This Prejudice Is The More Singular, As The Neighbours Of The Piraoas, The Guamos And The Ottomacs, Are Very Fond Of The Flesh Of The Manatee.

The flesh of the crocodile is also an object of horror to some tribes, and of predilection to others.

The island of Cuba furnishes a fact little known in the history of the manatee. South of the port of Xagua, several miles from the coast, there are springs of fresh water in the middle of the sea. They are supposed to be owing to a hydrostatic pressure existing in subterraneous channels, communicating with the lofty mountains of Trinidad. Small vessels sometimes take in water there; and, what is well worthy of observation, large manatees remain habitually in those spots. I have already called the attention of naturalists to the crocodiles which advance from the mouth of rivers far into the sea. Analogous circumstances may have caused, in the ancient catastrophes of our planet, that singular mixture of pelagian and fluviatile bones and petrifactions, which is observed in some rocks of recent formation.

Our stay at Carichana was very useful in recruiting our strength after our fatigues. M. Bonpland bore with him the germs of a cruel malady; he needed repose; but as the delta of the tributary streams included between the Horeda and Paruasi is covered with a rich vegetation, he made long herbalizations, and was wet through several times in a day. We found, fortunately, in the house of the missionary, the most attentive care; we were supplied with bread made of maize flour, and even with milk. The cows yield milk plentifully enough in the lower regions of the torrid zone, wherever good pasturage is found. I call attention to this fact, because local circumstances have spread through the Indian Archipelago the prejudice of considering hot climates as repugnant to the secretion of milk. We may conceive the indifference of the inhabitants of the New World for a milk diet, the country having been originally destitute of animals capable of furnishing it*; (* The reindeer are not domesticated in Greenland as they are in Lapland; and the Esquimaux care little for their milk. The bisons taken very young accustom themselves, on the west of the Alleghenies, to graze with herds of European cows. The females in some districts of India yield a little milk, but the natives have never thought of milking them. What is the origin of that fabulous story related by Gomara (chapter 43 page 36) according to which the first Spanish navigators saw, on the coast of South Carolina, stags led to the savannahs by herdsmen? The female bisons, according to Mr. Buchanan and the philosophical historian of the Indian Archipelago, Mr. Crawford, yield more milk than common cows.) but how can we avoid being astonished at this indifference in the immense Chinese population, living in great part beyond the tropics, and in the same latitude with the nomad and pastoral tribes of central Asia? If the Chinese have ever been a pastoral people, how have they lost the tastes and habits so intimately connected with that state, which precedes agricultural institutions? These questions are interesting with respect both to the history of the nations of oriental Asia, and to the ancient communications that are supposed to have existed between that part of the world and the north of Mexico.

We went down the Orinoco in two days, from Carichana to the mission of Uruana, after having again passed the celebrated strait of Baraguan. We stopped several times to determine the velocity of the river, and its temperature at the surface, which was 27.4 degrees. The velocity was found to be two feet in a second (sixty-two toises in 3 minutes 6 seconds) in places where the bed of the Orinoco was more than twelve thousand feet broad, and from ten to twelve fathoms deep. The slope of the river is in fact extremely gentle from the Great Cataracts to Angostura; and, if a barometric measurement were wanting, the difference of height might be determined by approximation, by measuring from time to time the velocity of the stream, and the extent of the section in breadth and depth. We had some observations of the stars at Uruana. I found the latitude of the mission to be 7 degrees 8 minutes; but the results from different stars left a doubt of more than 1 minute. The stratum of mosquitos, which hovered over the ground, was so thick that I could not succeed in rectifying properly the artificial horizon. I tormented myself in vain; and regretted that I was not provided with a mercurial horizon. On the 7th of June, good absolute altitudes of the sun gave me 69 degrees 40 minutes for the longitude. We had advanced from Esmeralda 1 degree 17 minutes toward the west, and this chronometric determination merits entire confidence on account of the double observations, made in going and returning, at the Great Cataracts, and at the confluence of the Atabapo and of the Apure.

The situation of the mission of Uruana is extremely picturesque. The little Indian village stands at the foot of a lofty granitic mountain. Rocks everywhere appear in the form of pillars above the forest, rising higher than the tops of the tallest trees. The aspect of the Orinoco is nowhere more majestic than when viewed from the hut of the missionary, Fray Ramon Bueno. It is more than two thousand six hundred toises broad, and it runs without any winding, like a vast canal, straight toward the east. Two long and narrow islands (Isla de Uruana and Isla vieja de la Manteca) contribute to give extent to the bed of the river; the two banks are parallel, and we cannot call it divided into different branches. The mission is inhabited by the Ottomacs, a tribe in the rudest state, and presenting one of the most extraordinary physiological phenomena. They eat earth; that is, they swallow every day, during several months, very considerable quantities, to appease hunger, and this practice does not appear to have any injurious effect on their health.

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