de Atabapo, San Carlos, and San Francisco Solano, are the

most considerable settlements among the missions of the Upper Orinoco.

At San Fernando, as well as in the neighbouring villages of San

Balthasar and Javita, the abodes of the priests are neatly-built

houses, covered by lianas, and surrounded by gardens. The tall trunks

of the pirijao palms were the most beautiful ornaments of these

plantations. In our walks, the president of the mission gave us an

animated account of his incursions on the Rio Guaviare. He related to

us how much these journeys, undertaken "for the conquest of souls;"

are desired by the Indians of the missions. All, even women and old

men, take part in them. Under the pretext of recovering neophytes who

have deserted the village, children above eight or ten years of age

are carried off, and distributed among the Indians of the missions as

serfs, or poitos. According to the astronomical observations I took on

the banks of the Atabapo, and on the western declivity of the

Cordillera of the Andes, near the Paramo de la suma Paz, the distance

is one hundred and seven leagues only from San Fernando to the first

villages of the provinces of Caguan and San Juan de los Llanos. I was

assured also by some Indians, who dwelt formerly to the west of the

island of Amanaveni, beyond the confluence of the Rio Supavi, that

going in a boat on the Guaviare (in the manner of the savages) beyond

the strait (angostura) and the principal cataract, they met, at three

days' distance, bearded and clothed men, who came in search of the

eggs of the terekay turtle. This meeting alarmed the Indians so much,

that they fled precipitately, redescending the Guaviare. It is

probable, that these bearded white men came from the villages of Aroma

and San Martin, the Rio Guaviare being formed by the union of the

rivers Ariari and Guayavero. We must not be surprised that the

missionaries of the Orinoco and the Atabapo little suspect how near

they live to the missionaries of Mocoa, Rio Fragua, and Caguan. In

these desert countries, the real distances can be known only by

observations of the longitude. It was in consequence of astronomical

data, and the information I gathered in the convents of Popayan and of

Pasto, to the west of the Cordillera of the Andes, that I formed an

accurate idea of the respective situations of the christian

settlements on the Atabapo, the Guayavero, and the Caqueta.* (* The

Caqueta bears, lower down, the name of the Yupura.)

Everything changes on entering the Rio Atabapo; the constitution of

the atmosphere, the colour of the waters, and the form of the trees

that cover the shore. You no longer suffer during the day the torment

of mosquitos; and the long-legged gnats (zancudos) become rare during

the night. Beyond the mission of San Fernando these nocturnal insects

disappear altogether. The water of the Orinoco is turbid, and loaded

with earthy matter; and in the coves, from the accumulation of dead

crocodiles and other putrescent substances, it diffuses a musky and

faint smell. We were sometimes obliged to strain this water through a

linen cloth before we drank it. The water of the Atabapo, on the

contrary, is pure, agreeable to the taste, without any trace of smell,

brownish by reflected, and of a pale yellow by transmitted light. The

people call it light, in opposition to the heavy and turbid waters of

the Orinoco. Its temperature is generally two degrees, and when you

approach the mouth of the Rio Temi, three degrees, cooler than the

temperature of the Upper Orinoco. After having been compelled during a

whole year to drink water at 27 or 28 degrees, a lowering of a few

degrees in the temperature produces a very agreeable sensation. I

think this lowering of the temperature may be attributed to the river

being less broad, and without the sandy beach, the heat of which, at

the Orinoco, is by day more than 50 degrees, and also to the thick

shade of the forests which are traversed by the Atabapo, the Temi, the

Tuamini, and the Guainia, or Rio Negro.

The extreme purity of the black waters is proved by their limpidity,

their transparency, and the clearness with which they reflect the

images and colours of surrounding objects. The smallest fish are

visible in them at a depth of twenty or thirty feet; and most commonly

the bottom of the river may be distinguished, which is not a yellowish

or brownish mud, like the colour of the water, but a quartzose and

granitic sand of dazzling whiteness. Nothing can be compared to the

beauty of the banks of the Atabapo. Loaded with plants, among which

rise the palms with feathery leaves; the banks are reflected in the

waters, and this reflex verdure seems to have the same vivid hue as

that which clothes the real vegetation. The surface of the fluid is

homogeneous, smooth, and destitute of that mixture of suspended sand

and decomposed organic matter, which roughens and streaks the surface

of less limpid rivers.

On quitting the Orinoco, several small rapids must be passed, but

without any appearance of danger. Amid these raudalitos, according to

the opinion of the missionaries, the Rio Atabapo falls into the

Orinoco. I am however disposed to think that the Atabapo falls into

the Guaviare. The Rio Guaviare, which is much wider than the Atabapo,

has white waters, and in the aspect of its banks, its fishing-birds,

its fish, and the great crocodiles which live in it, resembles the

Orinoco much more than that part of the Atabapo which comes from the

Esmeralda. When a river springs from the junction of two other rivers,

nearly alike in size, it is difficult to judge which of the two

confluent streams must be regarded as its source. The Indians of San

Fernando affirm that the Orinoco rises from two rivers, the Guaviare

and the Rio Paragua. They give this latter name to the Upper Orinoco,

from San Fernando and Santa Barbara to beyond the Esmeralda, and they

say that the Cassiquiare is not an arm of the Orinoco, but of the Rio

Paragua. It matters but little whether or not the name of Orinoco be

given to the Rio Paragua, provided we trace the course of these rivers

as it is in nature, and do not separate by a chain of mountains, (as

was done previously to my travels,) rivers that communicate together,

and form one system. When we would give the name of a large river to

one of the two branches by which it is formed, it should be applied to

that branch which furnishes most water. Now, at the two seasons of the

year when I saw the Guaviare and the Upper Orinoco or Rio Paragua

(between the Esmeralda and San Fernando), it appeared to me that the

latter was not so large as the Guaviare. Similar doubts have been

entertained by geographers respecting the junction of the Upper

Mississippi with the Missouri and the Ohio, the junction of the

Maranon with the Guallaga and the Ucayale, and the junction of the

Indus with the Chunab (Hydaspes of Cashmere) and the Gurra, or

Sutlej.* (* The Hydaspes is properly a tributary stream of the Chunab

or Acesines. The Sutlej or Hysudrus forms, together with the Beyah or

*** Gurra. These are the beautiful regions of the *** celebrated from

the time of Alexander to the ***) To avoid embroiling farther a

nomenclature of rivers so arbitrarily fixed, I will not propose new

denominations. I shall continue, with Father Caulin and the Spanish

geographers, to call the river Esmeralda the Orinoco, or Upper

Orinoco; but I must observe that if the Orinoco, from San Fernando de

Atabapo as far as the delta which it forms opposite the island of

Trinidad, were regarded as the continuance of the Rio Guaviare, and if

that part of the Upper Orinoco between the Esmeralda and the mission

of San Fernando were considered a tributary stream, the Orinoco would

preserve, from the savannahs of San Juan de los Llanos and the eastern

declivity of the Andes to its mouth, a more uniform and natural

direction, that from south-west to north-east.

The Rio Paragua, or that part of the Orinoco east of the mouth of the

Guaviare, has clearer, more transparent, and purer water than the part

of the Orinoco below San Fernando. The waters of the Guaviare, on the

contrary, are white and turbid; they have the same taste, according to

the Indians (whose organs of sense are extremely delicate and well

practised), as the waters of the Orinoco near the Great Cataracts.

"Bring me the waters of three or four great rivers of these

countries," an old Indian of the mission of Javita said to us; "on

tasting each of them I will tell you, without fear of mistake, whence

it was taken; whether it comes from a white or black river; the

Orinoco or the Atabapo, the Paragua or the Guaviare." The great

crocodiles and porpoises (toninas) which are alike common in the Rio

Guaviare and the Lower Orinoco, are entirely wanting, as we were told,

in the Rio Paragua (or Upper Orinoco, between San Fernando and the

Esmeralda). These are very remarkable differences in the nature of the

waters, and the distribution of animals. The Indians do not fail to

mention them, when they would prove to travellers that the Upper

Orinoco, to the east of San Fernando, is a distinct river which falls

into the Orinoco, and that the real origin of the latter must be

sought in the sources of the Guaviare.

The astronomical observations made in the night of the 25th of April

did not give me the latitude with satisfactory precision. The latitude

of the mission of San Fernando appeared to me to be 4 degrees 2

minutes 48 seconds. In Father Caulin's map, founded on the

observations of Solano made in 1756, it is 4 degrees 1 minute. This

agreement proves the justness of a result which, however, I could only

deduce from altitudes considerably distant from the meridian. A good

observation of the stars at Guapasoso gave me 4 degrees 2 minutes for

San Fernando de Atabapo. I was able to fix the longitude with much

more precision in my way to the Rio Negro, and in returning from that

river. It is 70 degrees 30 minutes 46 seconds (or 4 degrees 0 minutes

west of the meridian of Cumana).

On the 26th of April we advanced only two or three leagues, and passed

the night on a rock near the Indian plantations or conucos of

Guapasoso. The river losing itself by its inundations in the forests,

and its real banks being unseen, the traveller can venture to land

only where a rock or a small table-land rises above the water. The

granite of those countries, owing to the position of the thin laminae

of black mica, sometimes resembles graphic granite; but most

frequently (and this determines the age of its formation) it passes

into a real gneiss. Its beds, very regularly stratified, run from

south-west to north-east, as in the Cordillera on the shore of

Caracas. The dip of the granite-gneiss is 70 degrees north-west. It is

traversed by an infinite number of veins of quartz, which are

singularly transparent, and three or four, and sometimes fifteen

inches thick. I found no cavity (druse), no crystallized substance,

not even rock-crystal; and no trace of pyrites, or any other metallic

substance. I enter into these particulars on account of the chimerical

ideas that have been spread ever since the sixteenth century, after

the voyages of Berreo and Raleigh,* "on the immense riches of the

great and fine empire of Guiana." (* Raleigh's work bears the high

sounding title of The Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful

Empire of Guiana, London 1596. See also Raleghi admiranda Descriptio

Regni Guianae, auri abundantissimi, Hondius Noribergae 1599.)

The river Atabapo presents throughout a peculiar aspect; you see

nothing of its real banks formed by flat lands eight or ten feet high;

they are concealed by a row of palms, and small trees with slender

trunks, the roots of which are bathed by the waters. There are many

crocodiles from the point where you quit the Orinoco to the mission of

San Fernando, and their presence indicates that this part of the river

belongs to the Rio Guaviare and not to the Atabapo. In the real bed of

the latter river, above the mission of San Fernando, there are no

crocodiles: we find there some bavas, a great many fresh-water

dolphins, but no manatees. We also seek in vain on these banks for the

thick-nosed tapir, the araguato, or great howling monkey, the zamuro,

or Vultur aura, and the crested pheasant, known by the name of

guacharaca. Enormous water-snakes, in shape resembling the boa, are

unfortunately very common, and are dangerous to Indians who bathe. We

saw them almost from the first day we embarked, swimming by the side

of our canoe; they were at most twelve or fourteen feet long. The

jaguars of the banks of the Atabapo and the Temi are large and well

fed; they are said, however, to be less daring than the jaguars of the

Orinoco.

The night of the 27th was beautiful; dark clouds passed from time to

time over the zenith with extreme rapidity. Not a breath of wind was

felt in the lower strata of the atmosphere; the breeze was at the

height of a thousand toises. I dwell upon this peculiarity; for the

movement we saw was not produced by the counter-currents (from west to

east) which are sometimes thought to be observed in the torrid zone on

the loftiest mountains of the Cordilleras; it was the effect of a real

breeze, an east wind. We left the conucos of Guapasoso at two o'clock;

and continued to ascend the river toward the south, finding it (or

rather that part of its bed which is free from trees) growing more and

more narrow. It began to rain toward sunrise. In these forests, which

are less inhabited by animals than those of the Orinoco, we no longer

heard the howlings of the monkeys. The dolphins, or toninas, sported

by the side of our boat. According to the relation of Mr. Colebrooke,

the Delphinus gangeticus, which is the fresh-water porpoise of the Old

World, in like manner accompanies the boats that go up towards

Benares; but from Benares to the point where the Ganges receives the

salt waters is only two hundred leagues, while from the Atabapo to the

mouth of the Orinoco is more than three hundred and twenty.

About noon we passed the mouth of the little river Ipurichapano on the

east, and afterwards the granitic rock, known by the name of Piedra

del Tigre. Between the fourth and fifth degrees of latitude, a little

to the south of the mountains of Sipapo, we reach the southern

extremity of that chain of cataracts, which I proposed, in a memoir

published in 1800, to call the Chain of Parima. At 4 degrees 20

minutes it stretches from the right bank of the Orinoco toward the

east and east-south-east. The whole of the land extending from the

mountains of the Parima towards the river Amazon, which is traversed

by the Atabapo, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, is an immense

plain, covered partly with forests, and partly with grass. Small rocks

rise here and there like castles. We regretted that we had not stopped

to rest near the Piedra del Tigre; for on going up the Atabapo we had

great difficulty to find a spot of dry ground, open and spacious

enough to light a fire, and place our instrument and our hammocks.

On the 28th of April, it rained hard after sunset, and we were afraid

that our collections would be damaged. The poor missionary had his fit

of tertian fever, and besought us to re-embark immediately after

midnight. We passed at day-break the Piedra and the Raudalitos* (* The

rock and little cascades.) of Guarinuma. The rock is on the east bank;

it is a shelf of granite, covered with psora, cladonia, and other

lichens. I could have fancied myself transported to the north of

Europe, to the ridge of the mountains of gneiss and granite between

Freiberg and Marienberg in Saxony. The cladonias appeared to me to be

identical with the Lichen rangiferinus, the L. pixidatus, and the L.

polymorphus of Linnaeus. After having passed the rapids of Guarinuma,

the Indians showed us in the middle of the forest, on our right, the

ruins of the mission of Mendaxari, which has been long abandoned. On

the east bank of the river, near the little rock of Kemarumo, in the

midst of Indian plantations, a gigantic bombax* (* Bombax ceiba.)

attracted our curiosity. We landed to measure it; the height was

nearly one hundred and twenty feet, and the diameter between fourteen

and fifteen. This enormous specimen of vegetation surprised us the

more, as we had till then seen on the banks of the Atabapo only small

trees with slender trunks, which from afar resembled young

cherry-trees. The Indians assured that these small trees do not form a

very extensive group. They are checked in their growth by the

inundations of the river; while the dry grounds near the Atabapo, the

Temi, and the Tuamini, furnish excellent timber for building. These

forests do not stretch indefinitely to the east and west, toward the

Cassiquiare and the Guaviare; they are bounded by the open savannahs

of Manuteso, and the Rio Inirida. We found it difficult in the evening

to stem the current, and we passed the night in a wood a little above

Mendaxari; which is another granitic rock traversed by a stratum of

quartz. We found in it a group of fine crystals of black schorl.

On the 29th, the air was cooler. We had no zancudos, but the sky was

constantly clouded, and without stars. I began to regret the Lower

Orinoco. We still advanced but slowly from the force of the current,

and we stopped a great part of the day to seek for plants. It was

night when we arrived at the mission of San Balthasar, or, as the

monks style it, the mission of la divina Pastora de Balthasar de

Atabapo. We were lodged with a Catalonian missionary, a lively and

agreeable man, who displayed in these wild countries the activity that

characterises his nation. He had planted a garden, where the fig-tree

of Europe was found in company with the persea, and the lemon-tree

with the mammee. The village was built with that regularity which, in

the north of Germany, and in protestant America, we find in the

hamlets of the Moravian brethren; and the Indian plantations seemed

better cultivated than elsewhere. Here we saw for the first time that

white and fungous substance which I have made known by the name of

dapicho and zapis.* (* These two words belong to the Poimisano and

Paragini tongues.) We immediately perceived that it was analogous to

india-rubber; but, as the Indians made us understand by signs, that it

was found underground, we were inclined to think, till we arrived at

the mission of Javita, that the dapicho was a fossil caoutchouc,

though different from the elastic bitumen of Derbyshire. A Pomisano

Indian, seated by the fire in the hut of the missionary, was employed

in reducing the dapicho into black caoutchouc. He had spitted several

bits on a slender stick, and was roasting them like meat. The dapicho

blackens in proportion as it grows soft, and becomes elastic. The

resinous and aromatic smell which filled the hut, seemed to indicate

that this coloration is the effect of the decomposition of a carburet

of hydrogen, and that the carbon appears in proportion as the hydrogen

burns at a low heat. The Indian beat the softened and blackened mass

with a piece of brazil-wood, formed at one end like a club; he then

kneaded the dapicho into balls of three or four inches in diameter,

and let it cool. These balls exactly resemble the caoutchouc of the

shops, but their surface remains in general slightly viscous. They are

used at San Balthasar in the Indian game of tennis, which is

celebrated among the inhabitants of Uruana and Encaramada; they are

also cut into cylinders, to be used as corks, and are far preferable

to those made of the bark of the cork-tree.

This use of caoutchouc appeared to us the more worthy notice, as we

had been often embarrassed by the want of European corks. The great

utility of cork is fully understood in countries where trade has not

supplied this bark in plenty. Equinoctial America nowhere produces,

not even on the back of the Andes, an oak resembling the Quercus

suber; and neither the light wood of the bombax, the ochroma, and

other malvaceous plants, nor the rhachis of maize, of which the

natives make use, can well supply the place of our corks. The

missionary showed us, before the Casa de los Solteros (the house where

the young unmarried men reside), a drum, which was a hollow cylinder

of wood, two feet long and eighteen inches thick. This drum was beaten

with great masses of dapicho, which served as drumsticks; it had

openings which could be stopped by the hand at will, to vary the

sounds, and was fixed on two light supports. Savage notions love noisy

music; the drum and the botuto, or trumpet of baked earth, in which a

tube of three or four feet long communicates with several barrels, are

indispensable instruments among the Indians for their grand pieces of

music.

The night of the 30th of April was sufficiently fine for observing the

meridian heights of x of the Southern Cross, and the two large stars

in the feet of the Centaur. I found the latitude of San Balthasar 3

degrees 14 minutes 23 seconds. Horary angles of the sun gave 70

degrees 14 minutes 21 seconds for the longitude by the chronometer.

The dip of the magnetic needle was 27.8 degrees (cent div). We left

the mission at a late hour in the morning, and continued to go up the

Atabapo for five miles; then, instead of following that river to its

source in the east, where it bears the name of Atacavi, we entered the

Rio Temi. Before we reached its confluence, a granitic eminence on the

western bank, near the mouth of the Guasacavi, fixed our attention: it

is called Piedra de la Guahiba (Rock of the Guahiba woman), or the

Piedra de la Madre (Mother's Rock.) We inquired the cause of so

singular a denomination. Father Zea could not satisfy our curiosity;

but some weeks after, another missionary, one of the predecessors of

that ecclesiastic, whom we found settled at San Fernando as president

of the missions, related to us an event which excited in our minds the

most painful feelings. If, in these solitary scenes, man scarcely

leaves behind him any trace of his existence, it is doubly humiliating

for a European to see perpetuated by so imperishable a monument of

nature as a rock, the remembrance of the moral degradation of our

species, and the contrast between the virtue of a savage, and the

barbarism of civilized man!

In 1797 the missionary of San Fernando had led his Indians to the

banks of the Rio Guaviare, on one of those hostile incursions which

are prohibited alike by religion and the Spanish laws. They found in

an Indian hut a Guahiba woman with her three children (two of whom

were still infants), occupied in preparing the flour of cassava.

Resistance was impossible; the father was gone to fish, and the mother

tried in vain to flee with her children. Scarcely had she reached the

savannah when she was seized by the Indians of the mission, who hunt

human beings, like the Whites and the Negroes in Africa. The mother

and her children were bound, and dragged to the bank of the river. The

monk, seated in his boat, waited the issue of an expedition of which

he shared not the danger. Had the mother made too violent a resistance

the Indians would have killed her, for everything is permitted for the

sake of the conquest of souls (la conquista espirituel), and it is

particularly desirable to capture children, who may be treated in the

Mission as poitos, or slaves of the Christians. The prisoners were

carried to San Fernando, in the hope that the mother would be unable

to find her way back to her home by land. Separated from her other

children who had accompanied their father on the day in which she had

been carried off, the unhappy woman showed signs of the deepest

despair. She attempted to take back to her home the children who had

been seized by the missionary; and she fled with them repeatedly from

the village of San Fernando. But the Indians never failed to recapture

her; and the missionary, after having caused her to be mercilessly

beaten, took the cruel resolution of separating the mother from the

two children who had been carried off with her. She was conveyed alone

to the missions of the Rio Negro, going up the Atabapo. Slightly

bound, she was seated at the bow of the boat, ignorant of the fate

that awaited her; but she judged by the direction of the sun, that she

was removing farther and farther from her hut and her native country.

She succeeded in breaking her bonds, threw herself into the water, and

swam to the left bank of the Atabapo. The current carried her to a

shelf of rock, which bears her name to this day. She landed and took

shelter in the woods, but the president of the missions ordered the

Indians to row to the shore, and follow the traces of the Guahiba. In

the evening she was brought back. Stretched upon the rock (la Piedra

de la Madre) a cruel punishment was inflicted on her with those straps

of manatee leather, which serve for whips in that country, and with

which the alcaldes are always furnished. This unhappy woman, her hands

tied behind her back with strong stalks of mavacure, was then dragged

to the mission of Javita.

She was there thrown into one of the caravanserais, called las Casas

del Rey. It was the rainy season, and the night was profoundly dark.

Forests till then believed to be impenetrable separated the mission of

Javita from that of San Fernando, which was twenty-five leagues

distant in a straight line. No other route is known than that by the

rivers; no man ever attempted to go by land from one village to

another. But such difficulties could not deter a mother, separated

from her children. The Guahiba was carelessly guarded in the

caravanserai. Her arms being wounded, the Indians of Javita had

loosened her bonds, unknown to the missionary and the alcaldes. Having

succeeded by the help of her teeth in breaking them entirely, she

disappeared during the night; and at the fourth sunrise was seen at

the mission of San Fernando, hovering around the hut where her

children were confined. "What that woman performed," added the

missionary, who gave us this sad narrative, "the most robust Indian

would not have ventured to undertake!" She traversed the woods at a

season when the sky is constantly covered with clouds, and the sun

during whole days appears but for a few minutes. Did the course of the

waters direct her way? The inundations of the rivers forced her to go

far from the banks of the main stream, through the midst of woods

where the movement of the water is almost imperceptible. How often

must she have been stopped by the thorny lianas, that form a network

around the trunks they entwine! How often must she have swum across

the rivulets that run into the Atabapo! This unfortunate woman was

asked how she had sustained herself during four days. She said that,

exhausted with fatigue, she could find no other nourishment than those

great black ants called vachacos, which climb the trees in long bands,

to suspend on them their resinous nests. We pressed the missionary to

tell us whether the Guahiba had peacefully enjoyed the happiness of

remaining with her children; and if any repentance had followed this

excess of cruelty. He would not satisfy our curiosity; but at our

return from the Rio Negro we learned that the Indian mother was again

separated from her children, and sent to one of the missions of the

Upper Orinoco. There she died, refusing all kind of nourishment, as

savages frequently do in great calamities.

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. At

the centre of every leaf, no doubt from the effect of some disease of

the parenchyma, concentric circles of alternate blue and yellow

appear, the yellow prevailing towards the middle. We were singularly

struck by this appearance; the leaves, coloured like the peacock's

tail, are supported by short and very thick trunks. The thorns are not

slender and long like those of the corozo and other thorny palm-trees;

but on the contrary, very woody, short, and broad at the base, like

the thorns of the Hura crepitans. On the banks of the Atabapo and the

Temi, this palm-tree is distributed in groups of twelve or fifteen

stems, close together, and looking as if they rose from the same root.

These trees resemble in their appearance, form, and scarcity of

leaves, the fan-palms and palmettos of the Old World. We remarked that

some plants of the juria were entirely destitute of fruit, and others

exhibited a considerable quantity; this circumstance seems to indicate

a palm-tree of separate sexes.

Wherever the Rio Temi forms coves, the forest is inundated to the

extent of more than half a square league. To avoid the sinuosities of

the river and shorten the passage, the navigation is here performed in

a very extraordinary manner. The Indians made us leave the bed of the

river; and we proceeded southward across the forest, through paths

(sendas), that is, through open channels of four or five feet broad.

The depth of the water seldom exceeds half a fathom. These sendas are

formed in the inundated forest like paths on dry ground. The Indians,

in going from one mission to another, pass with their boats as much as

possible by the same way; but the communications not being frequent,

the force of vegetation sometimes produces unexpected obstacles. An

Indian, furnished with a machete (a great knife, the blade of which is

fourteen inches long), stood at the head of our boat, employed

continually in chopping off the branches that crossed each other from

the two sides of the channel. In the thickest part of the forest we

were astonished by an extraordinary noise. On beating the bushes, a

shoal of toninas (fresh-water dolphins) four feet long, surrounded our

boat. These animals had concealed themselves beneath the branches of a

fromager, or Bombax ceiba. They fled across the forest, throwing out

those spouts of compressed air and water which have given them in

every language the name of blowers. How singular was this spectacle in

an inland spot, three or four hundred leagues from the mouths of the

Orinoco and the Amazon! I am aware that the pleuronectes (dabs) of the

Atlantic go up the Loire as far as Orleans; but I am, nevertheless, of

opinion that the dolphins of the Temi, like those of the Ganges, and

like the skate (raia) of the Orinoco, are of a species essentially

different from the dolphins and skates of the ocean. In the immense

rivers of South America, and the great lakes of North America, nature

seems to repeat several pelagic forms. The Nile has no porpoises:*

those of the sea go up the Delta no farther than Biana and Metonbis

towards Selamoun. (* Those dolphins that enter the mouth of the Nile,

did not escape the observation of the ancients. In a bust in syenite,

preserved in the museum at Paris, the sculptor has represented them

half concealed in the undulatory beard of the god of the river.)

At five in the evening we regained with some difficulty the bed of the

river. Our canoe remained fast for some minutes between two trunks of

trees; and it was no sooner disengaged than we reached a spot where

several paths, or small channels, crossed each other, so that the

pilot was puzzled to distinguish the most open path. We navigated

through a forest so thick that we could guide ourselves neither by the

sun nor by the stars. We were again struck during this day by the want

of arborescent ferns in that country; they diminish visibly from the

sixth degree of north latitude, while the palm-trees augment

prodigiously towards the equator. Fern-trees belong to a climate less

hot, and a soil but little mountainous. It is only where there are

mountains that these majestic plants descend towards the plains; they

seem to avoid perfectly flat grounds, as those through which run the

Cassiquiare, the Temi, Inirida, and the Rio Negro. We passed in the

night near a rock, called the Piedra de Astor by the missionaries. The

ground from the mouth of the Guaviare constantly displays the same

geological formation. It is a vast granitic plain, in which from

league to league the rock pierces the soil, and forms, not hillocks,

but small masses, that resemble pillars or ruined buildings.

On the 1st of May the Indians chose to depart long before sunrise. We

were stirring before them, however, because I waited (though vainly)

for a star ready to pass the meridian. In those humid regions covered

with forests, the nights became more obscure in proportion as we drew

nearer to the Rio Negro and the interior of Brazil. We remained in the

bed of the river till daybreak, being afraid of losing ourselves among

the trees. At sunrise we again entered the inundated forest, to avoid

the force of the current. On reaching the junction of the Temi with

another little river, the Tuamini, the waters of which are equally

black, we proceeded along the latter to the south-west. This direction

led us near the mission of Javita, which is founded on the banks of

the Tuamini; and at this christian settlement we were to find the aid

necessary for transporting our canoe by land to the Rio Negro. We did

not arrive at San Antonio de Javita till near eleven in the morning.

An accident, unimportant in itself, but which shows the excessive

timidity of the little sagoins detained us some time at the mouth of

the Tuamini. The noise of the blowers had frightened our monkeys, and

one of them fell into the water. Animals of this species, perhaps on

account of their extreme meagreness, swim badly; and consequently it

was saved with some difficulty.

At Javita we had the pleasure of finding a very intelligent and

obliging monk, at whose mission we were forced to remain four or five

days, the time required for transporting our boat across the portage

of Pimichin. This delay enabled us to visit the surrounding country,

as also to relieve ourselves from an annoyance which we had suffered

for two days. We felt an extraordinary irritation on the joints of our

fingers, and on the backs of our hands. The missionary told us it was

caused by the aradores,* (* Literally the ploughers.) which get under

the skin. We could distinguish with a lens nothing but streaks, or

parallel and whitish furrows. It is the form of these furrows, that

has obtained for the insect the name of ploughman. A mulatto woman was

sent for, who professed to be thoroughly acquainted with all the

little insects that burrow in the human skin; the chego, the nuche,

the coya, and the arador; she was the curandera, or surgeon of the

place. She promised to extirpate, one by one, the insects which caused

this smarting irritation. Having heated at a lamp the point a little

bit of hard wood, she dug with it into the furrows that marked the

skin. After long examination, she announced with the pedantic gravity

peculiar to the mulatto race, that an arador was found. I saw a little

round bag, which I suspected to be the egg of an acarus. I was to find

relief when the mulatto woman had succeeded in taking out three or

four of these aradores. Having the skin of both hands filled with

acari, I had not the patience to wait the end of an operation, which

had already lasted till late at night. The next day an Indian of

Javita cured us radically, and with surprising promptitude. He brought

us the branch of a shrub, called uzao, with small leaves like those of

cassia, very coriaceous and glossy. He made a cold infusion of the

bark of this shrub, which had a bluish colour, and the taste of

liquorice. When beaten, it yields a great deal of froth. The

irritation of the aradores ceased by using simple lotions of this

uzao-water. We could not find this shrub in flower, or bearing fruit;

it appears to belong to the family of the leguminous plants, the

chemical properties of which are singularly varied. We dreaded so much

the sufferings to which we had been exposed, that we constantly kept

some branches of the uzao in our boat, till we reached San Carlos.

This shrub grows in abundance on the banks of the Pimichin. Why has no

remedy been discovered for the irritation produced by the sting of the

zancudos, as well as for that occasioned by the aradores or

microscopic acari?

In 1755, before the expedition for fixing the boundaries, better known

by the name of the expedition of Solano, the whole country between the

missions of Javita and San Balthasar was regarded as dependent on

Brazil. The Portuguese had advanced from the Rio Negro, by the portage

of the Cano Pimichin, as far as the banks of the Temi. An Indian chief

of the name of Javita, celebrated for his courage and his spirit of

enterprise, was the ally of the Portuguese. He pushed his hostile

incursions from the Rio Jupura, or Caqueta, one of the great tributary

streams of the Amazon, by the rivers Uaupe and Xie, as far as the

black waters of the Temi and the Tuamini, a distance of more than a

hundred leagues. He was furnished with letters patent, which

authorised him to bring the Indians from the forest, for the conquest

of souls. He availed himself amply of this permission; but his

incursions had an object which was not altogether spiritual, that of

making slaves to sell to the Portuguese. When Solano, the second chief

of the expedition of the boundaries, arrived at San Fernando de

Atabapo, he had Javita seized, in one of his incursions to the banks

of the Temi. He treated him with gentleness, and succeeded in gaining

him over to the interests of the Spanish government by promises that

were not fulfilled. The Portuguese, who had already formed some stable

settlements in these countries, were driven back as far as the lower

part of the Rio Negro; and the mission of San Antonio, of which the

more usual name is Javita, so called after its Indian founder, was

removed farther north of the sources of the Tuamini, to the spot where

it is now established. This captain, Javita, was still living, at an

advanced age, when we proceeded to the Rio Negro. He was an Indian of

great vigour of mind and body. He spoke Spanish with facility, and

preserved a certain influence over the neighbouring nations. As he

attended us in all our herborizations, we obtained from his own mouth

information so much the more useful, as the missionaries have great

confidence in his veracity. He assured us that in his youth he had

seen almost all the Indian tribes that inhabit the vast regions

between the Upper Orinoco, the Rio Negro, the Inirida, and the Jupura,

eat human flesh. The Daricavanas, the Puchirinavis, and the

Manitivitanos, appeared to him to be the greatest cannibals among

them. He believes that this abominable practice is with them the

effect of a system of vengeance; they eat only enemies who are made

prisoners in battle. The instances where, by a refinement of cruelty,

the Indian eats his nearest relations, his wife, or an unfaithful

mistress, are extremely rare. The strange custom of the Scythians and

Massagetes, the Capanaguas of the Rio Ucayale, and the ancient

inhabitants of the West Indian Islands, of honouring the dead by

eating a part of their remains, is unknown on the banks of the

Orinoco. In both continents this trait of manners belongs only to

nations that hold in horror the flesh of a prisoner. The Indian of

Hayti (Saint Domingo) would think himself wanting in regard to the

memory of a relation, if he did not throw into his drink a small

portion of the body of the deceased, after having dried it like one of

the mummies of the Guanches, and reduced it to powder. This gives us

just occasion to repeat with an eastern poet, "of all animals man is

the most fantastic in his manners, and the most disorderly in his

propensities."

The climate of the mission of San Antonio de Javita is extremely

rainy. When you have passed the latitude of three degrees north, and

approach the equator, you have seldom an opportunity of observing the

sun or the stars. It rains almost the whole year, and the sky is

constantly cloudy. As the breeze is not felt in these immense forests

of Guiana, and the refluent polar currents do not penetrate them, the

column of air which reposes on this wooded zone is not renewed by

dryer strata. It is saturated with vapours which are condensed into

equatorial rains. The missionary assured us that it often rains here

four or five months without cessation.

The temperature of Javita is cooler than that of Maypures, but

considerably hotter than that of the Guainia or Rio Negro. The

centigrade thermometer kept up in the day to twenty-six or

twenty-seven degrees; and in the night to twenty-one degrees.

From the 30th of April to the 11th of May, I had not been able to see

any star in the meridian so as to determine the latitude of places. I

watched whole nights in order to make use of the method of double

altitudes; but all my efforts were useless. The fogs of the north of

Europe are not more constant than those of the equatorial regions of

Guiana. On the 4th of May, I saw the sun for some minutes; and found

by the chronometer and the horary angles the longitude of Javita to be

70 degrees 22 minutes, or 1 degree 15 minutes farther west than the

longitude of the junction of the Apure with the Orinoco. This result

is interesting for laying down on our maps the unknown country lying

between the Xie and the sources of the Issana, situated on the same

meridian with the mission of Javita.

The Indians of Javita, whose number amounts to one hundred and sixty,

now belong for the most part to the nations of the Poimisanos, the

Echinavis, and the Paraganis. They are employed in the construction of

boats, formed of the trunks of sassafras, a large species of laurel,

hollowed by means of fire and the hatchet. These trees are more than

one hundred feet high; the wood is yellow, resinous, almost

incorruptible in water, and has a very agreeable smell. We saw them at

San Fernando, at Javita, and more particularly at Esmeralda, where

most of the canoes of the Orinoco are constructed, because the

adjacent forests furnish the largest trunks of sassafras.

The forest between Javita and the Cano Pimichin, contains an immense

quantity of gigantic trees, ocoteas, and laurels, the Amasonia

arborea,* (* This is a new species of the genus taligalea of Aublet.

On the same spot grow the Bignonia magnoliaefolia, B. jasminifolia,

Solanum topiro, Justicia pectoralis, Faramea cymosa, Piper javitense,

Scleria hirtella, Echites javitensis, Lindsea javitensis, and that

curious plant of the family of the verbenaceae, which I have dedicated

to the illustrious Leopold von Buch, in whose early labours I

participated.) the Retiniphyllum secundiflorum, the curvana, the

jacio, the iacifate, of which the wood is red like the brazilletto,

the guamufate, with its fine leaves of calophyllum from seven to eight

inches long, the Amyris carana, and the mani. All these trees (with

the exception of our new genus Retiniphyllum) were more than one

hundred or one hundred and ten feet high. As their trunks throw out

branches only toward the summit, we had some trouble in procuring both

leaves and flowers. The latter were frequently strewed upon the ground

at the foot of the trees; but, the plants of different families being

grouped together in these forests, and every tree being covered with

lianas, we could not, with any degree of confidence, rely on the

authority of the natives, when they assured us that a flower belonged

to such or such a tree. Amid these riches of nature heborizations

caused us more chagrin than satisfaction. What we could gather

appeared to us of little interest, compared to what we could not

reach. It rained unceasingly during several months, and M. Bonpland

lost the greater part of the specimens which he had been compelled to

dry by artificial heat. Our Indians distinguished the leaves better

than the corollae or the fruit. Occupied in seeking timber for canoes,

they are inattentive to flowers. "All those great trees bear neither

flowers nor fruits," they repeated unceasingly. Like the botanists of

antiquity, they denied what they had not taken the trouble to observe.

They were tired with our questions, and exhausted our patience in

return.

We have already mentioned that the same chemical properties being

sometimes found in the same organs of different families of plants,

these families supply each other's places in various climates. Several

species of palms* furnish the inhabitants of equinoctial America and

Africa with the oil which we derive from the olive. (* In Africa, the

elais or maba; in America the cocoa-tree. In the cocoa-tree it is the

perisperm; and in the elais (as in the olive, and the oleineae in

general) it is the sarcocarp, or the pulp of the pericarp, that yields

oil. This difference, observed in the same family, appears to me very

remarkable, though it is in no way contradictory to the results

obtained by De Candolle in his ingenious researches on the chemical

properties of plants. If our Alfonsia oleifera belong to the genus

Elais (as Brown, with great reason believes), it follows, that in the

same genus the oil is found in the sarcocarp and in the perisperm.)

What the coniferae are to the temperate zone, the terebinthaceae and

the guttiferae are to the torrid. In the forests of those burning

climates, (where there is neither pine, thuya, taxodium, nor even a

podocarpus,) resins, balsams, and aromatic gums, are furnished by the

maronobea, the icica, and the amyris. The collecting of these gummy

and resinous substances is a trade in the village of Javita. The most

celebrated resin bears the name of mani; and of this we saw masses of

several hundred-weight, resembling colophony and mastic. The tree

called mani by the Paraginis, which M. Bonpland believes to be the

Moronobaea coccinea, furnishes but a small quantity of the substance

employed in the trade with Angostura. The greatest part comes from the

mararo or caragna, which is an amyris. It is remarkable enough, that

the name mani, which Aublet heard among the Galibis* of Cayenne, was

again heard by us at Javita, three hundred leagues distant from French

Guiana. (* The Galibis or Caribis (the r has been changed into l, as

often happens) are of the great stock of the Carib nations. The

products useful in commerce and in domestic life have received the

same denomination in every part of America which this warlike and

commercial people have overrun.) The moronobaea or symphonia of Javita

yields a yellow resin; the caragna, a resin strongly odoriferous, and

white as snow; the latter becomes yellow where it is adherent to the

internal part of old bark.

We went every day to see how our canoe advanced on the portages.

Twenty-three Indians were employed in dragging it by land, placing

branches of trees to serve as rollers. In this manner a small boat

proceeds in a day or a day and a half, from the waters of the Tuamini

to those of the Cano Pimichin, which flow into the Rio Negro. Our

canoe being very large, and having to pass the cataracts a second

time, it was necessary to avoid with particular care any friction on

the bottom; consequently the passage occupied more than four days. It

is only since 1795 that a road has been traced through the forest. By

substituting a canal for this portage, as I proposed to the ministry

of king Charles IV, the communication between the Rio Negro and

Angostura, between the Spanish Orinoco and the Portuguese possessions

on the Amazon, would be singularly facilitated.

In this forest we at length obtained precise information respecting

the pretended fossil caoutchouc, called dapicho by the Indians. The

old chief Javita led us to the brink of a rivulet which runs into the

Tuamini; and showed us that, after digging two or three feet deep, in

a marshy soil, this substance was found between the roots of two trees

known by the name of the jacio and the curvana. The first is the hevea

of Aublet, or siphonia of the modern botanists, known to furnish the

caoutchouc of commerce in Cayenne and Grand Para; the second has

pinnate leaves, and its juice is milky, but very thin, and almost

destitute of viscosity. The dapicho appears to be the result of an

extravasation of the sap from the roots. This extravasation takes

place more especially when the trees have attained a great age, and

the interior of the trunk begins to decay. The bark and alburnum

crack; and thus is effected naturally, what the art of man performs

for the purpose of collecting the milky juices of the hevea, the

castilloa, and the caoutchouc fig-tree. Aublet relates, that the

Galibis and the Garipons of Cayenne begin by making a deep incision at

the foot of the trunk, so as to penetrate into the wood; soon after

they join with this horizontal notch others both perpendicular and

oblique, reaching from the top of the trunk nearly to the roots. All

these incisions conduct the milky juice towards one point, where the

vase of clay is placed, in which the caoutchouc is to be deposited. We

saw the Indians of Carichana operate nearly in the same manner.

If, as I suppose, the accumulation and overflowing of the milk in the

jacio and the curvana be a pathological phenomenon, it must sometimes

take place at the extremity of the longest roots, for we found masses

of dapicho two feet in diameter and four inches thick, eight feet

distant from the trunks. Sometimes the Indians dig in vain at the foot

of dead trees; at other times the dapicho is found beneath the hevea

or jacio still green. The substance is white, corky, fragile, and

resembles by its laminated structure and undulating edge, the Boletus

ignarius. The dapicho perhaps takes a long time to form; it is

probably a juice thickened by a particular disposition of the

vegetable organs, diffused and coagulated in a humid soil secluded

from the contact of light; it is caoutchouc in a particular state, I

may almost say an etiolated caoutchouc. The humidity of the soil seems

to account for the undulating form of the edges of the dapicho, and

its division into layers.

I often observed in Peru, that on pouring slowly the milky juice of

the hevea, or the sap of the carica, into a large quantity of water,

the coagulum forms undulating outlines. The dapicho is certainly not

peculiar to the forest that extends from Javita to Pimichin, although

that is the only spot where it has hitherto been found. I have no

doubt, that on digging in French Guiana beneath the roots and the old

trunks of the hevea, those enormous masses of corky caoutchouc,* which

I have just described, would from time to time be found. (* Thus, at

five or six inches depth, between the roots of the Hymenea courbaril,

masses of the resin anime (erroneously called copal) are discovered,

and are sometimes mistaken for amber in inland places. This phenomenon

seems to throw some light on the origin of those large masses of amber

which are picked up from time to time on the coast of Prussia.) As it

is observed in Europe, that at the fall of the leaf the sap is

conveyed towards the root, it would be curious to examine whether,

within the tropics, the milky juices of the urticeae, the

euphorbiaceae, and the apocyneae, descend also at certain seasons.

Notwithstanding a great equality of temperature, the trees of the

torrid zone follow a cycle of vegetation; they undergo changes

periodically returning. The existence of the dapicho is more

interesting to physiology than to vegetable chemistry. A

yellowish-white caoutchouc is now to be found in the shops, which may

be easily distinguished from the dapicho, because it is neither dry

like cork, nor friable, but extremely elastic, glossy, and soapy. I

lately saw considerable quantities of it in London. This caoutchouc,

white, and greasy to the touch, is prepared in the East Indies. It

exhales that animal and fetid smell which I have attributed in another

place to a mixture of caseum and albumen.* (* The pellicles deposited

by the milk of hevea, in contact with the atmospheric oxygen, become

brown on exposure to the sun. If the dapicho grow black as it is

softened before the fire, it is owing to a slight combustion, to a

change in the proportion of its elements. I am surprised that some

chemists consider the black caoutchouc of commerce, as being mixed

with soot, blackened by the smoke to which it has been exposed.) When

we reflect on the immense variety of plants in the equinoctial regions

that are capable of furnishing caoutchouc, it is to be regretted that

this substance, so eminently useful, is not found among us at a lower

price. Without cultivating trees with a milky sap, a sufficient

quantity of caoutchouc might be collected in the missions of the

Orinoco alone for the consumption of civilized Europe.* (* We saw in

Guiana, besides the jacio and the curvana, two other trees that yield

caoutchouc in abundance; on the banks of the Atabapo the guamaqui with

jatropha leaves, and at Maypures the cime.) In the kingdom of New

Grenada some successful attempts have been made to make boots and

shoes of this substance without a seam. Among the American nations,

the Omaguas of the Amazon best understand how to manufacture

caoutchouc.

Four days had passed, and our canoe had not yet arrived at the

landing-place of the Rio Pimichin. "You want for nothing in my

mission," said Father Cereso; "you have plantains and fish; at night

you are not stung by mosquitos; and the longer you stay, the better

chance you will have of seeing the stars of my country. If your boat

be destroyed in the portage, we will give you another; and I shall

have had the satisfaction of passing some weeks con gente blanca y de

razon." ("With white and rational people." European self-love usually

opposes the gente de razon to the gente parda, or coloured people.)

Notwithstanding our impatience, we listened with interest to the

information given us by the worthy missionary. It confirmed all we had

already heard of the moral state of the natives of those countries.

They live, distributed in hordes of forty or fifty, under a family

government; and they recognise a common chief (apoto, sibierene) only

at times when they make war against their neighbours. The mistrust of

these hordes towards one another is increased by the circumstance that

those who live in the nearest neighbourhood speak languages altogether

different. In the open plains, in the countries with savannahs, the

tribes are fond of choosing their habitations from an affinity of

origin, and a resemblance of manners and idioms. On the table-land of

Tartary, as in North America, great families of nations have been

seen, formed into several columns, extending their migrations across

countries thinly-wooded, and easily traversed. Such were the journeys

of the Toltec and Aztec race in the high plains of Mexico, from the

sixth to the eleventh century of our era; such probably was also the

movement of nations by which the petty tribes of Canada were grouped

together. As the immense country between the equator and the eighth

degree of north latitude forms one continuous forest, the hordes were

there dispersed by following the branchings of the rivers, and the

nature of the land compelled them to become more or less

agriculturists. Such is the labyrinth of these rivers, that families

settled themselves without knowing what race of men lived nearest the

spot. In Spanish Guiana a mountain, or a forest half a league broad,

sometimes separates hordes who could not meet in less than two days by

navigating rivers. In open countries, or in a state of advanced

civilization, communication by rivers contributes powerfully to

generalize languages, manners, and political institutions; but in the

impenetrable forests of the torrid zone, as in the first rude

condition of our species, rivers increase the dismemberment of great

nations, favour the transition of dialects into languages that appear

to us radically distinct, and keep up national hatred and mistrust.

Between the banks of the Caura and the Padamo everything bears the

stamp of disunion and weakness. Men avoid, because they do not

understand, each other; they mutually hate, because they mutually

fear.

When we examine attentively this wild part of America, we fancy

ourselves transported to those primitive times when the earth was

peopled by degrees, and we seem to be present at the birth of human

societies. In the old world we see that pastoral life has prepared the

hunting nations for agriculture. In the New World we seek in vain

these progressive developments of civilization, these intervals of

repose, these stages in the life of nations. The luxury of vegetation

embarrasses the Indians in the chase; and in their rivers, resembling

arms of the sea, the depth of the waters prevents fishing during whole

months. Those species of ruminating animals, that constitute the

wealth of the nations of the Old World, are wanting in the New. The

bison and the musk-ox have never been reduced to a domestic state; the

breeding of llamas and guanacos has not created the habits of pastoral

life. In the temperate zone, on the banks of the Missouri, as well as

on the tableland of New Mexico, the American is a hunter; but in the

torrid zone, in the forests of Guiana, he cultivates cassava,

plantains, and sometimes maize. Such is the admirable fertility of

nature, that the field of the native is a little spot of land, to

clear which requires only setting fire to the brambles; and putting a

few seeds or slips into the ground is all the husbandry it demands. If

we go back in thought to the most remote ages, in these thick forests

we must always figure to ourselves nations deriving the greater part

of their nourishment from the earth; but, as this earth produces

abundance in a small space, and almost without toil, we may also

imagine these nations often changing their dwellings along the banks

of the same river. Even now the native of the Orinoco travels with his

seeds; and transports his farm (conuco) as the Arab transports his

tent, and changes his pasturage. The number of cultivated plants found

wild amid the woods, proves the nomad habits of an agricultural

people. Can we be surprised, that by these habits they lose almost all

the advantages that result in the temperate zone from stationary

culture, from the growth of corn, which requires extensive lands and

the most assiduous labour?

The nations of the Upper Orinoco, the Atabapo, and the Inirida, like

the ancient Germans and the Persians, have no other worship than that

of the powers of nature. They call the good principle Cachimana; it is

the Manitou, the Great Spirit, that regulates the seasons, and favours

the harvests. Along with Cachimana there is an evil principle,

Iolokiamo, less powerful, but more artful, and in particular more

active. The Indians of the forest, when they occasionally visit the

missions, conceive with difficulty the idea of a temple or an image.

"These good people," said the missionary, "like only processions in

the open air. When I last celebrated the festival of San Antonio, the

patron of my village, the Indians of Inirida were present at mass.

'Your God,' said they to me, 'keeps himself shut up in a house, as if

he were old and infirm; ours is in the forest, in the fields, and on

the mountains of Sipapu, whence the rains come.'" Among the more

numerous, and on this account less barbarous tribes, religious

societies of a singular kind are formed. Some old Indians pretend to

be better instructed than others on points regarding divinity; and to

them is confided the famous botuto, of which I have spoken, and which

is sounded under the palm-trees that they may bear abundance of fruit.

On the banks of the Orinoco there exists no idol, as among all the

nations who have remained faithful to the first worship of nature, but

the botuto, the sacred trumpet, is an object of veneration. To be

initiated into the mysteries of the botuto, it is requisite to be of

pure morals, and to have lived single. The initiated are subjected to

flagellations, fastings, and other painful exercises. There are but a

small number of these sacred trumpets. The most anciently celebrated

is that upon a hill near the confluence of the Tomo and the Guainia.

It is pretended, that it is heard at once on the banks of the Tuamini,

and at the mission of San Miguel de Davipe, a distance of ten leagues.

Father Cereso assured us, that the Indians speak of the botuto of Tomo

as an object of worship common to many surrounding tribes. Fruit and

intoxicating liquors are placed beside the sacred trumpet. Sometimes

the Great Spirit himself makes the botuto resound; sometimes he is

content to manifest his will through him to whom the keeping of the

instrument is entrusted. These juggleries being very ancient (from the

fathers of our fathers, say the Indians), we must not be surprised

that some unbelievers are already to be found; but they express their

disbelief of the mysteries of the botuto only in whispers. Women are

not permitted to see this marvellous instrument; and are excluded from

all the ceremonies of this worship. If a woman have the misfortune to

see the trumpet, she is put to death without mercy. The missionary

related to us, that in 1798 he was happy enough to save a young girl,

whom a jealous and vindictive lover accused of having followed, from a

motive of curiosity, the Indians who sounded the botuto in the

plantations. "They would not have murdered her publicly," said father

Cesero, "but how was she to be protected from the fanaticism of the

natives, in a country where it is so easy to give poison? The young

girl told me of her fears, and I sent her to one of the missions of

the Lower Orinoco." If the people of Guiana had remained masters of

that vast country; if, without having been impeded by Christian

settlements, they could follow freely the development of their

barbarous institutions; the worship of the botuto would no doubt

become of some political importance. That mysterious society of the

initiated, those guardians of the sacred trumpet, would be transformed

into a ruling caste of priests, and the oracle of Tomo would gradually

form a link between the bordering nations.

In the evening of the 4th of May we were informed, that an Indian, who

had assisted in dragging our bark over the portage of Pimichin, had

been stung by a viper. He was a tall strong man, and was brought to

the mission in a very alarming state. He had dropped down senseless;

and nausea, vertigo, and congestions in the head, had succeeded the

fainting. The liana called vejeco de guaco,* which M. Mutis has

rendered so celebrated, and which is the most certain remedy for the

bite of venomous serpents, is yet unknown in these countries. (* This

is a mikania, which was confounded for some time in Europe with the

ayapana. De Candolle thinks that the guaco may be the Eupatorium

satureiaefolium of Lamarck; but this Eupatorium differs by its lineary

leaves, while the Mikania guaco has triangular, oval, and very large

leaves.) A number of Indians hastened to the hut of the sick man, and

he was cured by an infusion of raiz de mato. We cannot indicate with

certainty what plant furnishes this antidote; but I am inclined to

think, that the raiz de mato is an apocynea, perhaps the Cerbera

thevetia, called by the inhabitants of Cumana lingua de mato or

contra-culebra, and which they also use against the bite of serpents.

A genus nearly allied to the cerbera* (* Ophioxylon serpentinum.) is

employed in India for the same purpose. It is common enough to find in

the same family of plants vegetable poisons, and antidotes against the

venom of reptiles. Many tonics and narcotics are antidotes more or

less active; and we find these in families very different* from each

other, in the aristolochiae, the apocyneae, the gentianae, the

polygalae, the solaneae, the compositae, the malvaceae, the

drymyrhizeae, and, which is still more surprising, even in the

palm-trees. (* I shall mention as examples of these nine families;

Aristolochia anguicida, Cerbera thevetia, Ophoiorhiza mungos, Polygala

senega, Nicotiana tabacum, (One of the remedies most used in Spanish

America). Mikanua guaco, Hibiscus abelmoschus (the seeds of which are

very active), Lanpujum rumphii, and Kunthia montana (Cana de la

Vibora).)

In the hut of the Indian who had been so dangerously bitten by the

viper, we found balls two or three inches in diameter, of an earthy

and impure salt called chivi, which is prepared with great care by the

natives. At Maypures a conferva is burnt, which is left by the Orinoco

on the neighbouring rocks, when, after high swellings, it again enters

its bed. At Javita a salt is fabricated by the incineration of the

spadix and fruit of the palm-tree seje or chimu. This fine palm-tree,

which abounds on the banks of the Auvana, near the cataract of

Guarinumo, and between Javita and the Cano Pimichin, appears to be a

new species of cocoa-tree. It may be recollected, that the fluid

contained in the fruit of the common cocoa-tree is often saline, even

when the tree grows far from the sea shore. At Madagascar salt is

extracted from the sap of a palm-tree called ciro. Besides the spadix

and the fruit of the seje palm, the Indians of Javita lixiviate also

the ashes of the famous liana called cupana, which is a new species of

the genus paullinia, consequently a very different plant from the

cupania of Linnaeus. I may here mention, that a missionary seldom

travels without being provided with some prepared seeds of the cupana.

This preparation requires great care. The Indians scrape the seeds,

mix them with flour of cassava, envelope the mass in plantain leaves,

and set it to ferment in water, till it acquires a saffron-yellow

colour. This yellow paste dried in the sun, and diluted in water, is

taken in the morning as a kind of tea. The beverage is bitter and

stomachic, but it appeared to me to have a very disagreeable taste.

On the banks of the Niger, and in a great part of the interior of

Africa, where salt is extremely rare, it is said of a rich man, "he is

so fortunate as to eat salt at his meals." This good fortune is not

too common in the interior of Guiana. The whites only, particularly

the soldiers of the little fort of San Carlos, know how to procure

pure salt, either from the coast of Caracas, or from Chita* by the Rio

Meta. (* North of Morocote, at the eastern declivity of the Cordillera

of New Grenada. The salt of the coasts, which the Indians call

yuquira, costs two piastres the almuda at San Carlos.) Here, as

throughout America, the Indians eat little meat, and consume scarcely

any salt. The chivi of Javita is a mixture of muriate of potash and of

soda, of caustic lime, and of several other earthy salts. The Indians

dissolve a few particles in water, fill with this solution a leaf of

heliconia folded in a conical form, and let drop a little, as from the

extremity of a filter, on their food.

On the 5th of May we set off, to follow on foot our canoe, which had

at length arrived, by the portage, at the Cano Pimichin. We had to

ford a great number of streams; and these passages require some

caution on account of the vipers with which the marshes abound. The

Indians pointed out to us on the moist clay the traces of the little

black bears so common on the banks of the Temi. They differ at least

in size from the Ursus americanus. The missionaries call them osso

carnicero, to distinguish them from the osso palmero or tamanoir

(Myrmecophaga jubata), and from the osso hormigero, or anteater

(tamandua). The flesh of these animals is good to eat; the first two

defend themselves by rising on their hind feet. The tamanoir of Buffon

is called uaraca by the Indians; it is irascible and courageous, which

is extraordinary in an animal without teeth. We found, as we advanced,

some vistas in the forest, which appeared to us the richer, as it

became more accessible. We here gathered some new species of coffee

(the American tribe, with flowers in panicles, forms probably a

particular genus); the Galega piscatorum, of which the Indians make

use, as they do of jacquinia, and of a composite plant of the Rio

Temi, as a kind of barbasco, to intoxicate fish; and finally, the

liana, known in those countries by the name of vejuco de mavacure,

which yields the famous curare poison. It is neither a phyllanthus,

nor a coriaria, as M. Willdenouw conjectured, but, as M. Kunth's

researches show, very probably a strychnos. We shall have occasion,

farther on, to speak of this venomous substance, which is an important

object of trade among the savages.

The trees of the forest of Pimichin have the gigantic height of from

eighty to a hundred and twenty feet. In these burning climates the

laurineae and amyris* (* The great white and red cedars of these

countries are not the Cedrela odorata, but the Amyris altissima, which

is an icica of Aublet.) furnish that fine timber for building, which,

on the north-west coast of America, on mountains where the thermometer

falls in winter to 20 degrees centigrade below zero, we find in the

family of the coniferae. Such, in every zone, and in all the families

of American plants, is the prodigious force of vegetation, that, in

the latitude of fifty-seven degrees north, on the same isothermal line

with St. Petersburgh and the Orkneys, the Pinus canadensis displays

trunks one hundred and fifty feet high, and six feet in diameter.* (*

Langsdorf informs us that the inhabitants of Norfolk Sound make boats

of a single trunk, fifty feet long, four feet and a half broad, and

three high at the sides. They contain thirty persons. These boats

remind us of the canoes of the Rio Chagres in the isthmus of Panama,

in the torrid zone. The Populus balsamifera also attains an immense

height, on the mountains that border Norfolk Sound.) Towards night we

arrived at a small farm, in the puerto or landing place of Pimichin.

We were shown a cross near the road, which marked the spot where a

poor capuchin missionary had been killed by wasps. I state this on the

authority of the monks of Javita and the Indians. They talk much in

these countries of wasps and venomous ants, but we saw neither one nor

the other of these insects. It is well known that in the torrid zone

slight stings often cause fits of fever almost as violent as those

that with us accompany severe organic injuries. The death of this poor

monk was probably the effect of fatigue and damp, rather than of the

venom contained in the stings of wasps, which the Indians dread

extremely. We must not confound the wasps of Javita with the melipones

bees, called by the Spaniards angelitos (little angels) which covered

our faces and hands on the summit of the Silla de Caracas.

The landing place of Pimichin is surrounded by a small plantation of

cacao-trees; they are very vigorous, and here, as on the banks of the

Atabapo and the Guainia, they are loaded with flowers and fruits at

all seasons. They begin to bear from the fourth year; on the coast of

Caracas they do not bear till the sixth or eighth year. The soil of

these countries is sandy, wherever it is not marshy; but the light

lands of the Tuamini and Pimichin are extremely productive.* (* At

Javita, an extent of fifty feet square, planted with Jatropha manihot

(yucca) yields in two years, in the worst soil, a harvest of six

tortas of cassava: the same extent on a middling soil yields in

fourteen months a produce of nine tortas. In an excellent soil, around

clumps of mauritia, there is every year from fifty feet square a

produce of thirteen or fourteen tortas. A torta weighs three quarters

of a pound, and three tortas cost generally in the province of Caracas

one silver rial, or one-eighth of a piastre. These statements appear

to me to be of some importance, when we wish to compare the nutritive

matter which man can obtain from the same extent of soil, by covering

it, in different climates, with bread-trees, plantains, jatropha,

maize, potatoes, rice, and corn. The tardiness of the harvest of

jatropha has, I believe, a beneficial influence on the manners of the

natives, by fixing them to the soil, and compelling them to sojourn

long on the same spot.) Around the conucos of Pimichin grows, in its

wild state, the igua, a tree resembling the Caryocar nuciferum which

is cultivated in Dutch and French Guiana, and which, with the

almendron of Mariquita (Caryocar amygdaliferum), the juvia of the

Esmeralda (Bertholletia excelsa), and the Geoffroea of the Amazon,

yields the finest almonds of all South America. No commercial

advantage is here made of the igua; but I saw vessels arrive on the

coast of Terra Firma, that came from Demerara laden with the fruit of

the Caryocar tomentosum, which is the Pekea tuberculosa of Aublet.

These trees reach a hundred feet in height, and present, by the beauty

of their corolla, and the multitude of their stamens, a magnificent

appearance. I should weary the reader by continuing the enumeration of

the vegetable wonders which these vast forests contain. Their variety

depends on the coexistence of such a great number of families in a

small space of ground, on the stimulating power of light and heat, and

on the perfect elaboration of the juices that circulate in these

gigantic plants.

We passed the night in a hut lately abandoned by an Indian family, who

had left behind them their fishing-tackle, pottery, nets made of the

petioles of palm-trees; in short, all that composes the household

furniture of that careless race of men, little attached to property. A

great store of mani (a mixture of the resin of the moronoboea and the

Amyris carana) was accumulated round the house. This is used by the

Indians here, as at Cayenne, to pitch their canoes, and fix the bony

spines of the ray at the points of their arrows. We found in the same

place jars filled with a vegetable milk, which serves as a varnish,

and is celebrated in the missions by the name of leche para pintar

(milk for painting). They coat with this viscous juice those articles

of furniture to which they wish to give a fine white colour. It

thickens by the contact of the air, without growing yellow, and it

appears singularly glossy. We have already mentioned that the

caoutchouc is the oily part, the butter of all vegetable milk. It is,

no doubt, a particular modification of caoutchouc that forms this

coagulum, this white and glossy skin, that seems as if covered with

copal varnish. If different colours could be given to this milky

varnish, a very expeditious method would be found of painting and

varnishing our carriages by one process. The more we study vegetable

chemistry in the torrid zone, the more we shall discover, in remote

spots, and half-prepared in the organs of plants, products which we

believe belong only to the animal kingdom, or which we obtain by

processes which are often tedious and difficult. Already we have found

the wax that coats the palm-tree of the Andes of Quindiu, the silk of

the palm-tree of Mocoa, the nourishing milk of the palo de vaca, the

butter-tree of Africa, and the caseous substances obtained from the

almost animalized sap of the Carica papaya. These discoveries will be

multiplied, when, as the political state of the world seems now to

indicate, European civilization shall flow in a great measure toward

the equinoctial regions of the New Continent.

The marshy tract between Javita and the embarcadero of Pimichin is

infested with great numbers of vipers. Before we took possession of

the deserted hut, the Indians killed two great mapanare serpents.* (*

This name is given in the Spanish colonies to very different species.

The Coluber mapanare of the province of Caracas has one hundred and

forty-two ventral plates, and thirty-eight double caudal scales. The

Coluber mapanare of the Rio Magdalena has two hundred and eight

ventral plates, and sixty-four double caudal scales.) These grow to

four or five feet long. They appeared to me to be the same species as

those I saw in the Rio Magdalena. This serpent is a beautiful animal,

but extremely venomous, white on the belly, and spotted with brown and

red on the back. As the inside of the hut was filled with grass, and

we were lying on the ground, there being no means of suspending our

hammocks, we were not without inquietude during the night. In the

morning a large viper was found on lifting the jaguar-skin upon which

one of our domestics had slept. The Indians say that these reptiles,

slow in their movements when they are not pursued, creep near a man

because they are fond of heat. In fact, on the banks of the Magdalena

a serpent entered the bed of one of our fellow-travellers, and

remained there a part of the night, without injuring him. Without

wishing to take up the defence of vipers and rattlesnakes, I believe

it may be affirmed that, if these venomous animals had such a

disposition for offence as is supposed, the human species would

certainly not have withstood their numbers in some parts of America;

for instance, on the banks of the Orinoco and the humid mountains of

Choco.

We embarked on the 8th of May at sunrise, after having carefully

examined the bottom of our canoe. It had become thinner, but had

received no crack in the portage. We reckoned that it would still bear

the voyage of three hundred leagues, which we had yet to perform, in

going down the Rio Negro, ascending the Cassiquiare, and redescending

the Orinoco as far as Angostura. The Pimichin, which is called a

rivulet (cano) is tolerably broad; but small trees that love the water

narrow the bed so much that there remains open a channel of only

fifteen or twenty toises. Next to the Rio Chagres this river is one of

the most celebrated in America for the number of its windings: it is

said to have eighty-five, which greatly lengthen it. They often form

right angles, and occur every two or three leagues. To determine the

difference of longitude between the landing-place and the point where

we were to enter the Rio Negro, I took by the compass the course of

the Cano Pimichin, and noted the time during which we followed the

same direction. The velocity of the current was only 2.4 feet in a

second; but our canoe made by rowing 4.6 feet. The embarcadero of the

Pimichin appeared to me to be eleven thousand toises west of its

mouth, and 0 degrees 2 minutes west of the mission of Javita. This

Cano is navigable during the whole year, and has but one raudal, which

is somewhat difficult to go up; its banks are low, but rocky. After

having followed the windings of the Pimichin for four hours and a half

we at length entered the Rio Negro.

The morning was cool and beautiful. We had now been confined

thirty-six days in a narrow boat, so unsteady that it would have been

overset by any person rising imprudently from his seat, without

warning the rowers. We had suffered severely from the sting of

insects, but we had withstood the insalubrity of the climate; we had

passed without accident the great number of waterfalls and bars, which

impede the navigation of the rivers, and often render it more

dangerous than long voyages by sea. After all we had endured, it may

be conceived that we felt no little satisfaction in having reached the

tributary streams of the Amazon, having passed the isthmus that

separates two great systems of rivers, and in being sure of having

fulfilled the most important object of our journey, namely, to

determine astronomically the course of that arm of the Orinoco which

falls into the Rio Negro, and of which the existence has been

alternately proved and denied during half a century. In proportion as

we draw near to an object we have long had in view, its interest seems

to augment. The uninhabited banks of the Cassiquiare, covered with

forests, without memorials of times past, then occupied my

imagination, as do now the banks of the Euphrates, or the Oxus,

celebrated in the annals of civilized nations. In that interior part

of the New Continent one may almost accustom oneself to regard men as

not being essential to the order of nature. The earth is loaded with

plants, and nothing impedes their free development. An immense layer

of mould manifests the uninterrupted action of organic powers.

Crocodiles and boas are masters of the river; the jaguar, the peccary,

the dante, and the monkeys traverse the forest without fear and

without danger; there they dwell as in an ancient inheritance. This

aspect of animated nature, in which man is nothing, has something in

it strange and sad. To this we reconcile ourselves with difficulty on

the ocean, and amid the sands of Africa; though in scenes where

nothing recalls to mind our fields, our woods, and our streams, we are

less astonished at the vast solitude through which we pass. Here, in a

fertile country, adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the

traces of the power of man; we seem to be transported into a world

different from that which gave us birth. These impressions are the

more powerful in proportion as they are of long duration. A soldier,

who had spent his whole life in the missions of the Upper Orinoco,

slept with us on the bank of the river. He was an intelligent man,

who, during a calm and serene night, pressed me with questions on the

magnitude of the stars, on the inhabitants of the moon, on a thousand

subjects of which I was as ignorant as himself. Being unable by my

answers to satisfy his curiosity, he said to me in a firm tone of the

most positive conviction: "with respect to men, I believe there are no

more up there than you would have found if you had gone by land from

Javita to Cassiquiare. I think I see in the stars, as here, a plain

covered with grass, and a forest (mucho monte) traversed by a river."

In citing these words I paint the impression produced by the

monotonous aspect of those solitary regions. May this monotony not be

found to extend to the journal of our navigation, and weary the reader

accustomed to the description of the scenes and historical memorials

of the old continent!