BANKS OF THE CABSIQUIAEK. 
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 and 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 llio Negro, and of which the existence 
has been alternately proved and denied daring half a cen- 
tury. In proportion as we draw near to an object we have 
long had in r.ow, its interest seems to augment. The 
uninhabited banks of the Cassiquiare, covered with forests, 
without memorials of times past, then occupied my imagi- 
nation, ss do now the banks ol the Euphrates, or the Oxus, 
celebrated in the annals of civilized nat'ons. In that in- 
terior part of the New Continent one may almost accustom 
one self to regard men as not being essential to the order 
of nature. The earth is loaded with 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 aud without danger; there they 
dwell as in an ancient inheritance. THs aspect of animated 
nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange 
and sad. To this we reconcile ourselves with difficulty 
°n the ocean, and amid tue 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 
Udtli eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the 
power of man ; we seem to be transported into a world 
Afferent from that which gave us birth. These impres- 
ses are the more powerful in proportion as they are 
°f long duration. A soldier, who had spent his whole 
2 b 2 
