Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Crevice Is More Than A Hundred And Fifty
Toises Wide, Is Surrounded By Perpendicular Rocks, And Is Filled
With Trees, The Interwoven Branches Of Which Find No Room To
Spread.
This cleft appears like a mine opened by the falling in of
the earth.
It is intersected by a torrent, the Rio Juagua, and its
appearance is highly picturesque. It is called Risco del Cuchivano.
The river rises at the distance of seven leagues south-west, at the
foot of the mountain of the Brigantine, and it forms some beautiful
cascades before it spreads through the plain of Cumanacoa.
We visited several times a small farm, the Conuco of Bermudez,
opposite the Risco del Cuchivano, where tobacco, plantains, and
several species of cotton-trees,* are cultivated in the moist soil
(* Gossypium uniglandulosum, improperly called herbaceum, and G.
barbadense.); especially that tree, the cotton of which is of a
nankeen colour, and which is so common in the island of Margareta.*
(* G. religiosum.) The proprietor of the farm told us that the
Risco or crevice was inhabited by jaguar tigers. These animals pass
the day in caverns, and roam around human habitations at night.
Being well fed, they grow to the length of six feet. One of them
had devoured, in the preceding year, a horse belonging to the farm.
He dragged his prey on a fine moonlight night, across the savannah,
to the foot of a ceiba* of an enormous size. (* Bombax ceiba:
five-leaved silk-cotton tree.) The groans of the dying horse awoke
the slaves of the farm, who went out armed with lances and
machetes.* (* Great knives, with very long blades, like a couteau
de chasse.
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