Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.2 — Chapter 2.17, Part 3

Without stopping here to give a mineralogical description of the transverse chains which divide America from east to west, it will be sufficient to notice the general structure of a continent, the extremities of which, though situated in climates little analogous, nevertheless present several features of resemblance.

In order to have an exact idea of the plains, their configuration, and their limits, we must know the chains of mountains that form their boundaries.

We have already described the Cordillera of the coast, of which the highest summit is the Silla de Caraccas, and which is linked by the Paramo de las Rosas to the Nevada de Merida, and the Andes of New Grenada.

We have seen that, in the tenth degree of north latitude, it stretches from Quibor and Barquesimeto as far as the point of Paria.

A second chain of mountains, or rather a less elevated but much larger group, extends between the parallels of 3 and 7 degrees from the mouths of the Guaviare and the Meta to the sources of the Orinoco, the Marony, and the Essequibo, towards French and Dutch Guiana.

I call this chain the Cordillera of Parime, or of the great cataracts of the Orinoco.

It may be followed for a length of two hundred and fifty leagues; but it is less a chain, than a collection of granitic mountains, separated by small plains, without being everywhere disposed in lines.

The group of the mountains of Parime narrows considerably between the sources of the Orinoco and the mountains of Demerara, in the Sierras of Quimiropaca and Pacaraimo, which divide the waters between the Carony and the Rio Parime, or Rio de Aguas Blancas.

This is the scene of the expeditions which were undertaken in search of El Dorado, and the great city of Manoa, the Timbuctoo of the New Continent.

The Cordillera of Parime does not join the Andes of New Grenada, but is separated from them by a space eighty leagues broad.

If we suppose it to have been destroyed in this space by some great revolution of the globe (which is scarcely probable) we must admit that it anciently branched off from the Andes between Santa Fe de Bogota and Pamplona.

This remark serves to fix more easily in the memory of the reader the geographical position of a Cordillera till now very imperfectly known.

A third chain of mountains unites in 16 and 18 degrees south latitude (by Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the Serranias of Aguapehy, and the famous Campos dos Parecis) the Andes of Peru, to the mountains of Brazil.

It is the Cordillera of Chiquitos which widens in the Capitania de Minas Geraes, and divides the rivers flowing into the Amazon from those of the Rio de la Plata,* (* There is only a portage or carrying-place of 5322 bracas between the Guapore (a branch of the Marmore and of the Madeira), and the Rio Aguapehy (a branch of the Jaura and of the Paraguay).

) not only in the interior of the country, in the meridian of Villa Boa, but also at a few leagues from the coast, between Rio Janeiro and Bahia.

* (* The Cordillera of Chiquitos and of Brazil stretches toward the south-east, in the government of the Rio Grande, beyond the latitude of 30 degrees south.

) These three transverse chains, or rather these three groups of mountains stretching from west to east, within the limits of the torrid zone, are separated by tracts entirely level, the plains of Caracas, or of the Lower Orinoco; the plains of the Amazon and the Rio Negro; and the plains of Buenos Ayres, or of La Plata.

I use the term plains, because the Lower Orinoco and the Amazon, far from flowing in a valley, form but a little furrow in the midst of a vast level.

The two basins, placed at the extremities of South America, are savannahs or steppes, pasturage without trees; the intermediate basin, which receives the equatorial rains during the whole year, is almost entirely one vast forest, through which no other roads are known save the rivers.

The strong vegetation which conceals the soil, renders also the uniformity of its level less perceptible; and the plains of Caracas and La Plata bear no other name.

The three basins we have just described are called, in the language of the colonists, the Llanos of Varinas and of Caracas, the bosques or selvas (forests) of the Amazon, and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres.

The trees not only for the most part cover the plains of the Amazon, from the Cordillera de Chiquitos, as far as that of Parime; they also crown these two chains of mountains, which rarely attain the height of the Pyrenees.

* (* We must except the most western part of the Cordillera of Chiquitos, between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra where the summits are covered with snow;

but this colossal group almost belongs to the Andes de la Paz, of which it forms a promontory or spur, directed toward the east.

) On this account, the vast plains of the Amazon, the Madeira, and the Rio Negro, are not so distinctly bounded as the Llanos of Caracas, and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres.

As the region of forests comprises at once the plains and the mountains, it extends from 18 degrees south to 7 and 8 degrees north,* (* To the west, in consequence of the Llanos of Manso, and the Pampas de Huanacos, the forests do not extend generally beyond the parallels of 18 or 19 degrees south latitude; but to the east, in Brazil (in the capitanias of San Pablo and Rio Grande) as well as in Paraguay, on the borders of the Parana, they advance as far as 25 degrees south.

) and occupies an extent of near a hundred and twenty thousand square leagues.

This forest of South America, for in fact there is only one, is six times larger than France.

It is known to Europeans only on the shores of a few rivers, by which it is traversed; and has its openings, the extent of which is in proportion to that of the forests.

We shall soon skirt the marshy savannahs, between the Upper Orinoco, the Conorichite, and the Cassiquiare, in the latitude of 3 and 4 degrees.

There are other openings, or as they are called, clear savannahs,* (* Savannas limpias, that is to say, clear of trees.

) in the same parallel, between the sources of the Mao and the Rio de Aguas Blancas, south of the Sierra de Pacaraima.

These last savannahs, which are inhabited by Caribs, and nomad Macusis, lie near the frontiers of Dutch and French Guiana.

Having noticed the geological constitution of South America, we shall now mark its principal features.

The western coasts are bordered by an enormous wall of mountains, rich in precious metals wherever volcanic fire has not pierced through the eternal snow.

This is the Cordillera of the Andes.

Summits of trap-porphyry rise beyond three thousand three hundred toises, and the mean height of the chain* is one thousand eight hundred and fifty toises.

(* In New Grenada, Quito, and Peru, according to measurements taken by Bouguer, La Condamine, and myself.

) It stretches in the direction of a meridian, and sends into each hemisphere a lateral branch, in the latitudes of 10 degrees north, and 16 and 18 degrees south.

The first of these two branches, that of the coast of Caracas, is of considerable length, and forms in fact a chain.

The second branch, the Cordillera of Chiquitos and of the sources of the Guapore, is very rich in gold, and widens toward the east, in Brazil, into vast tablelands, having a mild and temperate climate.

Between these two transverse chains, contiguous to the Andes, an isolated group of granitic mountains is situated, from 3 to 7 degrees north latitude; which also runs parallel to the Equator, but, not passing the meridian of 71 degrees, terminates abruptly towards the west, and is not united to the Andes of New Grenada.

These three transverse chains have no active volcanoes; we know not whether the most southern, like the two others, be destitute of trachytes or trap-porphyry.

None of their summits enter the limit of perpetual snow; and the mean height of the Cordillera of La Parime, and of the littoral chain of Caracas, does not reach six hundred toises, though some of its summits rise fourteen hundred toises above the level of the sea.

* (* We do not reckon here, as belonging to the chain of the coast, the Nevados and Paramos of Merida and of Truxillo, which are a prolongation of the Andes of New Grenada.

) The three transverse chains are separated by plains entirely closed towards the west, and open towards the east and south-east.

When we reflect on their small elevation above the surface of the ocean, we are tempted to consider them as gulfs stretching in the direction of the current of rotation.

If, from the effect of some peculiar attraction, the waters of the Atlantic were to rise fifty toises at the mouth of the Orinoco, and two hundred toises at the mouth of the Amazon, the flood would submerge more than the half of South America.

The eastern declivity, or the foot of the Andes, now six hundred leagues distant from the coast of Brazil, would become a shore beaten by the waves.

This consideration is the result of a barometric measurement, taken in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, where the river Amazon issues from the Cordilleras.

I found the mean height of this immense river only one hundred and ninety-four toises above the present level of the Atlantic.

The intermediate plains, however, covered with forests, are still five times higher than the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, and the grass-covered Llanos of Caracas and the Meta.

Those Llanos which form the basin of the Orinoco, and which we crossed twice in one year, in the months of March and July, communicate with the basin of the Amazon and the Rio Negro, bounded on one side by the Cordillera of Chiquitos, and on the other by the mountains of Parime.

The opening which is left between the latter and the Andes of New Grenada, occasions this communication.

The aspect of the country here reminds us, but on a much larger scale, of the plains of Lombardy, which also are only fifty or sixty toises above the level of the ocean; and are directed first from La Brenta to Turin, east and west;

and then from Turin to Coni, north and south.

If we were authorized, from other geological facts, to regard the three great plains of the Lower Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Rio de la Plata as basins of ancient lakes,* (* In Siberia, the great steppes between the Irtish and the Obi, especially that of Baraba, full of salt lakes (Tchabakly, Tchany, Karasouk, and Topolony), appear to have been, according to the Chinese traditions, even within historical times, an inland sea.

) we should imagine we perceived in the plains of the Rio Vichada and the Meta, a channel by which the waters of the upper lake (those of the plains of the Amazon) forced their way towards the lower basin, (that of the Llanos of Caracas,) separating the Cordillera of La Parime from that of the Andes.

This channel is a kind of land-strait.

The ground, which is perfectly level between the Guaviare, the Meta, and the Apure, displays no vestige of a violent irruption of the waters; but on the edge of the Cordillera of Parime, between the latitudes of 4 and 7 degrees, the Orinoco, flowing in a westerly direction from its source to the mouth of the Guaviare, has forced its way through the rocks, directing its course from south to north.

All the great cataracts, as we shall soon see, are within the latitudes just named.

When the river has reached the mouth of the Apure in that very low ground where the slope towards the north is met by the counter-slope towards the south-east, that is to say, by the inclination of the plains which rise imperceptibly towards the mountains of Caracas, the river turns anew and flows eastward.

It appeared to me, that it was proper to fix the attention of the reader on these singular inflexions of the Orinoco because, belonging at once to two basins, its course marks, in some sort, even on the most imperfect maps, the direction of that part of the plains intervening between New Grenada and the western border of the mountains of La Parime.

The Llanos or steppes of the Lower Orinoco and of the Meta, like the deserts of Africa, bear different names in different parts.

From the mouths of the Dragon the Llanos of Cumana, of Barcelona, and of Caracas or Venezuela,* follow, running from east to west.

(* The following are subdivisions of these three great Llanos, as I marked them down on the spot.

The Llanos of Cumana and New Andalusia include those of Maturin and Terecen, of Amana, Guanipa, Jonoro, and Cari.

The Llanos of Nueva Barcelona comprise those of Aragua, Pariaguan, and Villa del Pao.

We distinguish in the Llanos of Caracas those of Chaguaramas, Uritucu, Calabozo or Guarico, La Portuguesa, San Carlos, and Araure.

) Where the steppes turn towards the south and south-south-west, from the latitude of 8 degrees, between the meridians of 70 and 73 degrees, we find from north to south, the Llanos of Varinas, Casanare, the Meta, Guaviare, Caguau, and Caqueta.

* (* The inhabitants of these plains distinguish as subdivisions, from the Rio Portuguesa to Caqueta, the Llanos of Guanare, Bocono, Nutrius or the Apure, Palmerito near Quintero, Guardalito and Arauca, the Meta, Apiay near the port of Pachaquiaro, Vichada, Guaviare, Arriari, Inirida, the Rio Hacha, and Caguan.

The limits between the savannahs and the forests, in the plains that extend from the sources of the Rio Negro to Putumayo, are not sufficiently known.

) The plains of Varinas contain some few monuments of the industry of a nation that has disappeared.

Between Mijagual and the Cano de la Hacha, we find some real tumuli, called in the country the Serillos de los Indios.

They are hillocks in the shape of cones, artificially formed of earth, and probably contain bones, like the tumuli in the steppes of Asia.

A fine road is also discovered near Hato de la Calzada, between Varinas and Canagua, five leagues long, made before the conquest, in the most remote times, by the natives.

It is a causeway of earth fifteen feet high, crossing a plain often overflowed.

Did nations farther advanced in civilization descend from the mountains of Truxillo and Merido to the plains of the Rio Apure?

The Indians whom we now find between this river and the Meta, are in too rude a state to think of making roads or raising tumuli.

I calculated the area of these Llanos from the Caqueta to the Apure, and from the Apure to the Delta of the Orinoco, and found it to be seventeen thousand square leagues twenty to a degree.

The part running from north to south is almost double that which stretches from east to west, between the Lower Orinoco and the littoral chain of Caracas.

The Pampas on the north and north-west of Buenos Ayres, between this city and Cordova, Jujuy, and the Tucuman, are of nearly the same extent as the Llanos; but the Pampas stretch still farther on to the length of 18 degrees southward; and the land they occupy is so vast, that they produce palm-trees at one of their extremities, while the other, equally low and level, is covered with eternal frost.

The Llanos of America, where they extend in the direction of a parallel of the equator, are three-fourths narrower then the great desert of Africa.

This circumstance is very important in a region where the winds constantly blow from east to west.

The farther the plains stretch in this direction, the more ardent is their climate.

The great ocean of sand in Africa communicates by Yemen* with Gedrosia and Beloochistan, as far as the right bank of the Indus.

(* We cannot be surprised that the Arabic should be richer than any other language of the East in words expressing the ideas of desert, uninhabited plains, and plains covered with gramina.

I could give a list of thirty-five of these words, which the Arabian authors employ without always distinguishing them by the shades of meaning which each separate word expresses.

Makadh and kaah indicate, in preference, plains; bakaak, a table-land; kafr, mikfar, smlis, mahk, and habaucer, a naked desert, covered with sand and gravel; tanufah, a steppe.

Zahra means at once a naked desert and a savannah.

The word steppe, or step, is Russian, and not Tartarian.

In the Turco-Tartar dialect a heath is called tala or tschol.

The word gobi, which Europeans have corrupted into cobi, signifies in the Mongol tongue a naked desert.

It is equivalent to the scha-mo or khan-hai of the Chinese.

A steppe, or plain covered with herbs, is in Mongol, kudah; in Chinese, kouana.

) It is from the effect of winds that have passed over the deserts situated to the east, that the little basin of the Red Sea, surrounded by plains which send forth from all sides radiant caloric, is one of the hottest regions of the globe.

The unfortunate captain Tuckey relates,* (* Expedition to explore the river Zahir, 1818. ) that the centigrade thermometer keeps there generally in the night at 34 degrees, and by day from 40 to 44 degrees.

We shall soon see that, even in the westernmost part of the steppes of Caracas, we seldom found the temperature of the air, in the shade, above 37 degrees.

These physical considerations on the steppes of the New World are linked with others more interesting, inasmuch as they are connected with the history of our species.

The great sea of sand in Africa, the deserts without water, are frequented only by caravans, that take fifty days to traverse them.

* (* This is the maximum of the time, according to Major Rennell, Travels of Mungo Park volume 2. ) Separating the Negro race from the Moors, and the Berber and Kabyle tribes, the Sahara is inhabited only in the oases.

It affords pasturage only in the eastern part, where, from the effect of the trade-winds, the layer of sand being less thick, the springs appear at the surface of the earth.

In America, the steppes, less vast, less scorching, fertilized by fine rivers, present fewer obstacles to the intercourse of nations.

The Llanos separate the chain of the coast of Caracas and the Andes of New Grenada from the region of forests; from that woody region of the Orinoco which, from the first discovery of America, has been inhabited by nations more rude, and farther removed from civilization, than the inhabitants of the coast, and still more than the mountaineers of the Cordilleras.

The steppes, however, were no more heretofore the rampart of civilization than they are now the rampart of the liberty of the hordes that live in the forests.

They have not hindered the nations of the Lower Orinoco from going up the little rivers and making incursions to the north and the west.

If, according to the various distribution of animals on the globe, the pastoral life could have existed in the New World--if, before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Llanos and the Pampas had been filled with those numerous herds of cows and horses that graze there, Columbus would have found the human race in a state quite different.

Pastoral nations living on milk and cheese, real nomad races, would have spread themselves over those vast plains which communicate with each other.

They would have been seen at the period of great droughts, and even at that of inundations, fighting for the possession of pastures; subjugating one another mutually; and, united by the common tie of manners, language, and worship, they would have risen to that state of demi-civilization which we observe with surprise in the nations of the Mongol and Tartar race.

America would then, like the centre of Asia, have had its conquerors, who, ascending from the plains to the tablelands of the Cordilleras, and abandoning a wandering life, would have subdued the civilized nations of Peru and New Grenada, overturned the throne of the Incas and of the Zaque,* and substituted for the despotism which is the fruit of theocracy, that despotism which arises from the patriarchal government of a pastoral people.

(* The Zaque was the secular chief of Cundinamarca.

His power was shared with the high priest (lama) of Iraca.

) In the New World the human race has not experienced these great moral and political changes, because the steppes, though more fertile than those of Asia, have remained without herds; because none of the animals that furnish milk in abundance are natives of the plains of South America; and because, in the progressive unfolding of American civilization, the intermediate link is wanting that connects the hunting with the agricultural nations.