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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A Pleasant
And Simple Expression, That Marks A Well-Observed Fact.
Since our departure from San Fernando we had not met a single boat on
this fine river.
Everything denoted the most profound solitude. On the
morning of the 3rd of April our Indians caught with a hook the fish
known in the country by the name of caribe,* (* Caribe in the Spanish
language signifies cannibal.) or caribito, because no other fish has
such a thirst for blood. It attacks bathers and swimmers, from whom it
often bites away considerable pieces of flesh. The Indians dread
extremely these caribes; and several of them showed us the scars of
deep wounds in the calf of the leg and in the thigh, made by these
little animals. They swim at the bottom of rivers; but if a few drops
of blood be shed on the water, they rise by thousands to the surface,
so that if a person be only slightly bitten, it is difficult for him
to get out of the water without receiving a severer wound. When we
reflect on the numbers of these fish, the largest and most voracious
of which are only four or five inches long, on the triangular form of
their sharp and cutting teeth, and on the amplitude of their
retractile mouths, we need not be surprised at the fear which the
caribe excites in the inhabitants of the banks of the Apure and the
Orinoco. In places where the river was very limpid, where not a fish
appeared, we threw into the water little morsels of raw flesh, and in
a few minutes a perfect cloud of caribes had come to dispute their
prey.
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