Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent During the Years 1799-1804, Volume 5 |
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according Amazon America ancient Angostura animals appears arrived Atabapo Atures banks become believe boat branch called Caqueta Caribbees Carony Cassiquiare cataracts cause celebrated civilization coast communication confluence contain Cordilleras course covered direction distance doubt earth east Esmeralda Europe existence expedition extremely falls father feet five flows forests four furnish geographers give going granite ground Guyana height hundred Indians inhabitants insects island it's known lake land latitude leagues leaves less Lower maps Maypures means missionaries missions mountains mouth natives nature night observations Oroonoko Parima passed period plains plants Raudal reach Rio Branco Rio Negro rise river rocks seen situation sometimes sources Spanish species tion toises traced travellers trees tribes tributary streams Upper Oroonoko village voyage waters whole zone
Popular passages
Page 491 - ... one hundred and ninety thousand square leagues. The grain of New Grenada will be carried to the banks of the Rio Negro ; boats will descend from the sources of the Napo and the Ucuyabe, from the Andes of Quito and of Upper Peru, to the mouths of the Oroonoko, a distance which equals that from Tombuctoo to Marseilles.
Page 418 - ... among civilized nations in times of great scarcity ? In Egypt, in the thirteenth century, the habit of eating human flesh pervaded all classes of society ; extraordinary snares were spread for physicians in particular. They were called to attend persons, who pretended to be sick, but who were only hungry ; and it was not in order to be consulted, but devoured. An historian of great veracity, Abd-Allatif, has related, how a practice, which at first inspired dread and horror, soon occasioned not...
Page 814 - ... delivered all such nations about her, as were by them oppressed, and having freed all the coast of the northern world from their servitude had sent me to free them also, and withal to defend the country of Guiana from their invasion and conquest.
Page 235 - We pressed the missionary to tell us, whether the Guahiba had peacefully enjoyed the happiness of remaining with her children ; and if any repentance had followed this excess of cruelty. He would not satisfy our curiosity ; but at our return from the Rio Negro we learnt, that the Indian mother was not allowed time to cure her wounds, but was again separated from her children, and sent to one of the missions of the Upper Oroonoko.
Page 97 - This animal, almost invisible to the eye, gets under the toe-nails, and there acquires the size of a small pea, by the quick increase of its eggs, which are placed in a bag under the belly of the insect. The nigua therefore distinguishes what the most delicate chemical analysis could not distinguish, the cellular membrane and blood of a European from those of a Creole white.
Page 231 - I recorded in my journal, and which excited in our minds the most painful feelings. If, in these solitary scenes, man scarcely leaves behind him any trace of his existence, it is doubly humiliating for a European to see perpetuated by the name of a rock, by one of those imperishable monuments of nature, the remembrance of the moral degradation of our species, and the contrast between the virtue of •& savage, and the barbarism of civilized man!
Page 490 - Since my departure from the banks of the Oroonoko and the Amazon, a new era unfolds itself in the social state of the nations of the West. The fury of civil discussions will be succeeded by the blessings of peace, and a freer development of the arts of industry. The bifurcation of the...
Page 178 - World no heaths ; why the calceolaria? are found only in the southern hemisphere ; why the birds of the continent of India glow with colours less splendid than the birds of the hot parts of America ; finally, why the tiger is peculiar to Asia, and the ornithorhincus to New-Holland.
Page 532 - In our climates the cucurbitacece only produce in the space of a few months fruits of an extraordinary size ; but these fruits are pulpy and succulent. Between the tropics the bertholletia forms, in less than fifty or sixty days, a pericarp, the ligneous part of which is half an inch thick, and which it is difficult to saw with the sharpest instrument.
Page 267 - These good people," said the missionary, "like only processions in the open air. When I last celebrated the festival of San Antonio, the patron of my village, the Indians of Inirida were present at mass. ' Your God,' said they to me, ' keeps himself shut up in a house, as if he were old and infirm ; ours is in the forest, in the fields, and on the mountains of Sipapu, whence the rains come.
Bibliographic information
| Title | Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent During the Years 1799-1804, Volume 5 Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent During the Years 1799-1804, Alexander von Humboldt |
| Authors | Alexander von Humboldt, Aimé Bonpland |
| Translated by | Helen Maria Williams |
| Edition | 3 |
| Publisher | Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1827 |
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