196 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



astronomical observations, we made our interpreter {lenguaraz) 

 repeat to us what the natives, our boatmen, related of the 

 tigers of the country. 



The so called black Jaguar is, as we learnt, not unfrequently 

 found among them. It is the largest and most blood-thirsty 

 variety, and has a dark brown skin marked with scarcely dis- 

 tinguishable black spots. It lives at the foot of the mountain 

 ranges of Maraguaca and Unturan. " The love of wandering, 

 and the rapacity of the Jaguars," said our Indian narrator, one 

 of the Durimond tribe; " often lead them into such impene- 

 trable thickets of the forest, that they can no longer hunt on the 

 ground, and then live for a long time in the trees — the terror 

 of the families of monkeys, and of the prehensile-tailed viverra. 

 {Cercoleptes.y 



The journal which I wrote at the time in German, and 

 from which I borrow these extracts, was not entirely exhausted 

 in the narrative of my travels (published in French). It 

 contains a circumstantial description of the nocturnal life of 

 animals ; I might say, of their nocturnal voices in the tropical 

 forests. And this sketch seems to me to be especially adapted 

 to constitute one of the chapters of the Vieics of Nature. That 

 which is written down on the spot, or soon after the impres- 

 sion of the phenomena has been received, may at least claim 

 to possess more freshness than what is produced by the recol- 

 lection of long passed events. 



We reached the bed of the Orinoco by descending from 

 west to east along the Rio Apure, whose inundations I have 

 noticed in the sketch of the Deserts and Steppes. It was the 

 period of low water, and the average breadth of the Apure 

 was only a little more than 1200 feet; while the Orinoco, 

 at its confluence with the Apure (near the granite rocks of 

 Curiquima, where I was able to measure a base-line), was 

 still upwards of 12,180 feet. Yet this point (the rock of 

 Curiquima,) is 400 miles in a straight line from the sea and 

 from the delta of the Orinoco. Some of the plains, watered by 



