Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799--1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aime Bonpland, &c. &c. London, 1821, 8vo. 2 Vols. pp. 864. These volumes, translated by H. Maria Williams, terminate the second volume (in quarto) of M. Humboldt's personal narrative; and belong to a work so universally celebrated, that we need only say, they are, if possible, more thickly studded with pieces of valuable information and curious matter, than the parts which have preceded them. We never take up Humboldt but he reminds us of Othello, who --Spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents, by flood, and field; Of hair-breadth 'scapes-- And portance in his travel's history; Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,-- And of the cannibals that each other eat; The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders, he told the marvellous stories. Our author is hardly a trace behind him; and, like the fair Desdemona, we, with greedy ear, devour up his discourse; whence, without further preface, we shall now proceed to draw for the benefit of our readers. The natives near the cataracts or raudales of the Oroonoko, up which river M. de Humboldt made his way to a height little known to Europeans, are distinguished by several remarkable prejudices, among which, none are more fatal than those narrated in the following:-- "Among the causes of the depopulation of the Raudales, I have not reckoned the small pox; that malady which, in other parts of America, makes such cruel ravages, that the natives, seized with dismay, burn their huts, kill their children, and renounce every kind of society. This scourge is almost unknown on the banks of the Oronoko. What depopulates the Christian settlements is, the repugnance of the Indians for the regulations of the missions, the insalubrity of a climate at once hot and damp, bad nourishment, want of care in the diseases of children, and the guilty practice of mothers of preventing pregnancy by the use of deleterious herbs. Among the barbarous people of Guyana, as well as those of the half-civilized islands of the South Sea, young wives will not become mothers. If they have children, their offspring are exposed, not only to the dangers of savage life, but also to the dangers arising from the strangest popular prejudices. When twins are born, false notions of propriety and family honour require, that one of them should be destroyed. 'To bring twins into the world, is to be exposed to public scorn; it is to resemble rats, opossums, and the vilest animals, which bring forth a great number of young at a time.' Nay more: 'two children born at the same time cannot belong to the same father.' This is an axiom of physiology of the Salivas; and in every zone, and in different states of society, when the vulgar seize upon an axiom, they adhere to it with more stedfastness than the better informed men, by whom it was first hazarded. To avoid a disturbance of conjugal tranquillity, the old female relations of the mother, or the mure japoic-nei (midwives,) take care, that one of the twins shall disappear. If the new-born infant, though not a twin, have any physical deformity, the father instantly puts it to death. They will have only robust and well-made children, for deformities indicate some influence of the evil spirit Ioloquiamo, or the bird Tikitiki, the enemy of the human race. Sometimes children of a feeble constitution undergo the same fate. When the father is asked, what is become of one of his sons, he will pretend, that he has lost him by a natural death. He will disavow an action, that appears to him blameable, but not criminal. 'The poor mure, he will tell you, 'could not follow us; we must have waited for him every moment; he has not been seen again, he did not come to sleep where we passed the night.' Such is the candour and simplicity of manners, such the boasted happiness of man in the state of nature! He kills his son, to escape the ridicule of having twins, or to avoid journeying more slowly; in fact, to avoid a little inconvenience." As the Mahas in the plaines of the Missoury, according to the accounts of the American travellers, Clark and Lewis. In Tamanack mure signifies a child; emuru, a son. Amid the prodigality and magnificence of nature, such are the moral evils which deform the scene; and we are often compelled to leave the author's glowing descriptions of superb landscape in the torrid zone, to vex our spirits with similar details. But, the able manner in which distant objects and remote similitudes are brought to bear on almost every subject discussed, is the great charm of this work; and we have so vast a quantity of intelligence combined with so rich a fund of amusing anecdote, that the mind never tires. It has been alleged, that Mr. H. is too prone to this sort of classification, and to theories built upon it; but however that may be in a philosophical point of view, as a popular performance, it wonderfully enhances the attractions of his narrative. He is, in truth, the very Jacques of travellers; and his way is delectable, " compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects; and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of his travels, in which his often rumination wraps him in a most humourous sadness." He morals on every thing; for example:-- "The inhabitants of Atures and Maypures, whatever the missionaries may have asserted in their works, are not more struck with deafness by the noise of the great cataracts, than the catadupes of the Nile. When this noise is heard in the plain that surrounds the mission, at the distance of more than a league, you seem to be near a coast skirted by reefs and breakers. The noise is three times as loud by night as by day, and gives an inexpressible charm to these solitary scenes. What can be the cause of this increased intensity of sound in a desert, where nothing seems to interrupt the silence of nature? The velocity of the propagation of sound, far from augmenting, decreases with the lowering of the temperature. The intensity diminishes in air, agitated by a wind, which is contrary to the direction of the sound; it diminishes also by dilatation of the air, and is weaker in the higher than in the lower regions of the atmosphere, where the number of particles of air in motion is greater in the same radius. The intensity is the same in dry air, and in air mingled with vapours; but it is feebler in carbonic acid gas, than in mixtures of azot and oxygen. From these facts, which are all we know with any certainty, it is difficult to explain a phenomenon observed near every cascade in Europe, and which, long before our arrival in the village of Atures, had struck the missionary and the Indians. The nocturnal temperature of the atmosphere is 3° less than the temperature of the day; at the same time the apparent humidity augments at night, and the mist that covers the cataracts becomes thicker. We have just seen, that the hygroscopic state of the air has no influence on the propagation of the sound, and that the cooling of the air diminishes its swiftness. "It may be thought, that, even in places not inhabited by man, the hum of insects, the song of birds, the rustling of leaves agitated by the feeblest winds, occasion, during the day, a confused noise, which we perceive the less because it is uniform, and constantly strikes the ear. Now this noise, however slightly perceptible it may be, may diminish the intensity of a louder, noise; and this diminution may cease, if during the calm of the night the song of birds, the hum of insects, and the action of the wind upon the leaves, be interrupted. But this reasoning, even admitting its justness, can scarcely be applied to the forests of the Oroonoko, where the air is constantly filled by an innumerable quantity of moschettoes, where the hum of insects is much louder by night than by day, and where the breeze, if ever it be felt, blows only after sunset. "I rather think, that the presence of the sun acts upon the propagation and intensity of the sound by the obstacles which they find in the currents of air different density, and the partial undulations of the atmosphere caused by the unequal heating of different parts of the soil. In calm air, whether it be dry, or mingled with vesicular vapours equally distributed, the sonorous undulation is propagated without difficulty. But when the air is crossed in every direction by small currents of hotter air, the sonorous undulation is divided into two undulations; where the density of the medium changes abruptly, partial echoes are formed, that weaken the sound, because one of the streams comes back upon itself; and those divisions of undulations take place, of which Mr. Poisson has recently developed the theory with great sagacity. It is not therefore the movement of the particles of air from below to above in the ascending current, or the small oblique currents, that we consider as opposing by a shock the propagation of the sonorous undulations. A shock, given to the surface of a liquid, will form circles around the center of percussion, even then the liquid is agitated. Several kinds of undulations may cross each other in water, as in air, without being disturbed in their propagation; little movements may ride over each other, and the real cause of the less intensity of sound during the day appears to be the interruption of homogeneity in the elastic medium. During the day, there is a sudden interruption of density, where ever small streamlets of air of a high temperature rise over parts of the soil unequally heated. The sonorous undulations are divided, as the rays of light are refracted, and form the mirage (looming), wherever strata of air of unequal density are contiguous. The propagation of sound is altered, when a stratum hydrogen gas is made to rise in a tube closed at one end above a stratum of atmospheric air; and Mr. Biot has well explained, by the interposition of bubbles of carbonic acid gas, why a glass filled with Champagne wine is little sonorous so long as the gas is evolved, and continues to pass through the strata of the liquid." This hypothesis is well worth further investigations; but we must surrender it to the scientific journals, and continue our more mixed career. "The Indians of Atures," says Mr. H., are mild, moderate, and accustomed, from the effects of their idleness, to the greatest privations. Formerly, excited to labour by the Jesuits, they did not want for food. The fathers cultivated maize, French beans, (frisoles), and other European vegetables; they even planted sweet oranges and tamarinds round the villages; and they possessed twenty or thirty thousand head of cows and horses, in the savannahs of Atures and Carichana. They had at their service a great number of slaves and servants (peones), to take care of their herds. Nothing is now cultivated but a little cassava, and a few plantains. The fertility of the soil however is such, that at Atures I counted on a single branch of musa 108 fruits, 4 or 5 of which would almost suffice for the daily nourishment of a man. The culture of maize is entirely neglected, and the horses and cows have disappeared. Near the raudal, a part of the village still bears the name of Passo del ganado (ford of the cattle), while the descendants of those very Indians, whom the Jesuits had assembled in a mission, speak of horned cattle as of animals of a race that is lost. In going up the Oroonoko, toward San Carlos del Rio Negro, we saw the last cow at Carichana. The fathers of the Observance, who now govern these vast countries, did not immediately succeed the Jesuits. During an interregnum of eighteen years, the missions were visited only from time to time, and by Capuchin monks. The agents of the secular government, under the title of Commissioners of the King, managed the hatos or farms of the Jesuits with culpable negligence. They killed the cattle in order to sell the hides. Many heifers were devoured by tigers, and a greater number perished in consequence of wounds made by the bats of the raudales, which are much less, but far bolder than the bats of the Llanos. At the time of the expedition of the boundaries, the horses of Encaramada, Carichana, and Atures, were conveyed as far as San Jose of Maravitanos, where, on the banks of the Rio Negro, the Portugueze could only procure them after a long passage, and of a very inferior quality, by the river Amazon and Grand Para. Since the year 1795, the cattle of the Jesuits have entirely disappeared. There now remains in testimony of the ancient cultivation of these countries, and the industrious activity of the first missionaries, only a few trunks of the orange and tamarind in the savannahs, surrounded by wild trees. "The tigers, or jaguars, which are less dangerous for the cattle than the bats, come into the village at Atures, and devour the pigs of the poor Indians. The missionary related to us a striking instance of the familiarity of these animals, upon the whole so ferocious. Some months before our arrival, a jaguar, which was thought to be young, though of a large size, had wounded a child in playing with him; I use confidently this expression, which may seem strange, having on the spot verified facts which are not without interest in the history of the manners of animals. Two Indian children, a boy and a girl, about eight and nine years of age, were seated on the grass near the village of Atures, in the middle of a savannah, which we have often traversed. At two o'clock in the afternoon, a jaguar issued from the forest, and approached the children, bounding around them; sometimes he hid himself in the high grass, sometimes he sprang forward, his back bent, his head hung down, in the manner of our cats. The little boy, ignorant of his danger, seemed to be sensible of it only when the jaguar with one of bis paws gave him some blows on the head. These blows, at first slight, became ruder and ruder; the claws of the jaguar wounded the child, and the blood flowed with violence. The little girl then took a branch of a tree, struck the animal, and it fled from her. The Indians ran up at the cries of the children, and saw the jaguar, which retired bounding, without the least show of resistance. "The little boy was brought to us, who appeared lively and intelligent. The claw of the jaguar had taken away the skin from the lower part of the forehead, and there was a second scar at the top of the head." "Among the monkeys," the author continues, "which we saw at the mission of the Atures, we found one new species of the tribe of sais and sajous, which the Creoles vulgarly call machis. It is the ouavapavi with grey hair and a bluish face. It has the orbits of the eyes and forehead as white as snow, which at first sight distinguish it from the simia capucina, the simia apella, the simia trepida, and the other weeping monkeys hitherto so confusedly described. This little animal is as gentle as it is ugly. Every day in the court-yard of the missionary it seized a pig, upon which it remained from morning till night, traversing the savannahs. We have also seen it upon the back of a large cat, which bad been brought up with it in father Zea's house. "It was among the cataracts that we began to hear of the hairy man of the woods, called salvaje, that carries off women, constructs huts, and sometimes eats human flesh. The Tamanacks call it achi, and the Maypures vasitri, or great devil. The natives and the missionaries have no doubt of the existence of this anthropomorphous monkey, which they singularly dread. Father Gili gravely relates the history of a lady in the town of San Carlos, who much praised the gentle character and attentions of the man of the woods. She lived several years with one in great domestic harmony, and only requested some hunters to take her back, 'because she was tired, she and her children (a little hairy also), of living far from the church and the sacraments." The same author, notwithstanding his credulity, confesses, that he had not been able to find an Indian, who asserted positively that he had seen the salvaje with his own eyes. This fable, which the missionaries, the European planters, and the negroes of Africa, have no doubt embellished with many features taken from the description of the manners of the ourang outang, the gibbon, the jocko or chimpanzee, and the pongo, pursued us during five years from the north- ern to the southern hemisphere; and we were every where blamed, in the most cultivated class of society, for being the only persons to doubt the existence of the great anthropomorphous monkey of America. We shall first observe, that there are certain regions, where this belief is particularly prevalent among the people; such are the banks of the Upper Oroonoko, the valley of Upar near the Lake of Maracaybo, the mountains of Santa Martha and of Merida, the provinces of Quixos, and the banks of the Amazon near Tomependa. In all these places, so distant one from the other, it is repeated, that the salvaje is easily recognized by the traces of its feet, the toes of which are turned backward. But if there exist a monkey of a large size in the New Continent, how has it happened, that during three centuries no man worthy of belief has been able to procure the skin of one? Several hypotheses present themselves to the mind, in order to explain the source of so ancient an error or belief. Has the famous capuchin monkey of Esmeralda, the canine teeth of which are more than six lines and a half long, the physiognomy much more like man's than that of the ourang outang, and which, when irritated, rubs its beard with its hand, give rise to the fable of the salvaje? It is not so large indeed as the coaita (simia paniscus); but when seen at the top of a tree, and the head only visible, it might easily be taken for a human being. It may be also (and this opinion appears to me the most probable), that the man of the woods was one of those large bears, the footsteps of which resemble those of a man, and which is believed in every country to attack women. The animal killed in my time at the foot of the mountains of Merida, and sent, by the name of salvaje, to Colonel Ungaro, the governor of the province Varinas, was in fact a bear with black and smooth fur." These extraordinary accounts are succeeded by a detailed history of the Moschettoes of this region; perhaps the most remarkable of all its animal phenomena. "Persons who have not navigated the great rivers of equinoctial America, for instance, the Oroonoko and the Rio Magdalena, can scarcely conceive, how without interruption, at every instant of life, you may be tormented by insects flying in the air, and how the multitude of these little animals may render vast regions wholly uninhabitable. However accustomed you may be to endure pain without complaint, however lively an interest you may take in the objects of your researches, it is impossible not to be constantly disturbed by the moschettoes, zancudoes, jejens and tempraneroes, that cover the face and hands, pierce the clothes with their long sucker in the form of a needle, and, getting into the mouth and nostrils, set you coughing and sneezing whenever you attempt to speak in the open air. In the missions of the Oroonoko, in the villages placed on the banks of the river, surrounded by immense forests, the plaga de las moscas, the plague of the flies, affords an inexhaustible subject of conversation. When two persons meet in the morning, the first questions they address to each other are, 'How did you find the zancudoes during the night? How are we to day for the moschettoes.' These questions remind us of a Chinese form of politeness, which indicates the ancient state of the country where it took birth. Salutations were made heretofore in the celestial empire, in the following words, vou-touhou, 'Have you been incommoded in the night by the serpents?' We shall soon see, that on the banks of the Tuamini, in the river Magdalena, and still more at Choco, the country of gold and platina, the Chinese compliment on the serpents might be added to that of the moschettoes." Other curious facts are recorded, and illustrate this subject. Mr. H. says-- "At Mandavaca we found an old missionary, who told us with an air of sadness, that he bad spent his twenty years of moschettoes in America. He desired us to look well at his legs, that we might be able to tell one day, 'poor alla (beyond sea), what the poor monks suffer in the forests of Cassiquiare.' Every sting leaving a small darkish brown point, his legs were so speckled, that it was difficult to recognize the whiteness of his skin through the spots of coagulated blood. If the insects of the simulium genus abound in the Cassiquiare, which has white waters, the culices, or zancudoes, are so much the more rare; you scarcely find any there, while on the rivers of black waters, in the Atabapo and the Rio Negro, there are generally some zancudoes and no moschettoes. (To be continued). HUMBOLDT'S TRAVELS, (Continued.) Our last number left us in the midst of a swarm of moschettoes, and, however painful it has been to remain a week among these pestiferous insects, there we are still. Proceeding with his anecdotes to illustrate their natural history, our author says: "I have just shown, from my own observations, how much the geographical distribution of venomous insects varies in this labyrinth of rivers with white and black waters. It were to be wished, that a learned entomologist could study on the spot the specific differences of these noxious insects, which in the torrid zone, in spite of their littleness, act an important part in the economy of nature. What appeared to us very remarkable, and is a fact, known to all the missionaries, is, that the different species do not associate together, and that at different hours of the day you are stung by a distinct species. Every time that the scene changes, and to use the simple expression of the missionaries, other insects 'mount guard,' you have a few minutes, often a quarter of an hour, of repose. The insects that disappear have not their places instantly supplied in equal numbers by their successors. From half after six in the morning till five in the afternoon, the air is filled with moschettoes; which have not, as we find related in some travels, the form of our gnats, but that of a small fly. They are simuliums of the family nemocerae of the system of Latreille. Their sting is as painful as that of stomoxes. It leaves a little reddish-brown spot, which is extravasated and coagulated blood, where their proboscis has pierced the skin. An hour before sun-set a species of small gnats, called tempraneros, because they appear also at sun-rise, take the place of the moschettoes. Their presence scarcely lasts an hour and a half; they disappear between six and seven in the evening; or, as they say here, after the Angelus(a la oracion). After a few minutes repose, you feel yourself stung by zancudoes, another species of gnat (culex) with very long legs. The zancudo, the proboscis of which contains a sharp pointed sucker, causes the most acute pain, and a swelling that remains several weeks. Its hum resembles that of our gnats in Europe, but is louder and more prolonged. The Indians pretend to distinguish 'by their song' the zancudoes and the tempraneroes; the latter of which are real twilight insects, while the zancudoes are most frequently nocturnal insects, and disappear towards sun-rise. "The culices of South America, have generally the wings, corselet, and legs of an azure colour, annulated, and variable from a mixture of spots of a metallic lustre. Here, as in Europe, the males, which are distinguished by their feathered antennae, are extremely rare; you are seldom stung except by females. The preponderance of this sex explains the immense increase of the species, each female laying several hundred eggs. In going up one of the great rivers of America, it is observed, that the appearance of a new species of culex denotes the approximity of a new stream flowing in.' "The whites born in the torrid zone walk barefoot with impunity in the same apartment where a European recently landed is exposed to the attack of the niguas or chegoes (pulex penetrans). These animals, almost invisible to the eye, get under the nails of the feet, and there acquire 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. It is not so with the moschettoes. "In the day, even when labouring at the oar, the natives, in order to chase the insects, are continually giving one another smart slaps with the palm of the hand. Rude in all their movements, they strike themselves and their comrades mechanically during their sleep. The violence of their blows reminds us of the Persian tale of the bear, that tried to kill with his paw the insects on the forehead of his sleeping master. Near Maypures we saw some young Indians seated in a circle and rubbing cruelly each others backs with the bark of trees dried at the fire. Indian women were occupied with a degree of patience, of which the copper-coloured race alone are capable, in extirpating by means of a sharp bone the little mass of coagulated blood, that forms the centre of every sting, and gives the skin a speckled appearance. One of the most barbarous nations of the Oroonoko, that of the Otomacs, is acquainted with the use of moschetto curtains (mosquiteros) formed of a tissue of fibres of the palm tree, murichi. We had lately seen, that at Higuerote, on the coast of Caraccas, the people of a copper colour sleep buried in the sand. In the villages of the Rio Magdalena the Indians often invited us to stretch ourselves with them on ox-skins, near the church, in the middle of the plaza grande, where they had assembled all the cows in the neighbourhood. The proximity of cattle give some repose to man. The Indians of the Upper Oroonoko and the Cassiquiare, seeing that Mr. Bonpland could not prepare his herbal, on account of the continual torment of the moschettoes, invited him to enter their ovens, (hornitos). Thus they call little chambers, without doors or windows, into which they creep horizontally through a very small opening. When they have driven away the insects by means of a fire of wet brush-wood, which emits a great deal of smoke, they close the opening of the oven. The absence of moschettoes is purchased dearly enough by the excessive heat of stagnant air, and the smoke of a torch of copal, which lights the oven during your stay in it. Mr. Bonpland, with courage and patience well worthy of praise, dried hundreds of plants, shut up in these hornitos of the Indians. "It is difficult not to smile at hearing the missionaries dispute on the size and voracity of the moschettoes at different parts of the same river. In the centre of a country ignorant of what is passing in the rest of the world, this is the favourite subject of conversation. 'How I pity your situation!' said the missionary of the raudales to the missionary of Cassiquiare, at our departure; 'you are alone, like me, in this country of tigers and monkeys; with you fish is still more rare, and the heat more violent; but as for my flies, (mia moscas) I can boast, that with one of mine I would beat three of yours.' "This voracity of insects in certain spots, the rage with which they attack man, the activity of the venom varying in the same species, are very remarkable facts; which find their analogy, however, in the classes of large animals. The crocodile of Angostura pursues men, while at Nueva Barcelona, in the Rio Neveri, you may bathe tranquilly in the midst of these carnivorous reptiles. The jaguars of Maturin, Cumanacoa, and the isthmus of Panama, are cowardly in comparison to those of the Upper Oroonoko. The Indians well know, that the monkeys of some valleys can easily be tamed, while others of the same species, caught elsewhere, will rather die of hunger, than submit to slavery." "I might have added the example of the scorpion of Cumana, which it is very difficult to distinguish from that of the island of Trinidad, Jamaica, Carthagena, and Guayaquil; yet the former is not more to be feared than the scorpio europaeus (of the south of France), while the latter produces consequences far more alarming than the scorpio occitanus (of Spain and Barbary). At Carthagena and Guayaquil, the sting of the scorpion (alacran) instantly causes the loss of speech. Sometimes a singular torpor of the tongue is observed for fifteen or sixteen hours. The patient, when stung in the legs, stammers as if he had been struck with apoplexy." By this time we fancy our readers are as well acquainted with the habits of the moschettoes, as if they had been bitten by them all over; and further knowledge being unnecessary, we shall advance to other subjects. Above the cataract of Atures, at the mouth of the Rio Calaniapo, Mr. Humboldt gives the following account of an extinct tribe: "We were shown at a distance, on the right of the river, the rocks that surround the cavern of Ataruipe; but we had not time to visit the cemetry of the destroyed tribe of the Atures. We regretted this so much the more, as father Zea was never weary of talking to us of the skeletons painted with anotta, which this cavern contained; of the large vases of baked earth, in which the bones of separate families appeared to be collected; and of many other curious objects, which we proposed to examine at our return from the Rio Negro." At Maypure, higher up, we hear more of the pottery of the Indians: "In every part of the forests, far from any human habitation, on digging the earth, fragments of pottery and delft are found. The taste for this kind of fabrication seems to have been common heretofore to the natives of both Americas. To the north of Mexico,--on the banks of the Rio Galaamong the ruins of an Azteck city--in the United States--near the tumuli of the Miamis; in Florida--and in every place where any trace of ancient civilization could be found, the soil covers fragments of painted pottery; and the extreme resemblances of the ornaments they display is striking. Savage nations, and those civilized people, who are condemned by their political and religious institutions always to imitate themselves, strive, as if by instinct, to perpetuate the same forms, to preserve a peculiar type or style, and to follow the methods and processes which were employed by their ancestors. In North America, fragments of delft have been discovered in places where lines of fortification are found, and the walls of towns constructed by an unknown nation, now entirely extinct. The paintings on these fragments have a great similitude to those which are executed in our days on earthenware by the natives of Louisiana and Florida. Thus too the Indians of Maypure often painted before our eyes the same ornaments as we had observed in the cavern of Ataroipe, on the vases containing human bones. They are real grecques, meandrites, and figures of crocodiles, of monkeys, and of a large qua- druped, which I could not recognize, though it has always the same squat form." Above Maypure this is indeed a "New World,": Mr. Humboldt says:-- "When the traveller has passed the great cataracts, he feels as if he were in a new world; and had overstepped the barriers which nature seems to have raised between the civilized countries of the coast and the savage and unknown interior. Toward the east, in the bluish distance, appeared for the last time, the high chain of the Cunavami mountains. Its long horizontal ridge reminded us of the Mesa of Bergantin, near Cumana; but it terminates by a truncated summit. The peak of Calitamini (the name given to this summit) glows at sun-set as with a reddish fire. This appearance is every day the same. No one ever approached the summit of this mountain, the height of which does not exceed six hundred toises. I believe this splendor, commonly reddish and sometimes silvery, to be a reflexion produced by large plates of talc, or by gneiss passing into mica-slate. The whole of this country contains granitic rocks, on which here and there, in little plains, an argillaceous grit-stone immediately reposes, containing fragments of quartz, and of brown iron ore. "In going to the embarcadere" he continues, "we caught on the trunk of a hevea a new species of tree frog, remarkable for its beautiful colours; it had a yellow belly, the back and head of a fine velvetty purple, and a very narrow stripe of white from the point of the nose to the hinder extremities. This frog was two inches long, and allied to the rana tinctoria, the blood of which, it is asserted, introduced into the skin of a parrot, in places where the feathers have been plucked out, occasions the growth of frizzled feathers of a yellow or red colour. But this is not only the region of real wonders; it has its fictions also. "The forests of Sipapo are altogether unknown, and there the missionaries place the nation of Rayas, who have their mouth in the navel. An old Indian, whom we met at Carichano, and who boasted of having often eaten human flesh, had seen these acephali 'with his own eyes.' These absurd fables are spread as far as the Llanos, where you are not always permitted to doubt the existence of the Raya Indians. In every zone intolerance accompanies credulity; and it might be said, that the fictions of ancient geographers had passed from one hemisphere to the other, did we not know, that the most fantastic productions of the imagination, like the works of nature, furnish every where a certain analogy of aspect and form." humboldt's travels, (Continued.) We cannot, even in the midst of the interesting works which are at present almost daily issuing from the press, do better than continue to devote a page of our Gazette to the agreeable narrative of this enterprising and intelligent traveller. In a preceding paper we have remarked upon the extraordinary degree of general knowledge which he brings to bear on any topic he is illustrating. The following is an admirable example of the truth of this position: "Every hemisphere produces plants of a different species; and it is not by the diversity of climates that we can attempt to explain why equinoctial Africa has no laurineae, and the New World no heaths; why the calceolariae 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. In the vegetable as well as in the animal kingdom, the causes of the distribution of the species are among the number of mysteries, which natural philosophy cannot reach. This science is not occupied in the investigation of the origin of beings, but of the laws according to which they are distributed on the globe. It examines the things that are, the coexistence of vegetable and animal forms in each latitude, at different heights, and at different degrees of temperature; it studies the relations under which particular organizations are more vigorously developed, multiplied, or modified; but it approaches not problems, the solution of which is impossible, since they touch the origin, the first existence of a germe of life. We may add, that the attempts which have been made, to explain the distribution of various species on the globe by the sole influence of climate, date at a period when physical geography was still in its infancy; when, recurring incessantly to pretended contrasts between the two worlds, it was imagined, that the whole of Africa and of America resembled the deserts of Egypt and the marshes of Cayenne. At present, when men judge of the state of things not from one type arbitrarily chosen, but from positive knowledge, it is ascertained, that the two continents, in their immense extent, contain countries that are altogether analogous. There are regions of America as barren and burning as the interior of Africa. The islands that produce the spices of India are scarcely remarkable for their dryness; and it is not on account of the humidity of the climate, as it has been affirmed in recent works, that the New Continent is deprived of those fine species of laurineae and myristicae, which are found united in one little corner of the earth in the Archipelago of India. For some years past, the real cinnamon has been cultivated with success in several parts of the New Continent; and a zone, that produces the coumarouna, the vanilla, the pucheri, the pineapple, the myrtus pimenta, the balsam of tolu, the myroxylon peruvianum, the crotons, the citrosmas, the pejoa, the incienso of the Silla of Caraccas, the quereme, the pancratium, and so many majestic liliaceous plants, cannot be considered as destitute of aromatics. Besides, a dry air favours the developement of the aromatic, or exciting properties, only in certain species of plants. The most cruel poisons are produced in the most humid zone of America; and it is precisely under the influence of the long rains of the tropics, that the American pimento, capsicum baccatum, the fruit of which is often as caustic and fiery as Indian pepper, vegetates best. From the whole of these considerations it follows, 1st, that the New Continent possesses spices, aromatics, and very active vegetable poisons, that are peculiar to itself, differing specifically from those of the ancient world; 2dly, that the primitive distribution of species in the torrid zone cannot be explained by the influence of climate solely, or by the distribution of temperature, which we observe in the present state of our planet; but that this difference of climates leads us to perceive, why a given type of organization developes itself more vigorously in such or such local circumstances. We can conceive, that a small number of the families of plants, for instance the musaceae and the palms, cannot belong to very cold regions, on account of their internal structure and the importance of certain organs; but we cannot explain why no one of the family of melastomas vegetates north of the parallel of thirty degrees, or why no rose-tree belongs to the southern hemisphere. Analogy of climates is often found in the two continents, without identity of productions." Here follow some very curious observations on the difference of colours in rivers, springs, and lakes; but we must pass them, and from the Oroonoko portage our readers across by Pimichin to the Rio Negro, on the frontiert of Brazil. Here is seen in all its majesty the phiguao of pirajao palm. "Its trunk, armed with thorns, is more than sixty feet high; its leaves are pinnated, very thin, undulated, and frizzled towards the points. Nothing is more extraordinary than the fruits of this tree; every cluster contains from fifty to eighty; they are yellow like apples, grow purple in proportion as they ripen, two or three inches thick; and generally, from abortion, without a kernel. Among the eighty or ninety species of palm-trees that are peculiar to the New Continent," adds Mr. H., which I have enumerated in the Nova Genera Plantarum aequinoctialum, there are none in which the sarcocarp is developed in a manner so extraordinary. The fruit of the pirijao furnishes a farinaceous substance, as yellow as the yolk of an egg, slightly saccharine, and extremely nutritious. It is eaten like plantains or potatoes, boiled or roasted in the ashes, and affords an aliment as wholesome as it is agreeable. The Indians and the missionaries are unwearied in their praises of this noble palmtree, which might be called the peach palm, and which we found cultivated in abundance at San Fernando, San Balthasar, Santa Barbara, and wherever we advanced toward the south or the east along the banks of the Atabapo and the Upper Oroonoko. In those wild regions are we involuntarily reminded of the assertion of Linnaeus, that the country of palm-trees was the first abode of our species, and that man is essentially palmivorous. On examining the provision accumulated in the huts of the Indians, we perceive, that their subsistence, during several months of the year, depends as much on the farinaceous fruit of the pirijao, as on the cassava and plantain. The tree bears fruit but once a year, but to the amount of three clusters, consequently from one hundred and fifty, to two hundred fruits." Here, also, is the gigantic bombax (bombax ceila) one of which, as they sailed along, attracted the notice of the travellers, and they landed to measure it. "The height (we are told) was nearly one hundred and twenty feet, and the diameter between fourteen and fifteen. This enormous effort of vegetation surprised us the more, as we had, till then, seen on the banks of the Atabapo, only small trees with slender trunks, which from afar resembled young cherrytrees. The Indians assured us, that these small trees do not form a very extensive group. They are checked in their growth by the inundations of the river; while the dry grounds near the Atabapo, the Temi, and the Tuamini, furnish excellent timber for building." Nor is animal inferior to vegetable life. "The river Atabapo displays everywhere a peculiar aspect; you see nothing of its real banks formed by flat lands eight or ten feet high; they are concealed by a row of palms, and small trees with slender trunks, the roots of which are bathed by the waters. There are many crocodiles from the point where you quit the Oroonoko to the mission of San Fernando, and their presence indicates, as we have said above, that this part of the river belongs to the Rio Guaviare and not to the Atabapo. In the real bed of the latter river, above the mission of San Fernando, there are no longer any crocodiles: we find there some bavas, a great many fresh-water dolphins, but no manatees. We also seek in vain on those banks the thick-nosed tapir, the araguates, or great howling monkeys, the zamuro, or vultur aura, and the crested pheasant, known by the name of guacharaca. Enormous water-snakes, in shape resembling the boa, are unfortunately very common, and are dangerous to Indians who bathe. We saw them almost from the first day, swimming by the side of our canoe; they were at most twelve or fourteen feet long. The jaguars of the banks of the Atabapo and the Temi are large and well fed; they are said, however, to be less daring than the jaguars of the Orinoco." Thus (as we have stated), interspersed with anecdote, does Mr. Humboldt vary his entertaining volumes; and that our review may partake of the character of its subject, we shall conclude the present division of it by copying a very affecting story. Where the Atabapo enters the Rio Temi, the narrative says: "Before we reached its confluence,a granitic hummock, that rises on the western bank, near the mouth of the Guasacavi, fixed our attention; it is called the Rock of the Guahiba woman, or the Rock of the Mother, Piedra de la Madre. We inquired the cause of so singular a denomination. Father Zea could not satisfy our curiosity; but some weeks after, another missionary, one of the predecessors of that ecclesiastic, whom we found settled at San Fernando as president of the missions, related to us an event, which 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 a savage, and the barbarism of civilized man! "In 1797 the missionary of San Fernando had led his Indians to the banks of the Rio Guaviare, on one of those hostile incursions which are prohibited alike by religion and the Spanish laws. They found in an Indian hut, a Guahiba woman with three children, two of whom were still infants. They were occupied in preparing the flour of Cassava. Resistance was impossible; the father was gone to fish, and the mother tried in vain to flee with her children. Scarcely had she reached the savannah, when she was seized by the Indians of the mission, who go to hunt men, like the whites and the negroes in Africa. The mother and her children were bound, and dragged to the bank of the river. The monk, seated in his boat, waited the issue of an expedition, of which he partook not the danger. Had the mother made too violent a resistance, the Indians would have killed her, for every thing is permitted when they go to the conquest of souls (a la conquista espiritual), and it is children in particular they seek to capture, in order to treat them, in the mission, as poitos, or slaves of the Christians. The prisoners were carried to San Fernando in the hope, that the mother would be unable to find her way back to her home, by land. Far from those children who had accompanied their father on the day in which she had been carried off, this unhappy woman showed signs of the deepest despair. She attempted to take back to her family the children who had been snatched away by the missionary, and fled with them repeatedly from the village of San Fernando, but the Indians never failed to seize her anew; and the missionary, after having caused her to be mercilessly beaten, took the cruel resolution of separating the mother from the two children, who had been carried off with her. She was conveyed alone toward the missions of the Rio Negro, going up the Atabapo. Slightly bound, she was seated at the bow of the boat, ignorant of the fate that awaited her; but she judged, by the direction of the sun, that she was removed farther and farther from her hut and her native country. She succeeded in breaking her bonds, threw herself into the water, and swam to the left bank of the Atabapo. The current carried her to a shelf of rock, which bears her name to this day. She landed, and took shelter in the woods, but the president of the missions ordered the Indians to row to the shore, and follow the traces of the Guahibi. In the evening she was brought back. Stretched upon the rock (la Piedra de la Madre) a cruel punishment was inflicted on her with those straps of manatee leather, which serve for whips in that country, and with which the alcades are always furnished. This unhappy woman, her hands tied behind her back with strong stalks of mavacure, was then dragged to the mission of Javita. "She was there thrown into one of the caravanseras that are called Casas del Rey. It was the rainy season, and the night was profoundly dark. Forests, till then believed to be impenetrable, separated the mission of Javita from that of San Fernando, which was twenty-five leagues distant in a straight line. No other route is known than that of the rivers; no man ever attempted to go by land from one village to another, were they only a few leagues apart. But such difficulties could not stop a mother, who is separated from her children. Her children are at San Fernando de Atabapo; she must find them again, she must execute her project of delivering them from the hands of Christians, of bringing them back to their father on the banks of the Guaviare. The Guahibi was carelessly guarded in the caravansera. Her arms being wounded, the Indians of Javita had loosened her bonds, unknown to the missionary and the alcades. She succeeded by the help of her teeth in breaking them entirely; disappeared during the night; and at the fourth rising sun was seen at the mission of San Fernando, hovering around the hut where her children were confined. 'What that woman performed,' added the missionary who gave us this sad narrative, 'the most robust Indian would not have ventured to undertake. She traversed the woods at a season when the sky is constantly covered with clouds, and the sun during whole days appears but for a few minutes. Did the course of the waters direct her way? The inundations of the rivers forced her to go far from the banks of the main stream, through the midst of woods where the movement of the waters is almost imperceptible. How often must she have been stopped by the thorny lianas, that form a network around the trunks they entwine? How often must she have swum across the rivulets, that run into the Atabapo! This unfortunate woman was asked how she had sustained herself during four days! She said, that, exhausted with fatigue, she could find no other nourishment than those great black ants called vachacos, which climb the trees in long bands, to suspend on them their resinous nests.' We pressed the missionary to tell us, whether the Guahibi 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. There she died, refusing all kind of nourishment, as savages do in great calamities. "Such is the remembrance annexed to this fatal rock, to Piedra de la Madre." humboldt's travels, (Continued.) This journal is so pregnant with instructive and interesting matter, that we could hardly, as we think, place any thing better before our readers, though we might be more instant with a greater variety of novelty. We therefore continue our extracts. The following is a curious account of the Indian Rubber:--"Here (says Mr. H. at the mission of St. Balthasar on the Atobapo) we saw, for the first time, that white and fungous substance, which I have made known by the name of dapicho and zapis. We immediately perceived, that it was analogous to the elastic resin; but, as the Indians made us understand by signs, that it was found under ground, we were inclined to think, till we arrived at the mission of Javita, that the dapicho was a fossil caoutchouc, though different from the elastic bitumen of Derbyshire. A Poimisano Indian, seated by the fire, in the hut of the missionary, was employed in reducing the dapicho into black caoutchouc. He had spitted several bits on a slender stick, and was roasting them like meat. The dapicho blackens in proportion as it grows softer, and gains in elasticity. The resinous and aromatic smell, which filled the hut, seemed to indicate, that this coloration is the effect of the decomposition of a carburet of hydrogen, and that the carbon appears in proportion as the hydrogen burns at a low heat. The Indian beat the softened and blackened mass with a piece of brazil wood, ending in form of a club; he then kneaded the dapicho into balls of three or four inches in diameter, and let it cool. These balls exactly resemble the caoutchouc of the shops, but their surface remains in general slightly viscous. They are used at San Balthasar in the Indian game of tennis, which is so celebrated among the inhabitants of Uruana and Encaramada; they are cut into cylinders, to be used as corks, and are far preferable to those made of the bark of the cork-tree." Soon after, the travellers obtained precise information respecting this substance:-- it was shown them at the depth of two or three feet, in a marshy soil, "between the roots of two trees known by the name of the jacio and the curvana. The first is the hevea of Aublet, or siphonia of the modern botanists, known to furnish the caoutchouc of commerce in Cayenne and the Grand Para; the second has pinnate leaves, and its juice is milky, but very thin, and almost destitute of viscosity. The dapicho appears to be the result of an extravasation of the sap from the roots. This extravasation takes place more especially when the trees have attained agreat age, and the interior of the trunk begins to decay. The bark and alburnum crack; and thus is effected naturally, what the art of man performs to collect in abundance the milky juices of the hevea, the castilloa, and the caoutchouc fig tree." The River Temi, near the banks of which this production is found in sufficient quantities to supply all Europe, runs through forests which overshadow it in so wild and luxuriant a manner as almost to mingle together the creatures of the several elements of air, earth, and water, and realize the classic images: Saeculum Pyrrhae, nova monstra questae; Omne quum Proteus pecus egit altos Visere montes; Piscium et summa genus haesit ulmo, Nota quae sedes fuerat Columbis, Et superjecto pavidae natarunt AEquore damae. "The Indians (says Mr. H.) made us leave the bed of the river; and we went up toward the south, across the forest, through paths (sendas), that is, through open channels of four or five feet broad. The depth of the water seldom exceeds half a fathom. These sendas are formed in the inundated forest-like paths on dry ground. The Indians, in going from one mission to another, pass with their boats as much as possible by the same way; but the communications not being frequent, the force of vegetation sometimes produces unexpected obstacles. An Indian, furnished with a machette (a great knife, the blade of which is fourteen inches long,) stood at the head of our boat, employed continually in chopping off the branches that cross each other from the two sides of the channel. In the thickest part of the forest we were astonished by an extraordinary noise. On beating the bushes, a shoal of toninas (fresh water dolphins) four feet long, surrounded our boat. These animals had concealed themselves beneath the branches of a fromager or bombax ceiba. They fled across the forest, throwing out those spouts of compressed air and water, which have given them in every language the name of blowers. How singular was this spectacle in the middle of the land, three or four hundred leagues from the mouths of the Oroonoko and the Amazon! I am not ignorant, that the pleuronectes of the Atlantic go up the Loire as far as Orleans; but I persist in thinking, that the dolphins of the Temi, like those of the Ganges, and like the skate (raia) of the Oroonoko, are of species essentially different from the dolphins and skates of the ocean. In the immense rivers of South America, and the great lakes of North America, nature seems to repeat several pelagic forms. The Nile has no porpoises: those of the sea go up the Delta no farther than Biana and Metonbis toward Selamoun." But these fishes among the woods, though the most singular, were not the most ungrateful of the animal creation to the startled Europeans. About this region they had to stop to be cured of an evil under which they suffered for two days. The author thus describes it:--"We felt an extraordinary irritation on the joints of our fingers, and on the backs of our hands. The missionary told us it was caused by the aradores, (ploughman insects), which get under the skin. We could distinguish with a lens nothing but streaks, or parallel and whitish furrows. It is the form of these furrows, that has obtained this insect the name of ploughman. A mulatto woman was sent for, who boasted of being thoroughly acquainted with all the little insects that burrow in the human skin; the chego, the nuche, the coya, and the arador; she was the curandera, the physician of the place. She promised to extirpate the insects, that caused this smarting irritation, one by one. She heated at a lamp the point of a little bit of hard wood, and dug with this point the furrows that marked the skin. After long researches, she announced with the pedantic gravity peculiar to the mulatto race, that an arador was found. I saw a little round bag, which I suspected to be the egg of an acarus. I was to find relief, when the mulatto woman had succeeded in taking out three or four of these aradores. Having the skin of both hands filled with acari, I had not the patience to wait the end of an operation, which had already lasted till late at night. The next day an Indian of Javita cured us radically, and with surprising promptitude."--The medicament consisted of an infusion of shrub called uzao. The annexed notice of the religious opinions of the natives has something very sublime in it:--"The nations of the Upper Oroonoko, the Atabapo, and the Inirida, like the ancient Germans and the Persians, have no other worship than that of the powers of nature. They call the good principle Cachimana; it is the Manitou, the Great Spirit, that regulates the seasons, and favours the harvests. By the side of Cachimana there is an evil principle, Iolokiamo, less powerful, but more artful, and in particular more active. The Indians of the forest, when they visit occasionally the missions, conceive with difficulty the idea of a temple or an image. "These good people, said the missionary, "like only processions in the open air. When I last celebrated the patron festival my village, that of San Antonio, 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.'" Among the more numerous, and on this account less barbarous tribes, religious societies of a singular kind are formed. Some old Indians pretend to be better instructed than others in what regards the divinity; and to them is confined the famous botuto, of which I have spoken, and which is sounded under the palm-trees, that they may bear abundance of fruit. On the banks of the Oroonoko there exists no idol, as among all the nations who have remained faithful to the first worship of nature, but the botuto, the sacred trumpet, is become an object of veneration. To be initiated into the mysteries of the botuto, it is requisite to have pure manners, and to have lived single. The initiated are subjected to flagellations, fastings, and other painful exercises. There are but a small number of these sacred trumpets. The most anciently celebrated is that upon a hill near the confluence of the Tomo and the Guainia. It is pretended, that it is heard at once on the banks of the Tuamini, and at the mission of San Miguel de Davipe, a distance of ten leagues. Father Cereso assured us, that the Indians speak of the botuto of Tomo as an object of worship common to many surrounding tribes. Fruit and intoxicating liquors are placed by the sacred trumpet. Sometimes the Great Spirit (Cuchimana) himself makes the botuto resound; sometimes he is content to manifest his will by him, to whom the keeping of the instrument is entrusted. These juggleries being very ancient (from the fathers of our fathers, say the Indians), we must not be surprised, that some incredulous are already to be found; but these express their disbelief of the mysteries of the botuto only in whispers. Women are not permitted to see this marvellous instrument; and are excluded from all the ceremonies of this worship. If a woman have the misfortune to see the trumpet, she is put to death without mercy." (To be continued.) humboldt's personal narrative. M. Humboldt relates some remarkable particulars concerning the serpents in South America, and the following will show to what perils, from them, the traveller is exposed. On taking up a night's lodging, we are told --" Before we took possession of the deserted hut, the Indians killed two great mapanare serpents. These grow to four or five feet long. They appeared to me to be the same species as those I described in the Rio Magdalena. It is a beautiful animal, but extremely venomous, white below the belly, and spotted with brown and red on the back. As the inside of the hut was filled with grass, and as we lay upon the ground, there being no means of suspending our hammocks, we were not without inquietude during the night. In the morning a large viper was found on lifting up from the ground the jaguar skin, upon which one of our domestics had slept. The Indians say, that these reptiles, slow in their movements when they are not pursued, creep near a man because they are fond of heat. In fact, on the banks of the Magdalena a serpent entered the bed of one of our fellow travellers, where he remained a part of the night, without doing him any harm. Without wishing here to take up the defence of vipers and rattlesnakes, I believe it may be affirmed, that, if these venomous animals had such a disposition for offence as is supposed, the human species would certainly not have resisted their numbers in some parts of America; for instance, on the banks of the Oroonoko, and the humid mountains of Choco." After this the wanderers entered the Rio Negro, and the view here taken is both geographically good and morally affecting. --"After all we had endured (observes our interesting author), I may be permitted, perhaps, to speak of the satisfaction we felt 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 voyage, the determining astronomically the course of that arm of the Oroonoko, which falls into the Rio Negro, and of which the existence has been alternately proved and denied during half a century. In proportion as we draw near to an object we have long had in view, its interest seems to augment. The uninhabited banks of the Cassiquiare, covered with forests, without memorials of times past, then occupied my imagination, as do now the banks of the Euphrates, or the Oxus, celebrated in the annals of civilized nations. In that interior part of the New Continent we almost accustomed ourselves to regard men as not being essential to the order of nature. The earth is loaded with plants, and nothing impedes their free developement. An immense layer of mould manifests the uninterrupted action of organic powers. The crocodiles and the boas are masters of the river; the jaguar, the pecari, the dante, and the monkeys, traverse the forest without fear, and without danger; there they dwell as in an ancient inheritance. This aspect of animated nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange and sad. To this we reconcile ourselves with difficulty on the ocean, and amid the sands of Africa; though in these scenes, where nothing recalls to mind our 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 impressions are so much the more powerful, in proportion as they are of longer duration. A soldier, who had spent his whole life in the missions of the Upper Oroonoko, slept with us on the bank of the river. He was an intelligent man, who, during a calm and serene night, pressed me with questions on the magnitude of the stars, on the inhabitants of the Moon, on a thousand subjects of which I was as ignorant as himself. Being unable, by my answers, to satisfy his curiosity, he said to me in a firm tone: 'With respect to men, I believe there are no more above, than you would have found, if you had gone by land from Javita to Cassiquiare. I think I see in the stars, as here, a plain covered with grass, and a forest (mucho monte) traversed by a river.' In citing these words, I paint the impression produced by the monotonous aspect of those solitary regions." We have now conducted our readers to the 8th book, and, though this notice is very brief, find this a convenient place to rest for the present. humboldt's personal narrative. Vol. V. Part II. Indian Poisons--Festivals--Roasted Monkeys-- Music A few weeks since, when this addition to the valuable labours of M. Humboldt appeared, we paid it that immediate attention which a work so replete with information demanded; and having conducted our readers through one of the two 8vo. vols. into which it is divided, we left the second for a future convenient opportunity. That opportunity the autumnal sterility of the press affords us, and we return with pleasure to an author than whom the present period does not possess one more full of entertainment and intelligence, though addicted in too great a degree to the formation of general systems, and given to too much technicality of expression. Without retracing, to connect our statements, we will beg our readers to plant themselves at Esmeralda, on the Upper Oroonoko, the most solitary and remote Christian settlement in those regions. Here there is a bifurcation of the river, and the granitic mountain of Duida rises to the height of nearly 8,000 feet. The mission contains about eighty inhabitants, and yet no fewer than three Indian languages are spokenthe Idapimanare, the Catarapenno, and the Maquiritan. "Esmeralda, (says M. H.) is the most celebrated spot on the Oroonoko for the fabrication of that active poison which is employed in war, in the chase, and, what is singular enough, as a remedy for gastric obstructions. The poison of the ticunas of the Amazon, the upas-tieute of Java, and the curare of Guyana, are the most deleterious substances that are known. Raleigh, toward the end of the sixteenth century, had heard the name of urari pronounced as being a vegetable substance, with which arrows were envenomed; yet no fixed notions of this poison had reached Europe. The missionaries Gumilla and Gili had not been able to penetrate into the country where the curare is manufactured. Gumilla asserts that 'this preparation was inveloped in great mystery; that its principal ingredient was furnished by a subterraneous plant, by a tuberose root, which never puts forth leaves, and which is called the root, by way of eminence, raiz de si misma; that the venomous exhalations, which arise from the pots, cause the old women (the most useless) to perish, who are chosen to watch over this operation; finally, that these vegetable juices never appear sufficiently concentrated, till a few drops produce at a distance a repulsive action on the blood. An Indian wounds himself slightly; and a dart dipped in the liquid curare is held near the wound. If it make the blood return to the vessels without having been brought into contact with them, the poison is judged to be sufficiently concentrated.' I shall not stop to refute these popular tales collected by Father Gumilla. "When we (he continues) arrived at Esmeralda, the greater part of the Indians were returning from an excursion which they had made to the east beyond the Rio Padamo, to gather juvias, or the fruit of the bertholletia, and the liana which yields the curare. Their return was celebrated by a festival, which is called in the Mission la fiesta de las juvias, and which resembles our harvest homes and vintage feasts. The women had prepared a quantity of fermented liquor, and during two days the Indians were in a state of intoxication. Among nations that attach great importance to the fruits of the palmtrees, and of some others useful for the nourishment of man, the period when these fruits are gathered is marked by public rejoicings, and time is divided according to these festivals, which succeed one another in a course invariably the same. We were fortunate enough to find an old Indian less drunk than the rest, who was employed in preparing the curare poison from freshly-gathered plants. He was the chemist of the place. We found at his dwelling large earthen pots for boiling vegetable juice, shallower vessels to favour the evaporation by a larger surface, and leaves of the plaintain-tree rolled up in the shape of our filters, and used to filtrate the liquids more or less loaded with fibrous matter. The greatest order and neatness prevailed in this hut, which was transformed into a chemical laboratory. The Indian who was to instruct us, is known throughout the mission by the name of the master of poison (amo del curare); he had that self-sufficient air and tone of pedantry, of which the pharmacopolists of Europe were formerly accused. 'I know,' said he, 'that the whites have the secret of fabricating soap, and that black powder, which has the defect of making a noise, and killing animals, when they are wanted. The curare, which we prepare from father to son, is superior to any thing you can make down yonder (beyond sea). It is the juice of an herb which kills silently (without any one knowing whence the stroke comes).' "This chemical operation, to which the master of the curare attached so much importance, appears to us extremely simple. The liana (bejuco), which is used at Esmeralda for the preparation of the poison, bears the same name as in the forests of Javita. It is the bejuco de mavacure, which is gathered in abundance east of the mission, on the left bank of the Oroonoko, beyond the Rio Amaguaca, in the mountainous and granatic lands of Guanaya and Yumariquin. "The juice of the liana, when it has been recently gathered, is not regarded as poisonous; perhaps it acts in a sensible manner only when it is strongly concentrated. It is the bark and a part of the alburnum, which contains this terrible poison.-- Branches of the mavacure four or five lines in diameter, are scraped with a knife; and the bark that comes off is bruised, and reduced into very thin filaments, on the stone employed for grinding cassava. The venomous juice being yellow, the whole fibrous mass takes this colour. It is thrown into a funnel nine inches high, with an opening four inches wide. This funnel was, of all the instruments of the Indian laboratory, that of which the master of poison seemed to be most proud. He asked us repeatedly, if por alla (down yonder, that is in Europe) we had ever seen any thing to be compared to his empudo. It was a leaf of a plaintaintree rolled up in the form of a cone, and placed in another stronger cone made of the leaves of the palm-tree. The whole of this apparatus was supported by slight framework made of the petioli and ribs of palmleaves. A cold infusion is first prepared by pouring water on the fibrous matter, which is the ground bark of the mavacure. A yellowish water filters during several hours, drop by drop, through the leafy funnel. This filtered water is the venomous liquor, but it acquires strength only when it is concentrated by evaporation, like melasses in a large earthen pot. The Indian from time to time invited us to taste the liquid; its taste, more or less bitter, decides when the concentration by fire has been carried sufficiently far. There is no danger in this operation, the curare being deleterious only when it comes into immediate contact with the blood. The vapours, therefore, that are disengaged from the pans, are not hurtful, notwithstanding what has been asserted on this point by the missionaries of the Oroonoko. Fontana, in his fine experiments on the poison of the ticunas of the river of Amazons, long ago proved, that the vapours rising from this poison when thrown on burning charcoal, may be inhaled without apprehension; and that it is false as M. de la Condamine has announced, that Indian women, when condemned to death, have been killed by the vapours of the poison of the ticunas." The juice is thickened with a glutinous substance to cause it to stick to the darts, which it renders mortal; but taken internally, the Indians consider the curare to be an excellent stomachic. "Scarcely a fowl is eaten (adds our author,) on the banks of the Oroonoko, which has not been killed with a poisoned arrow. The missionaries pretend, that the flesh of animals is never so good as when these means are employed. Father Zea, who accompanied us, though ill of a tertian fever, caused every morning the live fowl allotted for our repast to be brought to his hammock, together with an arrow. Notwithstanding his habitual state of weakness, he would not confide this operation, to which he attached great importance, to any other person. Large birds, a guan (pava de monte) for instance, or a curassoa (alector), when wounded in the thigh, perish in two or three minutes; but it is often ten or twelve before a pig or a pecari expires." M. Humboldt does not seem to be acquainted with any certain antidote, if such exists, to this fatal poison. Sugar, garlick, the muriate of soda, &c. are mentioned doubtingly. In London, some very curious experiments were tried on animals, somewhat resembling those used to restore suspended animation by drowning. By keeping up a constant motion of the lungs (by inflation with bellows and expiration through pressure), for many hours, it was supposed that the creature apparently killed by the curare would revive: we are not informed whether the operation ever succeeded, but we believe that several dead horses and asses refused to come to life again! But to return to the narrative. "The old Indian, who was called the master of poison, seemed flattered by the interest we had taken in his chemical processes. He found us sufficiently intelligent to have no doubt that we knew how to make soap, and, next to the fabrication of curare, this art appeared to him one of the finest inventions of the human mind. When the liquid poison was poured into the vessels prepared for this purpose, we accompanied the Indian to the festival of the juvias. The harvest of juvias, or fruits of the bertholletia excelsa, was celebrated by dancing, and the excesses of the most savage intoxication. The hut, where the natives were assembled, displayed, during several days, a very singular aspect. There was neither table nor bench, but large roasted monkeys, blackened by smoke, were ranged in order, resting against the wall. These were the marimondes (ateles belzebuth), and those bearded monkeys called capuchins, which must not be confounded with the weeper, or sai (simia capucina of Buffon). The manner of roasting these anthropomorphous animals contributes singularly to render their appearance disagreeable in the eyes of civilized man. A little grating or lattice of very hard wood is formed, and raised one foot from the ground. The monkey is skinned, and bent into a sitting posture; the head generally resting on the arms, which are meagre and long; but sometimes these are crossed behind the back. When it is tied on the grating, a very clear fire is kindled below. The monkey, enveloped in smoke and flame, is broiled and blackened at the same time. On seeing the natives devour the arm or leg of a roasted monkey, it is difficult not to believe, that this habit of eating animals, that so much resemblese man in their physical organization, has, in a certain degree, contributed to diminish the horror of anthropophagy among savages. Roasted monkeys, particularly those that have a very round head, display a hideous resemblance to a child; the Europeans therefore, who are obliged to feed on quadrumanes, prefer separating the head and the hands, and serve up only the rest of the animal at their tables. The flesh of monkeys is so lean and dry, that Mr. Bonpland has preserved in his collections at Paris an arm and hand, which had been broiled over the fire at Esmeralda; and no smell has arisen from them after a great number of years. "We saw the Indians dance. The monotony of this dance is increased by the women not daring to take part in it. The men, young and old, form a circle, holding each other's hands, and turn sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, for whole hours, with silent gravity. Most frequently the dancers themselves are the musicians. Feeble sounds, drawn from a series of reeds of different lengths, form a slow and plaintive accompaniment. The first dancer, to mark the time, bends both knees in a kind of cadence. Sometimes they all make a pause in their places, and execute little oscillatory movements, bending the body from one side to the other. These reeds ranged in a line, and fastened together, resemble the pipe of Pan, as we find it represented in the bacchanalian processions on Grecian vases. To unite reeds of different lengths, and make them sound in succession by passing them before the lips, is a simple idea, and has naturally presented itself to every nation. We were surprised to see with what promptitude the young Indians constructed and tuned these pipes, when they found reeds (carices) on the bank of the river. Men, in a state of nature, in every zone, make great use of these gramina with high stalks. The Greeks said with truth, that reeds had contributed to subjugate nations by furnishing arrows, to soften men's manners by the charm of music, and to unfold their understanding by affording the first instruments for tracing letters. These different uses of reeds mark in some sort three different periods in the life of nations. We must admit, that the tribes of the Oroonoko are in the first step of dawning civilization. The reed serves them only as an instrument of war and of hunting; and the Pan's pipes, of which we have spoken, have not yet, on those distant shores, yielded sounds capable of awakening mild and humane feelings." M.H. gives an interesting account of the Juvia, (chesnut-trees,) the harvested fruits of which cause the natives to rejoice so much; but there is another tree, the character of which is still more curious. It is thus described:-- "We saw on the slope of the Cerra Duida shirt trees fifty feet high. The Indians cut off cylindrical pieces two feet in diameter, from which they peel the red and fibrous bark, without making any longitudical incision. This bark affords them a sort of garment, which resembles sacks of a very coarse texture, and without a seam. The upper opening serves for the head; and two lateral holes are cut to admit the arms. The natives wear these shirts of marima in the rainy season: they have the form of the ponchos and ruanas of cotton, which are so common in New Grenada, at Quito, and in Peru. As in these climates the riches and beneficence of Nature are regarded as the primary causes of the indolence of the inhabitants, the missionaries do not fail to say in showing the shirts of marima, 'in the forests of the Oroonoko, garments are found ready made on the trees.' We may add to this tale of the shirts the pointed caps, which the spathes of certain palm-trees furnish, and which resemble coarse network. "At the festival of which we were the spectators, the women were excluded from the dance, and every sort of public rejoicing; they were daily occupied in serving the men with roasted monkey, fermented liquors, and palm cabbage. I mention this last production, which has the taste of our cauliflowers, because in no other country had we seen specimens of such an immense size. The leaves that are not unfolded are confounded with the young stem, and we measured cylinders of six feet long and five inches in diameter. Another substance, which is much more nutritive, is obtained from the animal kingdom: this is fish flour. The Indians in all the Upper Oroonoko fry fish, dry them in the sun, and reduce them to powder without separating the bones. I have seen masses of fifty or sixty pounds of this flour, which resembles that of cassava. When it is wanted for eating, it is mixed with water, and reduced to a paste. In every climate the abundance of fish has led to the invention of the same means of preserving them. Pliny and Diodorus Siculus have described the fish bread of the ichthyophagous nations, that dwelt on the Persian gulf, and the shores of the Red Sea." (To be Continued.) humboldt's personal narrative. Dwarf and Fair Indians.--Jaguars.--The Tomb of a Nation! THE following extract from our interesting traveller refers to a subject of much remarkable speculation:-- "I shall here proceed to give some information respecting the tribes of dwarf and fair Indians, which ancient traditions placed for centuries near the sources of the Oroonoko. I had an opportunity of seeing some of these Indians at Esmeralda, and can affirm, that the shortness of the Guaicas, and the fairness of the Guahariboes, whom Father Caulin calls Guaribos blancos, have been alike exaggerated. The Guaicas, whom I measured, were in general from four feet seven inches to four feet eight inches high (ancienct measure of France). We were assured, that the whole tribe were of this extreme littleness; but we must not forget, that what is called a tribe constitutes, properly speaking, but one family. The exclusion of all foreign mixture contributes to perpetuate varieties, or the aberrations from a common standard. The Indians of the lowest stature next to the Guaicas are the Guainares and the Poignaves. It is singular, that all these nations are found close to the Caribbees, who are remarkably tall. They all inhabit the same climate, and subsist on the same aliment. They are varieties in the race, which no doubt existed previously to the settlement of these tribes, (tall and short, fair and dark brown) in the same country. The four nations of the Upper Oroonoko, that appeared to me to be the fairest, are the Guahariboes of the Rio Gehette, the Guainares of the Ocamo, the Guaicas of Canno Chiguire, and the Maquiritares of the sources of the Padamo, the Jao, and the Ventuari. It being very striking to see natives with a fair skin beneath a burning sky, and amid nations of a very dark hue, the Spaniards have forged two daring hypotheses, in order to explain this phenomenon. Some assert, that the Dutch of Surinam and the Rio Esquibo may have intermingled with the Guahariboes and the Guainares; others insist, from hatred to the Capuchins of the Carony, and the Observantins of the Oroonoko, that the fair Indians are what are called in Dalmatia muso di frate, children whose legitimacy is somewhat doubtful. In both cases the Indios blancos would be mestizoes, sons of an Indian woman and a white man. Now, having seen thousands of mestizoes, I can assert that this comparison is altogether inaccurate. The individuals of the fair tribes, whom we examined, have the features, the stature, and the smooth, straight, black hair, which characterizes other Indians. It would be impossible to take them for a mixed race, like the descendants of natives and Europeans. Some of these people are very little, others of the ordinary stature of the copper-coloured Indians. They are neither feeble, nor sickly, nor albinoes; and they differ from the copper-coloured races only by a much less tawny skin." * * * "These tribes with a fair complexion, which we had an opportunity of seeing at the mission of Esmeralda, inhabit part of a mountainous country, that extends between the sources of six tributary streams of the Oroonoko, the Padamo, the Jao, the Ventuari, the Erevato, the Aruy, and the Paraguay. The Spanish and Portugueze missionaries have the custom of designating this country more particularly by the name of Parima. Here, as in several other countries of Spanish America, the savages have reconquered what had been wrested from them by civilization, or rather by its precursors, the missionaries. The expedition of the boundaries under Solano, and the extravagant zeal displayed by a governor of Guiana for the discovery of Dorado, revived in the latter half of the eighteenth century, in some individuals, that spirit of enterprise, which characterized the Castilians at the period of the discovery of America. In going along the Rio Padamo, a road was observed across the forests and savannahs ten days journey long, from Esmeralda to the sources of the Ventuari; and in two days more, from these sources, by the Erevato, the missions on the Rio Caura were reached. Two intelligent and daring men, don Antonio Santos and Captain Bareto, had established, with the aid of the Maquiritares, a chain of military posts on this line from Esmeralda to the Rio Erevato. They were houses of two stories (casas fuertes), mounted with swivels, such as I have described above, which figured as nineteen villages on the maps published at Madrid. The soldiers, left to themselves, exercised all kinds of vexations on the natives (Indians of peace), who had cultivated spots around the casas fuertes; and these vexations being less methodical, that is to say, worse contrived, than those to which the Indians are by degrees accustomed in the missions, several tribes formed a league, in 1776, against the Spaniards. All the military posts were attacked on the same night, on a line of nearly fifty leagues in length. The houses were burnt, and many soldiers massacred; a very small number only owing their preservation to the pity of the Indian women. This nocturnal expedition is still mentioned with horror. Concerted in the deepest silence, it was executed with that concert, which the natives of both Americas, skilful in concealing their hostile passions, well know how to practise in whatever concerns their common interests. Since 1776 no attempt has been made to re-establish the road, which leads by land from the Upper to the Lower Oroonoko, and no white man has been able to pass from Esmeralda to the Erevato." In May, M. Humboldt and his companion left Esmeralda, and proceeded down the Oroonoko to the point of bifurcation. Here, says the author, "the cries of the jaguars were heard during the whole night. They are very extremely frequent in those countries, between the Cerro Maraguaca, the Unturan, and the banks of the Pamoni. There also is found that black tiger, of which I saw some fine skins at Esmeralda. This animal is celebrated for its strength and ferocity; it appears to be still larger than the common jaguar. The black spots are scarcely visible on the dark-brown ground of its skin. The Indians assert, that these tigers are very rare, never mingle with the common jaguars, and 'form another race.'" "This frequency of large jaguars is somewhat remarkable in a country destitute of cattle. The tigers of the Upper Oroonoko lead a wretched life in comparison of those of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres and the Llanos of Caraccas, covered with herds of cattle. More than four thousand jaguars are killed annually in the Spanish colonies, several of them equalling the mean size of the royal tiger of Asia. Two thousand skins of jaguars were formerly exported annually from Buenos Ayres alone; they are called by the furriers of Europe skins of the great panther." "Gmelin, in his Synonima, seems to confound this animal by the name of felis discolor with the great American lion, felis concolor, which is very different from the little lion (puma) of the Andes of Quito. (Lin. Syst. Nat. vol.i. p. 79. Cuvier, Regnc animal, vol. i. p. 160.)" Descending still farther down the Oroonoko, the travellers passed the rivers Cunucunumo, Guanami, and Puruname. Here, as elsewhere in Guayana, rude figures, representing the sun, the moon, and various animals, are traced on the hardest rocks of granite, and attest the anterior existence of a people very different from those known to Europe as inhabitants of these parts. "The nations of the Tamanac race, the ancient inhabitants of those countries, have a local mythology, and traditions which relate to these sculptured rocks. Amalivaca, the father of the Tamanacs, that is, the creator of the human race, (for every nation regards itself as the root of the other nations,) arrived in a bark at the time of the great inundation, which is called the age of water, when the billows of the ocean broke against the mountains of Encamarada in the interior of the land. All mankind, or, to express myself better, all the Tamanacs, were drowned, with the exception of one man and one woman, who saved themselves on a mountain near the banks of the Asiveru, called Cuchivero by the Spaniards. This mountain is the Ararat of the Aramean or Semitic nations, and the Tlaloc or Colhuacan of the Mexicans. Amalivaca, sailing in his bark, engraved the figures of the moon and the sun on the Painted rock (Tepumereme) of Encaramada. Some blocks of granite piled upon one another, and forming a kind of cavern, are still called the house or dwelling of the great forefather of the Tamanacs. The natives show also a large stone near this cavern, in the plains of Maita, which they say was an instrument of music, the drum of Amalivaca. We must here observe, that this heroic personage had a brother, Vochi, who helped him to give the surface of the earth its present form. The Tamanacs relate, that the two brothers, in their system of perfectibility, sought at first to arrange the Oroonoko in such a manner, that the current of the water could always be followed either going down or going up the river. They hoped by this means to spare men the trouble of rowing in proceeding toward the source of rivers; but, however great the power of these regenerators of the world, they could never contrive to give a double slope to the Oroonoko, and were compelled to relinquish this singular plan. Amalivaca had daughters, who had a decided taste for travelling. The tradition says, no doubt in a figurative style, that he broke their legs, to render them sedentary, and force them to people the land of the Tamanacs. After having regulated every thing in America, on that side of the great water, Amalivaca again embarked, and 'returned to the other shore,' to the same place from which he came. Since the natives have seen the Missionaries arrive, they imagine, that Europe is this other shore; and one of them inquired with great simplicity of father Gili, whether he had seen the great Amalivaca yonder, the father of the Tamanacs, who had covered the rocks with symbolic figures." Still lower down the great river, M. Humboldt visited the cavern of Ataruipe, of which he gives the following curious account:-- "We soon reckoned in this tomb of a whole extinct tribe near six hundred skeletons well preserved, and so regularly placed, that it would have been difficult to make an error in their number. Ever skeleton reposes in a sort of basket, made of the petioles of the palm-tree. These baskets, which the natives call mapires, have the form of a square bag. Their size is proportioned to the age of the dead; there are some for infants cut off at the moment of their birth. We saw them from ten inches to three feet four inches long, the skeletons in them being bent together. They are all ranged near each other, and are so entire, that not a rib or a phalanx is wanting. The bones have been prepared in three different manners, either whitened in the air and the sun; dyed red with onoto, a coloring matter extracted from the bixa orellana; or, like real mummies, varnished with odoriferous resins, and enveloped in leaves of the heliconia or of the plantain tree. The Indians related to us, that the fresh corpse is placed in damp ground, in order that the flesh may be consumed by degrees; some months after, it is taken out, and the flesh remaining on the bones is scraped off with sharp stones. Several hordes in Guyana still observe this custom. Earthen vases half-baked are found near the mapires, or baskets. They appear to contain the bones of the same family. The largest of these vases, or funeral urns, are three feet high, and five feet and a half long. Their color is greenish gray; and their oval form is sufficiently pleasing to the eye. The handles are made in the shape of crocodiles, or serpents; the edge is bordered with meanders, labyrinths, and real grecques, in straight lines variously combined. Such paintings are found in every zone, among nations the most remote from each other, either with respect to the spot which they occupy on the globe, or to the degree of civilization which they have attained. The inhabitants of the little mission of Maypures still execute them on their commonest pottery; they decorate the bucklers of the Otaheiteans, the fishing implements of the Eskimoes, the walls of the Mexican palace of Mitla, and the vases of ancient Greece. Every where a rhythmic repetition of the same forms flatters the eye, as the cadensed repetition of sounds soothes the ear. Analogies founded on the internal nature of our feelings, on the natural dispositions of our intellect, are not calculated to throw light on the filiation and the ancient connections of nations. "We could not acquire any precise idea of the period to which the origin of the mapires and the painted vases, contained in the ossuary cavern of Ataruipe, can be traced. The greater part seemed not to be more than a century old; but it may be supposed, that, sheltered from all humidity, under the influence of a uniform temperature, the preservation of these articles would be no less perfect, if it dated from a period far more remote. A tradition circulates among the Guahiboes, that the warlike Atures, pursued by the Caribbees, escaped to the rocks that rise in the middle of the Great Cataracts; and there that nation, heretofore so numerous, became gradually extinct, as well as its language. The last families of the Atures still existed in 1767, in the time of the missionary Gili. At the period of our voyage an old parrot was shown at Maypures, of which the inhabitants related, and the fact is worthy of observation, that 'they did not understand what it said, because it spoke the language of the Atures.' "We opened, to the great concern of our guides, several mapires, in order to examine attentively the form of the sculls; they all displayed the characteristics of the American race, with the exception of two or three, which approached indubitably to the Caucasian." * * * * "We took several sculls, the skeleton of a child of six or seven years old, and two of full-grown men of the nation of the Atures, from the cavern of Ataruipe. All these bones, partly painted red, partly varnished with odoriferous resins, were placed in the baskets (mapires or canastos), which we have just described. They made almost the whole load of a mule; and as we knew the superstitious aversion of the Indians for dead bodies, when they have given them sepulture, we had carefully enveloped the canastos in mats recently woven. Unfortunately for us, the penetration of the Indians, and the extreme quickness of their senses, rendered all our precautions useless. Wherever we stopped, in the missions of the Caribbees, amid the Llanos, between Angostura and Nueva Barcelona, the natives assembled round our mules to admire the monkeys which we had purchased at the Oroonoko. These good people had scarcely touched our baggage, when they announced the approaching death of the beast of burden, 'that carried the dead.' In vain we told them that they were deceived in their conjectures, and that the baskets contained the bones of crocodiles and manatees; they persisted in repeating, that they smelt the resin, that surrounded the skeletons, and 'that they were their old relations.' We were obliged to make the monks interpose their authority, in order to conquer the aversion of the natives, and procure for us a change of mules. "One of the sculls, which we took from the cavern of Ataruipe, has appeared in the fine work published by my old master, Blumenbach, on the varieties of the human species. The skeletons of the Indians were lost on the coast of Africa, together with a considerable part of our collections, in a shipwreck, in which perished our friend and fellow-traveller, Fray Juan Gonzales, a young monk of the order of St. Francis. "We withdrew in silence from the cavern of Ataruipe. It was one of those calm and serene nights, which are so common in the torrid zone. The stars shone with a mild and planetary light. Their scintillation was scarcely sensible at the horizon, which seemed illumined by the great nebulae of the southern hemisphere. An innumerable multitude of insects spread a reddish light on the ground, loaded with plants, and resplendent with these living and moving fires, as if the stars of the firmament had sunk down on the savannah. On quitting the cavern, we stopped several times to admire the beauty of this singular scene. The odoriferous vanilla, and festoons of bignonia, decorated the entrance; and above, on the summit of the hill, the arrowy branches of the palm-trees waved murmuring in the air. (To be Continued.) humboldt's personal narrative. Dirt Eaters. "THE inhabitants of Uruana, belong to those nations of the savannahs (Indios andantes,) who, more difficult to civilize than the nations of the forest, (Indios del monte,) have a decided aversion to cultivate the land, and live almost exclusively on hunting and fishing. They are men of very robust constitution; but ugly, savage, vindictive, and passionately fond of fermented liquors. They are omnivorous animals in the highest degree; and therefore the other Indians, who consider them as barbarians, have a common saying, 'nothing is so disgusting that an Otomac will not eat it.' While the waters of the Oroonoko and its tributary streams are low, the Otomacs subsist on fish and turtles. The former they kill with surprising dexterity, by shooting them with an arrow, when they appear at the surface of the water. When the rivers swell, which in South America, as well as in Egypt and in Nubia, is erroneously attributed to the melting of the snows, and which occurs periodically in every part of the torrid zone, fishing almost entirely ceases. It is then as difficult to procure fish in the rivers which are become deeper, as when you are sailing on the open sea. It often fails the poor missionaries, on fast-days as well as flesh-days, though all the young Indians are under the obligation of 'fishing for the convent.' At the period of these inundations, which last two or three months, the Otomacs swallow a prodigious quantity of earth. We found heaps of balls in their huts, piled up in pyramids three or four feet high. These balls were five or six inches in diameter. The earth which the Otomacs eat is a very fine and unctuous clay, of a yellowish grey colour; and, being slightly baked in the fire, the hardened crust has a tint inclining to red, owing to the oxid of iron which is mingled with it. We brought away some of this earth, which we took from the winter provision of the Indians; and it is absolutely false, that it is steatitic, and contains magnesia. Mr. Vauquelin did not discover any traces of this earth in it; but he found that it contained more silex than alumin, and three or four per cent of lime. "The Otomacs do not eat every kind of clay indifferently; they choose the alluvial beds or strata that contain the most unctuous earth, and the smoothest to the feel. I inquired of the missionary, whether the moistened clay were made to undergo, as Father Gumilla asserts, that peculiar decomposition, which is indicated by a disengagement of carbonic acid and sulphuretted hydrogen, and which is designated in every language by the term of putrefaction; but he assured us, that the natives neither cause the clay to rot, nor do they mingle it with flour of maize, oil of turtles' eggs, or fat of the crocodile. We ourselves examined, both at the Oroonoko and after our return to Paris, the balls of earth which we brought away with us, and found no trace of the mixture of any organic substance, whether oily or farinaceous. The savage regards every thing as nourishing that appeases hunger; when, therefore, you inquire of an Otomac on what he subsists during the two months when the river is the highest, he shows you his balls of clayey earth. This he calls his principal food; for all this period he can seldom procure a lizard, a root of fern, or a dead fish swimming at the surface of the water. If the Indian eat earth from want during two months, (and from three quarters to five quarters of a pound in twentyfour hours,) he does not the less regale himself with it during the rest of the year. Every day in the season of drought, when fishing is most abundant, he scrapes his balls of poya, and mingles a little clay with his other aliment. What is most surprising is, that the Otomacs do not become lean by swallowing such quantities of earth; they are, on the contrary, extremely robust, and far from having the belly tense and puffed up. The missionary Fray Ramon Bueno asserts, that he never remarked any alteration in the health of the natives at the period of the great risings of the Oroonoko. "The following are the facts in all their simplicity, which we were able to verify. The Otomacs during some months, eat daily three quarters of a pound of clay slightly hardened by fire, without their health being sensibly affected by it. They moisten the earth afresh when they are going to swallow it. It has not been possible to verify hitherto with precision how much nutritious vegetable or animal matter the Indians take in a week at the same time; but it is certain that they attribute the sensation of satiety which they feel, to the clay, and not to the wretched aliments which they take with it occasionally. No physiological phenomenon being entirely insulated, it may be interesting to examine several analogous phenomena, which I have been able to collect. "I observed every where within the torrid zone, in a great number of individuals, children, women, and sometimes even full-grown men, an inordinate and almost irresistible desire of swallowing earth; not an alkaline or calcareous earth, to neutralize (as it is vulgarly said) acid juices, but a fat clay, unctuous, and exhaling a strong smell. It is often found necessary to tie the childrens' hands, or to confine them, to prevent their eating earth, when the rain ceases to fall. At the village of Banco, on the bank of the river Magdalena, I saw the Indian women who make pottery continually swallowing great pieces of clay." The author goes at some length into analogies and reasoning on them, but we confine our quotation principally to the facts. "The negroes on the coast of Guinea delight in eating a yellowish earth, which they call caouac. The slaves who are taken to America try to procure for themselves the same enjoyment; but it is constantly detrimental to their health. They say, 'that the earth of the West Indies is not so easy of digestion as that of their country.' * * * * * "In the Indian Archipelago, at the island of Java, Mr. Labillardiere saw, between Surabaya and Samarang, little square and reddish cakes exposed to sale. These cakes, called tanaampo, were cakes of clay, slightly baked, which the natives eat with appetite. The attention of physiologists, since my return from the Oroonoko, having been powerfully fixed on these phenomena of geophagy, Mr. Leschenault, (one of the naturalists of the expedition to the Southern Lands under the command of Captain Baudin) has published some curious details on the tanaampo, or ampo, of the Javanese. 'The reddish and somewhat ferruginous clay,' he says, 'which the inhabitants of Java are fond of eating occasionally, is spread on a plate of iron, and baked, after having been rolled into little cylinders in the form of the bark of cinnamon. In this state it takes the name of ampo, and is sold in the public markets. This clay has a peculiar taste, which is owing to the torrefaction; it is very absorbent, and adheres to the tongue, which it dries. In general it is only the Javanese women who eat the ampo, either in the time of their pregnancy, or in order to grow thin; the want of plumpness being a kind of beauty in this country. The use of this earth is fatal to health; the women lose their appetite imperceptibly, and no longer take without disgust a very small quantity of food: but the desire of becoming lean, and of preserving a slender shape, can brave these dangers, and maintains the credit of the ampo.' The savage inhabitants of New Caledonia also, to appease their hunger in times of scarcity, eat great pieces of a friable lapis ollaris. Mr. Vauquelin analysed this stone, and found in it, beside magnesia and silex in equal portions, a small quantity of oxid of copper. Mr. Goldberry had seen the negroes in Africa, in the islands of Bunck and Los Idolos, eat an earth of which he had himself eaten, without being incommoded by it, and which also was a white and friable steatite. * * * * * "Letter from Mr. Leschenault to Mr. de Humboldt on the Kind of Earth which is eaten at Java. (See Tableaux de la Nature, vol. i. p. 209.)" "Labillardiere, vol. ii. p. 205." "Goldberry, Voyage en Afrique, vol. ii. p. 455." "When we reflect on the whole of these facts, we perceive that this disorderly appetite for clayey, magnesian, and calcareous earth, is most common among the people of the torrid zone; that it is not always a cause of disease; and that some tribes eat earth from choice, while others (the Otomacs in America, and the inhabitants of New Caledonia, in the Pacific Ocean,) eat it from want, and to appease hunger. * * * * * "The observations, which I made on the banks of the Oroonoko, have been recently confirmed by the direct experiments of two distinguished young physiologists, Messrs. Hippolyte Cloquet and Breschet. After long fasting, they ate as much as five ounces of a silvery green and very fiexible laminar talc. Their hunger was completely satisfied, and they felt no inconvenience from a kind of food, to which their organs were unaccustomed. It is known, that great use is still made in the East of the bolar and sigillated earths of Lemnos, which are clay mingled with oxid of iron. In Germany, the workmen employed in the quarries of sandstone worked at the mountain of Kiffhaeuser spread a very fine clay upon their bread, instead of butter, which they call steinbutter, stone butter; and they find it singularly filling, and easy of digestion." "This steinbutter must not be confounded with the mountain butter, bergbutter, which is a saline substance, owing to a decomposition of aluminous schists." "Freiesleben, Kupferschiefer, vol. iv. p. 118. Kesler, in Gilbert's Annalen, B. 28, p. 492." humboldt's personal narrative (Concluded.) Stories of Crocodiles. Our latter extracts from this publication have been as desultory as the curious nature of the author's inquiries seemed to require, without servilely following him through all his topographical details, and philosophical generalizations. In the same spirit, we shall now conclude our notice of these volumes with a brief sequel relating to the crocodiles of the Oroonoko. "When the waters (says Mr. H.) are high, the river inundates the keys; and it sometimes happens, that even in the town imprudent men become the prey of crocodiles. I shall transcribe from my journal a fact, that took place during Mr. Bonpland's illness. A Guaykeri Indian, from the island de la Margaretta, went to anchor his canoe in a cove, where there were not three feet of water. A very fierce crocodile, that habitually haunted that spot, seized him by the leg, and withdrew from the shore, remaining on the surface of the water. The cries of the Indian drew together a crowd of spectators. This unfortunate man was first seen seeking with astonishing courage for a knife in the pocket of his pantaloons. Not being able to find it, he seized the head of the crocodile, and thrust his fingers into its eyes. No man in the hot regions of America is ignorant, that this carnivorous reptile, covered with a buckler of hard and dry scales, is extremely sensible in the only parts of his body which are soft and unprotected, such as the eyes, the hollow underneath the shoulders, the nostrils, and beneath the lower jaw, where there are two glands of musk. The Guaykeri Indian had recourse to the same means which saved the negro of Mungo Park, and the girl of Uritucu, whom I have mentioned above; but he was less fortunate than they had been, for the crocodile did not open its jaws, and lose hold of its prey. The animal, yielding to the pain, plunged to the bottom of the river; and, after having drowned the Indian, came up to the surface of the water, dragging the dead body to an island opposite the port. I arrived at the moment when a great number of the inhabitants of Angostura had witnessed this melancholy spectacle. "As the crocodile, on account of the structure of its larynx, of the hyoid bone, and of the folds of its tongue, can seize, though not swallow, its prey under water; a man seldom disappears without the animal being perceived some hours after near the spot where the misfortune has happened, devouring its prey on a neighbouring beach. The number of individuals who perish annually, the victims of their own imprudence and of the ferocity of these reptiles, is much greater than it is believed to be in Europe. It is particularly so in villages, where the neighbouring grounds are often inundated. The same crocodiles remain long in the same places. They become from year to year more daring, especially, as the Indians assert, if they have once tasted of human flesh. These animals are so wary, that they are killed with difficulty. A ball does not pierce their skin, and the shot is only mortal when directed at the throat, or beneath the shoulder. The Indians, who know little of the use of fire-arms, attack the crocodile with lances, after it is caught with large pointed iron hooks, baited with pieces of meat, and fastened by a chain to the trunk of a tree. They do not approach the animal till it has struggled a long time to disengage itself from the iron fixed in the upper jaw. There is little probability that a country in which a labyrinth of rivers without number brings every day new bands of crocodiles from the eastern back of the Andes, by the Meta and the Apure, towards the coast of Spanish Guyana, should ever be delivered from these reptiles. All that will be gained by civilization will be, to render them more timid, and more easily put to flight. "Affecting instances are related of African slaves, who have exposed their lives to save those of their masters, who had fallen into the jaws of the crocodile. A few years ago, between Uritucu and the Mission de Abaxo, a negro, hearing the cries of his master, flew to the spot, armed with a long knife, (machette,) and plunged into the river. He forced the crocodile, by putting out his eyes, to let go his prey, and hide himself under the water. The slave bore his expiring master to the shore, but all succour was unavailing to restore him to life. He died of suffocation, for his wounds were not deep; the crocodile, like the dog, appears not to close its jaws firmly while swimming. It is almost superfluous to add, that the children of the deceased, though poor, gave the slave his freedom." Upon the whole, this portion of Mr. Humboldt's work is equally entertaining with what has gone before, and throws much light on Physics and Geography.