Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 511 of 777 - First - Home
On The 28th Of April, It Rained Hard After Sunset, And We Were Afraid
That Our Collections Would Be Damaged.
The poor missionary had his fit
of tertian fever, and besought us to re-embark immediately after
midnight.
We passed at day-break the Piedra and the Raudalitos* (* The
rock and little cascades.) of Guarinuma. The rock is on the east bank;
it is a shelf of granite, covered with psora, cladonia, and other
lichens. I could have fancied myself transported to the north of
Europe, to the ridge of the mountains of gneiss and granite between
Freiberg and Marienberg in Saxony. The cladonias appeared to me to be
identical with the Lichen rangiferinus, the L. pixidatus, and the L.
polymorphus of Linnaeus. After having passed the rapids of Guarinuma,
the Indians showed us in the middle of the forest, on our right, the
ruins of the mission of Mendaxari, which has been long abandoned. On
the east bank of the river, near the little rock of Kemarumo, in the
midst of Indian plantations, a gigantic bombax* (* Bombax ceiba.)
attracted our curiosity. We landed to measure it; the height was
nearly one hundred and twenty feet, and the diameter between fourteen
and fifteen. This enormous specimen of vegetation surprised us the
more, as we had till then seen on the banks of the Atabapo only small
trees with slender trunks, which from afar resembled young
cherry-trees. The Indians assured that these small trees do not form a
very extensive group.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 511 of 777
Words from 138764 to 139014
of 211397
