The mission of Santa Barbara is situated a little to the west of the

mouth of the Rio Ventuari, or Venituari, examined in 1800 by Father

Francisco Valor. We found in this small village of one hundred and

twenty inhabitants some traces of industry; but the produce of this

industry is of little profit to the natives; it is reserved for the

monks, or, as they say in these countries, for the church and the

convent. We were assured that a great lamp of massive silver,

purchased at the expense of the neophytes, is expected from Madrid.

Let us hope that, after the arrival of this treasure, they will think

also of clothing the Indians, of procuring for them some instruments

of agriculture, and assembling their children in a school. Although

there are a few oxen in the savannahs round the mission, they are

rarely employed in turning the mill (trapiche), to express the juice

of the sugar-cane; this is the occupation of the Indians, who work

without pay here as they do everywhere when they are understood to

work for the church. The pasturages at the foot of the mountains round

Santa Barbara are not so rich as at Esmeralda, but superior to those

at San Fernando de Atabapo. The grass is short and thick, yet the

upper stratum of earth furnishes only a dry and parched granitic sand.

The savannahs (far from fertile) of the banks of the Guaviare, the

Meta, and the Upper Orinoco, are equally destitute of the mould which

abounds in the surrounding forests, and of the thick stratum of clay,

which covers the sandstone of the Llanos, or steppes of Venezuela. The

small herbaceous mimosas contribute in this zone to fatten the cattle,

but are very rare between the Rio Jao and the mouth of the Guaviare.

During the few hours of our stay at the mission of Santa Barbara, we

obtained pretty accurate ideas respecting the Rio Ventuari, which,

next to the Guaviare, appeared to me to be the most considerable

tributary of the Orinoco. Its banks, heretofore occupied by the

Maypures, are still peopled by a great number of independent nations.

On going up by the mouth of the Ventuari, which forms a delta covered

with palm-trees, you find in the east, after three days' journey, the

Cumaruita and the Paru, two streams that rise at the foot of the lofty

mountains of Cuneva. Higher up, on the west, lie the Mariata and the

Manipiare, inhabited by the Macos and Curacicanas. The latter nation

is remarkable for their active cultivation of cotton. In a hostile

incursion (entrada) a large house was found containing more than

thirty or forty hammocks of a very fine texture of spun cotton,

cordage, and fishing implements. The natives had fled; and Father

Valor informed us, that the Indians of the mission who accompanied him

had set fire to the house before he could save these productions of

the industry of the Curacicanas. The neophytes of Santa Barbara, who

think themselves very superior to these supposed savages, appeared to

me far less industrious. The Rio Manipiare, one of the principal

branches of the Ventuari, approaches near its source those lofty

mountains, the northern ridge of which gives birth to the Cuchivero.

It is a prolongation of the chain of Baraguan; and there Father Gili

places the table-land of Siamacu, of which he vaunts the temperate

climate. The upper course of the Rio Ventuari, beyond the confluence

of the Asisi, and the Great Raudales, is almost unknown. I was

informed only that the Upper Ventuari bends so much towards the east

that the ancient road from Esmeralda to the Rio Caura crosses the bed

of the river. The proximity of the tributary streams of the Carony,

the Caura, and the Ventuari, has facilitated for ages the access of

the Caribs to the banks of the Upper Orinoco. Bands of this warlike

and trading people went up from the Rio Carony, by the Paragua, to the

sources of the Paruspa. A portage conducted them to the Chavarro, an

eastern tributary stream of the Rio Caura; they descended with their

canoes first this stream, and then the Caura itself as far as the

mouth of the Erevato. After having gone up this last river south-west,

and traversed vast savannahs for three days, they entered by the

Manipiare into the great Rio Ventuari. I trace this road with

precision not only because it was that by which the traffic of native

slaves was carried on, but also to call the attention of those, who at

some future day may rule the destiny of Guiana, to the high importance

of this labyrinth of rivers.

It is by the four largest tributary streams, which the majestic river

of the Orinoco receives on the right (the Carony, the Caura, the

Padamo, and the Ventuari), that European civilization will one day

penetrate into this region of forests and mountains, which has a

surface of ten thousand six hundred square leagues, and which is

bounded by the Orinoco on the north, the west, and the south. The

Capuchins of Catalonia and the Observantins of Andalusia and Valencia,

have already made settlements in the valleys of the Carony and the

Caura. The tributary streams of the Lower Orinoco, being the nearest

to the coast and to the cultivated region of Venezuela, were naturally

the first to receive missionaries, and with them some germs of social

life. Corresponding to the Carony and the Caura, which flow toward the

north, are two great tributary streams of the Upper Orinoco, that send

their waters toward the south; these are the Padamo and the Ventuari.

No village has hitherto risen on their banks, though they offer

advantages for agriculture and pasturage, which would be sought in

vain in the valley of the immense river to which they are tributary.

In the centre of these wild countries, where there will long be no

other road than the rivers, every project of civilization should be

founded on an intimate knowledge of the hydraulic features of the

country, and the relative importance of the tributary streams.

In the morning of the 26th of May we left the little village of Santa

Barbara, where we found several Indians of Esmeralda, who had come

reluctantly, by order of the missionary, to construct for him a house

of two stories. During the whole day we enjoyed the view of the fine

mountains of Sipapo, which rise at a distance of more than eighteen

leagues in the direction of north-north-west. The vegetation of the

banks of the Orinoco is singularly varied in this part of the country;

the aborescent ferns* descend from the mountains, and mingle with the

palm-trees of the plain. (* The geographical distribution of these

plants is extremely singular. Scarcely any are found on the eastern

coast of Brazil. See the interesting work of Prince Maximilian of

Neuwied, Reise nach Brasilien volume 1 page 274.) We rested that night

on the island of Minisi; and, after having passed the mouths of the

little rivers Quejanuma, Ubua, and Masao, we arrived, on the 27th of

May, at San Fernando de Atabapo. We lodged in the same house which we

had occupied a month previously, when going up the Rio Negro. We then

directed our course towards the south, by the Atabapo and the Temi; we

were now returning from the west, having made a long circuit by the

Cassiquiare and the Upper Orinoco.

We remained only one day at San Fernando de Atabapo, although that

village, adorned as it was by the pirijao palm-tree, with fruit like

peaches, appeared to us a delicious abode. Tame pauxis* (* Not the

ourax of Cuvier, Crax pauxi Linn., but the Crax alector.) surrounded

the Indian huts; in one of which we saw a very rare monkey, which

inhabits the banks of the Guaviare. This monkey is the caparro, which

I have made known in my Observations on Zoology and comparative

Anatomy; it forms, as Geoffroy believes, a new genus (Lagothrix)

between the ateles and the alouates. The hair of this monkey is grey,

like that of the marten, and extremely soft to the touch. The caparro

is distinguished by a round head, and a mild and agreeable expression

of countenance. I believe the missionary Gili is the only author who

has made mention before me of this curious animal, around which

zoologists begin to group other monkeys of Brazil. Having quitted San

Fernando on the 27th of May, we arrived, by help of the rapid current

of the Orinoco, in seven hours, at the mouth of the Rio Mataveni. We

passed the night in the open air, under the granitic rock El

Castillito, which rises in the middle of the river, and the form of

which reminded us of the ruin called the Mouse-tower (Mausethurm), on

the Rhine, opposite Bingen. Here, as on the banks of the Atabapo, we

were struck by the sight of a small species of drosera, having exactly

the appearance of the drosera of Europe.

The Orinoco had sensibly swelled during the night; and the current,

strongly accelerated, bore us, in ten hours, from the mouth of the

Mataveni to the Upper Great Cataract, that of Maypures, or Quituna.

The distance which we passed over was thirteen leagues. We recalled to

mind, with much satisfaction, the scenes where we had reposed in going

up the river. We again found the Indians who had accompanied us in our

herborizations; and we visited anew the fine spring that issues from a

rock of stratified granite behind the house of the missionary: its

temperature was not changed more than 0.3 degrees. From the mouth of

the Atabapo as far as that of the Apure we seemed to be travelling as

through a country which we had long inhabited. We were reduced to the

same abstinence; we were stung by the same mosquitos; but the

certainty of reaching in a few weeks the term of our physical

sufferings kept up our spirits.

The passage of the canoe through the Great Cataract obliged us to stop

two days at Maypures. Father Bernardo Zea, missionary at the Raudales,

who had accompanied us to the Rio Negro, though ill, insisted on

conducting us with his Indians as far as Atures. One of these Indians,

Zerepe, the interpreter, who had been so unmercifully punished at the

beach of Pararuma, rivetted our attention by his appearance of deep

sorrow. We learned that his grief was caused by the loss of a young

girl to whom he was engaged, and that he had lost her in consequence

of false intelligence which had been spread respecting the direction

of our journey. Zerepe, who was a native of Maypures, had been brought

up in the woods by his parents, who were of the tribe of the Macos. He

had brought with him to the mission a girl of twelve years of age,

whom he intended to marry at our return from the Cataracts. The Indian

girl was little pleased with the life of the missions, and she was

told that the whites would go to the country of the Portuguese

(Brazil), and would take Zerepe with them. Disappointed in her hopes,

she seized a boat, and with another girl of her own age, crossed the

Great Cataract, and fled al monte. The recital of this courageous

adventure was the great news of the place. The affliction of Zerepe,

however, was not of long duration. Born among the Christians, having

travelled as far as the foot of the Rio Negro, understanding Spanish

and the language of the Macos, he thought himself superior to the

people of his tribe, and he no doubt soon forgot his forest love.

On the 31st of May we passed the rapids of Guahibos and Garcita. The

islands which rise in the middle of the waters of the river were

overspread with the purest verdure. The rains of winter had unfolded

the spathes of the vadgiai palm-tree, the leaves of which rise

straight toward the sky. The eye is never wearied of the view of those

scenes, where the trees and rocks give the landscape that grand and

severe character which we admire in the background of the pictures of

Salvator Rosa. We landed before sunset on the eastern bank of the

Orinoco, at the Puerto de la Expedicion, in order to visit the cavern

of Ataruipe, which is the place of sepulchre of a whole nation

destroyed. I shall attempt to describe this cavern, so celebrated

among the natives.

We climbed with difficulty, and not without some danger, a steep rock

of granite, entirely bare. It would have been almost impossible to fix

the foot on its smooth and sloping surface, if large crystals of

feldspar, resisting decomposition, did not stand out from the rock,

and furnish points of support. Scarcely had we attained the summit of

the mountain when we beheld with astonishment the singular aspect of

the surrounding country. The foamy bed of the waters is filled with an

archipelago of islands covered with palm-trees. Westward, on the left

bank of the Orinoco, the wide-stretching savannahs of the Meta and the

Casanare resembled a sea of verdure. The setting sun seemed like a

globe of fire suspended over the plain, and the solitary Peak of

Uniana, which appeared more lofty from being wrapped in vapours which

softened its outline, all contributed to augment the majesty of the

scene. Immediately below us lay a deep valley, enclosed on every side.

Birds of prey and goatsuckers winged their lonely flight in this

inaccessible circus. We found a pleasure in following with the eye

their fleeting shadows, as they glided slowly over the flanks of the

rock.

A narrow ridge led us to a neighbouring mountain, the rounded summit

of which supported immense blocks of granite. These masses are more

than forty or fifty feet in diameter; and their form is so perfectly

spherical, that, as they appear to touch the soil only by a small

number of points, it might be supposed, at the least shock of an

earthquake, they would roll into the abyss. I do not remember to have

seen anywhere else a similar phenomenon, amid the decompositions of

granitic soils. If the balls rested on a rock of a different nature,

as in the blocks of Jura, we might suppose that they had been rounded

by the action of water, or thrown out by the force of an elastic

fluid; but their position on the summit of a hill alike granitic,

makes it more probable that they owe their origin to the progressive

decomposition of the rock.

The most remote part of the valley is covered by a thick forest. In

this shady and solitary spot, on the declivity of a steep mountain,

the cavern of Ataruipe opens to the view. It is less a cavern than a

jutting rock in which the waters have scooped a vast hollow when, in

the ancient revolutions of our planet, they attained that height.* (*

I saw no vein, no hole (four) filled with crystals. The decomposition

of granitic rocks, and their separation into large masses, dispersed

in the plains and valleys in the form of blocks and balls with

concentric layers, appear to favour the enlarging of these natural

excavations, which resemble real caverns.) In this tomb of a whole

extinct tribe we soon counted nearly six hundred skeletons well

preserved, and regularly placed. Every skeleton reposes in a sort of

basket made of the petioles of the palm-tree. These baskets, which the

natives call mapires, have the form of a square bag. Their size is

proportioned to the age of the dead; there are some for infants cut

off at the moment of their birth. We saw them from ten inches to three

feet four inches long, the skeletons in them being bent together. They

are all ranged near each other, and are so entire that not a rib or a

phalanx is wanting. The bones have been prepared in three different

manners, either whitened in the air and the sun, dyed red with anoto,

or, like mummies, varnished with odoriferous resins, and enveloped in

leaves of the heliconia or of the plantain-tree. The Indians informed

us that the fresh corpse is placed in damp ground, that the flesh may

be consumed by degrees; some months afterwards it is taken out, and

the flesh remaining on the bones is scraped off with sharp stones.

Several hordes in Guiana still observe this custom. Earthen vases

half-baked are found near the mapires or baskets. They appear to

contain the bones of the same family. The largest of these vases, or

funeral urns, are five feet high, and three feet three inches long.

Their colour is greenish-grey, and their oval form is pleasing to the

eye. The handles are made in the shape of crocodiles or serpents; the

edges are bordered with painted meanders, labyrinths, and grecques, in

rows variously combined. Such designs are found in every zone among

nations the farthest removed from each other, either with respect to

their respective positions on the globe, or to the degree of

civilization which they have attained. They still adorn the common

pottery made by the inhabitants of the little mission of Maypures;

they ornament the bucklers of the Otaheitans, the fishing-implements

of the Esquimaux, the walls of the Mexican palace of Mitla, and the

vases of ancient Greece.

We could not acquire any precise idea of the period to which the

origin of the mapires and the painted vases, contained in the

bone-cavern of Ataruipe, can be traced. The greater part seemed not to

be more than a century old; but it may be supposed that, sheltered

from all humidity under the influence of a uniform temperature, the

preservation of these articles would be no less perfect if their

origin dated from a period far more remote. A tradition circulates

among the Guahibos, that the warlike Atures, pursued by the Caribs,

escaped to the rocks that rise in the middle of the Great Cataracts;

and there that nation, heretofore so numerous, became gradually

extinct, as well as its language. The last families of the Atures

still existed in 1767, in the time of the missionary Gili. At the

period of our voyage an old parrot was shown at Maypures, of which the

inhabitants said, and the fact is worthy of observation, that they did

not understand what it said, because it spoke the language of the

Atures.

We opened, to the great concern of our guides, several mapires, for

the purpose of examining attentively the form of the skulls. They were

all marked by the characteristics of the American race, with the

exception of two or three, which approached indubitably to the

Caucasian. In the middle of the Cataracts, in the most inaccessible

spots, cases are found strengthened with iron bands, and filled with

European tools, vestiges of clothes, and glass trinkets. These

articles, which have given rise to the most absurd reports of

treasures hidden by the Jesuits, probably belonged to Portuguese

traders who had penetrated into these savage countries. May we suppose

that the skulls of European race, which we saw mingled with the

skeletons of the natives, and preserved with the same care, were the

remains of some Portuguese travellers who had died of sickness, or had

been killed in battle? The aversion evinced by the natives for

whatever is not of their own race renders this hypothesis little

probable. Perhaps fugitive mestizos of the missions of the Meta and

Apure may have come and settled near the Cataracts, marrying women of

the tribe of the Atures. Such mixed marriages sometimes take place in

this zone, though they are more rare than in Canada, and in the whole

of North America, where hunters of European origin unite themselves

with savages, assume their habits, and sometimes acquire great

political influence.

We took several skulls, the skeleton of a child of six or seven years

old, and two of full-grown men of the nation of the Atures, from the

cavern of Ataruipe. All these bones, partly painted red, partly

varnished with odoriferous resins, were placed in the baskets (mapires

or canastos) which we have just described. They made almost the whole

load of a mule; and as we knew the superstitious feelings of the

Indians in reference to the remains of the dead after burial, we

carefully enveloped the canastos in mats recently woven. Unfortunately

for us, the penetration of the Indians, and the extreme quickness of

their sense of smelling, rendered all our precautions useless.

Wherever we stopped, in the missions of the Caribbees, amid the

Llanos, between Angostura and Nueva Barcelona, the natives assembled

round our mules to admire the monkeys which we had purchased at the

Orinoco. These good people had scarcely touched our baggage, when they

announced the approaching death of the beast of burden that carried

the dead. In vain we told them that they were deceived in their

conjectures; and that the baskets contained the bones of crocodiles

and manatees; they persisted in repeating that they smelt the resin

that surrounded the skeletons, and that they were their old relations.

We were obliged to request that the monks would interpose their

authority, to overcome the aversion of the natives, and procure for us

a change of mules.

One of the skulls, which we took from the cavern of Ataruipe, has

appeared in the fine work published by my old master, Blumenbach, on

the varieties of the human species. The skeletons of the Indians were

lost on the coast of Africa, together with a considerable part of our

collections, in a shipwreck, in which perished our friend and

fellow-traveller, Fray Juan Gonzales, the young monk of the order of

Saint Francis.

We withdrew in silence from the cavern of Ataruipe. It was one of

those calm and serene nights which are so common in the torrid zone.

The stars shone with a mild and planetary light. Their scintillation

was scarcely sensible at the horizon, which seemed illumined by the

great nebulae of the southern hemisphere. An innumerable multitude of

insects spread a reddish light upon the ground, loaded with plants,

and resplendent with these living and moving fires, as if the stars of

the firmament had sunk down on the savannah. On quitting the cavern we

stopped several times to admire the beauty of this singular scene. The

odoriferous vanilla and festoons of bignonia decorated the entrance;

and above, on the summit of the hill, the arrowy branches of the

palm-trees waved murmuring in the air. We descended towards the river,

to take the road to the mission, where we arrived late in the night.

Our imagination was struck by all we had just seen. Occupied

continually by the present, in a country where the traveller is

tempted to regard human society as a new institution, he is more

powerfully interested by remembrances of times past. These

remembrances were not indeed of a distant date; but in all that is

monumental antiquity is a relative idea, and we easily confound what

is ancient with what is obscure and problematic. The Egyptians

considered the historical remembrances of the Greeks as very recent.

If the Chinese, or, as they prefer calling themselves, the inhabitants

of the Celestial Empire, could have communicated with the priests of

Heliopolis, they would have smiled at those pretensions of the

Egyptians to antiquity. Contrasts not less striking are found in the

north of Europe and of Asia, in the New World, and in every region

where the human race has not preserved a long consciousness of itself.

The migration of the Toltecs, the most ancient historical event on the

tableland of Mexico, dates only in the sixth century of our era. The

introduction of a good system of intercalation, and the reform of the

calendars, the indispensable basis of an accurate chronology, took

place in the year 1091. These epochs, which to us appear so modern,

fall on fabulous times, when we reflect on the history of our species

between the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazon. We there see symbolic

figures sculptured on the rocks, but no tradition throws light upon

their origin. In the hot part of Guiana we can go back only to the

period when the Castilian and Portuguese conquerors, and more recently

peaceful monks, penetrated amid so many barbarous nations.

It appears that to the north of the Cataracts, in the strait of

Baraguan, there are caverns filled with bones, similar to those I have

just described: but I was informed of this fact only after my return;

our Indian pilots did not mention it when we landed at the strait.

These tombs no doubt have given rise to a fable of the Ottomacs,

according to which the granitic and solitary rocks of Baraguan, the

forms of which are very singular, are regarded as the grandfathers,

the ancient chiefs of the tribe. The custom of separating the flesh

from the bones, very anciently practised by the Massagetes, is still

known among several hordes of the Orinoco. It is even asserted, and

with some probability, that the Guaraons plunge their dead bodies

under water enveloped in nets; and that the small caribe-fishes, of

which we saw everywhere an innumerable quantity, devour in a few days

the muscular flesh, and thus prepare the skeleton. It may be supposed

that this operation can be practised only in places where crocodiles

are not common. Some tribes, for instance the Tamanacs, are accustomed

to lay waste the fields of a deceased relative, and cut down the trees

which he has planted. They say that the sight of objects which

belonged to their relation makes them melancholy. They like better to

efface than to preserve remembrances. These effects of Indian

sensibility are very detrimental to agriculture, and the monks oppose

with energy these superstitious practices, to which the natives

converted to Christianity still adhere in the missions.

The tombs of the Indians of the Orinoco have not been very closely

examined, because they do not contain valuable articles like those of

Peru; and even on the spot no faith is now lent to the chimerical

ideas, which were heretofore formed of the wealth of the ancient

inhabitants of El Dorado. The thirst of gold everywhere precedes the

desire of instruction, and a taste for researches into antiquity; in

all the mountainous part of South America, from Merida and Santa

Martha to the table-lands of Quito and Upper Peru, the labours of

absolute mining have been undertaken to discover tombs, or, as the

Creoles say, employing a word altered from the Inca language, guacas.

When in Peru, at Mancichi, I went into the guaca from which, in the

sixteenth century, masses of gold of great value were extracted. No

trace of the precious metals has been found in the caverns which have

served the natives of Guiana for ages as sepulchres. This circumstance

proves that even at the period when the Caribs, and other travelling

nations, made incursions to the south-west, gold had flowed in very

small quantities from the mountains of Peru towards the eastern

plains.

Wherever the granitic rocks do not present any of those large cavities

caused by their decomposition, or by an accumulation of their blocks,

the Indians deposit their dead in the earth. The hammock (chinchorro),

a kind of net in which the deceased had reposed during his life,

serves for a coffin. This net is fastened tight round the body, a hole

is dug in the hut, and there the body is laid. This is the most usual

method, according to the account of the missionary Gili, and it

accords with what I myself learned from Father Zea. I do not believe

that there exists one tumulus in Guiana, not even in the plains of the

Cassiquiare and the Essequibo. Some, however, are to be met with in

the savannahs of Varinas, as in Canada, to the west of the

Alleghenies.* (* Mummies and skeletons contained in baskets were

recently discovered in a cavern in the United States. It is believed

they belong to a race of men analogous to that of the Sandwich

Islands. The description of these tombs has some similitude with that

of the tombs of Ataruipe.) It seems remarkable enough that,

notwithstanding the extreme abundance of wood in those countries, the

natives of the Orinoco were as little accustomed as the ancient

Scythians to burn the dead. Sometimes they formed funeral piles for

that purpose; but only after a battle, when the number of the dead was

considerable. In 1748, the Parecas burned not only the bodies of their

enemies, the Tamanacs, but also those of their own people who fell on

the field of battle. The Indians of South America, like all nations in

a state of nature, are strongly attached to the spots where the bones

of their fathers repose. This feeling, which a great writer has

beautifully painted in the episode of Atala, is cherished in all its

primitive ardour by the Chinese. These people among whom everything is

the produce of art, or rather of the most ancient civilization, do not

change their dwelling without carrying along with them the bones of

their ancestors. Coffins are seen deposited on the banks of great

rivers, to be transported, with the furniture of the family, to a

remote province. These removals of bones, heretofore more common among

the savages of North America, are not practised among the tribes of

Guiana; but these are not nomad, like nations who live exclusively by

hunting.

We stayed at the mission of Atures only during the time necessary for

passing the canoe through the Great Cataract. The bottom of our frail

bark had become so thin that it required great care to prevent it from

splitting. We took leave of the missionary, Bernardo Zea, who remained

at Atures, after having accompanied us during two months, and shared

all our sufferings. This poor monk still continued to have fits of

tertian ague; they had become to him an habitual evil, to which he

paid little attention. Other fevers of a more fatal kind prevailed at

Atures on our second visit. The greater part of the Indians could not

leave their hammocks, and we were obliged to send in search of

cassava-bread, the most indispensable food of the country, to the

independent but neighbouring tribe of the Piraoas. We had hitherto

escaped these malignant fevers, which I believe to be always

contagious.

We ventured to pass in our canoe through the latter half of the Raudal

of Atures. We landed here and there, to climb upon the rocks, which

like narrow dikes joined the islands to one another. Sometimes the

waters force their way over the dikes, sometimes they fall within them

with a hollow noise. A considerable portion of the Orinoco was dry,

because the river had found an issue by subterraneous caverns. In

these solitary haunts the rock-manakin with gilded plumage (Pipra

rupicola), one of the most beautiful birds of the tropics, builds its

nest. The Raudalito of Carucari is caused by an accumulation of

enormous blocks of granite, several of which are spheroids of five or

six feet in diameter, and they are piled together in such a manner, as

to form spacious caverns. We entered one of these caverns to gather

the confervas that were spread over the clefts and humid sides of the

rock. This spot displayed one of the most extraordinary scenes of

nature that we had contemplated on the banks of the Orinoco. The river

rolled its waters turbulently over our heads. It seemed like the sea

dashing against reefs of rocks; but at the entrance of the cavern we

could remain dry beneath a large sheet of water that precipitated

itself in an arch from above the barrier. In other cavities, deeper,

but less spacious, the rock was pierced by the effect of successive

filtrations. We saw columns of water, eight or nine inches broad,

descending from the top of the vault, and finding an issue by clefts,

that seemed to communicate at great distances with each other.

The cascades of Europe, forming only one fall, or several falls close

to each other, can never produce such variety in the shifting

landscape. This variety is peculiar to rapids, to a succession of

small cataracts several miles in length, to rivers that force their

way across rocky dikes and accumulated blocks of granite. We had the

opportunity of viewing this extraordinary sight longer than we wished.

Our boat was to coast the eastern bank of a narrow island, and to take

us in again after a long circuit. We passed an hour and a half in vain

expectation of it. Night approached, and with it a tremendous storm.

It rained with violence. We began to fear that our frail bark had been

wrecked against the rocks, and that the Indians, conformably to their

habitual indifference for the evils of others, had returned tranquilly

to the mission. There were only three of us: we were completely wet,

and uneasy respecting the fate of our boat: it appeared far from

agreeable to pass, without sleep, a long night of the torrid zone amid

the noise of the Raudales. M. Bonpland proposed to leave me in the

island with Don Nicolas Soto, and to swim across the branches of the

river that are separated by the granitic dikes. He hoped to reach the

forest, and seek assistance at Atures from Father Zea. We dissuaded

him with difficulty from undertaking this hazardous enterprise. He

knew little of the labyrinth of small channels, into which the Orinoco

is divided. Most of them have strong whirlpools, and what passed

before our eyes while we were deliberating on our situation, proved

sufficiently that the natives had deceived us respecting the absence

of crocodiles in the cataracts. The little monkeys which we had

carried along with us for months were deposited on the point of our

island. Wet by the rains and sensible of the least lowering of the

temperature, these delicate animals sent forth plaintive cries, and

attracted to the spot two crocodiles, the size and leaden colour of

which denoted their great age. Their unexpected appearance made us

reflect on the danger we had incurred by bathing, at our first passing

by the mission of Atures, in the middle of the Raudal. After long

waiting, the Indians at length arrived at the close of day. The

natural coffer-dam by which they had endeavoured to descend in order

to make the circuit of the island, had become impassable owing to the

shallowness of the water. The pilot sought long for a more accessible

passage in this labyrinth of rocks and islands. Happily our canoe was

not damaged and in less than half an hour our instruments, provision,

and animals, were embarked.

We pursued our course during a part of the night, to pitch our tent

again in the island of Panumana. We recognized with pleasure the spots

where we had botanized when going up the Orinoco. We examined once

more on the beach of Guachaco that small formation of sandstone, which

reposes directly on granite. Its position is the same as that of the

sandstone which Burckhardt observed at the entrance of Nubia,

superimposed on the granite of Syene. We passed, without visiting it,

the new mission of San Borga, where (as we learned with regret a few

days after) the little colony of Guahibos had fled al monte, from the

chimerical fear that we should carry them off; to sell them as poitos,

or slaves. After having passed the rapids of Tabaje, and the Raudal of

Cariven, near the mouth of the great Rio Meta, we arrived without

accident at Carichana. The missionary received us with that kind

hospitality which he extended to us on our first passage. The sky was

unfavourable for astronomical observations; we had obtained some new

ones in the two Great Cataracts; but thence, as far as the mouth of

the Apure, we were obliged to renounce the attempt. M. Bonpland had

the satisfaction at Carichana of dissecting a manatee more than nine

feet long. It was a female, and the flesh appeared to us not

unsavoury. I have spoken in another place of the manner of catching

this herbivorous cetacea. The Piraoas, some families of whom inhabit

the mission of Carichana, detest this animal to such a degree, that

they hid themselves, to avoid being obliged to touch it, whilst it was

being conveyed to our hut. They said that the people of their tribe

die infallibly when they eat of it. This prejudice is the more

singular, as the neighbours of the Piraoas, the Guamos and the

Ottomacs, are very fond of the flesh of the manatee. The flesh of the

crocodile is also an object of horror to some tribes, and of

predilection to others.

The island of Cuba furnishes a fact little known in the history of the

manatee. South of the port of Xagua, several miles from the coast,

there are springs of fresh water in the middle of the sea. They are

supposed to be owing to a hydrostatic pressure existing in

subterraneous channels, communicating with the lofty mountains of

Trinidad. Small vessels sometimes take in water there; and, what is

well worthy of observation, large manatees remain habitually in those

spots. I have already called the attention of naturalists to the

crocodiles which advance from the mouth of rivers far into the sea.

Analogous circumstances may have caused, in the ancient catastrophes

of our planet, that singular mixture of pelagian and fluviatile bones

and petrifactions, which is observed in some rocks of recent

formation.

Our stay at Carichana was very useful in recruiting our strength after

our fatigues. M. Bonpland bore with him the germs of a cruel malady;

he needed repose; but as the delta of the tributary streams included

between the Horeda and Paruasi is covered with a rich vegetation, he

made long herbalizations, and was wet through several times in a day.

We found, fortunately, in the house of the missionary, the most

attentive care; we were supplied with bread made of maize flour, and

even with milk. The cows yield milk plentifully enough in the lower

regions of the torrid zone, wherever good pasturage is found. I call

attention to this fact, because local circumstances have spread

through the Indian Archipelago the prejudice of considering hot

climates as repugnant to the secretion of milk. We may conceive the

indifference of the inhabitants of the New World for a milk diet, the

country having been originally destitute of animals capable of

furnishing it*; (* The reindeer are not domesticated in Greenland as

they are in Lapland; and the Esquimaux care little for their milk. The

bisons taken very young accustom themselves, on the west of the

Alleghenies, to graze with herds of European cows. The females in some

districts of India yield a little milk, but the natives have never

thought of milking them. What is the origin of that fabulous story

related by Gomara (chapter 43 page 36) according to which the first

Spanish navigators saw, on the coast of South Carolina, stags led to

the savannahs by herdsmen? The female bisons, according to Mr.

Buchanan and the philosophical historian of the Indian Archipelago,

Mr. Crawford, yield more milk than common cows.) but how can we avoid

being astonished at this indifference in the immense Chinese

population, living in great part beyond the tropics, and in the same

latitude with the nomad and pastoral tribes of central Asia? If the

Chinese have ever been a pastoral people, how have they lost the

tastes and habits so intimately connected with that state, which

precedes agricultural institutions? These questions are interesting

with respect both to the history of the nations of oriental Asia, and

to the ancient communications that are supposed to have existed

between that part of the world and the north of Mexico.

We went down the Orinoco in two days, from Carichana to the mission of

Uruana, after having again passed the celebrated strait of Baraguan.

We stopped several times to determine the velocity of the river, and

its temperature at the surface, which was 27.4 degrees. The velocity

was found to be two feet in a second (sixty-two toises in 3 minutes 6

seconds) in places where the bed of the Orinoco was more than twelve

thousand feet broad, and from ten to twelve fathoms deep. The slope of

the river is in fact extremely gentle from the Great Cataracts to

Angostura; and, if a barometric measurement were wanting, the

difference of height might be determined by approximation, by

measuring from time to time the velocity of the stream, and the extent

of the section in breadth and depth. We had some observations of the

stars at Uruana. I found the latitude of the mission to be 7 degrees 8

minutes; but the results from different stars left a doubt of more

than 1 minute. The stratum of mosquitos, which hovered over the

ground, was so thick that I could not succeed in rectifying properly

the artificial horizon. I tormented myself in vain; and regretted that

I was not provided with a mercurial horizon. On the 7th of June, good

absolute altitudes of the sun gave me 69 degrees 40 minutes for the

longitude. We had advanced from Esmeralda 1 degree 17 minutes toward

the west, and this chronometric determination merits entire confidence

on account of the double observations, made in going and returning, at

the Great Cataracts, and at the confluence of the Atabapo and of the

Apure.

The situation of the mission of Uruana is extremely picturesque. The

little Indian village stands at the foot of a lofty granitic mountain.

Rocks everywhere appear in the form of pillars above the forest,

rising higher than the tops of the tallest trees. The aspect of the

Orinoco is nowhere more majestic than when viewed from the hut of the

missionary, Fray Ramon Bueno. It is more than two thousand six hundred

toises broad, and it runs without any winding, like a vast canal,

straight toward the east. Two long and narrow islands (Isla de Uruana

and Isla vieja de la Manteca) contribute to give extent to the bed of

the river; the two banks are parallel, and we cannot call it divided

into different branches. The mission is inhabited by the Ottomacs, a

tribe in the rudest state, and presenting one of the most

extraordinary physiological phenomena. They eat earth; that is, they

swallow every day, during several months, very considerable

quantities, to appease hunger, and this practice does not appear to

have any injurious effect on their health. Though we could stay only

one day at Uruana, this short space of time sufficed to make us

acquainted with the preparation of the poya, or balls of earth. I also

found some traces of this vitiated appetite among the Guamos; and

between the confluence of the Meta and the Apure, where everybody

speaks of dirt-eating as of a thing anciently known. I shall here

confine myself to an account of what we ourselves saw or heard from

the missionary, who had been doomed to live for twelve years among the

savage and turbulent tribe of the Ottomacs.

The inhabitants of Uruana belong to those nations of the savannahs

called wandering Indians (Indios andantes) who, more difficult to

civilize than the nations of the forest (Indios del monte), have a

decided aversion to cultivate the land, and live almost exclusively by

hunting and fishing. They are men of very robust constitution; but

ill-looking, savage, vindictive, and passionately fond of fermented

liquors. They are omnivorous animals in the highest degree; and

therefore the other Indians, who consider them as barbarians, have a

common saying, nothing is so loathsome but that an Ottomac will eat

it. While the waters of the Orinoco and its tributary streams are low,

the Ottomacs subsist on fish and turtles. The former they kill with

surprising dexterity, by shooting them with an arrow when they appear

at the surface of the water. When the rivers swell fishing almost

entirely ceases.* (* In South America, as in Egypt and Nubia, the

swelling of the rivers, which occurs periodically in every part of the

torrid zone, is erroneously attributed to the melting of the snows.)

It is then very difficult to procure fish, which often fails the poor

missionaries, on fast-days as well as flesh-days, though all the young

Indians are under the obligation of fishing for the convent. During

the period of these inundations, which last two or three months, the

Ottomacs swallow a prodigious quantity of earth. We found heaps of

earth-balls in their huts, piled up in pyramids three or four feet

high. These balls were five or six inches in diameter. The earth which

the Ottomacs eat is a very fine and unctuous clay of a yellowish grey

colour; and, when being slightly baked at the fire, the hardened crust

has a tint inclining to red, owing to the oxide of iron which is

mingled with it. We brought away some of this earth, which we took

from the winter-provision of the Indians; and it is a mistake to

suppose that it is steatitic, and that it contains magnesia. Vauquelin

did not discover any traces of that substance in it but he found that

it contained more silex than alumina, and three or four per cent of

lime.

The Ottomacs do not eat every kind of clay indifferently; they choose

the alluvial beds or strata, which contain the most unctuous earth,

and the smoothest to the touch. I inquired of the missionary whether

the moistened clay were made to undergo that peculiar decomposition

which is indicated by a disengagement of carbonic acid and

sulphuretted hydrogen, and which is designated in every language by

the term of putrefaction; but he assured us that the natives neither

cause the clay to rot, nor do they mingle it with flour of maize, oil

of turtle's eggs, or fat of the crocodile. We ourselves examined, both

at the Orinoco and after our return to Paris, the balls of earth which

we brought away with us, and found no trace of the mixture of any

organic substance, whether oily or farinaceous. The savage regards

every thing as nourishing that appeases hunger: when, therefore, you

inquire of an Ottomac on what he subsists during the two months when

the river is at its highest flood he shows you his balls of clayey

earth. This he calls his principal food at the period when he can

seldom procure a lizard, a root of fern, or a dead fish swimming at

the surface of the water. If necessity force the Indians to eat earth

during two months (and from three quarters to five quarters of a pound

in twenty-four hours), he eats it from choice during the rest of the

year. Every day in the season of drought, when fishing is most

abundant, he scrapes his balls of poya, and mingles a little clay with

his other aliment. It is most surprising that the Ottomacs do not

become lean by swallowing such quantities of earth: they are, on the

contrary, extremely robust. The missionary Fray Ramon Bueno asserts

that he never remarked any alteration in the health of the natives at

the period of the great risings of the Orinoco.

The Ottomacs during some months eat daily three-quarters of a pound of

clay slightly hardened by fire, but which they moisten before

swallowing it. It has not been possible to verify hitherto with

precision how much nutritious vegetable or animal matter they take in

a week at the same time; but they attribute the sensation of satiety

which they feel to the clay, and not to the wretched aliments which

they take with it occasionally.

No physiological phenomenon being entirely insulated, it may be

interesting to examine several analogous phenomena, which I have been

able to collect. I observed everywhere within the torrid zone, in a

great number of individuals, children, women, and sometimes even

full-grown men, an inordinate and almost irresistible desire of

swallowing earth; not an alkaline or calcareous earth to neutralize

(as it is said) acid juices, but a fat clay, unctuous, and exhaling a

strong smell. It is often found necessary to tie the children's hands

or to confine them to prevent them eating earth when the rain ceases

to fall. At the village of Banco, on the bank of the river Magdalena,

I saw the Indian women who make pottery continually swallowing great

pieces of clay. These women were not in a state of pregnancy; and they

affirmed that earth is an aliment which they do not find hurtful. In

other American tribes, people soon fall sick, and waste away, when

they yield too much to this mania of eating earth. We found at the

mission of San Borja an Indian child of the Guahiba nation, who was as

thin as a skeleton. The mother informed us that the little girl was

reduced to this lamentable state of atrophy in consequence of a

disordered appetite, she having refused during four months to take

almost any other food than clay. Yet San Borja is only twenty-five

leagues distant from the mission of Uruana, inhabited by that tribe of

the Ottomacs, who, from the effect no doubt of a habit progressively

acquired, swallow the poya without experiencing any pernicious

effects. Father Gumilla asserts that the Ottomacs take as an aperient,

oil, or rather the melted fat of the crocodile, when they feel any

gastric obstructions; but the missionary whom we found among them was

little disposed to confirm this assertion. It may be asked, why the

mania of eating earth is much more rare in the frigid and temperate

than in the torrid zones; and why in Europe it is found only among

women in a state of pregnancy, and sickly children. This difference

between hot and temperate climates arises perhaps only from the inert

state of the functions of the stomach caused by strong cutaneous

perspiration. It has been supposed to be observed that the inordinate

taste for eating earth augments among the African slaves, and becomes

more pernicious when they are restricted to a regimen purely vegetable

and deprived of spirituous liquors.

The negroes on the coast of Guinea delight in eating a yellowish

earth, which they call caouac. The slaves who are taken to America

endeavour to indulge in this habit; but it proves detrimental to their

health. They say that the earth of the West Indies is not so easy of

digestion as that of their country. Thibaut de Chanvalon, in his

Voyage to Martinico, expresses himself very judiciously on this

pathological phenomenon. "Another cause," he says, "of this pain in

the stomach is that several of the negroes, who come from the coast of

Guinea, eat earth; not from a depraved taste, or in consequence of

disease, but from a habit contracted at home in Africa, where they

eat, they say, a particular earth, the taste of which they find

agreeable, without suffering any inconvenience. They seek in our

islands for the earth most similar to this, and prefer a yellowish red

volcanic tufa. It is sold secretly in our public markets; but this is

an abuse which the police ought to correct. The negroes who have this

habit are so fond of caouac, that no chastisement will prevent their

eating it."

In the Indian Archipelago, at the island of Java, Labillardiere saw,

between Surabaya and Samarang, little square and reddish cakes exposed

for sale. These cakes called tanaampo, were cakes of clay, slightly

baked, which the natives eat with relish. The attention of

physiologists, since my return from the Orinoco, having been

powerfully directed to these phenomena of geophagy, M. Leschenault

(one of the naturalists of the expedition to the Antarctic regions

under the command of captain Baudin) has published some curious

details on the tanaampo, or ampo, of the Javanese. "The reddish and

somewhat ferruginous clay," he says "which the inhabitants of Java are

fond of eating occasionally, is spread on a plate of iron, and baked,

after having been rolled into little cylinders in the form of the bark

of cinnamon. In this state it takes the name of ampo, and is sold in

the public markets. This clay has a peculiar taste, which is owing to

the baking: it is very absorbent, and adheres to the tongue, which it

dries. In general it is only the Javanese women who eat the ampo,

either in the time of pregnancy, or in order to grow thin; the absence

of plumpness being there regarded as a kind of beauty. The use of this

earth is fatal to health; the women lose their appetite imperceptibly,

and take only with relish a very small quantity of food; but the

desire of becoming thin, and of preserving a slender shape, induces

them to brave these dangers, and maintains the credit of the ampo."

The savage inhabitants of New Caledonia also, to appease their hunger

in times of scarcity, eat great pieces of a friable Lapis ollaris.

Vauquelin analysed this stone, and found in it, beside magnesia and

silex in equal portions, a small quantity of oxide of copper. M.

Goldberry had seen the negroes in Africa, in the islands of Bunck and

Los Idolos, eat an earth of which he had himself eaten, without being

incommoded by it, and which also was a white and friable steatite.

These examples of earth-eating in the torrid zone appear very strange.

We are struck by the anomaly of finding a taste, which might seem to

belong only to the inhabitants of the most sterile regions, prevailing

among races of rude and indolent men, who live in the finest and most

fertile countries on the globe. We saw at Popayan, and in several

mountainous parts of Peru, lime reduced to a very fine powder, sold in

the public markets to the natives among other articles of food. This

powder, when eaten, is mingled with coca, that is, with the leaves of

the Erythroxylon peruvianum. It is well known that Indian messengers

take no other aliment for whole days than lime and coca: both excite

the secretion of saliva, and of the gastric juice; they take away the

appetite, without affording any nourishment to the body. In other

parts of South America, on the coast of Rio de la Hacha, the Guajiros

swallow lime alone, without adding any vegetable matter to it. They

carry with them a little box filled with lime, as we do snuff-boxes,

and as in Asia people carry a betel-box. This American custom excited

the curiosity of the first Spanish navigators. Lime blackens the

teeth; and in the Indian Archipelago, as among several American

hordes, to blacken the teeth is to beautify them. In the cold regions

of the kingdom of Quito, the natives of Tigua eat habitually from

choice, and without any injurious consequences, a very fine clay,

mixed with quartzose sand. This clay, suspended in water, renders it

milky. We find in their huts large vessels filled with this water,

which serves as a beverage, and which the Indians call agua or leche

de llanka.* (* Water or milk of clay. Llanka is a word of the general

language of the Incas, signifying fine clay.)

When we reflect on these facts, we perceive that the appetite for

clayey, magnesian, and calcareous earth is most common among the

people of the torrid zone; that it is not always a cause of disease;

and that some tribes eat earth from choice, whilst others (as the

Ottomacs in America, and the inhabitants of New Caledonia in the

Pacific) eat it from want and to appease hunger. A great number of

physiological phenomena prove that a temporary cessation of hunger may

be produced though the substances that are submitted to the organs of

digestion may not be, properly speaking, nutritive. The earth of the

Ottomacs, composed of alumine and silex, furnishes probably nothing,

or almost nothing, to the composition of the organs of man. These

organs contain lime and magnesia in the bones, in the lymph of the

thoracic duct, in the colouring matter of the blood, and in white

hairs; they afford very small quantities of silex in black hair; and,

according to Vauquelin, but a few atoms of alumine in the bones,

though this is contained abundantly in the greater part of those

vegetable substances which form part of our nourishment. It is not the

same with man as with animated beings placed lower in the scale of

organization. In the former, assimilation is exerted only on those

substances that enter essentially into the composition of the bones,

the muscles, and the medullary matter of the nerves and the brain.

Plants, on the contrary, draw from the soil the salts that are found

accidentally mixed in it; and their fibrous texture varies according

to the nature of the earths that predominate in the spots which they

inhabit. An object well worthy of research, and which has long fixed

my attention, is the small number of simple substances (earthy and

metallic) that enter into the composition of animated beings, and

which alone appear fitted to maintain what we may call the chemical

movement of vitality.

We must not confound the sensations of hunger with that vague feeling

of debility which is produced by want of nutrition, and by other

pathologic causes. The sensation of hunger ceases long before

digestion takes place, or the chyme is converted into chyle. It ceases

either by a nervous and tonic impression exerted by the aliments on

the coats of the stomach; or, because the digestive apparatus is

filled with substances that excite the mucous membranes to an abundant

secretion of the gastric juice. To this tonic impression on the nerves

of the stomach the prompt and salutary effects of what are called

nutritive medicaments may be attributed, such as chocolate, and every

substance that gently stimulates and nourishes at the same time. It is

the absence of a nervous stimulant that renders the solitary use of a

nutritive substance (as starch, gum, or sugar) less favourable to

assimilation, and to the reparation of the losses which the human body

undergoes. Opium, which is not nutritive, is employed with success in

Asia, in times of great scarcity; it acts as a tonic. But when the

matter which fills the stomach can be regarded neither as an aliment,

that is, as proper to be assimilated, nor as a tonic stimulating the

nerves, the cessation of hunger is probably owing only to the

secretion of the gastric juice. We here touch upon a problem of

physiology which has not been sufficiently investigated. Hunger is

appeased, the painful feeling of inanition ceases, when the stomach is

filled. It is said that this viscus stands in need of ballast; and

every language furnishes figurative expressions which convey the idea

that a mechanical distension of the stomach causes an agreeable

sensation. Recent works of physiology still speak of the painful

contraction which the stomach experiences during hunger, the friction

of its sides against one another, and the action of the gastric juice

on the texture of the digestive apparatus. The observations of Bichat,

and more particularly the fine experiments of Majendie, are in

contradiction to these superannuated hypotheses. After twenty-four,

forty-eight, or even sixty hours of abstinence, no contraction of the

stomach is observed; it is only on the fourth or fifth day that this

organ appears to change in a small degree its dimensions. The quantity

of the gastric juice diminishes with the duration of abstinence. It is

probable that this juice, far from accumulating, is digested as an

alimentary substance. If a cat or dog be made to swallow a substance

which is not susceptible of being digested, a pebble for instance, a

mucous and acid liquid is formed abundantly in the cavity of the

stomach, somewhat resembling in its composition the gastric juice of

the human body. It appears to me very probable, that when the want of

aliments compels the Ottomacs and the inhabitants of New Caledonia to

swallow clay and steatite during a part of the year, these earths

occasion a powerful secretion of the gastric and pancreatic juices in

the digestive apparatus of these people. The observations which I made

on the banks of the Orinoco, have been recently confirmed by the

direct experiments of two distinguished young physiologists, MM.

Cloquet and Breschet. After long fasting they ate as much as five

ounces of a silvery green and very flexible laminar talc. Their hunger

was completely satisfied, and they felt no inconvenience from a kind

of food to which their organs were unaccustomed. It is known that

great use is still made in the East of the bolar and sigillated earths

of Lemnos, which are clay mingled with oxide of iron. In Germany the

workmen employed in the quarries of sandstone worked at the mountain

of Kiffhauser spread a very fine clay upon their bread, instead of

butter, which they call steinbutter* (stone-butter). (* This

steinbutter must not be confounded with the mountain butter

(bergbutter) which is a saline substance, produced by a decomposition

of aluminous schists.)

The state of perfect health enjoyed by the Ottomacs during the time

when they use little muscular exercise, and are subjected to so

extraordinary a regimen, is a phenomenon difficult to be explained. It

can be attributed only to a habit prolonged from generation to

generation. The structure of the digestive apparatus differs much in

animals that feed exclusively on flesh or on seeds; it is even

probable that the gastric juice changes its nature, according as it is

employed in effecting the digestion of animal or vegetable substances;

yet we are able gradually to change the regimen of herbivorous and

carnivorous animals, to feed the former with flesh, and the latter

with vegetables. Man can accustom himself to an extraordinary

abstinence and find it but little painful if he employ tonic or

stimulating substances (various drugs, small quantities of opium,

betel, tobacco, or leaves of coca); or if he supply his stomach, from

time to time, with earthy insipid substances that are not in

themselves fit for nutrition. Like man in a savage state some animals,

when pressed by hunger in winter, swallow clay or friable steatites;

such are the wolves in the northeast of Europe, the reindeer and,

according to the testimony of M. Patrin, the kids in Siberia. The

Russian hunters, on the banks of the Yenisei and the Amour, use a

clayey matter which they call rock-butter, as a bait. The animals

scent this clay from afar, and are fond of the smell; as the clays of

bucaro, known in Portugal and Spain by the name of odoriferous earths

(tierras olorosas), have an odour agreeable to women.* (* Bucaro (vas

fictile odoriferum). People are fond of drinking out of these vessels

on account of the smell of the clay. The women of the province of

Alentejo acquire a habit of masticating the bucaro earth; and feel a

great privation when they cannot indulge this vitiated taste.) Brown

relates in his History of Jamaica that the crocodiles of South America

swallow small stones and pieces of very hard wood, when the lakes

which they inhabit are dry, or when they are in want of food. M.

Bonpland and I observed in a crocodile, eleven feet long, which we

dissected at Batallez, on the banks of the Rio Magdalena, that the

stomach of this reptile contained half-digested fish, and rounded

fragments of granite three or four inches in diameter. It is difficult

to admit that the crocodiles swallow these stony masses accidentally,

for they do not catch fish with their lower jaw resting on the ground

at the bottom of the river. The Indians have framed the absurd

hypothesis that these indolent animals like to augment their weight,

that they may have less trouble in diving. I rather think that they

load their stomach with large pebbles to excite an abundant secretion

of the gastric juice. The experiments of Majendie render this

explanation extremely probable. With respect to the habit of the

granivorous birds, particularly the gallinaceae and ostriches, of

swallowing sand and small pebbles, it has been hitherto attributed to

an instinctive desire of accelerating the trituration of the aliments

in a muscular and thick stomach.

We have mentioned that tribes of Negroes on the Gambia mingle clay

with their rice. Some families of Ottomacs were perhaps formerly

accustomed to cause the maize and other farinaceous seeds to rot in

their poya, in order to eat earth and amylaceous matter together:

possibly it was a preparation of this kind, that Father Gumilla

described indistinctly in the first volume of his work when he affirms

that the Guamos and the Ottomacs feed upon earth only because it is

impregnated with the sustancia del maiz (substance of maize) and the

fat of the cayman. I have already observed that neither the present

missionary of Uruana, nor Fray Juan Gonzales, who lived long in those

countries, knew anything of this mixture of animal and vegetable

substances with the poya. Perhaps Father Gumilla has confounded the

preparation of the earth which the natives swallow with the custom

they still retain (of which M. Bonpland acquired the certainty on the

spot) of burying in the ground the beans of a species of mimosacea,*

(* Of the genus Inga.) to cause them to enter into decomposition so as

to reduce them into a white bread, savoury, but difficult of

digestion. I repeat that the balls of poya, which we took from the

winter stores of the Indians, contained no trace of animal fat, or of

amylaceous matter. Gumilla being one of the most credulous travellers

we know, it almost perplexes us to credit facts which even he has

thought fit to reject. In the second volume of his work he however

gainsays a great part of what he advanced in the first; he no longer

doubts that half at least (a lo menos) of the bread of the Ottomacs

and the Guamos is clay. He asserts, that children and full grown

persons not only eat this bread without suffering in their health, but

also great pieces of pure clay (muchos terrones de pura greda.) He

adds that those who feel a weight on the stomach physic themselves

with the fat of the crocodile which restores their appetite and

enables them to continue to eat pure earth.* (* Gumilla volume 2 page

260.) It is certain that the Guamos are very fond, if not of the fat,

at least of the flesh of the crocodile, which appeared to us white,

and without any smell of musk. In Sennaar, according to Burckhardt, it

is equally esteemed, and sold in the markets.

The little village of Uruana is more difficult to govern than most of

the other missions. The Ottomacs are a restless, turbulent people,

with unbridled passions. They are not only fond to excess of the

fermented liquors prepared from cassava and maize, and of palm-wine,

but they throw themselves into a peculiar state of intoxication, we

might say of madness, by the use of the powder of niopo. They gather

the long pods of a mimosacea which we have made known by the name of

Acacia niopo,* cut them into pieces, moisten them, and cause them to

ferment. (* It is an acacia with very delicate leaves, and not an

Inga. We brought home another species of mimosacea (the chiga of the

Ottomacs and the sepa of the Maypures) that yields seeds, the flour of

which is eaten at Uruana like cassava. From this flour the chiga bread

is prepared, which is so common at Cunariche, and on the banks of the

Lower Orinoco. The chiga is a species of Inga, and I know of no other

mimosacea that can supply the place of the cerealia.) When the

softened seeds begin to grow black, they are kneaded like a paste;

mixed with some flour of cassava and lime procured from the shell of a

helix, and the whole mass is exposed to a very brisk fire, on a

gridiron made of hard wood. The hardened paste takes the form of small

cakes. When it is to be used, it is reduced to a fine powder, and

placed on a dish five or six inches wide. The Ottomac holds this dish,

which has a handle, in his right hand, while he inhales the niopo by

the nose, through the forked bone of a bird, the two extremities of

which are applied to the nostrils. This bone, without which the

Ottomac believes that he could not take this kind of snuff, is seven

inches long: it appeared to me to be the leg-bone of a large sort of

plover. The niopo is so stimulating that the smallest portions of it

produce violent sneezing in those who are not accustomed to its use.

Father Gumilla says this diabolical powder of the Ottomacs, furnished

by an arborescent tobacco-plant, intoxicates them through the nostrils

(emboracha por las narices), deprives them of reason for some hours,

and renders them furious in battle. However varied may be the family

of the leguminous plants in the chemical and medical properties of

their seeds, juices, and roots, we cannot believe, from what we know

hitherto of the group of mimosaceae, that it is principally the pod of

the Acacia niopo which imparts the stimulant power to the snuff of the

Ottomacs. This power is owing, no doubt, to the freshly calcined lime.

We have shown above that the mountaineers of the Andes of Popayan, and

the Guajiros, who wander between the lake of Maracaybo and the Rio la

Hacha, are also fond of swallowing lime as a stimulant, to augment the

secretion of the saliva and the gastric juice.

A custom analogous to the use of the niopo just described was observed

by La Condamine among the natives of the Upper Maranon. The Omaguas,

whose name is rendered celebrated by the expeditions attempted in

search of El Dorado, have like the Ottomacs a dish, and the hollow

bone of a bird, by which they convey to their nostrils their powder of

curupa. The seed that yields this powder is no doubt also a mimosacea;

for the Ottomacs, according to Father Gili, designate even now, at the

distance of one hundred and sixty leagues from the Amazon, the Acacia

niopo by the name of curupa. Since the geographical researches which I

have recently made on the scene of the exploits of Philip von Huten,

and the real situation of the province of Papamene, or of the Omaguas,

the probability of an ancient communication between the Ottomacs of

the Orinoco and the Omaguas of the Maranon has become more interesting

and more probable. The former came from the Meta, perhaps from the

country between the Meta and the Guaviare; the latter assert that they

descended in great numbers to the Maranon by the Rio Jupura, coming

from the eastern declivity of the Andes of New Grenada. Now, it is

precisely between the Guayavero (which joins the Guaviare) and the

Caqueta (which takes lower down the name of Japura) that the country

of the Omagua appears to be situate, of which the adventurers of Coro

and Tocuyo in vain attempted the conquest. There is no doubt a

striking contrast between the present barbarism of the Ottomacs and

the ancient civilization of the Omaguas; but all parts of the latter

nation were not perhaps alike advanced in civilization, and the

example of tribes fallen into complete barbarism are unhappily but too

common in the history of our species. Another point of resemblance may

be remarked between the Ottomacs and the Omaguas. Both of these

nations are celebrated among all the tribes of the Orinoco and the

Amazon for their employment of caoutchouc in the manufacture of

various articles of utility.

The real herbaceous tobacco* (for the missionaries have the habit of

calling the niopo or curupa tree-tobacco) has been cultivated from

time immemorial by all the native people of the Orinoco; and at the

period of the conquest the habit of smoking was found to be alike

spread over both North and South America.

(* The word tobacco (tabacco), like the words savannah, maize,

cacique, maguey (agave), and manati, belongs to the ancient language

of Haiti, or St. Domingo. It did not properly denote the herb but the

tube through which the smoke was inhaled. It seems surprising that a

vegetable production so universally spread should have different names

among neighbouring people. The pete-ma of the Omaguas is, no doubt,

the pety of the Guaranos; but the analogy between the Cabre and

Algonkin (or Lenni-Lenape) words which denote tobacco may be merely

accidental. The following are the synonyms in thirteen languages.

North America. Aztec or Mexican; yetl: Algonkin; sema: Huron; oyngoua.

South America. Peruvian or Quichua; sayri: Chiquito; pais. Guarany;

pety: Vilela; tusup: Mbaja (west of the Paraguay), nalodagadi: Moxo

(between the Rio Ucayale and the Rio Madeira); sabare. Omagua; petema.

Tamanac; cavas. Maypure; jema. Cabre; scema.)

The Tamanacs and the Maypures of Guiana wrap maize-leaves round their

cigars, as the Mexicans did at the time of the arrival of Cortes. The

Spaniards have substituted paper for the leaves of maize in imitation

of them. The poor Indians of the forests of the Orinoco know as well

as did the great nobles at the court of Montezuma that the smoke of

tobacco is an excellent narcotic; and they use it not only to procure

their afternoon nap, but also to put themselves into that state of

quiescence, which they call dreaming with the eyes open, or

day-dreaming. The use of tobacco appears to me to be now very rare in

the missions; and in New Spain, to the great regret of the

revenue-officers, the natives, who are almost all descended from the

lowest class of the Aztec people, do not smoke at all. Father Gili

affirms that the practice of chewing tobacco is unknown to the Indians

of the Lower Orinoco. I rather doubt the truth of this assertion,

having been told that the Sercucumas of the Erevato and the Caura,

neighbours of the whitish Taparitos, swallow tobacco chopped small,

and impregnated with some other very stimulant juices, to prepare

themselves for battle. Of the four species of nicotiana cultivated in

Europe* (* Nicotiana tabacum, N. rustica, N. paniculata, and N.

glutinosa.) we found only two growing wild; but the Nicotiana

loxensis, and the Nicotiana andicola, which I found on the back of the

Andes, at the height of eighteen hundred and fifty toises (almost the

height of the Peak of Teneriffe), are very similar to the N. tabacum

and N. rustica. The whole genus, however, is almost exclusively

American, and the greater number of the species appeared to me to

belong to the mountainous and temperate region of the tropics.

It was neither from Virginia, nor from South America, but from the

Mexican province of Yucatan, that Europe received the first tobacco

seeds, about the year 1559.* (* The Spaniards became acquainted with

tobacco in the West India Islands at the end of the 15th century. I

have already mentioned that the cultivation of this narcotic plant

preceded the cultivation of the potato in Europe more than 120 or 140

years. When Raleigh brought tobacco from Virginia to England in 1586,

whole fields of it were already cultivated in Portugal. It was also

previously known in France, where it was brought into fashion by

Catherine de Medicis, from whom it received the name of herbe a la

reine, the queen's herb.) The celebrated Raleigh contributed most to

introduce the custom of smoking among the nations of the north. As

early as the end of the sixteenth century bitter complaints were made

in England of this imitation of the manners of a savage people. It was

feared that, by the practice of smoking tobacco, Englishmen would

degenerate into a barbarous state.* (* This remarkable passage of

Camden is as follows, Annal. Elizabet. page 143 1585; "ex illo sane

tempore [tabacum] usu cepit esse creberrimo in Anglia et magno pretio

dum quamplurimi graveolentem illius fumum per tubulum testaceum

hauriunt et mox e naribus efflant; adeo ut Auglornm corporum in

barbarorum naturam degenerasse videantur, quum iidem ac barbari

delectentur." We may see from this passage that they emitted the smoke

through the nose; but at the court of Montezuma the pipe was held in

one hand, while the nostrils were stopped with the other, in order

that the smoke might be more easily swallowed. Life of Raleigh volume

1 page 82.)

When the Ottomacs of Uruana, by the use of niopo (their arborescent

tobacco), and of fermented liquors, have thrown themselves into a

state of intoxication, which lasts several days, they kill one another

without ostensibly fighting. The most vindictive among them poison the

nail of their thumb with curare; and, according to the testimony of

the missionary, the mere impression of this poisoned nail may become a

mortal wound if the curare be very active and immediately mingle with

the mass of the blood. When the Indians, after a quarrel at night,

commit a murder, they throw the dead body into the river, fearing that

some indications of the violence committed on the deceased may be

observed. "Every time," said Father Bueno, "that I see the women fetch

water from a part of the shore to which they are not accustomed to go,

I suspect that a murder has been committed in my mission."

We found in the Indian huts at Uruana the vegetable substance called

touchwood of ants,* (* Yesca de hormigas.) with which we had become

acquainted at the Great Cataracts, and which is employed to stop

bleeding. This substance, which might less improperly be called ants'

nests, is in much request in a region whose inhabitants are of so

turbulent a character. A new species of ant, of a fine emerald-green

(Formica spinicollis), collects for its habitation a cotton-down, of a

yellowish-brown colour, and very soft to the touch, from the leaves of

a melastomacea. I have no doubt that the yesca or touchwood of ants of

the Upper Orinoco (the animal is found, we were assured, only south of

Atures) will one day become an article of trade. This substance is

very superior to the ants' nests of Cayenne, which are employed in the

hospitals of Europe, but can rarely be procured.

On the 7th of June we took leave with regret of Father Ramon Bueno. Of

the ten missionaries whom we had found in different parts of the vast

extent of Guiana, he alone appeared to me to be earnestly attentive to

all that regarded the natives. He hoped to return in a short time to

Madrid, where he intended to publish the result of his researches on

the figures and characters that cover the rocks of Uruana.

In the countries we had just passed through, between the Meta, the

Arauca, and the Apure, there were found, at the time of the first

expeditions to the Orinoco, in 1535, those mute dogs, called by the

natives maios, and auries. This fact is curious in many points of

view. We cannot doubt that the dog, whatever Father Gili may assert,

is indigenous in South America. The different Indian languages furnish

words to designate this animal, which are scarcely derived from any

European tongue. To this day the word auri, mentioned three hundred

years ago by Alonzo de Herrera, is found in the Maypure. The dogs we

saw at the Orinoco may perhaps have descended from those that the

Spaniards carried to the coast of Caracas; but it is not less certain

that there existed a race of dogs before the conquest, in Peru, in New

Granada, and in Guiana, resembling our shepherds' dogs. The allco of

the natives of Peru, and in general all the dogs that we found in the

wildest countries of South America, bark frequently. The first

historians, however, all speak of mute dogs (perros mudos). They still

exist in Canada; and, what appears to me worthy of attention, it was

this dumb variety that was eaten in preference in Mexico,* and at the

Orinoco. (* See on the Mexican techichi and on the numerous

difficulties that occur in the history of mute dogs and dogs destitute

of hair the Views of Nature Bohn's edition page 85.) A very well

informed traveller, M. Giesecke, who resided six years in Greenland,

assured me that the dogs of the Esquimaux, which pass their lives in

the open air and bury themselves in winter beneath the snow, do not

bark, but howl like wolves.* (* They sit down in a circle, one of them

begins to howl alone and the others follow in the same tone. The

groups of alouate monkeys howl in the same manner, and among them the

Indians distinguish the leader of the band. It was the practice at

Mexico to castrate the mute dogs in order to fatten them. This

operation must have contributed to alter the organ of the voice.)

The practice of eating the flesh of dogs is now entirely unknown on

the banks of the Orinoco; but as it is a Tartar custom spread through

all the eastern part of Asia, it appears to me highly interesting for

the history of nations to have ascertained that it existed heretofore

in the hot regions of Guiana and on the table-lands of Mexico. I must

observe, also, that on the confines of the province of Durango, at the

northern extremity of New Spain, the Comanches have preserved the

habit of loading the backs of the great dogs that accompany them in

their migrations with their tents of buffalo-leather. It is well known

that employing dogs as beasts of burthen and of draught is equally

common near the Slave Lake and in Siberia. I dwell on these features

of conformity in the manners of nations, which become of some weight

when they are not solitary, and are connected with the analogies

furnished by the structure of languages, the division of time, and

religious creeds and institutions.

We passed the night at the island of Cucuruparu, called also Playa de

la Tortuga, because the Indians of Uruana go thither to collect the

turtles' eggs. It is one of the best determined points of latitude

along the banks of the Orinoco. I was there fortunate enough to

observe the passage of three stars over the meridian. To the east of

the island is the mouth of the Cano de la Tortuga, which descends from

the mountains of Cerbatana, continually wrapped in electric clouds. On

the southern bank of the Cano, between the tributary streams Parapara

and Oche, lies the almost ruined mission of San Miguel de la Tortuga.

The Indians assured us that the environs of this little mission abound

in otters with a very fine fur, called by the Portuguese water-dogs

(perritos de agua); and what is still more remarkable, in lizards

(lagartos) with only two feet. The whole of this country, which is

very accessible between the Rio Cuchivero and the strait of Baraguan,

is worthy of being visited by a well-informed zoologist. The lagarto

destitute of hinder extremities is perhaps a species of Siren,

different from the Siren lacertina of Carolina. If it were a saurian,

a real Bimanis (Chirotes, Cuvier), the natives would not have compared

it to a lizard. Besides the arrau turtles, of which I have in a former

place given a detailed account, an innumerable quantity of land

tortoises also, called morocoi, are found on the banks of the Orinoco,

between Uruana and Encaramada. During the great heats of summer, in

the time of drought, these animals remain without taking food, hidden

beneath stones, or in the holes they have dug. They issue from their

shelter and begin to eat, only when the humidity of the first rains

penetrates into the earth. The terekay, or tajelu turtle which lives

in fresh water, has the same habits. I have already spoken of the

summer-sleep of some animals of the tropics. As the natives know the

holes in which the tortoises sleep amidst the dried lands, they get

out a great number at once, by digging fifteen or eighteen inches

deep. Father Gili says that this operation, which he had seen, is not

without danger, because serpents often bury themselves in summer with

the terekays.

From the island of Cucuruparu, to the capital of Guiana, commonly

called Angostura, we were but nine days on the water. The distance is

somewhat less than ninety-five leagues. We seldom slept on shore but

the torment of the mosquitos diminished in proportion as we advanced.

We landed on the 8th of June at a farm (Hato de San Rafael del

Capuchino) opposite the mouth of the Rio Apure. I obtained some good

observations of latitude and longitude.* (* I had found, on the 4th of

April, for the Boca del Rio Apure (on the western bank of the

Orinoco), the latitude 7 degrees 36 minutes 30 seconds, the longitude

59 degrees 7 minutes 30 seconds; on the 8th of June I found, for the

Hato del Capuchino (on the eastern bank of the Orinoco), the latitude

7 degrees 37 minutes 45 seconds, the longitude 69 degrees 5 minutes 30

seconds.) Having two months before taken horary angles on the bank

opposite Capuchino, these observations were important for determining

the rate of my chronometer, and connecting the situations on the

Orinoco with those on the shore of Venezuela. The situation of this

farm, being at the point where the Orinoco changes its course (which

had previously been from south to north), and runs from west to east,

is extremely picturesque. Granite rocks rise like islets amidst vast

meadows. From their tops we discerned towards the north the Llanos of

Calabozo bounding the horizon. We had been so long accustomed to the

aspect of forests, that this view made a powerful impression on us.

The steppes after sunset assume a tint of greenish gray. The visual

ray being intercepted only by the rotundity of the earth, the stars

seemed to rise as from the bosom of the ocean, and the most

experienced mariner would have fancied himself placed on a projecting

cape of a rocky coast. Our host was a Frenchman who lived amidst his

numerous herds. Though he had forgotten his native language, he seemed

pleased to learn that we came from his country, which he had left

forty years before; and he wished to retain us for some days at his

farm. The small towns of Caycara and Cabruta were only a few miles

distant from the farm; but during part of the year our host was in

complete solitude. The Capuchino becomes an island by the inundations

of the Apure and the Orinoco, and the communication with the

neighbouring farms can be kept up only by means of a boat. The horned

cattle then seek the higher grounds which extend on the south toward

the chain of the mountains of Encaramada. This granitic chain is

intersected by valleys which contain magnetic sands (granulary

oxidulated iron), owing no doubt to the decomposition of some

amphibolic or chloritic strata.

On the morning of the 9th of June we met a great number of boats laden

with merchandize sailing up the Orinoco, in order to enter the Apure.

This is a commercial road much frequented between Angostura and the

port of Torunos in the province of Varinas. Our fellow-traveller, Don

Nicolas Soto, brother-in-law of the governor of Varinas, took the same

course to return to his family. At the period of the high waters,

several months are lost in contending with the currents of the

Orinoco, the Apure, and the Rio de Santo Domingo. The boatmen are

forced to carry out ropes to the trunks of trees and thus warp their

canoes up. In the great sinuosities of the river whole days are

sometimes passed without advancing more than two or three hundred

toises. Since my return to Europe the communications between the mouth

of the Orinoco and the provinces situated on the eastern slope of the

mountains of Merida, Pamplona, and Santa Fe de Bogota, have become

more active; and it may be hoped that steamboats will facilitate these

long voyages on the Lower Orinoco, the Portuguesa, the Rio Santo

Domingo, the Orivante, the Meta, and the Guaviare. Magazines of cleft

wood might be formed, as on the banks of the great rivers of the

United States, sheltering them under sheds. This precaution would be

indispensable, as, in the country through which we passed, it is not

easy to procure dry fuel fit to keep up a fire beneath the boiler of a

steam-engine.

We disembarked below San Rafael del Capuchino, on the right, at the

Villa de Caycara, near a cove called Puerto Sedeno. The Villa is

merely a few houses grouped together. Alta Gracia, la Ciudad de la

Piedra, Real Corona, Borbon, in short all the towns or villas lying

between the mouth of the Apure and Angostura, are equally miserable.

The presidents of the missions, and the governors of the provinces,

were formerly accustomed to demand the privileges of villas and

ciudades at Madrid, the moment the first foundations of a church were

laid. This was a means of persuading the ministry that the colonies

were augmenting rapidly in population and prosperity. Sculptured

figures of the sun and moon, such as I have already mentioned, are

found near Caycara, at the Cerro del Tirano.* (* The tyrant after whom

these mountains are named is not Lope de Aguirre, but probably, as the

name of the neighbouring cove seems to prove, the celebrated

conquistador Antonio Sedeno, who, after the expedition of Herrera,

sought to penetrate by the Orinoco to the Rio Meta. He was in a state

of rebellion against the audiencia of Santo Domingo. I know not how

Sedeno came to Caycara; for historians relate that he was poisoned on

the banks of the Rio Tisnado, one of the tributary streams of the

Portuguesa.) It is the work of the old people (that is of our

fathers), say the natives. On a rock more distant from the shore, and

called Tecoma, the symbolic figures are found, it is said, at the

height of a hundred feet. The Indians knew heretofore a road, that led

by land from Caycara to Demerara and Essequibo.

On the northern bank of the Orinoco, opposite Caycara, is the mission

of Cabruta, founded by the Jesuit Rotella, in 1740, as an advanced

post against the Caribs. An Indian village, known by the name of

Cabritu,* had existed on the same spot for several ages. (* A cacique

of Cabritu received Alonzo de Herrera at his dwelling, on the

expedition undertaken by Herrera for ascending the Orinoco in 1535.)

At the time when this little place became a Christian settlement, it

was believed to be situate in 5 degrees latitude, or two degrees forty

minutes more to the south than I found it by direct observations made

at San Rafael, and at La Boca del Rio Apure. No idea was then

conceived of the direction of a road that could lead by land to Nueva

Valencia and Caracas, which were supposed to be at an immense

distance. The merit of having first crossed the Llanos to go to

Cabruta from the Villa de San Juan Baptista del Pao belongs to a

woman. Father Gili relates that Dona Maria Bargas was so devoted to

the Jesuits that she attempted herself to discover the way to the

missions. She was seen with astonishment to arrive at Cabruta from the

north. She took up her abode near the fathers of St. Ignatius, and

died in their settlements on the banks of the Orinoco. Since that

period the northern part of the Llanos has been considerably peopled;

and the road leading from the valleys of Aragua by Calabozo to San

Fernando de Apure and Cabruta is much frequented. The chief of the

famous expedition of the boundaries made choice of the latter place in

1754 to establish dock-yards for building the vessels necessary for

conveying his troops intended for the Upper Orinoco. The little

mountain that rises northeast of Cabruta can be discerned from afar in

the steppes and serves as a landmark for travellers.

We embarked in the morning at Caycara; and driving with the current of

the Orinoco, we soon passed the mouth of the Rio Cuchivero, which

according to ancient tradition is the country of the Aikeambenanos, or

women without husbands; and we there reached the paltry village of

Alta Gracia, which is called a Spanish town. It was near this place

that Jose de Iturriaga founded the Pueblo de Ciudad Real, which still

figures on the most modern maps, though it has not existed for fifty

years past, on account of the insalubrity of its situation. Beyond the

point where the Orinoco turns to the east, forests are constantly seen

on the right bank, and the llanos or steppes of Venezuela on the left.

The forests which border the river are not however so thick as those

of the Upper Orinoco. The population, which augments perceptibly as

you advance toward the capital, comprises but few Indians, and is

composed chiefly of whites, negroes, and men of mixed descent. The

number of the negroes is not great; but here, as everywhere else, the

poverty of their masters does not tend to procure for them more humane

treatment. An inhabitant of Caycara had just been condemned to four

years' imprisonment, and a fine of one hundred piastres for having, in

a paroxysm of rage, tied a negress by the legs to the tail of his

horse, and dragged her at full gallop through the savannah till she

expired. It is gratifying to record that the Audiencia was generally

blamed in the country for not having punished more severely so

atrocious an action. Yet some few persons, who pretended to be the

most enlightened and most sagacious of the community, deemed the

punishment of a white contrary to sound policy, at the moment when the

blacks of St. Domingo were in complete insurrection. Since I left

those countries, civil dissensions have put arms into the hands of the

slaves; and fatal experience has led the inhabitants of Venezuela to

regret that they refused to listen to Don Domingo Tovar, and other

right-thinking men, who, as early as the year 1795, lifted up their

voices in the cabildo of Caracas, to prevent the introduction of

blacks, and to propose means that might ameliorate their condition.

After having slept on the 10th of June in an island in the middle of

the river (I believe that called Acaru by Father Caulin), we passed

the mouth of the Rio Caura. This, the Aruy and the Carony, are the

largest tributary streams which the Orinoco receives on its right

bank. All the Christian settlements are near the mouth of the river;

and the villages of San Pedro, Aripao, Urbani, and Guaraguaraico,

succeed each other at the distance of a few leagues. The first and the

most populous contains only about two hundred and fifty souls. San

Luis de Guaraguaraico is a colony of negroes, some freed and others

fugitives from Essequibo. This colony merits the particular attention

of the Spanish Government, for it can never be sufficiently

recommended to endeavour to attach the slaves to the soil, and suffer

them to enjoy as farmers the fruits of their agricultural labours. The

land on the Caura, for the most part a virgin soil, is extremely

fertile. There are pasturages for more than 15,000 beasts; but the

poor inhabitants have neither horses nor horned cattle. More than

five-sixths of the banks of the Caura are either desert, or occupied

by independent and savage tribes. The bed of the river is twice choked

up by rocks: these obstructions occasion the famous Raudales of Mura

and of Para or Paru, the latter of which has a portage, because it

cannot be passed by canoes. At the time of the expedition of the

boundaries, a small fort was erected on the northern cataract, that of

Mura; and the governor, Don Manuel Centurion, gave the name of Ciudad

de San Carlos to a few houses which some families, consisting of

whites and mulattos, had constructed near the fort. South of the

cataract of Para, at the confluence of the Caura and the Erevato, the

mission of San Luis was then situated; and a road by land led thence

to Angostura, the capital of the province. All these attempts at

civilization have been fruitless. No village now exists above the

Raudal of Mura; and here, as in many other parts of the colonies, the

natives may be said to have reconquered the country from the

Spaniards. The valley of Caura may become one day or other highly

interesting from the value of its productions, and the communications

which it affords with the Rio Ventuari, the Carony, and the Cuyuni. I

have shown above the importance of the four tributary streams which

the Orinoco receives from the mountains of Parima. Near the mouth of

the Caura, between the villages of San Pedro de Alcantara and San

Francisco de Aripao, a small lake of four hundred toises in diameter

was formed in 1790, by the sinking of the ground, consequent on an

earthquake. It was a portion of the forest of Aripao, which sunk to

the depth of eighty or a hundred feet below the level of the

neighbouring land. The trees remained green for several months; and

some of them, it was believed, continued to push forth leaves beneath

the water. This phenomenon is the more worthy of attention as the soil

of these countries is probably granitic. I doubt the secondary

formations of the Llanos being continued southward as far as the

valley of Caura.

On the 11th of June we landed on the right bank of the Orinoco at

Puerto de los Frailes, at the distance of three leagues above the

Ciudad de la Piedra, to take altitudes of the sun. The longitude of

this point is 67 degrees 26 minutes 20 seconds, or 1 degree 41 minutes

east of the mouth of the Apure. Farther on, between the towns of La

Piedra and Muitaco, or Real Corona, are the Torno and Boca del

Infierno, two points formerly dreaded by travellers. The Orinoco

suddenly changes its direction; it flows first east, then

north-north-west, and then again east. A little above the Cano

Marapiche, which opens on the northern bank, a very long island

divides the river into two branches. We passed on the south of this

island without difficulty; northward, a chain of small rocks, half

covered at high water, forms whirlpools and rapids. This is La Boca

del Infierno, and the Raudal de Camiseta. The first expeditions of

Diego Ordaz (1531) and Alonzo de Herrera (1535) have given celebrity

to this bar. The Great Cataracts of the Atures and Maypures were then

unknown; and the clumsy vessels (vergantines), in which travellers

persisted in going up the river, rendered the passage through the

rapids extremely difficult. At present no apprehension is felt in

ascending or descending the Orinoco, at any season, from its mouth as

far as the confluence of the Apure and the Meta. The only falls of

water in this space are those of Torno or Camiseta, Marimara, and

Cariven or Carichana Vieja. Neither of these three obstacles is to be

feared with experienced Indian pilots. I dwell on these hydrographic

details because a great political and commercial interest is now

connected with the communications between Angostura and the banks of

the Meta and the Apure, two rivers that lead to the eastern side of

the Cordilleras of New Grenada. The navigation from the mouth of the

Lower Orinoco to the province of Varinas is difficult only on account

of the current. The bed of the river nowhere presents obstacles more

difficult to be surmounted than those of the Danube between Vienna and

Linz. We meet with no great bars, no real cataracts, until we get

above the Meta. The Upper Orinoco, therefore, with the Cassiquiare and

the Rio Negro, forms a particular system of rivers, where the active

industry of Angostura and the shore of Caracas will remain long

unknown.

I obtained horary angles of the sun in an island in the midst of the

Boca del Infierno, where we had set up our instruments. The longitude

of this point according to the chronometer is 67 degrees 10 minutes 31

seconds. I attempted to determine the magnetic dip and intensity, but

was prevented by a heavy storm of rain. As the sky again became serene

in the afternoon, we lay down to rest that night on a vast beach, on

the southern bank of the Orinoco, nearly in the meridian of the little

town of Muitaco, or Real Corona. I found the latitude by three stars

to be 8 degrees 0 minutes 26 seconds, and the longitude 67 degrees 5

minutes 19 seconds. When the Observantin monks in 1752 made their

first entradas on the territory of the Caribs, they constructed on

this spot a small fort. The proximity of the lofty mountains of

Araguacais renders Muitaco one of the most healthy places on the Lower

Orinoco. There Iturriaga took up his abode in 1756, to repose after

the fatigues of the expedition of the boundaries; and as he attributed

his recovery to this hot rather than humid climate, the town, or more

properly the village, of Real Corona took the name of Pueblo del

Puerto sano. Going down the Orinoco more to the east, we left the

mouth of the Rio Pao on the north, and that of the Arui on the south.

The latter river, which is somewhat considerable, is often mentioned

by Raleigh. The current of the Orinoco diminished in velocity as we

advanced. I measured several times a base along the beach, to

ascertain the time taken by floating bodies in traversing a known

distance. Above Alta Gracia, near the mouth of the Rio Ujape, I had

found the velocity of the Orinoco 2.3 feet in a second; between

Muitaco and Borbon it was only 1.7 foot. The barometric observations

made in the neighbouring steppes prove the small slope of the ground

from the longitude of 69 degrees to the eastern coast of Guiana. We

found in this country, on the right bank of the Orinoco, small

formations of primitive grunstein, superimposed on granite (perhaps

even embedded in the rock). We saw between Muitaco and the island of

Ceiba a hill entirely composed of balls with concentric layers, in

which we perceived a close mixture of hornblende and feldspar, with

some traces of pyrites. The grunstein resembles that in the vicinity

of Caracas; but it was impossible to ascertain the position of a

formation which appeared to me to be of the same age as the granite of

Parima. Muitaco was the last spot where we slept in the open air on

the shore of the Orinoco: we proceeded along the river two nights more

before we reached Angostura, which terminated our voyage.

It would be difficult for me to express the satisfaction we felt on

landing at Angostura, the capital of Spanish Guiana. The

inconveniences endured at sea in small vessels are trivial in

comparison with those that are suffered under a burning sky,

surrounded by swarms of mosquitos, and lying stretched in a canoe,

without the possibility of taking the least bodily exercise. In

seventy-five days we had performed a passage of five hundred leagues

(twenty to a degree) on the five great rivers, Apure, Orinoco,

Atabapo, Rio Negro, and Cassiquiare; and in this vast extent we had

found but a very small number of inhabited places. After the life we

had led in the woods, our dress was not in the very best order, yet

nevertheless M. Bonpland and I hastened to present ourselves to Don

Felipe de Ynciarte, the governor of the province of Guiana. He

received us in the most cordial manner, and lodged us in the house of

the secretary of the Intendencia. Coming from an almost desert

country, we were struck with the bustle of the town, though it

contained only six thousand inhabitants. We admired the conveniences

which industry and commerce furnish to civilized man. Humble dwellings

appeared to us magnificent; and every person with whom we conversed

seemed to be endowed with superior intelligence. Long privations give

a value to the smallest enjoyments; and I cannot express the pleasure

we felt when we saw for the first time wheaten bread on the governor's

table. Sensations of this sort are doubtless familiar to all who have

made distant voyages.

A painful circumstance obliged us to sojourn a whole month in the town

of Angostura. We felt ourselves on the first days after our arrival

tired and enfeebled, but in perfect health. M. Bonpland began to

examine the small number of plants which he had been able to save from

the influence of the damp climate; and I was occupied in settling by

astronomical observations the longitude and latitude of the capital,*

as well as the dip of the magnetic needle. (* I found the latitude of

Santo Tomas de la Nueva Guiana, commonly called Angostura, or the

Strait, near the cathedral, 8 degrees 8 minutes 11 seconds, the

longitude 66 degrees 15 minutes 21 seconds.) These labours were soon

interrupted. We were both attacked almost on the same day by a

disorder which with my fellow-traveller took the character of a

debilitating fever. At this period the air was in a state of the

greatest salubrity at Angostura; and as the only mulatto servant we

had brought from Cumana felt symptoms of the same disorder, it was

suspected that we had imbibed the germs of typhus in the damp forests

of Cassiquiare. It is common enough for travellers to feel no effects

from miasmata till, on arriving in a purer atmosphere, they begin to

enjoy repose. A certain excitement of the mental powers may suspend

for some time the action of pathogenic causes. Our mulatto servant

having been much more exposed to the rains than we were, his disorder

increased with frightful rapidity. His prostration of strength was

excessive, and on the ninth day his death was announced to us. He was

however only in a state of swooning, which lasted several hours, and

was followed by a salutary crisis. I was attacked at the same time

with a violent fit of fever, during which I was made to take a mixture

of honey and bark (the cortex Angosturae): a remedy much extolled in

the country by the Capuchin missionaries. The intensity of the fever

augmented but it left me on the following day. M. Bonpland remained in

a very alarming state which during several weeks caused us the most

serious inquietude. Fortunately he preserved sufficient

self-possession to prescribe for himself; and he preferred gentler

remedies better adapted to his constitution. The fever was continual

and, as almost always happens within the tropics, it was accompanied

by dysentery. M. Bonpland displayed that courage and mildness of

character which never forsook him in the most trying situations. I was

agitated by sad presages for I remembered that the botanist Loefling,

a pupil of Linnaeus, died not far from Angostura, near the banks of

the Carony, a victim of his zeal for the progress of natural history.

We had not yet passed a year in the torrid zone and my too faithful

memory conjured up everything I had read in Europe on the dangers of

the atmosphere inhaled in the forests. Instead of going up the Orinoco

we might have sojourned some months in the temperate and salubrious

climate of the Sierra Nevada de Merida. It was I who had chosen the

path of the rivers; and the danger of my fellow-traveller presented

itself to my mind as the fatal consequence of this imprudent choice.

After having attained in a few days an extraordinary degree of

exacerbation the fever assumed a less alarming character. The

inflammation of the intestines yielded to the use of emollients

obtained from malvaceous plants. The sidas and the melochias have

singularly active properties in the torrid zone. The recovery of the

patient however was extremely slow, as it always happens with

Europeans who are not thoroughly seasoned to the climate. The period

of the rains drew near; and in order to return to the coast of Cumana,

it was necessary again to cross the Llanos, where, amidst

half-inundated lands, it is rare to find shelter, or any other food

than meat dried in the sun. To avoid exposing M. Bonpland to a

dangerous relapse, we resolved to stay at Angostura till the 10th of

July. We spent part of this time at a neighbouring plantation, where

mango-trees and bread-fruit trees* were cultivated. (* Artocarpus

incisa. Father Andujar, Capuchin missionary of the province of

Caracas, zealous in the pursuit of natural history, has introduced the

bread-fruit tree from Spanish Guiana at Varinas, and thence into the

kingdom of New Grenada. Thus the western Coasts of America, washed by

the Pacific, receive from the English Settlements in the West Indies a

production of the Friendly Islands.) The latter had attained in the

tenth year a height of more than forty feet. We measured several

leaves of the Artocarpus that were three feet long and eighteen inches

broad, remarkable dimensions in a plant of the family of the

dicotyledons.

END OF VOLUME 2.