BANKS OF THE CA.BSIQUIARE. 371 



it would have been overset by any person rising impru- 

 dently from his seat, without warning the rowers. We 

 had suffered severely from the sting of insects, but we had 

 withstood the insalubrity of the climate; we had passed 

 without accident the great number of waterfalls ana bars, 

 which impede the navigation of the rivers, and often render 

 it more dangerous than long voyages by sea. After all we 

 had endured, it may be conceived that we felt no little 

 satisfaction in having reached the tributary streams of the 

 Amazon, having passed the isthmus that separates two great 

 systems of rivers, and in being sure of having fulfilled the 

 most important object of our journey, namely, to deter- 

 mine astronomically the course of that arm of the Orinoco 

 which falls into the Bio Negro, and of ^hich the existence 

 has been alternately proved and denied during half a cen- 

 tury. In proportion as we draw near to an object we have 

 long had in r.ew, its interest seems to augment. The 

 uninhabited banks of the Cassiquiare, covered with forests, 

 without memorials of times pnst, then occupied my imagi- 

 nation, 8-s do now the banks of the Euphrates, or the Oxua, 

 celebrated in the annals of civilized nations. In that in- 

 terior part of the New Continent one may almost accustom 

 one self to regard men as not be/^ig essential to the order 

 of nature. The earth is loaded writh plants, and nothing 

 impedes their free development. An immense layer of 

 mould manifests the uninterrupted action of organic 

 powers. Crocodiles and boas are masters of the river ; the 

 jaguar, the peccary, the dante, and the monkeys traverse 

 the forest without fear and without danger; there they 

 dwell as in an ar"ier.t inheritance. THs aspect of animated 

 nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange 

 and sad. To this ^o reconcile ourselves with difficulty 

 on the ocean, and amid tiie sands of Africa; though in 

 scenes where nothing recalls to mind o~r fields, our woods, 

 and our streams, we are less astonished at the vast solitude 

 through which we pass. Here, in a fertile country, adorned 

 with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the 

 power of man ; we seem to be transported into a world 

 different from that which gave us birth. These impres- 

 sions are the more powerful in proportion as they are 

 of long duration. A soldier, who had spent his whole 



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