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Personal Narritive of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, During the Years 1799—1804

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Personal Narritive of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, During the Years 1799—1804 PERSONAL NARRITIVE OF TRAVELS TO THE EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS OF THE NEW CONTINENT, DURING THE YEARS 1799—1804. BY ALEXANDER DE HUMBOLDT. AND AIMÉ BONPLAND; WITH MAPS, PLANS, &c. WRITTEN IN FRENCH BY ALEXANDER DE HUMBOLDT, AND TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS. VOL. V. —————— LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1821. AMS PRESS, INC. NEW YORK 1966 AMS PRESS, INC. New York, N.Y. 10003 1966 Manufactured in the United States of America CONTENTS. CHAPTER XX. Page The Mouth of the Rio Anaveni---Peak of Uniana---Mission of Atures---Catarct, Or Raudal of Mapara---Islets of Surupmana, and Uirapuri 1 CHAPTER XXI. Raudal of Garcita---Maypures---Cataracts of Quittuna---Mouth of the Vichada And Zama---Rock of Aricagua---Suquita 119 CHAPTER XXII. San Fernando de Atabapo---San Balhasar---The Rivers Temi and Tuamini---Javita ---Portage from the Tuamini to the Rio Negro 195 NOTES TO BOOK VII. A---Remark on the Comparison of Roots in Languages that differ in Grammatical Structure 293 BOOK VIII. CHAPTER XXIII. The Rio Negro---Limits of Brazil---TheCassiquiare---Bifurcation of the Oroonoko 297 CHAPTER XXIV. The Upper Oroonoko, from Esmeralda to the Confluence of the Guaviare--- Second Passage across the Cataracts of Atures and Maypures---Lower Oroonoko between the Mouth of the Rio Apure and Angostura, the Capital of Spanish Guyana 502 1 JOURNEY TO THE EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS OF THE NEW CONTINENT. CHAPTER XX. The Mouth of the Rio Anaveni.—Peak of Uniana.—Mission of Atures, Cataract, or Raudal of Mapara.—Islets of Surupamana, and Uirapuri. THE river of the Oroonoko, in running from south to north, is crossed by a chain of granitic mountains. Twice confined in its course, it turbulently breaks on the rocks, that form steps and transverse dykes. Nothing can be grander than the aspect of this spot. Neither the fall of the Tequendama*, nor the magnificent scenes of the Cordilleras, could weaken the impression produced upon my mind by the first view of the * Near Santa Fe de Bogota. 2 rapids of Atures and of Maypures. When you are so stationed, that the eye can at once take in the long succession of cataracts, the immense sheet of foam and vapours, illumined by the rays of the setting Sun, it seems as if you saw the whole river suspended over its bed. Scenes so astonishing must for ages have fixed the attention of the inhabitants of the new world. When Diego de Todaz, Alfonso de Herera, and the intrepid Raleigh, anchored at the mouth of the Oroonoko, they were informed by the Indians of the Great Cataracts, which they themselves had never visited, and which they even confounded with cascades farther to the east. Whatever obstacles the force of vegetation under the torrid zone may be to the intercourse among nations, all that relates to the course of great rivers acquires a celebrity, which extends to vast distances. The Oroonoko, the Amazon, and the Uruguay; traverse, like inland arms of seas, in different directions, a land covered with forests, and inhabited by tribes, part of whom are cannibals. It is not yet two hundred years since civilization, and the mild light of a more humane religion, have pursued their way along the banks of these ancient canals traced by the hand of nature; long however before the introduction of agriculture, before communications for the purpose of barter were established among these scattered and often 3 hostile tribes, the knowledge of extraordinary phenomena, of falls of water, of volcanic fires, and of snows resisting all the ardent heat of summer, was propagated by a thousand fortuitous circumstances. Three hundred leagues from the coast, in the centre of South America, among nations whose excursions do not extend to three days journey, we find an idea of the ocean, and words* that denote a mass of salt water extending as far as the eye can discern. Various events, which repeatedly occur in savage life, contribute to enlarge these conceptions. In consequence of the petty wars between neighbouring tribes, a prisoner is brought into a strange country, and treated as a poito or mero†, that is to say, as a slave. After having been repeatedly sold, he is dragged to new wars, escapes, and returns home; he relates what he has seen, and what he has heard from those, whose tongue he had been compelled to learn. Thus on discovering a coast, you hear of great inland animals ‡; thus, on entering the valley of a vast river, you are surprised to find, that savages, who are strangers to navigation, have * Parava in the Tamanac language. Parana in the Maypure. † The first of these words belongs to the Caribbee language, the second to the Maypure tongue. ‡ Crevier, Anim. fossiles, Discours prélimin., p. 22. 4 acquired a knowledge of distant things. In the infant state of society, the exchange of ideas precedes to a certain point the exchange of productions. The two great cataracts of the Oroonoko, of which the celebrity is so far spread and so ancient, are formed by the passage of the river across the mountains of Parima*. They are called by the natives Mapara and Quittuna; but the missionaries have substituted for these names those of Atures and Maypures, after the names of the first tribes, which they assembled together in the nearest villages. On the coast of Caraccas, the two Great Cataracts are denoted by the simple appellation of the two Raudales†, or rapids; a denomination which implies, that the other falls of water, even the rapids of Camiseta and of Carichana, are not considered as worthy of attention, when compared with the cataracts of Atures and Maypures. These last, situated between five and six degrees of north latitude, and a hundred leagues west of the Cordilleras of New Grenada‡, in the meridian of Porto Cabello, are only twelve leagues distant from each other. It is surprising, * See chap. xvii, vol. iv, p. 304. † From the Spanish word raudo, rushing, rapidus. ‡ West of the Paramo of Zoraca, near Tunja, a town of New Granada. 5 that their existence was not known to d'Anville, who, in his large, fine map of South America, marks the inconsiderable cascades of Marimara and San Borja, by the names of the rapids of Carichana and Tabaje. The great Cataracts divide the Christian establishments of Spanish Guyana into two unequal parts. Those situated between the Randal of Atures and the mouth of the river are called the missions of the lower Oroonoko; the missions of the upper Oroonoko comprehend the villages between the Raudal of Maypures, and the mountains of Duida*. The course of the lower Oroonoko, if we estimate the sinuosities with Mr. de la Condamine at one third of the distance in a direct line, is two hundred and sixty nautical leagues; the course of the upper Oroonoko, supposing its sources to be three degrees east of Duida, includes one hundred and sixty-seven leagues. Beyond the Great Cataracts an unknown land begins. The country is partly mountainous, and partly flat, receiving at once the confluents of the Amazon and the Oroonoko. From the facility of its communications with the Rio Negro and the Gran Para, it appears to belong still more to Brazil than to the Spanish colonies. * Missiones del Alto y del Baxo Orinoco. The missions of the Cassiquiare are not included in this statement, though this river forms a branch of the upper Oroonoko. 6 None of the missionaries, who have described the Oroonoko before me, neither Father Gumilla, Gili, nor Caulin, had passed the Raudal of Maypures. If the last have made known with some precision the topography of the upper Oroonoko, and the Cassiquiare, this information was obtained only from the military employed in the expedition of Solano. We found but three Christian establishments, above the Great Cataracts, along the shores of the Oroonoko, in an extent of more than a hundred leagues; and these three establishments contained scarcely six or eight white persons, that is to say, persons of European race. We cannot be surprised, that such a desert region should have been at all times the classical soil of fable and fairy visions. It is there, that grave missionaries have placed nations with one eye in the forehead, the head of a dog, or the mouth below the stomach. It is there they have found all that the ancients relate of the Garamantes, of the Arimaspes, and of the Hyperboreans. It would be an error to suppose, that these simple and often rustic missionaries had themselves invented all these exaggerated fictions; they derived them in great part from the recitals of the Indians. A fondness for narration prevails in the missions, as it does at sea, in the East, and in every place where the mind wants amusement. A missionary, from his vocation, is not inclined 7 to scepticism; he imprints on his memory what the natives have so often repeated to him; and, when returned to Europe, and restored to the civilized world, he finds a compensation for his toils in the pleasure of creating astonishment by a recital of facts, which he thinks he has collected, and by an animated description of remote things. These tales of travellers and of monks (cuentos de viageros y frailes) increase in improbability in proportion as you increase your distance from the forests of the Oroonoko, and approach the coasts, inhabited by the whites. When at Cumana, Nueva Barcelona, and other sea-ports, which have frequent communication with the missions, you betray any sign of incredulity, you are reduced to silence by these few words, "The fathers have seen it, but far above the Great Cataracts, mas ariba de los Raudales." Entering a country so little frequented, and of which a part only has been described by those who passed through it, I have several motives for adhering to the journal form in my narrative.
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