OF BARON HUMBOLDT. 109 



poison proved that if it immediately mixed with 

 the blood, in consequence of a wound, it would 

 be deadly ; whilst, taken internally, it was an 

 excellent means of strengthening the intestinal 

 parts. 



Baron Humboldt positively established the 

 union of the Orinoco and the Amazon; and 

 achieved this scientific conquest, partly by 

 means of his own penetration to the cataracts, 

 and partly through the information obtained 

 from soldiers from San Carlos, who had under- 

 taken an expedition in order to discover the 

 sources of the former river. This region was, 

 before his time, entirely unknown, and to pre- 

 vious historians a pure enigma. The discovery 

 of the sources of the Orinoco was reserved to 

 a later traveller, Schomburgh,* who explored 



* At the last anniversary meeting of the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society, May 22nd, 1865, the President, Sir 

 Roderick Murchison, commented in his obituaiy on the 

 career of this extensive traveller, Sir Robert Hermann 

 Schomburgh. " By his journey," said the President of the 

 Royal Geographical Society, " across the interior, from the 

 Essequibo to Esmeralda, on the Orinoco, he was enabled to 

 connect his observations with those of his illustrious country- 

 man Humboldt, who had always been his patron, and thus 

 to determine, astronomically, a series of fixed points, ex- 

 tending across the watershed of the great rivers of Equatorial 

 America. Humboldt was stopped at San Carlos, on the 

 Rio Negro, but Schomburgh descended the mighty affluent 



