520 
ATTACK or nulKESS. 
of plants which he had been able to save from the influence 
of the damp climate; and I was occupied in settling by 
astronomical observations the longitude and latitude of the 
capital,* as \t ell as the dip of the magnetic needle. These 
labours were soon interrupted. We were both attacked 
almost on the same day by a disorder, which with my fellow- 
traveller took the character of a debilitating fever. ' At this 
period the air was in a state of the greatest salubrity at An- 
gostura; and as the only mulatto servant we had" brought 
from Cum ana felt symptoms of the same disorder, it was 
suspected that we had imbibed the germs of typhus in 
the damp forests of Cassiquiare. It is common enough for 
travellers to feel no effects from miasmata till, on arriving 
in a purer atmosphere, they begin to enjoy repose. A cer- 
tain excitement of the mental powers may suspend for some 
time the action of pathogenic causes. Our mulatto servant 
having been much more exposed to the rains than we were, 
his disorder increased with frightful rapidity. His prostra- 
tion of strength was excessive, and on the ninth day his 
death was announced to us. He was however only in a 
state of swooning, which lasted several hours, and was fol- 
lowed by a salutary crisis. I was attacked at the same 
time with a violent fit of fever, during which I was made to 
take a mixture of honey and bark (the cortex Angosturas) : 
a remedy much extolled in the country by the Capuchin 
missionaries. The intensity of the fever augmented, hut it 
left me on the following day. M. Bonpland remained in a 
very alarming state, which during several weeks caused us 
the most serious inquietude. Fortunately he preserved suf- 
ficient self-possession to prescribe for himself ; and he pre- 
ferred gentler remedies, better adapted to his constitution. 
The fever was continual; and, as almost always happens 
within the tropics, it was accompanied by dysentery. M. 
Bonpland displayed tbat courage and mildness of character, 
which never forsook him in the most trying situations. I 
was agitated by sad presages ; for I remembered that the 
botanist Loefling, a pupil of Linnteus, died not fiir from 
Angostura, near the banks of the Carony, a victim of bis 
* I found the latitude of Santo Tomas de la Xueva Guiana, commonly 
called Angostura, or the Strait, near the cathedral, S° 8' 11', the long. 
CG“ 15' 21'. 
