Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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No Tribe Is More
Difficult To Fix To The Soil Than The Guahibos.
They would rather feed
on stale fish, scolopendras, and worms, than cultivate a little spot
of ground.
The other Indians say, that a Guahibo eats everything that
exists, both on and under the ground.
In ascending the Orinoco more to the south, the heat, far from
increasing, became more bearable. The air in the day was at 26 or 27.5
degrees; and at night, at 23.7. The water of the Orinoco retained its
habitual temperature of 27.7 degrees. The torment of the mosquitos
augmented severely, notwithstanding the decrease of heat. We never
suffered so much from them as at San Borja. We could neither speak nor
uncover our faces without having our mouths and noses filled with
insects. We were surprised not to find the thermometer at 35 or 36
degrees; the extreme irritation of the skin made us believe that the
air was scorching. We passed the night on the beach of Guaripo. The
fear of the little caribe fish prevented us from bathing. The
crocodiles we had met with this day were all of an extraordinary size,
from twenty-two to twenty-four feet.
Our sufferings from the zancudos made us depart at five o'clock on the
morning of the 14th. There are fewer insects in the strata of air
lying immediately on the river, than near the edge of the forests. We
stopped to breakfast at the island of Guachaco, or Vachaco, where the
granite is immediately covered by a formation of sandstone, or
conglomerate. This sandstone contains fragments of quartz, and even of
feldspar, cemented by indurated clay. It exhibits little veins of
brown iron-ore, which separate in laminae, or plates, of one line in
thickness. We had already found these plates on the shores between
Encaramada and Baraguan, where the missionaries had sometimes taken
them for an ore of gold, and sometimes for tin. It is probable, that
this secondary formation occupied formerly a larger space. Having
passed the mouth of the Rio Parueni, beyond which the Maco Indians
dwell, we spent the night on the island of Panumana. I could with
difficulty take the altitudes of Canopus, in order to fix the
longitude of the point, near which the river suddenly turns towards
the west. The island of Panumana is rich in plants. We there again
found those shelves of bare rock, those tufts of melastomas, those
thickets of small shrubs, the blended scenery of which had charmed us
in the plains of Carichana. The mountains of the Great Cataracts
bounded the horizon towards the south-east. In proportion as we
advanced, the shores of the Orinoco exhibited a more imposing and
picturesque aspect.
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.
The river of the Orinoco, in running from south to north, is crossed
by a chain of granitic mountains.
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