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Title: Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America,
During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 2

Author: Alexander von Humboldt
Aimé Bonpland

Translator: Thomasina Ross

Release date: December 1, 2004 [eBook #7014]
Most recently updated: June 4, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7014

Credits: Produced by Sue Asscher

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERSONAL
NARRATIVE OF TRAVELS TO THE EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS OF
AMERICA, DURING THE YEAR 1799-1804 — VOLUME 2 ***

Produced by Sue Asscher

BOHN'S SCIENTIFIC LIBRARY.
HUMBOLDT'S PERSONAL NARRATIVE

VOLUME 2.

PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF TRAVELS TO THE EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS OF
AMERICA DURING THE YEARS 1799-1804

BY

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT AND AIME BONPLAND.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

AND EDITED BY

THOMASINA ROSS.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOLUME 2.

LONDON.

GEORGE BELL & SONS.
1907.
LONDON: PORTUGAL ST., LINCOLN'S INN.
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
BOMBAY: A.H. WHEELER AND CO.

***

A tablon, equal to 1849 square toises, contains nearly an acre and one-
fifth: a legal acre has 1344 square toises, and 1.95 legal acre is equal to one
hectare.

A torta weighs three quarters of a pound, and three tortas cost generally
in the province of Caracas one silver rial, or one-eighth of a piastre.

It is sufficient to mention, that the cubic foot contains 2,985,984 cubic
lines.

Foot (old measure of France) about five feet three inches English
measure.

VOLUME 2.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER 2.16.

LAKE OF TACARIGUA.—HOT SPRINGS OF MARIARA.—TOWN OF NUEVA VALENCIA
DEL REY.—DESCENT TOWARDS THE COASTS OF PORTO CABELLO.

CHAPTER 2.17.

MOUNTAINS WHICH SEPARATE THE VALLEYS OF ARAGUA FROM THE LLANOS OF
CARACAS.—VILLA DE CURA.—PARAPARA.—LLANOS OR STEPPES.—CALABOZO.

CHAPTER 2.18.

SAN FERNANDO DE APURE.—INTERTWININGS AND BIFURCATIONS OF THE
RIVERS APURE AND ARAUCA.—NAVIGATION ON THE RIO APURE.

CHAPTER 2.19.

JUNCTION OF THE APURE AND THE ORINOCO.—MOUNTAINS OF ENCARAMADA.—
URUANA.—BARAGUAN.—CARICHANA.—MOUTH OF THE META.—ISLAND OF
PANUMANA.

CHAPTER 2.20.

THE MOUTH OF THE RIO ANAVENI.—PEAK OF UNIANA.—MISSION OF ATURES.—
CATARACT, OR RAUDAL OF MAPARA.—ISLETS OF SURUPAMANA AND UIRAPURI.

CHAPTER 2.21.

RAUDAL OF GARCITA.—MAYPURES.—CATARACTS OF QUITUNA.—MOUTH OF THE
VICHADA AND THE ZAMA.—ROCK OF ARICAGUA.—SIQUITA.

CHAPTER 2.22.

SAN FERNANDO DE ATABAPO.—SAN BALTHASAR.—THE RIVERS TEMI AND
TUAMINI.—JAVITA.—PORTAGE FROM THE TUAMINI TO THE RIO NEGRO.

CHAPTER 2.23.

THE RIO NEGRO.—BOUNDARIES OF BRAZIL.—THE CASSIQUIARE.—BIFURCATION
OF THE ORINOCO.

CHAPTER 2.24.

THE UPPER ORINOCO, FROM THE ESMERALDA TO THE CONFLUENCE OF THE
GUAVIARE.—SECOND PASSAGE ACROSS THE CATARACTS OF ATURES AND
MAYPURES.—THE LOWER ORINOCO, BETWEEN THE MOUTH OF THE RIO APURE,
AND ANGOSTURA THE CAPITAL OF SPANISH GUIANA.

***

PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY TO THE EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS OF THE
NEW CONTINENT.

VOLUME 2.

CHAPTER 2.16.

LAKE OF TACARIGUA. HOT SPRINGS OF MARIARA. TOWN OF NUEVA VALENCIA
DEL REY. DESCENT TOWARDS THE COASTS OF PORTO CABELLO.

The valleys of Aragua form a narrow basin between granitic and
calcareous mountains of unequal height. On the north, they are separated by
the Sierra Mariara from the sea-coast; and towards the south, the chain of
Guacimo and Yusma serves them as a rampart against the heated air of the
steppes. Groups of hills, high enough to determine the course of the waters,
close this basin on the east and west like transverse dykes. We find these
hills between the Tuy and La Victoria, as well as on the road from Valencia
to Nirgua, and at the mountains of Torito.* (* The lofty mountains of Los
Teques, where the Tuy takes its source, may be looked upon as the eastern
boundary of the valleys of Aragua. The level of the ground continues, in
fact, to rise from La Victoria to the Hacienda de Tuy; but the river Tuy,
turning southward in the direction of the sierras of Guairaima and Tiara has
found an issue on the east; and it is more natural to consider as the limits of
the basin of Aragua a line drawn through the sources of the streams flowing
into the lake of Valencia. The charts and sections I have traced of the road
from Caracas to Nueva Valencia, and from Porto Cabello to Villa de Cura,
exhibit the whole of these geological relations.) From this extraordinary
configuration of the land, the little rivers of the valleys of Aragua form a
peculiar system, and direct their course towards a basin closed on all sides.
These rivers do not bear their waters to the ocean; they are collected in a
lake; and subject to the peculiar influence of evaporation, they lose
themselves, if we may use the expression, in the atmosphere. On the
existence of rivers and lakes, the fertility of the soil and the produce of
cultivation in these valleys depend. The aspect of the spot, and the
experience of half a century, have proved that the level of the waters is not
invariable; the waste by evaporation, and the increase from the waters
running into the lake, do not uninterruptedly balance each other. The lake
being elevated one thousand feet above the neighbouring steppes of
Calabozo, and one thousand three hundred and thirty-two feet above the
level of the ocean, it has been suspected that there are subterranean

communications and filtrations. The appearance of new islands, and the
gradual retreat of the waters, have led to the belief that the lake may
perhaps, in time, become entirely dry. An assemblage of physical
circumstances so remarkable was well fitted to fix my attention on those
valleys where the wild beauty of nature is embellished by agricultural
industry, and the arts of rising civilization.

The lake of Valencia, called Tacarigua by the Indians, exceeds in
magnitude the lake of Neufchatel in Switzerland; but its general form has
more resemblance to the lake of Geneva, which is nearly at the same height
above the level of the sea. As the slope of the ground in the valleys of
Aragua tends towards the south and the west, that part of the basin still
covered with water is the nearest to the southern chain of the mountains of
Guigue, of Yusma, and of Guacimo, which stretch towards the high
savannahs of Ocumare. The opposite banks of the lake of Valencia display a
singular contrast; those on the south are desert, and almost uninhabited, and
a screen of high mountains gives them a gloomy and monotonous aspect.
The northern shore on the contrary, is cheerful, pastoral, and decked with
the rich cultivation of the sugar-cane, coffee-tree, and cotton. Paths
bordered with cestrums, azedaracs, and other shrubs always in flower, cross
the plain, and join the scattered farms. Every house is surrounded by
clumps of trees. The ceiba with its large yellow flowers* (* Carnes
tollendas, Bombax hibiscifolius.) gives a peculiar character to the
landscape, mingling its branches with those of the purple erythrina. This
mixture of vivid vegetable colours contrasts finely with the uniform tint of
an unclouded sky. In the season of drought, where the burning soil is
covered with an undulating vapour, artificial irrigations preserve verdure
and promote fertility. Here and there the granite rock pierces through the
cultivated ground. Enormous stony masses rise abruptly in the midst of the
valley. Bare and forked, they nourish a few succulent plants, which prepare
mould for future ages. Often on the summit of these lonely hills may be

seen a fig-tree or a clusia with fleshy leaves, which has fixed its roots in the
rock, and towers over the landscape. With their dead and withered branches,
these trees look like signals erected on a steep cliff. The form of these
mounts unfolds the secret of their ancient origin; for when the whole of this
valley was filled with water, and the waves beat at the foot of the peaks of
Mariara (the Devil's Nook* (* El Rincon del Diablo.)) and the chain of the
coast, these rocky hills were shoals or islets.

These features of a rich landscape, these contrasts between the two banks
of the lake of Valencia, often reminded me of the Pays de Vaud, where the
soil, everywhere cultivated, and everywhere fertile, offers the husbandman,
the shepherd, and the vine-dresser, the secure fruit of their labours, while,
on the opposite side, Chablais presents only a mountainous and half-desert
country. In these distant climes surrounded by exotic productions, I loved to
recall to mind the enchanting descriptions with which the aspect of the
Leman lake and the rocks of La Meillerie inspired a great writer. Now,
while in the centre of civilized Europe, I endeavour in my turn to paint the
scenes of the New World, I do not imagine I present the reader with clearer
images, or more precise ideas, by comparing our landscapes with those of
the equinoctial regions. It cannot be too often repeated that nature, in every
zone, whether wild or cultivated, smiling or majestic, has an individual
character. The impressions which she excites are infinitely varied, like the
emotions produced by works of genius, according to the age in which they
were conceived, and the diversity of language from which they in part
derive their charm. We must limit our comparisons merely to dimensions
and external form. We may institute a parallel between the colossal summit
of Mont Blanc and the Himalaya Mountains; the cascades of the Pyrenees
and those of the Cordilleras: but these comparisons, useful with respect to
science, fail to convey an idea of the characteristics of nature in the
temperate and torrid zones. On the banks of a lake, in a vast forest, at the
foot of summits covered with eternal snow, it is not the mere magnitude of

the objects which excites our admiration. That which speaks to the soul,
which causes such profound and varied emotions, escapes our
measurements as it does the forms of language. Those who feel powerfully
the charms of nature cannot venture on comparing one with another, scenes
totally different in character.

But it is not alone the picturesque beauties of the lake of Valencia that
have given celebrity to its banks. This basin presents several other
phenomena, and suggests questions, the solution of which is interesting
alike to physical science and to the well-being of the inhabitants. What are
the causes of the diminution of the waters of the lake? Is this diminution
more rapid now than in former ages? Can we presume that an equilibrium
between the waters flowing in and the waters lost will be shortly re-
established, or may we apprehend that the lake will entirely disappear?

According to astronomical observations made at La Victoria, Hacienda
de Cura, Nueva Valencia, and Guigue, the length of the lake in its present
state from Cagua to Guayos, is ten leagues, or twenty-eight thousand eight
hundred toises. Its breadth is very unequal. If we judge from the latitudes of
the mouth of the Rio Cura and the village of Guigue, it nowhere surpasses
2.3 leagues, or six thousand five hundred toises; most commonly it is but
four or five miles. The dimensions, as deduced from my observations are
much less than those hitherto adopted by the natives. It might be thought
that, to form a precise idea of the progressive diminution of the waters, it
would be sufficient to compare the present dimensions of the lake with
those attributed to it by ancient chroniclers; by Oviedo for instance, in his
History of the Province of Venezuela, published about the year 1723. This
writer in his emphatic style, assigns to "this inland sea, this monstruoso
cuerpo de la laguna de Valencia"* (* "Enormous body of the lake of
Valencia."), fourteen leagues in length and six in breadth. He affirms that at
a small distance from the shore the lead finds no bottom; and that large

floating islands cover the surface of the waters, which are constantly
agitated by the winds. No importance can be attached to estimates which,
without being founded on any measurement, are expressed in leagues
(leguas) reckoned in the colonies at three thousand, five thousand, and six
thousand six hundred and fifty varas.* (* Seamen being the first, and for a
long time the only, persons who introduced into the Spanish colonies any
precise ideas on the astronomical position and distances of places, the legua
nautica of 6650 varas, or of 2854 toises (20 in a degree), was originally
used in Mexico and throughout South America; but this legua nautica has
been gradually reduced to one-half or one-third, on account of the slowness
of travelling across steep mountains, or dry and burning plains. The
common people measure only time directly; and then, by arbitrary
hypotheses, infer from the time the space of ground travelled over. In the
course of my geographical researches, I have had frequent opportunities of
examining the real value of these leagues, by comparing the itinerary
distances between points lying under the same meridian with the difference
of latitudes.) Oviedo, who must so often have passed over the valleys of
Aragua, asserts that the town of Nueva Valencia del Rey was built in 1555,
at the distance of half a league from the lake; and that the proportion
between the length of the lake and its breadth, is as seven to three. At
present, the town of Valencia is separated from the lake by level ground of
more than two thousand seven hundred toises (which Oviedo would no
doubt have estimated as a space of a league and a half); and the length of
the basin of the lake is to its breadth as 10 to 2.3, or as 7 to 1.6. The
appearance of the soil between Valencia and Guigue, the little hills rising
abruptly in the plain east of the Cano de Cambury, some of which (el Islote
and la Isla de la Negra or Caratapona) have even preserved the name of
islands, sufficiently prove that the waters have retired considerably since
the time of Oviedo. With respect to the change in the general form of the
lake, it appears to me improbable that in the seventeenth century its breadth

was nearly the half of its length. The situation of the granite mountains of
Mariara and of Guigue, the slope of the ground which rises more rapidly
towards the north and south than towards the east and west, are alike
repugnant to this supposition.

In treating the long-discussed question of the diminution of the waters, I
conceive we must distinguish between the different periods at which the
sinking of their level has taken place. Wherever we examine the valleys of
rivers, or the basins of lakes, we see the ancient shore at great distances. No
doubt seems now to be entertained, that our rivers and lakes have
undergone immense diminutions; but many geological facts remind us also,
that these great changes in the distribution of the waters have preceded all
historical times; and that for many thousand years most lakes have attained
a permanent equilibrium between the produce of the water flowing in, and
that of evaporation and filtration. Whenever we find this equilibrium
broken, it will be well rather to examine whether the rupture be not owing
to causes merely local, and of very recent date, than to admit an
uninterrupted diminution of the water. This reasoning is conformable to the
more circumspect method of modern science. At a time when the physical
history of the world, traced by the genius of some eloquent writers,
borrowed all its charms from the fictions of imagination, the phenomenon
of which we are treating would have been adduced as a new proof of the
contrast these writers sought to establish between the two continents. To
demonstrate that America rose later than Asia and Europe from the bosom
of the waters, the lake of Tacarigua would have been described as one of
those interior basins which have not yet become dry by the effects of slow
and gradual evaporation. I have no doubt that, in very remote times, the
whole valley, from the foot of the mountains of Cocuyza to those of Torito
and Nirgua, and from La Sierra de Mariara to the chain of Guigue, of
Guacimo, and La Palma, was filled with water. Everywhere the form of the
promontories, and their steep declivities, seem to indicate the shore of an

alpine lake, similar to those of Styria and Tyrol. The same little helicites,
the same valvatae, which now live in the lake of Valencia, are found in
layers of three or four feet thick as far inland as Turmero and La Concesion
near La Victoria. These facts undoubtedly prove a retreat of the waters; but
nothing indicates that this retreat has continued from a very remote period
to our days. The valleys of Aragua are among the portions of Venezuela
most anciently peopled; and yet there is no mention in Oviedo, or any other
old chronicler, of a sensible diminution of the lake. Must we suppose, that
this phenomenon escaped their observation, at a time when the Indians far
exceeded the white population, and when the banks of the lake were less
inhabited? Within half a century, and particularly within these thirty years,
the natural desiccation of this great basin has excited general attention. We
find vast tracts of land which were formerly inundated, now dry, and
already cultivated with plantains, sugar-canes, or cotton. Wherever a hut is
erected on the bank of the lake, we see the shore receding from year to year.
We discover islands, which, in consequence of the retreat of the waters, are
just beginning to be joined to the continent, as for instance the rocky island
of Culebra, in the direction of Guigue; other islands already form
promontories, as the Morro, between Guigue and Nueva Valencia, and La
Cabrera, south-east of Mariara; others again are now rising in the islands
themselves like scattered hills. Among these last, so easily recognised at a
distance, some are only a quarter of a mile, others a league from the present
shore. I may cite as the most remarkable three granite islands, thirty or forty
toises high, on the road from the Hacienda de Cura to Aguas Calientes; and
at the western extremity of the lake, the Serrito de Don Pedro, Islote, and
Caratapona. On visiting two islands entirely surrounded by water, we found
in the midst of brushwood, on small flats (four, six, and even eight toises
height above the surface of the lake,) fine sand mixed with helicites,
anciently deposited by the waters. (Isla de Cura and Cabo Blanco. The
promontory of Cabrera has been connected with the shore ever since the

year 1750 or 1760 by a little valley, which bears the name of Portachuelo.)
In each of these islands may be perceived the most certain traces of the
gradual sinking of the waters. But still farther (and this accident is regarded
by the inhabitants as a marvellous phenomenon) in 1796 three new islands
appeared to the east of the island Caiguira, in the same direction as the
islands Burro, Otama, and Zorro. These new islands, called by the people
Los nuevos Penones, or Los Aparecidos,* (* Los Nuevos Penones, the New
Rocks. Los Aparecidos, the Unexpectedly-appeared.) form a kind of banks
with surfaces quite flat. They rose, in 1800, more than a foot above the
mean level of the water.

It has already been observed that the lake of Valencia, like the lakes of
the valley of Mexico, forms the centre of a little system of rivers, none of
which have any communication with the ocean. These rivers, most of which
deserve only the name of torrents, or brooks,* are twelve or fourteen in
number. (* The following are their names: Rios de Aragua, Turmero,
Maracay, Tapatapa, Agnes Calientes, Mariara, Cura, Guacara, Guataparo,
Valencia, Cano Grande de Cambury, etc.) The inhabitants, little acquainted
with the effects of evaporation, have long imagined that the lake has a
subterranean outlet, by which a quantity of water runs out equal to that
which flows in by the rivers. Some suppose that this outlet communicates
with grottos, supposed to be at great depth; others believe that the water
flows through an oblique channel into the basin of the ocean. These bold
hypotheses on the communication between two neighbouring basins have
presented themselves in every zone to the imagination of the ignorant, as
well as to that of the learned; for the latter, without confessing it, sometimes
repeat popular opinions in scientific language. We hear of subterranean
gulfs and outlets in the New World, as on the shores of the Caspian sea,
though the lake of Tacarigua is two hundred and twenty-two toises higher,
and the Caspian sea fifty-four toises lower, than the sea; and though it is

well known, that fluids find the same level, when they communicate by a
lateral channel.

The changes which the destruction of forests, the clearing of plains, and
the cultivation of indigo, have produced within half a century in the
quantity of water flowing in on the one hand, and on the other the
evaporation of the soil, and the dryness of the atmosphere, present causes
sufficiently powerful to explain the progressive diminution of the lake of
Valencia. I cannot concur in the opinion of M. Depons* (who visited these
countries since I was there) "that to set the mind at rest, and for the honour
of science," a subterranean issue must be admitted. (* In his Voyage a la
Terre Ferme M. Depons says, "The small extent of the surface of the lake
renders impossible the supposition that evaporation alone, however
considerable within the tropics, could remove as much water as the rivers
furnish." In the sequel, the author himself seems to abandon what he terms
"this occult case, the hypothesis of an aperture.") By felling the trees which
cover the tops and the sides of mountains, men in every climate prepare at
once two calamities for future generations; want of fuel and scarcity of
water. Trees, by the nature of their perspiration, and the radiation from their
leaves in a sky without clouds, surround themselves with an atmosphere
constantly cold and misty. They affect the copiousness of springs, not, as
was long believed, by a peculiar attraction for the vapours diffused through
the air, but because, by sheltering the soil from the direct action of the sun,
they diminish the evaporation of water produced by rain. When forests are
destroyed, as they are everywhere in America by the European planters,
with imprudent precipitancy, the springs are entirely dried up, or become
less abundant. The beds of the rivers, remaining dry during a part of the
year, are converted into torrents whenever great rains fall on the heights. As
the sward and moss disappear with the brushwood from the sides of the
mountains, the waters falling in rain are no longer impeded in their course;
and instead of slowly augmenting the level of the rivers by progressive

filtrations, they furrow, during heavy showers, the sides of the hills, bearing
down the loosened soil, and forming sudden and destructive inundations.
Hence it results, that the clearing of forests, the want of permanent springs,
and the existence of torrents, are three phenomena closely connected
together. Countries situated in opposite hemispheres, as, for example,
Lombardy bordered by the Alps, and Lower Peru inclosed between the
Pacific and the Cordillera of the Andes, afford striking proofs of the
justness of this assertion.

Till the middle of the last century, the mountains round the valleys of
Aragua were covered with forests. Great trees of the families of mimosa,
ceiba, and the fig-tree, shaded and spread coolness along the banks of the
lake. The plain, then thinly inhabited, was filled with brushwood,
interspersed with trunks of scattered trees and parasite plants, enveloped
with a thick sward, less capable of emitting radiant caloric than the soil that
is cultivated and consequently not sheltered from the rays of the sun. With
the destruction of the trees, and the increase of the cultivation of sugar,
indigo, and cotton, the springs, and all the natural supplies of the lake of
Valencia, have diminished from year to year. It is difficult to form a just
idea of the enormous quantity of evaporation which takes place under the
torrid zone, in a valley surrounded with steep declivities, where a regular
breeze and descending currents of air are felt towards evening, and the
bottom of which is flat, and looks as if levelled by the waters. It has been
remarked, that the heat which prevails throughout the year at Cura,
Guacara, Nueva Valencia, and on the borders of the lake, is the same as that
felt at midsummer in Naples and Sicily. The mean annual temperature of
the valleys of Aragua is nearly 25.5 degrees; my hygrometrical observations
of the month of February, taking the mean of day and night, gave 71.4
degrees of the hair hygrometer. As the words great drought and great
humidity have no determinate signification, and air that would be called
very dry in the lower regions of the tropics would be regarded as humid in

Europe, we can judge of these relations between climates only by
comparing spots situated in the same zone. Now at Cumana, where it
sometimes does not rain during a whole year, and where I had the means of
collecting a great number of hygrometric observations made at different
hours of the day and night, the mean humidity of the air is 86 degrees;
corresponding to the mean temperature of 27.7 degrees. Taking into account
the influence of the rainy months, that is to say, estimating the difference
observed in other parts of South America between the mean humidity of the
dry months and that of the whole year; an annual mean humidity is
obtained, for the valleys of Aragua, at farthest of 74 degrees, the
temperature being 25.5 degrees. In this air, so hot, and at the same time so
little humid, the quantity of water evaporated is enormous. The theory of
Dalton estimates, under the conditions just stated, for the thickness of the
sheet of water evaporated in an hour's time, 0.36 mill., or 3.8 lines in
twenty-four hours. Assuming for the temperate zone, for instance at Paris,
the mean temperature to be 10.6 degrees, and the mean humidity 82
degrees, we find, according to the same formulae, 0.10 mill., an hour, and 1
line for twenty-four hours. If we prefer substituting for the uncertainty of
these theoretical deductions the direct results of observation, we may
recollect that in Paris, and at Montmorency, the mean annual evaporation
was found by Sedileau and Cotte, to be from 32 in. 1 line to 38 in. 4 lines.
Two able engineers in the south of France, Messrs. Clausade and Pin,
found, that in subtracting the effects of filtrations, the waters of the canal of
Languedoc, and the basin of Saint Ferreol lose every year from 0.758 met.
to 0.812 met., or from 336 to 360 lines. M. de Prony found nearly similar
results in the Pontine marshes. The whole of these experiments, made in the
latitudes of 41 and 49 degrees, and at 10.5 and 16 degrees of mean
temperature, indicate a mean evaporation of one line, or one and three-
tenths a day. In the torrid zone, in the West India Islands for instance, the
effect of evaporation is three times as much, according to Le Gaux, and

double according to Cassan. At Cumana, in a place where the atmosphere is
far more loaded with humidity than in the valley of Aragua, I have often
seen evaporate during twelve hours, in the sun, 8.8 mill., in the shade 3.4
mill.; and I believe, that the annual produce of evaporation in the rivers near
Cumana is not less than one hundred and thirty inches. Experiments of this
kind are extremely delicate, but what I have stated will suffice to
demonstrate how great must be the quantity of vapour that rises from the
lake of Valencia, and from the surrounding country, the waters of which
flow into the lake. I shall have occasion elsewhere to resume this subject;
for, in a work which displays the great laws of nature in different zones, we
must endeavour to solve the problem of the mean tension of the vapours
contained in the atmosphere in different latitudes, and at different heights
above the surface of the ocean.

A great number of local circumstances cause the produce of evaporation
to vary; it changes in proportion as more or less shade covers the basin of
the waters, with their state of motion or repose, with their depth, and the
nature and colour of their bottom; but in general evaporation depends only
on three circumstances, the temperature, the tension of the vapours
contained in the atmosphere, and the resistance which the air, more or less
dense, more or less agitated, opposes to the diffusion of vapour. The
quantity of water that evaporates in a given spot, everything else being
equal, is proportionate to the difference between the quantity of vapour
which the ambient air can contain when saturated, and the quantity which it
actually contains. Hence it follows that the evaporation is not so great in the
torrid zone as might be expected from the enormous augmentation of
temperature; because, in those ardent climates, the air is habitually very
humid.

Since the increase of agricultural industry in the valleys of Aragua, the
little rivers which run into the lake of Valencia can no longer be regarded as

positive supplies during the six months succeeding December. They remain
dried up in the lower part of their course, because the planters of indigo,
coffee, and sugar-canes, have made frequent drainings (azequias), in order
to water the ground by trenches. We may observe also, that a pretty
considerable river, the Rio Pao, which rises at the entrance of the Llanos, at
the foot of the range of hills called La Galera, heretofore mingled its waters
with those of the lake, by uniting with the Cano de Cambury, on the road
from the town of Nueva Valencia to Guigue. The course of this river was
from south to north. At the end of the seventeenth century, the proprietor of
a neighbouring plantation dug at the back of the hill a new bed for the Rio
Pao. He turned the river; and, after having employed part of the water for
the irrigation of his fields, he caused the rest to flow at a venture southward,
following the declivity of the Llanos. In this new southern direction the Rio
Pao, mingled with three other rivers, the Tinaco, the Guanarito, and the
Chilua, falls into the Portuguesa, which is a branch of the Apure. It is a
remarkable phenomenon, that by a particular position of the ground, and the
lowering of the ridge of division to south-west, the Rio Pao separates itself
from the little system of interior rivers to which it originally belonged, and
for a century past has communicated, through the channel of the Apure and
the Orinoco, with the ocean. What has been here effected on a small scale
by the hand of man, nature often performs, either by progressively elevating
the level of the soil, or by those falls of the ground occasioned by violent
earthquakes. It is probable, that in the lapse of ages, several rivers of
Soudan, and of New Holland, which are now lost in the sands, or in inland
basins, will open for themselves a course to the shores of the ocean. We
cannot at least doubt, that in both continents there are systems of interior
rivers, which may be considered as not entirely developed; and which
communicate with each other, either in the time of great risings, or by
permanent bifurcations.

The Rio Pao has scooped itself out a bed so deep and broad, that in the
season of rains, when the Cano Grande de Cambury inundates all the land
to the north-west of Guigue, the waters of this Cano, and those of the lake
of Valencia, flow back into the Rio Pao itself; so that this river, instead of
adding water to the lake, tends rather to carry it away. We see something
similar in North America, where geographers have represented on their
maps an imaginary chain of mountains, between the great lakes of Canada
and the country of the Miamis. At the time of floods, the waters flowing
into the lakes communicate with those which run into the Mississippi; and it
is practicable to proceed by boats from the sources of the river St. Mary to
the Wabash, as well as from the Chicago to the Illinois. These analogous
facts appear to me well worthy of the attention of hydrographers.

The land that surrounds the lake of Valencia being entirely flat and even,
a diminution of a few inches in the level of the water exposes to view a vast
extent of ground covered with fertile mud and organic remains.* (* This I
observed daily in the Lake of Mexico.) In proportion as the lake retires,
cultivation advances towards the new shore. These natural desiccations, so
important to agriculture, have been considerable during the last ten years, in
which America has suffered from great droughts. Instead of marking the
sinuosities of the present banks of the lake, I have advised the rich
landholders in these countries to fix columns of granite in the basin itself, in
order to observe from year to year the mean height of the waters. The
Marquis del Toro has undertaken to put this design into execution,
employing the fine granite of the Sierra de Mariara, and establishing
limnometers, on a bottom of gneiss rock, so common in the lake of
Valencia.

It is impossible to anticipate the limits, more or less narrow, to which this
basin of water will one day be confined, when an equilibrium between the
streams flowing in and the produce of evaporation and filtration, shall be

completely established. The idea very generally spread, that the lake will
soon entirely disappear, seems to me chimerical. If in consequence of great
earthquakes, or other causes equally mysterious, ten very humid years
should succeed to long droughts; if the mountains should again become
clothed with forests, and great trees overshadow the shore and the plains of
Aragua, we should more probably see the volume of the waters augment,
and menace that beautiful cultivation which now trenches on the basin of
the lake.

While some of the cultivators of the valleys of Aragua fear the total
disappearance of the lake, and others its return to the banks it has deserted,
we hear the question gravely discussed at Caracas, whether it would not be
advisable, in order to give greater extent to agriculture, to conduct the
waters of the lake into the Llanos, by digging a canal towards the Rio Pao.
The possibility* of this enterprise cannot be denied, particularly by having
recourse to tunnels, or subterranean canals. (The dividing ridge, namely,
that which divides the waters between the valleys of Aragua and the Llanos,
lowers so much towards the west of Guigue, as we have already observed,
that there are ravines which conduct the waters of the Cano de Cambury, the
Rio Valencia, and the Guataparo, in the time of floods, to the Rio Pao; but it
would be easier to open a navigable canal from the lake of Valencia to the
Orinoco, by the Pao, the Portuguesa, and the Apure, than to dig a draining
canal level with the bottom of the lake. This bottom, according to the
sounding, and my barometric measurements, is 40 toises less than 222, or
182 above the surface of the ocean. On the road from Guigue to the Llanos,
by the table-land of La Villa de Cura, I found, to the south of the dividing
ridge, and on its southern declivity, no point of level corresponding to the
182 toises, except near San Juan. The absolute height of this village is 194
toises. But, I repeat that, farther towards the west, in the country between
the Cano de Cambury and the sources of the Rio Pao, which I was not able
to visit, the point of level of the bottom of the lake is much further north.)

The progressive retreat of the waters has given birth to the beautiful and
luxuriant plains of Maracay, Cura, Mocundo, Guigue, and Santa Cruz del
Escoval, planted with tobacco, sugar-canes, coffee, indigo, and cacao; but
how can it be doubted for a moment that the lake alone spreads fertility
over this country? If deprived of the enormous mass of vapour which the
surface of the waters sends forth daily into the atmosphere, the valleys of
Aragua would become as dry and barren as the surrounding mountains.

The mean depth of the lake is from twelve to fifteen fathoms; the deepest
parts are not, as is generally admitted, eighty, but thirty-five or forty deep.
Such is the result of soundings made with the greatest care by Don Antonio
Manzano. When we reflect on the vast depths of all the lakes of
Switzerland, which, notwithstanding their position in high valleys, almost
reach the level of the Mediterranean, it appears surprising that greater
cavities are not found at the bottom of the lake of Valencia, which is also an
Alpine lake. The deepest places are between the rocky island of Burro and
the point of Cana Fistula, and opposite the high mountains of Mariara. But
in general the southern part of the lake is deeper than the northern: nor must
we forget that, if all the shores be now low, the southern part of the basin is
the nearest to a chain of mountains with abrupt declivities; and we know
that even the sea is generally deepest where the coast is elevated, rocky, or
perpendicular.

The temperature of the lake at the surface during my abode in the valleys
of Aragua, in the month of February, was constantly from 23 to 23.7
degrees, consequently a little below the mean temperature of the air. This
may be from the effect of evaporation, which carries off caloric from the air
and the water; or because a great mass of water does not follow with an
equal rapidity the changes in the temperature of the atmosphere, and the
lake receives streams which rise from several cold springs in the
neighbouring mountains. I have to regret that, notwithstanding its small

depth, I could not determine the temperature of the water at thirty or forty
fathoms. I was not provided with the thermometrical sounding apparatus
which I had used in the Alpine lakes of Salzburg, and in the Caribbean Sea.
The experiments of Saussure prove that, on both sides of the Alps, the lakes
which are from one hundred and ninety to two hundred and seventy-four
toises of absolute elevation* (* This is the difference between the absolute
elevations of the lakes of Geneva and Thun.) have, in the middle of winter,
at nine hundred, at six hundred, and sometimes even at one hundred and
fifty feet of depth, a uniform temperature from 4.3 to 6 degrees: but these
experiments have not yet been repeated in lakes situated under the torrid
zone. The strata of cold water in Switzerland are of an enormous thickness.
They have been found so near the surface in the lakes of Geneva and
Bienne, that the decrement of heat in the water was one centesimal degree
for ten or fifteen feet; that is to say, eight times more rapid than in the
ocean, and forty-eight times more rapid than in the atmosphere. In the
temperate zone, where the heat of the atmosphere sinks to the freezing
point, and far lower, the bottom of a lake, even were it not surrounded by
glaciers and mountains covered with eternal snow, must contain particles of
water which, having during winter acquired at the surface the maximum of
their density, between 3.4 and 4.4 degrees, have consequently fallen to the
greatest depth. Other particles, the temperature of which is +0.5 degrees, far
from placing themselves below the stratum at 4 degrees, can only find their
hydrostatic equilibrium above that stratum. They will descend lower only
when their temperature is augmented 3 or 4 degrees by the contact of strata
less cold. If water in cooling continued to condense uniformly to the
freezing point, there would be found, in very deep lakes and basins having
no communication with each other (whatever the latitude of the place), a
stratum of water, the temperature of which would be nearly equal to the
maximum of refrigeration above the freezing point, which the lower regions
of the ambient atmosphere annually attain. Hence it is probable, that, in the

plains of the torrid zone, or in the valleys but little elevated, the mean heat
of which is from 25.5 to 27 degrees, the temperature of the bottom of the
lakes can never be below 21 or 22 degrees. If in the same zone the ocean
contain at depths of seven or eight hundred fathoms, water the temperature
of which is at 7 degrees, that is to say, twelve or thirteen degrees colder than
the maximum of the heat* of the equinoctial atmosphere over the sea, I
think it must be considered as a direct proof of a submarine current,
carrying the waters of the pole towards the equator. (* It is almost
superfluous to observe that I am considering here only that part of the
atmosphere lying on the ocean between 10 degrees north and 10 degrees
south latitude. Towards the northern limits of the torrid zone, in latitude 23
degrees, whither the north winds bring with an extreme rapidity the cold air
of Canada, the thermometer falls at sea as low as 16 degrees, and even
lower.) We will not here solve the delicate problem, as to the manner in
which, within the tropics and in the temperate zone, (for example, in the
Caribbean Sea and in the lakes of Switzerland,) these inferior strata of
water, cooled to 4 or 7 degrees, act upon the temperature of the stony strata
of the globe which they cover; and how these same strata, the primitive
temperature of which is, within the tropics, 27 degrees, and at the lake of
Geneva 10 degrees, react upon the half-frozen waters at the bottom of the
lakes, and of the equinoctial ocean. These questions are of the highest
importance, both with regard to the economy of animals that live habitually
at the bottom of fresh and salt waters, and to the theory of the distribution
of heat in lands surrounded by vast and deep seas.

The lake of Valencia is full of islands, which embellish the scenery by the
picturesque form of their rocks, and the beauty of the vegetation with which
they are covered: an advantage which this tropical lake possesses over those
of the Alps. The islands are fifteen in number, distributed in three groups;*
without reckoning Morro and Cabrera, which are already joined to the
shore. (* The position of these islands is as follows: northward, near the

shore, the Isla de Cura; on the south-east, Burro, Horno, Otama, Sorro,
Caiguira, Nuevos Penones, or the Aparecidos; on the north-west, Cabo
Blanco, or Isla de Aves, and Chamberg; on the south-west, Brucha and
Culebra. In the centre of the lake rise, like shoals or small detached rocks,
Vagre, Fraile, Penasco, and Pan de Azucar.) They are partly cultivated, and
extremely fertile on account of the vapours that rise from the lake. Burro,
the largest of these islands, is two miles in length, and is inhabited by some
families of mestizos, who rear goats. These simple people seldom visit the
shore of Mocundo. To them the lake appears of immense extent; they have
plantains, cassava, milk, and a little fish. A hut constructed of reeds;
hammocks woven from the cotton which the neighbouring fields produce; a
large stone on which the fire is made; the ligneous fruit of the tutuma (the
calabash) in which they draw water, constitute their domestic establishment.
An old mestizo who offered us some goat's milk had a beautiful daughter.
We learned from our guide, that solitude had rendered him as mistrustful as
he might perhaps have been made by the society of men. The day before
our arrival, some hunters had visited the island. They were overtaken by the
shades of night; and preferred sleeping in the open air to returning to
Mocundo. This news spread alarm throughout the island. The father obliged
the young girl to climb up a very lofty zamang or acacia, which grew in the
plain at some distance from the hut, while he stretched himself at the foot of
the tree, and did not permit his daughter to descend till the hunters had
departed.

The lake is in general well stocked with fish; though it furnishes only
three kinds, the flesh of which is soft and insipid, the guavina, the vagre,
and the sardina. The two last descend into the lake with the streams that
flow into it. The guavina, of which I made a drawing on the spot, is 20
inches long and 3.5 broad. It is perhaps a new species of the genus erythrina
of Gronovius. It has large silvery scales edged with green. This fish is
extremely voracious, and destroys other kinds. The fishermen assured us

that a small crocodile, the bava,* which often approached us when we were
bathing, contributes also to the destruction of the fish. (* The bava, or
bavilla, is very common at Bordones, near Cumana. See volume 1. The
name of bava, baveuse, has misled M. Depons; he takes this reptile for a
fish of our seas, the Blennius pholis. Voyage a la Terre Ferme. The Blennius
pholis, smooth blenny, is called by the French baveuse (slaverer), in
Spanish, baba.) We never could succeed in procuring this reptile so as to
examine it closely: it generally attains only three or four feet in length. It is
said to be very harmless; its habits however, as well as its form, much
resemble those of the alligator (Crocodilus acutus). It swims in such a
manner as to show only the point of its snout, and the extremity of its tail;
and places itself at mid-day on the bare beach. It is certainly neither a
monitor (the real monitors living only in the old continent,) nor the
sauvegarde of Seba (Lacerta teguixin,) which dives and does not swim. It is
somewhat remarkable that the lake of Valencia, and the whole system of
small rivers flowing into it, have no large alligators, though this dangerous
animal abounds a few leagues off in the streams which flow either into the
Apure or the Orinoco, or immediately into the Caribbean Sea between Porto
Cabello and La Guayra.

In the islands that rise like bastions in the midst of the waters, and
wherever the rocky bottom of the lake is visible, I recognised a uniform
direction in the strata of gneiss. This direction is nearly that of the chains of
mountains on the north and south of the lake. In the hills of Cabo Blanco
there are found among the gneiss, angular masses of opaque quartz, slightly
translucid on the edges, and varying from grey to deep black. This quartz
passes sometimes into hornstein, and sometimes into kieselschiefer
(schistose jasper). I do not think it constitutes a vein. The waters of the
lake* decompose the gneiss by erosion in a very extraordinary manner. (*
The water of the lake is not salt, as is asserted at Caracas. It may be drunk
without being filtered. On evaporation it leaves a very small residuum of

carbonate of lime, and perhaps a little nitrate of potash. It is surprising that
an inland lake should not be richer in alkaline and earthy salts, acquired
from the neighbouring soils. I have found parts of it porous, almost cellular,
and split in the form of cauliflowers, fixed on gneiss perfectly compact.
Perhaps the action ceases with the movement of the waves, and the alternate
contact of air and water.

The island of Chamberg is remarkable for its height. It is a rock of gneiss,
with two summits in the form of a saddle, and raised two hundred feet
above the surface of the water. The slope of this rock is barren, and affords
only nourishment for a few plants of clusia with large white flowers. But
the view of the lake and of the richly cultivated neighbouring valleys is
beautiful, and their aspect is wonderful after sunset, when thousands of
aquatic birds, herons, flamingoes, and wild ducks cross the lake to roost in
the islands, and the broad zone of mountains which surrounds the horizon is
covered with fire. The inhabitants, as we have already mentioned, burn the
meadows in order to produce fresher and finer grass. Gramineous plants
abound, especially at the summit of the chain; and those vast conflagrations
extend sometimes the length of a thousand toises, and appear like streams
of lava overflowing the ridge of the mountains. When reposing on the banks
of the lake to enjoy the soft freshness of the air in one of those beautiful
evenings peculiar to the tropics, it is delightful to contemplate in the waves
as they beat the shore, the reflection of the red fires that illumine the
horizon.

Among the plants which grow on the rocky islands of the lake of
Valencia, many have been believed to be peculiar to those spots, because till
now they have not been discovered elsewhere. Such are the papaw-trees of
the lake; and the tomato* of the island of Cura. (* The tomatoes are
cultivated, as well as the papaw-tree of the lake, in the Botanical Garden of
Berlin, to which I had sent some seeds.) The latter differs from our Solanum

lycopersicum; the fruit is round and small, but has a fine flavour; it is now
cultivated at La Victoria, at Nueva Valencia, and everywhere in the valleys
of Aragua. The papaw-tree of the lake (papaya de la laguna) abounds also in
the island of Cura and at Cabo Blanco; its trunk shoots higher than that of
the common papaw (Carica papaya), but its fruit is only half as large,
perfectly spherical, without projecting ribs, and four or five inches in
diameter. When cut open it is found quite filled with seeds, and without
those hollow places which occur constantly in the common papaw. The
taste of this fruit, of which I have often eaten, is extremely sweet.* (* The
people of the country attribute to it an astringent quality, and call it
tapaculo.) I know not whether it be a variety of the Carica microcarpa,
described by Jacquin.

The environs of the lake are insalubrious only in times of great drought,
when the waters in their retreat leave a muddy sediment exposed to the rays
of the sun. The banks, shaded by tufts of Coccoloba barbadensis, and
decorated with fine liliaceous plants,* (* Pancratium undulatum, Amaryllis
nervosa.) remind us, by the appearance of the aquatic vegetation, of the
marshy shores of our lakes in Europe. We find there, pondweed
(potamogeton), chara, and cats'-tail three feet high, which it is difficult not
to confound with the Typha angustifolia of our marshes. It is only after a
careful examination, that we recognise each of these plants for distinct
species,* (* Potamogeton tenuifolium, Chara compressa, Typha tenuifolia.)
peculiar to the new continent. How many plants of the straits of Magellan,
of Chile, and the Cordilleras of Quito have formerly been confounded with
the productions of the northern temperate zone, owing to their analogy in
form and appearance.

The inhabitants of the valleys of Aragua often inquire why the southern
shore of the lake, particularly the south-west part towards los Aguacotis, is
generally more shaded, and exhibits fresher verdure than the northern side.

We saw, in the month of February, many trees stripped of their foliage, near
the Hacienda de Cura, at Mocundo, and at Guacara; while to the south-east
of Valencia everything presaged the approach of the rains. I believe that in
the early part of the year, when the sun has southern declination, the hills
around Valencia, Guacara, and Cura are scorched by the heat of the solar
rays, while the southern shore receives, along with the breeze when it enters
the valley by the Abra de Porto Cabello, an atmosphere which has crossed
the lake, and is loaded with aqueous vapour. On this southern shore, near
Guaruto, are situated the finest plantations of tobacco in the whole
province.

Among the rivers flowing into the lake of Valencia some owe their origin
to thermal springs, and deserve particular attention. These springs gush out
at three points of the granitic Cordillera of the coast; near Onoto, between
Turmero and Maracay; near Mariara, north-east of the Hacienda de Cura;
and near Las Trincheras, on the road from Nueva Valencia to Porto Cabello.
I could examine with care only the physical and geological relations of the
thermal waters of Mariara and Las Trincheras. In going up the small river
Cura towards its source, the mountains of Mariara are seen advancing into
the plain in the form of a vast amphitheatre, composed of perpendicular
rocks, crowned by peaks with rugged summits. The central point of the
amphitheatre bears the strange name of the Devil's Nook (Rincon del
Diablo). The range stretching to the east is called El Chaparro; that to the
west, Las Viruelas. These ruin-like rocks command the plain; they are
composed of a coarse-grained granite, nearly porphyritic, the yellowish
white feldspar crystals of which are more than an inch and a half long. Mica
is rare in them, and is of a fine silvery lustre. Nothing can be more
picturesque and solemn than the aspect of this group of mountains, half
covered with vegetation. The Peak of Calavera, which unites the Rincon del
Diablo to the Chaparro, is visible from afar. In it the granite is separated by
perpendicular fissures into prismatic masses. It would seem as if the

primitive rock were crowned with columns of basalt. In the rainy season, a
considerable sheet of water rushes down like a cascade from these cliffs.
The mountains connected on the east with the Rincon del Diablo, are much
less lofty, and contain, like the promontory of La Cabrera, and the little
detached hills in the plain, gneiss and mica-slate, including garnets.

In these lower mountains, two or three miles north-east of Mariara, we
find the ravine of hot waters called Quebrada de Aguas Calientes. This
ravine, running north-west 75 degrees, contains several small basins. Of
these the two uppermost, which have no communication with each other,
are only eight inches in diameter; the three lower, from two to three feet.
Their depth varies from three to fifteen inches. The temperature of these
different funnels (pozos) is from 56 to 59 degrees; and what is remarkable,
the lower funnels are hotter than the upper, though the difference of the
level is only seven or eight inches. The hot waters, collected together, form
a little rivulet, called the Rio de Aguas Calientes, which, thirty feet lower,
has a temperature of only 48 degrees. In seasons of great drought, the time
at which we visited the ravine, the whole body of the thermal waters forms
a section of only twenty-six square inches. This is considerably augmented
in the rainy season; the rivulet is then transformed into a torrent, and its heat
diminishes for it appears that the hot springs themselves are subject only to
imperceptible variations. All these springs are slightly impregnated with
sulphuretted hydrogen gas. The fetid smell, peculiar to this gas, can be
perceived only by approaching very near the springs. In one of these wells
only, the temperature of which is 56.2 degrees, bubbles of air are evolved at
nearly regular intervals of two or three minutes. I observed that these
bubbles constantly rose from the same points, which are four in number;
and that it was not possible to change the places from which the gas is
emitted, by stirring the bottom of the basin with a stick. These places
correspond no doubt to holes or fissures on the gneiss; and indeed when the
bubbles rise from one of the apertures, the emission of gas follows instantly

from the other three. I could not succeed in inflaming the small quantities of
gas that rise above the thermal waters, or those I collected in a glass phial
held over the springs, an operation that excited in me a nausea, caused less
by the smell of the gas, than by the excessive heat prevailing in this ravine.
Is this sulphuretted hydrogen mixed with a great proportion of carbonic acid
or atmospheric air? I am doubtful of the first of these mixtures, though so
common in thermal waters; for example at Aix la Chapelle, Enghien, and
Bareges. The gas collected in the tube of Fontana's eudiometer had been
shaken for a long time with water. The small basins are covered with a light
film of sulphur, deposited by the sulphuretted hydrogen in its slow
combustion in contact with the atmospheric oxygen. A few plants near the
springs were encrusted with sulphur. This deposit is scarcely visible when
the water of Mariara is suffered to cool in an open vessel; no doubt because
the quantity of disengaged gas is very small, and is not renewed. The water,
when cold, gives no precipitate with a solution of nitrate of copper; it is
destitute of flavour, and very drinkable. If it contain any saline substances,
for example, the sulphates of soda or magnesia, their quantities must be
very insignificant. Being almost destitute of chemical tests,* (* A small
case, containing acetate of lead, nitrate of silver, alcohol, prussiate of
potash, etc., had been left by mistake at Cumana. I evaporated some of the
water of Mariara, and it yielded only a very small residuum, which,
digested with nitric acid, appeared to contain only a little silica and
extractive vegetable matter.) we contented ourselves with filling at the
spring two bottles, which were sent, along with the nourishing milk of the
tree called palo de vaca, to MM. Fourcroy and Vauquelin, by the way of
Porto Cabello and the Havannah. This purity in hot waters issuing
immediately from granite mountains is in Europe, as well as in the New
Continent, a most curious phenomenon.* (* Warm springs equally pure are
found issuing from the granites of Portugal, and those of Cantal. In Italy,
the Pisciarelli of the lake Agnano have a temperature equal to 93 degrees.

Are these pure waters produced by condensed vapours?) How can we
explain the origin of the sulphuretted hydrogen? It cannot proceed from the
decomposition of sulphurets of iron, or pyritic strata. Is it owing to
sulphurets of calcium, of magnesium, or other earthy metalloids, contained
in the interior of our planet, under its rocky and oxidated crust?

In the ravine of the hot waters of Mariara, amidst little funnels, the
temperature of which rises from 56 to 59 degrees, two species of aquatic
plants vegetate; the one is membranaceous, and contains bubbles of air; the
other has parallel fibres. The first much resembles the Ulva labyrinthiformis
of Vandelli, which the thermal waters of Europe furnish. At the island of
Amsterdam, tufts of lycopodium and marchantia have been seen in places
where the heat of the soil was far greater: such is the effect of an habitual
stimulus on the organs of plants. The waters of Mariara contain no aquatic
insects. Frogs are found in them, which, being probably chased by serpents,
have leaped into the funnels, and there perished.

South of the ravine, in the plain extending towards the shore of the lake,
another sulphureous spring gushes out, less hot and less impregnated with
gas. The crevice whence this water issues is six toises higher than the funnel
just described. The thermometer did not rise in the crevice above 42
degrees. The water is collected in a basin surrounded by large trees; it is
nearly circular, from fifteen to eighteen feet diameter, and three feet deep.
The slaves throw themselves into this bath at the end of the day, when
covered with dust, after having worked in the neighbouring fields of indigo
and sugar-cane. Though the water of this bath (bano) is habitually from 12
to 14 degrees hotter than the air, the negroes call it refreshing; because in
the torrid zone this term is used for whatever restores strength, calms the
irritation of the nerves, or causes a feeling of comfort. We ourselves
experienced the salutary effects of the bath. Having slung our hammocks on
the trees round the basin, we passed a whole day in this charming spot,

which abounds in plants. We found near the bano of Mariara the volador, or
gyrocarpus. The winged fruits of this large tree turn like a fly-wheel, when
they fall from the stalk. On shaking the branches of the volador, we saw the
air filled with its fruits, the simultaneous fall of which presents the most
singular spectacle. The two membranaceous and striated wings are turned
so as to meet the air, in falling, at an angle of 45 degrees. Fortunately the
fruits we gathered were at their maturity. We sent some to Europe, and they
have germinated in the gardens of Berlin, Paris, and Malmaison. The
numerous plants of the volador, now seen in hot-houses, owe their origin to
the only tree of the kind found near Mariara. The geographical distribution
of the different species of gyrocarpus, which Mr. Brown considers as one of
the laurineae, is very singular. Jacquin saw one species near Carthagena in
America.* (* The Gyrocarpus Jacquini of Gartner, or Gyrocarpus
americanus of Willdenouw.) This is the same which we met with again in
Mexico, near Zumpango, on the road from Acapulco to the capital.* (* The
natives of Mexico called it quitlacoctli. I saw some of its young leaves with
three and five lobes; the full-grown leaves are in the form of a heart, and
always with three lobes. We never met with the volador in flower.) Another
species, which grows on the mountains of Coromandel,* (* This is the
Gyrocarpus asiaticus of Willdenouw.) has been described by Roxburgh; the
third and fourth* grow in the southern hemisphere, on the coasts of
Australia. (* Gyrocarpus sphenopterus, and G. rugosus.)

After getting out of the bath, while, half-wrapped in a sheet, we were
drying ourselves in the sun, according to the custom of the country, a little
man of the mulatto race approached us. After bowing gravely, he made us a
long speech on the virtues of the waters of Mariara, adverting to the
numbers of invalids by whom they have been visited for some years past,
and to the favourable situation of the springs, between the two towns
Valencia and Caracas. He showed us his house, a little hut covered with
palm-leaves, situated in an enclosure at a small distance, on the bank of a

rivulet, communicating with the bath. He assured us that we should there
find all the conveniences of life; nails to suspend our hammocks, ox-leather
to stretch over benches made of reeds, earthern vases always filled with
cool water, and what, after the bath, would be most salutary of all, those
great lizards (iguanas), the flesh of which is known to be a refreshing
aliment. We judged from his harangue, that this good man took us for
invalids, who had come to stay near the spring. His counsels and offers of
hospitality were not altogether disinterested. He styled himself the inspector
of the waters, and the pulpero* (* Proprietor of a pulperia, or little shop
where refreshments are sold.) of the place. Accordingly all his obliging
attentions to us ceased as soon as he heard that we had come merely to
satisfy our curiosity; or as they express it in the Spanish colonies, those
lands of idleness, para ver, no mas, to see, and nothing more. The waters of
Mariara are used with success in rheumatic swellings, and affections of the
skin. As the waters are but very feebly impregnated with sulphuretted
hydrogen, it is necessary to bathe at the spot where the springs issue.
Farther on, these same waters are employed for the irrigation of fields of
indigo. A wealthy landed proprietor of Mariara, Don Domingo Tovar, had
formed the project of erecting a bathing-house, and an establishment which
would furnish visitors with better resources than lizard's flesh for food, and
leather stretched on a bench for their repose.

On the 21st of February, in the evening, we set out from the beautiful
Hacienda de Cura for Guacara and Nueva Valencia. We preferred travelling
by night, on account of the excessive heat of the day. We passed by the
hamlet of Punta Zamuro, at the foot of the high mountains of Las Viruelas.
The road is bordered with large zamang-trees, or mimosas, the trunks of
which rise to sixty feet high. Their branches, nearly horizontal, meet at
more than one hundred and fifty feet distance. I have nowhere seen a vault
of verdure more beautiful and luxuriant. The night was gloomy: the Rincon
del Diablo with its denticulated rocks appeared from time to time at a

distance, illumined by the burning of the savannahs, or wrapped in ruddy
smoke. At the spot where the bushes were thickest, our horses were
frightened by the yell of an animal that seemed to follow us closely. It was a
large jaguar, which had roamed for three years among these mountains. He
had constantly escaped the pursuits of the boldest hunters, and had carried
off horses and mules from the midst of enclosures; but, having no want of
food, had not yet attacked men. The negro who conducted us uttered wild
cries, expecting by these means to frighten the tiger; but his efforts were
ineffectual. The jaguar, like the wolf of Europe, follows travellers even
when he will not attack them; the wolf in the open fields and in unsheltered
places, the jaguar skirting the road and appearing only at intervals between
the bushes.

We passed the day on the 23rd in the house of the Marquis de Toro, at the
village of Guacara, a very considerable Indian community. An avenue of
carolineas leads from Guacara to Mocundo. It was the first time I had seen
in the open air this majestic plant, which forms one of the principal
ornaments of the extensive conservatories of Schonbrunn.* (* Every tree of
the Carolinea princeps at Schonbrunn has sprung from seeds collected from
one single tree of enormous size, near Chacao, east of Caracas.) Mocundo is
a rich plantation of sugar-canes, belonging to the family of Toro. We there
find, what is so rare in that country, a garden, artificial clumps of trees, and
on the border of the water, upon a rock of gneiss, a pavilion with a mirador,
or belvidere. The view is delightful over the western part of the lake, the
surrounding mountains, and a forest of palm-trees that separates Guacara
from the city of Nueva Valencia. The fields of sugar-cane, from the soft
verdure of the young reeds, resemble a vast meadow. Everything denotes
abundance; but it is at the price of the liberty of the cultivators. At
Mocundo, with two hundred and thirty negroes, seventy-seven tablones, or
cane-fields, are cultivated, each of which, ten thousand varas square,* (* A
tablon, equal to 1849 square toises, contains nearly an acre and one-fifth: a

legal acre has 1344 square toises, and 1.95 legal acre is equal to one
hectare.) yields a net profit of two hundred or two hundred and forty
piastres a-year. The creole cane and the cane of Otaheite* are planted in the
month of April, the first at four, the second at five feet distance. (* In the
island of Palma, where in the latitude of 29 degrees the sugar-cane is said to
be cultivated as high as 140 toises above the level of the Atlantic, the
Otaheite cane requires more heat than the Creole cane.) The cane ripens in
fourteen months. It flowers in the month of October, if the plant be
sufficiently vigorous; but the top is cut off before the panicle unfolds. In all
the monocotyledonous plants (for example, the maguey cultivated at
Mexico for extracting pulque, the wine-yielding palm-tree, and the sugar-
cane), the flowering alters the quality of the juices. The preparation of
sugar, the boiling, and the claying, are very imperfect in Terra Firma,
because it is made only for home consumption; and for wholesale, papelon
is preferred to sugar, either refined or raw. This papelon is an impure sugar,
in the form of little loaves, of a yellow-brown colour. It contains a mixture
of molasses and mucilaginous matter. The poorest man eats papelon, as in
Europe he eats cheese. It is believed to have nutritive qualities. Fermented
with water it yields the guarapo, the favourite beverage of the people. In the
province of Caracas subcarbonate of potash is used, instead of lime, to
purify the juice of the sugar-cane. The ashes of the bucare, which is the
Erythrina corallodendrum, are preferred.

The sugar-cane was introduced very late, probably towards the end of the
sixteenth century, from the West India Islands, into the valleys of Aragua. It
was known in India, in China, and in all the islands of the Pacific, from the
most remote antiquity; and it was planted at Khorassan, in Persia, as early
as the fifth century of our era, in order to obtain from it solid sugar.* (* The
Indian name for the sugar-cane is sharkara. Thence the word sugar.) The
Arabs carried this reed, so useful to the inhabitants of hot and temperate
countries, to the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1306, its cultivation was

yet unknown in Sicily; but was already common in the island of Cyprus, at
Rhodes, and in the Morea. A hundred years after it enriched Calabria,
Sicily, and the coasts of Spain. From Sicily the Infante Don Henry
transported the cane to Madeira: from Madeira it passed to the Canary
Islands, where it was entirely unknown; for the ferulae of Juba, quae
expressae liquorem fundunt potui ucundum, are euphorbias (the Tabayba
dulce), and not, as has been recently asserted,* sugar-canes. (* On the
origin of cane-sugar, in the Journal de Pharmacie 1816 page 387. The
Tabayba dulce is, according to Von Buch, the Euphorbia balsamifera, the
juice of which is neither corrosive nor bitter like that of the cardon, or
Euphorbia canariensis.) Twelve sugar-manufactories (ingenios de azucar)
were soon established in the island of Great Canary, in that of Palma, and
between Adexe, Icod, and Guarachico, in the island of Teneriffe. Negroes
were employed in this cultivation, and their descendants still inhabit the
grottos of Tiraxana, in the Great Canary. Since the sugar-cane has been
transplanted to the West Indies, and the New World has given maize to the
Canaries, the cultivation of the latter has taken the place of the cane at
Teneriffe and the Great Canary. The cane is now found only in the island of
Palma, near Argual and Tazacorte,* where it yields scarcely one thousand
quintals of sugar a year. (* "Notice sur la Culture du Sucre dans les Isles
Canariennes" by Leopold von Buch.) The sugar-cane of the Canaries, which
Aiguilon transported to St. Domingo, was there cultivated extensively as
early as 1513, or during the six or seven following years, under the auspices
of the monks of St. Jerome. Negroes were employed in this cultivation from
its commencement; and in 1519 representations were made to government,
as in our own time, that the West India Islands would be ruined and made
desert, if slaves were not conveyed thither annually from the coast of
Guinea.

For some years past the culture and preparation of sugar has been much
improved in Terra Firma; and, as the process of refining is prohibited by the

laws at Jamaica, they reckon on the fraudulent exportation of refined sugar
to the English colonies. But the consumption of the provinces of Venezuela,
in papelon, and in raw sugar employed in making chocolate and sweetmeats
(dulces) is so enormous, that the exportation has been hitherto entirely null.
The finest plantations of sugar are in the valleys of Aragua and of the Tuy,
near Pao de Zarate, between La Victoria and San Sebastian, near Guatire,
Guarenas, and Caurimare. The first canes arrived in the New World from
the Canary Islands; and even now Canarians, or Islenos, are placed at the
head of most of the great plantations, and superintend the labours of
cultivation and refining.

It is this connexion between the Canarians and the inhabitants of
Venezuela, that has given rise to the introduction of camels into those
provinces. The Marquis del Toro caused three to be brought from
Lancerote. The expense of conveyance was very considerable, owing to the
space which these animals occupy on board merchant-vessels, and the great
quantity of water they require during a long sea-voyage. A camel, bought
for thirty piastres, costs between eight and nine hundred before it reaches
the coast of Caracas. We saw four of these animals at Mocundo; three of
which had been bred in America. Two others had died of the bite of the
coral, a venomous serpent very common on the banks of the lake. These
camels have hitherto been employed only in the conveyance of the
sugarcanes to the mill. The males, stronger than the females, carry from
forty to fifty arrobas. A wealthy landholder in the province of Varinas,
encouraged by the example of the Marquis del Toro, has allotted a sum of
15,000 piastres for the purpose of bringing fourteen or fifteen camels at
once from the Canary Islands. It is presumed these beasts of burden may be
employed in the conveyance of merchandise across the burning plains of
Casanare, from the Apure and Calabozo, which in the season of drought
resemble the deserts of Africa. How advantageous it would have been had
the Conquistadores, from the beginning of the sixteenth century, peopled

America with camels, as they have peopled it with horned cattle, horses,
and mules. Wherever there are immense distances to cross in uninhabited
lands; wherever the construction of canals becomes difficult (as in the
isthmus of Panama, on the table-land of Mexico, and in the deserts that
separate the kingdom of Quito from Peru, and Peru from Chile), camels
would be of the highest importance, to facilitate inland commerce. It seems
the more surprising, that their introduction was not encouraged by the
government at the beginning of the conquest, as, long after the taking of
Grenada, camels, for which the Moors had a great predilection, were still
very common in the south of Spain. A Biscayan, Juan de Reinaga, carried
some of these animals at his own expense to Peru. Father Acosta saw them
at the foot of the Andes, about the end of the sixteenth century; but little
care being taken of them, they scarcely ever bred, and the race soon became
extinct. In those times of oppression and cruelty, which have been described
as the era of Spanish glory, the commendatories (encomenderos) let out the
Indians to travellers like beasts of burden. They were assembled by
hundreds, either to carry merchandise across the Cordilleras, or to follow
the armies in their expeditions of discovery and pillage. The Indians
endured this service more patiently, because, owing to the almost total want
of domestic animals, they had long been constrained to perform it, though
in a less inhuman manner, under the government of their own chiefs. The
introduction of camels attempted by Juan de Reinaga spread an alarm
among the encomenderos, who were, not by law, but in fact, lords of the
Indian villages. The court listened to the complaints of the encomenderos;
and in consequence America was deprived of one of the means which
would have most facilitated inland communication, and the exchange of
productions. Now, however, there is no reason why the introduction of
camels should not be attempted as a general measure. Some hundreds of
these useful animals, spread over the vast surface of America, in hot and
barren places, would in a few years have a powerful influence on the public

prosperity. Provinces separated by steppes would then appear to be brought
nearer to each other; several kinds of inland merchandize would diminish in
price on the coast; and by increasing the number of camels, above all the
species called hedjin, or the ship of the desert, a new life would be given to
the industry and commerce of the New World.

On the evening of the 22nd we continued our journey from Mocundo by
Los Guayos to the city of Nueva Valencia. We passed a little forest of palm-
trees, which resembled, by their appearance, and their leaves spread like a
fan, the Chamaerops humilis of the coast of Barbary. The trunk, however,
rises to twenty-four and sometimes thirty feet high. It is probably a new
species of the genus corypha; and is called in the country palma de
sombrero, the footstalks of the leaves being employed in weaving hats
resembling our straw hats. This grove of palm-trees, the withered foliage of
which rustles at the least breath of air—the camels feeding in the plain—the
undulating motion of the vapours on a soil scorched by the ardour of the
sun, give the landscape an African aspect. The aridity of the land augments
as the traveller approaches the town, after passing the western extremity of
the lake. It is a clayey soil, which has been levelled and abandoned by the
waters. The neighbouring hills, called Los Morros de Valencia, are
composed of white tufa, a very recent limestone formation, immediately
covering the gneiss. It is again found at Victoria, and on several other points
along the chain of the coast. The whiteness of this tufa, which reflects the
rays of the sun, contributes greatly to the excessive heat felt in this place.
Everything seems smitten with sterility; scarcely are a few plants of cacao
found on the banks of the Rio de Valencia; the rest of the plain is bare, and
destitute of vegetation. This appearance of sterility is here attributed, as it is
everywhere in the valleys of Aragua, to the cultivation of indigo; which,
according to the planters, is, of all plants, that which most exhausts (cansa)
the ground. The real physical causes of this phenomenon would be an
interesting inquiry, since, like the effects of fallowing land, and of a rotation

of crops, it is far from being sufficiently understood. I shall only observe in
general, that the complaints of the increasing sterility of cultivated land
become more frequent between the tropics, in proportion as they are near
the period of their first breaking-up. In a region almost destitute of herbs,
where every plant has a ligneous stem, and tends to raise itself as a shrub,
the virgin soil remains shaded either by great trees, or by bushes; and under
this tufted shade it preserves everywhere coolness and humidity. However
active the vegetation of the tropics may appear, the number of roots that
penetrate into the earth, is not so great in an uncultivated soil; while the
plants are nearer to each other in lands subjected to cultivation, and covered
with indigo, sugar-canes, or cassava. The trees and shrubs, loaded with
branches and leaves, draw a great part of their nourishment from the
ambient air; and the virgin soil augments its fertility by the decomposition
of the vegetable substances which progressively accumulate. It is not so in
the fields covered with indigo, or other herbaceous plants; where the rays of
the sun penetrate freely into the earth, and by the accelerated combustion of
the hydrurets of carbon and other acidifiable principles, destroy the germs
of fecundity. These effects strike the imagination of the planters the more
forcibly, as in lands newly inhabited they compare the fertility of a soil
which has been abandoned to itself during thousands of years, with the
produce of ploughed fields. The Spanish colonies on the continent, and the
great islands of Porto-Rico and Cuba, possess remarkable advantages with
respect to the produce of agriculture over the lesser West India islands. The
former, from their extent, the variety of their scenery, and their small
relative population, still bear all the characters of a new soil; while at
Barbadoes, Tobago, St. Lucia, the Virgin Islands, and the French part of St.
Domingo, it may be perceived that long cultivation has begun to exhaust the
soil. If in the valleys of Aragua, instead of abandoning the indigo grounds,
and leaving them fallow, they were covered during several years, not with
corn, but with other alimentary plants and forage; if among these plants

such as belong to different families were preferred, and which shade the soil
by their large leaves, the amelioration of the fields would be gradually
accomplished, and they would be restored to a part of their former fertility.

The city of Nueva Valencia occupies a considerable extent of ground, but
its population scarcely amounts to six or seven thousand souls. The streets
are very broad, the market place, (plaza mayor,) is of vast dimensions; and,
the houses being low, the disproportion between the population of the town,
and the space that it occupies, is still greater than at Caracas. Many of the
whites, (especially the poorest,) forsake their houses, and live the greater
part of the year in their little plantations of indigo and cotton, where they
can venture to work with their own hands; which, according to the
inveterate prejudices of that country, would be a disgrace to them in the
town.

Nueva Valencia, founded in 1555 under the government of Villacinda, by
Alonzo Diaz Moreno, is twelve years older than Caracas. Valencia was at
first only a dependency of Burburata; but this latter town is nothing now but
a place of embarkation for mules. It is regretted, and perhaps justly, that
Valencia has not become the capital of the country. Its situation in a plain,
on the banks of a lake, recalls to mind the position of Mexico. When we
reflect on the easy communication afforded by the valleys of Aragua with
the Llanos and the rivers that flow into the Orinoco; when we recognize the
possibility of opening an inland navigation, by the Rio Pao and the
Portuguesa, as far as the mouths of the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the
Amazon, it may be conceived that the capital of the vast provinces of
Venezuela would have been better placed near the fine harbour of Porto
Cabello, beneath a pure and serene sky, than near the unsheltered road of La
Guayra, in a temperate but constantly foggy valley. Near the kingdom of
New Grenada, and situate between the fertile corn-lands of La Victoria and
Barquesimeto, the city of Valencia ought to have prospered; but,

notwithstanding these advantages, it has been unable to maintain the contest
with Caracas.

Only those who have seen the myriads of ants, that infest the countries
within the torrid zone, can form an idea of the destruction and the sinking of
the ground occasioned by these insects. They abound to such a degree on
the site of Valencia, that their excavations resemble subterranean canals,
which are filled with water in the time of the rains, and become very
dangerous to the buildings. Here recourse has not been had to the
extraordinary means employed at the beginning of the sixteenth century in
the island of St. Domingo, when troops of ants ravaged the fine plains of La
Vega, and the rich possessions of the order of St. Francis. The monks, after
having in vain burnt the larvae of the ants, and had recourse to fumigations,
advised the inhabitants to choose by lot a saint, who would act as a
mediator against the plague of the ants.* (* Un abogado contra los
harmigos.) The honour of the choice fell on St. Saturnin; and the ants
disappeared as soon as the first festival of this saint was celebrated.
Incredulity has made great progress since the time of the conquest; and it
was only on the back of the Cordilleras that I found a small chapel,
destined, according to its inscription, for prayers to be addressed to Heaven
for the destruction of the termites.

Valencia affords some historical remembrances; but these, like
everything connected with the colonies, have no remote date, and recall to
mind either civil discords or sanguinary conflicts with the savages. Lopez
de Aguirre, whose crimes and adventures form some of the most dramatic
episodes of the history of the conquest, proceeded in 1561, from Peru, by
the river Amazon to the island of Margareta; and thence, by the port of
Burburata, into the valleys of Aragua. On his entrance into Valencia, which
proudly entitles itself the City of the King, he proclaimed the independence
of country, and the deposition of Philip II. The inhabitants withdrew to the

islands of the lake of Tacarigua, taking with them all the boats from the
shore, to be more secure in their retreat. In consequence of this stratagem,
Aguirre could exercise his cruelties only on his own people. From Valencia
he addressed to the king of Spain, a remarkable letter, in which he boasts
alternately of his crimes and his piety; at the same time giving advice to the
king on the government of the colonies, and the system of missions.
Surrounded by savage Indians, navigating on a great sea of fresh water, as
he calls the Amazon, he is alarmed at the heresies of Martin Luther, and the
increasing influence of schismatics in Europe.*

(* The following are some remarkable passages in the letter from
Aguirre to the king of Spain.

"King Philip, native of Spain, son of Charles the Invincible! I, Lopez de
Aguirre, thy vassal, an old Christian, of poor but noble parents, and a native
of the town of Onate in Biscay, passed over young to Peru, to labour lance
in hand. I rendered thee great services in the conquest of India. I fought for
thy glory, without demanding pay of thy officers, as is proved by the books
of thy treasury. I firmly believe, Christian King and Lord, that, very
ungrateful to me and my companions, all those who write to thee from this
land [America], deceive thee much, because thou seest things from too far
off. I recommend to thee to be more just toward the good vassals whom
thou hast in this country: for I and mine, weary of the cruelties and injustice
which thy viceroys, thy governors, and thy judges, exercise in thy name, are
resolved to obey thee no more. We regard ourselves no longer as Spaniards.
We wage a cruel war against thee, because we will not endure the
oppression of thy ministers; who, to give places to their nephews and their
children, dispose of our lives, our reputation, and our fortune. I am lame in
the left foot from two shots of an arquebuss, which I received in the valley
of Coquimbo, fighting under the orders of thy marshal, Alonzo de Alvarado,
against Francis Hernandez Giron, then a rebel, as I am at present, and shall

be always; for since thy viceroy, the Marquis de Canete, a cowardly,
ambitious, and effeminate man, has hanged our most valiant warriors, I care
no more for thy pardon than for the books of Martin Luther. It is not well in
thee, King of Spain, to be ungrateful toward thy vassals; for it was whilst
thy father, the emperor Charles, remained quietly in Castile, that they
procured for thee so many kingdoms and vast countries. Remember, King
Philip, that thou hast no right to draw revenues from these provinces, the
conquest of which has been without danger to thee, but inasmuch as thou
recompensest those who have rendered thee such great services. I am
certain that few kings go to heaven. Therefore we regard ourselves as very
happy to be here in the Indies, preserving in all their purity the
commandments of God, and of the Roman Church; and we intend, though
sinners during life, to become one day martyrs to the glory of God. On
going out of the river Amazon, we landed in an island called La Margareta.
We there received news from Spain of the great faction and machination
(maquina) of the Lutherans. This news alarmed us extremely; we found
among us one of that faction; his name was Monteverde. I had him cut to
pieces, as was just: for, believe me, Senor, wherever I am, people live
according to the law. But the corruption of morals among the monks is so
great in this land that it is necessary to chastise it severely. There is not an
ecclesiastic here who does not think himself higher than the governor of a
province. I beg of thee, great King, not to believe what the monks tell thee
down yonder in Spain. They are always talking of the sacrifices they make,
as well as of the hard and bitter life they are forced to lead in America:
while they occupy the richest lands, and the Indians hunt and fish for them
every day. If they shed tears before thy throne, it is that thou mayest send
them hither to govern provinces. Dost thou know what sort of life they lead
here? Given up to luxury, acquiring possessions, selling the sacraments,
being at once ambitious, violent, and gluttonous; such is the life they lead in

America. The faith of the Indians suffer by such bad examples. If thou dost
not change all this, O King of Spain, thy government will not be stable.

"What a misfortune that the Emperor, thy father, should have conquered
Germany at such a price, and spent, on that conquest, the money we
procured for him in these very Indies! In the year 1559 the Marquis de
Canete sent to the Amazon, Pedro de Ursua, a Navarrese, or rather a
Frenchman: we sailed on the largest rivers of Peru till we came to a gulf of
fresh water. We had already gone three hundred leagues when we killed that
bad and ambitious captain. We chose a caballero of Seville, Fernando de
Guzman, for king: and we swore fealty to him, as is done to thyself. I was
named quarter-master-general: and because I did not consent to all he
willed, he wanted to kill me. But I killed this new king, the captain of his
guards, his lieutenant-general, his chaplain, a woman, a knight of the order
of Rhodes, two ensigns, and five or six domestics of the pretended king. I
then resolved to punish thy ministers and thy auditors (counsellors of the
audiencia). I named captains and sergeants: these again wanted to kill me,
but I had them all hanged. In the midst of these adventures we navigated for
eleven months, till we reached the mouth of the river. We sailed more than
fifteen hundred leagues. God knows how we got through that great mass of
water. I advise thee, O great King, never to send Spanish fleets into that
accursed river. God preserve thee in his holy keeping."

This letter was given by Aguirre to the vicar of the island of Margareta,
Pedro de Contreras, in order to be transmitted to King Philip II. Fray Pedro
Simon, Provincial of the Franciscans in New Grenada, saw several
manuscript copies of it both in America and in Spain. It was printed, for the
first time, in 1723, in the History of the Province of Venezuela, by Oviedo,
volume 1 page 206. Complaints no less violent, on the conduct of the
monks of the 16th century, were addressed directly to the pope by the
Milanese traveller, Girolamo Benzoni.)

Lopez de Aguirre, or as he is still called by the common people, the
Tyrant, was killed at Barquesimeto, after having been abandoned by his
own men. At the moment when he fell, he plunged a dagger into the bosom
of his only daughter, "that she might not have to blush before the Spaniards
at the name of the daughter of a traitor." The soul of the tyrant (such is the
belief of the natives) wanders in the savannahs, like a flame that flies the
approach of men.* (* See volume 1 chapter 1.4.)

The second historical event connected with the name of Valencia is the
great incursion made by the Caribs of the Orinoco in 1578 and 1580. That
cannibal horde went up the banks of the Guarico, crossing the plains or
llanos. They were happily repulsed by the valour of Garcia Gonzales, one of
the captains whose names are still most revered in those provinces. It is
gratifying to recollect, that the descendants of those very Caribs now live in
the missions as peaceable husbandmen, and that no savage nation of Guiana
dares to cross the plains which separate the region of the forests from that
of cultivated land. The Cordillera of the coast is intersected by several
ravines, very uniformly directed from south-east to north-west. This
phenomenon is general from the Quebrada of Tocume, between Petares and
Caracas, as far as Porto Cabello. It would seem as if the impulsion had
everywhere come from the south-east; and this fact is the more striking, as
the strata of gneiss and mica-slate in the Cordillera of the coast are
generally directed from the south-west to the north-east. Most of these
ravines penetrate into the mountains at their southern declivity, without
crossing them entirely. But there is an opening (abra) on the meridian of
Nueva Valencia, which leads towards the coast, and by which a cooling sea-
breeze penetrates every evening into the valleys of Aragua. This breeze
rises regularly two or three hours after sunset.

By this abra, the farm of Barbula, and an eastern branch of the ravine, a
new road is being constructed from Valencia to Porto Cabello. It will be so

short, that it will require only four hours to reach the port; and the traveller
will be able to go and return in the same day from the coast to the valleys of
Aragua. In order to examine this road, we set out on the 26th of February in
the evening for the farm of Barbula.

On the morning of the 27th we visited the hot springs of La Trinchera,
three leagues from Valencia. The ravine is very large, and the descent
almost continual from the banks of the lake to the sea-coast. La Trinchera
takes its name from some fortifications of earth, thrown up in 1677 by the
French buccaneers, who sacked the town of Valencia. The hot springs (and
this is a remarkable geological fact,) do not issue on the south side of the
mountains, like those of Mariara, Onoto, and the Brigantine; but they issue
from the chain itself almost at its northern declivity. They are much more
abundant than any we had till then seen, forming a rivulet which, in times
of the greatest drought, is two feet deep and eighteen wide. The temperature
of the water, measured with great care, was 90.3 degrees of the centigrade
thermometer. Next to the springs of Urijino, in Japan, which are asserted to
be pure water at 100 degrees of temperature, the waters of the Trinchera of
Porto Cabello appear to be the hottest in the world. We breakfasted near the
spring; eggs plunged into the water were boiled in less than four minutes.
These waters, strongly charged with sulphuretted hydrogen, gush out from
the back of a hill rising one hundred and fifty feet above the bottom of the
ravine, and tending from south-south-east to north-north-west. The rock
from which the springs gush, is a real coarse-grained granite, resembling
that of the Rincon del Diablo, in the mountains of Mariara. Wherever the
waters evaporate in the air, they form sediments and incrustations of
carbonate of lime; possibly they traverse strata of primitive limestone, so
common in the mica-slate and gneiss of the coasts of Caracas. We were
surprised at the luxuriant vegetation that surrounds the basin; mimosas with
slender pinnate leaves, clusias, and fig-trees, have pushed their roots into
the bottom of a pool, the temperature of which is 85 degrees; and the

branches of these trees extended over the surface of the water, at two or
three inches distance. The foliage of the mimosas, though constantly
enveloped in the hot vapours, displayed the most beautiful verdure. An
arum, with a woody stem, and with large sagittate leaves, rose in the very
middle of a pool the temperature of which was 70 degrees. Plants of the
same species vegetate in other parts of those mountains at the brink of
torrents, the temperature of which is not 18 degrees. What is still more
singular, forty feet distant from the point whence the springs gush out at a
temperature of 90 degrees, other springs are found perfectly cold. They all
follow for some time a parallel direction; and the natives showed us that, by
digging a hole between the two rivulets, they could procure a bath of any
given temperature they pleased. It seems remarkable, that in the hottest as
well as the coldest climates, people display the same predilection for heat.
On the introduction of Christianity into Iceland, the inhabitants would be
baptized only in the hot springs of Hecla: and in the torrid zone, in the
plains, as well as on the Cordilleras, the natives flock from all parts to the
thermal waters. The sick, who come to La Trinchera to use vapour-baths,
form a sort of frame-work over the spring with branches of trees and very
slender reeds. They stretch themselves naked on this frame, which appeared
to me to possess little strength, and to be dangerous of access. The Rio de
Aguas Calientes runs towards the north-east, and becomes, near the coast, a
considerable river, swarming with great crocodiles, and contributing, by its
inundations, to the insalubrity of the shore.

We descended towards Porto Cabello, having constantly the river of hot
water on our right. The road is extremely picturesque, and the waters roll
down on the shelves of rock. We might have fancied we were gazing on the
cascades of the Reuss, that flows down Mount St. Gothard; but what a
contrast in the vigour and richness of the vegetation! The white trunks of
the cecropia rise majestically amid bignonias and melastomas. They do not
disappear till we are within a hundred toises above the level of the ocean. A

small thorny palm-tree extends also to this limit; the slender pinnate leaves
of which look as if they had been curled toward the edges. This tree is very
common in these mountains; but not having seen either its fruit or its
flowers, we are ignorant whether it be the piritu palm-tree of the Caribbees,
or the Cocos aculeata of Jacquin.

The rock on this road presents a geological phenomenon, the more
remarkable as the existence of real stratified granite has long been disputed.
Between La Trinchera and the Hato de Cambury a coarse-grained granite
appears, which, from the disposition of the spangles of mica, collected in
small groups, scarcely admits of confounding with gneiss, or with rocks of
a schistose texture. This granite, divided into ledges of two or three feet
thick, is directed 52 degrees north-east, and slopes to the north-west
regularly at an angle of from 30 or 40 degrees. The feldspar, crystallized in
prisms with four unequal sides, about an inch long, passes through every
variety of tint from a flesh-red to yellowish white. The mica, united in
hexagonal plates, is black, and sometimes green. The quartz predominates
in the mass; and is generally of a milky white. I observed neither
hornblende, black schorl, nor rutile titanite, in this granite. In some ledges
we recognised round masses, of a blackish gray, very quartzose, and almost
destitute of mica. They are from one to two inches diameter; and are found
in every zone, in all granite mountains. These are not imbedded fragments,
as at Greiffenstein in Saxony, but aggregations of particles which seem to
have been subjected to partial attractions. I could not follow the line of
junction of the gneiss and granitic formations. According to angles taken in
the valleys of Aragua, the gneiss appears to descend below the granite,
which must consequently be of a more recent formation. The appearance of
a stratified granite excited my attention the more, because, having had the
direction of the mines of Fichtelberg in Franconia for several years, I was
accustomed to see granites divided into ledges of three or four feet thick,
but little inclined, and forming masses like towers, or old ruins, at the

summit of the highest mountains.* (* At Ochsenkopf, at Rudolphstein, at
Epprechtstein, at Luxburg, and at Schneeberg. The dip of the strata of these
granites of Fichtelberg is generally only from 6 to 10 degrees, rarely (at
Schneeberg) 18 degrees. According to the dips I observed in the
neighbouring strata of gneiss and mica-slate, I should think that the granite
of Fichtelberg is very ancient, and serves as a basis for other formations; but
the strata of grunstein, and the disseminated tin-ore which it contains, may
lead us to doubt its great antiquity, from the analogy of the granites of
Saxony containing tin.)

The heat became stifling as we approached the coast. A reddish vapour
veiled the horizon. It was near sunset, and the breeze was not yet stirring.
We rested in the lonely farms known under the names of the Hato de
Cambury and the house of the Canarian (Casa del Isleno). The river of hot
water, along the banks of which we passed, became deeper. A crocodile,
more than nine feet long, lay dead on the strand. We wished to examine its
teeth, and the inside of its mouth; but having been exposed to the sun for
several weeks, it exhaled a smell so fetid that we were obliged to relinquish
our design and remount our horses. When we arrived at the level of the sea,
the road turned eastward, and crossed a barren shore a league and a half
broad, resembling that of Cumana. We there found some scattered cactuses,
a sesuvium, a few plants of Coccoloba uvifera, and along the coast some
avicennias and mangroves. We forded the Guayguaza and the Rio Estevan,
which, by their frequent overflowing, form great pools of stagnant water.
Small rocks of meandrites, madrepores, and other corals, either ramified or
with a rounded surface, rise in this vast plain, and seem to attest the recent
retreat of the sea. But these masses, which are the habitations of polypi, are
only fragments imbedded in a breccia with a calcareous cement. I say a
breccia, because we must not confound the fresh and white corallites of this
very recent littoral formation, with the corallites blended in the mass of
transition-rocks, grauwacke, and black limestone. We were astonished to

find in this uninhabited spot a large Parkinsonia aculeata loaded with
flowers. Our botanical works indicate this tree as peculiar to the New
World; but during five years we saw it only twice in a wild state, once in the
plains of the Rio Guayguaza, and once in the llanos of Cumana, thirty
leagues from the coast, near la Villa del Pao, but there was reason to believe
that this latter place had once been a conuco, or cultivated enclosure.
Everywhere else on the continent of America we saw the Parkinsonia, like
the Plumeria, only in the gardens of the Indians.

At Porto Cabello, as at La Guayra, it is disputed whether the port lies east
or west of the town, with which the communications are the most frequent.
The inhabitants believe that Porto Cabello is north-north-west of Nueva
Valencia; and my observations give a longitude of three or four minutes
more towards the west.

We were received with the utmost kindness in the house of a French
physician, M. Juliac, who had studied medicine at Montpelier. His small
house contained a collection of things the most various, but which were all
calculated to interest travellers. We found works of literature and natural
history; notes on meteorology; skins of the jaguar and of large aquatic
serpents; live animals, monkeys, armadilloes, and birds. Our host was
principal surgeon to the royal hospital of Porto Cabello, and was celebrated
in the country for his skilful treatment of the yellow fever. During a period
of seven years he had seen six or eight thousand persons enter the hospitals,
attacked by this cruel malady. He had observed the ravages that the
epidemic caused in Admiral Ariztizabal's fleet, in 1793. That fleet lost
nearly a third of its men; for the sailors were almost all unseasoned
Europeans, and held unrestrained intercourse with the shore. M. Juliac had
heretofore treated the sick as was commonly practised in Terra Firma, and
in the island, by bleeding, aperient medicines, and acid drinks. In this
treatment no attempt was made to raise the vital powers by the action of

stimulants, so that, in attempting to allay the fever, the languor and debility
were augmented. In the hospitals, where the sick were crowded, the
mortality was often thirty-three per cent among the white Creoles; and
sixty-five in a hundred among the Europeans recently disembarked. Since a
stimulant treatment, the use of opium, of benzoin, and of alcoholic
draughts, has been substituted for the old debilitating method, the mortality
has considerably diminished. It was believed to be reduced to twenty in a
hundred among Europeans, and ten among Creoles;* even when black
vomiting, and haemorrhage from the nose, ears, and gums, indicated a high
degree of exacerbation in the malady. (* I have treated in another work of
the proportions of mortality in the yellow fever. (Nouvelle Espagne volume
2 pages 777, 785, and 867.) At Cadiz the average mortality was, in 1800,
twenty per cent; at Seville, in 1801, it amounted to sixty per cent. At Vera
Cruz the mortality does not exceed twelve or fifteen per cent, when the sick
can be properly attended. In the civil hospitals of Paris the number of
deaths, one year with another, is from fourteen to eighteen per cent; but it is
asserted that a great number of patients enter the hospitals almost dying, or
at very advanced time of life.) I relate faithfully what was then given as the
general result of observation: but I think, in these numerical comparisons, it
must not be forgotten, that, notwithstanding appearances, the epidemics of
several successive years do not resemble each other; and that, in order to
decide on the use of fortifying or debilitating remedies, (if indeed this
difference exist in an absolute sense,) we must distinguish between the
various periods of the malady.

The climate of Porto Cabello is less ardent than that of La Guayra. The
breeze there is stronger, more frequent, and more regular. The houses do not
lean against rocks that absorb the rays of the sun during the day, and emit
caloric at night, and the air can circulate more freely between the coast and
the mountains of Ilaria. The causes of the insalubrity of the atmosphere
must be sought in the shores that extend to the east, as far as the eye can

reach, towards the Punta de Tucasos, near the fine port of Chichiribiche.
There are situated the salt-works; and there, at the beginning of the rainy
season, tertian fevers prevail, and easily degenerate into asthenic fevers. It
is affirmed that the mestizoes who are employed in the salt-works are more
tawny, and have a yellower skin, when they have suffered several
successive years from those fevers, which are called the malady of the
coast. The poor fishermen, who dwell on this shore, are of opinion that it is
not the inundations of the sea, and the retreat of the salt-water, which render
the lands covered with mangroves so unhealthful;* (* In the West India
Islands all the dreadful maladies which prevail during the wintry season,
have been for a long time attributed to the south winds. These winds convey
the emanations of the mouths of the Orinoco and of the small rivers of Terra
Firma toward the high latitudes.) they believe that the insalubrity of the air
is owing to the fresh water, that is, to the overflowings of the Guayguaza
and Estevan, the swell of which is so great and sudden in the months of
October and November. The banks of the Rio Estevan have been less
insalubrious since little plantations of maize and plantains have been
established; and, by raising and hardening the ground, the river has been
confined within narrower limits. A plan is formed of giving another issue to
the Rio San Estevan, and thus to render the environs of Porto Cabello more
wholesome. A canal is to lead the waters toward that part of the coast which
is opposite the island of Guayguaza.

The salt-works of Porto Cabello somewhat resemble those of the
peninsula of Araya, near Cumana. The earth, however, which they lixivate
by collecting the rain-water into small basins, contains less salt. It is
questioned here, as at Cumana, whether the ground be impregnated with
saline particles because it has been for ages covered at intervals with sea-
water evaporated by the heat of the sun, or whether the soil be
muriatiferous, as in a mine very poor in native salt. I had not leisure to
examine this plain with the same attention as the peninsula of Araya.

Besides, does not this problem reduce itself to the simple question, whether
the salt be owing to new or very ancient inundations? The labouring at the
salt-works of Porto Cabello being extremely unhealthy, the poorest men
alone engage in it. They collect the salt in little stores, and afterwards sell it
to the shopkeepers in the town.

During our abode at Porto Cabello, the current on the coast, generally
directed towards the west,* ran from west to east. This upward current
(corriente por arriba), is very frequent during two or three months of the
year, from September to November. It is believed to be owing to some
north-west winds that have blown between Jamaica and Cape St. Antony in
the island of Cuba. (* The wrecks of the Spanish ships, burnt at the island
of Trinidad, at the time of its occupation by the English in 1797, were
carried by the general or rotary current to Punta Brava, near Porto Cabello.
This general current toward the east, from the coasts of Paria to the isthmus
of Panama and the western extremity of the island of Cuba, was the subject
of a violent dispute between Don Diego Columbus, Oviedo, and the pilot
Andres, in the sixteenth century.)

The military defence of the coasts of Terra Firma rests on six points: the
castle of San Antonio at Cumana; the Morro of Nueva Barcelona; the
fortifications of La Guayra, (mounting one hundred and thirty-four guns);
Porto Cabello; fort San Carlos, (at the mouth of the lake of Maracaybo);
and Carthagena. Porto Cabello is, next to Carthagena, the most important
fortified place. The town of Porto Cabello is quite modern, and the port is
one of the finest in the world. Art has had scarcely anything to add to the
advantages which the nature of the spot presents. A neck of land stretches
first towards the north, and then towards the west. Its western extremity is
opposite to a range of islands connected by bridges, and so close together
that they might be taken for another neck of land. These islands are all
composed of a calcareous breccia of extremely recent formation, and

analagous to that on the coast of Cumana, and near the castle of Araya. It is
a conglomerate, containing fragments of madrepores and other corals
cemented by a limestone basis and grains of sand. We had already seen this
conglomerate near the Rio Guayguaza. By a singular disposition of the
ground the port resembles a basin or a little inland lake, the southern
extremity of which is filled with little islands covered with mangroves. The
opening of the port towards the west contributes much to the smoothness of
the water.* (* It is disputed at Porto Cabello whether the port takes its name
from the tranquillity of its waters, "which would not move a hair (cabello),"
or (which is more probable) derived from Antonio Cabello, one of the
fishermen with whom the smugglers of Curacoa had formed a connexion at
the period when the first hamlet was constructed on this half-desert coast.)
One vessel only can enter at a time; but the largest ships of the line can
anchor very near land to take in water. There is no other danger in entering
the harbour than the reefs of Punta Brava, opposite which a battery of eight
guns has been erected. Towards the west and south-west we see the fort,
which is a regular pentagon with five bastions, the battery of the reef, and
the fortifications that surround the ancient town, founded on an island of a
trapezoidal form. A bridge and the fortified gate of the Staccado join the old
to the new town; the latter is already larger than the former, though
considered only as its suburb. The bottom of the basin or lake which forms
the harbour of Porto Cabello, turns behind this suburb to the south-west. It
is a marshy ground filled with noisome and stagnant water. The town,
which has at present nearly nine thousand inhabitants, owes its origin to an
illicit commerce, attracted to these shores by the proximity of the town of
Burburata, which was founded in 1549. It is only since the administration of
the Biscayans, and of the company of Guipuzcoa, that Porto Cabello, which
was but a hamlet, has been converted into a well-fortified town. The vessels
of La Guayra, which is less a port than a bad open roadstead, come to Porto
Cabello to be caulked and repaired.

The real defence of the harbour consists in the low batteries on the neck
of land at Punta Brava, and on the reef; but from ignorance of this principle,
a new fort, the Mirador of Solano* has been constructed at a great expense,
on the mountains commanding the suburb towards the south. (* The
Mirador is situate eastward of the Vigia Alta, and south-east of the battery
of the salt-works and the powder-mill.) More than ten thousand mules are
annually exported from Porto Cabello. It is curious enough to see these
animals embarked; they are thrown down with ropes, and then hoisted on
board the vessels by means of a machine resembling a crane. Ranged in two
files, the mules with difficulty keep their footing during the rolling and
pitching of the ship; and in order to frighten and render them more docile, a
drum is beaten during a great part of the day and night. We may guess what
quiet a passenger enjoys, who has the courage to embark for Jamaica in a
schooner laden with mules.

We left Porto Cabello on the first of March, at sunrise. We saw with
surprise the great number of boats that were laden with fruit to be sold at
the market. It reminded me of a fine morning at Venice. The town presents
in general, on the side towards the sea, a cheerful and agreeable aspect.
Mountains covered with vegetation, and crowned with peaks called Las
Tetas de Ilaria, which, from their outline would be taken for rocks of a trap-
formation, form the background of the landscape. Near the coast all is bare,
white, and strongly illumined, while the screen of mountains is clothed with
trees of thick foliage that project their vast shadows upon the brown and
rocky ground. On going out of the town we visited an aqueduct that had
been just finished. It is five thousand varas long, and conveys the waters of
the Rio Estevan by a trench to the town. This work has cost more than thirty
thousand piastres; but its waters gush out in every street.

We returned from Porto Cabello to the valleys of Aragua, and stopped at
the Farm of Barbula, near which, a new road to Valencia is in the course of

construction. We had heard, several weeks before, of a tree, the sap of
which is a nourishing milk. It is called the cow-tree; and we were assured
that the negroes of the farm, who drink plentifully of this vegetable milk,
consider it a wholesome aliment. All the milky juices of plants being acrid,
bitter, and more or less poisonous, this account appeared to us very
extraordinary; but we found by experience during our stay at Barbula, that
the virtues of this tree had not been exaggerated. This fine tree rises like the
broad-leaved star-apple.* (* Chrysophyllum cainito.) Its oblong and pointed
leaves, rough and alternate, are marked by lateral ribs, prominent at the
lower surface, and parallel. Some of them are ten inches long. We did not
see the flower: the fruit is somewhat fleshy, and contains one and
sometimes two nuts. When incisions are made in the trunk of this tree, it
yields abundance of a glutinous milk, tolerably thick, devoid of all acridity,
and of an agreeable and balmy smell. It was offered to us in the shell of a
calabash. We drank considerable quantities of it in the evening before we
went to bed, and very early in the morning, without feeling the least
injurious effect. The viscosity of this milk alone renders it a little
disagreeable. The negroes and the free people who work in the plantations
drink it, dipping into it their bread of maize or cassava. The overseer of the
farm told us that the negroes grow sensibly fatter during the season when
the palo de vaca furnishes them with most milk. This juice, exposed to the
air, presents at its surface (perhaps in consequence of the absorption of the
atmospheric oxygen) membranes of a strongly animalized substance,
yellowish, stringy, and resembling cheese. These membranes, separated
from the rest of the more aqueous liquid, are elastic, almost like
caoutchouc; but they undergo, in time, the same phenomena of putrefaction
as gelatine. The people call the coagulum that separates by the contact of
the air, cheese. This coagulum grows sour in the space of five or six days,
as I observed in the small portions which I carried to Nueva Valencia. The
milk contained in a stopped phial, had deposited a little coagulum; and, far

from becoming fetid, it exhaled constantly a balsamic odour. The fresh juice
mixed with cold water was scarcely coagulated at all; but on the contact of
nitric acid the separation of the viscous membranes took place. We sent two
bottles of this milk to M. Fourcroy at Paris: in one it was in its natural state,
and in the other, mixed with a certain quantity of carbonate of soda. The
French consul residing in the island of St. Thomas, undertook to convey
them to him.

The extraordinary tree of which we have been speaking appears to be
peculiar to the Cordillera of the coast, particularly from Barbula to the lake
of Maracaybo. Some stocks of it exist near the village of San Mateo; and,
according to M. Bredemeyer, whose travels have so much enriched the fine
conservatories of Schonbrunn and Vienna, in the valley of Caucagua, three
days journey east of Caracas. This naturalist found, like us, that the
vegetable milk of the palo de vaco had an agreeable taste and an aromatic
smell. At Caucagua, the natives call the tree that furnishes this nourishing
juice, the milk-tree (arbol del leche). They profess to recognize, from the
thickness and colour of the foliage, the trunks that yield the most juice; as
the herdsman distinguishes, from external signs, a good milch-cow. No
botanist has hitherto known the existence of this plant. It seems, according
to M. Kunth, to belong to the sapota family. Long after my return to
Europe, I found in the Description of the East Indies by Laet, a Dutch
traveller, a passage that seems to have some relation to the cow-tree. "There
exist trees," says Laet,* "in the province of Cumana, the sap of which much
resembles curdled milk, and affords a salubrious nourishment." (* "Inter
arbores quae sponte hic passim nascuntur, memorantur a scriptoribus
Hispanis quaedam quae lacteum quemdam liquorem fundunt, qui durus
admodum evadit instar gummi, et suavem odorem de se fundit; aliae quae
liquorem quemdam edunt, instar lactis coagulati, qui in cibis ab ipsis
usurpatur sine noxa." (Among the trees growing here, it is remarked by
Spanish writers that there are some which pour out a milky juice which

soon grows solid, like gum, affording a pleasant odour; and also others that
give out a liquid which coagulates like cheese, and which they eat at meals
without any ill effects). Descriptio Indiarum Occidentalium, lib. 18.)

Amidst the great number of curious phenomena which I have observed in
the course of my travels, I confess there are few that have made so powerful
an impression on me as the aspect of the cow-tree. Whatever relates to milk
or to corn, inspires an interest which is not merely that of the physical
knowledge of things, but is connected with another order of ideas and
sentiments. We can scarcely conceive how the human race could exist
without farinaceous substances, and without that nourishing juice which the
breast of the mother contains, and which is appropriated to the long
feebleness of the infant. The amylaceous matter of corn, the object of
religious veneration among so many nations, ancient and modern, is
diffused in the seeds, and deposited in the roots of vegetables; milk, which
serves as an aliment, appears to us exclusively the produce of animal
organization. Such are the impressions we have received in our earliest
infancy: such is also the source of that astonishment created by the aspect of
the tree just described. It is not here the solemn shades of forests, the
majestic course of rivers, the mountains wrapped in eternal snow, that
excite our emotion. A few drops of vegetable juice recall to our minds all
the powerfulness and the fecundity of nature. On the barren flank of a rock
grows a tree with coriaceous and dry leaves. Its large woody roots can
scarcely penetrate into the stone. For several months of the year not a single
shower moistens its foliage. Its branches appear dead and dried; but when
the trunk is pierced there flows from it a sweet and nourishing milk. It is at
the rising of the sun that this vegetable fountain is most abundant. The
negroes and natives are then seen hastening from all quarters, furnished
with large bowls to receive the milk, which grows yellow, and thickens at
its surface. Some empty their bowls under the tree itself; others carry the
juice home to their children.

In examining the physical properties of animal and vegetable products,
science displays them as closely linked together; but it strips them of what
is marvellous, and perhaps, therefore, of a part of their charms. Nothing
appears isolated; the chemical principles that were believed to be peculiar to
animals are found in plants; a common chain links together all organic
nature.

Long before chemists had recognized small portions of wax in the pollen
of flowers, the varnish of leaves, and the whitish dust of our plums and
grapes, the inhabitants of the Andes of Quindiu made tapers with the thick
layer of wax that covers the trunk of a palm-tree.* (* Coroxylon andicola.)
It is but a few years since we discovered, in Europe, caseum, the basis of
cheese, in the emulsion of almonds; yet for ages past, in the mountains of
the coast of Venezuela, the milk of a tree, and the cheese separated from
that vegetable milk, have been considered as a salutary aliment. How are
we to account for this singular course in the development of knowledge?
How have the unlearned inhabitants of one hemisphere become cognizant
of a fact which, in the other, so long escaped the sagacity of the scientific?
It is because a small number of elements and principles differently
combined are spread through several families of plants; it is because the
genera and species of these natural families are not equally distributed in
the torrid, the frigid, and the temperate zones; it is that tribes, excited by
want, and deriving almost all their subsistence from the vegetable kingdom,
discover nutritive principles, farinaceous and alimentary substances,
wherever nature has deposited them in the sap, the bark, the roots, or the
fruits of vegetables. That amylaceous fecula which the seeds of the cereal
plants furnish in all its purity, is found united with an acrid and sometimes
even poisonous juice, in the roots of the arums, the Tacca pinnatifida, and
the Jatropha manihot. The savage of America, like the savage of the South
Sea islands, has learned to dulcify the fecula, by pressing and separating it
from its juice. In the milk of plants, and in the milky emulsions, matter

extremely nourishing, albumen, caseum, and sugar, are found mixed with
caoutchouc and with deleterious and caustic principles, such as morphine
and hydrocyanic acid.* (* Opium contains morphine, caoutchouc, etc.)
These mixtures vary not only in the different families, but also in the
species which belong to the same genus. Sometimes it is morphine or the
narcotic principle, that characterises the vegetable milk, as in some
papaverous plants; sometimes it is caoutchouc, as in the hevea and the
castilloa; sometimes albumen and caseum, as in the cow-tree.

The lactescent plants belong chiefly to the three families of the
euphorbiaceae, the urticeae, and the apocineae.* (* After these three great
families follow the papaveraceae, the chicoraceae, the lobeliaceae, the
campanulaceae, the sapoteae, and the cucurbitaceae. The hydrocyanic acid
is peculiar to the group of rosaceo-amygdalaceae. In the monocotyledonous
plants there is no milky juice; but the perisperm of the palms, which yields
such sweet and agreeable milky emulsions, contains, no doubt, caseum. Of
what nature is the milk of mushrooms?) Since, on examining the
distribution of vegetable forms over the globe, we find that those three
families are more numerous in species in the low regions of the tropics, we
must thence conclude, that a very elevated temperature contributes to the
elaboration of the milky juices, to the formation of caoutchouc, albumen,
and caseous matter. The sap of the palo de vaca furnishes unquestionably
the most striking example of a vegetable milk in which the acrid and
deleterious principle is not united with albumen, caseum, and caoutchouc:
the genera euphorbia and asclepias, however, though generally known for
their caustic properties, already present us with a few species, the juice of
which is sweet and harmless. Such are the Tabayba dulce of the Canary
Islands, which we have already mentioned,* (* Euphorbia balsamifera. The
milky juice of the Cactus mamillaris is equally sweet.) and the Asclepias
lactifera of Ceylon. Burman relates that, in the latter country, when cow's
milk is wanting, the milk of this asclepias is used; and that the ailments

commonly prepared with animal milk are boiled with its leaves. It may be
possible, as Decandolle has well observed, that the natives employ only the
juice that flows from the young plant, at a period when the acrid principle is
not yet developed. In fact, the first shoots of the apocyneous plants are
eaten in several countries.

I have endeavoured by these comparisons to bring into consideration,
under a more general point of view, the milky juices that circulate in
vegetables; and the milky emulsions that the fruits of the amygdalaceous
plants and palms yield. I may be permitted to add the result of some
experiments which I attempted to make on the juice of the Carica papaya
during my stay in the valleys of Aragua, though I was then almost destitute
of chemical tests. The juice has been since examined by Vauquelin, and this
celebrated chemist has very clearly recognized the albumen and caseous
matter; he compares the milky sap to a substance strongly animalized—to
the blood of animals; but his researches were confined to a fermented juice
and a coagulum of a fetid smell, formed during the passage from the
Mauritius to France. He has expressed a wish that some traveller would
examine the milk of the papaw-tree just as it flows from the stem or the
fruit.

The younger the fruit of the carica, the more milk it yields: it is even
found in the germen scarcely fecundated. In proportion as the fruit ripens,
the milk becomes less abundant, and more aqueous. Less of that animal
matter which is coagulable by acids and by the absorption of atmospheric
oxygen, is found in it. As the whole fruit is viscous,* (* The same viscosity
is also remarked in the fresh milk of the palo de vaca. It is no doubt
occasioned by the caoutchouc, which is not yet separated, and which forms
one mass with the albumen and the caseum, as the butter and the caseum in
animal milk. The juice of a euphorbiaceous plant (Sapium aucuparium),
which also yields caoutchouc, is so glutinous that it is used to catch

parrots.) it might be supposed that, as it grows larger, the coagulable matter
is deposed in the organs, and forms a part of the pulp, or the fleshy
substance. When nitric acid, diluted with four parts of water, is added drop
by drop to the milk expressed from a very young fruit, a very extraordinary
phenomenon appears. At the centre of each drop a gelatinous pellicle is
formed, divided by greyish streaks. These streaks are simply the juice
rendered more aqueous, owing to the contact of the acid having deprived it
of the albumen. At the same time, the centre of the pellicles becomes
opaque, and of the colour of the yolk of an egg; they enlarge as if by the
prolongation of divergent fibres. The whole liquid assumes at first the
appearance of an agate with milky clouds; and it seems as if organic
membranes were forming under the eye of the observer. When the
coagulum extends to the whole mass, the yellow spots again disappear. By
agitation it becomes granulous like soft cheese.* (* The substance which
falls down in grumous and filamentous clots is not pure caoutchouc, but
perhaps a mixture of this substance with caseum and albumen. Acids
precipitate the caoutchouc from the milky juice of the euphorbiums, fig-
trees, and hevea; they precipitate the caseum from the milk of animals. A
white coagulum was formed in phials closely stopped, containing the milk
of the hevea, and preserved among our collections, during our journey to
the Orinoco. It is perhaps the development of a vegetable acid which then
furnishes oxygen to the albumen. The formation of the coagulum of the
hevea, or of real caoutchouc, is nevertheless much more rapid in contact
with the air. The absorption of atmospheric oxygen is not in the least
necessary to the production of butter which exists already formed in the
milk of animals; but I believe it cannot be doubted that, in the milk of
plants, this absorption produces the pellicles of caoutchouc, of coagulated
albumen, and of caseum, which are successively formed in vessels exposed
to the open air.) The yellow colour reappears on adding a few more drops of
nitric acid. The acid acts in this instance as the oxygen of the atmosphere at

a temperature from 27 to 35 degrees; for the white coagulum grows yellow
in two or three minutes, when exposed to the sun. After a few hours the
yellow colour turns to brown, no doubt because the carbon is set more free
progressively as the hydrogen, with which it was combined, is burnt. The
coagulum formed by the acid becomes viscous, and acquires that smell of
wax which I have observed in treating muscular flesh and mushrooms
(morels) with nitric acid. According to the fine experiments of Mr. Hatchett,
the albumen may be supposed to pass partly to the state of gelatine. The
coagulum of the papaw-tree, when newly prepared, being thrown into
water, softens, dissolves in part, and gives a yellowish tint to the fluid. The
milk, placed in contact with water only, forms also membranes. In an
instant a tremulous jelly is precipitated, resembling starch. This
phenomenon is particularly striking if the water employed be heated to 40
or 60 degrees. The jelly condenses in proportion as more water is poured
upon it. It preserves a long time its whiteness, only growing yellow by the
contact of a few drops of nitric acid. Guided by the experiments of
Fourcroy and Vauquelin on the juice of the hevea, I mixed a solution of
carbonate of soda with the milk of the papaw. No clot is formed, even when
pure water is poured on a mixture of the milk with the alkaline solution.
The membranes appear only when, by adding an acid, the soda is
neutralized, and the acid is in excess. I made the coagulum formed by nitric
acid, the juice of lemons, or hot water, likewise disappear by mixing it with
carbonate of soda. The sap again becomes milky and liquid, as in its
primitive state; but this experiment succeeds only when the coagulum has
been recently formed.

On comparing the milky juices of the papaw, the cow-tree, and the hevea,
there appears a striking analogy between the juices which abound in
caseous matter, and those in which caoutchouc prevails. All the white and
newly prepared caoutchouc, as well as the waterproof cloaks, manufactured
in Spanish America by placing a layer of milk of hevea between two pieces

of cloth, exhale an animal and nauseating smell. This seems to indicate that
the caoutchouc, in coagulating, carries with it the caseum, which is perhaps
only an altered albumen.

The produce of the bread-fruit tree can no more be considered as bread
than plantains before the state of maturity, or the tuberous and amylaceous
roots of the cassava, the dioscorea, the Convolvulus batatas, and the potato.
The milk of the cow-tree contains, on the contrary, a caseous matter, like
the milk of mammiferous animals. Advancing to more general
considerations, we may regard, with M. Gay-Lussac, the caoutchouc as the
oily part—the butter of vegetable milk. We find in the milk of plants
caseum and caoutchouc; in the milk of animals, caseum and butter. The
proportions of the two albuminous and oily principles differ in the various
species of animals and of lactescent plants. In these last they are most
frequently mixed with other substances hurtful as food; but of which the
separation might perhaps be obtained by chemical processes. A vegetable
milk becomes nourishing when it is destitute of acrid and narcotic
principles; and abounds less in caoutchouc than in caseous matter.*

(* The milk of the lactescent agarics has not been separately analysed; it
contains an acrid principle in the Agaricus piperatus, and in other species it
is sweet and harmless. The experiments of MM. Braconnot, Bouillon-
Lagrange, and Vauquelin (Annales de Chimie, volume 46, volume 51,
volume 79, volume 80, volume 85, have pointed out a great quantity of
albumen in the substance of the Agaricus deliciosus, an edible mushroom. It
is this albumen contained in their juice which renders them so hard when
boiled. It has been proved that morels (Morchella esculenta) can be
converted into sebaceous and adipocerous matter, capable of being used in
the fabrication of soap. (De Candolle, sur les Proprietes medicinales des
Plantes.) Saccharine matter has also been found in mushrooms by Gunther.
It is in the family of the fungi, more especially in the clavariae, phalli,

helvetiae, the merulii, and the small gymnopae which display themselves in
a few hours after a storm of rain, that organic nature produces with most
rapidity the greatest variety of chemical principles—sugar, albumen,
adipocire, acetate of potash, fat, ozmazome, the aromatic principles, etc. It
would be interesting to examine, besides the milk of the lactescent fungi,
those species which, when cut in pieces, change their colour on the contact
of atmospheric air.

Though we have referred the palo de vaca to the family of the sapotas,
we have nevertheless found in it a great resemblance to some plants of the
urticeous kind, especially to the fig-tree, because of its terminal stipulae in
the shape of a horn; and to the brosimum, on account of the structure of its
fruit. M. Kunth would even have preferred this last classification; if the
description of the fruit, made on the spot, and the nature of the milk, which
is acrid in the urticeae, and sweet in the sapotas, did not seem to confirm
our conjecture. Bredemeyer saw, like us, the fruit, and not the flower of the
cow tree. He asserts that he observed [sometimes?] two seeds, lying one
against the other, as in the alligator pear-tree (Laurus persea). Perhaps this
botanist had the intention of expressing the same conformation of the
nucleus that Swartz indicates in the description of the brosimum—"nucleus
bilobus aut bipartibilis." We have mentioned the places where this
remarkable tree grows: it will be easy for botanical travellers to procure the
flower of the palo de vaca and to remove the doubts which still remain, of
the family to which it belongs.)

Whilst the palo de vaca manifests the immense fecundity and the bounty
of nature in the torrid zone, it also reminds us of the numerous causes which
favour in those fine climates the careless indolence of man. Mungo Park has
made known the butter-tree of Bambarra, which M. De Candolle suspects to
be of the family of sapotas, as well as our milk-tree. The plantain, the sago-
tree, and the mauritia of the Orinoco, are as much bread-trees as the rema of

the South Sea. The fruits of the crescentia and the lecythis serve as vessels
for containing food, while the spathes of the palms, and the bark of trees,
furnish caps and garments without a seam. The knots, or rather the interior
cells of the trunks of bamboos, supply ladders, and facilitate in a thousand
ways the construction of a hut, and the fabrication of chairs, beds, and other
articles of furniture that compose the wealth of a savage household. In the
midst of this lavish vegetation, so varied in its productions, it requires very
powerful motives to excite man to labour, to rouse him from his lethargy,
and to unfold his intellectual faculties.

Cacao and cotton are cultivated at Barbula. We there found, what is very
rare in that country, two large cylindrical machines for separating the cotton
from its seed; one put in motion by an hydraulic wheel, and the other by a
wheel turned by mules. The overseer of the farm, who had constructed these
machines, was a native of Merida. He was acquainted with the road that
leads from Nueva Valencia, by the way of Guanare and Misagual, to
Varinas; and thence by the ravine of Collejones, to the Paramo de
Mucuchies and the mountains of Merida covered with eternal snows. The
notions he gave us of the time requisite for going from Valencia by Varinas
to the Sierra Nevada, and thence by the port of Torunos, and the Rio Santo
Domingo, to San Fernando de Apure, were of infinite value to us. It can
scarcely be imagined in Europe, how difficult it is to obtain accurate
information in a country where the communications are so rare; and where
distances are diminished or exaggerated according to the desire that may be
felt to encourage the traveller, or to deter him from his purpose. I had
resolved to visit the eastern extremity of the Cordilleras of New Grenada,
where they lose themselves in the paramos of Timotes and Niquitao. I
learned at Barbula, that this excursion would retard our arrival at the
Orinoco thirty-five days. This delay appeared to us so much the longer, as
the rains were expected to begin sooner than usual. We had the hope of
examining afterwards a great number of mountains covered with perpetual

snow, at Quito, Peru, and Mexico; and it appeared to me still more prudent
to relinquish our project of visiting the mountains of Merida, since by so
doing we might miss the real object of our journey, that of ascertaining by
astronomical observations the point of communication between the
Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the river Amazon. We returned in consequence
from Barbula to Guacara, to take leave of the family of the Marquis del
Toro, and pass three days more on the borders of the lake.

It was the carnival season, and all was gaiety. The sports in which the
people indulge, and which are called carnes tollendas,* assume occasionally
somewhat of a savage character. (* Or "farewell to flesh." The word
carnival has the same meaning, these sports being always held just before
the commencement of Lent.) Some led an ass loaded with water, and,
where-ever they found a window open, inundated the apartment within by
means of a pump. Others carried bags filled with hairs of picapica;* (*
Dolichos pruriens (cowage).) and blew the hair, which causes a great
irritation of the skin, into the faces of those who passed by.

From Guacara we returned to Nueva Valencia. We found there a few
French emigrants, the only ones we saw during five years passed in the
Spanish colonies. Notwithstanding the ties of blood which unite the royal
families of France and Spain, even French priests were not permitted to take
refuge in that part of the New World, where man with such facility finds
food and shelter. Beyond the Atlantic, the United States of America afford
the only asylum to misfortune. A government, strong because it is free,
confiding because it is just, has nothing to fear in giving refuge to the
proscribed.

We have endeavoured above to give some notions of the state of the
cultivation of indigo, cotton, and sugar, in the province of Caracas. Before
we quit the valley of Aragua and its neighbouring coast, it remains for us to

speak of the cacao-plantations, which have at all times been considered as
the principal source of the prosperity of those countries. The province of
Caracas,* (* The province, not the capitania-general, consequently not
including the cacao plantations of Cumana, the province of Barcelona, of
Maracaybo, of Varinas, and of Spanish Guiana.) at the end of the eighteenth
century, produced annually a hundred and fifty thousand fanegas, of which
a hundred thousand were consumed in Spain, and thirty thousand in the
province. Estimating a fanega of cacao at only twenty-five piastres for the
price given at Cadiz, we find that the total value of the exportation of cacao,
by the six ports of the Capitania General of Caracas, amounts to four
million eight hundred thousand piastres. So important an object of
commerce merits a careful discussion; and I flatter myself, that, from the
great number of materials I have collected on all the branches of colonial
agriculture, I shall be able to add something to the information published by
M. Depons, in his valuable work on the provinces of Venezuela.

The tree which produces the cacao is not at present found wild in the
forests of Terra Firma to the north of the Orinoco; we began to find it only
beyond the cataracts of Ature and Maypure. It abounds particularly near the
banks of the Ventuari, and on the Upper Orinoco, between the Padamo and
the Gehette. This scarcity of wild cacao-trees in South America, north of the
latitude of 6 degrees, is a very curious phenomenon of botanical geography,
and yet little known. This phenomenon appears the more surprising, as,
according to the annual produce of the harvest, the number of trees in full
bearing in the cacao-plantations of Caracas, Nueva Barcelona, Venezuela,
Varinas, and Maracaybo, is estimated at more than sixteen millions. The
wild cacao-tree has many branches, and is covered with a tufted and dark
foliage. It bears a very small fruit, like that variety which the ancient
Mexicans called tlalcacahuatl. Transplanted into the conucos of the Indians
of Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro, the wild tree preserves for several
generations that force of vegetable life, which makes it bear fruit in the

fourth year; while, in the province of Caracas, the harvest begins only the
sixth, seventh, or eighth year. It is later in the inland parts than on the coasts
and in the valley of Guapo. We met with no tribe on the Orinoco that
prepared a beverage with the seeds of the cacao-tree. The savages suck the
pulp of the pod, and throw away the seeds, which are often found in heaps
where they have passed the night. Though chorote, which is a very weak
infusion of cacao, is considered on the coast to be a very ancient beverage,
no historical fact proves that chocolate, or any preparation whatever of
cacao, was known to the natives of Venezuela before the arrival of the
Spaniards. It appears to me more probable that the cacao-plantations of
Caracas were suggested by those of Mexico and Guatimala; and that the
Spaniards inhabiting Terra Firma learned the cultivation of the cacao-tree,
sheltered in its youth by the foliage of the erythrina and plantain;* (This
process of the Mexican cultivators, practised on the coast of Caracas, is
described in the memoirs known under the title of "Relazione di certo
Gentiluomo del Signor Cortez, Conquistadore del Messico." (Ramusio,
tome 2 page 134).) the fabrication of cakes of chocolatl, and the use of the
liquid of the same name, in course of their communications with Mexico,
Guatimala, and Nicaragua.

Down to the sixteenth century travellers differed in opinion respecting
the chocolatl. Benzoni plainly says that it is a drink "fitter for hogs than
men."* (* Benzoni, Istoria del Mondo Nuovo, 1572 page 104.) The Jesuit
Acosta asserts, that "the Spaniards who inhabit America are fond of
chocolate to excess; but that it requires to be accustomed to that black
beverage not to be disgusted at the mere sight of its froth, which swims on
it like yeast on a fermented liquor." He adds, "the cacao is a prejudice (una
supersticion) of the Mexicans, as the coca is a prejudice of the Peruvians."
These opinions remind us of Madame de Sevigne's prediction respecting the
use of coffee. Fernando Cortez and his page, the gentilhombre del gran
Conquistador, whose memoirs were published by Ramusio, on the contrary,

highly praise chocolate, not only as an agreeable drink, though prepared
cold,* but in particular as a nutritious substance. (* Father Gili has very
clearly shown, from two passages in Torquemada (Monarquia Indiana, lib.
14) that the Mexicans prepared the infusion cold, and that the Spaniards
introduced the custom of preparing chocolate by boiling water with the
paste of cacao.) "He who has drunk one cup," says the page of Fernando
Cortez, "can travel a whole day without any other food, especially in very
hot climates; for chocolate is by its nature cold and refreshing." We shall
not subscribe to the latter part of this assertion; but we shall soon have
occasion, in our voyage on the Orinoco, and our excursions towards the
summit of the Cordilleras, to celebrate the salutary properties of chocolate.
It is easily conveyed and readily employed: as an aliment it contains a large
quantity of nutritive and stimulating particles in a small compass. It has
been said with truth, that in the East, rice, gum, and ghee (clarified butter),
assist man in crossing the deserts; and so, in the New World, chocolate and
the flour of maize, have rendered accessible to the traveller the table-lands
of the Andes, and vast uninhabited forests.

The cacao harvest is extremely variable. The tree vegetates with such
vigour that flowers spring out even from the roots, wherever the earth
leaves them uncovered. It suffers from the north-east winds, even when
they lower the temperature only a few degrees. The heavy showers that fall
irregularly after the rainy season, during the winter months, from December
to March, are also very hurtful to the cacao-tree. The proprietor of a
plantation of fifty thousand trees often loses the value of more than four or
five thousand piastres in cacao in one hour. Great humidity is favourable to
the tree only when it augments progressively, and is for a long time
uninterrupted. If, in the season of drought, the leaves and the young fruit be
wetted by a violent shower, the fruit falls from the stem; for it appears that
the vessels which absorb water break from being rendered turgid. Besides,
the cacao-harvest is one of the most uncertain, on account of the fatal

effects of inclement seasons, and the great number of worms, insects, birds,
and quadrupeds,* (* Parrots, monkeys, agoutis, squirrels, and stags.) which
devour the pod of the cacao-tree; and this branch of agriculture has the
disadvantage of obliging the new planter to wait eight or ten years for the
fruit of his labours, and of yielding after all an article of very difficult
preservation.

The finest plantations of cacao are found in the province of Caracas,
along the coast, between Caravalleda and the mouth of the Rio Tocuyo, in
the valleys of Caucagua, Capaya, Curiepe, and Guapo; and in those of
Cupira, between cape Conare and cape Unare, near Aroa, Barquesimeto,
Guigue, and Uritucu. The cacao that grows on the banks of the Uritucu, at
the entrance of the llanos, in the jurisdiction of San Sebastian de las Reyes,
is considered to be of the finest quality. Next to the cacao of Uritucu comes
that of Guigue, of Caucagua, of Capaya, and of Cupira. The merchants of
Cadiz assign the first rank to the cacao of Caracas, immediately after that of
Socomusco; and its price is generally from thirty to forty per cent higher
than that of Guayaquil.

It is only since the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Dutch,
tranquil possessors of the island of Curacoa, awakened, by their smuggling,
the agricultural industry of the inhabitants of the neighbouring coasts, that
cacao has become an object of exportation in the province of Caracas. We
are ignorant of everything that passed in those countries before the
establishment of the Biscay Company of Guipuzcoa, in 1728. No precise
statistical data have reached us: we only know that the exportation of cacao
from Caracas scarcely amounted, at the beginning of the eighteenth century,
to thirty thousand fanegas a-year. From 1730 to 1748, the company sent to
Spain eight hundred and fifty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-
eight fanegas, which make, on an average, forty-seven thousand seven
hundred fanegas a-year; the price of the fanega fell, in 1732, to forty-five

piastres, when it had before kept at eighty piastres. In 1763 the cultivation
had so much augmented, that the exportation rose to eighty thousand six
hundred and fifty-nine fanegas.

In an official document, taken from the papers of the minister of finance,
the annual produce (la cosecha) of the province of Caracas is estimated at a
hundred and thirty-five thousand fanegas of cacao; thirty-three thousand of
which are for home consumption, ten thousand for other Spanish colonies,
seventy-seven thousand for the mother-country, fifteen thousand for the
illicit commerce with the French, English, Dutch, and Danish colonies.
From 1789 to 1793, the importation of cacao from Caracas into Spain was,
on an average, seventy-seven thousand seven hundred and nineteen fanegas
a-year, of which sixty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty-six were
consumed in the country, and eleven thousand nine hundred and fifty-three
exported to France, Italy, and Germany.

The late wars have had much more fatal effects on the cacao trade of
Caracas than on that of Guayaquil. On account of the increase of price, less
cacao of the first quality has been consumed in Europe. Instead of mixing,
as was done formerly for common chocolate, one quarter of the cacao of
Caracas, with three-quarters of that of Guayaquil, the latter has been
employed pure in Spain. We must here remark, that a great deal of cacao of
an inferior quality, such as that of Maranon, the Rio Negro, Honduras, and
the island of St. Lucia, bears the name, in commerce, of Guayaquil cacao.
The exportation from that port amounts only to sixty thousand fanegas;
consequently it is two-thirds less than that of the ports of the Capitania-
General of Caracas.

Though the plantations of cacao have augmented in the provinces of
Cumana, Barcelona, and Maracaybo, in proportion as they have diminished
in the province of Caracas, it is still believed that, in general, this ancient

branch of agricultural industry gradually declines. In many parts coffee and
cotton-trees progressively take place of the cacao, of which the lingering
harvests weary the patience of the cultivator. It is also asserted, that the new
plantations of cacao are less productive than the old; the trees do not
acquire the same vigour, and yield later and less abundant fruit. The soil is
still said to be exhausted; but probably it is rather the atmosphere that is
changed by the progress of clearing and cultivation. The air that reposes on
a virgin soil covered with forests is loaded with humidity and those gaseous
mixtures that serve for the nutriment of plants, and arise from the
decomposition of organic substances. When a country has been long
subjected to cultivation, it is not the proportions between the azote and
oxygen that vary. The constituent bases of the atmosphere remain unaltered;
but it no longer contains, in a state of suspension, those binary and ternary
mixtures of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, which a virgin soil exhales, and
which are regarded as a source of fecundity. The air, purer and less charged
with miasmata and heterogeneous emanations, becomes at the same time
drier. The elasticity of the vapours undergoes a sensible diminution. On
land long cleared, and consequently little favourable to the cultivation of
the cacao-tree (as, for instance, in the West India Islands), the fruit is almost
as small as that of the wild cacao-tree. It is on the banks of the Upper
Orinoco, after having crossed the Llanos, that we find the true country of
the cacao-tree; thick forests, in which, on a virgin soil, and surrounded by
an atmosphere continually humid, the trees furnish, from the fourth year,
abundant crops. Wherever the soil is not exhausted, the fruit has become by
cultivation larger and bitter, but also later.

On seeing the produce of cacao gradually diminish in Terra Firma, it may
be inquired, whether the consumption will diminish in the same proportion
in Spain, Italy, and the rest of Europe; or whether it be not probable, that by
the destruction of the cacao plantations, the price will augment sufficiently
to rouse anew the industry of the cultivator. This latter opinion is generally

admitted by those who deplore, at Caracas, the diminution of so ancient and
profitable a branch of commerce. In proportion as civilization extends
towards the humid forests of the interior, the banks of the Orinoco and the
Amazon, or towards the valleys that furrow the eastern declivity of the
Andes, the new planters will find lands and an atmosphere equally
favourable to the culture of the cacao-tree.

The Spaniards, in general, dislike a mixture of vanilla with the cacao, as
irritating the nervous system; the fruit, therefore, of that orchideous plant is
entirely neglected in the province of Caracas, though abundant crops of it
might be gathered on the moist and feverish coast between Porto Cabello
and Ocumare; especially at Turiamo, where the fruits of the Epidendrum
vanilla attain the length of eleven or twelve inches. The English and the
Anglo-Americans often seek to make purchases of vanilla at the port of La
Guayra, but the merchants procure with difficulty a very small quantity. In
the valleys that descend from the chain of the coast towards the Caribbean
Sea, in the province of Truxillo, as well as in the Missions of Guiana, near
the cataracts of the Orinoco, a great quantity of vanilla might be collected;
the produce of which would be still more abundant, if, according to the
practice of the Mexicans, the plant were disengaged, from time to time,
from the creeping plants by which it is entwined and stifled.

The hot and fertile valleys of the Cordillera of the coast of Venezuela
occupy a tract of land which, on the west, towards the lake of Maracaybo,
displays a remarkable variety of scenery. I shall exhibit in one view, to close
this chapter, the facts I have been able to collect respecting the quality of
the soil and the metallic riches of the districts of Aroa, of Barquesimeto, and
of Carora.

From the Sierra Nevada of Merida, and the paramos of Niquitao,
Bocono, and Las Rosas,* (Many travellers, who were monks, have asserted

that the little Paramo de Las Rosas, the height of which appears to be more
than 1,600 toises, is covered with rosemary, and the red and white roses of
Europe grow wild there. These roses are gathered to decorate the altars in
the neighbouring villages on the festivals of the church. By what accident
has our Rosa centifolia become wild in this country, while we nowhere
found it in the Andes of Quito and Peru? Can it really be the rose-tree of our
garden?) which contain the valuable bark-tree, the eastern Cordillera of
New Granada* (* The bark exported from the port of Maracaybo does not
come from the territory of Venezuela, but from the mountains of Pamplona
in New Grenada, being brought down the Rio de San Faustino, that flows
into the lake of Maracaybo. (Pombo, Noticias sobre las Quinas, 1814 page
65.) Some is collected near Merida, in the ravine of Viscucucuy.) decreases
in height so rapidly, that, between the ninth and tenth degrees of latitude, it
forms only a chain of little mountains, which, stretching to the north-east by
the Altar and Torito, separates the rivers that join the Apure and the Orinoco
from those numerous rivers that flow either into the Caribbean Sea or the
lake of Maracaybo. On this dividing ridge are built the towns of Nirgua,
San Felipe el Fuerte, Barquesimeto, and Tocuyo. The first three are in a
very hot climate; but Tocuyo enjoys great coolness, and we heard with
surprise, that, beneath so fine a sky, the inhabitants have a strong propensity
to suicide. The ground rises towards the south; for Truxillo, the lake of
Urao, from which carbonate of soda is extracted, and La Grita, all to the
east of the Cordillera, though no farther distant, are four or five hundred
toises high.

On examining the law which the primitive strata of the Cordillera of the
coast follow in their dip, we believe we recognize one of the causes of the
extreme humidity of the land bounded by this Cordillera and the ocean. The
dip of the strata is most frequently to the north-west; so that the waters flow
in that direction on the ledges of rock; and form, as we have stated above,
that multitude of torrents and rivers, the inundations of which become so

fatal to the health of the inhabitants, from cape Codera as far as the lake of
Maracaybo.

Among the rivers which descend north-east toward the coast of Porto
Cabello, and La Punta de Hicacos, the most remarkable are those of
Tocuyo, Aroa, and Yaracuy. Were it not for the miasmata which infect the
atmosphere, the valleys of Aroa and of Yaracuy would perhaps be more
populous than those of Aragua. Navigable rivers would even give the
former the advantage of facilitating the exportation of their own crops of
sugar and cacao, and that of the productions of the neighbouring lands; as
the wheat of Quibor, the cattle of Monai, and the copper of Aroa. The mines
from which this copper is extracted, are in a lateral valley, opening into that
of Aroa; and which is less hot, and less unhealthy, than the ravines nearer
the sea. In the latter the Indians have their gold-washings, and the soil
conceals rich copper-ores, which no one has yet attempted to extract. The
ancient mines of Aroa, after having been long neglected, have been wrought
anew by the care of Don Antonio Henriquez, whom we met at San
Fernando on the borders of the Apure. The total produce of metallic copper
is twelve or fifteen hundred quintals a year. This copper, known at Cadiz by
the name of Caracas copper, is of excellent quality. It is even preferred to
that of Sweden, and of Coquimbo in Chile. Part of the copper of Aroa is
employed for making bells, which are cast on the spot. Some ores of silver
have been recently discovered between Aroa and Nirgua, near Guanita, in
the mountain of San Pablo. Grains of gold are found in all the mountainous
lands between the Rio Yaracuy, the town of San Felipe, Nirgua, and
Barquesimeto; particularly in the Rio de Santa Cruz, in which the Indian
gold-gatherers have sometimes found lumps of the value of four or five
piastres. Do the neighbouring rocks of mica-slate and gneiss contain veins?
or is the gold disseminated here, as in the granites of Guadarama in Spain,
and of the Fichtelberg in Franconia, throughout the whole mass of the rock?
Possibly the waters, in filtering through it, bring together the disseminated

grains of gold; in which case every attempt to work the rock would be
useless. In the Savana de la Miel, near the town of Barquesimeto, a shaft
has been sunk in a black shining slate resembling ampelite. The minerals
extracted from this shaft, which were sent to me at Caracas, were quartz,
non-auriferous pyrites, and carbonated lead, crystallized in needles of a
silky lustre.

In the early times of the conquest the working of the mines of Nirgua and
of Buria* was begun, notwithstanding the incursions of the warlike nation
of the Giraharas. (* The valley of Buria, and the little river of the same
name, communicate with the valley of the Rio Coxede, or the Rio de
Barquesimeto.) In this very district the accumulation of negro slaves in
1553 gave rise to an event bearing some analogy to the insurrection in St.
Domingo. A negro slave excited an insurrection among the miners of the
Real de San Felipe de Buria. He retired into the woods, and founded, with
two hundred of his companions, a town, where he was proclaimed king.
Miguel, this new king, was a friend to pomp and parade. He caused his wife
Guiomar, to assume the title of queen; and, according to Oviedo, he
appointed ministers and counsellors of state, officers of the royal household,
and even a negro bishop. He soon after ventured to attack the neighbouring
town of Nueva Segovia de Barquesimeto; but, being repulsed by Diego de
Losada, he perished in the conflict. This African monarchy was succeeded
at Nirgua by a republic of Zamboes, the descendants of negroes and
Indians. The whole municipality (cabildo) is composed of men of colour to
whom the king of Spain has given the title of "his faithful and loyal
subjects, the Zamboes of Nirgua." Few families of Whites will inhabit a
country where the system of government is so adverse to their pretensions;
and the little town is called in derision La republica de Zambos y Mulatos.

If the hot valleys of Aroa, of Yaracuy, and of the Rio Tocuyo, celebrated
for their excellent timber, be rendered feverish by luxuriance of vegetation,

and extreme atmospheric humidity, it is different in the savannahs of Monai
and Carora. These Llanos are separated by the mountainous tract of Tocuyo
and Nirgua from the great plains of La Portuguesa and Calabozo. It is very
extraordinary to see barren savannahs loaded with miasmata. No marshy
ground is found there, but several phenomena indicate a disengagement of
hydrogen.* (* What is that luminous phenomenon known under the name of
the Lantern (farol) of Maracaybo, which is perceived every night toward the
seaside as well as in the inland parts, at Merida for example, where M.
Palacios observed it during two years? The distance, greater than 40
leagues, at which the light is observed, has led to the supposition that it
might be owing to the effects of a thunderstorm, or of electrical explosions
which might daily take place in a pass in the mountains. It is asserted that,
on approaching the farol, the rolling of thunder is heard. Others vaguely
allege that it is an air-volcano, and that asphaltic soils, like those of Mena,
cause these inflammable exhalations which are so constant in their
appearance. The phenomenon is observed on a mountainous and
uninhabited spot, on the borders of the Rio Catatumbo, near the junction
with the Rio Sulia. The situation of the farol is such that, being nearly in the
meridian of the opening (boca) of the lake of Maracaybo, navigators are
guided by it as by a lighthouse.) When travellers, who are not acquainted
with natural inflammable gases, are shown the Cueva del Serrito de Monai,
the people of the country love to frighten them by setting fire to the gaseous
combination which is constantly accumulated in the upper part of the
cavern. May we attribute the insalubrity of the atmosphere to the same
causes as those which operate in the plains between Tivoli and Rome,
namely, disengagements of sulphuretted hydrogen?* (* Don Carlos del
Pozo has discovered in this district, at the bottom of the Quebrada de
Moroturo, a stratum of clayey earth, black, strongly soiling the fingers,
emitting a powerful smell of sulphur, and inflaming spontaneously when
slightly moistened and exposed for a long time to the rays of the tropical

sun. The detonation of this muddy substance is very violent.) Possibly, also,
the mountainous lands, near the llanos of Monai, may have a baneful
influence on the surrounding plains. The south-easterly winds may convey
to them the putrid exhalations that rise from the ravine of Villegas, and from
La Sienega de Cabra, between Carora and Carache. I am desirous of
collecting every circumstance having a relation to the salubrity of the air;
for, in a matter so obscure, it is only by the comparison of a great number of
phenomena, that we can hope to discover the truth.

The barren yet feverish savannahs, extending from Barquesimeto to the
eastern shore of the lake of Maracaybo, are partly covered with cactus; but
the good silvester-cochineal, known by the vague name of grana de Carora,
comes from a more temperate region, between Carora and Truxillo, and
particularly from the valley of the Rio Mucuju,* to the east of Merida. (*
This little river descends from the Paramo de los Conejos, and flows into
the Rio Albarregas.) The inhabitants altogether neglect this production, so
much sought for in commerce.

CHAPTER 2.17.

MOUNTAINS WHICH SEPARATE THE VALLEYS OF ARAGUA FROM THE LLANOS OF
CARACAS. VILLA DE CURA. PARAPARA. LLANOS OR STEPPES. CALABOZO.

The chain of mountains, bordering the lake of Tacarigua towards the
south, forms in some sort the northern shore of the great basin of the Llanos
or savannahs of Caracas. To descend from the valleys of Aragua into these
savannahs, it is necessary to cross the mountains of Guigue and of
Tucutunemo. From a peopled country embellished by cultivation, we
plunge into a vast solitude. Accustomed to the aspect of rocks, and to the
shade of valleys, the traveller beholds with astonishment these savannahs
without trees, these immense plains, which seem to ascend to the horizon.

Before I trace the scenery of the Llanos, or of the region of pasturage, I
will briefly describe the road we took from Nueva Valencia, by Villa de
Cura and San Juan, to the little village of Ortiz, at the entrance of the
steppes. We left the valleys of Aragua on the 6th of March before sunrise.
We passed over a plain richly cultivated, keeping along the south-west side
of the lake of Valencia, and crossing the ground left uncovered by the
waters of the lake. We were never weary of admiring the fertility of the soil,
covered with calabashes, water-melons, and plantains. The rising of the sun
was announced by the distant noise of the howling monkeys. Approaching a
group of trees, which rise in the midst of the plain, between those parts
which were anciently the islets of Don Pedro and La Negra, we saw
numerous bands of araguatos moving as in procession and very slowly,
from one tree to another. A male was followed by a great number of
females; several of the latter carrying their young on their shoulders. The
howling monkeys, which live in society in different parts of America,
everywhere resemble each other in their manners, though the species are
not always the same. The uniformity with which the araguatos* (* Simia
ursina.) perform their movements is extremely striking. Whenever the
branches of neighbouring trees do not touch each other, the male who leads
the party suspends himself by the callous and prehensile part of his tail;
and, letting fall the rest of his body, swings himself till in one of his
oscillations he reaches the neighbouring branch. The whole file performs
the same movements on the same spot. It is almost superfluous to add how
dubious is the assertion of Ulloa, and so many otherwise well-informed
travellers, according to whom, the marimondos,* (* Simia belzebuth.) the
araguatos, and other monkeys with a prehensile tail, form a sort of chain, in
order to reach the opposite side of a river.* (* Ulloa has not hesitated to
represent in an engraving this extraordinary feat of the monkeys with a
prehensile tail.—See Viage a la America Meridional, Madrid 1748.) We had
opportunities, during five years, of observing thousands of these animals;

and for this very reason we place no confidence in statements possibly
invented by the Europeans themselves, though repeated by the Indians of
the Missions, as if they had been transmitted to them by their fathers. Man,
the most remote from civilization, enjoys the astonishment he excites in
recounting the marvels of his country. He says he has seen what he
imagines may have been seen by others. Every savage is a hunter, and the
stories of hunters borrow from the imagination in proportion as the animals,
of which they boast the artifices, are endowed with a high degree of
intelligence. Hence arise the fictions of which foxes, monkeys, crows, and
the condor of the Andes, have been the subjects in both hemispheres.

The araguatos are accused of sometimes abandoning their young, that
they may be lighter for flight when pursued by the Indian hunters. It is said
that mothers have been seen removing their young from their shoulders, and
throwing them down to the foot of the tree. I am inclined to believe that a
movement merely accidental has been mistaken for one premeditated. The
Indians have a dislike and a predilection for certain races of monkeys; they
love the viuditas, the titis, and generally all the little sagoins; while the
araguatos, on account of their mournful aspect, and their uniform howling,
are at once detested and abused. In reflecting on the causes that may
facilitate the propagation of sound in the air during the night, I thought it
important to determine with precision the distance at which, especially in
damp and stormy weather, the howling of a band of araguatos is heard. I
believe I obtained proof of its being distinguished at eight hundred toises
distance. The monkeys which are furnished with four hands cannot make
excursions in the Llanos; and it is easy, amidst vast plains covered with
grass, to recognize a solitary group of trees, whence the noise proceeds, and
which is inhabited by howling monkeys. Now, by approaching or
withdrawing from this group of trees, the maximum of the distance may be
measured, at which the howling is heard. These distances appeared to me

sometimes one-third greater during the night, especially when the weather
was cloudy, very hot, and humid.

The Indians pretend that when the araguatos fill the forests with their
howling, there is always one that chaunts as leader of the chorus. The
observation is pretty accurate. During a long interval one solitary and strong
voice is generally distinguished, till its place is taken by another voice of a
different pitch. We may observe from time to time the same instinct of
imitation among frogs, and almost all animals which live together and exert
their voices in union. The Missionaries further assert, that, when a female
among the araguatos is on the point of bringing forth, the choir suspends its
howlings till the moment of the birth of the young. I could not myself judge
of the accuracy of this assertion; but I do not believe it to be entirely
unfounded. I have observed that, when an extraordinary incident, the moans
for instance of a wounded araguato, fixed the attention of the band, the
howlings were for some minutes suspended. Our guides assured us gravely,
that, to cure an asthma, it is sufficient to drink out of the bony drum of the
hyoidal bone of the araguato. This animal having so extraordinary a volume
of voice, it is supposed that its larynx must necessarily impart to the water
poured into it the virtue of curing affections of the lungs. Such is the
science of the vulgar, which sometimes resembles that of the ancients.

We passed the night at the village of Guigue, the latitude of which I
found by observations of Canopus to be 10 degrees 4 minutes 11 seconds.
The village, surrounded with the richest cultivation, is only a thousand
toises distant from the lake of Tacarigua. We lodged with an old sergeant, a
native of Murcia, a man of a very original character. To prove to us that he
had studied among the Jesuits, he recited the history of the creation of the
world in Latin. He knew the names of Augustus, Tiberius, and Diocletian;
and while enjoying the agreeable coolness of the nights in an enclosure
planted with bananas, he employed himself in reading all that related to the

courts of the Roman emperors. He inquired of us with earnestness for a
remedy for the gout, from which he suffered severely. "I know," said he, "a
Zambo of Valencia, a famous curioso, who could cure me; but the Zambo
would expect to be treated with attentions which I cannot pay to a man of
his colour, and I prefer remaining as I am."

On leaving Guigue we began to ascend the chain of mountains, extending
on the south of the lake towards Guacimo and La Palma. From the top of a
table-land, at three hundred and twenty toises of elevation, we saw for the
last time the valleys of Aragua. The gneiss appeared uncovered, presenting
the same direction of strata, and the same dip towards the north-west. Veins
of quartz, that traverse the gneiss, are auriferous; and hence the
neighbouring ravine bears the name of Quebrada del Oro. We heard with
surprise at every step the name of "ravine of gold," in a country where only
one single mine of copper is wrought. We travelled five leagues to the
village of Maria Magdalena, and two leagues more to the Villa de Cura. It
was Sunday, and at the village of Maria Magdalena the inhabitants were
assembled before the church. They wanted to force our muleteers to stop
and hear mass. We resolved to remain; but, after a long altercation, the
muleteers pursued their way. I may observe, that this is the only dispute in
which we became engaged from such a cause. Very erroneous ideas are
formed in Europe of the intolerance, and even of the religious fervour of the
Spanish colonists.

San Luis de Cura, or, as it is commonly called, the Villa de Cura, lies in a
very barren valley, running north-west and south-east, and elevated,
according to my barometrical observations, two hundred and sixty-six
toises above the level of the ocean. The country, with the exception of some
fruit-trees, is almost destitute of vegetation. The dryness of the plateau is
the greater, because (and this circumstance is rather extraordinary in a
country of primitive rocks) several rivers lose themselves in crevices in the

ground. The Rio de Las Minas, north of the Villa de Cura, is lost in a rock,
again appears, and then is ingulphed anew without reaching the lake of
Valencia, towards which it flows. Cura resembles a village more than a
town. We lodged with a family who had excited the resentment of
government during the revolution at Caracas in 1797. One of the sons, after
having languished in a dungeon, had been sent to the Havannah, to be
imprisoned in a strong fortress. With what joy his mother heard that after
our return from the Orinoco, we should visit the Havannah! She entrusted
me with five piastres, "the whole fruit of her savings." I earnestly wished to
return them to her; but I feared to wound her delicacy, and give pain to a
mother, who felt a pleasure in the privations she imposed on herself.

All the society of the town was assembled in the evening, to admire in a
magic lantern views of the great capitals of Europe. We were shown the
palace of the Tuileries, and the statue of the Elector at Berlin.

An apothecary who had been ruined by an unhappy propensity for
working mines, accompanied us in our excursion to the Serro de Chacao,
very rich in auriferous pyrites. We continued to descend the southern
declivity of the Cordillera of the coast, in which the plains of Aragua form a
longitudinal valley. We passed a part of the night of the 11th of March at the
village of San Juan, remarkable for its thermal waters, and the singular form
of two neighbouring mountains, called the Morros of San Juan. They form
slender peaks, which rise from a wall of rocks with a very extensive base.
The wall is perpendicular, and resembles the Devil's Wall, which surrounds
a part of the group of mountains in the Hartz.* (* Die Teufels Mauer near
Wernigerode in Germany.) These peaks, when seen from afar in the Llanos,
strike the imagination of the inhabitants of the plain, who are not
accustomed to the least unequal ground, and the height of the peaks is
singularly exaggerated by them. They were described to us as being in the
middle of the steppes (which they in reality bound on the north) far beyond

a range of hills called La Galera. Judging from angles taken at the distance
of two miles, these hills are scarcely more than a hundred and fifty-six
toises higher than the village of San Juan, and three hundred and fifty toises
above the level of the Llanos. The thermal waters glide out at the foot of
these hills, which are formed of transition-limestone. The waters are
impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, like those of Mariara, and form a
little pool or lagoon, in which the thermometer rose only to 31.3 degrees. I
found, on the night of the 9th of March, by very satisfactory observations of
the stars, the latitude of Villa de Cura to be 10 degrees 2 minutes 47
seconds.

The Villa de Cura is celebrated in the country for the miracles of an
image of the Virgin, known by the name of Nuestra Senora de los
Valencianos. This image was found in a ravine by an Indian, about the
middle of the eighteenth century, when it became the object of a contest
between the towns of Cura and San Sebastian de los Reyes. The vicars of
the latter town asserting that the Virgin had made her first appearance on the
territory of their parish, the Bishop of Caracas, in order to put an end to the
scandal of this long dispute, caused the image to be placed in the archives
of his bishopric, and kept it thirty years under seal. It was not restored to the
inhabitants of Cura till 1802.

After having bathed in the cool and limpid water of the little river of San
Juan, the bottom of which is of basaltic grunstein, we continued our journey
at two in the morning, by Ortiz and Parapara, to the Mesa de Paja. The road
to the Llanos being at that time infested with robbers, several travellers
joined us so as to form a sort of caravan. We proceeded down hill during six
or seven hours; and we skirted the Cerro de Flores, near which the road
turns off, leading to the great village of San Jose de Tisnao. We passed the
farms of Luque and Juncalito, to enter the valleys which, on account of the

bad road, and the blue colour of the slates, bear the names of Malpaso and
Piedras Azules.

This ground is the ancient shore of the great basin of the steppes, and it
furnishes an interesting subject of research to the geologist. We there find
trap-formations, probably more recent than the veins of diabasis near the
town of Caracas, which seem to belong to the rocks of igneous formation.
They are not long and narrow streams as in Auvergne, but large sheets,
streams that appear like real strata. The lithoid masses here cover, if we may
use the expression, the shore of the ancient interior sea; everything subject
to destruction, such as the liquid dejections, and the scoriae filled with
bubbles, has been carried away. These phenomena are particularly worthy
of attention on account of the close affinities observed between the
phonolites and the amygdaloids, which, containing pyroxenes and
hornblende-grunsteins, form strata in a transition-slate. The better to convey
an idea of the whole situation and superposition of these rocks, we will
name the formations as they occur in a profile drawn from north to south.

We find at first, in the Sierra de Mariara, which belongs to the northern
branch of the Cordillera of the coast, a coarse-grained granite; then, in the
valleys of Aragua, on the borders of the lake, and in the islands, it contains,
as in the southern branch of the chain of the coast, gneiss and mica-slate.
These last-named rocks are auriferous in the Quebrada del Oro, near
Guigue; and between Villa de Cura and the Morros de San Juan, in the
mountain of Chacao. The gold is contained in pyrites, which are found
sometimes disseminated almost imperceptibly in the whole mass of the
gneiss,* and sometimes united in small veins of quartz. (* The four metals,
which are found disseminated in the granite rocks, as if they were of
contemporaneous formation, are gold, tin, titanium, and cobalt.) Most of the
torrents that traverse the mountains bear along with them grains of gold.
The poor inhabitants of Villa de Cura and San Juan have sometimes gained

thirty piastres a-day by washing the sand; but most commonly, in spite of
their industry, they do not in a week find particles of gold of the value of
two piastres. Here, however, as in every place where native gold and
auriferous pyrites are disseminated in the rock, or by the destruction of the
rocks, are deposited in alluvial lands, the people conceive the most
exaggerated ideas of the metallic riches of the soil. But the success of the
workings, which depends less on the abundance of the ore in a vast space of
land than on its accumulation in one point, has not justified these favourable
prepossessions. The mountain of Chacao, bordered by the ravine of
Tucutunemo, rises seven hundred feet above the village of San Juan. It is
formed of gneiss, which, especially in the superior strata, passes into mica-
slate. We saw the remains of an ancient mine, known by the name of Real
de Santa Barbara. The works were directed to a stratum of cellular quartz,*
full of polyhedric cavities, mixed with iron-ore, containing auriferous
pyrites and small grains of gold, sometimes, it is said, visible to the naked
eye. (* This stratum of quartz, and the gneiss in which it is contained, lie
hor 8 of the Freyberg compass, and dip 70 degrees to the south-west. At a
hundred toises distance from the auriferous quartz, the gneiss resumes its
ordinary situation, hor 3 to 4, with 60 degrees dip to the north-west. A few
strata of gneiss abound in silvery mica, and contain, instead of garnets, an
immense quantity of small octohedrons of pyrites. This silvery gneiss
resembles that of the famous mine of Himmelsfurst, in Saxony.) It appears
that the gneiss of the Cerro de Chacao also furnishes another metallic
deposit, a mixture of copper and silver-ores. This deposit has been the
object of works attempted with great ignorance by some Mexican miners
under the superintendance of M. Avalo. The gallery* directed to the north-
east, is only twenty-five toises long. (* La Cueva de los Mexicanos.) We
there found some fine specimens of blue carbonated copper mingled with
sulphate of barytes and quartz; but we could not ourselves judge whether
the ore contained any argentiferous fahlerz, and whether it occurred in a

stratum, or, as the apothecary who was our guide asserted, in real veins.
This much is certain, that the attempt at working the mine cost more than
twelve thousand piastres in two years. It would no doubt have been more
prudent to have resumed the works on the auriferous stratum of the Real de
Santa Barbara.

The zone of gneiss just mentioned is, in the coast-chain from the sea to
the Villa de Cura, ten leagues broad. In this great extent of land, gneiss and
mica-slate are found exclusively, and they constitute one formation.* (*
This formation, which we shall call gneiss-mica-slate, is peculiar to the
chain of the coast of Caracas. Five formations must be distinguished, as
MM. von Buch and Raumer have so ably demonstrated in their excellent
papers on Landeck and the Riesengebirge, namely, granite, granite-gneiss,
gneiss, gneiss-mica-slate, and mica-slate. Geologists whose researches have
been confined to a small tract of land, having confounded these formations
which nature has separated in several countries in the most distinct manner,
have admitted that the gneiss and mica-slate alternate everywhere in
superimposed beds, or furnish insensible transitions from one rock to the
other. These transitions and alternating superpositions take place no doubt
in formations of granite-gneiss and gneiss-mica-slate; but because these
phenomena are observed in one region, it does not follow that in other
regions we may not find very distinct circumscribed formations of granite,
gneiss, and mica-slate. The same considerations may be applied to the
formations of serpentine, which are sometimes isolated, and sometimes
belong to the eurite, mica-slate, and grunstein.) Beyond the town of Villa de
Cura and the Cerro de Chacao the aspect of the country presents greater
geognostic variety. There are still eight leagues of declivity from the table-
land of Cura to the entry of the Llanos; and on the southern slope of the
mountains of the coast, four different formations of rock cover the gneiss.
We shall first give the description of the different strata, without grouping
them systematically.

On the south of the Cerro de Chacao, between the ravine of Tucutunemo
and Piedras Negras, the gneiss is concealed beneath a formation of
serpentine, of which the composition varies in the different superimposed
strata. Sometimes it is very pure, very homogeneous, of a dusky olive-
green, and of a conchoidal fracture: sometimes it is veined, mixed with
bluish steatite, of an unequal fracture, and containing spangles of mica. In
both these states I could not discover in it either garnets, hornblende, or
diallage. Advancing farther to the south (and we always passed over this
ground in that direction) the green of the serpentine grows deeper, and
feldspar and hornblende are recognised in it: it is difficult to determine
whether it passes into diabasis or alternates with it. There is, however, no
doubt of its containing veins of copper-ore.* (* One of these veins, on
which two shafts have been sunk, was directed hor. 2.1, and dipped 80
degrees east. The strata of the serpentine, where it is stratified with some
regularity, run hor. 8, and dip almost perpendicularly. I found malachite
disseminated in this serpentine, where it passes into grunstein.) At the foot
of this mountain two fine springs gush out from the serpentine. Near the
village of San Juan, the granular diabasis appears alone uncovered, and
takes a greenish black hue. The feldspar intimately mixed with the mass,
may be separated into distinct crystals. The mica is very rare, and there is
no quartz. The mass assumes at the surface a yellowish crust like dolerite
and basalt.

In the midst of this tract of trap-formation, the Morros of San Juan rise
like two castles in ruins. They appear linked to the mornes of St. Sebastian,
and to La Galera which bounds the Llanos like a rocky wall. The Morros of
San Juan are formed of limestone of a crystalline texture; sometimes very
compact, sometimes spongy, of a greenish-grey, shining, composed of small
grains, and mixed with scattered spangles of mica. This limestone yields a
strong effervescence with acids. I could not find in it any vestige of
organized bodies. It contains in subordinate strata, masses of hardened clay

of a blackish blue, and carburetted. These masses are fissile, very heavy,
and loaded with iron; their streak is whitish, and they produce no
effervescence with acids. They assume at their surface, by their
decomposition in the air, a yellow colour. We seem to recognize in these
argillaceous strata a tendency either to the transition-slates, or to the
kieselschiefer (schistose jasper), which everywhere characterise the black
transition-limestones. When in fragments, they might be taken at first sight
for basalt or hornblende.* (* I had an opportunity of examining again, with
the greatest care, the rocks of San Juan, of Chacao, of Parapara, and of
Calabozo, during my stay at Mexico, where, conjointly with M. del Rio,
one of the most distinguished pupils of the school of Freyberg, I formed a
geognostical collection for the Colegio de Mineria of New Spain.) Another
white limestone, compact, and containing some fragments of shells, backs
the Morros de San Juan. I could not see the line of junction of these two
limestones, or that of the calcareous formation and the diabasis.

The transverse valley which descends from Piedras Negras and the
village of San Juan, towards Parapara and the Llanos, is filled with trap-
rocks, displaying close affinity with the formation of green slates, which
they cover. Sometimes we seem to see serpentine, sometimes grunstein, and
sometimes dolerite and basalt. The arrangement of these problematical
masses is not less extraordinary. Between San Juan, Malpaso, and Piedras
Azules, they form strata parallel to each other; and dipping regularly
northward at an angle of 40 or 50 degrees, they cover even the green slates
in concordant stratification. Lower down, towards Parapara and Ortiz,
where the amygdaloids and phonolites are connected with the grunstein,
everything assumes a basaltic aspect. Balls of grunstein heaped one upon
another, form those rounded cones, which are found so frequently in the
Mittelgebirge in Bohemia, near Bilin, the country of phonolites. The
following is the result of my partial observations.

The grunstein, which at first alternated with strata of serpentine, or was
connected with that rock by insensible transitions, is seen alone, sometimes
in strata considerably inclined, and sometimes in balls with concentric
strata, imbedded in strata of the same substance. It lies, near Malpaso, on
green slates, steatitic, mingled with hornblende, destitute of mica and grains
of quartz, dipping, like the grunsteins, 45 degrees toward the north, and
directed, like them, 75 degrees north-west.

A great sterility prevails where these green slates predominate, no doubt
on account of the magnesia they contain, which (as is proved by the
magnesian-limestone of England*) is very hurtful to vegetation. (*
Magnesian limestone is of a straw-yellow colour, and contains madrepores:
it lies beneath red marl, or muriatiferous red sandstone.) The dip of the
green slates continues the same; but by degrees the direction of their strata
becomes parallel to the general direction of the primitive rocks of the chain
of the coast. At Piedras Azules these slates, mingled with hornblende, cover
in concordant stratification a blackish-blue slate, very fissile, and traversed
by small veins of quartz. The green slates include some strata of grunstein,
and even contain balls of that substance. I nowhere saw the green slates
alternate with the black slates of the ravine of Piedras Azules: at the line of
junction these two slates appear rather to pass one into the other, the green
slates becoming of a pearl-grey in proportion as they lose their hornblende.

Farther south, towards Parapara and Ortiz, the slates disappear. They are
concealed under a trap-formation more varied in its aspect. The soil
becomes more fertile; the rocky masses alternate with strata of clay, which
appear to be produced by the decomposition of the grunsteins, the
amygdaloids, and the phonolites.

The grunstein, which farther north was less granulous, and passed into
serpentine, here assumes a very different character. It contains balls of

mandelstein, or amygdaloid, eight or ten inches in diameter. These balls,
sometimes a little flattened, are divided into concentric layers: this is the
effect of decomposition. Their nucleus is almost as hard as basalt, and they
are intermingled with little cavities, owing to bubbles of gas, filled with
green earth, and crystals of pyroxene and mesotype. Their basis is greyish
blue, rather soft, and showing small white spots which, by the regular form
they present, I should conceive to be decomposed feldspar. M. von Buch
examined with a powerful lens the species we brought. He discovered that
each crystal of pyroxene, enveloped in the earthy mass, is separated from it
by fissures parallel to the sides of the crystal. These fissures seem to be the
effect of a contraction which the mass or basis of the mandelstein has
undergone. I sometimes saw these balls of mandelstein arranged in strata,
and separated from each other by beds of grunstein of ten or fourteen inches
thick; sometimes (and this situation is most common) the balls of
mandelstein, two or three feet in diameter, are found in heaps, and form
little mounts with rounded summits, like spheroidal basalt. The clay which
separates these amygdaloid concretions arises from the decomposition of
their crust. They acquire by the contact of the air a very thin coating of
yellow ochre.

South-west of the village of Parapara rises the little Cerro de Flores,
which is discerned from afar in the steppes. Almost at its foot, and in the
midst of the mandelstein tract we have just been describing, a porphyritic
phonolite, a mass of compact feldspar of a greenish grey, or mountain-
green, containing long crystals of vitreous feldspar, appears exposed. It is
the real porphyrschiefer of Werner; and it would be difficult to distinguish,
in a collection of stones, the phonolite of Parapara from that of Bilin, in
Bohemia. It does not, however, here form rocks in grotesque shapes, but
little hills covered with tabular blocks, large plates extremely sonorous,
translucid on the edges, and wounding the hands when broken.

Such are the successions of rocks, which I described on the spot as I
progressively found them, from the lake of Tacarigua to the entrance of the
steppes. Few places in Europe display a geological arrangement so well
worthy of being studied. We saw there in succession six formations:
namely, mica-slate-gneiss, green transition-slate, black transition-limestone,
serpentine and grunstein, amygdaloid (with pyroxene), and phonolite.

I must observe, in the first place, that the substance just described under
the name of grunstein, in every respect resembles that which forms layers in
the mica-slate of Cabo Blanco, and veins near Caracas. It differs only by
containing neither quartz, garnets, nor pyrites. The close relations we
observed near the Cerro de Chacao, between the grunstein and the
serpentine, cannot surprise these geologists who have studied the mountains
of Franconia and Silesia. Near Zobtenberg* (* Between Tampadel and
Silsterwiz.) a serpentine rock alternates also with gabbro. In the district of
Glatz the fissures of the gabbro are filled with a steatite of a greenish white
colour, and the rock which was long thought to belong to the grunsteins* is
a close mixture of feldspar and diallage. (* In the mountains of Bareuth, in
Franconia, so abundant in grunstein and serpentine, these formations are not
connected together. The serpentine there belongs rather to the schistose
hornblende (hornblendschiefer), as in the island of Cuba. Near Guanaxuato,
in Mexico, I saw it alternating with syenite. These phenomena of serpentine
rocks forming layers in eurite (weisstein), in schistose hornblende, in
gabbro, and in syenite, are so much the more remarkable, as the great mass
of garnetiferous serpentines, which are found in the mountains of gneiss
and mica-slate, form little distinct mounts, masses not covered by other
formations. It is not the same in the mixtures of serpentine and granulated
limestone.)

The grunsteins of Tucutunemo, which we consider as constituting the
same formation as the serpentine rock, contain veins of malachite and

copper-pyrites. These same metalliferous combinations are found also in
Franconia, in the grunsteins of the mountains of Steben and Lichtenberg.
With respect to the green slates of Malpaso, which have all the characters of
transition-slates, they are identical with those which M. von Buch has so
well described, near Schonau, in Silesia. They contain beds of grunstein,
like the slates of the mountains of Steben just mentioned.* (* On advancing
into the adit for draining the Friedrich-Wilhelmstollen mine, which I caused
to be begun in 1794, near Steben, and which is yet only 340 toises long,
there have successively been found, in the transition-slate subordinate strata
of pure and porphyritic grunstein, strata, of Lydian stone and ampelite
(alaunschiefer), and strata of fine-grained grunstein. All these strata
characterise the transition-slates.) The black limestone of the Morros de San
Juan is also a transition-limestone. It forms perhaps a subordinate stratum in
the slates of Malpaso. This situation would be analogous to what is
observed in several parts of Switzerland.* (* For Instance, at the Glyshorn,
at the Col de Balme, etc.) The slaty zone, the centre of which is the ravine
of Piedras Azules, appears divided into two formations. On some points we
think we observe one passing into the other.

The grunsteins, which begin again to the south of these slates, appear to
me to differ little from those found north of the ravine of Piedras Azules. I
did not see there any pyroxene; but on the very spot I recognized a number
of crystals in the amygdaloid, which appears so strongly linked to the
grunstein that they alternate several times.

The geologist may consider his task as fulfilled when he has traced with
accuracy the positions of the diverse strata; and has pointed out the
analogies traceable between these positions and what has been observed in
other countries. But how can he avoid being tempted to go back to the
origin of so many different substances, and to inquire how far the dominion
of fire has extended in the mountains that bound the great basin of the

steppes? In researches on the position of rocks we have generally to
complain of not sufficiently perceiving the connection between the masses,
which we believe to be superimposed on one another. Here the difficulty
seems to arise from the too intimate and too numerous relations observed in
rocks that are thought not to belong to the same family.

The phonolite (or leucostine compacte of Cordier) is pretty generally
regarded by all who have at once examined burning and extinguished
volcanoes, as a flow of lithoid lava. I found no real basalt or dolerite; but
the presence of pyroxene in the amygdaloid of Parapara leaves little doubt
of the igneous origin of those spheroidal masses, fissured, and full of
cavities. Balls of this amygdaloid are enclosed in the grunstein; and this
grunstein alternates on one side with a green slate, on the other with the
serpentine of Tucutunemo. Here, then, is a connexion sufficiently close
established between the phonolites and the green slates, between the
pyroxenic amygdaloids and the serpentines containing copper-ores, between
volcanic substances and others that are included under the vague name of
transition-traps. All these masses are destitute of quartz like the real trap-
porphyries, or volcanic trachytes. This phenomenon is the more remarkable,
as the grunsteins which are called primitive almost always contain quartz in
Europe. The most general dip of the slates of Piedras Azules, of the
grunsteins of Parapara, and of the pyroxenic amygdaloids embedded in
strata of grunstein, does not follow the slope of the ground from north to
south, but is pretty regular towards the north. The strata incline towards the
chain of the coast, as substances which had not been in fusion might be
supposed to do. Can we admit that so many alternating rocks, imbedded one
in the other, have a common origin? The nature of the phonolites, which are
lithoid lavas with a feldspar basis, and the nature of the green slates
intermixed with hornblende, oppose this opinion. In this state of things we
may choose between two solutions of the problem in question. In one of
these solutions the phonolite of the Cerro de Flores is to be regarded as the

sole volcanic production of the tract; and we are forced to unite the
pyroxenic amygdaloids with the rest of the grunsteins, in one single
formation, that which is so common in the transition-mountains of Europe,
considered hitherto as not volcanic. In the other solution of the problem, the
masses of phonolite, amygdaloid, and grunstein, which are found in the
south of the ravine of Piedras Azules, are separated from the grunsteins and
serpentine rocks that cover the declivity of the mountains north of the
ravine. In the present state of knowledge I find difficulties almost equally
great in adopting either of these suppositions; but I have no doubt that,
when the real grunsteins (not the hornblende-grunsteins) contained in the
gneiss and mica-slates, shall have been more attentively examined in other
places; when the basalts (with pyroxene) forming strata in primitive rocks*
(* For instance, at Krobsdorf, in Silesia, a stratum of basalt has been
recognized in the mica-slate by two celebrated geologists, MM. von Buch
and Raumer. (Vom Granite des Riesengebirges, 1813.) and the diabases and
amygdaloids in the transition mountains, shall have been carefully studied;
when the texture of the masses shall have been subjected to a kind of
mechanical analysis, and the hornblendes better distinguished from the
pyroxenes,* (* The grunsteins or diabases of the Fichtelgebirge, in
Franconia, which belong to the transition-slate, sometimes contain
pyroxenes.) and the grunsteins from the dolerites; a great number of
phenomena which now appear isolated and obscure, will be ranged under
general laws. The phonolite and other rocks of igneous origin at Parapara
are so much the more interesting, as they indicate ancient eruptions in a
granite zone; as they belong to the shore of the basin of the steppes, as the
basalts of Harutsh belong to the shore of the desert of Sahara; and lastly, as
they are the only rocks of the kind we observed in the mountains of the
Capitania-General of Caracas, which are also destitute of trachytes or trap-
porphyry, basalts, and volcanic productions.* (* From the Rio Negro to the

coasts of Cumana and Caracas, to the east of the mountains of Merida,
which we did not visit.)

The southern declivity of the western chain is tolerably steep; the
steppes, according to my barometrical measurements, being a thousand feet
lower than the bottom of the basin of Aragua. From the extensive table-land
of the Villa de Cura we descended towards the banks of the Rio
Tucutunemo, which has hollowed for itself, in a serpentine rock, a
longitudinal valley running from east to west, at nearly the same level as La
Victoria. A transverse valley, lying generally north and south, led us into the
Llanos, by the villages of Parapara and Ortiz. It grows very narrow in
several parts. Basins, the bottoms of which are perfectly horizontal,
communicate together by narrow passes with steep declivities. They were,
no doubt, formerly small lakes, which, owing to the accumulation of the
waters, or some more violent catastrophe, have broken down the dykes by
which they were separated. This phenomenon is found in both continents,
wherever we examine the longitudinal valleys forming the passages of the
Andes, the Alps,* (* For example, the road from the valley of Ursern to the
Hospice of St. Gothard, and thence to Airolo.) or the Pyrenees. It is
probable, that the irruption of the waters towards the Llanos have given, by
extraordinary rents, the form of ruins to the Morros of San Juan and of San
Sebastian. The volcanic tract of Parapara and Ortis is now only 30 or 40
toises above the Llanos. The eruptions consequently took place at the
lowest point of the granitic chain.

In the Mesa de Paja, in the ninth degree of latitude, we entered the basin
of the Llanos. The sun was almost at its zenith; the earth, wherever it
appeared sterile and destitute of vegetation, was at the temperature of 48 or
50 degrees.* (* A thermometer, placed in the sand, rose to 38.4 and 40
degrees Reaumur.) Not a breath of air was felt at the height at which we
were on our mules; yet, in the midst of this apparent calm, whirls of dust

incessantly arose, driven on by those small currents of air which glide only
over the surface of the ground, and are occasioned by the difference of
temperature between the naked sand and the spots covered with grass.
These sand-winds augment the suffocating heat of the air. Every grain of
quartz, hotter than the surrounding air, radiates heat in every direction; and
it is difficult to observe the temperature of the atmosphere, owing to these
particles of sand striking against the bulb of the thermometer. All around us
the plains seemed to ascend to the sky, and the vast and profound solitude
appeared like an ocean covered with sea-weed. According to the unequal
mass of vapours diffused through the atmosphere, and the variable
decrement in the temperature of the different strata of air, the horizon in
some parts was clear and distinct; in other parts it appeared undulating,
sinuous, and as if striped. The earth there was confounded with the sky.
Through the dry mist and strata of vapour the trunks of palm-trees were
seen from afar, stripped of their foliage and their verdant summits, and
looking like the masts of a ship descried upon the horizon.

There is something awful, as well as sad and gloomy, in the uniform
aspect of these steppes. Everything seems motionless; scarcely does a small
cloud, passing across the zenith, and denoting the approach of the rainy
season, cast its shadow on the earth. I know not whether the first aspect of
the Llanos excite less astonishment than that of the chain of the Andes.
Mountainous countries, whatever may be the absolute elevation of the
highest summits, have an analogous physiognomy; but we accustom
ourselves with difficulty to the view of the Llanos of Venezuela and
Casanare, to that of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres and of Chaco, which recal
to mind incessantly, and during journeys of twenty or thirty days, the
smooth surface of the ocean. I had seen the plains or llanos of La Mancha in
Spain, and the heaths (ericeta) that extend from the extremity of Jutland,
through Luneburg and Westphalia, to Belgium. These last are really steppes,
and, during several ages, only small portions of them have yielded to

cultivation; but the plains of the west and north of Europe present only a
feeble image of the immense llanos of South America. It is in the south-east
of our continent, in Hungary, between the Danube and the Theiss; in Russia,
between the Borysthenes, the Don, and the Volga, that we find those vast
pastures, which seem to have been levelled by a long abode of the waters,
and which meet the horizon on every side. The plains of Hungary, where I
traversed them on the frontiers of Germany, between Presburg and
Oedenburg, strike the imagination of the traveller by the constant mirage;
but their greatest extent is more to the east, between Czegled, Debreczin,
and Tittel. There they present the appearance of a vast ocean of verdure,
having only two outlets, one near Gran and Waitzen, the other between
Belgrade and Widdin.

The different quarters of the world have been supposed to be
characterized by the remark, that Europe has its heaths, Asia its steppes,
Africa its deserts, and America its savannahs; but by this distinction,
contrasts are established that are not founded either on the nature of things,
or the genius of languages. The existence of a heath always supposes an
association of plants of the family of ericae; the steppes of Asia are not
everywhere covered with saline plants; the savannahs of Venezuela furnish
not only the gramina, but with them small herbaceous mimosas, legumina,
and other dicotyledonous plants. The plains of Songaria, those which extend
between the Don and the Volga, and the puszta of Hungary, are real
savannahs, pasturages abounding in grasses;* (* These vast steppes of
Hungary are elevated only thirty or forty toises above the level of the sea,
which is more than eighty leagues distant from them. See Wahlenberg's
Flora Carpathianica. Baron Podmanitzky, an Hungarian nobleman, highly
distinguished for his knowledge of the physical sciences, caused the level of
these plains to be taken, to facilitate the formation of a canal then projected
between the Danube and the Theiss. He found the line of division, or the
convexity of the ground, which slopes on each side towards the beds of the

two rivers, to be only thirteen toises above the height of the Danube. The
widely extended pastures, which reach in every direction to the horizon, are
called in the country, Puszta, and, over a distance of many leagues, are
without any human habitation. Plains of this kind, intermingled with
marshes and sandy tracts, are found on the western side of the Theiss,
between Czegled, Csaba, Komloss, and Szarwass; and on the eastern side,
between Debreczin, Karczag, and Szoboszlo. The area of these plains of the
interior basin of Hungary has been estimated, by a pretty accurate
calculation, to be between two thousand five hundred and three thousand
square leagues (twenty to a degree). Between Czegled, Szolnok, and
Ketskemet, the plain resembles a sea of sand.) while the savannahs to the
east and west of the Rocky Mountains and of New Mexico produce
chenopodiums containing carbonate and muriate of soda. Asia has real
deserts destitute of vegetation, in Arabia, in Gobi, and in Persia. Since we
have become better acquainted with the deserts in the interior of Africa, so
long and so vaguely confounded together under the name of desert of
Sahara (Zahra); it has been observed, that in this continent, towards the east,
savannahs and pastures are found, as in Arabia, situated in the midst of
naked and barren tracts. It is these deserts, covered with gravel and destitute
of plants, which are almost entirely wanting in the New World. I saw them
only in that part of Peru, between Amotape and Coquimbo, on the shores of
the Pacific. These are called by the Spaniards, not llanos, but the desiertos
of Sechura and Atacamez. This solitary tract is not broad, but it is four
hundred and forty leagues long. The rock pierces everywhere through the
quicksands. No drop of rain ever falls on it; and, like the desert of Sahara,
north of Timbuctoo, the Peruvian desert affords, near Huaura, a rich mine of
native salt. Everywhere else, in the New World, there are plains desert
because not inhabited, but no real deserts.* (* We are almost tempted,
however, to give the name of desert to that vast and sandy table-land of
Brazil, the Campos dos Parecis, which gives birth to the rivers Tapajos,

Paraguay, and Madeira, and which reaches the summit of the highest
mountains. Almost destitute of vegetation, it reminds us of Gobi, in
Mongolia.)

The same phenomena are repeated in the most distant regions; and,
instead of designating those vast treeless plains in accordance with the
nature of the plants they produce, it seems natural to class them into deserts,
steppes, or savannahs; into bare lands without any appearance of
vegetation, and lands covered with gramina or small plants of the
dicotyledonous tribe. The savannahs of America, especially those of the
temperate zone, have in many works been designated by the French term
prairies; but this appears to me little applicable to pastures which are often
very dry, though covered with grass of four or five feet in height. The
Llanos and the Pampas of South America are really steppes. They are
covered with beautiful verdure in the rainy season, but in the time of great
drought they assume the aspect of a desert. The grass is then reduced to
powder; the earth cracks; the alligators and the great serpents remain buried
in the dried mud, till awakened from their long lethargy by the first showers
of spring. These phenomena are observed on barren tracts of fifty or sixty
leagues in length, wherever the savannahs are not traversed by rivers; for on
the borders of rivulets, and around little pools of stagnant water, the
traveller finds at certain distances, even during the period of the great
droughts, thickets of mauritia, a palm, the leaves of which spread out like a
fan, and preserve a brilliant verdure.

The steppes of Asia are all beyond the tropics, and form very elevated
table-lands. America also has savannahs of considerable extent on the backs
of the mountains of Mexico, Peru, and Quito; but its most extensive
steppes, the Llanos of Cumana, Caracas, and Meta, are little raised above
the level of the ocean, and all belong to the equinoctial zone. These
circumstances give them a peculiar character. They have not, like the

steppes of southern Asia, and the deserts of Persia, those lakes without
issue, those small systems of rivers which lose themselves either in the
sands, or by subterranean filtrations. The Llanos of America incline to the
east and south; and their running waters are branches of the Orinoco.

The course of these rivers once led me to believe, that the plains formed
table-lands, raised at least from one hundred to one hundred and fifty toises
above the level of the ocean. I supposed that the deserts of interior Africa
were also at a considerable height; and that they rose one above another as
in tiers, from the coast to the interior of the continent. No barometer has yet
been carried into the Sahara. With respect to the Llanos of America, I found
by barometric heights observed at Calabozo, at the Villa del Pao, and at the
mouth of the Meta, that their height is only forty or fifty toises above the
level of the sea. The fall of the rivers is extremely gentle, often nearly
imperceptible; and therefore the least wind, or the swelling of the Orinoco,
causes a reflux in those rivers that flow into it. The Indians believe
themselves to be descending during a whole day, when navigating from the
mouths of these rivers to their sources. The descending waters are separated
from those that flow back by a great body of stagnant water, in which, the
equilibrium being disturbed, whirlpools are formed very dangerous for
boats.

The chief characteristic of the savannahs or steppes of South America is
the absolute want of hills and inequalities—the perfect level of every part of
the soil. Accordingly the Spanish conquerors, who first penetrated from
Coro to the banks of the Apure, did not call them deserts or savannahs, or
meadows, but plains (llanos). Often within a distance of thirty square
leagues there is not an eminence of a foot high. This resemblance to the
surface of the sea strikes the imagination most powerfully where the plains
are altogether destitute of palm-trees; and where the mountains of the shore
and of the Orinoco are so distant that they cannot be seen, as in the Mesa de

Pavones. A person would be tempted there to take the altitude of the sun
with a quadrant, if the horizon of the land were not constantly misty on
account of the variable effects of refraction. This equality of surface is still
more perfect in the meridian of Calabozo, than towards the east, between
Cari, La Villa del Pao, and Nueva Barcelona; but it extends without
interruption from the mouths of the Orinoco to La Villa de Araure and to
Ospinos, on a parallel of a hundred and eighty leagues in length; and from
San Carlos to the savannahs of Caqueat, on a meridian of two hundred
leagues. It particularly characterises the New Continent, as it does the low
steppes of Asia, between the Borysthenes and the Volga, between the Irtish
and the Obi. The deserts of central Africa, of Arabia, Syria, and Persia,
Gobi, and Casna, present, on the contrary, many inequalities, ranges of hills,
ravines without water, and rocks which pierce the sands.

The Llanos, however, notwithstanding the apparent uniformity of their
surface, present two kinds of inequalities, which cannot escape the
observation of the traveller. The first is known by the name of banks
(bancos); they are in reality shoals in the basin of the steppes, fractured
strata of sandstone, or compact limestone, standing four or five feet higher
than the rest of the plain. These banks are sometimes three or four leagues
in length; they are entirely smooth, with a horizontal surface; their existence
is perceived only by examining their margins. The second species of
inequality can be recognised only by geodesical or barometric levellings, or
by the course of rivers. It is called a mesa or table, and is composed of
small flats, or rather convex eminences, that rise insensibly to the height of
a few toises. Such are, towards the east, in the province of Cumana, on the
north of the Villa de la Merced and Candelaria, the Mesas of Amana, of
Guanipa, and of Jonoro, the direction of which is south-west and north-east;
and which, in spite of their inconsiderable elevation, divide the waters
between the Orinoco and the northern coast of Terra Firma. The convexity
of the savannah alone occasions this partition: we there find the dividing of

the waters (divortia aquarum* (* "C. Manlium prope jugis [Tauri] ad
divortia aquarum castra posuisse." Livy lib. 38 c. 75.)), as in Poland, where,
far from the Carpathian mountains, the plain itself divides the waters
between the Baltic and the Black Sea. Geographers, who suppose the
existence of a chain of mountains wherever there is a line of division, have
not failed to mark one in the maps, at the sources of the Rio Neveri, the
Unare, the Guarapiche, and the Pao. Thus the priests of Mongol race,
according to ancient and superstitious custom, erect oboes, or little mounds
of stone, on every point where the rivers flow in an opposite direction.

The uniform landscape of the Llanos; the extremely small number of
their inhabitants; the fatigue of travelling beneath a burning sky, and an
atmosphere darkened by dust; the view of that horizon, which seems for
ever to fly before us; those lonely trunks of palm-trees, which have all the
same aspect, and which we despair of reaching, because they are
confounded with other trunks that rise by degrees on the visual horizon; all
these causes combine to make the steppes appear far more extensive than
they are in reality. The planters who inhabit the southern declivity of the
chain of the coast see the steppes extend towards the south, as far as the eye
can reach, like an ocean of verdure. They know that from the Delta of the
Orinoco to the province of Varinas, and thence, by traversing the banks of
the Meta, the Guaviare, and the Caguan, they can advance three hundred
and eighty leagues* (* This is the distance from Timbuctoo to the northern
coast of Africa.) into the plains, first from east to west, and then from north-
east to south-east beyond the Equator, to the foot of the Andes of Pasto.
They know by the accounts of travellers the Pampas of Buenos Ayres,
which are also Llanos covered with fine grass, destitute of trees, and filled
with oxen and horses become wild. They suppose that, according to the
greater part of our maps of America, this continent has only one chain of
mountains, that of the Andes, which stretches from south to north; and they

form a vague idea of the contiguity of all the plains from the Orinoco and
the Apure to the Rio de la Plata and the Straits of Magellan.

Without stopping here to give a mineralogical description of the
transverse chains which divide America from east to west, it will be
sufficient to notice the general structure of a continent, the extremities of
which, though situated in climates little analogous, nevertheless present
several features of resemblance. In order to have an exact idea of the plains,
their configuration, and their limits, we must know the chains of mountains
that form their boundaries. We have already described the Cordillera of the
coast, of which the highest summit is the Silla de Caraccas, and which is
linked by the Paramo de las Rosas to the Nevada de Merida, and the Andes
of New Grenada. We have seen that, in the tenth degree of north latitude, it
stretches from Quibor and Barquesimeto as far as the point of Paria. A
second chain of mountains, or rather a less elevated but much larger group,
extends between the parallels of 3 and 7 degrees from the mouths of the
Guaviare and the Meta to the sources of the Orinoco, the Marony, and the
Essequibo, towards French and Dutch Guiana. I call this chain the
Cordillera of Parime, or of the great cataracts of the Orinoco. It may be
followed for a length of two hundred and fifty leagues; but it is less a chain,
than a collection of granitic mountains, separated by small plains, without
being everywhere disposed in lines. The group of the mountains of Parime
narrows considerably between the sources of the Orinoco and the
mountains of Demerara, in the Sierras of Quimiropaca and Pacaraimo,
which divide the waters between the Carony and the Rio Parime, or Rio de
Aguas Blancas. This is the scene of the expeditions which were undertaken
in search of El Dorado, and the great city of Manoa, the Timbuctoo of the
New Continent. The Cordillera of Parime does not join the Andes of New
Grenada, but is separated from them by a space eighty leagues broad. If we
suppose it to have been destroyed in this space by some great revolution of
the globe (which is scarcely probable) we must admit that it anciently

branched off from the Andes between Santa Fe de Bogota and Pamplona.
This remark serves to fix more easily in the memory of the reader the
geographical position of a Cordillera till now very imperfectly known. A
third chain of mountains unites in 16 and 18 degrees south latitude (by
Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the Serranias of Aguapehy, and the famous Campos
dos Parecis) the Andes of Peru, to the mountains of Brazil. It is the
Cordillera of Chiquitos which widens in the Capitania de Minas Geraes,
and divides the rivers flowing into the Amazon from those of the Rio de la
Plata,* (* There is only a portage or carrying-place of 5322 bracas between
the Guapore (a branch of the Marmore and of the Madeira), and the Rio
Aguapehy (a branch of the Jaura and of the Paraguay).) not only in the
interior of the country, in the meridian of Villa Boa, but also at a few
leagues from the coast, between Rio Janeiro and Bahia.* (* The Cordillera
of Chiquitos and of Brazil stretches toward the south-east, in the
government of the Rio Grande, beyond the latitude of 30 degrees south.)

These three transverse chains, or rather these three groups of mountains
stretching from west to east, within the limits of the torrid zone, are
separated by tracts entirely level, the plains of Caracas, or of the Lower
Orinoco; the plains of the Amazon and the Rio Negro; and the plains of
Buenos Ayres, or of La Plata. I use the term plains, because the Lower
Orinoco and the Amazon, far from flowing in a valley, form but a little
furrow in the midst of a vast level. The two basins, placed at the extremities
of South America, are savannahs or steppes, pasturage without trees; the
intermediate basin, which receives the equatorial rains during the whole
year, is almost entirely one vast forest, through which no other roads are
known save the rivers. The strong vegetation which conceals the soil,
renders also the uniformity of its level less perceptible; and the plains of
Caracas and La Plata bear no other name. The three basins we have just
described are called, in the language of the colonists, the Llanos of Varinas
and of Caracas, the bosques or selvas (forests) of the Amazon, and the

Pampas of Buenos Ayres. The trees not only for the most part cover the
plains of the Amazon, from the Cordillera de Chiquitos, as far as that of
Parime; they also crown these two chains of mountains, which rarely attain
the height of the Pyrenees.* (* We must except the most western part of the
Cordillera of Chiquitos, between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra
where the summits are covered with snow; but this colossal group almost
belongs to the Andes de la Paz, of which it forms a promontory or spur,
directed toward the east.) On this account, the vast plains of the Amazon,
the Madeira, and the Rio Negro, are not so distinctly bounded as the Llanos
of Caracas, and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. As the region of forests
comprises at once the plains and the mountains, it extends from 18 degrees
south to 7 and 8 degrees north,* (* To the west, in consequence of the
Llanos of Manso, and the Pampas de Huanacos, the forests do not extend
generally beyond the parallels of 18 or 19 degrees south latitude; but to the
east, in Brazil (in the capitanias of San Pablo and Rio Grande) as well as in
Paraguay, on the borders of the Parana, they advance as far as 25 degrees
south.) and occupies an extent of near a hundred and twenty thousand
square leagues. This forest of South America, for in fact there is only one, is
six times larger than France. It is known to Europeans only on the shores of
a few rivers, by which it is traversed; and has its openings, the extent of
which is in proportion to that of the forests. We shall soon skirt the marshy
savannahs, between the Upper Orinoco, the Conorichite, and the
Cassiquiare, in the latitude of 3 and 4 degrees. There are other openings, or
as they are called, clear savannahs,* (* Savannas limpias, that is to say,
clear of trees.) in the same parallel, between the sources of the Mao and the
Rio de Aguas Blancas, south of the Sierra de Pacaraima. These last
savannahs, which are inhabited by Caribs, and nomad Macusis, lie near the
frontiers of Dutch and French Guiana.

Having noticed the geological constitution of South America, we shall
now mark its principal features. The western coasts are bordered by an

enormous wall of mountains, rich in precious metals wherever volcanic fire
has not pierced through the eternal snow. This is the Cordillera of the
Andes. Summits of trap-porphyry rise beyond three thousand three hundred
toises, and the mean height of the chain* is one thousand eight hundred and
fifty toises. (* In New Grenada, Quito, and Peru, according to
measurements taken by Bouguer, La Condamine, and myself.) It stretches
in the direction of a meridian, and sends into each hemisphere a lateral
branch, in the latitudes of 10 degrees north, and 16 and 18 degrees south.
The first of these two branches, that of the coast of Caracas, is of
considerable length, and forms in fact a chain. The second branch, the
Cordillera of Chiquitos and of the sources of the Guapore, is very rich in
gold, and widens toward the east, in Brazil, into vast tablelands, having a
mild and temperate climate. Between these two transverse chains,
contiguous to the Andes, an isolated group of granitic mountains is situated,
from 3 to 7 degrees north latitude; which also runs parallel to the Equator,
but, not passing the meridian of 71 degrees, terminates abruptly towards the
west, and is not united to the Andes of New Grenada. These three transverse
chains have no active volcanoes; we know not whether the most southern,
like the two others, be destitute of trachytes or trap-porphyry. None of their
summits enter the limit of perpetual snow; and the mean height of the
Cordillera of La Parime, and of the littoral chain of Caracas, does not reach
six hundred toises, though some of its summits rise fourteen hundred toises
above the level of the sea.* (* We do not reckon here, as belonging to the
chain of the coast, the Nevados and Paramos of Merida and of Truxillo,
which are a prolongation of the Andes of New Grenada.) The three
transverse chains are separated by plains entirely closed towards the west,
and open towards the east and south-east. When we reflect on their small
elevation above the surface of the ocean, we are tempted to consider them
as gulfs stretching in the direction of the current of rotation. If, from the
effect of some peculiar attraction, the waters of the Atlantic were to rise

fifty toises at the mouth of the Orinoco, and two hundred toises at the
mouth of the Amazon, the flood would submerge more than the half of
South America. The eastern declivity, or the foot of the Andes, now six
hundred leagues distant from the coast of Brazil, would become a shore
beaten by the waves. This consideration is the result of a barometric
measurement, taken in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, where the river
Amazon issues from the Cordilleras. I found the mean height of this
immense river only one hundred and ninety-four toises above the present
level of the Atlantic. The intermediate plains, however, covered with
forests, are still five times higher than the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, and the
grass-covered Llanos of Caracas and the Meta.

Those Llanos which form the basin of the Orinoco, and which we crossed
twice in one year, in the months of March and July, communicate with the
basin of the Amazon and the Rio Negro, bounded on one side by the
Cordillera of Chiquitos, and on the other by the mountains of Parime. The
opening which is left between the latter and the Andes of New Grenada,
occasions this communication. The aspect of the country here reminds us,
but on a much larger scale, of the plains of Lombardy, which also are only
fifty or sixty toises above the level of the ocean; and are directed first from
La Brenta to Turin, east and west; and then from Turin to Coni, north and
south. If we were authorized, from other geological facts, to regard the three
great plains of the Lower Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Rio de la Plata as
basins of ancient lakes,* (* In Siberia, the great steppes between the Irtish
and the Obi, especially that of Baraba, full of salt lakes (Tchabakly, Tchany,
Karasouk, and Topolony), appear to have been, according to the Chinese
traditions, even within historical times, an inland sea.) we should imagine
we perceived in the plains of the Rio Vichada and the Meta, a channel by
which the waters of the upper lake (those of the plains of the Amazon)
forced their way towards the lower basin, (that of the Llanos of Caracas,)
separating the Cordillera of La Parime from that of the Andes. This channel

is a kind of land-strait. The ground, which is perfectly level between the
Guaviare, the Meta, and the Apure, displays no vestige of a violent irruption
of the waters; but on the edge of the Cordillera of Parime, between the
latitudes of 4 and 7 degrees, the Orinoco, flowing in a westerly direction
from its source to the mouth of the Guaviare, has forced its way through the
rocks, directing its course from south to north. All the great cataracts, as we
shall soon see, are within the latitudes just named. When the river has
reached the mouth of the Apure in that very low ground where the slope
towards the north is met by the counter-slope towards the south-east, that is
to say, by the inclination of the plains which rise imperceptibly towards the
mountains of Caracas, the river turns anew and flows eastward. It appeared
to me, that it was proper to fix the attention of the reader on these singular
inflexions of the Orinoco because, belonging at once to two basins, its
course marks, in some sort, even on the most imperfect maps, the direction
of that part of the plains intervening between New Grenada and the western
border of the mountains of La Parime.

The Llanos or steppes of the Lower Orinoco and of the Meta, like the
deserts of Africa, bear different names in different parts. From the mouths
of the Dragon the Llanos of Cumana, of Barcelona, and of Caracas or
Venezuela,* follow, running from east to west. (* The following are
subdivisions of these three great Llanos, as I marked them down on the
spot. The Llanos of Cumana and New Andalusia include those of Maturin
and Terecen, of Amana, Guanipa, Jonoro, and Cari. The Llanos of Nueva
Barcelona comprise those of Aragua, Pariaguan, and Villa del Pao. We
distinguish in the Llanos of Caracas those of Chaguaramas, Uritucu,
Calabozo or Guarico, La Portuguesa, San Carlos, and Araure.) Where the
steppes turn towards the south and south-south-west, from the latitude of 8
degrees, between the meridians of 70 and 73 degrees, we find from north to
south, the Llanos of Varinas, Casanare, the Meta, Guaviare, Caguau, and
Caqueta.* (* The inhabitants of these plains distinguish as subdivisions,

from the Rio Portuguesa to Caqueta, the Llanos of Guanare, Bocono,
Nutrius or the Apure, Palmerito near Quintero, Guardalito and Arauca, the
Meta, Apiay near the port of Pachaquiaro, Vichada, Guaviare, Arriari,
Inirida, the Rio Hacha, and Caguan. The limits between the savannahs and
the forests, in the plains that extend from the sources of the Rio Negro to
Putumayo, are not sufficiently known.) The plains of Varinas contain some
few monuments of the industry of a nation that has disappeared. Between
Mijagual and the Cano de la Hacha, we find some real tumuli, called in the
country the Serillos de los Indios. They are hillocks in the shape of cones,
artificially formed of earth, and probably contain bones, like the tumuli in
the steppes of Asia. A fine road is also discovered near Hato de la Calzada,
between Varinas and Canagua, five leagues long, made before the conquest,
in the most remote times, by the natives. It is a causeway of earth fifteen
feet high, crossing a plain often overflowed. Did nations farther advanced in
civilization descend from the mountains of Truxillo and Merido to the
plains of the Rio Apure? The Indians whom we now find between this river
and the Meta, are in too rude a state to think of making roads or raising
tumuli.

I calculated the area of these Llanos from the Caqueta to the Apure, and
from the Apure to the Delta of the Orinoco, and found it to be seventeen
thousand square leagues twenty to a degree. The part running from north to
south is almost double that which stretches from east to west, between the
Lower Orinoco and the littoral chain of Caracas. The Pampas on the north
and north-west of Buenos Ayres, between this city and Cordova, Jujuy, and
the Tucuman, are of nearly the same extent as the Llanos; but the Pampas
stretch still farther on to the length of 18 degrees southward; and the land
they occupy is so vast, that they produce palm-trees at one of their
extremities, while the other, equally low and level, is covered with eternal
frost.

The Llanos of America, where they extend in the direction of a parallel of
the equator, are three-fourths narrower then the great desert of Africa. This
circumstance is very important in a region where the winds constantly blow
from east to west. The farther the plains stretch in this direction, the more
ardent is their climate. The great ocean of sand in Africa communicates by
Yemen* with Gedrosia and Beloochistan, as far as the right bank of the
Indus. (* We cannot be surprised that the Arabic should be richer than any
other language of the East in words expressing the ideas of desert,
uninhabited plains, and plains covered with gramina. I could give a list of
thirty-five of these words, which the Arabian authors employ without
always distinguishing them by the shades of meaning which each separate
word expresses. Makadh and kaah indicate, in preference, plains; bakaak, a
table-land; kafr, mikfar, smlis, mahk, and habaucer, a naked desert, covered
with sand and gravel; tanufah, a steppe. Zahra means at once a naked desert
and a savannah. The word steppe, or step, is Russian, and not Tartarian. In
the Turco-Tartar dialect a heath is called tala or tschol. The word gobi,
which Europeans have corrupted into cobi, signifies in the Mongol tongue a
naked desert. It is equivalent to the scha-mo or khan-hai of the Chinese. A
steppe, or plain covered with herbs, is in Mongol, kudah; in Chinese,
kouana.) It is from the effect of winds that have passed over the deserts
situated to the east, that the little basin of the Red Sea, surrounded by plains
which send forth from all sides radiant caloric, is one of the hottest regions
of the globe. The unfortunate captain Tuckey relates,* (* Expedition to
explore the river Zahir, 1818.) that the centigrade thermometer keeps there
generally in the night at 34 degrees, and by day from 40 to 44 degrees. We
shall soon see that, even in the westernmost part of the steppes of Caracas,
we seldom found the temperature of the air, in the shade, above 37 degrees.

These physical considerations on the steppes of the New World are linked
with others more interesting, inasmuch as they are connected with the
history of our species. The great sea of sand in Africa, the deserts without
water, are frequented only by caravans, that take fifty days to traverse
them.* (* This is the maximum of the time, according to Major Rennell,
Travels of Mungo Park volume 2.) Separating the Negro race from the
Moors, and the Berber and Kabyle tribes, the Sahara is inhabited only in the
oases. It affords pasturage only in the eastern part, where, from the effect of
the trade-winds, the layer of sand being less thick, the springs appear at the
surface of the earth. In America, the steppes, less vast, less scorching,
fertilized by fine rivers, present fewer obstacles to the intercourse of
nations. The Llanos separate the chain of the coast of Caracas and the
Andes of New Grenada from the region of forests; from that woody region
of the Orinoco which, from the first discovery of America, has been
inhabited by nations more rude, and farther removed from civilization, than
the inhabitants of the coast, and still more than the mountaineers of the
Cordilleras. The steppes, however, were no more heretofore the rampart of
civilization than they are now the rampart of the liberty of the hordes that
live in the forests. They have not hindered the nations of the Lower Orinoco
from going up the little rivers and making incursions to the north and the
west. If, according to the various distribution of animals on the globe, the
pastoral life could have existed in the New World—if, before the arrival of
the Spaniards, the Llanos and the Pampas had been filled with those
numerous herds of cows and horses that graze there, Columbus would have
found the human race in a state quite different. Pastoral nations living on
milk and cheese, real nomad races, would have spread themselves over
those vast plains which communicate with each other. They would have
been seen at the period of great droughts, and even at that of inundations,
fighting for the possession of pastures; subjugating one another mutually;
and, united by the common tie of manners, language, and worship, they

would have risen to that state of demi-civilization which we observe with
surprise in the nations of the Mongol and Tartar race. America would then,
like the centre of Asia, have had its conquerors, who, ascending from the
plains to the tablelands of the Cordilleras, and abandoning a wandering life,
would have subdued the civilized nations of Peru and New Grenada,
overturned the throne of the Incas and of the Zaque,* and substituted for the
despotism which is the fruit of theocracy, that despotism which arises from
the patriarchal government of a pastoral people. (* The Zaque was the
secular chief of Cundinamarca. His power was shared with the high priest
(lama) of Iraca.) In the New World the human race has not experienced
these great moral and political changes, because the steppes, though more
fertile than those of Asia, have remained without herds; because none of the
animals that furnish milk in abundance are natives of the plains of South
America; and because, in the progressive unfolding of American
civilization, the intermediate link is wanting that connects the hunting with
the agricultural nations.

We have thought proper to bring together these general notions on the
plains of the New Continent, and the contrast they exhibit to the deserts of
Africa and the fertile steppes of Asia, in order to give some interest to the
narrative of a journey across lands of so monotonous an aspect. Having now
accomplished this task, I shall trace the route by which we proceeded from
the volcanic mountains of Parapara and the northern side of the Llanos, to
the banks of the Apure, in the province of Varinas.

After having passed two nights on horseback, and sought in vain, by day,
for some shelter from the heat of the sun beneath the tufts of the moriche
palm-trees, we arrived before night at the little Hato del Cayman,* (* The
Farm of the Alligator.) called also La Guadaloupe. It was a solitary house in
the steppes, surrounded by a few small huts, covered with reeds and skins.
The cattle, oxen, horses, and mules are not penned, but wander freely over

an extent of several square leagues. There is nowhere any enclosure; men,
naked to the waist and armed with a lance, ride over the savannahs to
inspect the animals; bringing back those that wander too far from the
pastures of the farm, and branding all that do not already bear the mark of
their proprietor. These mulattos, who are known by the name of peones
llaneros, are partly freed-men and partly slaves. They are constantly
exposed to the burning heat of the tropical sun. Their food is meat, dried in
the air, and a little salted; and of this even their horses sometimes partake.
Being always in the saddle, they fancy they cannot make the slightest
excursion on foot. We found an old negro slave, who managed the farm in
the absence of his master. He told us of herds composed of several thousand
cows, that were grazing in the steppes; yet we asked in vain for a bowl of
milk. We were offered, in a calabash, some yellow, muddy, and fetid water,
drawn from a neighbouring pool. The indolence of the inhabitants of the
Llanos is such that they do not dig wells, though they know that almost
everywhere, at ten feet deep, fine springs are found in a stratum of
conglomerate, or red sandstone. After suffering during one half of the year
from the effect of inundations, they quietly resign themselves, during the
other half; to the most distressing deprivation of water. The old negro
advised us to cover the cup with a linen cloth, and drink as through a filter,
that we might not be incommoded by the smell, and might swallow less of
the yellowish mud suspended in the water. We did not then think that we
should afterwards be forced, during whole months, to have recourse to this
expedient. The waters of the Orinoco are always loaded with earthy
particles; they are even putrid, where dead bodies of alligators are found in
the creeks, lying on banks of sand, or half-buried in the mud.

No sooner were our instruments unloaded and safely placed, than our
mules were set at liberty to go, as they say here, para buscar agua, that is,
"to search for water." There are little pools round the farm, which the
animals find, guided by their instinct, by the view of some scattered tufts of

mauritia, and by the sensation of humid coolness, caused by little currents
of air amid an atmosphere which to us appears calm and tranquil. When the
pools of water are far distant, and the people of the farm are too lazy to lead
the cattle to these natural watering-places, they confine them during five or
six hours in a very hot stable before they let them loose. Excess of thirst
then augments their sagacity, sharpening as it were their senses and their
instinct. No sooner is the stable opened, than the horses and mules,
especially the latter (for the penetration of these animals exceeds the
intelligence of the horses), rush into the savannahs. With upraised tails and
heads thrown back they run against the wind, stopping from time to time as
if exploring space; they follow less the impressions of sight than of smell;
and at length announce, by prolonged neighings, that there is water in the
direction of their course. All these movements are executed more promptly,
and with readier success, by horses born in the Llanos, and which have long
enjoyed their liberty, than by those that come from the coast, and descend
from domestic horses. In animals, for the most part, as in man, the
quickness of the senses is diminished by long subjection, and by the habits
that arise from a fixed abode and the progress of cultivation.

We followed our mules in search of one of those pools, whence the
muddy water had been drawn, that so ill quenched our thirst. We were
covered with dust, and tanned by the sandy wind, which burns the skin even
more than the rays of the sun. We longed impatiently to take a bath, but we
found only a great pool of feculent water, surrounded with palm-trees. The
water was turbid, though, to our great astonishment, a little cooler than the
air. Accustomed during our long journey to bathe whenever we had an
opportunity, often several times in one day, we hastened to plunge into the
pool. We had scarcely begun to enjoy the coolness of the bath, when a noise
which we heard on the opposite bank, made us leave the water precipitately.
It was an alligator plunging into the mud.

We were only at the distance of a quarter of a league from the farm, yet
we continued walking more than an hour without reaching it. We perceived
too late that we had taken a wrong direction. Having left it at the decline of
day, before the stars were visible, we had gone forward into the plain at
hazard. We were, as usual, provided with a compass, and it might have been
easy for us to steer our course from the position of Canopus and the
Southern Cross; but unfortunately we were uncertain whether, on leaving
the farm, we had gone towards the east or the south. We attempted to return
to the spot where we had bathed, and we again walked three quarters of an
hour without finding the pool. We sometimes thought we saw fire on the
horizon; but it was the light of the rising stars enlarged by the vapours.
After having wandered a long time in the savannah, we resolved to seat
ourselves beneath the trunk of a palm-tree, in a spot perfectly dry,
surrounded by short grass; for the fear of water-snakes is always greater
than that of jaguars among Europeans recently disembarked. We could not
flatter ourselves that our guides, of whom we knew the insuperable
indolence, would come in search of us in the savannah before they had
prepared their food and finished their repast. Whilst somewhat perplexed by
the uncertainty of our situation, we were agreeably affected by hearing from
afar the sound of a horse advancing towards us. The rider was an Indian,
armed with a lance, who had just made the rodeo, or round, in order to
collect the cattle within a determinate space of ground. The sight of two
white men, who said they had lost their way, led him at first to suspect some
trick. We found it difficult to inspire him with confidence; he at last
consented to guide us to the farm of the Cayman, but without slackening the
gentle trot of his horse. Our guides assured us that "they had already begun
to be uneasy about us;" and, to justify this inquietude, they gave a long
enumeration of persons who, having lost themselves in the Llanos, had been
found nearly exhausted. It may be supposed that the danger is imminent
only to those who lose themselves far from any habitation, or who, having

been stripped by robbers, as has happened of late years, have been fastened
by the body and hands to the trunk of a palm-tree.

In order to escape as much as possible from the heat of the day, we set off
at two in the morning, with the hope of reaching Calabozo before noon, a
small but busy trading-town, situated in the midst of the Llanos. The aspect
of the country was still the same. There was no moonlight; but the great
masses of nebulae that spot the southern sky enlighten, as they set, a part of
the terrestrial horizon. The solemn spectacle of the starry vault, seen in its
immense expanse—the cool breeze which blows over the plain during the
night—the waving motion of the grass, wherever it has attained any height;
everything recalled to our minds the surface of the ocean. The illusion was
augmented when the disk of the sun appearing on the horizon, repeated its
image by the effects of refraction, and, soon losing its flattened form,
ascended rapidly and straight towards the zenith.

Sunrise in the plains is the coolest moment of the day; but this change of
temperature does not make a very lively impression on the organs. We did
not find the thermometer in general sink below 27.5; while near Acapulco,
at Mexico, and in places equally low, the temperature at noon is often 32,
and at sunrise only 17 or 18 degrees. The level surface of the ground in the
Llanos, which, during the day, is never in the shade, absorbs so much heat
that, notwithstanding the nocturnal radiation toward a sky without clouds,
the earth and air have not time to cool very sensibly from midnight to
sunrise.

In proportion as the sun rose towards the zenith, and the earth and the
strata of superincumbent air took different temperatures, the phenomenon of
the mirage displayed itself in its numerous modifications. This phenomenon
is so common in every zone, that I mention it only because we stopped to
measure with some precision the breadth of the aerial distance between the

horizon and the suspended object. There was a constant suspension, without
inversion. The little currents of air that swept the surface of the soil had so
variable a temperature that, in a drove of wild oxen, one part appeared with
the legs raised above the surface of the ground, while the other rested on it.
The aerial distance was, according to the distance of the animal, from 3 to 4
minutes. Where tufts of the moriche palm were found growing in long
ranges, the extremities of these green rows were suspended like the capes
which were, for so long a time, the subject of my observations at Cumana.
A well-informed person assured us, that he had seen, between Calabozo and
Uritucu, the image of an animal inverted, without there being any direct
image. Niebuhr made a similar observation in Arabia. We several times
thought we saw on the horizon the figures of tumuli and towers, which
disappeared at intervals, without our being able to discern the real shape of
the objects. They were perhaps hillocks, or small eminences, situated
beyond the ordinary visual horizon. I need not mention those tracts destitute
of vegetation, which appear like large lakes with an undulating surface.
This phenomenon, observed in very remote times, has occasioned the
mirage to receive in Sanscrit the expressive name of desire of the antelope.
We admire the frequent allusions in the Indian, Persian, and Arabic poets, to
the magical effects of terrestrial refraction. It was scarcely known to the
Greeks and Romans. Proud of the riches of their soil, and the mild
temperature of the air, they would have felt no envy of this poetry of the
desert. It had its birth in Asia; and the oriental poets found its source in the
nature of the country they inhabited. They were inspired with the aspect of
those vast solitudes, interposed like arms of the sea or gulfs, between lands
which nature had adorned with her most luxuriant fertility.

The plain assumes at sunrise a more animated aspect. The cattle, which
had reposed during the night along the pools, or beneath clumps of
mauritias and rhopalas, were now collected in herds; and these solitudes
became peopled with horses, mules, and oxen, that live here free, rather

than wild, without settled habitations, and disdaining the care and
protection of man. In these hot climates, the oxen, though of Spanish breed,
like those of the cold table-lands of Quito, are of a gentle disposition. A
traveller runs no risk of being attacked or pursued, as we often were in our
excursions on the back of the Cordilleras, where the climate is rude, the
aspect of the country more wild, and food less abundant. As we approached
Calabozo, we saw herds of roebucks browsing peacefully in the midst of
horses and oxen. They are called matacani; their flesh is good; they are a
little larger than our roes, and resemble deer with a very sleek skin, of a
fawn-colour, spotted with white. Their horns appear to me to have single
points. They had little fear of the presence of man: and in herds of thirty or
forty we observed several that were entirely white. This variety, common
enough among the large stags of the cold climates of the Andes, surprised
us in these low and burning plains. I have since learned, that even the
jaguar, in the hot regions of Paraguay, sometimes affords albino varieties,
the skin of which is of such uniform whiteness that the spots or rings can be
distinguished only in the sunshine. The number of matacani, or little deer,*
(* They are called in the country Venados de tierras calientes (deer of the
warm lands.)) is so considerable in the Llanos, that a trade might be carried
on with their skins.* (* This trade is carried on, but on a very limited scale,
at Carora and at Barquesimeto.) A skilful hunter could easily kill more than
twenty in a day; but such is the indolence of the inhabitants, that often they
will not give themselves the trouble of taking the skin. The same
indifference is evinced in the chase of the jaguar, a skin of which fetches
only one piastre in the steppes of Varinas, while at Cadiz it costs four or
five.

The steppes that we traversed are principally covered with grasses of the
genera Killingia, Cenchrus, and Paspalum.* (* Killingia monocephala, K.
odorata, Cenchrus pilosus, Vilfa tenacissima, Andropogon plumosum,
Panicum micranthum, Poa repens, Paspalum leptostachyum, P. conjugatum,

Aristida recurvata. (Nova Genera et Species Plantarum, volume 1 pages 84
to 243.) At this season, near Calabozo and San Jerome del Pirital, these
grasses scarcely attain the height of nine or ten inches. Near the banks of
the Apure and the Portuguesa they rise to four feet in height, so that the
jaguar can conceal himself among them, to spring upon the mules and
horses that cross the plain. Mingled with these gramina some plants of the
dicotyledonous class are found; as turneras, malvaceae, and, what is very
remarkable, little mimosas with irritable leaves,* called by the Spaniards
dormideras. (* The sensitive-plant Mimosa dormiens.) The same breed of
cows, which fatten in Europe on sainfoin and clover, find excellent
nourishment in the herbaceous sensitive plants. The pastures where these
shrubs particularly abound are sold at a higher price than others. To the east,
in the llanos of Cari and Barcelona, the cypura and the craniolaria,* (*
Cypura graminea, Craniolaria annua, the scorzonera of the natives.) the
beautiful white flower of which is from six to eight inches long, rise
solitarily amid the gramina. The pastures are richest not only around the
rivers subject to inundations, but also wherever the trunks of palm-trees are
near each other. The least fertile spots are those destitute of trees; and
attempts to cultivate them would be nearly fruitless. We cannot attribute this
difference to the shelter afforded by the palm-trees, in preventing the solar
rays from drying and burning up the soil. I have seen, it is true, trees of this
family, in the forests of the Orinoco, spreading a tufted foliage; but we
cannot say much for the shade of the palm-tree of the llanos, the palma de
cobija,* (* The roofing palm-tree Corypha tectorum.) which has but a few
folded and palmate leaves, like those of the chamaerops, and of which the
lower-most are constantly withered. We were surprised to see that almost all
these trunks of the corypha were nearly of the same size, namely, from
twenty to twenty-four feet high, and from eight to ten inches diameter at the
foot. Nature has produced few species of palm-trees in such prodigious
numbers. Amidst thousands of trunks loaded with olive-shaped fruits we

found about one hundred without fruit. May we suppose that there are some
trees with flowers purely monoecious, mingled with others furnished with
hermaphrodite flowers?

The Llaneros, or inhabitants of the plains, believe that all these trees,
though so low, are many centuries old. Their growth is almost
imperceptible, being scarcely to be noticed in the lapse of twenty or thirty
years. The wood of the palma de cobija is excellent for building. It is so
hard, that it is difficult to drive a nail into it. The leaves, folded like a fan,
are employed to cover the roofs of the huts scattered through the Llanos;
and these roofs last more than twenty years. The leaves are fixed by
bending the extremity of the footstalks, which have been beaten beforehand
between two stones, so that they may bend without breaking.

Beside the solitary trunks of this palm-tree, we find dispersed here and
there in the steppes a few clumps, real groves (palmares), in which the
corypha is intermingled with a tree of the proteaceous family, called
chaparro by the natives. It is a new species of rhopala,* (* Resembling the
Embothrium, of which we found no species in South America. The
embothriums are represented in American vegetation by the genera Lomatia
and Oreocallis.) with hard and resonant leaves. The little groves of rhopala
are called chaparales; and it may be supposed that, in a vast plain, where
only two or three species of trees are to be found, the chaparro, which
affords shade, is considered a highly valuable plant. The corypha spreads
through the Llanos of Caracas from Mesa de Peja as far as Guayaval;
farther north and north-west, near Guanare and San Carlos, its place is
taken by another species of the same genus, with leaves alike palmate but
larger. It is called the royal palm of the plains (palma real de los Llanos).*
(* This palm-tree of the plains must not be confounded with the palma real
of Caracas and of Curiepe, with pinnate leaves.) Other palm-trees rise south
of Guayaval, especially the piritu with pinnate leaves,* (* Perhaps an

Aiphanes.) and the moriche (Mauritia flexuosa), celebrated by Father
Gumilla under the name of arbol de la vida, or tree of life. It is the sago-tree
of America, furnishing flour, wine, thread for weaving hammocks, baskets,
nets, and clothing. Its fruit, of the form of the cones of the pine, and covered
with scales, perfectly resembles that of the Calamus rotang. It has
somewhat the taste of the apple. When arrived at its maturity it is yellow
within and red without. The araguato monkeys eat it with avidity; and the
nation of the Guaraounos, whose whole existence, it may be said, is closely
linked with that of the moriche palm-tree, produce from it a fermented
liquor, slightly acid, and extremely refreshing. This palm-tree, with its large
shining leaves, folded like a fan, preserves a beautiful verdure at the period
of the greatest drought. The mere sight of it produces an agreeable sensation
of coolness, and when loaded with scaly fruit, it contrasts singularly with
the mournful aspect of the palma de cobija, the foliage of which is always
grey and covered with dust. The Llaneros believe that the former attracts
the vapours in the air;* (* If the head of the moriche were better furnished
with leaves than it generally is, we might perhaps admit that the soil round
the tree preserves its humidity through the influence of the shade.) and that
for this reason, water is constantly found at its foot, when dug for to a
certain depth. The effect is confounded with the cause. The moriche grows
best in moist places; and it may rather be said that the water attracts the
tree. The natives of the Orinoco, by analogous reasoning, admit, that the
great serpents contribute to preserve humidity in a province. "You would
look in vain for water-serpents," said an old Indian of Javita to us gravely,
"where there are no marshes; because the water ceases to collect when you
imprudently kill the serpents that attract it."

We suffered greatly from the heat in crossing the Mesa de Calabozo. The
temperature of the air augmented sensibly every time that the wind began to
blow. The air was loaded with dust; and during these gusts the thermometer
rose to 40 or 41 degrees. We went slowly forward, for it would have been

dangerous to leave the mules that carried our instruments. Our guides
advised us to fill our hats with the leaves of the rhopala, to diminish the
action of the solar rays on the hair and the crown of the head. We found
relief from this expedient, which was particularly agreeable, when we could
procure the thick leaves of the pothos or some other similar plant.

It is impossible to cross these burning plains, without inquiring whether
they have always been in the same state; or whether they have been stripped
of their vegetation by some revolution of nature. The stratum of mould now
found on them is in fact very thin. The natives believe that the palmares and
the chaparales (the little groves of palm-trees and rhopala) were more
frequent and more extensive before the arrival of the Spaniards. Since the
Llanos have been inhabited and peopled with cattle become wild, the
savannah is often set on fire, in order to ameliorate the pasturage. Groups of
scattered trees are accidentally destroyed with the grasses. The plains were
no doubt less bare in the fifteenth century, than they now are; yet the first
Conquistadores, who came from Coro, described them then as savannahs,
where nothing could be perceived but the sky and the turf, generally
destitute of trees, and difficult to traverse on account of the reverberation of
heat from the soil. Why does not the great forest of the Orinoco extend to
the north, on the left bank of that river? Why does it not fill that vast space
that reaches as far as the Cordillera of the coast, and which is fertilized by
numerous rivers? These questions are connected with all that relates to the
history of our planet. If, indulging in geological reveries, we suppose that
the steppes of America, and the desert of Sahara, have been stripped of their
vegetation by an irruption of the ocean, or that they formed originally the
bottom of an inland sea, we may conceive that thousands of years have not
sufficed for the trees and shrubs to advance from the borders of the forests,
from the skirts of the plains either naked or covered with turf, toward the
centre, and darken so vast a space with their shade. It is more difficult to
explain the origin of bare savannahs, encircled by forests, than to recognize

the causes that maintain forests and savannahs within their ancient limits,
like continents and seas.

We found the most cordial hospitality at Calabozo, in the house of the
superintendent of the royal plantations, Don Miguel Cousin. The town,
situated between the banks of the Guarico and the Uritucu, contained at this
period only five thousand inhabitants; but everything denoted increasing
prosperity. The wealth of most of the inhabitants consists in herds, under the
management of farmers, who are called hateros, from the word hato, which
signifies in Spanish a house or farm placed in the midst of pastures. The
scattered population of the Llanos being accumulated on certain points,
principally around towns, Calabozo reckons already five villages or
missions in its environs. It is computed, that 98,000 head of cattle wander in
the pastures nearest to the town. It is very difficult to form an exact idea of
the herds contained in the Llanos of Caracas, Barcelona, Cumana, and
Spanish Guiana. M. Depons, who lived in the town of Caracas longer than
I, and whose statistical statements are generally accurate, reckons in those
vast plains, from the mouths of the Orinoco to the lake of Maracaybo,
1,200,000 oxen, 180,000 horses, and 90,000 mules. He estimates the
produce of these herds at 5,000,000 francs; adding to the value of the
exportation the price of the hides consumed in the country. There exist, it is
believed, in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, 12,000,000 cows, and 3,000,000
horses, without comprising in this enumeration the cattle that have no
acknowledged proprietor.

I shall not hazard any general estimates, which from their nature are too
uncertain; but shall only observe that, in the Llanos of Caracas, the
proprietors of the great hatos are entirely ignorant of the number of the
cattle they possess. They only know that of the young cattle, which are
branded every year with a letter or mark peculiar to each herd. The richest
proprietors mark as many as 14,000 head every year; and sell to the number

of five or six thousand. According to official documents, the exportation of
hides from the whole capitania-general of Caracas amounted annually to
174,000 skins of oxen, and 11,500 of goats. When we reflect, that these
documents are taken from the books of the custom-houses, where no
mention is made of the fraudulent dealings in hides, we are tempted to
believe that the estimate of 1,200,000 oxen wandering in the Llanos, from
the Rio Carony and the Guarapiche to the lake of Maracaybo, is much
underrated. The port of La Guayra alone exported annually from 1789 to
1792, 70,000 or 80,000 hides, entered in the custom-house books, scarcely
one-fifth of which was sent to Spain. The exportation from Buenos Ayres, at
the end of the eighteenth century, was, according to Don Felix de Azara,
800,000 skins. The hides of Caracas are preferred in the Peninsula to those
of Buenos Ayres; because the latter, on account of a longer passage,
undergo a loss of twelve per cent in the tanning. The southern part of the
savannahs, commonly called the Upper Plains (Llanos de arriba), is very
productive in mules and oxen; but the pasturage being in general less good,
these animals are obliged to be sent to other plains to be fattened before
they are sold. The Llano de Monai, and all the Lower Plains (Llanos de
abaxo), abound less in herds, but the pastures are so fertile, that they furnish
meat of an excellent quality for the supply of the coast. The mules, which
are not fit for labour before the fifth year, are purchased on the spot at the
price of fourteen or eighteen piastres. The horses of the Llanos, descending
from the fine Spanish breed, are not very large; they are generally of a
uniform colour, brown bay, like most of the wild animals. Suffering
alternately from drought and floods, tormented by the stings of insects and
the bites of the large bats, they lead a sorry life. After having enjoyed for
some months the care of man, their good qualities are developed. Here there
are no sheep: we saw flocks only on the table-land of Quito.

The hatos of oxen have suffered considerably of late from troops of
marauders, who roam over the steppes killing the animals merely to take

their hides. This robbery has increased since the trade of the Lower Orinoco
has become more flourishing. For half a century, the banks of that great
river, from the mouth of the Apure as far as Angostura, were known only to
the missionary-monks. The exportation of cattle took place from the ports
of the northern coast only, namely from Cumana, Barcelona, Burburata, and
Porto Cabello. This dependence on the coast is now much diminished. The
southern part of the plains has established an internal communication with
the Lower Orinoco; and this trade is the more brisk, as those who devote
themselves to it easily escape the trammels of the prohibitory laws.

The greatest herds of cattle in the Llanos of Caracas are those of the
hatos of Merecure, La Cruz, Belen, Alta Gracia, and Pavon. The Spanish
cattle came from Coro and Tocuyo into the plains. History has preserved the
name of the colonist who first conceived the idea of peopling these
pasturages, inhabited only by deer, and a large species of cavy.* (* The
thick-nosed tapir, or river cavy (Cavia capybara), called chiguire in those
countries.) Christoval Rodriguez sent the first horned cattle into the Llanos,
about the year 1548. He was an inhabitant of the town of Tocuyo, and had
long resided in New Grenada.

When we hear of the innumerable quantity of oxen, horses, and mules,
that are spread over the plains of America, we seem generally to forget that
in civilized Europe, on lands of much less extent, there exist, in agricultural
countries, quantities no less prodigious. France, according to M. Peuchet,
feeds 6,000,000 large horned cattle, of which 3,500,000 are oxen employed
in drawing the plough. In the Austrian monarchy, the number of oxen,
cows, and calves, has been estimated at 13,400,000 head. Paris alone
consumes annually 155,000 horned cattle. Germany receives 150,000 oxen
yearly from Hungary. Domestic animals, collected in small herds, are
considered by agricultural nations as a secondary object in the riches of the
state. Accordingly they strike the imagination much less than those

wandering droves of oxen and horses which alone fill the uncultivated tracts
of the New World. Civilization and social order favour alike the progress of
population, and the multiplication of animals useful to man.

We found at Calabozo, in the midst of the Llanos, an electrical machine
with large plates, electrophori, batteries, electrometers; an apparatus nearly
as complete as our first scientific men in Europe possess. All these articles
had not been purchased in the United States; they were the work of a man
who had never seen any instrument, who had no person to consult, and who
was acquainted with the phenomena of electricity only by reading the
treatise of De Lafond, and Franklin's Memoirs. Senor Carlos del Pozo, the
name of this enlightened and ingenious man, had begun to make cylindrical
electrical machines, by employing large glass jars, after having cut off the
necks. It was only within a few years he had been able to procure, by way
of Philadelphia, two plates, to construct a plate machine, and to obtain more
considerable effects. It is easy to judge what difficulties Senor Pozo had to
encounter, since the first works upon electricity had fallen into his hands,
and that he had the courage to resolve to procure himself, by his own
industry, all that he had seen described in his books. Till now he had
enjoyed only the astonishment and admiration produced by his experiments
on persons destitute of all information, and who had never quitted the
solitude of the Llanos; our abode at Calabozo gave him a satisfaction
altogether new. It may be supposed that he set some value on the opinions
of two travellers who could compare his apparatus with those constructed in
Europe. I had brought with me electrometers mounted with straw, pith-
balls, and gold-leaf; also a small Leyden jar which could be charged by
friction according to the method of Ingenhousz, and which served for my
physiological experiments. Senor del Pozo could not contain his joy on
seeing for the first time instruments which he had not made, yet which
appeared to be copied from his own. We also showed him the effect of the

contact of heterogeneous metals on the nerves of frogs. The name of
Galvani and Volta had not previously been heard in those vast solitudes.

Next to his electrical apparatus, the work of the industry and intelligence
of an inhabitant of the Llanos, nothing at Calabozo excited in us so great an
interest as the gymnoti, which are animated electrical apparatuses. I was
impatient, from the time of my arrival at Cumana, to procure electrical eels.
We had been promised them often, but our hopes had always been
disappointed. Money loses its value as you withdraw from the coast; and
how is the imperturbable apathy of the ignorant people to be vanquished,
when they are not excited by the desire of gain?

The Spaniards confound all electric fishes under the name of
tembladores.* (* Literally "tremblers," or "producers of trembling.") There
are some of these in the Caribbean Sea, on the coast of Cumana. The
Guayquerie Indians, who are the most skilful and active fishermen in those
parts, brought us a fish, which, they said, benumbed their hands. This fish
ascends the little river Manzanares. It is a new species of ray, the lateral
spots of which are scarcely visible, and which much resembles the torpedo.
The torpedos, which are furnished with an electric organ externally visible,
on account of the transparency of the skin, form a genus or subgenus
different from the rays properly so called.* (* Cuvier, Regne Animal
volume 2. The Mediterranean contains, according to M. Risso, four species
of electrical torpedos, all formerly confounded under the name of Raia
torpedo; these are Torpedo narke, T. unimaculata, T. galvanii, and T.
marmorata. The torpedo of the Cape of Good Hope, the subject of the
recent experiments of Mr. Todd, is, no doubt, a nondescript species.) The
torpedo of Cumana was very lively, very energetic in its muscular
movements, and yet the electric shocks it gave us were extremely feeble.
They became stronger on galvanizing the animal by the contact of zinc and
gold. Other tembladores, real gymnoti or electric eels, inhabit the Rio

Colorado, the Guarapiche, and several little streams which traverse the
Missions of the Chayma Indians. They abound also in the large rivers of
America, the Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Meta; but the force of the
currents and the depth of the water, prevent them from being caught by the
Indians. They see these fish less frequently than they feel shocks from them
when swimming or bathing in the river. In the Llanos, particularly in the
environs of Calabozo, between the farms of Morichal and the Upper and
Lower Missions, the basins of stagnant water and the confluents of the
Orinoco (the Rio Guarico and the canos Rastro, Berito, and Paloma) are
filled with electric eels. We at first wished to make our experiments in the
house we inhabited at Calabozo; but the dread of the shocks caused by the
gymnoti is so great, and so exaggerated among the common people, that
during three days we could not obtain one, though they are easily caught,
and we had promised the Indians two piastres for every strong and vigorous
fish. This fear of the Indians is the more extraordinary, as they do not
attempt to adopt precautions in which they profess to have great confidence.
When interrogated on the effect of the tembladores, they never fail to tell
the Whites, that they may be touched with impunity while you are chewing
tobacco. This supposed influence of tobacco on animal electricity is as
general on the continent of South America, as the belief among mariners of
the effect of garlic and tallow on the magnetic needle.

Impatient of waiting, and having obtained very uncertain results from an
electric eel which had been brought to us alive, but much enfeebled, we
repaired to the Cano de Bera, to make our experiments in the open air, and
at the edge of the water. We set off on the 19th of March, at a very early
hour, for the village of Rastro; thence we were conducted by the Indians to
a stream, which, in the time of drought, forms a basin of muddy water,
surrounded by fine trees,* (* Amyris lateriflora, A. coriacea, Laurus
pichurin. Myroxylon secundum, Malpighia reticulata.) the clusia, the
amyris, and the mimosa with fragrant flowers. To catch the gymnoti with

nets is very difficult, on account of the extreme agility of the fish, which
bury themselves in the mud. We would not employ the barbasco, that is to
say, the roots of the Piscidea erithyrna, the Jacquinia armillaris, and some
species of phyllanthus, which thrown into the pool, intoxicate or benumb
the eels. These methods have the effect of enfeebling the gymnoti. The
Indians therefore told us that they would "fish with horses," (embarbascar
con caballos.* (* Meaning to excite the fish by horses.)) We found it
difficult to form an idea of this extraordinary manner of fishing; but we
soon saw our guides return from the savannah, which they had been
scouring for wild horses and mules. They brought about thirty with them,
which they forced to enter the pool.

The extraordinary noise caused by the horses' hoofs, makes the fish issue
from the mud, and excites them to the attack. These yellowish and livid
eels, resembling large aquatic serpents, swim on the surface of the water,
and crowd under the bellies of the horses and mules. A contest between
animals of so different an organization presents a very striking spectacle.
The Indians, provided with harpoons and long slender reeds, surround the
pool closely; and some climb up the trees, the branches of which extend
horizontally over the surface of the water. By their wild cries, and the length
of their reeds, they prevent the horses from running away and reaching the
bank of the pool. The eels, stunned by the noise, defend themselves by the
repeated discharge of their electric batteries. For a long interval they seem
likely to prove victorious. Several horses sink beneath the violence of the
invisible strokes which they receive from all sides, in organs the most
essential to life; and stunned by the force and frequency of the shocks, they
disappear under the water. Others, panting, with mane erect, and haggard
eyes expressing anguish and dismay, raise themselves, and endeavour to
flee from the storm by which they are overtaken. They are driven back by
the Indians into the middle of the water; but a small number succeed in
eluding the active vigilance of the fishermen. These regain the shore,

stumbling at every step, and stretch themselves on the sand, exhausted with
fatigue, and with limbs benumbed by the electric shocks of the gymnoti.

In less than five minutes two of our horses were drowned. The eel being
five feet long, and pressing itself against the belly of the horses, makes a
discharge along the whole extent of its electric organ. It attacks at once the
heart, the intestines, and the caeliac fold of the abdominal nerves. It is
natural that the effect felt by the horses should be more powerful than that
produced upon man by the touch of the same fish at only one of his
extremities. The horses are probably not killed, but only stunned. They are
drowned from the impossibility of rising amid the prolonged struggle
between the other horses and the eels.

We had little doubt that the fishing would terminate by killing
successively all the animals engaged; but by degrees the impetuosity of this
unequal combat diminished, and the wearied gymnoti dispersed. They
require a long rest, and abundant nourishment, to repair the galvanic force
which they have lost.* (* The Indians assured us that when the horses are
made to run two days successively into the same pool, none are killed the
second day. See, on the fishing for gymnoti Views of Nature Bohn's edition
page 18.) The mules and horses appear less frightened; their manes are no
longer bristled, and their eyes express less dread. The gymnoti approach
timidly the edge of the marsh, where they are taken by means of small
harpoons fastened to long cords. When the cords are very dry the Indians
feel no shock in raising the fish into the air. In a few minutes we had five
large eels, most of which were but slightly wounded. Some others were
taken, by the same means, towards evening.

The temperature of the waters in which the gymnoti habitually live, is
from 26 to 27 degrees. Their electric force diminishes it is said, in colder
waters; and it is remarkable that, in general, animals endowed with

electromotive organs, the effects of which are sensible to man, are not
found in the air, but in a fluid that is a conductor of electricity. The
gymnotus is the largest of electrical fishes. I measured some that were from
five feet to five feet three inches long; and the Indians assert that they have
seen them still larger. We found that a fish of three feet ten inches long
weighed twelve pounds. The transverse diameter of the body, without
reckoning the anal fin, which is elongated in the form of a keel, was three
inches and a half. The gymnoti of the Cano de Bera are of a fine olive-
green. The under part of the head is yellow mingled with red. Two rows of
small yellow spots are placed symmetrically along the back, from the head
to the end of the tail. Every spot contains an excretory aperture. In
consequence, the skin of the animal is constantly covered with a mucous
matter, which, as Volta has proved, conducts electricity twenty or thirty
times better than pure water. It is in general somewhat remarkable, that no
electric fish yet discovered in the different parts of the world, is covered
with scales.* (* We yet know with certainty only seven electric fishes;
Torpedo narke, Risso, T. unimaculata, T. marmorata, T. galvanii, Silurus
electricus, Tetraodon electricus, Gymnotus electricus. It appears uncertain
whether the Trichiurus indicus has electrical properties or not. See Cuvier's
Regne Animal volume 2. But the genus Torpedo, very different from that of
the rays properly so called, has numerous species in the equatorial seas; and
it is probable that there exist several gymnoti specifically different. The
Indians mentioned to us a black and very powerful species, inhabiting the
marshes of the Apure, which never attains a length of more than two feet,
but which we were not able to procure. The raton of the Rio de la
Magdalena, which I have described under the name of Gymnotus
aequilabiatus (Observations de Zoologie volume 1) forms a particular sub-
genus. This is a Carapa, not scaly, and without an electric organ. This organ
is also entirely wanting in the Brazilian Carapo, and in all the rays which
were carefully examined by Cuvier.)

The gymnoti, like our eels, are fond of swallowing and breathing air on
the surface of the water; but we must not thence conclude that the fish
would perish if it could not come up to breathe the air. The European eel
will creep during the night upon the grass; but I have seen a very vigorous
gymnotus that had sprung out of the water, die on the ground. M. Provencal
and myself have proved by our researches on the respiration of fishes, that
their humid bronchiae perform the double function of decomposing the
atmospheric air, and of appropriating the oxygen contained in water. They
do not suspend their respiration in the air; but they absorb the oxygen like a
reptile furnished with lungs. It is known that carp may be fattened by being
fed, out of the water, if their gills are wet from time to time with humid
moss, to prevent them from becoming dry. Fish separate their gill-covers
wider in oxygen gas than in water. Their temperature however, does not
rise; and they live the same length of time in pure vital air, and in a mixture
of ninety parts nitrogen and ten oxygen. We found that tench placed under
inverted jars filled with air, absorb half a cubic centimetre of oxygen in an
hour. This action takes place in the gills only; for fishes on which a collar of
cork has been fastened, and leaving their head out of the jar filled with air,
do not act upon the oxygen by the rest of their body.

The swimming-bladder of the gymnotus is two feet five inches long in a
fish of three feet ten inches.* (* Cuvier has shown that in the Gymnotus
electricus there exists, besides the large swimming-bladder, another situated
before it, and much smaller. It looks like the bifurcated swimming-bladder
in the Gymnotus aequilabiatus.) It is separated by a mass of fat from the
external skin; and rests upon the electric organs, which occupy more than
two-thirds of the animal's body. The same vessels which penetrate between
the plates or leaves of these organs, and which cover them with blood when
they are cut transversely, also send out numerous branches to the exterior
surface of the air-bladder. I found in a hundred parts of the air of the
swimming-bladder four of oxygen and ninety-six of nitrogen. The

medullary substance of the brain displays but a feeble analogy with the
albuminous and gelatinous matter of the electric organs. But these two
substances have in common the great quantity of arterial blood which they
receive, and which is deoxidated in them. We may again remark, on this
occasion, that an extreme activity in the functions of the brain causes the
blood to flow more abundantly towards the head, as the energy of the
movement of the muscles accelerates the deoxidation of the arterial blood.
What a contrast between the multitude and the diameter of the blood-
vessels of the gymnotus, and the small space occupied by its muscular
system! This contrast reminds the observer, that three functions of animal
life, which appear in other respects sufficiently distinct—the functions of
the brain, those of the electrical organ, and those of the muscles, all require
the afflux and concourse of arterial or oxygenated blood.

It would be temerity to expose ourselves to the first shocks of a very
large and strongly irritated gymnotus. If by chance a stroke be received
before the fish is wounded or wearied by long pursuit, the pain and
numbness are so violent that it is impossible to describe the nature of the
feeling they excite. I do not remember having ever received from the
discharge of a large Leyden jar, a more dreadful shock than that which I
experienced by imprudently placing both my feet on a gymnotus just taken
out of the water. I was affected during the rest of the day with a violent pain
in the knees, and in almost every joint. To be aware of the difference that
exists between the sensation produced by the Voltaic battery and an electric
fish, the latter should be touched when they are in a state of extreme
weakness. The gymnoti and the torpedos then cause a twitching of the
muscles, which is propagated from the part that rests on the electric organs,
as far as the elbow. We seem to feel, at every stroke, an internal vibration,
which lasts two or three seconds, and is followed by a painful numbness.
Accordingly, the Tamanac Indians call the gymnotus, in their expressive
language, arimna, which means something that deprives of motion.

The sensation caused by the feeble shocks of an electric eel appeared to
me analogous to that painful twitching with which I have been seized at
each contact of two heterogeneous metals applied to wounds which I had
made on my back by means of cantharides. This difference of sensation
between the effects of electric fishes and those of a Voltaic battery or a
Leyden jar feebly charged has struck every observer; there is, however,
nothing in this contrary to the supposition of the identity of electricity and
the galvanic action of fishes. The electricity may be the same; but its effects
will be variously modified by the disposition of the electrical apparatus, by
the intensity of the fluid, by the rapidity of the current, and by the particular
mode of action.

In Dutch Guiana, at Demerara for instance, electric eels were formerly
employed to cure paralytic affections. At a time when the physicians of
Europe had great confidence in the effects of electricity, a surgeon of
Essequibo, named Van der Lott, published in Holland a treatise on the
medical properties of the gymnotus. These electric remedies are practised
among the savages of America, as they were among the Greeks. We are told
by Scribonius Largus, Galen, and Dioscorides, that torpedos cure the
headache and the gout. I did not hear of this mode of treatment in the
Spanish colonies which I visited; and I can assert that, after having made
experiments during four hours successively with gymnoti, M. Bonpland and
myself felt, till the next day, a debility in the muscles, a pain in the joints,
and a general uneasiness, the effect of a strong irritation of the nervous
system.

The gymnotus is neither a charged conductor, nor a battery, nor an
electromotive apparatus, the shock of which is received every time they are
touched with one hand, or when both hands are applied to form a
conducting circle between the opposite poles. The electric action of the fish
depends entirely on its will; because it does not keep its electric organs

always charged, or whether by the secretion of some fluid, or by any other
means alike mysterious to us, it be capable of directing the action of its
organs to an external object. We often tried, both insulated and otherwise, to
touch the fish, without feeling the least shock. When M. Bonpland held it
by the head, or by the middle of the body, while I held it by the tail, and,
standing on the moist ground, did not take each other's hand, one of us
received shocks, which the other did not feel. It depends upon the gymnotus
to direct its action towards the point where it finds itself most strongly
irritated. The discharge is then made at one point only, and not at the
neighbouring points. If two persons touch the belly of the fish with their
fingers, at an inch distance, and press it simultaneously, sometimes one,
sometimes the other, will receive the shock. In the same manner, when one
insulated person holds the tail of a vigorous gymnotus, and another pinches
the gills or pectoral fin, it is often the first only by whom the shock is
received. It did not appear to us that these differences could be attributed to
the dryness or moisture of our hands, or to their unequal conducting power.
The gymnotus seemed to direct its strokes sometimes from the whole
surface of its body, sometimes from one point only. This effect indicates
less a partial discharge of the organ composed of an innumerable quantity
of layers, than the faculty which the animal possesses, (perhaps by the
instantaneous secretion of a fluid spread through the cellular membrane,) of
establishing the communication between its organs and the skin only, in a
very limited space.

Nothing proves more strongly the faculty, which the gymnotus possesses,
of darting and directing its stroke at will, than the observations made at
Philadelphia and Stockholm,* on gymnoti rendered extremely tame. (* By
MM. Williamson and Fahlberg. The following account is given by the latter
gentleman. "The gymnotus sent from Surinam to M. Norderling, at
Stockholm, lived more than four months in a state of perfect health. It was
twenty-seven inches long; and the shocks it gave were so violent, especially

in the open air, that I found scarcely any means of protecting myself by
non-conductors, in transporting the fish from one place to another. Its
stomach being very small, it ate little at a time, but fed often. It approached
living fish, first sending them from afar a shock, the energy of which was
proportionate to the size of the prey. The gymnotus seldom failed in its aim;
one single stroke was almost always sufficient to overcome the resistance
which the strata of water, more or less thick according to the distance,
opposed to the electrical current. When very much pressed by hunger, it
sometimes directed the shocks against the person who daily brought its food
of boiled meat. Persons afflicted with rheumatism came to touch it in hopes
of being cured. They took it at once by the neck and tail the shocks were in
this case stronger than when touched with one hand only. It almost entirely
lost its electrical power a short time before its death.") When they had been
made to fast a long time, they killed small fishes put into the tub. They
acted from a distance; that is to say, their electrical shock passed through a
very thick stratum of water. We need not be surprised that what was
observed in Sweden, on a single gymnotus only, we could not perceive in a
great number of individuals in their native country. The electric action of
animals being a vital action, and subject to their will, it does not depend
solely on their state of health and vigour. A gymnotus that has been kept a
long time in captivity, accustoms itself to the imprisonment to which it is
reduced; it resumes by degrees the same habits in the tub, which it had in
the rivers and marshes. An electrical eel was brought to me at Calabozo: it
had been taken in a net, and consequently having no wound. It ate meat, and
terribly frightened the little tortoises and frogs which, not aware of their
danger, placed themselves on its back. The frogs did not receive the stroke
till the moment when they touched the body of the gymnotus. When they
recovered, they leaped out of the tub; and when replaced near the fish, they
were frightened at the mere sight of it. We then observed nothing that
indicated an action at a distance; but our gymnotus, recently taken, was not

yet sufficiently tame to attack and devour frogs. On approaching the finger,
or the metallic points, very close to the electric organs, no shock was felt.
Perhaps the animal did not perceive the proximity of a foreign body; or, if it
did, we must suppose that in the commencement of its captivity, timidity
prevented it from darting forth its energetic strokes except when strongly
irritated by an immediate contact. The gymnotus being immersed in water, I
placed my hand, both armed and unarmed with metal, within a very small
distance from the electric organs; yet the strata of water transmitted no
shock, while M. Bonpland irritated the animal strongly by an immediate
contact, and received some very violent shocks. Had we placed a very
delicate electroscope in the contiguous strata of water, it might possibly
have been influenced at the moment when the gymnotus seemed to direct
its stroke elsewhere. Prepared frogs, placed immediately on the body of a
torpedo, experience, according to Galvani, a strong contraction at every
discharge of the fish.

The electrical organ of the gymnoti acts only under the immediate
influence of the brain and the heart. On cutting a very vigorous fish through
the middle of the body, the fore part alone gave shocks. These are equally
strong in whatever part of the body the fish is touched; it is most disposed,
however, to emit them when the pectoral fin, the electrical organ, the lips,
the eyes, or the gills, are pinched. Sometimes the animal struggles violently
with a person holding it by the tail, without communicating the least shock.
Nor did I feel any when I made a slight incision near the pectoral fin of the
fish, and galvanized the wound by the contact of two pieces of zinc and
silver. The gymnotus bent itself convulsively, and raised its head out of the
water, as if terrified by a sensation altogether new; but I felt no vibration in
the hands which held the two metals. The most violent muscular
movements are not always accompanied by electric discharges.

The action of the fish on the human organs is transmitted and intercepted
by the same bodies that transmit and intercept the electrical current of a
conductor charged by a Leyden jar, or Voltaic battery. Some anomalies,
which we thought we observed, are easily explained, when we recollect that
even metals (as is proved from their ignition when exposed to the action of
the battery) present a slight obstacle to the passage of electricity; and that a
bad conductor annihilates the effect, on our organs, of a feeble electric
charge, whilst it transmits to us the effect of a very strong one. The
repulsive force which zinc and silver exercise together being far superior to
that of gold and silver, I have found that when a frog, prepared and armed
with silver, is galvanized under water, the conducting arc of zinc produces
contraction as soon as one of its extremities approaches the muscles within
three lines distance; while an arc of gold does not excite the organs, when
the stratum of water between the gold and the muscles is more than half a
line thick. In the same manner, by employing a conducting arc composed of
two pieces of zinc and silver soldered together endways; and resting, as
before, one of the extremities of the metallic circuit on the femoral nerve, it
is necessary, in order to produce contractions, to bring the other extremity
of the conductor nearer and nearer to the muscles, in proportion as the
irritability of the organs diminishes. Toward the end of the experiment the
slightest stratum of water prevents the passage of the electrical current, and
it is only by the immediate contact of the arc with the muscles, that the
contractions take place. These effects are, however, dependent on three
variable circumstances; the energy of the electromotive apparatus, the
conductibility of the medium, and the irritability of the organs which
receive the impressions: it is because experiments have not been sufficiently
multiplied with a view to these three variable elements, that, in the action of
electric eels and torpedos, accidental circumstances have been taken for
absolute conditions, without which the electric shocks are not felt.

In wounded gymnoti, which give feeble but very equal shocks, these
shocks appeared to us constantly stronger on touching the body of the fish
with a hand armed with metal, than with the naked hand. They are stronger
also, when, instead of touching the fish with one hand, naked, or armed
with metal, we press it at once with both hands, either naked or armed.
These differences become sensible only when one has gymnoti enough at
disposal to be able to choose the weakest; and when the extreme equality of
the electric discharges admits of distinguishing between the sensations felt
alternately by the hand naked or armed with a metal, by one or both hands
naked, and by one or both hands armed with metal. It is also in the case
only of small shocks, feeble and uniform, that they are more sensible on
touching the gymnotus with one hand (without forming a chain) with zinc,
than with copper or iron.

Resinous substances, glass, very dry wood, horn, and even bones, which
are generally believed to be good conductors, prevent the action of the
gymnoti from being transmitted to man. I was surprised at not feeling the
least shock on pressing wet sticks of sealing-wax against the organs of the
fish, while the same animal gave me the most violent strokes, when excited
by means of a metallic rod. M. Bonpland received shocks, when carrying a
gymnotus on two cords of the fibres of the palm-tree, which appeared to us
extremely dry. A strong discharge makes its way through very imperfect
conductors. Perhaps also the obstacle which the conductor presents renders
the discharge more painful. I touched the gymnotus with a wet pot of brown
clay, without effect; yet I received violent shocks when I carried the
gymnotus in the same pot, because the contact was greater.

When two persons, insulated or otherwise, hold each other's hands, and
only one of these persons touches the fish with the hand, either naked or
armed with metal, the shock is most commonly felt by both at once.
However, it sometimes happens that, in the most severe shocks, the person

who comes into immediate contact with the fish alone feels them. When the
gymnotus is exhausted, or in a very reduced state of excitability, and will no
longer emit strokes on being irritated with one hand, the shocks are felt in a
very vivid manner, on forming the chain, and employing both hands. Even
then, however, the electric shock takes place only at the will of the animal.
Two persons, one of whom holds the tail, and the other the head, cannot, by
joining hands and forming a chain, force the gymnotus to dart his stroke.

Though employing the most delicate electrometers in various ways,
insulating them on a plate of glass, and receiving very strong shocks which
passed through the electrometer, I could never discover any phenomenon of
attraction or repulsion. The same observation was made by M. Fahlberg at
Stockholm. That philosopher, however, has seen an electric spark, as Walsh
and Ingenhousz had before him, in London, by placing the gymnotus in the
air, and interrupting the conducting chain by two gold leaves pasted upon
glass, and a line distant from each other. No person, on the contrary, has
ever perceived a spark issue from the body of the fish itself. We irritated it
for a long time during the night, at Calabozo, in perfect darkness, without
observing any luminous appearance. Having placed four gymnoti, of
unequal strength, in such a manner as to receive the shocks of the most
vigorous fish by contact, that is to say, by touching only one of the other
fishes, I did not observe that these last were agitated at the moment when
the current passed their bodies. Perhaps the current did not penetrate below
the humid surface of the skin. We will not, however, conclude from this,
that the gymnoti are insensible to electricity; and that they cannot fight with
each other at the bottom of the pools. Their nervous system must be subject
to the same agents as the nerves of other animals. I have indeed seen, that,
on laying open their nerves, they undergo muscular contractions at the mere
contact of two opposite metals; and M. Fahlberg, of Stockholm, found that
his gymnotus was convulsively agitated when placed in a copper vessel,
and feeble discharges from a Leyden jar passed through its skin.

After the experiments I had made on gymnoti, it became highly
interesting to me, on my return to Europe, to ascertain with precision the
various circumstances in which another electric fish, the torpedo of our
seas, gives or does not give shocks. Though this fish had been examined by
numerous men of science, I found all that had been published on its
electrical effects extremely vague. It has been very arbitrarily supposed, that
this fish acts like a Leyden jar, which may be discharged at will, by
touching it with both hands; and this supposition appears to have led into
error observers who have devoted themselves to researches of this kind. M.
Gay-Lussac and myself, during our journey to Italy, made a great number of
experiments on torpedos taken in the gulf of Naples. These experiments
furnish many results somewhat different from those I collected on the
gymnoti. It is probable that the cause of these anomalies is owing rather to
the inequality of electric power in the two fishes, than to the different
disposition of their organs.

Though the power of the torpedo cannot be compared with that of the
gymnotus, it is sufficient to cause very painful sensations. A person
accustomed to electric shocks can with difficulty hold in his hands a
torpedo of twelve or fourteen inches, and in possession of all its vigour.
When the torpedo gives only very feeble strokes under water, they become
more sensible if the animal be raised above the surface. I have often
observed the same phenomenon in experimenting on frogs.

The torpedo moves the pectoral fins convulsively every time it emits a
stroke; and this stroke is more or less painful, according as the immediate
contact takes place by a greater or less surface. We observed that the
gymnotus gives the strongest shocks without making any movement with
the eyes, head, or fins.* (* The anal fin of the gymnoti only has a sensible
motion when these fishes are excited under the belly, where the electric
organ is placed.) Is this difference caused by the position of the electric

organ, which is not double in the gymnoti? or does the movement of the
pectoral fins of the torpedo directly prove that the fish restores the electrical
equilibrium by its own skin, discharges itself by its own body, and that we
generally feel only the effect of a lateral shock?

We cannot discharge at will either a torpedo or a gymnotus, as we
discharge at will a Leyden jar or a Voltaic battery. A shock is not always
felt, even on touching the electric fish with both hands. We must irritate it to
make it give the shock. This action in the torpedos, as well as in the
gymnoti, is a vital action; it depends on the will only of the animal, which
perhaps does not always keep its electric organs charged, or does not
always employ the action of its nerves to establish the chain between the
positive and negative poles. It is certain that the torpedo gives a long series
of shocks with astonishing celerity; whether it is that the plates or laminae
of its organs are not wholly exhausted, or that the fish recharges them
instantaneously.

The electric stroke is felt, when the animal is disposed to give it, whether
we touch with a single finger only one of the surfaces of the organs, or
apply both hands to the two surfaces, the superior and inferior, at once. In
either case it is altogether indifferent whether the person who touches the
fish with one finger or both hands be insulated or not. All that has been said
on the necessity of a communication with the damp ground to establish a
circuit, is founded on inaccurate observations.

M. Gay-Lussac made the important observation that when an insulated
person touches the torpedo with one finger, it is indispensible that the
contact be direct. The fish may with impunity be touched with a key, or any
other metallic instrument; no shock is felt when a conducting or non-
conducting body is interposed between the finger and the electrical organ of
the torpedo. This circumstance proves a great difference between the

torpedo and the gymnotus, the latter giving his strokes through an iron rod
several feet long.

When the torpedo is placed on a metallic plate of very little thickness, so
that the plate touches the inferior surface of the organs, the hand that
supports the plate never feels any shock, though another insulated person
may excite the animal, and the convulsive movement of the pectoral fins
may denote the strongest and most reiterated discharges.

If, on the contrary, a person support the torpedo placed upon a metallic
plate, with the left hand, as in the foregoing experiment, and the same
person touch the superior surface of the electrical organ with the right hand,
a strong shock is then felt in both arms. The sensation is the same when the
fish is placed between two metallic plates, the edges of which do not touch,
and the person applies both hands at once to these plates. The interposition
of one metallic plate prevents the communication if that plate be touched
with one hand only, while the interposition of two metallic plates does not
prevent the shock when both hands are applied. In the latter case it cannot
be doubted that the circulation of the fluid is established by the two arms.

If, in this situation of the fish between two plates, there exist any
immediate communication between the edges of these two plates, no shock
takes place. The chain between the two surfaces of the electric organ is then
formed by the plates, and the new communication, established by the
contact of the two hands with the two plates, remains without effect. We
carried the torpedo with impunity between two plates of metal, and felt the
strokes it gave only at the instant when they ceased to touch each other at
the edges.

Nothing in the torpedo or in the gymnotus indicates that the animal
modifies the electrical state of the bodies by which it is surrounded. The
most delicate electrometer is no way affected in whatever manner it is

employed, whether bringing it near the organs or insulating the fish,
covering it with a metallic plate, and causing the plate to communicate by a
conducting wire with the condenser of Volta. We were at great pains to vary
the experiments by which we sought to render the electrical tension of the
torpedo sensible; but they were constantly without effect, and perfectly
confirmed what M. Bonpland and myself had observed respecting the
gymnoti, during our abode in South America.

Electrical fishes, when very vigorous, act with equal energy under water
and in the air. This observation led us to examine the conducting property of
water; and we found that, when several persons form the chain between the
superior and inferior surface of the organs of the torpedo, the shock is felt
only when these persons join hands. The action is not intercepted if two
persons, who support the torpedo with their right hands, instead of taking
one another by the left hand, plunge each a metallic point into a drop of
water placed on an insulating substance. On substituting flame for the drop
of water, the communication is interrupted, and is only re-established, as in
the gymnotus, when the two points immediately touch each other in the
interior of the flame.

We are, doubtless, very far from having discovered all the secrets of the
electrical action of fishes which is modified by the influence of the brain
and the nerves; but the experiments we have just described are sufficient to
prove that these fishes act by a concealed electricity, and by electromotive
organs of a peculiar construction, which are recharged with extreme
rapidity. Volta admits that the discharges of the opposite electricities in the
torpedos and the gymnoti are made by their own skin, and that when we
touch them with one hand only, or by means of a metallic point, we feel the
effect of a lateral shock, the electrical current not being directed solely the
shortest way. When a Leyden jar is placed on a wet woollen cloth (which is
a bad conductor), and the jar is discharged in such a manner that the cloth

makes part of the chain, prepared frogs, placed at different distances,
indicate by their contractions that the current spreads itself over the whole
cloth in a thousand different ways. According to this analogy, the most
violent shock given by the gymnotus at a distance would be but a feeble
part of the stroke which re-establishes the equilibrium in the interior of the
fish.* (* The heterogeneous poles of the double electrical organs must exist
in each organ. Mr. Todd has recently proved, by experiments made on
torpedos at the Cape of Good Hope, that the animal continues to give
violent shocks when one of these organs is extirpated. On the contrary, all
electrical action is stopped (and this point, as elucidated by Galvani, is of
the greatest importance) if injury be inflicted on the brain, or if the nerves
which supply the plates of the electrical organs be divided. In the latter
case, the nerves being cut, and the brain left untouched, the torpedo
continues to live, and perform every muscular movement. A fish, exhausted
by too numerous electrical discharges, suffered much more than another
fish deprived, by dividing the nerves, of any communication between the
brain and the electromotive apparatus. Philosophical Transactions 1816.) As
the gymnotus directs its stroke wherever it pleases, it must also be admitted
that the discharge is not made by the whole skin at once, but that the
animal, excited perhaps by the motion of a fluid poured into one part of the
cellular membrane, establishes at will the communication between its
organs and some particular part of the skin. It may be conceived that a
lateral stroke, out of the direct current, must become imperceptible under
the two conditions of a very weak discharge, or a very great obstacle
presented by the nature and length of the conductor. Notwithstanding these
considerations, it appears to me very surprising that shocks of the torpedo,
strong in appearance, are not propagated to the hand when a very thin plate
of metal is interposed between it and the fish.

Schilling declared that the gymnotus approached the magnet
involuntarily. We tried in a thousand ways this supposed influence of the

magnet on the electrical organs, without having ever observed any sensible
effect. The fish no more approached the magnet, than a bar of iron not
magnetic. Iron-filings, thrown on its back, remained motionless.

The gymnoti, which are objects of curiosity and of the deepest interest to
the philosophers of Europe, are at once dreaded and detested by the natives.
They furnish, indeed, in their muscular flesh, pretty good aliment; but the
electric organ fills the greater part of their body, and this organ is slimy, and
disagreeable to the taste; it is accordingly separated with care from the rest
of the eel. The presence of gymnoti is also considered as the principal cause
of the want of fish in the ponds and pools of the Llanos. They, however, kill
many more than they devour: and the Indians told us, that when young
alligators and gymnoti are caught at the same time in very strong nets, the
latter never show the slightest trace of a wound, because they disable the
young alligators before they are attacked by them. All the inhabitants of the
waters dread the society of the gymnoti. Lizards, tortoises, and frogs, seek
pools where they are secure from the electric action. It became necessary to
change the direction of a road near Uritucu, because the electric eels were
so numerous in one river, that they every year killed a great number of
mules, as they forded the water with their burdens.

Though in the present state of our knowledge we may flatter ourselves
with having thrown some light on the extraordinary effects of electric
fishes, yet a vast number of physical and physiological researches still
remain to be made. The brilliant results which chemistry has obtained by
means of the Voltaic battery, have occupied all observers, and turned
attention for some time from the examinations of the phenomena of vitality.
Let us hope that these phenomena, the most awful and the most mysterious
of all, will in their turn occupy the earnest attention of natural philosophers.
This hope will be easily realized if they succeed in procuring anew living
gymnoti in some one of the great capitals of Europe. The discoveries that

will be made on the electromotive apparatus of these fish, much more
energetic, and more easy of preservation, than the torpedos,* will extend to
all the phenomena of muscular motion subject to volition. (* In order to
investigate the phenomena of the living electromotive apparatus in its
greatest simplicity, and not to mistake for general conditions circumstances
which depend on the degree of energy of the electric organs, it is necessary
to perform the experiments on those electrical fishes most easily tamed. If
the gymnoti were not known, we might suppose, from the observations
made on torpedos, that fishes cannot give their shocks from a distance
through very thick strata of water, or through a bar of iron, without forming
a circuit. Mr. Williamson has felt strong shocks when he held only one hand
in the water, and this hand, without touching the gymnotus, was placed
between it and the small fish towards which the stroke was directed from
ten or fifteen inches distance. Philosophical Transactions volume 65 pages
99 and 108. When the gymnotus was enfeebled by bad health, the lateral
shock was imperceptible; and in order to feel the shock, it was necessary to
form a chain, and touch the fish with both hands at once. Cavendish, in his
ingenious experiments on an artificial torpedo, had well remarked these
differences, depending on the greater or less energy of the charge.
Philosophical Transactions 1776 page 212.) It will perhaps be found that, in
most animals, every contraction of the muscular fibre is preceded by a
discharge from the nerve into the muscle; and that the mere simple contact
of heterogeneous substances is a source of movement and of life in all
organized beings. Did an ingenious and lively people, the Arabians, guess
from remote antiquity, that the same force which inflames the vault of
Heaven in storms, is the living and invisible weapon of inhabitants of the
waters? It is said, that the electric fish of the Nile bears a name in Egypt,
that signifies thunder.* (* It appears, however, that a distinction is to be
made between rahd, thunder, and rahadh, the electrical fish; and that this
latter word means simply that which causes trembling.)

We left the town of Calabozo on the 24th of March, highly satisfied with
our stay, and the experiments we had made on an object so worthy of the
attention of physiologists. I had besides obtained some good observations of
the stars; and discovered with surprise, that the errors of maps amounted
here also to a quarter of a degree of latitude. No person had taken an
observation before me on this spot; and geographers, magnifying as usual
the distance from the coast to the islands, have carried back beyond
measure all the localities towards the south.

As we advanced into the southern part of the Llanos, we found the
ground more dusty, more destitute of herbage, and more cracked by the
effect of long drought. The palm-trees disappeared by degrees. The
thermometer kept, from eleven in the morning till sunset, at 34 or 35
degrees. The calmer the air appeared at eight or ten feet high, the more we
were enveloped in those whirlwinds of dust, caused by the little currents of
air that sweep the ground. About four o'clock in the afternoon, we found a
young Indian girl stretched upon the savannah. She was almost in a state of
nudity, and appeared to be about twelve or thirteen years of age. Exhausted
with fatigue and thirst, her eyes, nostrils, and mouth filled with dust, she
breathed with a rattling in her throat, and was unable to answer our
questions. A pitcher, overturned, and half filled with sand, was lying at her
side. Happily one of our mules was laden with water; and we roused the girl
from her lethargic state by bathing her face, and forcing her to drink a few
drops of wine. She was at first alarmed on seeing herself surrounded by so
many persons; but by degrees she took courage, and conversed with our
guides. She judged, from the position of the sun, that she must have
remained during several hours in that state of lethargy. We could not prevail
on her to mount one of our beasts of burden, and she would not return to
Uritucu. She had been in service at a neighbouring farm; and she had been
discharged, because at the end of a long sickness she was less able to work
than before. Our menaces and prayers were alike fruitless; insensible to

suffering, like the rest of her race, she persisted in her resolution of going to
one of the Indian Missions near the city of Calabozo. We removed the sand
from her pitcher, and filled it with water. She resumed her way along the
steppe, before we had remounted our horses, and was soon separated from
us by a cloud of dust. During the night we forded the Rio Uritucu, which
abounds with a breed of crocodiles remarkable for their ferocity. We were
advised to prevent our dogs from going to drink in the rivers, for it often
happens that the crocodiles of Uritucu come out of the water, and pursue
dogs upon the shore. This intrepidity is so much the more striking, as at
eight leagues distance, the crocodiles of the Rio Tisnao are extremely timid,
and little dangerous. The manners of animals vary in the same species
according to local circumstances difficult to be determined. We were shown
a hut, or rather a kind of shed, in which our host of Calabozo, Don Miguel
Cousin, had witnessed a very extraordinary scene. Sleeping with one of his
friends on a bench or couch covered with leather, Don Miguel was
awakened early in the morning by a violent shaking and a horrible noise.
Clods of earth were thrown into the middle of the hut. Presently a young
crocodile two or three feet long issued from under the bed, darted at a dog
which lay on the threshold of the door, and, missing him in the impetuosity
of his spring, ran towards the beach to gain the river. On examining the spot
where the barbacoa, or couch, was placed, the cause of this strange
adventure was easily discovered. The ground was disturbed to a
considerable depth. It was dried mud, which had covered the crocodile in
that state of lethargy, or summer-sleep, in which many of the species lie
during the absence of the rains in the Llanos. The noise of men and horses,
perhaps the smell of the dog, had aroused the crocodile. The hut being built
at the edge of the pool, and inundated during part of the year, the crocodile
had no doubt entered, at the time of the inundation of the savannahs, by the
same opening at which it was seen to go out. The Indians often find
enormous boas, which they call uji, or water-serpents,* in the same

lethargic state. (* Culebra de agua, named by the common people traga-
venado, the swallower of stags. The word uji belongs to the Tamanac
language.) To reanimate them, they must be irritated, or wetted with water.
Boas are killed, and immersed in the streams, to obtain, by means of
putrefaction, the tendinous parts of the dorsal muscles, of which excellent
guitar-strings are made at Calabozo, preferable to those furnished by the
intestines of the alouate monkeys.

The drought and heat of the Llanos act like cold upon animals and plants.
Beyond the tropics the trees lose their leaves in a very dry air. Reptiles,
particularly crocodiles and boas, having very indolent habits, leave with
reluctance the basins in which they have found water at the period of great
inundations. In proportion as the pools become dry, these animals penetrate
into the mud, to seek that degree of humidity which gives flexibility to their
skin and integuments. In this state of repose they are seized with
stupefaction; but possibly they preserve a communication with the external
air; and, however little that communication may be, it possibly suffices to
keep up the respiration of an animal of the saurian family, provided with
enormous pulmonary sacs, exerting no muscular motion, and in which
almost all the vital functions are suspended. It is probable that the mean
temperature of the dried mud, exposed to the solar rays, is more than 40
degrees. When the north of Egypt, where the coolest month does not fall
below 13.4 degrees, was inhabited by crocodiles, they were often found
torpid with cold. They were subject to a winter-sleep, like the European
frog, lizard, sand-martin, and marmot. If the hibernal lethargy be observed,
both in cold-blooded and in hot-blooded animals, we shall be less surprised
to learn, that these two classes furnish alike examples of a summer-sleep. In
the same manner as the crocodiles of South America, the tanrecs, or
Madagascar hedgehogs, in the midst of the torrid zone, pass three months of
the year in lethargy.

On the 25th of March we traversed the smoothest part of the steppes of
Caracas, the Mesa de Pavones. It is entirely destitute of the corypha and
moriche palm-trees. As far as the eye can reach, not a single object fifteen
inches high can be discovered. The air was clear, and the sky of a very deep
blue; but the horizon reflected a livid and yellowish light, caused no doubt
by the quantity of sand suspended in the atmosphere. We met some large
herds of cattle, and with them flocks of birds of a black colour with an olive
shade. They are of the genus Crotophaga,* and follow the cattle. (* The
Spanish colonists call the Crotophaga ani, zamurito (little carrion vulture—
Vultur aura minuta), or garapatero, the eater of garaparas, insects of the
Acarus family.) We had often seen them perched on the backs of cows,
seeking for gadflies and other insects. Like many birds of these desert
places, they fear so little the approach of man, that children often catch
them in their hands. In the valleys of Aragua, where they are very common,
we have seen them perch upon the hammocks on which we were reposing,
in open day.

We discover, between Calabozo, Uritucu, and the Mesa de Pavones,
wherever there are excavations of some feet deep, the geological
constitution of the Llanos. A formation of red sandstone (ancient
conglomerate) covers an extent of several thousand square leagues. We
shall find it again in the vast plains of the Amazon, on the eastern boundary
of the province of Jaen de Bracamoros. This prodigious extension of red
sandstone in the low grounds stretching along the east of the Andes, is one
of the most striking phenomena I observed during my examination of rocks
in the equinoctial regions.

The red sandstone of the Llanos of Caracas lies in a concave position,
between the primitive mountains of the shore and of Parime. On the north it
is backed by the transition-slates,* (* At Malpaso and Piedras Azules.) and
on the south it rests immediately on the granites of the Orinoco. We

observed in it rounded fragments of quartz (kieselschiefer), and Lydian
stone, cemented by an olive-brown ferruginous clay. The cement is
sometimes of so bright a red that the people of the country take it for
cinnabar. We met a Capuchin monk at Calabozo, who was in vain
attempting to extract mercury from this red sandstone. In the Mesa de Paja
this rock contains strata of another quartzose sandstone, very fine-grained;
more to the south it contains masses of brown iron, and fragments of
petrified trees of the monocotyledonous family, but we did not see in it any
shells. The red sandstone, called by the Llaneros, the stone of the reefs
(piedra de arrecifes), is everywhere covered with a stratum of clay. This
clay, dried and hardened in the sun, splits into separate prismatic pieces
with five or six sides. Does it belong to the trap-formation of Parapara? It
becomes thicker, and mixed with sand, as we approach the Rio Apure; for
near Calabozo it is one toise thick, near the mission of Guayaval five toises,
which may lead to the belief that the strata of red sandstone dips towards
the south. We gathered in the Mesa de Pavones little nodules of blue iron-
ore disseminated in the clay.

A dense whitish-gray limestone, with a smooth fracture, somewhat
analogous to that of Caripe, and consequently to that of Jura, lies on the red
sandstone between Tisnao and Calabozo.* (* Does this formation of
secondary limestone of the Llanos contain galena? It has been found in
strata of black marl, at Barbacoa, between Truxillo and Barquesimeto,
north-west of the Llanos.) In several other places, for instance in the Mesa
de San Diego, and between Ortiz and the Mesa de Paja,* (* Also near
Cachipe and San Joacquim, in the Llanos of Barcelona.) we find above the
limestone lamellar gypsum alternating with strata of marl. Considerable
quantities of this gypsum are sent to the city of Caracas,* which is situated
amidst primitive mountains. (* This trade is carried on at Parapara. A load
of eight arrobas sells at Caracas for twenty-four piastres.)

This gypsum generally forms only small beds, and is mixed with a great
deal of fibrous gypsum. Is it of the same formation as that of Guire, on the
coast of Paria, which contains sulphur? or do the masses of this latter
substance, found in the valley of Buen Pastor and on the banks of the
Orinoco, belong, with the argillaceous gypsum of the Llanos, to a secondary
formation much more recent.

These questions are very interesting in the study of the relative antiquity
of rocks, which is the principal basis of geology. I know not of any salt-
deposits in the Llanos. Horned cattle prosper here without those famous
bareros, or muriatiferous lands, which abound in the Pampas of Buenos
Ayres.* (* Known in North America under the name of salt-licks.)

After having wandered for a long time, and without any traces of a road,
in the desert savannahs of the Mesa de Pavones, we were agreeably
surprised when we came to a solitary farm, the Hato de Alta Gracia,
surrounded with gardens and basins of limpid water. Hedges of bead-trees
encircled groups of icacoes laden with fruit. Farther on we passed the night
near the small village of San Geronymo del Guayaval, founded by
Capuchin missionaries. It is situated near the banks of the Rio Guarico,
which falls into the Apure. I visited the missionary, who had no other
habitation than his church, not having yet built a house. He was a young
man, and he received us in the most obliging manner, giving us all the
information we desired. His village, or to use the word established among
the monks, his Mission, was not easy to govern. The founder, who had not
hesitated to establish for his own profit a pulperia, in other words, to sell
bananas and guarapo in the church itself, had shown himself to be not very
nice in the choice of the new colonists. Many marauders of the Llanos had
settled at Guayaval, because the inhabitants of a Mission are exempt from
the authority of secular law. Here, as in Australia, it cannot be expected that
good colonists will be formed before the second or third generation.

We passed the Guarico, and encamped in the savannahs south of
Guayaval. Enormous bats, no doubt of the tribe of Phyllostomas, hovered as
usual over our hammocks during a great part of the night. Every moment
they seemed to be about to fasten on our faces. Early in the morning we
pursued our way over low grounds, often inundated. In the season of rains,
a boat may be navigated, as on a lake, between the Guarico and the Apure.
We arrived on the 27th of March at the Villa de San Fernando, the capital of
the Mission of the Capuchins in the province of Varinas. This was the
termination of our journey over the Llanos; for we passed the three months
of April, May, and June on the rivers.

CHAPTER 2.18.

SAN FERNANDO DE APURE. INTERTWININGS AND BIFURCATIONS OF THE RIVERS
APURE AND ARAUCA. NAVIGATION ON THE RIO APURE.

Till the second half of the eighteenth century the names of the great
rivers Apure, Arauca, and Meta were scarcely known in Europe: certainly
less than they had been in the two preceding centuries, when the valiant
Felipe de Urre and the conquerors of Tocuyo traversed the Llanos, to seek,
beyond the Apure, the great legendary city of El Dorado, and the rich
country of the Omeguas, the Timbuctoo of the New Continent. Such daring
expeditions could not be carried out without all the apparatus of war; and
the weapons, which had been destined for the defence of the new colonists,
were employed without intermission against the unhappy natives. When
more peaceful times succeeded to those of violence and public calamity,
two powerful Indian tribes, the Cabres and the Caribs of the Orinoco, made
themselves masters of the country which the Conquistadores had ceased to
ravage. None but poor monks were then permitted to advance to the south
of the steppes. Beyond the Uritucu an unknown world opened to the
Spanish colonists; and the descendants of those intrepid warriors who had

extended their conquests from Peru to the coasts of New Grenada and the
mouth of the Amazon, knew not the roads that lead from Coro to the Rio
Meta. The shore of Venezuela remained a separate country; and the slow
conquests of the Jesuit missionaries were successful only by skirting the
banks of the Orinoco. These fathers had already penetrated beyond the great
cataracts of Atures and Maypures, when the Andalusian Capuchins had
scarcely reached the plains of Calabozo, from the coast and the valleys of
Aragua. It would be difficult to explain these contrasts by the system
according to which the different monastic orders are governed; for the
aspect of the country contributes powerfully to the more or less rapid
progress of the Missions. They extend but slowly into the interior of the
land, over mountains, or in steppes, wherever they do not follow the course
of a particular river. It will scarcely be believed, that the Villa de Fernando
de Apure, only fifty leagues distant in a direct line from that part of the
coast of Caracas which has been longest inhabited, was founded at no
earlier a date than 1789. We were shown a parchment, full of fine paintings,
containing the privileges of this little town. The parchment was sent from
Madrid at the solicitation of the monks, whilst yet only a few huts of reeds
were to be seen around a great cross raised in the centre of the hamlet. The
missionaries and the secular governments being alike interested in
exaggerating in Europe what they have done to augment the culture and
population of the provinces beyond the sea, it often happens that names of
towns and villages are placed on the list of new conquests, long before their
foundation.

The situation of San Fernando, on a large navigable river, near the mouth
of another river which traverses the whole province of Varinas, is extremely
advantageous for trade. Every production of that province, hides, cacao,
cotton, and the indigo of Mijagual, which is of the first quality, passes
through this town towards the mouths of the Orinoco. During the season of
rains large vessels go from Angostura as far as San Fernando de Apure, and

by the Rio Santo Domingo as far as Torunos, the port of the town of
Varinas. At that period the inundations of the rivers, which form a labyrinth
of branches between the Apure, the Arauca, the Capanaparo, and the
Sinaruco, cover a country of nearly four hundred square leagues. At this
point, the Orinoco, turned aside from its course, not by neighbouring
mountains, but by the rising of counterslopes, runs eastward instead of
following its previous direction in the line of the meridian. Considering the
surface of the globe as a polyhedron, formed of planes variously inclined,
we may conceive by the mere inspection of the maps, that the intersection
of these slopes, rising towards the north, the west, and south,* between San
Fernando de Apure, Caycara, and the mouth of the Meta, must cause a
considerable depression. (* The risings towards the north and west are
connected with two lines of ridges, the mountains of Villa de Cura and of
Merida. The third slope, running from north to south, is that of the land-
strait between the Andes and the chain of Parime. It determines the general
inclination of the Orinoco, from the mouth of the Guaviare to that of the
Apure.) The savannahs in this basin are covered with twelve or fourteen
feet of water, and present, at the period of rains, the aspect of a great lake.
The farms and villages which seem as if situated on shoals, scarcely rise
two or three feet above the surface of the water. Everything here calls to
mind the inundations of Lower Egypt, and the lake of Xarayes, heretofore
so celebrated among geographers, though it exists only during some months
of the year. The swellings of the rivers Apure, Meta, and Orinoco, are also
periodical. In the rainy season, the horses that wander in the savannah, and
have not time to reach the rising grounds of the Llanos, perish by hundreds.
The mares are seen, followed by their colts,* swimming during a part of the
day to feed upon the grass, the tops of which alone wave above the waters.
(The colts are drowned everywhere in large numbers, because they are
sooner tired of swimming, and strive to follow the mares in places where
the latter alone can touch the ground.) In this state they are pursued by the

crocodiles, and it is by no means uncommon to find the prints of the teeth
of these carnivorous reptiles on their thighs. The carcases of horses, mules,
and cows, attract an innumerable quantity of vultures. The zamuros are the
ibisis of this country, and they render the same service to the inhabitants of
the Llanos as the Vultur percnopterus to the inhabitants of Egypt.

We cannot reflect on the effects of these inundations without admiring
the prodigious pliability of the organization of the animals which man has
subjected to his sway. In Greenland the dog eats the refuse of the fisheries;
and when fish are wanting, feeds on seaweed. The ass and the horse,
originally natives of the cold and barren plains of Upper Asia, follow man
to the New World, return to the wild state, and lead a restless and weary life
in the burning climates of the tropics. Pressed alternately by excess of
drought and of humidity, they sometimes seek a pool in the midst of a bare
and dusty plain, to quench their thirst; and at other times flee from water,
and the overflowing rivers, as menaced by an enemy that threatens them on
all sides. Tormented during the day by gadflies and mosquitos, the horses,
mules, and cows find themselves attacked at night by enormous bats, which
fasten on their backs, and cause wounds that become dangerous, because
they are filled with acaridae and other hurtful insects. In the time of great
drought the mules gnaw even the thorny cactus* in order to imbibe its
cooling juice, and draw it forth as from a vegetable fountain. (* The asses
are particularly adroit in extracting the moisture contained in the Cactus
melocatus. They push aside the thorns with their hoofs; but sometimes lame
themselves in performing this feat.) During the great inundations these
same animals lead an amphibious life, surrounded by crocodiles, water-
serpents, and manatees. Yet, such are the immutable laws of nature, that
their races are preserved in the struggle with the elements, and amid so
many sufferings and dangers. When the waters retire, and the rivers return
again into their beds, the savannah is overspread with a beautiful scented

grass; and the animals of Europe and Upper Asia seem to enjoy, as in their
native climes, the renewed vegetation of spring.

During the time of great floods, the inhabitants of these countries, to
avoid the force of the currents, and the danger arising from the trunks of
trees which these currents bring down, instead of ascending the beds of
rivers in their boats, cross the savannahs. To go from San Fernando to the
villages of San Juan de Payara, San Raphael de Atamaica, or San Francisco
de Capanaparo, they direct their course due south, as if they were crossing a
single river of twenty leagues broad. The junctions of the Guarico, the
Apure, the Cabullare, and the Arauca with the Orinoco, form, at a hundred
and sixty leagues from the coast of Guiana, a kind of interior Delta, of
which hydrography furnishes few examples in the Old World. According to
the height of the mercury in the barometer, the waters of the Apure have
only a fall of thirty-four toises from San Fernando to the sea. The fall from
the mouths of the Osage and the Missouri to the bar of the Mississippi is not
more considerable. The savannahs of Lower Louisiana everywhere remind
us of the savannahs of the Lower Orinoco.

During our stay of three days in the little town of San Fernando, we
lodged with the Capuchin missionary, who lived much at his ease. We were
recommended to him by the bishop of Caracas, and he showed us the most
obliging attention. He consulted me on the works that had been undertaken
to prevent the flood from undermining the shore on which the town was
built. The flowing of the Portuguesa into the Apure gives the latter an
impulse towards south-east; and, instead of procuring a freer course for the
river, attempts were made to confine it by dykes and piers. It was easy to
predict that these would be rapidly destroyed by the swell of the waters, the
shore having been weakened by taking away the earth from behind the dyke
to employ it in these hydraulic constructions.

San Fernando is celebrated for the excessive heat which prevails there the
greater part of the year; and before I begin the recital of our long navigation
on the rivers, I shall relate some facts calculated to throw light on the
meteorology of the tropics. We went, provided with thermometers, to the
flat shores covered with white sand which border the river Apure. At two in
the afternoon I found the sand, wherever it was exposed to the sun, at 52.5
degrees. The instrument, raised eighteen inches above the sand, marked
42.8 degrees, and at six feet high 38.7 degrees. The temperature of the air
under the shade of a ceiba was 36.2 degrees. These observations were made
during a dead calm. As soon as the wind began to blow, the temperature of
the air rose 3 degrees higher, yet we were not enveloped by a wind of sand,
but the strata of air had been in contact with a soil more strongly heated, or
through which whirlwinds of sand had passed. This western part of the
Llanos is the hottest, because it receives air that has already crossed the rest
of the barren steppe. The same difference has been observed between the
eastern and western parts of the deserts of Africa, where the trade-winds
blow.

The heat augments sensibly in the Llanos during the rainy season,
particularly in the month of July, when the sky is cloudy, and reflects the
radiant heat toward the earth. During this season the breeze entirely ceases;
and, according to good thermometrical observations made by M. Pozo, the
thermometer rises in the shade to 39 and 39.5 degrees, though kept at the
distance of more than fifteen feet from the ground. As we approached the
banks of the Portuguesa, the Apure, and the Apurito, the air became cooler
from the evaporation of so considerable a mass of water. This effect is more
especially perceptible at sunset. During the day the shores of the rivers,
covered with white sand, reflect the heat in an insupportable degree, even
more than the yellowish brown clayey grounds of Calabozo and Tisnao.

On the 28th of March I was on the shore at sunrise to measure the
breadth of the Apure, which is two hundred and six toises. The thunder
rolled in all directions around. It was the first storm and the first rain of the
season. The river was swelled by the easterly wind; but it soon became
calm, and then some great cetacea, much resembling the porpoises of our
seas, began to play in long files on the surface of the water. The slow and
indolent crocodiles seem to dread the neighbourhood of these animals, so
noisy and impetuous in their evolutions, for we saw them dive whenever
they approached. It is a very extraordinary phenomenon to find cetacea at
such a distance from the coast. The Spaniards of the Missions designate
them, as they do the porpoises of the ocean, by the name of toninas. The
Tamanacs call them orinucna. They are three or four feet long; and bending
their back, and pressing with their tail on the inferior strata of the water,
they expose to view a part of the back and of the dorsal fin. I did not
succeed in obtaining any, though I often engaged Indians to shoot at them
with their arrows. Father Gili asserts that the Gumanos eat their flesh. Are
these cetacea peculiar to the great rivers of South America, like the
manatee, which, according to Cuvier, is also a fresh water cetaceous
animal? or must we admit that they go up from the sea against the current,
as the beluga sometimes does in the rivers of Asia? What would lead me to
doubt this last supposition is, that we saw toninas above the great cataracts
of the Orinoco, in the Rio Atabapo. Did they penetrate into the centre of
equinoctial America from the mouth of the Amazon, by the communication
of that river with the Rio Negro, the Cassiquiare, and the Orinoco? They are
found here at all seasons, and nothing seems to denote that they make
periodical migrations like salmon.

While the thunder rolled around us, the sky displayed only scattered
clouds, that advanced slowly toward the zenith, and in an opposite
direction. The hygrometer of Deluc was at 53 degrees, the centigrade
thermometer 23.7 degrees, and Saussure's hygrometer 87.5 degrees. The

electrometer gave no sign of electricity. As the storm gathered, the blue of
the sky changed at first to deep azure and then to grey. The vesicular vapour
became visible, and the thermometer rose three degrees, as is almost always
the case, within the tropics, from a cloudy sky which reflects the radiant
heat of the soil. A heavy rain fell. Being sufficiently habituated to the
climate not to fear the effect of tropical rains, we remained on the shore to
observe the electrometer. I held it more than twenty minutes in my hand, six
feet above the ground, and observed that in general the pith-balls separated
only a few seconds before the lightning was seen. The separation was four
lines. The electric charge remained the same during several minutes; and
having time to determine the nature of the electricity, by approaching a stick
of sealing-wax, I saw here what I had often observed on the ridge of the
Andes during a storm, that the electricity of the atmosphere was first
positive, then nil, and then negative. These oscillations from positive to
negative were often repeated. Yet the electrometer constantly denoted, a
little before the lightning, only E., or positive E., and never negative E.
Towards the end of the storm the west wind blew very strongly. The clouds
dispersed, and the thermometer sunk to 22 degrees on account of the
evaporation from the soil, and the freer radiation towards the sky.

I have entered into these details on the electric charge of the atmosphere
because travellers in general confine themselves to the description of the
impressions produced on a European newly arrived by the solemn spectacle
of a tropical storm. In a country where the year is divided into great seasons
of drought and wet, or, as the Indians say in their expressive language, of
sun* (* In the Maypure dialect camoti, properly the heat [of the sun]. The
Tamanacs call the season of drought uamu, the time of grasshoppers.) and
rain* (* In the Tamanac language canepo. The year is designated, among
several nations, by the name of one of the two seasons. The Maypures say,
so many suns, (or rather so many heats;) the Tamanacs, so many rains.), it is
highly interesting to follow the progress of meteorological phenomena in

the transition from one season to another. We had already observed, in the
valleys of Aragua from the 18th and 19th of February, clouds forming at the
commencement of the night. In the beginning of the month of March the
accumulation of the vesicular vapours, visible to the eye, and with them
signs of atmospheric electricity, augmented daily. We saw flashes of heat-
lightning to the south; and the electrometer of Volta constantly displayed, at
sunset, positive electricity. The pith balls, unexcited during the day,
separated to the width of three or four lines at the commencement of the
night, which is triple what I generally observed in Europe, with the same
instrument, in calm weather. Upon the whole, from the 26th of May, the
electrical equilibrium of the atmosphere seemed disturbed. During whole
hours the electricity was nil, then it became very strong, and soon after was
again imperceptible. The hygrometer of Deluc continued to indicate great
dryness (from 33 to 35 degrees), and yet the atmosphere appeared no longer
the same. Amidst these perpetual variations of the electric state of the air,
the trees, divested of their foliage, already began to unfold new leaves, and
seemed to feel the approach of spring.

The variations which we have just described are not peculiar to one year.
Everything in the equinoctial zone has a wonderful uniformity of
succession, because the active powers of nature limit and balance each
other, according to laws that are easily recognized. I shall here note the
progress of atmospherical phenomena in the islands to the east of the
Cordilleras of Merida and of New Grenada, in the Llanos of Venezuela and
the Rio Meta, from four to ten degrees of north latitude, wherever the rains
are constant from May to October, and comprehending consequently the
periods of the greatest heats, which occur in July and August.* (* The
maximum of the heat is not felt on the coast, at Cumana, at La Guayra, and
in the neighbouring island of Margareta, before the month of September;
and the rains, if the name can be given to a few drops that fall at intervals,
are observed only in the months of October and November.)

Nothing can equal the clearness of the atmosphere from the month of
December to that of February. The sky is then constantly without clouds;
and if one should appear, it is a phenomenon that engages the whole
attention of the inhabitants. A breeze from the east, and from east-north-
east, blows with violence. As it brings with it air always of the same
temperature, the vapours cannot become visible by cooling.

About the end of February and the beginning of March, the blue of the
sky is less intense, the hygrometer indicates by degrees greater humidity,
the stars are sometimes veiled by a slight stratum of vapour, and their light
is no longer steady and planetary; they are seen twinkling from time to time
when at 20 degrees above the horizon. The breeze at this period becomes
less strong, less regular, and is often interrupted by dead calms. The clouds
accumulate towards south-south-east, appearing like distant mountains,
with outlines strongly marked. From time to time they detach themselves
from the horizon, and traverse the vault of the sky with a rapidity which
little corresponds with the feeble wind prevailing in the lower strata of the
air. At the end of March, the southern region of the atmosphere is illumined
by small electric explosions. They are like phosphorescent gleams,
circumscribed by vapour. The breeze then shifts from time to time, and for
several hours together, to the west and south-west. This is a certain sign of
the approach of the rainy season, which begins at the Orinoco about the end
of April. The blue sky disappears, and a grey tint spreads uniformly over it.
At the same time the heat of the atmosphere progressively increases; and
soon the heavens are no longer obscured by clouds, but by condensed
vapours. The plaintive cry of the howling apes begins to be heard before
sunrise. The atmospheric electricity, which, during the season of drought,
from December to March, had been constantly, in the day-time, from 1.7 to
2 lines, becomes extremely variable from the month of March. It appears nil
during whole days; and then for some hours the pith-balls diverge three or
four lines. The atmosphere, which is generally, in the torrid as well as in the

temperate zone, in a state of positive electricity, passes alternately, for eight
or ten minutes, to the negative state. The season of rains is that of storms;
and yet a great number of experiments made during three years, prove to
me that it is precisely in this season of storms we find the smallest degree of
electric tension in the lower regions of the atmosphere. Are storms the
effect of this unequal charge of the different superincumbent strata of air?
What prevents the electricity from descending towards the earth, in air
which becomes more humid after the month of March? The electricity at
this period, instead of being diffused throughout the whole atmosphere,
appears accumulated on the exterior envelope, at the surface of the clouds.
According to M. Gay-Lussac it is the formation of the cloud itself that
carries the fluid toward its surface. The storm rises in the plains two hours
after the sun has passed the meridian; consequently a short time after the
moment of the maximum of diurnal heat within the tropics. It is extremely
rare in the islands to hear thunder during the night, or in the morning.
Storms at night are peculiar to certain valleys of rivers, having a peculiar
climate.

What then are the causes of this rupture of the equilibrium in the electric
tension of the air? of this continual condensation of the vapours into water?
of this interruption of the breezes? of this commencement and duration of
the rainy seasons? I doubt whether electricity has any influence on the
formation of vapours. It is rather the formation of these vapours that
augments and modifies the electrical tension. North and south of the
equator, storms or great explosions take place at the same time in the
temperate and in the equinoctial zone. Is there an action propagated through
the great aerial ocean from the temperate zone towards the tropics? How
can it be conceived, that in that zone where the sun rises constantly to so
great a height above the horizon, its passage through the zenith can have so
powerful an influence on the meteorological variations? I am of opinion
that no local cause determines the commencement of the rains within the

tropics; and that a more intimate knowledge of the higher currents of air
will elucidate these problems, so complicated in appearance. We can
observe only what passes in the lower strata of the atmosphere. The Andes
are scarcely inhabited beyond the height of two thousand toises; and at that
height the proximity of the soil, and the masses of mountains, which form
the shoals of the aerial ocean, have a sensible influence on the ambient air.
What we observe on the table-land of Antisana is not what we should find
at the same height in a balloon, hovering over the Llanos or the surface of
the ocean.

We have just seen that the season of rains and storms in the northern
equinoctial zone coincides with the passage of the sun through the zenith of
the place,* (* These passages take place, in the fifth and tenth degrees of
north latitude between the 3rd and the 16th of April, and between the 27th
of August and the 8th of September.) with the cessation of the north-east
breezes, and with the frequency of calms and bendavales, which are stormy
winds from south-east and south-west, accompanied by a cloudy sky. I
believe that, in reflecting on the general laws of the equilibrium of the
gaseous masses constituting our atmosphere, we may find, in the
interruption of the current that blows from an homonymous pole, in the
want of the renewal of air in the torrid zone, and in the continued action of
an ascending humid current, a very simple cause of the coincidence of these
phenomena. While the north-easterly breeze blows with all its violence
north of the equator, it prevents the atmosphere which covers the
equinoctial lands and seas from saturating itself with moisture. The hot and
moist air of the torrid zone rises aloft, and flows off again towards the
poles; while inferior polar currents, bringing drier and colder strata, are
every instant taking the place of the columns of ascending air. By this
constant action of two opposite currents, the humidity, far from being
accumulated in the equatorial region, is carried towards the cold and
temperate regions. During this season of breezes, which is that when the

sun is in the southern signs, the sky in the northern equinoctial zone is
constantly serene. The vesicular vapours are not condensed, because the air,
unceasingly renewed, is far from the point of saturation. In proportion as
the sun, entering the northern signs, rises towards the zenith, the breeze
from the north-east moderates, and by degrees entirely ceases. The
difference of temperature between the tropics and the temperate northern
zone is then the least possible. It is the summer of the boreal pole; and, if
the mean temperature of the winter, between 42 and 52 degrees of north
latitude, be from 20 to 26 degrees of the centigrade thermometer less than
the equatorial heat, the difference in summer is scarcely from 4 to 6
degrees. The sun being in the zenith, and the breeze having ceased, the
causes which produce humidity, and accumulate it in the northern
equinoctial zone, become at once more active. The column of air reposing
on this zone, is saturated with vapours, because it is no longer renewed by
the polar current. Clouds form in this air saturated and cooled by the
combined effects of radiation and the dilatation of the ascending air. This
air augments its capacity for heat in proportion as it rarefies. With the
formation and collection of the vesicular vapours, electricity accumulates in
the higher regions of the atmosphere. The precipitation of the vapours is
continual during the day; but it generally ceases at night, and frequently
even before sunset. The showers are regularly more violent, and
accompanied with electric explosions, a short time after the maximum of
the diurnal heat. This state of things remains unchanged, till the sun enters
into the southern signs. This is the commencement of cold in the northern
temperate zone. The current from the north-pole is then re-established,
because the difference between the heat of the equinoctial and temperate
regions augments daily. The north-east breeze blows with violence, the air
of the tropics is renewed, and can no longer attain the degree of saturation.
The rains consequently cease, the vesicular vapour is dissolved, and the sky
resumes its clearness and its azure tint. Electrical explosions are no longer

heard, doubtless because electricity no longer comes in contact with the
groups of vesicular vapours in the high regions of the air, I had almost said
the coating of clouds, on which the fluid can accumulate.

We have here considered the cessation of the breezes as the principal
cause of the equatorial rains. These rains in each hemisphere last only as
long as the sun has its declination in that hemisphere. It is necessary to
observe, that the absence of the breeze is not always succeeded by a dead
calm; but that the calm is often interrupted, particularly along the western
coast of America, by bendavales, or south-west and south-east winds. This
phenomenon seems to demonstrate that the columns of humid air which rise
in the northern equatorial zone, sometimes flow off toward the south pole.
In fact, the countries situated in the torrid zone, both north and south of the
equator, furnish, during their summer, while the sun is passing through their
zenith, the maximum of difference of temperature with the air of the
opposite pole. The southern temperate zone has its winter, while it rains on
the north of the equator; and while a mean heat prevails from 5 to 6 degrees
greater than in the time of drought, when the sun is lower.* (* From the
equator to 10 degrees of north latitude the mean temperatures of the
summer and winter months scarcely differ 2 or 3 degrees; but at the limits
of the torrid zone, toward the tropic of Cancer, the difference amounts to 8
or 9 degrees.) The continuation of the rains, while the bendavales blow,
proves that the currents from the remoter pole do not act in the northern
equinoctial zone like the currents of the nearer pole, on account of the
greater humidity of the southern polar current. The air, wafted by this
current, comes from a hemisphere consisting almost entirely of water. It
traverses all the southern equatorial zone to reach the parallel of 8 degrees
north latitude; and is consequently less dry, less cold, less adapted to act as
a counter-current to renew the equinoctial air and prevent its saturation,
than the northern polar current, or the breeze from the north-east.* (* In the
two temperate zones the air loses its transparency every time that the wind

blows from the opposite pole, that is to say, from the pole that has not the
same denomination as the hemisphere in which the wind blows.) We may
suppose that the bendavales are impetuous winds which, on some coasts,
for instance on that of Guatimala, (because they are not the effect of a
regular and progressive descent of the air of the tropics towards the south
pole, but they alternate with calms), are accompanied by electrical
explosions, and are in fact squalls, that indicate a reflux, an abrupt and
instantaneous rupture, of equilibrium in the aerial ocean.

We have here discussed one of the most important phenomena of the
meteorology of the tropics, considered in its most general view. In the same
manner as the limits of the trade-winds do not form circles parallel with the
equator, the action of the polar currents is variously felt in different
meridians. The chains of mountains and the coasts in the same hemisphere
have often opposite seasons. There are several examples of these anomalies;
but, in order to discover the laws of nature, we must know, before we
examine into the causes of local perturbations, the average state of the
atmosphere, and the constant type of its variations.

The aspect of the sky, the progress of the electricity, and the shower of
the 28th of March, announced the commencement of the rainy season; we
were still advised, however, to go from San Fernando de Apure by San
Francisco de Capanaparo, the Rio Sinaruco, and the Hato de San Antonio,
to the village of the Ottomacs, recently founded near the banks of the Meta,
and to embark on the Orinoco a little above Carichana. This way by land
lies across an unhealthy and feverish country. An old farmer named
Francisco Sanchez obligingly offered to conduct us. His dress denoted the
great simplicity of manners prevailing in those distant countries. He had
acquired a fortune of more than 100,000 piastres, and yet he mounted on
horseback with his feet bare, and wearing large silver spurs. We knew by
the experience of several weeks the dull uniformity of the vegetation of the

Llanos, and preferred the longer road, which leads by the Rio Apure to the
Orinoco. We chose one of those very large canoes called lanchas by the
Spaniards. A pilot and four Indians were sufficient to manage it. They
constructed, near the stern, in the space of a few hours, a cabin covered with
palm-leaves, sufficiently spacious to contain a table and benches. These
were made of ox-hides, strained tight, and nailed to frames of brazil-wood. I
mention these minute circumstances, to prove that our accommodations on
the Rio Apure were far different from those to which we were afterwards
reduced in the narrow boats of the Orinoco. We loaded the canoe with
provision for a month. Fowls, eggs, plantains, cassava, and cacao, are found
in abundance at San Fernando. The good Capuchin, Fray Jose Maria de
Malaga, gave us sherry wine, oranges, and tamarinds, to make cooling
beverages. We could easily foresee that a roof constructed of palm-tree
leaves would become excessively hot on a large river, where we were
almost always exposed to the perpendicular rays of the sun. The Indians
relied less on the provision we had purchased, than on their hooks and nets.
We took also some fire-arms, which we found in general use as far as the
cataracts; but farther south the great humidity of the air prevents the
missionaries from using them. The Rio Apure abounds in fish, manatees,
and turtles, the eggs of which afford an aliment more nutritious than
agreeable to the taste. Its banks are inhabited by an innumerable quantity of
birds, among which the pauxi and the guacharaca, which may be called the
turkeys and pheasants of those countries, are found to be the most useful.
Their flesh appeared to be harder and less white than that of the
gallinaceous tribe in Europe, because they use much more muscular
exercise. We did not forget to add to our provision, fishing-tackle, fire-arms,
and a few casks of brandy, to serve as a medium of barter with the Indians
of the Orinoco.

We departed from San Fernando on the 30th of March, at four in the
afternoon. The weather was extremely hot; the thermometer rising in the

shade to 34 degrees, though the breeze blew very strongly from the south-
east. Owing to this contrary wind we could not set our sails. We were
accompanied, in the whole of this voyage on the Apure, the Orinoco, and
the Rio Negro, by the brother-in-law of the governor of the province of
Varinas, Don Nicolas Soto, who had recently arrived from Cadiz. Desirous
of visiting countries so calculated to excite the curiosity of a European, he
did not hesitate to confine himself with us during seventy-four days in a
narrow boat infested with mosquitos. His amiable disposition and gay
temper often helped to make us forget the sufferings of a voyage which was
not wholly exempt from danger. We passed the mouth of the Apurito, and
coasted the island of the same name, formed by the Apure and the Guarico.
This island is in fact only a very low spot of ground, bordered by two great
rivers, both of which, at a little distance from each other, fall into the
Orinoco, after having formed a junction below San Fernando by the first
bifurcation of the Apure. The Isla del Apurito is twenty-two leagues in
length, and two or three leagues in breadth. It is divided by the Cano de la
Tigrera and the Cano del Manati into three parts, the two extremes of which
bear the names of Isla de Blanco and Isla de los Garzitas. The right bank of
the Apure, below the Apurito, is somewhat better cultivated than the left
bank, where the Yaruros, or Japuin Indians, have constructed a few huts
with reeds and stalks of palm-leaves. These people, who live by hunting and
fishing, are very skilful in killing jaguars. It is they who principally carry
the skins, known in Europe by the name of tiger-skins, to the Spanish
villages. Some of these Indians have been baptized, but they never visit the
Christian churches. They are considered as savages because they choose to
remain independent. Other tribes of Yaruros live under the rule of the
missionaries, in the village of Achaguas, situated south of the Rio Payara.
The individuals of this nation, whom I had an opportunity of seeing at the
Orinoco, have a stern expression of countenance; and some features in their
physiognomy, erroneously called Tartarian, belong to branches of the

Mongol race, the eye very long, the cheekbones high, but the nose
prominent throughout its whole length. They are taller, browner, and less
thick-set than the Chayma Indians. The missionaries praise the intellectual
character of the Yaruros, who were formerly a powerful and numerous
nation on the banks of the Orinoco, especially in the environs of Cuycara,
below the mouth of the Guarico. We passed the night at Diamante, a small
sugar-plantation formed opposite the island of the same name.

During the whole of my voyage from San Fernando to San Carlos del Rio
Negro, and thence to the town of Angostura, I noted down day by day,
either in the boat or where we disembarked at night, all that appeared to me
worthy of observation. Violent rains, and the prodigious quantity of
mosquitos with which the air is filled on the banks of the Orinoco and the
Cassiquiare, necessarily occasioned some interruptions; but I supplied the
omission by notes taken a few days after. I here subjoin some extracts from
my journal. Whatever is written while the objects we describe are before
our eyes bears a character of truth and individuality which gives attraction
to things the least important.

On the 31st March a contrary wind obliged us to remain on shore till
noon. We saw a part of some cane-fields laid waste by the effect of a
conflagration which had spread from a neighbouring forest. The wandering
Indians everywhere set fire to the forest where they have encamped at
night; and during the season of drought, vast provinces would be the prey of
these conflagrations if the extreme hardness of the wood did not prevent the
trees from being entirely consumed. We found trunks of desmanthus and
mahogany which were scarcely charred two inches deep.

Having passed the Diamante we entered a land inhabited only by tigers,
crocodiles, and chiguires; the latter are a large species of the genus Cavia of
Linnaeus. We saw flocks of birds, crowded so closely together as to appear

against the sky like a dark cloud which every instant changed its form. The
river widens by degrees. One of its banks is generally barren and sandy
from the effect of inundations; the other is higher, and covered with lofty
trees. In some parts the river is bordered by forests on each side, and forms
a straight canal a hundred and fifty toises broad. The manner in which the
trees are disposed is very remarkable. We first find bushes of sauso,* (*
Hermesia castaneifolia. This is a new genus, approaching the alchornea of
Swartz.) forming a kind of hedge four feet high, and appearing as if they
had been clipped by the hand of man. A copse of cedar, brazilletto, and
lignum-vitae, rises behind this hedge. Palm-trees are rare; we saw only a
few scattered trunks of the thorny piritu and corozo. The large quadrupeds
of those regions, the jaguars, tapirs, and peccaries, have made openings in
the hedge of sauso which we have just described. Through these the wild
animals pass when they come to drink at the river. As they fear but little the
approach of a boat, we had the pleasure of viewing them as they paced
slowly along the shore till they disappeared in the forest, which they entered
by one of the narrow passes left at intervals between the bushes. These
scenes, which were often repeated, had ever for me a peculiar attraction.
The pleasure they excite is not owing solely to the interest which the
naturalist takes in the objects of his study, it is connected with a feeling
common to all men who have been brought up in the habits of civilization.
You find yourself in a new world, in the midst of untamed and savage
nature. Now the jaguar—the beautiful panther of America—appears upon
the shore; and now the hocco,* (* Ceyx alector, the peacock-pheasant; C.
pauxi, the cashew-bird.) with its black plumage and tufted head, moves
slowly along the sausos. Animals of the most different classes succeed each
other. "Esse como en el Paradiso," "It is just as it was in Paradise," said our
pilot, an old Indian of the Missions. Everything, indeed, in these regions
recalls to mind the state of the primitive world with its innocence and
felicity. But in carefully observing the manners of animals among

themselves, we see that they mutually avoid and fear each other. The golden
age has ceased; and in this Paradise of the American forests, as well as
everywhere else, sad and long experience has taught all beings that
benignity is seldom found in alliance with strength.

When the shore is of considerable breadth, the hedge of sauso remains at
a distance from the river. In the intermediate space we see crocodiles,
sometimes to the number of eight or ten, stretched on the sand. Motionless,
with their jaws wide open, they repose by each other, without displaying
any of those marks of affection observed in other animals living in society.
The troop separates as soon as they quit the shore. It is, however, probably
composed of one male only, and many females; for as M. Descourtils, who
has so much studied the crocodiles of St. Domingo, observed to me, the
males are rare, because they kill one another in fighting during the season
of their loves. These monstrous creatures are so numerous, that throughout
the whole course of the river we had almost at every instant five or six in
view. Yet at this period the swelling of the Rio Apure was scarcely
perceived; and consequently hundreds of crocodiles were still buried in the
mud of the savannahs. About four in the afternoon we stopped to measure a
dead crocodile which had been cast ashore. It was only sixteen feet eight
inches long; some days after M. Bonpland found another, a male, twenty-
two feet three inches long. In every zone, in America as in Egypt, this
animal attains the same size. The species so abundant in the Apure, the
Orinoco,* (* It is the arua of the Tamanac Indians, the amana of the
Maypure Indians, the Crocodilus acutus of Cuvier.) and the Rio de la
Magdalena, is not a cayman, but a real crocodile, analogous to that of the
Nile, having feet dentated at the external edges. When it is recollected that
the male enters the age of puberty only at ten years, and that its length is
then eight feet, we may presume that the crocodile measured by M.
Bonpland was at least twenty-eight years old. The Indians told us, that at
San Fernando scarcely a year passes, without two or three grown-up

persons, particularly women who fetch water from the river, being drowned
by these carnivorous reptiles. They related to us the history of a young girl
of Uritucu, who by singular intrepidity and presence of mind, saved herself
from the jaws of a crocodile. When she felt herself seized, she sought the
eyes of the animal, and plunged her fingers into them with such violence,
that the pain forced the crocodile to let her go, after having bitten off the
lower part of her left arm. The girl, notwithstanding the enormous quantity
of blood she lost, reached the shore, swimming with the hand that still
remained to her. In those desert countries, where man is ever wrestling with
nature, discourse daily turns on the best means that may be employed to
escape from a tiger, a boa, or a crocodile; every one prepares himself in
some sort for the dangers that may await him. "I knew," said the young girl
of Uritucu coolly, "that the cayman lets go his hold, if you push your fingers
into his eyes." Long after my return to Europe, I learned that in the interior
of Africa the negroes know and practise the same means of defence. Who
does not recollect, with lively interest, Isaac, the guide of the unfortunate
Mungo Park, who was seized twice by a crocodile, and twice escaped from
the jaws of the monster, having succeeded in thrusting his fingers into the
creature's eyes while under water. The African Isaac, and the young
American girl, owed their safety to the same presence of mind, and the
same combination of ideas.

The movements of the crocodile of the Apure are sudden and rapid when
it attacks any object; but it moves with the slowness of a salamander, when
not excited by rage or hunger. The animal in running makes a rustling noise,
which seems to proceed from the rubbing of the scales of its skin one
against another. In this movement it bends its back, and appears higher on
its legs than when at rest. We often heard this rattling of the scales very near
us on the shore; but it is not true, as the Indians pretend, that, like the
armadillo, the old crocodiles "can erect their scales, and every part of their
armour." The motion of these animals is no doubt generally in a straight

line, or rather like that of an arrow, supposing it to change its direction at
certain distances. However, notwithstanding the little apparatus of false
ribs, which connects the vertebrae of the neck, and seems to impede the
lateral movement, crocodiles can turn easily when they please. I often saw
young ones biting their tails; and other observers have seen the same action
in crocodiles at their full growth. If their movements almost always appear
to be straight forward, it is because, like our small lizards, they move by
starts. Crocodiles are excellent swimmers; they go with facility against the
most rapid current. It appeared to me, however, that in descending the river,
they had some difficulty in turning quickly about. A large dog, which had
accompanied us in our journey from Caracas to the Rio Negro, was one day
pursued in swimming by an enormous crocodile. The latter had nearly
reached its prey, when the dog escaped by turning round suddenly and
swimming against the current. The crocodile performed the same
movement, but much more slowly than the dog, which succeeded in gaining
the shore.

The crocodiles of the Apure find abundant food in the chiguires (thick-
nosed tapirs),* which live fifty or sixty together in troops on the banks of
the river. (* Cavia capybara, Linn. The word chiguire belongs to the
language of the Palenkas and the Cumanagotos. The Spaniards call this
animal guardatinaja; the Caribs, capigua; the Tamanacs, cappiva; and the
Maypures, chiato. According to Azara, it is known at Buenos Ayres by the
Indian names of capiygua and capiguara. These various denominations
show a striking analogy between the languages of the Orinoco and those of
the Rio de la Plata.) These animals, as large as our pigs, have no weapons of
defence; they swim somewhat better than they run: yet they become the
prey of the crocodiles in the water, and of the tigers on land. It is difficult to
conceive, how, being thus persecuted by two powerful enemies, they
become so numerous; but they breed with the same rapidity as the little
cavies or guinea-pigs, which come to us from Brazil.

We stopped below the mouth of the Cano de la Tigrera, in a sinuosity
called la Vuelta del Joval, to measure the velocity of the water at its surface.
It was not more than 3.2 feet* in a second, which gives 2.56 feet for the
mean velocity. (* In order to measure the velocity of the surface of a river, I
generally measured on the beach a base of 250 feet, and observed with the
chronometer the time that a floating body, abandoned to the current,
required to reach this distance.) The height of the barometer indicated
barely a slope of seventeen inches in a mile of nine hundred and fifty toises.
The velocity is the simultaneous effect of the slope of the ground, and the
accumulation of the waters by the swelling of the upper parts of the river.
We were again surrounded by chiguires, which swim like dogs, raising their
heads and necks above the water. We saw with surprise a large crocodile on
the opposite shore, motionless, and sleeping in the midst of these nibbling
animals. It awoke at the approach of our canoe, and went into the water
slowly, without frightening the chiguires. Our Indians accounted for this
indifference by the stupidity of the animals, but it is more probable that the
chiguires know by long experience, that the crocodile of the Apure and the
Orinoco does not attack upon land, unless he finds the object he would
seize immediately in his way, at the instant when he throws himself into the
water.

Near the Joval nature assumes an awful and extremely wild aspect. We
there saw the largest jaguar we had ever met with. The natives themselves
were astonished at its prodigious length, which surpassed that of any
Bengal tiger I had ever seen in the museums of Europe. The animal lay
stretched beneath the shade of a large zamang.* (* A species of mimosa.) It
had just killed a chiguire, but had not yet touched its prey, on which it kept
one of its paws. The zamuro vultures were assembled in great numbers to
devour the remains of the jaguar's repast. They presented the most curious
spectacle, by a singular mixture of boldness and timidity. They advanced
within the distance of two feet from the animal, but at the least movement

he made they drew back. In order to observe more nearly the manners of
these creatures, we went into the little skiff that accompanied our canoe.
Tigers very rarely attack boats by swimming to them; and never but when
their ferocity is heightened by a long privation of food. The noise of our
oars led the animal to rise slowly, and hide itself behind the sauso bushes
that bordered the shore. The vultures tried to profit by this moment of
absence to devour the chiguire; but the tiger, notwithstanding the proximity
of our boat, leaped into the midst of them, and in a fit of rage, expressed by
his gait and the movement of his tail, carried off his prey to the forest. The
Indians regretted that they were not provided with their lances, in order to
go on shore and attack the tiger. They are accustomed to this weapon, and
were right in not trusting to our fire-arms. In so excessively damp an
atmosphere muskets often miss fire.

Continuing to descend the river, we met with the great herd of chiguires
which the tiger had put to flight, and from which he had selected his prey.
These animals saw us land very unconcernedly; some of them were seated,
and gazed upon us, moving the upper lip like rabbits. They seemed not to be
afraid of man, but the sight of our dog put them to flight. Their hind legs
being longer than their fore legs, their pace is a slight gallop, but with so
little swiftness that we succeeded in catching two of them. The chiguire,
which swims with the greatest agility, utters a short moan in running, as if
its respiration were impeded. It is the largest of the family of rodentia or
gnawing animals. It defends itself only at the last extremity, when it is
surrounded and wounded. Having great strength in its grinding teeth,*
particularly the hinder ones, which are pretty long, it can tear the paw of a
tiger, or the leg of a horse, with its bite. (* We counted eighteen on each
side. On the hind feet, at the upper end of the metatarsus, there is a callosity
three inches long and three quarters of an inch broad, destitute of hair. The
animal, when seated, rests upon this part. No tail is visible externally; but
on putting aside the hair we discover a tubercle, a mass of naked and

wrinkled flesh, of a conical figure, and half an inch long.) Its flesh has a
musky smell somewhat disagreeable; yet hams are made of it in this
country, a circumstance which almost justifies the name of water-hog, given
to the chiguire by some of the older naturalists. The missionary monks do
not hesitate to eat these hams during Lent. According to their zoological
classification they place the armadillo, the thick-nosed tapir, and the
manatee, near the tortoises; the first, because it is covered with a hard
armour like a sort of shell; and the others because they are amphibious. The
chiguires are found in such numbers on the banks of the rivers Santo
Domingo, Apure, and Arauca, in the marshes and in the inundated
savannahs* of the Llanos, that the pasturages suffer from them. (* Near
Uritucu, in the Cano del Ravanal, we saw a flock of eighty or one hundred
of these animals.) They browze the grass which fattens the horses best, and
which bears the name of chiguirero, or chiguire-grass. They feed also upon
fish; and we saw with surprise, that, when scared by the approach of a boat,
the animal in diving remains eight or ten minutes under water.

We passed the night as usual, in the open air, though in a plantation, the
proprietor of which employed himself in hunting tigers. He wore scarcely
any clothing, and was of a dark brown complexion like a Zambo. This did
not prevent his classing himself amongst the Whites. He called his wife and
his daughter, who were as naked as himself, Dona Isabella and Dona
Manuela. Without having ever quitted the banks of the Apure, he took a
lively interest in the news of Madrid—enquiring eagerly respecting those
never-ending wars, and everything down yonder (todas las cosas de alla).
He knew, he said, that the king was soon to come and visit the grandees of
the country of Caracas, but he added with some pleasantry, as the people of
the court can eat only wheaten bread, they will never pass beyond the town
of Victoria, and we shall not see them here. I had brought with me a
chiguire, which I had intended to have roasted; but our host assured us, that
such Indian game was not food fit for nos otros caballeros blancos, (white

gentlemen like ourselves and him). Accordingly he offered us some
venison, which he had killed the day before with an arrow, for he had
neither powder nor fire-arms.

We supposed that a small wood of plantain-trees concealed from us the
hut of the farm; but this man, so proud of his nobility and the colour of his
skin, had not taken the trouble of constructing even an ajoupa, or hut of
palm-leaves. He invited us to have our hammocks hung near his own,
between two trees; and he assured us, with an air of complacency, that, if
we came up the river in the rainy season, we should find him beneath a roof
(baxo techo). We soon had reason to complain of a system of philosophy
which is indulgent to indolence, and renders a man indifferent to the
conveniences of life. A furious wind arose after midnight, lightnings flashed
over the horizon, thunder rolled, and we were wet to the skin. During this
storm a whimsical incident served to amuse us for a moment. Dona
Isabella's cat had perched upon the tamarind-tree, at the foot of which we
lay. It fell into the hammock of one of our companions, who, being hurt by
the claws of the cat, and suddenly aroused from a profound sleep, imagined
he was attacked by some wild beast of the forest. We ran to him on hearing
his cries, and had some trouble to convince him of his error. While it rained
in torrents on our hammocks and on our instruments which we had brought
ashore, Don Ignacio congratulated us on our good fortune in not sleeping on
the strand, but finding ourselves in his domain, among whites and persons
of respectability (entre gente blanca y de trato). Wet as we were, we could
not easily persuade ourselves of the advantages of our situation, and we
listened with some impatience to the long narrative our host gave us of his
pretended expedition to the Rio Meta, of the valour he had displayed in a
sanguinary combat with the Guahibo Indians, and "the services that he had
rendered to God and his king, in carrying away Indian children (los
Indiecitos) from their parents, to distribute them in the Missions." We were
struck with the singularity of finding in that vast solitude a man believing

himself to be of European race and knowing no other shelter than the shade
of a tree, and yet having all the vain pretensions, hereditary prejudices, and
errors of long-standing civilization!

On the 1st of April, at sunrise, we quitted Senor Don Ignacio and Senora
Dona Isabella his wife. The weather was cooler, for the thermometer (which
generally kept up in the daytime to 30 or 35 degrees) had sunk to 24
degrees. The temperature of the river was little changed: it continued
constantly at 26 or 27 degrees. The current carried with it an enormous
number of trunks of trees. It might be imagined that on ground entirely
smooth, and where the eye cannot distinguish the least hill, the river would
have formed by the force of its current a channel in a straight line; but a
glance at the map, which I traced by the compass, will prove the contrary.
The two banks, worn by the waters, do not furnish an equal resistance; and
almost imperceptible inequalities of the level suffice to produce great
sinuosities. Yet below the Joval, where the bed of the river enlarges a little,
it forms a channel that appears perfectly straight, and is shaded on each side
by very tall trees. This part of the river is called Cano Rico. I found it to be
one hundred and thirty-six toises broad. We passed a low island, inhabited
by thousands of flamingos, rose-coloured spoonbills, herons, and moorhens,
which displayed plumage of the most various colours. These birds were so
close together that they seemed to be unable to stir. The island they frequent
is called Isla de Aves, or Bird Island. Lower down we passed the point
where the Rio Arichuna, an arm of the Apure, branches off to the Cabulare,
carrying away a considerable body of its waters. We stopped, on the right
bank, at a little Indian mission, inhabited by the tribe of the Guamos, called
the village of Santa Barbara de Arichuna.

The Guamos* are a race of Indians very difficult to fix on a settled spot.
(* Father Gili observes that their Indian name is Uamu and Pau, and that
they originally dwelt on the Upper Apure.) They have great similarity of

manners with the Achaguas, the Guajibos,* (* Their Indian name is
Guahiva.) and the Ottomacs, partaking their disregard of cleanliness, their
spirit of vengeance, and their taste for wandering; but their language differs
essentially. The greater part of these four tribes live by fishing and hunting,
in plains often inundated, situated between the Apure, the Meta, and the
Guaviare. The nature of these regions seems to invite the natives to a
wandering life. On entering the mountains of the Cataracts of the Orinoco,
we shall soon find, among the Piraoas, the Macos, and the Maquiritaras,
milder manners, a love of agriculture, and great cleanliness in the interior of
their huts. On mountain ridges, in the midst of impenetrable forests, man is
compelled to fix himself; and cultivate a small spot of land. This cultivation
requires little care; while, in a country where there are no other roads than
rivers, the life of the hunter is laborious and difficult. The Guamos of the
mission of Santa Barbara could not furnish us with the provision we
wanted. They cultivate only a little cassava. They appeared hospitable; and
when we entered their huts, they offered us dried fish, and water cooled in
porous vessels.

Beyond the Vuelta del Cochino Roto, in a spot where the river has
scooped itself a new bed, we passed the night on a bare and very extensive
strand. The forest being impenetrable, we had the greatest difficulty to find
dry wood to light fires, near which the Indians believe themselves in safety
from the nocturnal attacks of the tiger. Our own experience seems to bear
testimony in favour of this opinion; but Azara asserts that, in his time, a
tiger in Paraguay carried off a man who was seated near a fire lighted in the
savannah.

The night was calm and serene, and there was a beautiful moonlight. The
crocodiles, stretched along the shore, placed themselves in such a manner as
to be able to see the fire. We thought we observed that its blaze attracted
them, as it attracts fishes, crayfish, and other inhabitants of the water. The

Indians showed us the tracks of three tigers in the sand, two of which were
very young. A female had no doubt conducted her little ones to drink at the
river. Finding no tree on the strand, we stuck our oars in the ground, and to
these we fastened our hammocks. Everything passed tranquilly till eleven at
night; and then a noise so terrific arose in the neighbouring forest, that it
was almost impossible to close our eyes. Amid the cries of so many wild
beasts howling at once, the Indians discriminated such only as were at
intervals heard separately. These were the little soft cries of the sapajous,
the moans of the alouate apes, the howlings of the jaguar and couguar, the
peccary, and the sloth, and the cries of the curassao, the parraka, and other
gallinaceous birds. When the jaguars approached the skirt of the forest, our
dog, which till then had never ceased barking, began to howl and seek for
shelter beneath our hammocks. Sometimes, after a long silence, the cry of
the tiger came from the tops of the trees; and then it was followed by the
sharp and long whistling of the monkeys, which appeared to flee from the
danger that threatened them. We heard the same noises repeated, during the
course of whole months, whenever the forest approached the bed of the
river. The security evinced by the Indians inspires confidence in the minds
of travellers, who readily persuade themselves that the tigers are afraid of
fire, and that they do not attack a man lying in his hammock. These attacks
are in fact extremely rare; and, during a long abode in South America, I
remember only one example, of a llanero, who was found mutilated in his
hammock opposite the island of Achaguas.

When the natives are interrogated on the causes of the tremendous noise
made by the beasts of the forest at certain hours of the night, the answer is,
"They are keeping the feast of the full moon."

I believe this agitation is most frequently the effect of some conflict that
has arisen in the depths of the forest. The jaguars, for instance, pursue the
peccaries and the tapirs, which, having no defence but in their numbers, flee

in close troops, and break down the bushes they find in their way. Terrified
at this struggle, the timid and mistrustful monkeys answer, from the tops of
the trees, the cries of the large animals. They awaken the birds that live in
society, and by degrees the whole assembly is in commotion. It is not
always in a fine moonlight, but more particularly at the time of a storm and
violent showers, that this tumult takes place among the wild beasts. "May
Heaven grant them a quiet night and repose, and us also!" said the monk
who accompanied us to the Rio Negro, when, sinking with fatigue, he
assisted in arranging our accommodations for the night. It was indeed
strange, to find no silence in the solitude of woods. In the inns of Spain we
dread the sound of guitars from the next apartment; on the Orinoco, where
the traveller's resting-place is the open beach, or beneath the shelter of a
solitary tree, his slumbers are disturbed by a serenade from the forest.

We set sail before sunrise, on the 2nd of April. The morning was
beautiful and cool, according to the feelings of those who are accustomed to
the heat of these climates. The thermometer rose only to 28 degrees in the
air, but the dry and white sand of the beach, notwithstanding its radiation
towards a cloudless sky, retained a temperature of 36 degrees. The
porpoises (toninas) ploughed the river in long files. The shore was covered
with fishing-birds. Some of these perched on the floating wood as it passed
down the river, and surprised the fish that preferred the middle of the
stream. Our canoe was aground several times during the morning. These
shocks are sufficiently violent to split a light bark. We struck on the points
of several large trees, which remain for years in an oblique position, sunk in
the mud. These trees descend from Sarare, at the period of great
inundations, and they so fill the bed of the river, that canoes in going up
find it difficult sometimes to make their way over the shoals, or wherever
there are eddies. We reached a spot near the island of Carizales, where we
saw trunks of the locust-tree, of an enormous size, above the surface of the
water. They were covered with a species of plotus, nearly resembling the

anhinga, or white bellied darter. These birds perch in files, like pheasants
and parrakas, and they remain for hours entirely motionless, with their
beaks raised toward the sky.

Below the island of Carizales we observed a diminution of the waters of
the river, at which we were the more surprised, as, after the bifurcation at la
Boca de Arichuna, there is no branch, no natural drain, which takes away
water from the Apure. The loss is solely the effect of evaporation, and of
filtration on a sandy and wet shore. Some idea of the magnitude of these
effects may be formed, from the fact that we found the heat of the dry
sands, at different hours of the day, from 36 to 52 degrees, and that of sands
covered with three or four inches of water 32 degrees. The beds of rivers
are heated as far as the depth to which the solar rays can penetrate without
undergoing too great an extinction in their passage through the
superincumbent strata of water. Besides, filtration extends in a lateral
direction far beyond the bed of the river. The shore, which appears dry to
us, imbibes water as far up as to the level of the surface of the river. We saw
water gush out at the distance of fifty toises from the shore, every time that
the Indians struck their oars into the ground. Now these sands, wet below,
but dry above, and exposed to the solar rays, act like sponges, and lose the
infiltrated water every instant by evaporation. The vapour that is emitted,
traverses the upper stratum of sand strongly heated, and becomes sensible
to the eye when the air cools towards evening. As the beach dries, it draws
from the river new portions of water; and it may be easily conceived that
this continual alternation of vaporization and lateral absorption must cause
an immense loss, difficult to submit to exact calculation. The increase of
these losses would be in proportion to the length of the course of the rivers,
if from their source to their mouth they were equally surrounded by a flat
shore; but these shores being formed by deposits from the water, and the
water having less velocity in proportion as it is more remote from its
source, throwing down more sediment in the lower than in the upper part of

its course, many rivers in hot climates undergo a diminution in the quantity
of their water, as they approach their outlets. Mr. Barrow observed these
curious effects of sands in the southern part of Africa, on the banks of the
Orange River. They have also become the subject of a very important
discussion, in the various hypotheses that have been formed respecting the
course of the Niger.* (* Geographers supposed, for a long period, that the
Niger was entirely absorbed by the sands, and evaporated by the heat of the
tropical sun, as no embouchure could be found on the western coast of
Africa to meet the requirements of so enormous a river. It was discovered,
however, by the Landers, in 1830, that it does really flow into the Atlantic;
yet the cause mentioned above is so powerful, that of all the numerous
branches into which it separates at its mouth, only one (the Nun River) is
navigable even for light ships, and for half the year even those are unable to
enter.)

Near the Vuelta de Basilio, where we landed to collect plants, we saw on
the top of a tree two beautiful little monkeys, black as jet, of the size of the
sai, with prehensile tails. Their physiognomy and their movements
sufficiently showed that they were neither the quato (Simia beelzebub) nor
the chamek, nor any of the Ateles. Our Indians themselves had never seen
any that resembled them. Monkeys, especially those living in troops, make
long emigrations at certain periods, and consequently it happens that at the
beginning of the rainy seasons the natives discover round their huts
different kinds which they have not before observed. On this same bank our
guides showed us a nest of young iguanas only four inches long. It was
difficult to distinguish them from common lizards. There was no
distinguishing mark yet formed but the dewlap below the throat. The dorsal
spines, the large erect scales, all those appendages that render the iguana so
remarkable when it attains its full growth, were scarcely traceable.

The flesh of this animal of the saurian family appeared to us to have an
agreeable taste in every country where the climate is very dry; we even
found it so at periods when we were not in want of other food. It is
extremely white, and next to the flesh of the armadillo, one of the best kinds
of food to be found in the huts of the natives.

It rained toward evening, and before the rain fell, swallows, exactly
resembling our own, skimmed over the surface of the water. We saw also a
flock of paroquets pursued by little goshawks without crests. The piercing
cries of these paroquets contrasted singularly with the whistling of the birds
of prey. We passed the night in the open air, upon the beach, near the island
of Carizales. There were several Indian huts in the neighbourhood,
surrounded with plantations. Our pilot assured us beforehand that we should
not hear the cries of the jaguar, which, when not extremely pressed by
hunger, withdraws from places where he does not reign unmolested. "Men
put him out of humour" (los hombres lo enfadan), say the people in the
Missions. A pleasant and simple expression, that marks a well-observed
fact.

Since our departure from San Fernando we had not met a single boat on
this fine river. Everything denoted the most profound solitude. On the
morning of the 3rd of April our Indians caught with a hook the fish known
in the country by the name of caribe,* (* Caribe in the Spanish language
signifies cannibal.) or caribito, because no other fish has such a thirst for
blood. It attacks bathers and swimmers, from whom it often bites away
considerable pieces of flesh. The Indians dread extremely these caribes; and
several of them showed us the scars of deep wounds in the calf of the leg
and in the thigh, made by these little animals. They swim at the bottom of
rivers; but if a few drops of blood be shed on the water, they rise by
thousands to the surface, so that if a person be only slightly bitten, it is
difficult for him to get out of the water without receiving a severer wound.

When we reflect on the numbers of these fish, the largest and most
voracious of which are only four or five inches long, on the triangular form
of their sharp and cutting teeth, and on the amplitude of their retractile
mouths, we need not be surprised at the fear which the caribe excites in the
inhabitants of the banks of the Apure and the Orinoco. In places where the
river was very limpid, where not a fish appeared, we threw into the water
little morsels of raw flesh, and in a few minutes a perfect cloud of caribes
had come to dispute their prey. The belly of this fish has a cutting edge,
indented like a saw, a characteristic which may be also traced in the serra-
salmes, the myletes, and the pristigastres. The presence of a second adipous
dorsal fin, and the form of the teeth, covered by lips distant from each other,
and largest in the lower jaw, place the caribe among the serra-salmes. Its
mouth is much wider than that of the myletes of Cuvier. Its body, toward
the back, is ash-coloured with a tint of green, but the belly, the gill-covers,
and the pectoral, anal, and ventral fins, are of a fine orange hue. Three
species are known in the Orinoco, and are distinguished by their size. The
intermediate appears to be identical with the medium species of the piraya,
or piranha, of Marcgrav.* (* Salmo rhombeus, Linn.) The caribito has a
very agreeable flavour. As no one dares to bathe where it is found, it may be
considered as one of the greatest scourges of those climates, in which the
sting of the mosquitos and the general irritation of the skin render the use of
baths so necessary.

We stopped at noon in a desert spot called Algodonal. I left my
companions while they drew the boat ashore and were occupied in
preparing our dinner. I went along the beach to get a near view of a group of
crocodiles sleeping in the sun, and lying in such a manner as to have their
tails, which were furnished with broad plates, resting on one another. Some
little herons,* white as snow, walked along their backs, and even upon their
heads, as if passing over trunks of trees. (* Garzon chico. It is believed, in
Upper Egypt, that herons have an affection for crocodiles, because they take

advantage in fishing of the terror that monstrous animal causes among the
fishes, which he drives from the bottom to the surface of the water; but on
the banks of the Nile, the heron keeps prudently at some distance from the
crocodile.) The crocodiles were of a greenish grey, half covered with dried
mud; from their colour and immobility they might have been taken for
statues of bronze. This excursion had nearly proved fatal to me. I had kept
my eyes constantly turned towards the river; but, whilst picking up some
spangles of mica agglomerated together in the sand, I discovered the recent
footsteps of a tiger, easily distinguishable from their form and size. The
animal had gone towards the forest, and turning my eyes on that side, I
found myself within eighty paces of a jaguar that was lying under the thick
foliage of a ceiba. No tiger had ever appeared to me so large.

There are accidents in life against which we may seek in vain to fortify
our reason. I was extremely alarmed, yet sufficiently master of myself and
of my motions to enable me to follow the advice which the Indians had so
often given us as to how we ought to act in such cases. I continued to walk
on without running, avoided moving my arms, and I thought I observed that
the jaguar's attention was fixed on a herd of capybaras which was crossing
the river. I then began to return, making a large circuit toward the edge of
the water. As the distance increased, I thought I might accelerate my pace.
How often was I tempted to look back in order to assure myself that I was
not pursued! Happily I yielded very tardily to this desire. The jaguar had
remained motionless. These enormous cats with spotted robes are so well
fed in countries abounding in capybaras, pecaries, and deer, that they rarely
attack men. I arrived at the boat out of breath, and related my adventure to
the Indians. They appeared very little interested by my story; yet, after
having loaded our guns, they accompanied us to the ceiba beneath which
the jaguar had lain. He was there no longer, and it would have been
imprudent to have pursued him into the forest, where we must have
dispersed, or advanced in single file, amidst the intertwining lianas.

In the evening we passed the mouth of the Cano del Manati, thus named
on account of the immense quantity of manatees caught there every year.
This herbivorous animal of the cetaceous family, is called by the Indians
apcia and avia,* and it attains here generally ten or twelve feet in length. (*
The first of these words belongs to the Tamanac language, and the second to
the Ottomac. Father Gili proves, in opposition to Oviedo, that manati (fish
with hands) is not Spanish, but belongs to the languages of Hayti (St.
Domingo) and the Maypures. I believe also that, according to the genius of
the Spanish tongue, the animal would have been called manudo or manon,
but not manati.) It usually weighs from five hundred to eight hundred
pounds, but it is asserted that one has been taken of eight thousand pounds
weight. The manatee abounds in the Orinoco below the cataracts, in the Rio
Meta, and in the Apure, between the two islands of Carizales and Conserva.
We found no vestiges of nails on the external surface or the edges of the
fins, which are quite smooth; but little rudiments of nails appear at the third
phalanx, when the skin of the fins is taken off. We dissected one of these
animals, which was nine feet long, at Carichana, a Mission of the Orinoco.
The upper lip was four inches longer than the lower one. It was covered
with a very fine skin, and served as a proboscis. The inside of the mouth,
which has a sensible warmth in an animal newly killed, presented a very
singular conformation. The tongue was almost motionless; but in front of
the tongue there was a fleshy excrescence in each jaw, and a cavity lined
with a very hard skin, into which the excrescence fitted. The manatee eats
such quantities of grass, that we have found its stomach, which is divided
into several cavities, and its intestines, (one hundred and eight feet long,)
filled with it. On opening the animal at the back, we were struck with the
magnitude, form, and situation of its lungs. They have very large cells, and
resemble immense swimming-bladders. They are three feet long. Filled
with air, they have a bulk of more than a thousand cubic inches. I was
surprised to see that, possessing such considerable receptacles for air, the

manatee comes so often to the surface of the water to breathe. Its flesh is
very savoury, though, from what prejudice I know not, it is considered
unwholesome and apt to produce fever. It appeared to me to resemble pork
rather than beef. It is most esteemed by the Guamos and the Ottomacs; and
these two nations are particularly expert in catching the manatee. Its flesh,
when salted and dried in the sun, can be preserved a whole year; and, as the
clergy regard this mammiferous animal as a fish, it is much sought during
Lent. The vital principal is singularly strong in the manatee; it is tied after
being harpooned, but is not killed till it has been taken into the canoe. This
is effected, when the animal is very large, in the middle of the river, by
filling the canoe two-thirds with water, sliding it under the animal, and then
baling out the water by means of a calabash. This fishery is most easy after
great inundations, when the manatee has passed from the great rivers into
the lakes and surrounding marshes, and the waters diminish rapidly. At the
period when the Jesuits governed the Missions of the Lower Orinoco, they
assembled every year at Cabruta, below the mouth of the Apure, to have a
grand fishing for manatees, with the Indians of their Missions, at the foot of
the mountain now called El Capuchino. The fat of the animal, known by the
name of manatee-butter (manteca de manati,) is used for lamps in the
churches; and is also employed in preparing food. It has not the fetid smell
of whale-oil, or that of the other cetaceous animals which spout water. The
hide of the manati, which is more than an inch and a half thick, is cut into
slips, and serves, like thongs of ox-leather, to supply the place of cordage in
the Llanos. When immersed in water, it has the defect of undergoing a
slight degree of putrefaction. Whips are made of it in the Spanish colonies.
Hence the words latigo and manati are synonymous. These whips of
manatee-leather are a cruel instrument of punishment for the unhappy
slaves, and even for the Indians of the Missions, though, according to the
laws, the latter ought to be treated like freemen.

We passed the night opposite the island of Conserva. In skirting the forest
we were surprised by the sight of an enormous trunk of a tree seventy feet
high, and thickly set with branching thorns. It is called by the natives barba
de tigre. It was perhaps a tree of the berberideous family.* (* We found, on
the banks of the Apure, Ammania apurensis, Cordia cordifolia, C.
grandiflora, Mollugo sperguloides, Myosotis lithospermoides, Spermacocce
diffusa, Coronilla occidentalis, Bignonia apurensis, Pisonia pubescens,
Ruellia viscosa, some new species of Jussieua, and a new genus of the
composite family, approximating to Rolandra, the Trichospira menthoides
of M. Kunth.) The Indians had kindled fires at the edge of the water. We
again perceived that their light attracted the crocodiles, and even the
porpoises (toninas), the noise of which interrupted our sleep, till the fire
was extinguished. A female jaguar approached our station whilst taking her
young one to drink at the river. The Indians succeeded in chasing her away,
but we heard for a long time the cries of the little jaguar, which mewed like
a young cat. Soon after, our great dog was bitten, or, as the Indians say,
stung, at the point of the nose, by some enormous bats that hovered around
our hammocks. These bats had long tails, like the Molosses: I believe,
however, that they were Phyllostomes, the tongue of which, furnished with
papillae, is an organ of suction, and is capable of being considerably
elongated. The dog's wound was very small and round; and though he
uttered a plaintive cry when he felt himself bitten, it was not from pain, but
because he was frightened at the sight of the bats, which came out from
beneath our hammocks. These accidents are much more rare than is
believed even in the country itself. In the course of several years,
notwithstanding we slept so often in the open air, in climates where
vampire-bats,* (* Verspertilio spectrum.) and other analogous species are so
common, we were never wounded. Besides, the puncture is no-way
dangerous, and in general causes so little pain, that it often does not awaken
the person till after the bat has withdrawn.

The 4th of April was the last day we passed on the Rio Apure. The
vegetation of its banks became more and more uniform. During several
days, and particularly since we had left the Mission of Arichuna, we had
suffered cruelly from the stings of insects, which covered our faces and
hands. They were not mosquitos, which have the appearance of little flies,
or of the genus Simulium, but zancudos, which are really gnats, though very
different from our European species.* (* M. Latreille has discovered that
the mosquitos of South Carolina are of the genus Simulium (Atractocera
meigen.) These insects appear only after sunset. Their proboscis is so long
that, when they fix on the lower surface of a hammock, they pierce through
it and the thickest garments with their sting.

We had intended to pass the night at the Vuelta del Palmito, but the
number of jaguars at that part of the Apure is so great, that our Indians
found two hidden behind the trunk of a locust-tree, at the moment when
they were going to sling our hammocks. We were advised to re-embark, and
take our station in the island of Apurito, near its junction with the Orinoco.
That portion of the island belongs to the province of Caracas, while the
right banks of the Apure and the Orinoco form a part, the one of the
province of Varinas, the other of Spanish Guiana. We found no trees to
which we could suspend our hammocks, and were obliged to sleep on ox-
hides spread on the ground. The boats were too narrow and too full of
zancudos to permit us to pass the night in them.

In the place where we had landed our instruments, the banks being steep,
we saw new proofs of the indolence of the gallinaceous birds of the tropics.
The curassaos and cashew-birds* have the habit of going down several
times a day to the river to allay their thirst. (* The latter (Crax pauxi) is less
common than the former.) They drink a great deal, and at short intervals. A
vast number of these birds had joined, near our station, a flock of parraka
pheasants. They had great difficulty in climbing up the steep banks; they

attempted it several times without using their wings. We drove them before
us, as if we had been driving sheep. The zamuro vultures raise themselves
from the ground with great reluctance.

We were singularly struck at the small quantity of water which the Rio
Apure furnishes at this season to the Orinoco. The Apure, which, according
to my measurements, was still one hundred and thirty-six toises broad at the
Cano Rico, was only sixty or eighty at its mouth.* (* Not quite so broad as
the Seine at the Pont Royal, opposite the palace of the Tuileries, and a little
more than half the width of the Thames at Westminster Bridge.) Its depth
here was only three or four toises. It loses, no doubt, a part of its waters by
the Rio Arichuna and the Cano del Manati, two branches of the Apure that
flow into the Payara and the Guarico; but its greatest loss appears to be
caused by filtrations on the beach, of which we have before spoken. The
velocity of the Apure near its mouth was only 3.2 feet per second; so that I
could easily have calculated the whole quantity of the water if I had taken,
by a series of proximate soundings, the whole dimensions of the transverse
section.

We touched several times on shoals before we entered the Orinoco. The
ground gained from the water is immense towards the confluence of the two
rivers. We were obliged to be towed along by the bank. What a contrast
between this state of the river immediately before the entrance of the rainy
season, when all the effects of dryness of the air and of evaporation have
attained their maximum, and that autumnal state when the Apure, like an
arm of the sea, covers the savannahs as far as the eye can reach! We
discerned towards the south the lonely hills of Coruato; while to the east the
granite rocks of Curiquima, the Sugar Loaf of Caycara, and the mountains
of the Tyrant* (Cerros del Tirano) began to rise on the horizon. (* This
name alludes, no doubt, to the expedition of Antonio Sedeno. The port of
Caycara, opposite Cabruta, still bears the name of that Conquistador.) It was

not without emotion that we beheld for the first time, after long expectation,
the waters of the Orinoco, at a point so distant from the coast.

CHAPTER 2.19.

JUNCTION OF THE APURE AND THE ORINOCO. MOUNTAINS OF ENCARAMADA.
URUANA. BARAGUAN. CARICHANA. MOUTH OF THE META. ISLAND OF
PANUMANA.

On leaving the Rio Apure we found ourselves in a country presenting a
totally different aspect. An immense plain of water stretched before us like
a lake, as far as we could see. White-topped waves rose to the height of
several feet, from the conflict of the breeze and the current. The air
resounded no longer with the piercing cries of herons, flamingos, and
spoonbills, crossing in long files from one shore to the other. Our eyes
sought in vain those waterfowls, the habits of which vary in each tribe. All
nature appeared less animated. Scarcely could we discover in the hollows of
the waves a few large crocodiles, cutting obliquely, by the help of their long
tails, the surface of the agitated waters. The horizon was bounded by a zone
of forests, which nowhere reached so far as the bed of the river. A vast
beach, constantly parched by the heat of the sun, desert and bare as the
shores of the sea, resembled at a distance, from the effect of the mirage,
pools of stagnant water. These sandy shores, far from fixing the limits of the
river, render them uncertain, by enlarging or contracting them alternately,
according to the variable action of the solar rays.

In these scattered features of the landscape, in this character of solitude
and of greatness, we recognize the course of the Orinoco, one of the most
majestic rivers of the New World. The water, like the land, displays
everywhere a characteristic and peculiar aspect. The bed of the Orinoco
resembles not the bed of the Meta, the Guaviare, the Rio Negro, or the
Amazon. These differences do not depend altogether on the breadth or the

velocity of the current; they are connected with a multitude of impressions
which it is easier to perceive upon the spot than to define with precision.
Thus, the mere form of the waves, the tint of the waters, the aspect of the
sky and the clouds, would lead an experienced navigator to guess whether
he were in the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, or in the equinoctial part of
the Pacific.

The wind blew fresh from east-north-east. Its direction was favourable
for sailing up the Orinoco, towards the Mission of Encaramada; but our
canoes were so ill calculated to resist the shocks of the waves, that, from the
violence of the motion, those who suffered habitually at sea were equally
incommoded on the river. The short, broken waves are caused by the
conflict of the waters at the junction of the two rivers. This conflict is very
violent, but far from being so dangerous as Father Gumilla describes. We
passed the Punta Curiquima, which is an isolated mass of quartzose granite,
a small promontory composed of rounded blocks. There, on the right bank
of the Orinoco, Father Rotella founded, in the time of the Jesuits, a Mission
of the Palenka and Viriviri or Guire Indians. But during inundations, the
rock Curiquima and the village at its foot were entirely surrounded by
water; and this serious inconvenience, together with the sufferings of the
missionaries and Indians from the innumerable quantity of mosquitos and
niguas,* led them to forsake this humid spot. (* The chego (Pulex
penetrans) which penetrates under the nails of the toe in men and monkeys,
and there deposits its eggs.) It is now entirely deserted, while opposite to it,
on the right bank of the river, the little mountains of Coruato are the retreat
of wandering Indians, expelled either from the Missions, or from tribes that
are not subject to the government of the monks.

Struck with the extreme breadth of the Orinoco, between the mouth of
the Apure and the rock Curiquima, I ascertained it by means of a base
measured twice on the western beach. The bed of the Orinoco, at low water,

was 1906 toises broad; but this breadth increases to 5517 toises, when, in
the rainy season, the rock Curiquima, and the farm of Capuchino near the
hill of Pocopocori, become islands. The swelling of the Orinoco is
augmented by the impulse of the waters of the Apure, which, far from
forming, like other rivers, an acute angle with the upper part of that into
which it flows, meets it at right angles.

We first proceeded south-west, as far as the shore inhabited by the
Guaricoto Indians on the left bank of the Orinoco, and then we advanced
straight toward the south. The river is so broad that the mountains of
Encaramada appear to rise from the water, as if seen above the horizon of
the sea. They form a continued chain from east to west. These mountains
are composed of enormous blocks of granite, cleft and piled one upon
another. Their division into blocks is the effect of decomposition. What
contributes above all to embellish the scene at Encaramada is the luxuriance
of vegetation that covers the sides of the rocks, leaving bare only their
rounded summits. They look like ancient ruins rising in the midst of a
forest. The mountain immediately at the back of the Mission, the
Tepupano* of the Tamanac Indians is terminated by three enormous granitic
cylinders, two of which are inclined, while the third, though worn at its
base, and more than eighty feet high, has preserved a vertical position. (*
Tepu-pano, place of stones, in which we recognize tepu stone, rock, as in
tepu-iri, mountain. We here perceive that Lesgian Oigour-Tartar root tep,
stone (found in America among the Americans, in teptl; among the Caribs,
in tebou; among the Tamanacs, in tepuiri); a striking analogy between the
languages of Caucasus and Upper Asia and those of the banks of the
Orinoco.) This rock, which calls to mind the form of the Schnarcher in the
Hartz mountains, or that of the Organs of Actopan in Mexico,* composed
formerly a part of the rounded summit of the mountain. (* In Captain
Tuckey's Voyage on the river Congo, we find represented a granitic rock,
Taddi Enzazi, which bears a striking resemblance to the mountain of

Encaramada.) In every climate, unstratified granite separates by
decomposition into blocks of prismatic, cylindric, or columnar figures.

Opposite the shore of the Guaricotos, we drew near another heap of
rocks, which is very low, and three or four toises long. It rises in the midst
of the plain, and has less resemblance to a tumulus than to those masses of
granitic stone, which in North Holland and Germany bear the name of
hunenbette, beds (or tombs) of heroes. The shore, at this part of the
Orinoco, is no longer of pure and quartzose sand; but is composed of clay
and spangles of mica, deposited in very thin strata, and generally at an
inclination of forty or fifty degrees. It looks like decomposed mica-slate.
This change in the geological configuration of the shore extends far beyond
the mouth of the Apure. We had begun to observe it in this latter river as far
off as Algodonal and the Cano del Manati. The spangles of mica come, no
doubt, from the granite mountains of Curiquima and Encaramada; since
further north-east we find only quartzose sand, sandstone, compact
limestone, and gypsum. Alluvial earth carried successively from south to
north need not surprise us in the Orinoco; but to what shall we attribute the
same phenomenon in the bed of the Apure, seven leagues west of its
mouth? In the present state of things, notwithstanding the swellings of the
Orinoco, the waters of the Apure never retrograde so far; and, to explain
this phenomenon, we are forced to admit that the micaceous strata were
deposited at a time when the whole of the very low country lying between
Caycara, Algodonal, and the mountains of Encaramada, formed the basin of
an inland lake.

We stopped some time at the port of Encaramada, which is a sort of
embarcadero, a place where boats assemble. A rock of forty or fifty feet
high forms the shore. It is composed of blocks of granite, heaped one upon
another, as at the Schneeberg in Franconia, and in almost all the granitic
mountains of Europe. Some of these detached masses have a spheroidal

form; they are not balls with concentric layers, but merely rounded blocks,
nuclei separated from their envelopes by the effect of decomposition. This
granite is of a greyish lead-colour, often black, as if covered with oxide of
manganese; but this colour does not penetrate one fifth of a line into the
rock, which is of a reddish white colour within, coarse-grained, and
destitute of hornblende.

The Indian names of the Mission of San Luis del Encaramada, are Guaja
and Caramana.* (* All the Missions of South America have names
composed of two words, the first of which is necessarily the name of a
saint, the patron of the church, and the second an Indian name, that of the
nation, or the spot where the establishment is placed. Thus we say, San Jose
de Maypures, Santa Cruz de Cachipo, San Juan Nepomuceno de los Atures,
etc. These compound names appear only in official documents; the
Inhabitants adopt but one of the two names, and generally, provided it be
sonorous, the Indian. As the names of saints are several times repeated in
neighbouring places, great confusion in geography arises from these
repetitions. The names of San Juan, San Diego, and San Pedro, are scattered
in our maps as if by chance. It is pretended that the Mission of Guaja
affords a very rare example of the composition of two Spanish words. The
word Encaramada means things raised one upon another, from encaramar,
to raise up. It is derived from the figure of Tepupano and the neighbouring
rocks: perhaps it is only an Indian word caramana, in which, as in manati, a
Spanish signification was believed to be discovered.) This small village was
founded in 1749 by Father Gili, the Jesuit, author of the Storia dell'
Orinoco, published at Rome. This missionary, learned in the Indian tongues,
lived in these solitudes during eighteen years, till the expulsion of the
Jesuits. To form a precise idea of the savage state of these countries it must
be recollected that Father Gili speaks of Carichana,* which is forty leagues
from Encaramada, as of a spot far distant; and that he never advanced so far

as the first cataract in the river of which he ventured to undertake the
description. (* Saggio di Storia Americana volume 1 page 122.)

In the port of Encaramada we met with some Caribs of Panapana. A
cacique was going up the Orinoco in his canoe, to join in the famous fishing
of turtles' eggs. His canoe was rounded toward the bottom like a bongo, and
followed by a smaller boat called a curiara. He was seated beneath a sort of
tent, constructed, like the sail, of palm-leaves. His cold and silent gravity,
the respect with which he was treated by his attendants, everything denoted
him to be a person of importance. He was equipped, however, in the same
manner as his Indians. They were all equally naked, armed with bows and
arrows, and painted with onoto, which is the colouring fecula of the Bixa
orellana. The chief, the domestics, the furniture, the boat, and the sail, were
all painted red. These Caribs are men of an almost athletic stature; they
appeared to us much taller than any Indians we had hitherto seen. Their
smooth and thick hair, cut short on the forehead like that of choristers, their
eyebrows painted black, their look at once gloomy and animated, gave a
singular expression to their countenances. Having till then seen only the
skulls of some Caribs of the West India Islands preserved in the collections
of Europe, we were surprised to find that these Indians, who were of pure
race, had foreheads much more rounded than they are described. The
women, who were very tall, and disgusting from their want of cleanliness,
carried their infants on their backs. The thighs and legs of the infants were
bound at certain distances by broad strips of cotton cloth, and the flesh,
strongly compressed beneath the ligatures, was swelled in the interstices. It
is generally to be observed, that the Caribs are as attentive to their exterior
and their ornaments, as it is possible for men to be, who are naked and
painted red. They attach great importance to certain configurations of the
body; and a mother would be accused of culpable indifference toward her
children, if she did not employ artificial means to shape the calf of the leg
after the fashion of the country. As none of our Indians of Apure understood

the Caribbee language, we could obtain no information from the cacique of
Panama respecting the encampments that are made at this season in several
islands of the Orinoco for collecting turtles' eggs.

Near Encaramada a very long island divides the river into two branches.
We passed the night in a rocky creek, opposite the mouth of the Rio
Cabullare, which is formed by the Payara and the Atamaica, and is
sometimes considered as one of the branches of the Apure, because it
communicates with that river by the Rio Arichuna. The evening was
beautiful. The moon illumined the tops of the granite rocks. The heat was so
uniformly distributed, that, notwithstanding the humidity of the air, no
twinkling of the stars was observable, even at four or five degrees above the
horizon. The light of the planets was singularly dimmed; and if, on account
of the smallness of the apparent diameter of Jupiter, I had not suspected
some error in the observation, I should say, that here, for the first time, we
thought we distinguished the disk of Jupiter with the naked eye. Towards
midnight, the north-east wind became extremely violent. It brought no
clouds, but the vault of the sky was covered more and more with vapours.
Strong gusts were felt, and made us fear for the safety of our canoe. During
this whole day we had seen very few crocodiles, but all of an extraordinary
size, from twenty to twenty-four feet. The Indians assured us that the young
crocodiles prefer the marshes, and the rivers that are less broad, and less
deep. They crowd together particularly in the Canos, and we may say of
them, what Abdallatif says of the crocodiles of the Nile,* "that they swarm
like worms in the shallow waters of the river, and in the shelter of
uninhabited islands." (* Description de l'Egypte translated by De Sacy.)

On the 6th of April, whilst continuing to ascend the Orinoco, first
southward and then to south-west, we perceived the southern side of the
Serrania, or chain of the mountains of Encaramada. The part nearest the
river is only one hundred and forty or one hundred and sixty toises high; but

from its abrupt declivities, its situation in the midst of a savannah, and its
rocky summits, cut into shapeless prisms, the Serrania appears singularly
elevated. Its greatest breadth is only three leagues. According to
information given me by the Indians of the Pareka nation, it is considerably
wider toward the east. The summits of Encaramada form the northernmost
link of a group of mountains which border the right bank of the Orinoco,
between the latitudes of 5 degrees and 7 degrees 30 minutes from the mouth
of the Rio Zama to that of the Cabullare. The different links into which this
group is divided are separated by little grassy plains. They do not preserve a
direction perfectly parallel to each other; for the most northern stretch from
west to east, and the most southern from north-west to south-east. This
change of direction sufficiently explains the increase of breadth observed in
the Cordillera of Parime towards the east, between the sources of the
Orinoco and of the Rio Paruspa. On penetrating beyond the great cataracts
of Atures and of Maypures, we shall see seven principal links, those of
Encaramada or Sacuina, of Chaviripa, of Baraguan, of Carichana, of
Uniama, of Calitamini, and of Sipapo, successively appear. This sketch may
serve to give a general idea of the geological configuration of the ground.
We recognize everywhere on the globe a tendency toward regular forms, in
those mountains that appear the most irregularly grouped. Every link
appears, in a transverse section, like a distinct summit, to those who
navigate the Orinoco; but this division is merely in appearance. The
regularity in the direction and separation of the links seems to diminish in
proportion as we advance towards the east. The mountains of Encaramada
join those of Mato, which give birth to the Rio Asiveru or Cuchivero; those
of Chaviripe are prolonged by the granite chain of the Corosal, of Amoco,
and of Murcielago, towards the sources of the Erevato and the Ventuari.

It was across these mountains, which are inhabited by Indians of gentle
character, employed in agriculture,* (* The Mapoyes, Parecas, Javaranas,
and Curacicanas, who possess fine plantations (conucos) in the savannahs

by which these forests are bounded.) that, at the time of the expedition for
settling boundaries, General Iturriaga took some horned cattle for the
supply of the new town of San Fernando de Atabapo. The inhabitants of
Encaramada then showed the Spanish soldiers the way by the Rio
Manapiari,* which falls into the Ventuari. (* Between Encaramada and the
Rio Manapiare, Don Miguel Sanchez, chief of this little expedition, crossed
the Rio Guainaima, which flows into the Cuchivero. Sanchez died, from the
fatigue of this journey, on the borders of the Ventuari.) By descending these
two rivers, the Orinoco and the Atabapo may be reached without passing
the great cataracts, which present almost insurmountable obstacles to the
conveyance of cattle. The spirit of enterprise which had so eminently
distinguished the Castilians at the period of the discovery of America, was
again roused for a time in the middle of the eighteenth century, when
Ferdinand VI was desirous of knowing the true limits of his vast
possessions; and in the forests of Guiana, that land of fiction and fabulous
tradition, the wily Indians revived the chimerical idea of the wealth of El
Dorado, which had so much occupied the imagination of the first
conquerors.

Amidst the mountains of Encaramada, which, like most coarse-grained
granite rocks, are destitute of metallic veins, we cannot help inquiring
whence came those grains of gold which Juan Martinez* (* The companion
of Diego Ordaz.) and Raleigh profess to have seen in such abundance in the
hands of the Indians of the Orinoco. From what I observed in that part of
America, I am led to think that gold, like tin,* is sometimes disseminated in
an almost imperceptible manner in the very mass of granite rocks, without
our being able to perceive that there is a ramification and an intertwining of
small veins. (* Thus tin is found in granite of recent formation, at Geyer; in
hyalomicte or graisen, at Zinnwald; and in syenitic porphyry, at Altenberg,
in Saxony, as well as near Naila, in the Fichtelgebirge. I have also seen, in
the Upper Palatinate, micaceous iron, and black earthy cobalt, far from any

kind of vein, disseminated in a granite destitute of mica, as magnetic iron-
sand is in volcanic rocks.) Not long ago the Indians of Encaramada found in
the Quebrada del Tigre* (* The Tiger-ravine.) a piece of native gold two
lines in diameter. It was rounded, and appeared to have been washed along
by the waters. This discovery excited the attention of the missionaries much
more than of the natives; it was followed by no other of the same kind.

I cannot quit this first link of the mountains of Encaramada without
recalling to mind a fact that was not unknown to Father Gili, and which was
often mentioned to me during our abode in the Missions of the Orinoco.
The natives of those countries have retained the belief that, "at the time of
the great waters, when their fathers were forced to have recourse to boats, to
escape the general inundation, the waves of the sea beat against the rocks of
Encaramada." This belief is not confined to one nation singly, the
Tamanacs; it makes part of a system of historical tradition, of which we find
scattered notions among the Maypures of the great cataracts; among the
Indians of the Rio Erevato, which runs into the Caura; and among almost all
the tribes of the Upper Orinoco. When the Tamanacs are asked how the
human race survived this great deluge, the age of water, of the Mexicans,
they say, a man and a woman saved themselves on a high mountain, called
Tamanacu, situated on the banks of the Asiveru; and casting behind them,
over their heads, the fruits of the mauritia palm-tree, they saw the seeds
contained in those fruits produce men and women, who repeopled the earth.
Thus we find in all its simplicity, among nations now in a savage state, a
tradition which the Greeks embellished with all the charms of imagination!
A few leagues from Encaramada, a rock, called Tepu-mereme, or the
painted rock, rises in the midst of the savannah. Upon it are traced
representations of animals, and symbolic figures resembling those we saw
in going down the Orinoco, at a small distance below Encaramada, near the
town Caycara. Similar rocks in Africa are called by travellers fetish stones.
I shall not make use of this term, because fetishism does not prevail among

the natives of the Orinoco; and the figures of stars, of the sun, of tigers, and
of crocodiles, which we found traced upon the rocks in spots now
uninhabited, appeared to me in no way to denote the objects of worship of
those nations. Between the banks of the Cassiquiare and the Orinoco,
between Encaramada, the Capuchino, and Caycara, these hieroglyphic
figures are often seen at great heights, on rocky cliffs which could be
accessible only by constructing very lofty scaffolds. When the natives are
asked how those figures could have been sculptured, they answer with a
smile, as if relating a fact of which only a white man could be ignorant, that
"at the period of the great waters, their fathers went to that height in boats."

These ancient traditions of the human race, which we find dispersed over
the whole surface of the globe, like the relics of a vast shipwreck, are highly
interesting in the philosophical study of our own species. Like certain
families of the vegetable kingdom, which, notwithstanding the diversity of
climates and the influence of heights, retain the impression of a common
type, the traditions of nations respecting the origin of the world, display
everywhere the same physiognomy, and preserve features of resemblance
that fill us with astonishment. How many different tongues, belonging to
branches that appear totally distinct, transmit to us the same facts! The
traditions concerning races that have been destroyed, and the renewal of
nature, scarcely vary in reality, though every nation gives them a local
colouring. In the great continents, as in the smallest islands of the Pacific
Ocean, it is always on the loftiest and nearest mountain that the remains of
the human race have been saved; and this event appears the more recent, in
proportion as the nations are uncultivated, and as the knowledge they have
of their own existence has no very remote date. After having studied with
attention the Mexican monuments anterior to the discovery of the New
World; after having penetrated into the forests of the Orinoco, and observed
the diminutive size of the European establishments, their solitude, and the
state of the tribes that have remained independent; we cannot allow

ourselves to attribute the analogies just cited to the influence exercised by
the missionaries, and by Christianity, on the national traditions. Nor is it
more probable, that the discovery of sea-shells on the summit of mountains
gave birth, among the nations of the Orinoco, to the tradition of some great
inundation which extinguished for a time the germs of organic life on our
globe. The country that extends from the right bank of the Orinoco to the
Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro, is a country of primitive rocks. I saw there
one small formation of sandstone or conglomerate; but no secondary
limestone, and no trace of petrifactions.

A fresh north-east breeze carried us full-sail towards the Boca de la
Tortuga. We landed, at eleven in the morning, on an island which the
Indians of the Missions of Uruana considered as their property, and which
lies in the middle of the river. This island is celebrated for the turtle fishery,
or, as they say here, the cosecha, the harvest [of eggs,] that takes place
annually. We here found an assemblage of Indians, encamped under huts
made of palm-leaves. This encampment contained more than three hundred
persons. Accustomed, since we had left San Fernando de Apure, to see only
desert shores, we were singularly struck by the bustle that prevailed here.
We found, besides the Guamos and the Ottomacs of Uruana, who are both
considered as savage races, Caribs and other Indians of the Lower Orinoco.
Every tribe was separately encamped, and was distinguished by the
pigments with which their skins were painted. Some white men were seen
amidst this tumultuous assemblage, chiefly pulperos, or little traders of
Angostura, who had come up the river to purchase turtle oil from the
natives. The missionary of Uruana, a native of Alcala, came to meet us, and
he was extremely astonished at seeing us. After having admired our
instruments, he gave us an exaggerated picture of the sufferings to which
we should be necessarily exposed in ascending the Orinoco beyond the
cataracts. The object of our journey appeared to him very mysterious. "How
is it possible to believe," said he, "that you have left your country, to come

and be devoured by mosquitos on this river, and to measure lands that are
not your own?" We were happily furnished with recommendations from the
Superior of the Franciscan Missions, and the brother-in-law of the governor
of Varinas, who accompanied us, soon dissipated the doubts to which our
dress, our accent, and our arrival in this sandy island, had given rise among
the Whites. The missionary invited us to partake a frugal repast of fish and
plantains. He told us that he had come to encamp with the Indians during
the time of the harvest of eggs, "to celebrate mass every morning in the
open air, to procure the oil necessary for the church-lamps, and especially to
govern this mixed republic (republica de Indios y Castellanos) in which
every one wished to profit singly by what God had granted to all."

We made the tour of the island, accompanied by the missionary and by a
pulpero, who boasted of having, for ten successive years, visited the camp
of the Indians, and attended the turtle-fishery. We were on a plain of sand
perfectly smooth; and were told that, as far as we could see along the beach,
turtles' eggs were concealed under a layer of earth. The missionary carried a
long pole in his hand. He showed us, that by means of this pole, the extent
of the stratum of eggs could be determined as accurately as the miner
determines the limits of a bed of marl, of bog iron-ore, or of coal. On
thrusting the rod perpendicularly into the ground, the sudden want of
resistance shows that the cavity or layer of loose earth containing the eggs,
has been reached. We saw that the stratum is generally spread with so much
uniformity, that the pole finds it everywhere in a radius of ten toises around
any given spot. Here they talk continually of square perches of eggs; it is
like a mining-country, divided into lots, and worked with the greatest
regularity. The stratum of eggs, however, is far from covering the whole
island: they are not found wherever the ground rises abruptly, because the
turtle cannot mount heights. I related to my guides the emphatic description
of Father Gumilla, who asserts, that the shores of the Orinoco contain fewer
grains of sand than the river contains turtles; and that these animals would

prevent vessels from advancing, if men and tigers did not annually destroy
so great a number.* (* "It would be as difficult to count the grains of sand
on the shores of the Orinoco, as to count the immense number of tortoises
which inhabit its margins and waters. Were it not for the vast consumption
of tortoises and their eggs, the river Orinoco, despite its great magnitude,
would be unnavigable, for vessels would be impeded by the enormous
multitude of the tortoises." Gumilla, Orinoco Illustrata volume 1 pages 331
to 336.) "Son cuentos de frailes," "they are monkish legends," said the
pulpero of Angostura, in a low voice; for the only travellers in this country
being the missionaries, they here call monks' stories, what we call travellers'
tales, in Europe.

The Indians assured us that, in going up the Orinoco from its mouth to its
junction with the Apure, not one island or one beach is to be found, where
eggs can be collected in abundance. The great turtle (arrau* (* This word
belongs to the Maypure language, and must not be confounded with arua,
which means a crocodile, among the Tamanacs, neighbours of the
Maypures. The Ottomacs call the turtle of Uruana, achea; the Tamanacs,
peje.)) dreads places inhabited by men, or much frequented by boats. It is a
timid and mistrustful animal, raising only its head above the water, and
hiding itself at the least noise. The shores where almost all the turtles of the
Orinoco appear to assemble annually, are situated between the junction of
the Orinoco with the Apure, and the great cataracts; that is to say, between
Cabruta and the Mission of Atures. There are found the three famous
fisheries; those of Encaramada, or Boca del Cabullare; of Cucuruparu, or
Boca de la Tortuga; and of Pararuma, a little below Carichana. It seems that
the arrau does not pass beyond the cataracts; and we were assured, that only
the turtles called terekay, (in Spanish terecayas,) are found above Atures
and Maypures.

The arrau, called by the Spaniards of the Missions simply tortuga, is an
animal whose existence is of great importance to the nations on the Lower
Orinoco. It is a large freshwater tortoise, with palmate and membraneous
feet; the head very flat, with two fleshy and acutely-pointed appendages
under the chin; five claws to the fore feet, and four to the hind feet, which
are furrowed underneath. The upper shell has five central, eight lateral, and
twenty-four marginal plates. The colour is darkish grey above, and orange
beneath. The feet are yellow, and very long. There is a deep furrow between
the eyes. The claws are very strong and crooked. The anus is placed at the
distance of one-fifth from the extremity of the tail. The full-grown animal
weighs from forty to fifty pounds. Its eggs are much larger than those of
pigeons, and less elongated than the eggs of the terekay. They are covered
with a calcareous crust, and, it is said, they have sufficient firmness for the
children of the Ottomac Indians, who are great players at ball, to throw
them into the air from one to another. If the arrau inhabited the bed of the
river above the cataracts, the Indians of the Upper Orinoco would not travel
so far to procure the flesh and the eggs of this tortoise. Yet, formerly, whole
tribes from the Atabapo and the Cassiquiare have been known to pass the
cataracts, in order to take part in the fishery at Uruana.

The terekay is less than the arrau. It is in general only fourteen inches in
diameter. The number of plates in the upper shell is the same, but they are
somewhat differently arranged. I counted three in the centre of the disk, and
five hexagonal on each side. The margins contain twenty-four, all
quadrangular, and much curved. The upper shell is of a black colour
inclining to green; the feet and claws are like those of the arrau. The whole
animal is of an olive-green, but it has two spots of red mixed with yellow
on the top of the head. The throat is also yellow, and furnished with a
prickly appendage. The terekays do not assemble in numerous societies like
the arraus, to lay their eggs in common, and deposit them upon the same
shore. The eggs of the terekay have an agreeable taste, and are much sought

after by the inhabitants of Spanish Guiana. They are found in the Upper
Orinoco, as well as below the cataracts, and even in the Apure, the Uritucu,
the Guarico, and the small rivers that traverse the Llanos of Caracas. The
form of the feet and head, the appendages of the chin and throat, and the
position of the anus, seem to indicate that the arrau, and probably the
terekay also, belong to a new subdivision of the tortoises, that may be
separated from the emydes. The period at which the large arrau tortoise lays
its eggs coincides with the period of the lowest waters. The Orinoco
beginning to increase from the vernal equinox, the lowest flats are found
uncovered from the end of January till the 20th or 25th of March. The arrau
tortoises collect in troops in the month of January, then issue from the
water, and warm themselves in the sun, reposing on the sands. The Indians
believe that great heat is indispensable to the health of the animal, and that
its exposure to the sun favours the laying of the eggs. The arraus are found
on the beach a great part of the day during the whole month of February. At
the beginning of March the straggling troops assemble, and swim towards
the small number of islands on which they habitually deposit their eggs. It
is probable that the same tortoise returns every year to the same locality. At
this period, a few days before they lay their eggs, thousands of these
animals may be seen ranged in long files, on the borders of the islands of
Cucuruparu, Uruana, and Pararuma, stretching out their necks and holding
their heads above water, to see whether they have anything to dread. The
Indians, who are anxious that the bands when assembled should not
separate, that the tortoises should not disperse, and that the laying of the
eggs should be performed tranquilly, place sentinels at certain distances
along the shore. The people who pass in boats are told to keep in the middle
of the river, and not frighten the tortoises by cries. The laying of the eggs
takes place always during the night, and it begins soon after sunset. With its
hind feet, which are very long, and furnished with crooked claws, the
animal digs a hole of three feet in diameter and two in depth. These

tortoises feel so pressing a desire to lay their eggs, that some of them
descend into holes that have been dug by others, but which are not yet
covered with earth. There they deposit a new layer of eggs on that which
has been recently laid. In this tumultuous movement an immense number of
eggs are broken. The missionary showed us, by removing the sand in
several places, that this loss probably amounts to a fifth of the whole
quantity. The yolk of the broken eggs contributes, in drying, to cement the
sand; and we found very large concretions of grains of quartz and broken
shells. The number of animals working on the beach during the night is so
considerable, that day surprises many of them before the laying of their
eggs is terminated. They are then urged on by the double necessity of
depositing their eggs, and closing the holes they have dug, that they may
not be perceived by the jaguars. The tortoises that thus remain too late are
insensible to their own danger. They work in the presence of the Indians,
who visit the beach at a very early hour, and who call them mad tortoises.
Notwithstanding the rapidity of their movements, they are then easily
caught with the hand.

The three encampments formed by the Indians, in the places indicated
above, begin about the end of March or commencement of April. The
gathering of the eggs is conducted in a uniform manner, and with that
regularity which characterises all monastic institutions. Before the arrival of
the missionaries on the banks of the river, the Indians profited much less
from a production which nature has supplied in such abundance. Every tribe
searched the beach in its own way; and an immense number of eggs were
uselessly broken, because they were not dug up with precaution, and more
eggs were uncovered than could be carried away. It was like a mine worked
by unskilful hands. The Jesuits have the merit of having reduced this
operation to regularity; and though the Franciscan monks, who succeeded
the Jesuits in the Missions of the Orinoco, boast of having followed the
example of their predecessors, they unhappily do not effect all that

prudence requires. The Jesuits did not suffer the whole beach to be
searched; they left a part untouched, from the fear of seeing the breed of
tortoises, if not destroyed, at least considerably diminished. The whole
beach is now dug up without reserve; and accordingly it seems to be
perceived that the gathering is less productive from year to year.

When the camp is formed, the missionary of Uruana names his
lieutenant, or commissary, who divides the ground where the eggs are found
into different portions, according to the number of the Indian tribes who
take part in the gathering. They are all Indians of Missions, as naked and
rude as the Indians of the woods; though they are called reducidos and
neofitos, because they go to church at the sound of the bell, and have
learned to kneel down during the consecration of the host.

The lieutenant (commissionado del Padre) begins his operations by
sounding. He examines by means of a long wooden pole or a cane of
bamboo, how far the stratum of eggs extends. This stratum, according to
our measurements, extended to the distance of one hundred and twenty feet
from the shore. Its average depth is three feet. The commissionado places
marks to indicate the point where each tribe should stop in its labours. We
were surprised to hear this harvest of eggs estimated like the produce of a
well-cultivated field. An area accurately measured of one hundred and
twenty feet long, and thirty feet wide, has been known to yield one hundred
jars of oil, valued at about forty pounds sterling. The Indians remove the
earth with their hands; they place the eggs they have collected in small
baskets, carry them to their encampment, and throw them into long troughs
of wood filled with water. In these troughs the eggs, broken and stirred with
shovels, remain exposed to the sun till the oily part, which swims on the
surface, has time to inspissate. As fast as this collects on the surface of the
water, it is taken off and boiled over a quick fire. This animal oil, called
tortoise butter (manteca de tortugas* (* The Tamanac Indians give it the

name of carapa; the Maypures call it timi.)) keeps the better, it is said, in
proportion as it has undergone a strong ebullition. When well prepared, it is
limpid, inodorous, and scarcely yellow. The missionaries compare it to the
best olive oil, and it is used not merely for burning in lamps, but for
cooking. It is not easy, however, to procure oil of turtles' eggs quite pure. It
has generally a putrid smell, owing to the mixture of eggs in which the
young are already formed.

I acquired some general statistical notions on the spot, by consulting the
missionary of Uruana, his lieutenant, and the traders of Angostura. The
shore of Uruana furnishes one thousand botijas, or jars of oil, annually. The
price of each jar at Angostura varies from two piastres to two and a half. We
may admit that the total produce of the three shores, where the cosecha, or
gathering of eggs, is annually made, is five thousand botijas. Now as two
hundred eggs yield oil enough to fill a bottle (limeta), it requires five
thousand eggs for a jar or botija of oil. Estimating at one hundred, or one
hundred and sixteen, the number of eggs that one tortoise produces, and
reckoning that one third of these is broken at the time of laying, particularly
by the mad tortoises, we may presume that, to obtain annually five thousand
jars of oil, three hundred and thirty thousand arrau tortoises, the weight of
which amounts to one hundred and sixty-five thousand quintals, must lay
thirty-three millions of eggs on the three shores where this harvest is
gathered. The results of these calculations are much below the truth. Many
tortoises lay only sixty or seventy eggs; and a great number of these animals
are devoured by jaguars at the moment they emerge from the water. The
Indians bring away a great number of eggs to eat them dried in the sun; and
they break a considerable number through carelessness during the
gathering. The number of eggs that are hatched before the people can dig
them up is so prodigious, that near the encampment of Uruana I saw the
whole shore of the Orinoco swarming with little tortoises an inch in
diameter, escaping with difficulty from the pursuit of the Indian children. If

to these considerations be added, that all the arraus do not assemble on the
three shores of the encampments; and that there are many which lay their
eggs in solitude, and some weeks later,* between the mouth of the Orinoco
and the confluence of the Apure; we must admit that the number of turtles
which annually deposit their eggs on the banks of the Lower Orinoco, is
near a million. (* The arraus, which lay their eggs before the beginning of
March, (for in the same species the more or less frequent basking in the sun,
the food, and the peculiar organization of each individual, occasion
differences,) come out of the water with the terekays, which lay in January
and February. Father Gumilla believes them to be arraus that were not able
to lay their eggs the preceding year. It is difficult to find the eggs of the
terekays, because these animals, far from collecting in thousands on the
same beach, deposit their eggs as they are scattered about.) This number is
very great for so large an animal. In general large animals multiply less
considerably than the smaller ones.

The labour of collecting the eggs, and preparing the oil, occupies three
weeks. It is at this period only that the missionaries have any
communication with the coast and the civilized neighbouring countries. The
Franciscan monks who live south of the cataracts, come to the harvest of
eggs less to procure oil, than to see, as they say, white faces; and to learn
whether the king inhabits the Escurial or San Ildefonso, whether convents
are still suppressed in France, and above all, whether the Turks continue to
keep quiet. On these subjects, (the only ones interesting to a monk of the
Orinoco), the small traders of Angostura, who visit the encampments, can
give, unfortunately, no very exact information. But in these distant countries
no doubt is ever entertained of the news brought by a white man from the
capital. The profit of the traders in oil amounts to seventy or eighty per
cent; for the Indians sell it them at the price of a piastre a jar or botija, and
the expense of carriage is not more than two-fifths of a piastre per jar. The
Indians bring away also a considerable quantity of eggs dried in the sun, or

slightly boiled. Our rowers had baskets or little bags of cotton-cloth filled
with these eggs. Their taste is not disagreeable, when well preserved. We
were shown large shells of turtles, which had been destroyed by the jaguars.
These animals follow the arraus towards those places on the beach where
the eggs are laid. They surprise the arraus on the sand; and, in order to
devour them at their ease, turn them in such a manner that the under shell is
uppermost. In this situation the turtles cannot rise; and as the jaguar turns
many more than he can eat in one night, the Indians often avail themselves
of his cunning and avidity.

When we reflect on the difficulty experienced by the naturalist in getting
out the body of the turtle without separating the upper and under shells, we
cannot sufficiently wonder at the suppleness of the tiger's paw, which is
able to remove the double armour of the arrau, as if the adhering parts of
the muscles had been cut by a surgical instrument. The jaguar pursues the
turtle into the water when it is not very deep. It even digs up the eggs; and
together with the crocodile, the heron, and the galinazo vulture, is the most
cruel enemy of the little turtles recently hatched. The island of Pararuma
had been so much infested with crocodiles the preceding year, during the
egg-harvest, that the Indians in one night caught eighteen, of twelve or
fifteen feet long, by means of curved pieces of iron, baited with the flesh of
the manatee. Besides the beasts of the forests we have just named, the wild
Indians also very much diminish the quantity of the oil. Warned by the first
slight rains, which they call turtle-rains (peje canepori* (* In the Tamanac
language, from peje, a tortoise, and canepo, rain.)), they hasten to the banks
of the Orinoco, and kill the turtles with poisoned arrows, whilst, with
upraised heads and paws extended, the animals are warming themselves in
the sun.

Though the little turtles (tortuguillos) may have burst the shells of their
eggs during the day, they are never seen to come out of the ground but at

night. The Indians assert that the young animal fears the heat of the sun.
They tried also to show us, that when the tortuguillo is carried in a bag to a
distance from the shore, and placed in such a manner that its tail is turned to
the river, it takes without hesitation the shortest way to the water. I confess,
that this experiment, of which Father Gumilla speaks, does not always
succeed equally well: yet in general it does appear that at great distances
from the shore, and even in an island, these little animals feel with extreme
delicacy in what direction the most humid air prevails.

Reflecting on the almost uninterrupted layer of eggs that extends along
the beach, and on the thousands of little turtles that seek the water as soon
as they are hatched, it is difficult to admit that the many turtles which have
made their nests in the same spot, can distinguish their own young, and lead
them, like the crocodiles, to the lakes in the vicinity of the Orinoco. It is
certain, however, that the animal passes the first years of its life in pools
where the water is shallow, and does not return to the bed of the great river
till it is full-grown. How then do the tortuguillos find these pools? Are they
led thither by female turtles, which adopt the young as by chance? The
crocodiles, less numerous, deposit their eggs in separate holes; and, in this
family of saurians, the female returns about the time when the incubation is
terminated, calls her young, which answer to her voice, and often assists
them to get out of the ground. The arrau tortoise, no doubt, like the
crocodile, knows the spot where she has made her nest; but, not daring to
return to the beach on which the Indians have formed their encampment,
how can she distinguish her own young from those which do not belong to
her? On the other hand, the Ottomac Indians declare that, at the period of
inundation, they have met with female turtles followed by a great number of
young ones. These were perhaps arraus whose eggs had been deposited on a
desert beach to which they could return. Males are extremely rare among
these animals. Scarcely is one male found among several hundred females.

The cause of this disparity cannot be the same as with the crocodiles, which
fight in the coupling season.

Our pilot had anchored at the Playa de huevos, to purchase some
provisions, our store having begun to run short. We found there fresh meat,
Angostura rice, and even biscuit made of wheat-flour. Our Indians filled the
boat with little live turtles, and eggs dried in the sun, for their own use.
Having taken leave of the missionary of Uruana, who had treated us with
great kindness, we set sail about four in the afternoon. The wind was fresh,
and blew in squalls. Since we had entered the mountainous part of the
country, we had discovered that our canoe carried sail very badly; but the
master was desirous of showing the Indians who were assembled on the
beach, that, by going close to the wind, he could reach, at one single tack,
the middle of the river. At the very moment when he was boasting of his
dexterity, and the boldness of his manoeuvre, the force of the wind upon the
sail became so great that we were on the point of going down. One side of
the boat was under water, which rushed in with such violence that it was
soon up to our knees. It washed over a little table at which I was writing at
the stern of the boat. I had some difficulty to save my journal, and in an
instant we saw our books, papers, and dried plants, all afloat. M. Bonpland
was lying asleep in the middle of the canoe. Awakened by the entrance of
the water and the cries of the Indians, he understood the danger of our
situation, whilst he maintained that coolness which he always displayed in
the most difficult circumstances. The lee-side righting itself from time to
time during the squall, he did not consider the boat as lost. He thought that,
were we even forced to abandon it, we might save ourselves by swimming,
since there was no crocodile in sight. Amidst this uncertainty the cordage of
the sail suddenly gave way. The same gust of wind, that had thrown us on
our beam, served also to right us. We laboured to bale the water out of the
boat with calabashes, the sail was again set, and in less than half an hour we
were in a state to proceed. The wind now abated a little. Squalls alternating

with dead calms are common in that part of the Orinoco which is bordered
by mountains. They are very dangerous for boats deeply laden, and without
decks. We had escaped as if by miracle. To the reproaches that were heaped
on our pilot for having kept too near the wind, he replied with the
phlegmatic coolness peculiar to the Indians, observing "that the whites
would find sun enough on those banks to dry their papers." We lost only
one book—the first volume of the Genera Plantarum of Schreber—which
had fallen overboard. At nightfall we landed on a barren island in the
middle of the river, near the Mission of Uruana. We supped in a clear
moonlight, seating ourselves on some large turtle-shells that were found
scattered about the beach. What satisfaction we felt on finding ourselves
thus comfortably landed! We figured to ourselves the situation of a man
who had been saved alone from shipwreck, wandering on these desert
shores, meeting at every step with other rivers which fall into the Orinoco,
and which it is dangerous to pass by swimming, on account of the multitude
of crocodiles and caribe fishes. We pictured to ourselves such a man, alive
to the most tender affections of the soul, ignorant of the fate of his
companions, and thinking more of them than of himself. If we love to
indulge such melancholy meditations, it is because, when just escaped from
danger, we seem to feel as it were the necessity of strong emotions. Our
minds were full of what we had just witnessed. There are periods in life
when, without being discouraged, the future appears more uncertain. It was
only three days since we had entered the Orinoco, and there yet remained
three months for us to navigate rivers encumbered with rocks, and in boats
smaller than that in which we had so nearly perished.

The night was intensely hot. We lay upon skins spread on the ground,
there being no trees to which we could fasten our hammocks. The torments
of the mosquitos increased every day; and we were surprised to find that on
this spot our fires did not prevent the approach of the jaguars. They swam
across the arm of the river that separated us from the mainland. Towards

morning we heard their cries very near. They had come to the island where
we passed the night. The Indians told us that, during the collecting of the
turtles' eggs, tigers are always more frequent in those regions, and display at
that period the greatest intrepidity.

On the following day, the 7th, we passed, on our right, the mouth of the
great Rio Arauca, celebrated for the immense number of birds that frequent
it; and, on our left, the Mission of Uruana, commonly called La Concepcion
de Urbana. This small village, which contains five hundred souls, was
founded by the Jesuits, about the year 1748, by the union of the Ottomac
and Cavere Indians. It lies at the foot of a mountain composed of detached
blocks of granite, which, I believe, bears the name of Saraguaca. Masses of
rock, separated one from the other by the effect of decomposition, form
caverns, in which we find indubitable proofs of the ancient civilization of
the natives. Hieroglyphic figures, and even characters in regular lines, are
seen sculptured on their sides; though I doubt whether they bear any
analogy to alphabetic writing. We visited the Mission of Uruana on our
return from the Rio Negro, and saw with our own eyes those heaps of earth
which the Ottomacs eat, and which have become the subject of such lively
discussion in Europe.* (* This earth is a greasy kind of clay, which, in
seasons of scarcity, the natives use to assuage the cravings of hunger; it
having been proved by their experience as well as by physiological
researches, that want of food can be more easily borne by filling the cavity
of the stomach with some substance, even although it may be in itself very
nearly or totally innutritious. The Indian hunters of North America, for the
same purpose, tie boards tightly across the abdomen; and most savage races
are found to have recourse to expedients that answer the same end.)

On measuring the breadth of the Orinoco between the islands called Isla
de Uruana and Isla de la Manteca, we found it, during the high waters, 2674
toises, which make nearly four nautical miles. This is eight times the

breadth of the Nile at Manfalout and Syout, yet we were at the distance of a
hundred and ninety-four leagues from the mouth of the Orinoco.

The temperature of the water at its surface was 27.8 degrees of the
centigrade thermometer, near Uruana. That of the river Zaire, or Congo, in
Africa, at an equal distance from the equator, was found by Captain Tuckey,
in the months of July and August, to be only from 23.9 to 25.6 degrees.

The western bank of the Orinoco remains low farther than the mouth of
the Meta; while from the Mission of Uruana the mountains approach the
eastern bank more and more. As the strength of the current increases in
proportion as the river grows narrower, the progress of our boat became
much slower. We continued to ascend the Orinoco under sail, but the high
and woody grounds deprived us of the wind. At other times the narrow
passes between the mountains by which we sailed, sent us violent gusts, but
of short duration. The number of crocodiles increased below the junction of
the Rio Arauca, particularly opposite the great lake of Capanaparo, which
communicates with the Orinoco, as the Laguna de Cabullarito
communicates at the same time with the Orinoco and the Rio Arauca. The
Indians told us that the crocodiles came from the inlands, where they had
been buried in the dried mud of the savannahs. As soon as the first showers
arouse them from their lethargy, they crowd together in troops, and hasten
toward the river, there to disperse again. Here, in the equinoctial zone, it is
the increase of humidity that recalls them to life; while in Georgia and
Florida, in the temperate zone, it is the augmentation of heat that rouses
these animals from a state of nervous and muscular debility, during which
the active powers of respiration are suspended or singularly diminished.
The season of great drought, improperly called the summer of the torrid
zone, corresponds with the winter of the temperate zone; and it is a curious
physiological phenomenon to observe the alligators of North America
plunged into a winter-sleep by excess of cold, at the same period when the

crocodiles of the Llanos begin their siesta or summer-sleep. If it were
probable that these animals of the same family had heretofore inhabited the
same northern country, we might suppose that, in advancing towards the
equator, they feel the want of repose after having exercised their muscles
for seven or eight months, and that they retain under a new sky the habits
which appear to be essentially linked with their organization.

Having passed the mouths of the channels communicating with the lake
of Capanaparo, we entered a part of the Orinoco, where the bed of the river
is narrowed by the mountains of Baraguan. It is a kind of strait, reaching
nearly to the confluence of the Rio Suapure. From these granite mountains
the natives heretofore gave the name of Baraguan to that part of the Orinoco
comprised between the mouths of the Arauca and the Atabapo. Among
savage nations great rivers bear different denominations in the different
portions of their course. The Passage of Baraguan presents a picturesque
scene. The granite rocks are perpendicular. They form a range of mountains
lying north-west and south-east; and the river cutting this dyke nearly at a
right angle, the summits of the mountains appear like separate peaks. Their
elevation in general does not surpass one hundred and twenty toises; but
their situation in the midst of a small plain, their steep declivities, and their
flanks destitute of vegetation, give them a majestic character. They are
composed of enormous masses of granite of a parallelopipedal figure, but
rounded at the edges, and heaped one upon another. The blocks are often
eighty feet long, and twenty or thirty broad. They would seem to have been
piled up by some external force, if the proximity of a rock identical in its
composition, not separated into blocks but filled with veins, did not prove
that the parallelopipedal form is owing solely to the action of the
atmosphere. These veins, two or three inches thick, are distinguished by a
fine-grained quartz-granite crossing a coarse-grained granite almost
porphyritic, and abounding in fine crystals of red feldspar. I sought in vain,

in the Cordillera of Baraguan, for hornblende, and those steatitic masses
that characterise several granites of the Higher Alps in Switzerland.

We landed in the middle of the strait of Baraguan to measure its breadth.
The rocks project so much towards the river that I measured with difficulty
a base of eighty toises. I found the river eight hundred and eighty-nine
toises broad. In order to conceive how this passage bears the name of a
strait, we must recollect that the breadth of the river from Uruana to the
junction of the Meta is in general from 1500 to 2500 toises. In this place,
which is extremely hot and barren, I measured two granite summits, much
rounded: one was only a hundred and ten, and the other eighty-five, toises.
There are higher summits in the interior of the group, but in general these
mountains, of so wild an aspect, have not the elevation that is assigned to
them by the missionaries.

We looked in vain for plants in the clefts of the rocks, which are as steep
as walls, and furnish some traces of stratification. We found only an old
trunk of aubletia* (* Aubletia tiburba.), with large apple-shaped fruit, and a
new species of the family of the apocyneae.* (* Allamanda salicifolia.) All
the stones were covered with an innumerable quantity of iguanas and
geckos with spreading and membranous fingers. These lizards, motionless,
with heads raised, and mouths open, seemed to suck in the heated air. The
thermometer placed against the rock rose to 50.2 degrees. The soil appeared
to undulate, from the effect of mirage, without a breath of wind being felt.
The sun was near the zenith, and its dazzling light, reflected from the
surface of the river, contrasted with the reddish vapours that enveloped
every surrounding object. How vivid is the impression produced by the
calm of nature, at noon, in these burning climates! The beasts of the forests
retire to the thickets; the birds hide themselves beneath the foliage of the
trees, or in the crevices of the rocks. Yet, amidst this apparent silence, when
we lend an attentive ear to the most feeble sounds transmitted through the

air, we hear a dull vibration, a continual murmur, a hum of insects, filling, if
we may use the expression, all the lower strata of the air. Nothing is better
fitted to make man feel the extent and power of organic life. Myriads of
insects creep upon the soil, and flutter round the plants parched by the heat
of the sun. A confused noise issues from every bush, from the decayed
trunks of trees, from the clefts of the rocks, and from the ground
undermined by lizards, millepedes, and cecilias. These are so many voices
proclaiming to us that all nature breathes; and that, under a thousand
different forms, life is diffused throughout the cracked and dusty soil, as
well as in the bosom of the waters, and in the air that circulates around us.

The sensations which I here recall to mind are not unknown to those
who, without having advanced to the equator, have visited Italy, Spain, or
Egypt. That contrast of motion and silence, that aspect of nature at once
calm and animated, strikes the imagination of the traveller when he enters
the basin of the Mediterranean, within the zone of olives, dwarf palms, and
date-trees.

We passed the night on the eastern bank of the Orinoco, at the foot of a
granitic hill. Near this desert spot was formerly seated the Mission of San
Regis. We could have wished to find a spring in the Baraguan, for the water
of the river had a smell of musk, and a sweetish taste extremely
disagreeable. In the Orinoco, as well as in the Apure, we are struck with the
difference observable in the various parts of the river near the most barren
shore. The water is sometimes very drinkable, and sometimes seems to be
loaded with a slimy matter. "It is the bark (meaning the coriaceous
covering) of the putrefied cayman that is the cause," say the natives. "The
more aged the cayman, the more bitter is his bark." I have no doubt that the
carcasses of these large reptiles, those of the manatees, which weigh five
hundred pounds, and the presence of the porpoises (toninas) with their
mucilaginous skin, may contaminate the water, especially in the creeks,
where the river has little velocity. Yet the spots where we found the most
fetid water, were not always those where dead animals were accumulated
on the beach. When, in such burning climates, where we are constantly
tormented by thirst, we are reduced to drink the water of a river at the
temperature of 27 or 28 degrees, we cannot help wishing at least that water
so hot, and so loaded with sand, should be free from smell.

On the 8th of April we passed the mouths of the Suapure or Sivapuri, and
the Caripo, on the east, and the outlet of the Sinaruco on the west. This last
river is, next to the Rio Arauca, the most considerable between the Apure

and the Meta. The Suapure, full of little cascades, is celebrated among the
Indians for the quantity of wild honey obtained from the forests in its
neighbourhood. The melipones there suspend their enormous hives to the
branches of trees. Father Gili, in 1766, made an excursion on the Suapure,
and on the Turiva, which falls into it. He there found tribes of the nation of
Areverians. We passed the night a little below the island Macapina.

Early on the following morning we arrived at the beach of Pararuma,
where we found an encampment of Indians similar to that we had seen at
the Boca de la Tortuga. They had assembled to search the sands, for
collecting the turtles' eggs, and extracting the oil; but they had unfortunately
made a mistake of several days. The young turtles had come out of their
shells before the Indians had formed their camp; and consequently the
crocodiles and the garzes, a species of large white herons, availed
themselves of the delay. These animals, alike fond of the flesh of the young
turtles, devour an innumerable quantity. They fish during the night, for the
tortuguillos do not come out of the earth to gain the neighbouring river till
after the evening twilight. The zamuro vultures are too indolent to hunt after
sunset. They stalk along the shores in the daytime, and alight in the midst of
the Indian encampment to steal provisions; but they often find no other
means of satisfying their voracity than by attacking young crocodiles of
seven or eight inches long, either on land or in water of little depth. It is
curious to see the address with which these little animals defend themselves
for a time against the vultures. As soon as they perceive the enemy, they
raise themselves on their fore paws, bend their backs, and lift up their
heads, opening their wide jaws. They turn continually, though slowly,
toward their assailant to show him their teeth, which, even when the animal
has but recently issued from the egg, are very long and sharp. Often while
the attention of a young crocodile is wholly engaged by one of the zamuros,
another seizes the favourable opportunity for an unforeseen attack. He
pounces on the crocodile, grasps him by the neck, and bears him off to the

higher regions of the air. We had an opportunity of observing this
manoeuvre during several mornings, at Mompex, on the banks of the
Magdalena, where we had collected more than forty very young crocodiles,
in a spacious court surrounded by a wall.

We found among the Indians assembled at Pararuma some white men,
who had come from Angostura to purchase the tortoise-butter. After having
wearied us for a long time with their complaints of the bad harvest, and the
mischief done by the tigers among the turtles, at the time of laying their
eggs, they conducted us beneath an ajoupa, that rose in the centre of the
Indian camp. We here found the missionary-monks of Carichana and the
Cataracts seated on the ground, playing at cards, and smoking tobacco in
long pipes. Their ample blue garments, their shaven heads, and their long
beards, might have led us to mistake them for natives of the East. These
poor priests received us in the kindest manner, giving us every information
necessary for the continuation of our voyage. They had suffered from
tertian fever for some months; and their pale and emaciated aspect easily
convinced us that the countries we were about to visit were not without
danger to the health of travellers.

The Indian pilot, who had brought us from San Fernando de Apure as far
as the shore of Pararuma, was unacquainted with the passage of the rapids*
(* Little cascades, chorros raudalitos.) of the Orinoco, and would not
undertake to conduct our bark any farther. We were obliged to conform to
his will. Happily for us, the missionary of Carichana consented to sell us a
fine canoe at a very moderate price: and Father Bernardo Zea, missionary of
the Atures and Maypures near the great cataracts, offered, though still
unwell, to accompany us as far as the frontiers of Brazil. The number of
natives who can assist in guiding boats through the Raudales is so
inconsiderable that, but for the presence of the monk, we should have risked
spending whole weeks in these humid and unhealthy regions. On the banks

of the Orinoco, the forests of the Rio Negro are considered as delicious
spots. The air is indeed cooler and more healthful. The river is free from
crocodiles; one may bathe without apprehension, and by night as well as by
day there is less torment from the sting of insects than on the Orinoco.
Father Zea hoped to reestablish his health by visiting the Missions of Rio
Negro. He talked of those places with that enthusiasm which is felt in all the
colonies of South America for everything far off.

The assemblage of Indians at Pararuma again excited in us that interest,
which everywhere attaches man in a cultivated state to the study of man in a
savage condition, and the successive development of his intellectual
faculties. How difficult to recognize in this infancy of society, in this
assemblage of dull, silent, inanimate Indians, the primitive character of our
species! Human nature does not here manifest those features of artless
simplicity, of which poets in every language have drawn such enchanting
pictures. The savage of the Orinoco appeared to us to be as hideous as the
savage of the Mississippi, described by that philosophical traveller Volney,
who so well knew how to paint man in different climates. We are eager to
persuade ourselves that these natives, crouching before the fire, or seated on
large turtle-shells, their bodies covered with earth and grease, their eyes
stupidly fixed for whole hours on the beverage they are preparing, far from
being the primitive type of our species, are a degenerate race, the feeble
remains of nations who, after having been long dispersed in the forests, are
replunged into barbarism.

Red paint being in some sort the only clothing of the Indians, two kinds
may be distinguished among them, according as they are more or less
affluent. The common decoration of the Caribs, the Ottomacs, and the
Jaruros, is onoto,* (* Properly anoto. This word belongs to the Tamanac
Indians. The Maypures call it majepa. The Spanish missionaries say
onotarse, to rub the skin with anato.) called by the Spaniards achote, and by

the planters of Cayenne, rocou. It is the colouring matter extracted from the
pulp of the Bixa orellana.* (* The word bixa, adopted by botanists, is
derived from the ancient language of Haiti (the island of St. Domingo).
Rocou, the term commonly used by the French, is derived from the
Brazilian word, urucu.) The Indian women prepare the anato by throwing
the seeds of the plant into a tub filled with water. They beat this water for an
hour, and then leave it to deposit the colouring fecula, which is of an intense
brick-red. After having separated the water, they take out the fecula, dry it
between their hands, knead it with oil of turtles' eggs, and form it into round
cakes of three or four ounces weight. When turtle oil is wanting, some
tribes mix with the anato the fat of the crocodile.

Another pigment, much more valuable, is extracted from a plant of the
family of the bignoniae, which M. Bonpland has made known by the name
of Bignonia chica. It climbs up and clings to the tallest trees by the aid of
tendrils. Its bilabiate flowers are an inch long, of a fine violet colour, and
disposed by twos or threes. The bipinnate leaves become reddish in drying.
The fruit is a pod, filled with winged seeds, and is two feet long. This plant
grows spontaneously, and in great abundance, near Maypures; and in going
up the Orinoco, beyond the mouth of the Guaviare, from Santa Barbara to
the lofty mountain of Duida, particularly near Esmeralda. We also found it
on the banks of the Cassiquiare. The red pigment of chica is not obtained
from the fruit, like the onoto, but from the leaves macerated in water. The
colouring matter separates in the form of a light powder. It is collected,
without being mixed with turtle-oil, into little lumps eight or nine inches
long, and from two to three high, rounded at the edges. These lumps, when
heated, emit an agreeable smell of benzoin. When the chica is subjected to
distillation, it yields no sensible traces of ammonia. It is not, like indigo, a
substance combined with azote. It dissolves slightly in sulphuric and
muriatic acids, and even in alkalis. Ground with oil, the chica furnishes a
red colour that has a tint of lake. Applied to wool, it might be confounded

with madder-red. There is no doubt but that the chica, unknown in Europe
before our travels, may be employed usefully in the arts. The nations on the
Orinoco, by whom this pigment is best prepared, are the Salivas, the
Guipunaves,* (* Or Guaypunaves; they call themselves Uipunavi.) the
Caveres, and the Piraoas. The processes of infusion and maceration are in
general very common among all the nations on the Orinoco. Thus the
Maypures carry on a trade of barter with the little loaves of puruma, which
is a vegetable fecula, dried in the manner of indigo, and yielding a very
permanent yellow colour. The chemistry of the savage is reduced to the
preparation of pigments, that of poisons, and the dulcification of the
amylaceous roots, which the aroides and the euphorbiaceous plants afford.

Most of the missionaries of the Upper and Lower Orinoco permit the
Indians of their Missions to paint their skins. It is painful to add, that some
of them speculate on this barbarous practice of the natives. In their huts,
pompously called conventos,* (* In the Missions, the priest's house bears
the name of the convent.) I have often seen stores of chica, which they sold
as high as four francs the cake. To form a just idea of the extravagance of
the decoration of these naked Indians, I must observe, that a man of large
stature gains with difficulty enough by the labour of a fortnight, to procure
in exchange the chica necessary to paint himself red. Thus as we say, in
temperate climates, of a poor man, "he has not enough to clothe himself,"
you hear the Indians of the Orinoco say, "that man is so poor, that he has not
enough to paint half his body." The little trade in chica is carried on chiefly
with the tribes of the Lower Orinoco, whose country does not produce the
plant which furnishes this much-valued substance. The Caribs and the
Ottomacs paint only the head and the hair with chica, but the Salives
possess this pigment in sufficient abundance to cover their whole bodies.
When the missionaries send on their own account small cargoes of cacao,
tobacco, and chiquichiqui* (* Ropes made with the petioles of a palm-tree

with pinnate leaves.) from the Rio Negro to Angostura, they always add
some cakes of chica, as being articles of merchandise in great request.

The custom of painting is not equally ancient among all the tribes of the
Orinoco. It has increased since the time when the powerful nation of the
Caribs made frequent incursions into those countries. The victors and the
vanquished were alike naked; and to please the conqueror it was necessary
to paint like him, and to assume his colour. The influence of the Caribs has
now ceased, and they remain circumscribed between the rivers Carony,
Cuyuni, and Paraguamuzi; but the Caribbean fashion of painting the whole
body is still preserved. The custom has survived the conquest.

Does the use of the anato and chica derive its origin from the desire of
pleasing, and the taste for ornament, so common among the most savage
nations? or must we suppose it to be founded on the observation, that these
colouring and oily matters with which the skin is plastered, preserve it from
the sting of the mosquitos? I have often heard this question discussed in
Europe; but in the Missions of the Orinoco, and wherever, within the
tropics, the air is filled with venomous insects, the inquiry would appear
absurd. The Carib and the Salive, who are painted red, are not less cruelly
tormented by the mosquitos and the zancudos, than the Indians whose
bodies are plastered with no colour. The sting of the insect causes no
swelling in either; and scarcely ever produces those little pustules which
occasion such smarting and itching to Europeans recently arrived. But the
native and the White suffer equally from the sting, till the insect has
withdrawn its sucker from the skin. After a thousand useless essays, M.
Bonpland and myself tried the expedient of rubbing our hands and arms
with the fat of the crocodile, and the oil of turtle-eggs, but we never felt the
least relief, and were stung as before. I know that the Laplanders boast of
oil and fat as the most useful preservatives; but the insects of Scandinavia
are not of the same species as those of the Orinoco. The smoke of tobacco

drives away our gnats, while it is employed in vain against the zancudos. If
the application of fat and astringent* substances preserved the inhabitants
of these countries from the torment of insects, as Father Gumilla alleges,
why has not the custom of painting the skin become general on these
shores? (* The pulp of the anato, and even the chica, are astringent and
slightly purgative.) Why do so many naked natives paint only the face,
though living in the neighbourhood of those who paint the whole body?* (*
The Caribs, the Salives, the Tamanacs, and the Maypures.)

We are struck with the observation, that the Indians of the Orinoco, like
the natives of North America, prefer the substances that yield a red colour
to every other. Is this predilection founded on the facility with which the
savage procures ochreous earths, or the colouring fecula of anato and of
chica? I doubt this much. Indigo grows wild in a great part of equinoctial
America. This plant, like so many other leguminous plants, would have
furnished the natives abundantly with pigments to colour themselves blue
like the ancient Britons.* (* The half-clad nations of the temperate zone
often paint their skin of the same colour as that with which their clothes are
dyed.) Yet we see no American tribe painted with indigo. It appears to me
probable, as I have already hinted above, that the preference given by the
Americans to the red colour is generally founded on the tendency which
nations feel to attribute the idea of beauty to whatever characterises their
national physiognomy. Men whose skin is naturally of a brownish red, love
a red colour. If they be born with a forehead little raised, and the head flat,
they endeavour to depress the foreheads of their children. If they be
distinguished from other nations by a thin beard, they try to eradicate the
few hairs that nature has given them. They think themselves embellished in
proportion as they heighten the characteristic marks of their race, or of their
national conformation.

We were surprised to see, that, in the camp of Pararuma, the women far
advanced in years were more occupied with their ornaments than the
youngest women. We saw an Indian female of the nation of the Ottomacs
employing two of her daughters in the operation of rubbing her hair with
the oil of turtles' eggs, and painting her back with anato and caruto. The
ornament consisted of a sort of lattice-work formed of black lines crossing
each other on a red ground. Each little square had a black dot in the centre.
It was a work of incredible patience. We returned from a very long
herborization, and the painting was not half finished. This research of
ornament seems the more singular when we reflect that the figures and
marks are not produced by the process of tattooing, but that paintings
executed with so much care are effaced,* if the Indian exposes himself
imprudently to a heavy shower. (* The black and caustic pigment of the
caruto (Genipa americana) however, resists a long time the action of water,
as we found with regret, having one day, in sport with the Indians, caused
our faces to be marked with spots and strokes of caruto. When we returned
to Angostura, in the midst of Europeans, these marks were still visible.)
There are some nations who paint only to celebrate festivals; others are
covered with colour during the whole year: and the latter consider the use of
anato as so indispensable, that both men and women would perhaps be less
ashamed to present themselves without a guayaco* than destitute of paint.
(* A word of the Caribbean language. The perizoma of the Indians of the
Orinoco is rather a band than an apron.) These guayucos of the Orinoco are
partly bark of trees, and partly cotton-cloth. Those of the men are broader
than those worn by the women, who, the missionaries say, have in general a
less lively feeling of modesty. A similar observation was made by
Christopher Columbus. May we not attribute this in difference, this want of
delicacy in women belonging to nations of which the manners are not much
depraved, to that rude state of slavery to which the sex is reduced in South
America by male injustice and tyranny?

When we speak in Europe of a native of Guiana, we figure to ourselves a
man whose head and waist are decorated with the fine feathers of the
macaw, the toucan, and the humming-bird. Our painters and sculptors have
long since regarded these ornaments as the characteristic marks of an
American. We were surprised at not finding in the Chayma Missions, in the
encampments of Uruana and of Pararuma (I might almost say on all the
shores of the Orinoco and the Cassiquiare) those fine plumes, those
feathered aprons, which are so often brought by travellers from Cayenne
and Demerara. These tribes for the most part, even those whose intellectual
faculties are most expanded, who cultivate alimentary plants, and know
how to weave cotton, are altogether as naked,* as poor, and as destitute of
ornaments as the natives of New Holland. (* For instance, the Macos and
the Piraoas. The Caribs must be excepted, whose perizoma is a cotton cloth,
so broad that it might cover the shoulders.) The excessive heat of the air, the
profuse perspiration in which the body is bathed at every hour of the day
and a great part of the night, render the use of clothes insupportable. Their
objects of ornament, and particularly their plumes of feathers, are reserved
for dances and solemn festivals. The plumes worn by the Guipunaves* are
the most celebrated; being composed of the fine feathers of manakins and
parrots. (* These came originally from the banks of the Inirida, one of the
rivers that fall into the Guaviare.)

The Indians are not always satisfied with one colour uniformly spread;
they sometimes imitate, in the most whimsical manner, in painting their
skin, the form of European garments. We saw some at Pararuma, who were
painted with blue jackets and black buttons. The missionaries related to us
that the Guaynaves of the Rio Caura are accustomed to stain themselves red
with anato, and to make broad transverse stripes on the body, on which they
stick spangles of silvery mica. Seen at a distance, these naked men appear
to be dressed in laced clothes. If painted nations had been examined with
the same attention as those who are clothed, it would have been perceived

that the most fertile imagination, and the most mutable caprice, have
created the fashions of painting, as well as those of garments.

Painting and tattooing are not restrained, in either the New or the Old
World, to one race or one zone only. These ornaments are most common
among the Malays and American races; but in the time of the Romans they
were also employed by the white race in the north of Europe. As the most
picturesque garments and modes of dress are found in the Grecian
Archipelago and western Asia, so the type of beauty in painting and
tattooing is displayed by the islanders of the Pacific. Some clothed nations
still paint their hands, their nails, and their faces. It would seem that
painting is then confined to those parts of the body that remain uncovered;
and while rouge, which recalls to mind the savage state of man, is
disappearing by degrees in Europe, in some towns of the province of Peru
the ladies think they embellish their delicate skins by covering them with
colouring vegetable matter, starch, white-of-egg, and flour. After having
lived a long time among men painted with anato and chica, we are
singularly struck with these remains of ancient barbarism retained amidst
all the usages of civilization.

The encampment at Pararuma afforded us an opportunity of examining
several animals in their natural state, which, till then, we had seen only in
the collections of Europe. These little animals form a branch of commerce
for the missionaries. They exchange tobacco, the resin called mani, the
pigment of chica, gallitos (rock-manakins), orange monkeys, capuchin
monkeys, and other species of monkeys in great request on the coast, for
cloth, nails, hatchets, fishhooks, and pins. The productions of the Orinoco
are bought at a low price from the Indians, who live in dependence on the
monks; and these same Indians purchase fishing and gardening implements
from the monks at a very high price, with the money they have gained at the

egg-harvest. We ourselves bought several animals, which we kept with us
throughout the rest of our passage on the river, and studied their manners.

The gallitos, or rock-manakins, are sold at Pararuma in pretty little cages
made of the footstalks of palm-leaves. These birds are infinitely more rare
on the banks of the Orinoco, and in the north and west of equinoctial
America, than in French Guiana. They have hitherto been found only near
the Mission of Encaramada, and in the Raudales or cataracts of Maypures. I
say expressly IN the cataracts, because the gallitos choose for their habitual
dwelling the hollows of the little granitic rocks that cross the Orinoco and
form such numerous cascades. We sometimes saw them appear in the
morning in the midst of the foam of the river, calling their females, and
fighting in the manner of our cocks, folding the double moveable crest that
decorates the crown of the head. As the Indians very rarely take the full-
grown gallitos, and those males only are valued in Europe, which from the
third year have beautiful saffron-coloured plumage, purchasers should be on
their guard not to confound young females with young males. Both the male
and female gallitos are of an olive-brown; but the pollo, or young male, is
distinguishable at the earliest age, by its size and its yellow feet. After the
third year the plumage of the males assumes a beautiful saffron tint; but the
female remains always of a dull dusky brown colour, with yellow only on
the wing-coverts and tips of the wings.* (* Especially the part which
ornithologists call the carpus.) To preserve in our collections the fine tint of
the plumage of a male and full-grown rock-manakin, it must not be exposed
to the light. This tint grows pale more easy than in the other genera of the
passerine order. The young males, as in most other birds, have the plumage
or livery of their mother. I am surprised to see that so skilful a naturalist as
Le Vaillant can doubt whether the females always remain of a dusky olive
tint.* (* Oiseaux de Paradis volume 2 page 61.) The Indians of the Raudales
all assured me that they had never seen a saffron-coloured female.

Among the monkeys, brought by the Indians to the fair of Pararuma, we
distinguished several varieties of the sai,* (* Simia capucina the capuchin
monkey.) belonging to the little groups of creeping monkeys called matchi
in the Spanish colonies; marimondes* (* Simia belzebuth.), or ateles with a
red belly; titis, and viuditas. The last two species particularly attracted our
attention, and we purchased them to send to Europe.

The titi of the Orinoco (Simia sciurea), well-known in our collections, is
called bititeni by the Maypure Indians. It is very common on the south of
the cataracts. Its face is white; and a little spot of bluish-black covers the
mouth and the point of the nose. The titis of the most elegant form, and the
most beautiful colour (with hair of a golden yellow), come from the banks
of the Cassiquiare. Those that are taken on the shores of the Guaviare are
large and difficult to tame. No other monkey has so much the physiognomy
of a child as the titi; there is the same expression of innocence, the same
playful smile, the same rapidity in the transition from joy to sorrow. Its
large eyes are instantly filled with tears, when it is seized with fear. It is
extremely fond of insects, particularly of spiders. The sagacity of this little
animal is so great, that one of those we brought in our boat to Angostura
distinguished perfectly the different plates annexed to Cuvier's Tableau
elementaire d'Histoire naturelle. The engravings of this work are not
coloured; yet the titi advanced rapidly its little hand in the hope of catching
a grasshopper or a wasp, every time that we showed it the eleventh plate, on
which these insects are represented. It remained perfectly indifferent when
it was shown engravings of skeletons or heads of mammiferous animals.*
(* I may observe, that I have never heard of an instance in which a picture,
representing, in the greatest perfection, hares or deer of their natural size,
has made the least impression even on sporting dogs, the intelligence of
which appears the most improved. Is there any authenticated instance of a
dog having recognized a full length picture of his master? In all these cases,
the sight is not assisted by the smell.) When several of these little monkeys,

shut up in the same cage, are exposed to the rain, and the habitual
temperature of the air sinks suddenly two or three degrees, they twist their
tail (which, however, is not prehensile) round their neck, and intertwine
their arms and legs to warm one another. The Indian hunters told us, that in
the forests they often met groups of ten or twelve of these animals, whilst
others sent forth lamentable cries, because they wished to enter amid the
group to find warmth and shelter. By shooting arrows dipped in weak
poison at one of these groups, a great number of young monkeys are taken
alive at once. The titi in falling remains clinging to its mother, and if it be
not wounded by the fall, it does not quit the shoulder or the neck of the dead
animal. Most of those that are found alive in the huts of the Indians have
been thus taken from the dead bodies of their mothers. Those that are full
grown, when cured of a slight wound, commonly die before they can
accustom themselves to a domestic state. The titis are in general delicate
and timid little animals. It is very difficult to convey them from the
Missions of the Orinoco to the coast of Caracas, or of Cumana. They
become melancholy and dejected in proportion as they quit the region of the
forests, and enter the Llanos. This change cannot be attributed to the slight
elevation of the temperature; it seems rather to depend on a greater intensity
of light, a less degree of humidity, and some chemical property of the air of
the coast.

The saimiri, or titi of the Orinoco, the atele, the sajou, and other
quadrumanous animals long known in Europe, form a striking contrast,
both in their gait and habits, with the macavahu, called by the missionaries
viudita, or widow in mourning. The hair of this little animal is soft, glossy,
and of a fine black. Its face is covered with a mask of a square form and a
whitish colour tinged with blue. This mask contains the eyes, nose, and
mouth. The ears have a rim: they are small, very pretty, and almost bare.
The neck of the widow presents in front a white band, an inch broad, and
forming a semicircle. The feet, or rather the hinder hands, are black like the

rest of the body; but the fore paws are white without, and of a glossy black
within. In these marks, or white spots, the missionaries think they recognize
the veil, the neckerchief, and the gloves of a widow in mourning. The
character of this little monkey, which sits up on its hinder extremities only
when eating, is but little indicated in its appearance. It has a wild and timid
air; it often refuses the food offered to it, even when tormented by a
ravenous appetite. It has little inclination for the society of other monkeys.
The sight of the smallest saimiri puts it to flight. Its eye denotes great
vivacity. We have seen it remain whole hours motionless without sleeping,
and attentive to everything that was passing around. But this wildness and
timidity are merely apparent. The viudita, when alone, and left to itself,
becomes furious at the sight of a bird. It then climbs and runs with
astonishing rapidity; darts upon its prey like a cat; and kills whatever it can
seize. This rare and delicate monkey is found on the right bank of the
Orinoco, in the granite mountains which rise behind the Mission of Santa
Barbara. It inhabits also the banks of the Guaviare, near San Fernando de
Atabapo.

The viudita accompanied us on our whole voyage on the Cassiquiare and
the Rio Negro, passing the cataracts twice. In studying the manners of
animals, it is a great advantage to observe them during several months in
the open air, and not in houses, where they lose all their natural vivacity.

The new canoe intended for us was, like all Indian boats, a trunk of a tree
hollowed out partly by the hatchet and partly by fire. It was forty feet long,
and three broad. Three persons could not sit in it side by side. These canoes
are so crank, and they require, from their instability, a cargo so equally
distributed, that when you want to rise for an instant, you must warn the
rowers to lean to the opposite side. Without this precaution the water would
necessarily enter the side pressed down. It is difficult to form an idea of the
inconveniences that are suffered in such wretched vessels.

The missionary from the cataracts made the preparations for our voyage
with greater energy than we wished. Lest there might not be a sufficient
number of the Maco and Guahibe Indians, who are acquainted with the
labyrinth of small channels and cascades of which the Raudales or cataracts
are composed, two Indians were, during the night, placed in the cepo—a
sort of stocks in which they were made to lie with their legs between two
pieces of wood, notched and fastened together by a chain with a padlock.
Early in the morning we were awakened by the cries of a young man,
mercilessly beaten with a whip of manatee skin. His name was Zerepe, a
very intelligent young Indian, who proved highly useful to us in the sequel,
but who now refused to accompany us. He was born in the Mission of
Atures; but his father was a Maco, and his mother a native of the nation of
the Maypures. He had returned to the woods (al monte), and having lived
some years with the unsubdued Indians, he had thus acquired the
knowledge of several languages, and the missionary employed him as an
interpreter. We obtained with difficulty the pardon of this young man.
"Without these acts of severity," we were told, "you would want for
everything. The Indians of the Raudales and the Upper Orinoco are a
stronger and more laborious race than the inhabitants of the Lower Orinoco.
They know that they are much sought after at Angostura. If left to their own
will, they would all go down the river to sell their productions, and live in
full liberty among the whites. The Missions would be totally deserted."

These reasons, I confess, appeared to me more specious than sound. Man,
in order to enjoy the advantages of a social state, must no doubt sacrifice a
part of his natural rights, and his original independence; but, if the sacrifice
imposed on him be not compensated by the benefits of civilization, the
savage, wise in his simplicity, retains the wish of returning to the forests
that gave him birth. It is because the Indian of the woods is treated like a
person in a state of villanage in the greater part of the Missions, because he
enjoys not the fruit of his labours, that the Christian establishments on the

Orinoco remain deserts. A government founded on the ruins of the liberty of
the natives extinguishes the intellectual faculties, or stops their progress.

To say that the savage, like the child, can be governed only by force, is
merely to establish false analogies. The Indians of the Orinoco have
something infantine in the expression of their joy, and the quick succession
of their emotions, but they are not great children; they are as little so as the
poor labourers in the east of Europe, whom the barbarism of our feudal
institutions has held in the rudest state. To consider the employment of
force as the first and sole means of the civilization of the savage, is a
principle as far from being true in the education of nations as in the
education of youth. Whatever may be the state of weakness or degradation
in our species, no faculty is entirely annihilated. The human understanding
exhibits only different degrees of strength and development. The savage,
like the child, compares the present with the past; he directs his actions, not
according to blind instinct, but motives of interest. Reason can everywhere
enlighten reason; and its progress will be retarded in proportion as the men
who are called upon to bring up youth, or govern nations, substitute
constraint and force for that moral influence which can alone unfold the
rising faculties, calm the irritated passions, and give stability to social order.

We could not set sail before ten on the morning of the 10th. To gain
something in breadth in our new canoe, a sort of lattice-work had been
constructed on the stern with branches of trees, that extended on each side
beyond the gunwale. Unfortunately, the toldo or roof of leaves, that covered
this lattice-work, was so low that we were obliged to lie down, without
seeing anything, or, if seated, to sit nearly double. The necessity of carrying
the canoe across the rapids, and even from one river to another; and the fear
of giving too much hold to the wind, by making the toldo higher, render this
construction necessary for vessels that go up towards the Rio Negro. The
toldo was intended to cover four persons, lying on the deck or lattice-work

of brush-wood; but our legs reached far beyond it, and when it rained half
our bodies were wet. Our couches consisted of ox-hides or tiger-skins,
spread upon branches of trees, which were painfully felt through so thin a
covering. The fore part of the boat was filled with Indian rowers, furnished
with paddles, three feet long, in the form of spoons. They were all naked,
seated two by two, and they kept time in rowing with a surprising
uniformity, singing songs of a sad and monotonous character. The small
cages containing our birds and our monkeys, the number of which
augmented as we advanced, were hung some to the toldo and others to the
bow of the boat. This was our travelling menagerie. Notwithstanding the
frequent losses occasioned by accidents, and above all by the fatal effects of
exposure to the sun, we had fourteen of these little animals alive at our
return from the Cassiquiare. Naturalists, who wish to collect and bring
living animals to Europe, might cause boats to be constructed expressly for
this purpose at Angostura, or at Grand Para, the two capitals situated on the
banks of the Orinoco and the Amazon, the fore-deck of which boats might
be fitted up with two rows of cages sheltered from the rays of the sun.
Every night, when we established our watch, our collection of animals and
our instruments occupied the centre; around these were placed first our
hammocks, then the hammocks of the Indians; and on the outside were the
fires which are thought indispensable against the attacks of the jaguar.
About sunrise the monkeys in our cages answered the cries of the monkeys
of the forest. These communications between animals of the same species
sympathizing with one another, though unseen, one party enjoying that
liberty which the other regrets, have something melancholy and affecting.

In a canoe not three feet wide, and so incumbered, there remained no
other place for the dried plants, trunks, a sextant, a dipping-needle, and the
meteorological instruments, than the space below the lattice-work of
branches, on which we were compelled to remain stretched the greater part
of the day. If we wished to take the least object out of a trunk, or to use an

instrument, it was necessary to row ashore and land. To these
inconveniences were joined the torment of the mosquitos which swarmed
under the toldo, and the heat radiated from the leaves of the palm-trees, the
upper surface of which was continually exposed to the solar rays. We
attempted every instant, but always without success, to amend our situation.
While one of us hid himself under a sheet to ward off the insects, the other
insisted on having green wood lighted beneath the toldo, in the hope of
driving away the mosquitos by the smoke. The painful sensations of the
eyes, and the increase of heat, already stifling, rendered both these
contrivances alike impracticable. With some gaiety of temper, with feelings
of mutual good-will, and with a vivid taste for the majestic grandeur of
these vast valleys of rivers, travellers easily support evils that become
habitual.

Our Indians showed us, on the right bank of the river, the place which
was formerly the site of the Mission of Pararuma, founded by the Jesuits
about the year 1733. The mortality occasioned by the smallpox among the
Salive Indians was the principal cause of the dissolution of the mission. The
few inhabitants who survived this cruel epidemic, removed to the village of
Carichana. It was at Pararuma, that, according to the testimony of Father
Roman, hail was seen to fall during a great storm, about the middle of the
last century. This is almost the only instance of it I know in a plain that is
nearly on a level with the sea; for hail falls generally, between the tropics,
only at three hundred toises of elevation. If it form at an equal height over
plains and table-lands, we must suppose that it melts as it falls, in passing
through the lowest strata of the atmosphere, the mean temperature of which
is from 27.5 to 24 degrees of the centigrade thermometer. I acknowledge it
is very difficult to explain, in the present state of meteorology, why it hails
at Philadelphia, at Rome, and at Montpelier, during the hottest months, the
mean temperature of which attains 25 or 26 degrees; while the same
phenomenon is not observed at Cumana, at La Guayra, and in general, in

the equatorial plains. In the United States, and in the south of Europe, the
heat of the plains (from 40 to 43 degrees latitude) is nearly the same as
within the tropics; and according to my researches the decrement of caloric
equally varies but little. If then the absence of hail within the torrid zone, at
the level of the sea, be produced by the melting of the hailstones in crossing
the lower strata of the air, we must suppose that these hail-stones, at the
moment of their formation, are larger in the temperate than in the torrid
zone. We yet know so little of the conditions under which water congeals in
a stormy cloud in our climates, that we cannot judge whether the same
conditions be fulfilled on the equator above the plains. The clouds in which
we hear the rattling of the hailstones against one another before they fall,
and which move horizontally, have always appeared to me of little
elevation; and at these small heights we may conceive that extraordinary
refrigerations are caused by the dilatation of the ascending air, of which the
capacity for caloric augments; by currents of cold air coming from a higher
latitude, and above all, according to M. Gay Lussac, by the radiation from
the upper surface of the clouds. I shall have occasion to return to this
subject when speaking of the different forms under which hail and hoar-
frost appear on the Andes, at two thousand and two thousand six hundred
toises of height; and when examining the question whether we may
consider the stratum of clouds that envelops the mountains as a horizontal
continuation of the stratum which we see immediately above us in the
plains.

The Orinoco, full of islands, begins to divide itself into several branches,
of which the most western remain dry during the months of January and
February. The total breadth of the river exceeds two thousand five hundred
or three thousand toises. We perceived to the East, opposite the island of
Javanavo, the mouth of the Cano Aujacoa. Between this Cano and the Rio
Paruasi or Paruati, the country becomes more and more woody. A solitary
rock, of extremely picturesque aspect, rises in the midst of a forest of palm-

trees, not far from the Orinoco. It is a pillar of granite, a prismatic mass, the
bare and steep sides of which attain nearly two hundred feet in height. Its
point, which overtops the highest trees of the forest, is terminated by a shelf
of rock with a horizontal and smooth surface. Other trees crown this
summit, which the missionaries call the peak, or Mogote de Cocuyza. This
monument of nature, in its simple grandeur recalls to mind the Cyclopean
remains of antiquity. Its strongly-marked outlines, and the group of trees
and shrubs by which it is crowned, stand out from the azure of the sky. It
seems a forest rising above a forest.

Further on, near the mouth of the Paruasi, the Orinoco narrows. On the
east is perceived a mountain with a bare top, projecting like a promontory.
It is nearly three hundred feet high, and served as a fortress for the Jesuits.
They had constructed there a small fort, with three batteries of cannon, and
it was constantly occupied by a military detachment. We saw the cannon
dismounted, and half-buried in the sand, at Carichana and at Atures. This
fort of the Jesuits has been destroyed since the dissolution of their society;
but the place is still called El Castillo. I find it set down, in a manuscript
map, lately completed at Caracas by a member of the secular clergy, under
the denomination of Trinchera del despotismo monacal.* (* Intrenchmnent
of monachal despotism.)

The garrison which the Jesuits maintained on this rock, was not intended
merely to protect the Missions against the incursions of the Caribs: it was
employed also in an offensive war, or, as they say here, in the conquest of
souls (conquista de almas). The soldiers, excited by the allurement of gain,
made military incursions (entradas) into the lands of the independent
Indians. They killed all those who dared to make any resistance, burnt their
huts, destroyed their plantations, and carried away the women, children, and
old men, as prisoners. These prisoners were divided among the Missions of
the Meta, the Rio Negro, and the Upper Orinoco. The most distant places