Chapter IX: Part 9

I will preface my consideration of the question of the sources of the Orinoco with my own conjectures in relation to the subject. The perilous route travelled in 1739 by the surgeon Nicolas Hortsmann, of Hildesheim; in 1775 by the Spaniard Don Antonio Santos, and his friend Nicolas Rodriguez; in 1793 by the Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st Regiment of the Line of Para, Don Francisco José Rodriguez Barata; and (according to manuscript maps, for which I am indebted to the former Portuguese Ambassador in Paris, Chevalier de Brito) by several English and Dutch settlers, who in 1811 travelled from Surinam to Para by the portage of the Rupunuri and by the Rio Branco;—divides the _terra incognita_ of the Parime into two unequal parts, and serves to mark the position of a very important point in the geography of those regions—viz., the sources of the Orinoco, which it is no longer possible to remove to an indefinite distance towards the east, without intersecting the bed of the Rio Branco, which flows from north to south through the fluvial district of the Upper Orinoco; while this portion of the great river itself pursues for the most part a direction from east to west. The Brazilians, since the beginning of the present century, have from political motives manifested a vivid interest in the extensive plains east of the Rio Branco.[IG] Owing to the position of Santa Rosa on the Uraricapara, whose course appears to have been pretty accurately determined by Portuguese engineers, the sources of the Orinoco cannot be situated east of the meridian of 63° 8′ west long. This is the eastern limit beyond which they cannot be placed, and taking into consideration the state of the river at the Raudal de los Guaharibos (above Caño Chiguire, in the country of the strikingly fair-skinned Guaycas Indians, and 52′ east of the great Cerro Duida), it appears to me probable that the Orinoco in its upper part does not extend, at the utmost, beyond the meridian of 64° 8′ west long. This point is, according to my combinations, 4° 12′ west of the little lake of Amucu, which was reached by Sir Robert Schomburgk.

I will now detail the conjectures of that traveller, after having first given my own earlier ones. According to him the course of the Upper Orinoco, to the east of Esmeralda, is directed from south-east to north-west; my estimations of latitude for the mouths of the Padamo and the Gehette appear to be respectively 19′ and 36′ too small. Schomburgk conjectures that the sources of the Orinoco are situated in lat. 2° 30′, and the fine “Map of Guayana, to illustrate the route of R. H. Schomburgk,” which accompanies the splendid English work entitled _Views in the Interior of Guiana_, places its geographical sources in 64° 56′ west long., _i.e._, 1° 6′ west of Esmeralda, and only 48′ of longitude nearer to the Atlantic than I had determined the position of this point. Astronomical combinations led Schomburgk to place the mountain of Maravaca, which is about ten thousand feet high, in 3° 41′ lat. and 65° 48′ west long. The Orinoco was scarcely three hundred yards wide near the mouth of the Padamo or Paramu, and more to the west, where it expands to a width of from four to six hundred yards, it was so shallow, and so full of sandbanks, that the expedition was obliged to dig channels, as the river bed was only fifteen inches deep. Fresh-water dolphins were still to be seen in great numbers everywhere—a phenomenon which the zoologists of the eighteenth century would not have expected to find in the Orinoco and the Ganges.

Footnote 59:

p. 158—“_The most luxurious product of a tropical climate_.”

The _Bertholletia excelsa_ (Juvia), of the family of Myrtaceæ (and placed in Richard Schomburgk’s proposed division of Lecythideæ), was first described in _Plantes Equinoxiales_, t. i. 1808, p. 122, tab. 36. This colossal and magnificent tree offers, in the perfect development of its cocoa-like, round, close-grained, woody fruit, inclosing the three-cornered and also woody seed-vessels, the most remarkable example of luxuriant organic development. The Bertholletia grows in the forests of the Upper Orinoco, between the Padamo and the Ocamu, in the vicinity of the mountain of Mapaya, as well as between the rivers Amaguaca and Gehette.[IH]

Footnote 60:

p. 158—“_Grass stalks, whose joints measure upwards of eighteen feet from knot to knot_.”

Robert Schomburgk, when visiting the small mountainous country of the Majonkongs, on his route to Esmeralda, was fortunate enough to determine the species of Arundinaria, which furnishes the material for these blowing-tubes. He says of this plant: “It grows in large tufts, like the bambusa; the first joint rises, in the old cane, without a knot, to a height of from 16 to 17 feet before it begins to bear leaves. The entire height of the Arundinaria, growing at the foot of the great mountain-cluster of Maravaca, is from 30 to 40 feet, with a thickness of scarcely half an inch in diameter. The top is always inclined; and this species of grass is peculiar to the sandstone mountains between the Ventuari, the Paramu (Padamo), and the Mavaca. The Indian name is Curata, and, therefore, from the excellence of these celebrated long blowing-tubes, the Majonkongs and Guinaus of these districts have acquired the name of the Curata nation.”[II]

Footnote 61:

p. 159—“_Fabulous origin of the Orinoco from a lake_.”

The lakes of these regions (some of which are wholly imaginary, while the real size of others has been much exaggerated by theoretical geographers) may be divided into two groups. The first of these groups comprise those situate between Esmeralda (the most easterly mission on the Upper Orinoco), and the Rio Branco; to the second, belong the lakes presumed to exist in the district between the Rio Branco and French, Dutch, and British Guiana. This general view, of which travellers should never lose sight, proves that the question of whether there is another Lake Parime eastward of the Rio Branco, besides the Lake Amucu, seen by Hortsmann, Santos, Colonel Barata, and Schomburgk, has nothing whatever to do with the problem of the sources of the Orinoco. As the name of my distinguished friend the former Director of the Hydrographic Office at Madrid, Don Felipe Bauza, is of great weight in questions of geography, the impartiality which ought to influence every scientific investigation makes it incumbent on me to mention that this learned man was inclined to the view that there must be lakes west of the Rio Branco, at no great distance from the sources of the Orinoco. He wrote to me from London shortly before his death, “I wish you were here that I might converse with you respecting the geography of the Upper Orinoco, which has occupied you so much. I have been fortunate enough to rescue from entire destruction the papers of the General of Marine, Don José Solano, father of the Solano who perished in so melancholy a manner at Cadiz. These documents relate to the settlement of the boundary line between the Spaniards and Portuguese, with which Solano had been charged since 1754, in conjunction with the Escadre Chef Yturriaga and Don Vicente Doz. In all these plans and sketches I find a Laguna Parime sometimes as a source of the Orinoco, and sometimes as wholly detached from it. Are we then to assume that there is another lake further eastward to the north-east of Esmeralda?”

Löffling, the celebrated pupil of Linnæus, accompanied the last-named expedition to Cumana in the capacity of botanist. He died on the 22nd of February, 1756, at the mission of Santa Eulalia de Murucuri (somewhat to the south of the confluence of the Orinoco and Caroni), after traversing the missions on the Piritu and Caroni. The documents of which Bauza speaks are the same as those on which the great map of De la Cruz Olmedilla is based. They have served as the foundation of all the maps of South America, which appeared in England, France, and Germany, before the end of the last century; and have also served for the two maps executed in 1756 by Father Caulin, the historiographer of Solano’s expedition, and by M. de Surville, Keeper of the Archives in the Secretary of State’s Office at Madrid, who was but an unskilful compiler. The contradictions abounding in these maps show the little reliance that can be placed on the results of this expedition. Nay more, Father Caulin, above referred to, acutely details the circumstances which gave rise to this fable of the lake of Parime; and the map of Surville, which accompanies his work, not only restores this lake, under the name of the White Lake, and the Mar Dorado, but indicates another smaller one, from which flow partly by means of collateral branches, the Orinoco, Siapa, and Ocamo. I was able to convince myself on the spot of the following facts well known in the missions; that Don José Solano did not do more than cross the cataracts of Atures and Maypures; that he did not reach the confluence of the Guaviare and the Orinoco in 4° 3′ north lat., and 68° 9′ west long.; and that the astronomical instruments of the boundary expedition were neither carried to the isthmus of the Pimichin and the Rio Negro, nor to the Cassiquiare; and even on the Upper Orinoco, not beyond the mouth of the Atabapo. This vast extent of territory was not made the scene of any accurate observations before my journey, and has subsequently to Solano’s expedition been traversed only by some few soldiers who had been sent on exploring expeditions; while Don Apolinario de Fuente, whose journal I obtained from the archives of the province of Quixos, has gathered without discrimination everything from the fallacious narratives of the Indians that could flatter the credulity of the Governor Centurion. No member of the expedition had seen a lake, and Don Apolinario was unable to advance beyond the Cerro Yumarique and Gehette.

Although a line of separation, formed by the basin of the Rio Branco, is now established throughout the whole extent of the country, to which we are desirous of directing the inquiring zeal of travellers, it must yet be admitted, that our geographical knowledge of the district west of this valley between 62° and 66° long., has made no advance whatever for at least a century. The repeated attempts made by the Government of Spanish Guiana since the expeditions of Iturria and Solano, to reach and to pass over the Pacaraima Mountains, have been attended by very unimportant results. When the Spaniards, in proceeding to the missions of the Catalonian capuchins of Barceloneta, at the confluence of the Caroni and the Rio Paragua, ascended the last-named river southward to its junction with the Paraguamusi, they founded at this point the mission of Guirion, which, at first, bore the pompous appellation of Ciudad de Guirion. I place it in about 4° 30′ north latitude. From thence the Governor Centurion, in consequence of the exaggerated accounts given by two Indian chiefs, Paranacare and Arimuicapi, respecting the powerful tribe of the Ipurucotos, was excited to search for ‘El Dorado,’ and in carrying what were then called spiritual conquests still further, founded, beyond the Pacaraima Mountains, the two villages of Santa Rosa and San Bautista de Caudacacla. The former was situate on the upper eastern bank of the Uraricapara, a tributary of the Uraricuera, which I find in the journal of Rodriguez under the name of the Rio Curaricara; the latter, at from 24 to 28 miles further east-south-east. The astronomo-geographer of the Portuguese Boundary Commission, Captain Don Antonio Pires de Sylva Pontes Leme, and the Captain of Engineers, Don Ricardo Franco d’Almeida de Serra, who between 1787 and 1804, surveyed with the greatest care the whole course of the Rio Branco and its upper tributaries, call the most western part of the Uraricapara, “The Valley of Inundation.” They place the Spanish mission of Santa Rosa in 3° 46′ north lat., and mark the route that leads from thence northward across the mountain chain to the Caño Anocapra, a branch of the Paraguamusi, which forms a connecting passage between the basin of the Rio Branco and that of the Caroni. Two maps of these Portuguese officers, embracing all the details of the trigonometrical survey of the bends of the Rio Branco, the Uraricuera, the Tacutu, and the Mahu, were most kindly communicated to Colonel Lapie and myself by the Count of Linhares. These valuable unpublished documents, of which I have availed myself, are still in the hands of the learned geographer, who long since began to have them engraved at his own expense. The Portuguese sometimes call the whole of the Rio Branco by the name of Rio Parime, and sometimes limit this appellation to one branch only, the Uraricuera, somewhat below the Caño Mayari and above the old mission of San Antonio. As the words _Paragua_ and _Parime_ alike imply water, great water, lake, and sea, we cannot wonder at finding them so often repeated among tribes living at great distances from each other; as, for instance, by the Omaguas on the Upper Marañon, by the Western Guaranis, and by the Caribs. In all parts of the world, as I have already remarked, large rivers are called by those who live on their banks “the River,” without any specific denomination. Paragua, the name of a branch of the Caroni, is also the term applied by the natives to the Upper Orinoco. The name Orinucu is Tamanakish; and Diego de Ordaz first heard it used in the year 1531, when he ascended to the mouth of the Meta. Besides the Valley of Inundation above mentioned we find other large pieces of water between the Rio Xumuru and the Parime. One of these bays is a branch of the Tacutu, and the other of the Uraricuera. Even at the base of the Pacaraima Mountains the rivers are subject to great periodical overflowings; and the Lake Amucu, of which we shall subsequently speak more fully, exhibits exactly the same character at the commencement of the plains. The Spanish missions, Santa Rosa and San Bautista de Caudacacla, or Cayacaya, founded in the years 1770 and 1773, by the Governor Don Manuel Centurion, were destroy ed before the close of the last century; and since that time, no new attempt has been made to advance from the basin of the Caroni to the southern declivity of the Pacaraima Mountains.

The territory east of the valley of the Rio Branco has of late years been made the subject of several successful explorations. Mr. Hillhouse navigated the Massaruni as far as the Bay of Caranang, whence, as he says, a path would lead the traveller, in two days, to the source of the Massaruni; and, in three days, to the tributaries of the Rio Branco. With respect to the windings of the great river Massaruni, described by Mr. Hillhouse, he himself observes, in a letter addressed to me from Demerara, 1st January, 1831, that “the Massaruni, reckoning from its sources, flows first to the west, then for one degree of latitude to the north; afterwards nearly 200 miles eastward; and, finally, to the north and north-north-east till it merges in the Essequibo.” As Mr. Hillhouse was unable to reach the southern declivity of the Pacaraima chain, he was not acquainted with the Amucu Lake; and he says himself, in his printed report, that “from the accounts given him by the Accaouais, who are continually traversing the country between the shore and the Amazon River, he is convinced there is no lake in this district.” This assertion occasioned me some surprise, as it was directly opposed to the views I had previously formed regarding the Lake Amucu, from which flows the Caño Pirara, according to the accounts given by the travellers Hortsmann, Santos, and Rodriguez (and which had inspired me with the more confidence, because they entirely coincide with the recent Portuguese manuscript charts). Finally, after five years of expectation, Schomburgk’s journey has removed all farther doubt.

“It is difficult to believe,” says Mr. Hillhouse, in his interesting memoir on the Massaruni, “that the tradition of a large inland sea is wholly unfounded. According to my views, the following circumstance may have given rise to the belief in the existence of the fabulous lake of the Parime. At some distance from the rocky fall of Teboco the waters of the Massaruni present to the eye as little motion as the calm surface of a lake. If at a more or less remote period the horizontal granitic strata of Teboco had been totally compact and without fissures, the waters must have been at least 50 feet above their present level, and there would have been formed an immense lake 10 or 12 miles in width, and 1500 or 2000 miles in length.”[IJ] The extent of this supposed inundation is not the only reason which prevents me from acceding to this explanation; for I have seen plains (Llanos), where, during the rainy season, the overflowing of the tributaries of the Orinoco annually covered a surface of 6400 square miles. The labyrinth of ramifications between the Apure, Arauca, Capanaparo, and Sinaruco (see maps 17 and 18 of my Physical Atlas), is then wholly lost sight of; the configuration of the river beds can no longer be traced, and the whole appears like one vast lake. But the locality of the fabulous Dorado, and of the Lake Parime, belongs historically to quite a different part of Guiana, namely, that lying south of the Pacaraima mountains. This myth of the White Sea and of the Dorado of the Parime, has arisen, as I endeavoured thirty years ago to show in another work, from the appearance of the micaceous rocks of the Ucucuamo, the name _Rio Parime_ (Rio Branco), the inundations of the tributaries; and especially from the existence of the lake _Amucu_, which is in the neighbourhood of the Rio Rupunuwini (Rupunuri), and is connected by means of the Pirara with the Rio Parime.

I have had much pleasure in finding that the travels of Sir Robert Schomburgk have fully corroborated these early views. The section of his map which gives the course of the Essequibo and of the Rupunuri is quite new, and of great importance in a geographical point of view. It places the Pacaraima chain between 3° 52′and 4° north lat., while I had given its mean direction from 4° to 4° 10′. The chain reaches the confluence of the Essequibo and Rupunuri in 3° 57′ north lat., and 58° 1′ west longitude; I had placed it half a degree too far to the north. Schomburgk calls the last-named river Rupununi, according to the pronunciation of the Macusis; and gives as the synonymes Rupunuri, Rupunuwini and Opununy, which have arisen from the difficulty the Carib tribes of these districts find in pronouncing the letter “r.” The position of the lake Amucu and its relations to the Mahu (Maou) and Tacutu (Tacoto) correspond perfectly with my map of Colombia drawn in 1825. We agree equally well regarding the latitude of the lake of Amucu, for while he places it in 3° 33′, I considered it to be in 3° 35′; the Caño Pirara (Pirarara) which connects the Amucu with the Rio Branco, flows from it towards the north, and not to the west as I had marked it. The Sibarana of my map, the sources of which Hortsmann placed to the north of the Cerro Ucucuamo near a fine mine of rock crystal, is the Siparuni of Schomburgk’s map. His Waa-Ekuru is the Tavaricaru of the Portuguese geographer Pontes Leme, and is the branch of the Rupunuri which lies the nearest to the lake of Amucu.

The following remarks from the report of Sir Robert Schomburgk throw some light on the subject in question. “The lake of Amucu,” says this traveller, “is without doubt the nucleus of the Lake of Parime and of the supposed White Sea. In December and January, when we visited it, it was scarcely a mile in length, and was half covered with reeds.” The same observation occurs on D’Anville’s map of 1748. “The Pirara flows from the lake to the W.N.W. of the Indian village of Pirara and falls into the Maou or Mahu. The last-named river rises, according to the information given me, north of the ridge of the Pacaraima mountains, which in their eastern portion do not attain a greater elevation than about 1600 feet. The sources of the river are on a plateau, from whence it is precipitated in a beautiful waterfall, known as the Corona. We were on the point of visiting this fall, when on the third day of our excursion to the mountains, the indisposition of one of my companions compelled me to return to the station at the lake Amucu. The Mahu has black coffee-coloured water, and its current is more impetuous than that of the Rupunuri. In the mountains through which it pursues its course it is about 60 yards in breadth. Its environs are here extremely picturesque. This valley as well as the bank of the Buroburo, which flows into the Siparuni, are inhabited by the Macusis. In April the whole Savannahs are overflowed, and then present the peculiar phenomenon of the waters belonging to two different river basins commingling together. It is probable that the vast extent of this temporary inundation may have given rise to the fable of the lake of Parime. During the rainy season a water communication is formed in the interior of the country between the Essequibo, the Rio Branco, and the Gran Para. Some groups of trees, rising like Oases on the sand-hills of the Savannahs, present, at the time of the inundation, the appearance of islands scattered over a lake; and these are without doubt the Ipomucena islands of Don Antonio Santos.”

In D’Anville’s manuscripts, which his heirs kindly allowed me to examine, I find that Hortsmann of Hildesheim, who described these districts with great care, saw a second Alpine lake, which he places two day’s journey above the confluence of the Mahu with the Rio Parime (Tacutu?). It is a black water lake, situated on the summit of a mountain. He explicitly distinguishes it from the lake of Amucu, which he describes as “covered with rushes.” The descriptions given by Hortsmann and Santos coincide with the Portuguese manuscript maps of the Marine Bureau at Rio Janeiro, in not indicating the existence of an uninterrupted connection between the Rupunuri and the lake of Amucu. In D’Anville’s maps of South America, the rivers are better drawn in the first edition published in 1748, than in the more extensively circulated one of 1760. Schomburgk’s travels fully confirm the independence of the basin of the Rupunuri and Essequibo; but he draws attention to the fact that, during the rainy season, the Rio Waa-Ekuru, a tributary of the Rupunuri, is in connection with the Caño Pirara. Such is the condition of these river-channels, which are still but little developed, and almost entirely without separating ridges.

The Rupunuri and the village of Anai, 3° 56′ north latitude, 58° 34′ west longitude, are at present recognised as the political boundaries between the British and Brazilian domains in these desert regions. Sir Robert Schomburgk was compelled by severe illness to make a protracted stay at Anai. He bases his chronometrical determinations of the position of the lake of Amucu on the mean of many lunar distances, east and west, which he measured during his sojourn at Anai. His determinations of longitude for these points of the Parime are in general one degree more east than those in my map of Colombia. While I am far from calling in question the result of these lunar observations taken at Anai, I may be allowed to observe that the calculation of these distances is of importance, when it is desired to carry the comparison from the lake of Amucu to Esmeralda, which I found in 66° 19′ west longitude.

Thus then we see the great _Mar de la Parima_, (which it was so difficult to remove from our maps, that even after my return from America it was still supposed to be 160 miles in length,) reduced by recent investigations to the lake of Amucu, measuring only two or three miles in circumference. The illusions entertained for nearly two hundred years, and which in the last Spanish expedition, in 1775, for the discovery of El Dorado, cost several hundred lives, have finally terminated by enriching geography with some few results. In the year 1512 thousands of soldiers perished in the expedition, undertaken by Ponce de Leon, to discover the “Fountain of Youth,” on one of the Bahama Islands, called Binimi, which is hardly to be found on any of our maps. This expedition led to the conquest of Florida, and to the knowledge of the great oceanic current, or gulf-stream, which flows through the Straights of Bahama. The thirst after gold, and the desire of rejuvenescence—the _Dorado_ and the _Fountain of Youth_—stimulated, to an almost equal extent, the passions of mankind.

Footnote 62:

p. 161—“_The Piriguao, one of the noblest forms of the Palm_.”

Compare Humboldt, Bonpland, and Kunth, _Nova Genera Plantarum_, and _Plant. æquinoct._, t. i. p. 315.

Footnote 63:

p. 171—“_The grave of an extinct race_.”

During my stay in the forests of the Orinoco, researches were being made, by royal command, in reference to these bone-caves. The missionary of the cataracts had been falsely accused of having discovered in these caves treasures which the Jesuits had concealed there prior to their flight.

Footnote 64:

p. 172—“_When his language perished with him_.”

The parrot of the Atures has been made the subject of a charming poem by my friend Professor Ernst Curtius, the tutor of the promising young Prince Friedrick Wilhelm of Prussia. The author will forgive me for closing the present section of the “Views of Nature” with this poem, which was not designed for publication, and was communicated to me by letter.

THE PARROT OF ATURES.

Where, through deserts wild and dreary,
Orinoco dashes on,
Sits a Parrot old and weary,
Like a sculptur’d thing of stone.

Through its rocky barriers flowing,
Onward rolls the foaming stream;
Waving palms on high are glowing
In the sun’s meridian beam.

Ceaselessly the waves are heaving,
Sparkling up in antic play;
While the sunny rays are weaving
Rainbows in the feathery spray.

Where yon billows wild are breaking,
Sleeps a tribe for evermore,
Who, their native land forsaking,
Refuge sought on this lone shore.

As they lived, free, dauntless ever,
So the brave Aturians died;
And the green banks of the river
All their mortal relics hide.

Yet the Parrot, ne’er forgetting
Those who loved him, mourns them still;
On the stone his sharp beak whetting,
While the air his wailings fill.

Where are now the youths who bred him,
To pronounce their mother tongue,—
Where the gentle maids who fed him,
And who built his nest when young?

All, alas! are lifeless lying,
Stretch’d upon their grassy bed;
Nor can all his mournful crying,
E’er awake the slumbering dead.

Still he calls with voice imploring,
To a world that heeds him not;
Nought replies but waters roaring—
No kind soul bewails his lot.

Swift the savage turns his rudder,
When his eyes the bird behold;
None e’er saw without a shudder
That Aturian Parrot old!

THE NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS
IN THE
PRIMEVAL FOREST.

If the faculty of appreciating nature, in different races of man, and if the character of the countries they now inhabit, or have traversed in their earlier migrations, have more or less enriched the respective languages by appropriate terms, expressive of the forms of mountains, the state of vegetation, the appearances of the atmosphere, and the contour and grouping of the clouds, it must be admitted that by long use and literary caprice many of these designations have been diverted from the sense they originally bore. Words have gradually been regarded as synonymous, which ought to have remained distinct; and languages have thus lost a portion of the expressiveness and force which might else have imparted a physiognomical character to descriptions of natural scenery. As an evidence of the extent to which a communion with nature, and the requirements of a laborious nomadic life, may enrich language, I would recall the abundance of characteristic denominations employed in Arabic and Persian, to distinguish plains, steppes, and deserts[65], according as they are entirely bare, covered with sand, or intersected by tabular masses of rock; or as they are diversified by spots of pasture land and extended tracts of social plants. The old Castilian dialects are no less remarkable[66] for the copiousness of their terms descriptive of the physiognomy of mountains, especially in reference to those features which recur in all regions of the earth, and which proclaim afar off the nature of the rock. As the declivities of the Andes and the mountainous parts of the Canaries, the Antilles, and the Philippines, are all inhabited by races of Spanish descent; and as the nature of the soil has there influenced the mode of life of the inhabitants to a greater degree than in other parts of the world, excepting perhaps in the Himalaya and the Thibetian Highlands; so also the designations expressive of the forms of mountains in trachytic, basaltic, and porphyritic districts, as well as in schistose, calcareous, and sandstone formations, have been happily preserved in daily use. Under such circumstances, newly formed words become incorporated with the common stock. Speech acquires life from everything which bears the true impress of nature, whether it be by the definition of sensuous impressions received from the external world, or by the expression of thoughts and feelings that emanate from our inner being.

In descriptions of natural phenomena, as well as in the choice of the expressions employed, this truth to nature should be especially kept in view. The object will be the best attained by simplicity in the narration of whatever we have ourselves observed and experienced, and by closely examining the locality with which the subject-matter is connected. Generalisation of physical views, and the enumeration of results, belong principally to the study of the Cosmos, which, indeed, must still be regarded as an inductive science; but the vivid delineation of organic forms (animals and plants,) in their picturesque and local relations to the multiform surface of the earth, although limited to a small section of terrestrial life, still affords materials for this study. It acts as a stimulus to the mind wherever it is capable of appreciating the great phenomena of nature in an æsthetic point of view.

To these phenomena belongs especially the boundless forest district which, in the torrid zone of South America, connects the river basins of the Orinoco and the Amazon. This region deserves, in the strictest sense of the word, to be called a _primeval_ forest—a term that has, in recent times, been so frequently misapplied. Primeval (or primitive), as applied to a forest, a nation, or a period of time, is a word of rather indefinite signification, and generally but of relative import. If every wild forest, densely covered with trees, on which man has never laid his destroying hand, is to be regarded as a primitive forest, then the phenomenon is common to many parts both of the temperate and the frigid zones; if, however, this character consists in impenetrability, through which it is impossible to clear with the axe, between trees measuring from 8 to 12 feet in diameter, a path of any length, primitive forests belong exclusively to tropical regions. This impenetrability is by no means, as is often erroneously supposed in Europe, always occasioned by the interlaced climbing “lianes,” or creeping plants, for these often constitute but a very small portion of the underwood. The chief obstacles are the shrub-like plants which fill up every space between the trees, in a zone where all vegetable forms have a tendency to become arborescent. If travellers, the moment they set foot in a tropical region, and even while on islands, in the vicinity of the sea-coast, imagine that they are within the precincts of a primeval forest, the misconception must be ascribed to their ardent desire of realizing a long-cherished wish. Every tropical forest is not _primeval_ forest. I have scarcely ever used the latter term in the narrative of my travels; although, I believe, that of all investigators of nature now living, Bonpland, Martius, Pöppig, Robert and Richard Schomburgk, and myself, have spent the longest period of time in primeval forests in the interior of a great continent.

Notwithstanding the striking richness of the Spanish language in designations, (descriptive of natural objects, of which I have already spoken), yet one and the same word _monte_ is employed for a mountain and a forest, for _cerro_ (_montaña_), and for _selva_. In a work on the true breadth and the greatest extension of the chain of the Andes towards the east, I have shown how this twofold signification of the word _monte_ has led to the error, in a fine and extensively circulated English map of South America, of marking ranges of high mountains in districts occupied only by plains. Where the Spanish map of La Cruz Olmedilla, which formed the basis of so many others, indicated Cacao Woods, _Montes de Cacao_[67], Cordilleras were supposed to exist, although the Cacao-tree affects only the hottest of the low lands.

If we comprehend, in one general view, the woody region which embraces the whole of South America, between the grassy plains of Venezuela (_los Llanos de Caracas_) and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, lying between 8° north and 19° south latitude, we perceive that this connected _Hylæa_ of the tropical zone is unequalled in extent by any other on the surface of the earth. Its area is about twelve times that of Germany. Traversed in all directions by rivers, some of whose direct and indirect tributary streams (as well those of the second as of the first order) surpass the Danube and Rhine in the abundance of their waters, it owes the wonderful luxuriance of its vegetation to the twofold influence of great humidity and high temperature. In the temperate zone, particularly in Europe and Northern Asia, forests may be named from particular genera of trees which grow together as social plants (_plantæ sociales_), and form separate woods. In the Oak, Pine, and Birch forests of the northern regions, and in the Linden or Lime Woods of the eastern, there usually predominates only one species of Amentaceæ, Coniferæ or Tiliaceæ; while sometimes a single species of Piniferæ is intermixed with trees of deciduous foliage. Such uniformity of association is unknown in tropical forests. The excessive variety of their rich sylvan flora renders it vain to ask, of what do the primeval forests consist. Numberless families of plants are here crowded together; and even in small spaces, plants of the same species are rarely associated. Every day, and with every change of place, new forms present themselves to the traveller’s attention; often flowers, beyond his reach, although the shape of the leaf and the ramifications of the plant excite his curiosity.

The rivers, with their innumerable branches, are the only means of traversing the country. Astronomical observations, or in the absence of these, determinations by compass of the bends of the rivers, between the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, have shewn that two lonely mission-stations might be situated only a few miles apart, and yet the monks thereof, in visiting each other would require a day and a half to make the passage in their hollow-tree canoes, along the windings of small streams. The most striking evidence of the impenetrability of some portions of these forests, is afforded by a trait in the habits of the American tiger, or panther-like Jaguar. While the introduction of European horned cattle, horses, and mules, has yielded so abundant a supply of food to the beasts of prey in the extensive grassy and treeless plains of Varinas, Meta, and Buenos Ayres; that these animals, (owing to the unequal contest between them and their prey,) have considerably increased since the discovery of America; other individuals of the same species lead a toilsome life in the dense forests contiguous to the sources of the Orinoco. The distressing loss of a large mastiff, the faithful companion of our travels, while we were bivouacking near the junction of the Cassiquiare with the Orinoco, induced us on our return from the insect-swarming Esmeralda, to pass another night on the same spot (uncertain whether he was devoured by a tiger) where we had already long sought him in vain. We again heard in the immediate neighbourhood the cries of the Jaguar, probably the very same animal to which we owed our loss. As the cloudy state of the sky rendered it impossible to conduct astronomical observations, we made our interpreter (_lenguaraz_) repeat to us what the natives, our boatmen, related of the tigers of the country.

The so called black Jaguar is, as we learnt, not unfrequently found among them. It is the largest and most blood-thirsty variety, and has a dark brown skin marked with scarcely distinguishable black spots. It lives at the foot of the mountain ranges of Maraguaca and Unturan. “The love of wandering, and the rapacity of the Jaguars,” said our Indian narrator, one of the Durimond tribe; “often lead them into such impenetrable thickets of the forest, that they can no longer hunt on the ground, and then live for a long time in the trees—the terror of the families of monkeys, and of the prehensile-tailed viverra. (_Cercoleptes._)”

The journal which I wrote at the time in German, and from which I borrow these extracts, was not entirely exhausted in the narrative of my travels (published in French). It contains a circumstantial description of the nocturnal life of animals; I might say, of their nocturnal voices in the tropical forests. And this sketch seems to me to be especially adapted to constitute one of the chapters of the _Views of Nature_. That which is written down on the spot, or soon after the impression of the phenomena has been received, may at least claim to possess more freshness than what is produced by the recollection of long passed events.

We reached the bed of the Orinoco by descending from west to east along the Rio Apure, whose inundations I have noticed in the sketch of the Deserts and Steppes. It was the period of low water, and the average breadth of the Apure was only a little more than 1200 feet; while the Orinoco, at its confluence with the Apure (near the granite rocks of Curiquima, where I was able to measure a base-line), was still upwards of 12,180 feet. Yet this point (the rock of Curiquima,) is 400 miles in a straight line from the sea and from the delta of the Orinoco. Some of the plains, watered by the Apure and the Payara, are inhabited by Yaruros and Achaguas, who are called savages in the mission-villages established by the monks, because they will not relinquish their independence. In reference to social culture, they however occupy about the same scale as those Indians, who, although baptized and living “under the bell” (_baxo la campana_), have remained strangers to every form of instruction and cultivation.

On leaving the Island del Diamante, where the Zambos, who speak Spanish, cultivate the sugar-cane, we entered into a grand and wild domain of nature. The air was filled with countless flamingoes (_Phœnicopterus_) and other water-fowl, which seemed to stand forth from the blue sky like a dark cloud in ever-varying outlines. The bed of the river had here contracted to less than 1000 feet, and formed a perfectly straight canal, which was inclosed on both sides by thick woods. The margin of the forest presents a singular spectacle. In front of the almost impenetrable wall of colossal trunks of Cæsalpinia, Cedrela, and Desmanthus, there rises with the greatest regularity on the sandy bank of the river, a low hedge of Sauso, only four feet high; it consists of a small shrub, _Hermesia castanifolia_, which forms a new genus[68] of the family of Euphorbiaceæ. A few slender, thorny palms, called by the Spaniards Piritu and Corozo (perhaps species of _Martinezia_ or _Bactris_) stand close alongside; the whole resembling a trimmed garden hedge, with gate-like openings at considerable distances from each other, formed undoubtedly by the large four-footed animals of the forests, for convenient access to the river. At sunset, and more particularly at break of day, the American Tiger, the Tapir, and the Peccary (_Pecari_, _Dicotyles_) may be seen coming forth from these openings accompanied by their young, to give them drink. When they are disturbed by a passing Indian canoe, and are about to retreat into the forest, they do not attempt to rush violently through these hedges of Sauso, but proceed deliberately along the bank, between the hedge and river, affording the traveller the gratification of watching their motions for sometimes four or five hundred paces, until they disappear through the nearest opening. During a seventy-four days’ almost uninterrupted river navigation of 1520 miles up the Orinoco, to the neighbourhood of its sources, and along the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro—during the whole of which time we were confined to a narrow canoe—the same spectacle presented itself to our view at many different points, and, I may add, always with renewed excitement. There came to drink, bathe, or fish, groups of creatures belonging to the most opposite species of animals; the larger mammalia with many-coloured herons, palamedeas with the proudly-strutting curassow (_Crax Alector_, _C. Pauxi_). “It is here as in Paradise” (_es como en el Paradiso_), remarked with pious air our steersman, an old Indian, who had been brought up in the house of an ecclesiastic. But the gentle peace of the primitive golden age does not reign in the paradise of these American animals, they stand apart, watch, and avoid each other. The Capybara, a cavy (or river-hog) three or four feet long (a colossal repetition of the common Brazilian cavy, (_Cavia Aguti_), is devoured in the river by the crocodile, and on the shore by the tiger. They run so badly, that we were frequently able to overtake and capture several from among the numerous herds.

Below the mission of Santa Barbara de Arichuna we passed the night as usual in the open air, on a sandy flat, on the bank of the Apure, skirted by the impenetrable forest. We had some difficulty in finding dry wood to kindle the fires with which it is here customary to surround the bivouac, as a safeguard against the attacks of the Jaguar. The air was bland and soft, and the moon shone brightly. Several crocodiles approached the bank; and I have observed that fire attracts these creatures as it does our crabs and many other aquatic animals. The oars of our boats were fixed upright in the ground, to support our hammocks. Deep stillness prevailed, only broken at intervals by the blowing of the fresh-water dolphins[69], which are peculiar to the river net-work of the Orinoco (as, according to Colebrooke, they are also to the Ganges, as high up the river as Benares); they followed each other in long tracks.

After eleven o’clock, such a noise began in the contiguous forest, that for the remainder of the night all sleep was impossible. The wild cries of animals rung through the woods. Among the many voices which resounded together, the Indians could only recognise those which, after short pauses, were heard singly. There was the monotonous, plaintive, cry of the Aluates (howling monkeys), the whining, flute-like notes of the small sapajous, the grunting murmur of the striped nocturnal ape[70] (_Nyctipithecus trivirgatus_, which I was the first to describe), the fitful roar of the great tiger, the Cuguar or maneless American lion, the peccary, the sloth, and a host of parrots, parraquas (_Ortalides_), and other pheasant-like birds. Whenever the tigers approached the edge of the forest, our dog, who before had barked incessantly, came howling to seek protection under the hammocks. Sometimes the cry of the tiger resounded from the branches of a tree, and was then always accompanied by the plaintive piping tones of the apes, who were endeavouring to escape from the unwonted pursuit.

If one asks the Indians why such a continuous noise is heard on certain nights, they answer, with a smile, that “the animals are rejoicing in the beautiful moonlight, and celebrating the return of the full moon.” To me the scene appeared rather to be owing to an accidental, long-continued, and gradually increasing conflict among the animals. Thus, for instance, the jaguar will pursue the peccaries and the tapirs, which, densely crowded together, burst through the barrier of tree-like shrubs which opposes their flight. Terrified at the confusion, the monkeys on the tops of the trees join their cries with those of the larger animals. This arouses the tribes of birds who build their nests in communities, and suddenly the whole animal world is in a state of commotion. Further experience taught us, that it was by no means always the festival of moonlight that disturbed the stillness of the forest; for we observed that the voices were loudest during violent storms of rain, or when the thunder echoed and the lightning flashed through the depths of the woods. The good-natured Franciscan monk who (notwithstanding the fever from which he had been suffering for many months), accompanied us through the cataracts of Atures and Maypures to San Carlos, on the Rio Negro, and to the Brazilian coast, used to say, when apprehensive of a storm at night, “May Heaven grant a quiet night both to us and to the wild beasts of the forest!”

A singular contrast to the scenes I have here described, and which I had repeated opportunities of witnessing, is presented by the stillness which reigns within the tropics at the noontide of a day unusually sultry. I borrow from the same journal the description of a scene at the Narrows of Baraguan. Here the Orinoco forms for itself a passage through the western part of the mountains of the Parime. That which is called at this remarkable pass a Narrow (_Angostura del Baraguan_), is, however, a basin almost 5700 feet in breadth. With the exception of an old withered stem of Aubletia (_Apeiba Tiburbu_), and a new Apocinea (_Allamanda Salicifolia_), the barren rocks were only covered with a few silvery croton shrubs. A thermometer observed in the shade, but brought within a few inches of the lofty mass of granite rock, rose to more than 122° Fahr. All distant objects had wavy undulating outlines, the optical effect of the _mirage_. Not a breath of air moved the dust-like sand. The sun stood in the zenith; and the effulgence of light poured upon the river, and which, owing to a gentle ripple of the waters, was brilliantly reflected, gave additional distinctness to the red haze which veiled the distance. All the rocky mounds and naked boulders were covered with large, thick-scaled Iguanas, Gecko-lizards, and spotted Salamanders. Motionless, with uplifted heads and widely extended mouths, they seemed to inhale the heated air with ecstasy. The larger animals at such times take refuge in the deep recesses of the forest, the birds nestle beneath the foliage of the trees, or in the clefts of the rocks; but if in this apparent stillness of nature we listen closely for the faintest tones, we detect, a dull, muffled sound, a buzzing and humming of insects close to the earth, in the lower strata of the atmosphere. Everything proclaims a world of active organic forces. In every shrub, in the cracked bark of trees, in the perforated ground inhabited by hymenopterous insects, life is everywhere audibly manifest. It is one of the many voices of nature revealed to the pious and susceptible spirit of man.

ILLUSTRATIONS AND ADDITIONS.

Footnote 65:

p. 191.—“_Characteristic denominations in Arabic and Persian._”

More than twenty words might be cited by which the Arabs distinguish between a Steppe (tanufah), according as it may be a Desert without water, entirely bare, or covered with siliceous sand, and interspersed with spots of pasture land (Sahara, Kafr, Mikfar, Tih, Mehme). Sahl is a depressed plain; Dakkah a desolate elevated plateau. In Persian Beyaban is an arid sandy waste (as the Mongolian Gobi and the Chinese Han-hai and Scha-mo); Yaila is a Steppe covered with grass rather than with low-growing plants (like the Mongolian Küdah, the Turkish Tala or Tschol, and the Chinese Huang). Deschti-reft is a naked elevated plateau.[IK]

Footnote 66:

p. 191.—“_The old Castilian dialects._”

Pico, picacho, mogote, cucurucho, espigon, loma tendida, mesa, panecillo, farallon, tablon, peña, peñon, peñasco, peñoleria, roca partida, laxa, cerro, sierra, serrania, cordillera, monte, montaña, montañuela, cadena de montes, los altos, malpais, reventazon, bufa, &c.

Footnote 67:

p. 194.—“_Where the map had indicated Montes de Cacao._”

On the range of hills from which the lofty Andes de Cuchao have originated, see my _Relation historique_, t. iii. p. 238.

Footnote 68:

p. 197.—“_Hermesia._”

The genus Hermesia, the Sauso, has been described by Bonpland, and is delineated in our _Plantes équinoxiales_, t. i. p. 162, tab. xlvi.

Footnote 69:

p. 199.—“_The fresh-water dolphin._”

These are not sea dolphins, which, like some species of Pleuronectes (flat fish which invariably have both eyes on one side of the body), ascend the rivers to a great distance, as, for instance, the Limande (_Pleuronectes Limanda_), which is found as far inland as Orleans. Some forms of sea fish, as the dolphin and skate (_Raia_), are met with in the great rivers of both continents. The fresh-water dolphin of the Apure and the Orinoco differs specifically from the _Delphinus gangeticus_ as well as from all sea dolphins.[IL]

Footnote 70:

p. 199.—“_The striped nocturnal monkey._”

This is the Douroucouli or Cusi-cusi of the Cassiquiare which I have elsewhere described as the _Simia trivirgata_,[IM] from a drawing made by myself of the living animal. We have since seen the nocturnal monkey living in the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris.[IN] Spix also met with this remarkable little animal on the Amazon River and called it _Nyctipithecus vociferans_.

POTSDAM, JUNE 1849.

HYPSOMETRIC ADDENDA.

I am indebted to Mr. Pentland, whose scientific labours have thrown so much light on the geology and geography of Bolivia, for the following determinations of position, which he communicated to me in a letter from Paris (October 1848), subsequent to the publication of his great map.

Nevado of Sorata, South Latitude. Longitude. Height. or Ancohuma. South Peak 15° 51′ 33″ 68° 33′ 55″ 21,286 North Peak 15° 49′ 18″ 68° 33′ 52″ 21,043

Illimani. South Peak 16° 38′ 52″ 67° 49′ 18″ 21,145 Middle Peak 16° 38′ 26″ 67° 49′ 17″ 21,094 North Peak 16° 37′ 50″ 67° 49′ 39″ 21,060

The numbers representing the heights are, with the exception of the unimportant difference of a few feet in the South Peak of Illimani, the same as those in the map of the Lake of Titicaca. A sketch of the Illimani, as it appears in all its majesty from La Paz, was given at an earlier date by Mr. Pentland in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.[IO] But this was five years after the publication of the first measurements in the _Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes_ for 1830, p. 323, which results I myself hastened to disseminate in Germany.[IP] The Nevado de Sorata lies to the east of the village of Sorata or Esquibel, and is called in the Ymarra language, according to Pentland, Ancomani, Itampu, and Illhampu. In _Illimani_ we recognize the Ymarra word _illi_, snow.

If, however, in the _eastern_ chain of Bolivia the Sorata was long assumed to be 3962 feet, and the Illimani 2851 feet too high, there are in the western chain of Bolivia, according to Pentland’s map of Titicaca (1848), four peaks east of Arica between the latitudes 18° 7′ and 18° 25′, all of which exceed Chimborazo in height, which itself is 21,422 feet.

These four peaks are:—

English feet. French feet.
Pomarape 21,700 20,360
Gualateiri 21,960 20,604
Parinacota 22,030 20,670
Sahama 22,350 20,971

Berghaus has applied to the chains of the Andes in Bolivia, the investigation which I published[IQ] regarding the proportion, which varies extremely in different mountain-chains, of the mountain ridge (the mean height of the passes), to the highest summits (or the culminating points). He finds,[IR] according to Pentland’s map, that the mean height of the passes in the eastern chain is 13,505, and in the western chain 14,496 feet. The culminating points are 21,285 and 22,350 feet; consequently the ratio of the height of the ridge to that of the highest summit is, in the eastern chain, as 1 : 1·57, and in the western chain as 1 : 1·54. This ratio, which is, as it were, the measure of the subterranean upheaving force, is very similar to that in the Pyrenees, but very different from the plastic form of the Alps, the mean height of whose passes is far less in comparison with the height of Mont Blanc. In the Pyrenees these ratios are as 1 : 1·43, and in the Alps as 1 : 2·09.

But, according to Fitzroy and Darwin, the height of the Sahama is still surpassed by 848 feet by that of the volcano Aconcagua (south lat. 32° 39′), in the north-east of Valparaiso in Chili. The officers of the expedition of the Adventure and Beagle found, in August 1835, that the Aconcagua was between 23,000 and 23,400 feet in height. If we reckon it at 23,200 feet it is 1776 feet, higher than Chimborazo.[IS] According to more recent calculations,[IT] Aconcagua is determined to be 23,906 feet.