We Cannot Doubt, That The Physical Aspect Of Greece, Intersected By Small Chains Of Mountains, And Mediterranean Gulfs, Contributed, At The Dawn Of Civilization, To The Intellectual Development Of The Greeks.

But the operation of this influence of climate, and of the configuration of the soil, is felt in all its force only among a race of men who, endowed with a happy organization of the mental faculties, are susceptible of exterior impulse.

In studying the history of our species, we see, at certain distances, these foci of ancient civilization dispersed over the globe like luminous points; and we are struck by the inequality of improvement in nations inhabiting analogous climates, and whose native soil appears equally favoured by the most precious gifts of nature.

Since my departure from the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazon, a new era has unfolded itself in the social state of the nations of the West. The fury of civil discussions has been succeeded by the blessings of peace, and a freer development of the arts of industry. The bifurcations of the Orinoco, the isthmus of Tuamini, so easy to be made passable by an artificial canal, will ere long fix the attention of commercial Europe. The Cassiquiare, as broad as the Rhine, and the course of which is one hundred and eighty miles in length, will no longer form uselessly a navigable canal between two basins of rivers which have a surface of one hundred and ninety thousand square leagues. The grain of New Grenada will be carried to the banks of the Rio Negro; boats will descend from the sources of the Napo and the Ucuyabe, from the Andes of Quito and of Upper Peru, to the mouths of the Orinoco, a distance which equals that from Timbuctoo to Marseilles. A country nine or ten times larger than Spain, and enriched with the most varied productions, is navigable in every direction by the medium of the natural canal of the Cassiquiare, and the bifurcation of the rivers. This phenomenon, which will one day be so important for the political connections of nations, unquestionably deserves to be carefully examined.

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.

Opposite to the point where the Orinoco forms its bifurcation, the granitic group of Duida rises in an amphitheatre on the right bank of the river. This mountain, which the missionaries call a volcano, is nearly eight thousand feet high. It is perpendicular on the south and west, and has an aspect of solemn grandeur. Its summit is bare and stony, but, wherever its less steep declivities are covered with mould vast forests appear suspended on its flanks. At the foot of Duida is the mission of Esmeralda, a little hamlet with eighty inhabitants, surrounded by a lovely plain, intersected by rills of black but limpid water. This plain is adorned with clumps of the mauritia palm, the sago-tree of America. Nearer the mountain, the distance of which from the cross of the mission I found to be seven thousand three hundred toises, the marshy plain changes to a savannah, and spends itself along the lower region of the Cordillera. Large pine-apples are there found of a delicious flavour; that species of bromelia always grows solitary among the gramina, like our Colchicum autumnale, while the B. karatas, another species of the same genus, is a social plant, like our whortleberries and heaths. The pine-apples of Esmeralda are cultivated throughout Guiana. There are certain spots in America, as in Europe, where different fruits attain their highest perfection. The sapota-plum (achra) should be eaten at the Island of Margareta or at Cumana: the chirimoya (very different from the custard-apple and sweet-sop of the West India Islands) at Loxa in Peru; the grenadilla, or parcha, at Caracas; and the pine-apple at Esmeralda, or in the island of Cuba. The pine-apple forms the ornament of the fields near the Havannah, where it is planted in parallel rows; on the sides of the Duida it embellishes the turf of the savannahs, lifting its yellow fruit, crowned with a tuft of silvery leaves, above the setaria, the paspalum, and a few cyperaceae. This plant, which the Indians of the Orinoco call ana-curua, has been propagated since the sixteenth century in the interior of China,* and some English travellers found it recently, together with other plants indubitably American (maize, cassava, tobacco, and pimento), on the banks of the River Congo, in Africa. (* No doubt remains of the American origin of the Bromelia ananas. See Cayley's Life of Raleigh volume 1 page 61. Gili volume 1 pages 210 and 336. Robert Brown, Geogr. Observ. on the Plants of the River Congo 1818 page 50.)

There is no missionary at Esmeralda; the monk appointed to celebrate mass in that hamlet is settled at Santa Barbara, more than fifty leagues distant; and he visits this spot but five or six times in a year. We were cordially received by an old officer, who took us for Catalonian shopkeepers, and who supposed that trade had led to the missions. On seeing packages of paper intended for drying our plants, he smiled at our simple ignorance. "You come," said he, "to a country where this kind of merchandise has no sale; we write little here; and the dried leaves of maize, the platano (plantain-tree), and the vijaho (heliconia), serve us, like paper in Europe, to wrap up needles, fish-hooks, and other little articles of which we are careful." This old officer united in his person the civil and ecclesiastical authority. He taught the children, I will not say the Catechism, but the Rosary; he rang the bells to amuse himself; and impelled by ardent zeal for the service of the church, he sometimes used his chorister's wand in a manner not very agreeable to the natives.

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