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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They Are Checked In Their Growth By The
Inundations Of The River; While The Dry Grounds Near The Atabapo, The
Temi, And The Tuamini, Furnish Excellent Timber For Building.
These
forests do not stretch indefinitely to the east and west, toward the
Cassiquiare and the Guaviare; they are bounded by the open savannahs
of Manuteso, and the Rio Inirida.
We found it difficult in the evening
to stem the current, and we passed the night in a wood a little above
Mendaxari; which is another granitic rock traversed by a stratum of
quartz. We found in it a group of fine crystals of black schorl.
On the 29th, the air was cooler. We had no zancudos, but the sky was
constantly clouded, and without stars. I began to regret the Lower
Orinoco. We still advanced but slowly from the force of the current,
and we stopped a great part of the day to seek for plants. It was
night when we arrived at the mission of San Balthasar, or, as the
monks style it, the mission of la divina Pastora de Balthasar de
Atabapo. We were lodged with a Catalonian missionary, a lively and
agreeable man, who displayed in these wild countries the activity that
characterises his nation. He had planted a garden, where the fig-tree
of Europe was found in company with the persea, and the lemon-tree
with the mammee. The village was built with that regularity which, in
the north of Germany, and in protestant America, we find in the
hamlets of the Moravian brethren; and the Indian plantations seemed
better cultivated than elsewhere.
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