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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On Entering The
Crevice We Recognised The Proximity Of Tigers By A Porcupine
Recently Emboweled.
For greater security the Indians returned to
the farm, and brought back some dogs of a very small breed.
We were
assured that in the event of our meeting a jaguar in a narrow path
he would spring on the dog rather than on a man. We did not proceed
along the brink of the torrent, but on the slope of the rocks which
overhung the water. We walked on the side of a precipice from two
to three hundred feet deep, on a kind of very narrow cornice, like
the road which leads from the Grindelwald along the Mettenberg to
the great glacier. When the cornice was so narrow that we could
find no place for our feet, we descended into the torrent, crossed
it by fording, and then climbed the opposite wall. These descents
are very fatiguing, and it is not safe to trust to the lianas,
which hang like great cords from the tops of the trees. The
creeping and parasite plants cling but feebly to the branches which
they embrace; the united weight of their stalks is considerable,
and you run the risk of pulling down a whole mass of verdure, if,
in walking on a sloping ground, you support your weight by the
lianas. The farther we advanced the thicker the vegetation became.
In several places the roots of the trees had burst the calcareous
rock, by inserting themselves into the clefts that separate the
beds.
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