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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There They Pretend To Have Found All That The
Ancients Relate Of The Garamantes, Of The Arimaspes, And Of The
Hyperboreans.
It would be an error to suppose that these simple and
often rustic missionaries had themselves invented all these
exaggerated fictions; they derived them in great part from the
recitals of the Indians.
A fondness for narration prevails in the
Missions, as it does at sea, in the East, and in every place where the
mind seeks amusement. A missionary, from his vocation, is not inclined
to scepticism; he imprints on his memory what the natives have so
often repeated to him; and, when returned to Europe, and restored to
the civilized world, he finds a pleasure in creating astonishment by a
recital of facts which he thinks he has collected, and by an animated
description of remote things. These stories, which the Spanish
colonists call tales of travellers and of monks (cuentos de viageros y
frailes), increase in improbability in proportion as you increase your
distance from the forests of the Orinoco, and approach the coasts
inhabited by the whites. When, at Cumana, Nueva Barcelona, and other
seaports which have frequent communication with the Missions, you
betray any sign of incredulity, you are reduced to silence by these
few words: The fathers have seen it, but far above the Great Cataracts
(mas arriba de los Raudales).
On the 15th of April, we left the island of Panumana at four in the
morning, two hours before sunrise. The sky was in great part obscured,
and lightnings flashed over dense clouds at more than forty degrees of
elevation.
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