The occupations of our travellers were much disturbed during the first weeks of their abode at Cumana by the intrusion of persons desirous of examining their astronomical and other instruments. They however determined the latitude of the great square to be 10° 27′ 52″, and its longitude 66° 30′ 2″.

On the 17th of August, a halo of the moon attracted the attention of the inhabitants, who viewed it as the presage of a violent earthquake. Coloured circles of this kind, Humboldt remarks, are much rarer in the northern than in the southern countries of Europe. They are seen more especially when the sky is clear and the weather settled. In the torrid zone they appear almost every night, and often in the space of a few minutes disappear several times. Between the latitude of 15° N. and the equator he has seen small haloes around the planet Venus, but never observed any in connexion with the fixed stars. While the halo was seen at Cumana, the hygrometer indicated great humidity, although the atmosphere was perfectly transparent. It consisted of two circles; a larger, of a whitish colour, and 44° in diameter, and a smaller, displaying all the tints of the rainbow, and 1° 43′ in diameter. The intermediate space was of the deepest azure.

Part of the great square is surrounded with arcades, over which is a long wooden gallery, where slaves imported from the coast of Africa are sold.

Leaving the Rio Apure the travellers entered the Orinoco, and presently found themselves in a country of an entirely different aspect. As far as the eye could reach there lay before them a sheet of water, the waves of which, from the conflict of the breeze and the current, rose to the height of several feet. The long files of herons, flamingoes, and spoonbills, which were observed on the Apure, had disappeared; and all that supplied the place of those multitudes of animated beings by whom they had been lately accompanied, was here and there a crocodile swimming in the agitated stream. The horizon was bounded by a girdle of forests, separated from the river by a broad beach, the bare and parched surface of which refracted the solar rays into the semblance of pools.

The wind was favourable for sailing up the Orinoco; but the short broken waves at the junction of the two rivers were exceedingly disagreeable. They passed the Punta Curiquima, a granitic promontory, between which and the mouth of the Apure, the breadth of the stream was ascertained to be 4063 yards, and in the rainy season it extends to 11,760. The temperature of the water was in the middle of the current 82·9°, and near the shores, 84·6°. They first went up toward the southwest as far as the shore of the Guaricoto Indians on the left bank, and then toward the south.

Leaving the island of Panumana at an early hour the navigators continued to ascend the Orinoco, the scenery on which became more interesting the nearer they approached the great cataracts. The sky was in part obscured, and lightnings flashed among the dense clouds; but no thunder was heard. On the western bank of the river they perceived the fires of an encampment of Guahiboes, to intimidate whom some shots were discharged by the direction of the missionary. In the evening they arrived at the foot of the great fall, and passed the night at the mission of Atures in its neighbourhood. The flat savannah which surrounds the village seemed to Humboldt to have formerly been the bed of the Orinoco.

This station was found to be in a deplorable state, the Indians having gradually deserted it until only forty-seven remained. At its foundation in 1748 several tribes had been assembled, which subsequently dispersed, and their places were supplied by the Guahiboes, who belong to the lowest grade of uncivilized society, and a few families of Macoes. The epidemic fevers, which prevail here at the commencement of the rainy season, contributed greatly to the decay of the establishment. This distemper is ascribed to the violent heats, excessive humidity of the air, bad food, and, as the natives believe, to the noxious exhalations that rise from the bare rocks of the rapids.

Previous to Humboldt's visit to New Spain, the information possessed in Europe respecting that interesting and important country was exceedingly meagre and incorrect. The ignorance of the European conquerors, the indolence of their successors, the narrow policy of the government, and the want of scientific enterprise among the Creoles and Spaniards, left it for centuries a region of dim obscurity into which the eye of research was unable to penetrate. So inaccurate were the maps, that even the latitude and longitude of the capital remained unfixed, and the inhabitants were thrown into consternation by the occurrence of a total eclipse of the sun on the 21st February 1803; the almanacs, calculating from a false indication of the meridian, having announced it as scarcely visible. The determination of the geographical position of many of the more remarkable places, that of the altitude of the volcanic summits and other eminences, together with the vast mass of intelligence contained in the Political Essay on New Spain, served to dispel in some measure the darkness; and since the period of Humboldt's visit numerous travellers have contributed so materially to our acquaintance with Mexico, that it no longer remains among the least known of those remote countries of the globe over which the power of Europe has extended.

The town of San Fernando, which was founded only in 1789, is advantageously situated on a large navigable river, the Apure, a tributary of the Orinoco, near the mouth of another stream which traverses the whole province of Varinas, all the productions of which pass through it on their way to the coast. It is during the rainy season, when the rivers overflow their banks and inundate a vast extent of country, that commerce is most active. At this period the savannahs are covered with water to the depth of twelve or fourteen feet, and present the appearance of a great lake, in the midst of which the farm-houses and villages are seen rising on islands scarcely elevated above the surface. Horses, mules, and cows, perish in great numbers, and afford abundant food to the zamuros or carrion vultures, as well as to the alligators. The inhabitants, to avoid the force of the currents, and the danger arising from the trees carried down by them, instead of ascending the course of the rivers, find it safer to cross the flats in their boats.

San Fernando is celebrated for the excessive heat which prevails there during the greater part of the year. The travellers found the white sand of the shores, wherever it was exposed to the sun, to have a temperature of 126·5°, at two in the afternoon. The thermometer, raised eighteen inches above the sand, indicated 109°; and at six feet, 101·7°.

It is the custom of Humboldt, in his “Journey to the Equinoctial Regions,” to stand still after an excursion, reflect, and present to his readers the result of his inquiries on any subject that has fixed his attention. For example, on concluding the narrative of his visit to the Chayma missions, he gives a general account of the aborigines of New Andalusia, of which an abridgment is here offered.

The north-eastern part of Equinoctial America, Terra Firma, and the shores of the Orinoco, resemble, in the multiplicity of the tribes by which they are inhabited, the defiles of Caucasus, the mountains of Hindookho, and the northern extremity of Asia, beyond the Tungooses and the Tartars of the mouth of the Lena. The barbarism which prevails in these various regions is perhaps less owing to an original absence of civilisation than to the effects of a long debasement; and if every thing connected with the first population of a continent were known, we should probably find that savages are merely tribes banished from society and driven into the forests. At the commencement of the conquest of America, the natives were collected into large bodies only on the ridge of the Cordilleras and the coast opposite to Asia, while the vast savannahs, and the great plains covered by forests and intersected by rivers, presented wandering tribes, separated by differences of language and manners.

Opposite the point where the division of the river takes place, there rises in the form of an amphitheatre a group of granitic mountains, of which the principal one bears the name of Duida. It is about 8500 feet high; and being perpendicular on the south and west, bare and stony on the summit, and clothed on its less steep declivities with vast forests, presents a magnificent spectacle. At the foot of this huge mass is placed the most solitary and remote Christian settlement on the Upper Orinoco,—the mission of Esmeralda, containing eighty inhabitants. It is surrounded by a beautiful plain, covered with grasses of various species, pine-apples, and clumps of Mauritia palm, and watered by limpid rills.

There was no monk at the village; but the travellers were received with kindness by an old officer, who, taking them for Catalonian shopkeepers, admired their simplicity when he saw the bundles of paper in which their plants were preserved, and which he supposed they intended for sale. Notwithstanding the smallness of the mission three Indian languages were spoken in it; and among the inhabitants were some Zaniboes, mulattoes, and copper-coloured people. A mineralogical error gave celebrity to Esmeralda, the rock-crystals and chloritic quartzes of Duida having been mistaken for diamonds and emeralds. The converts live in great poverty, and their misery is augmented by prodigious swarms of mosquitoes.

It has been already stated that Humboldt, previously to leaving Paris, had promised Baudin, that should his projected expedition to the southern hemisphere ever take place, he would endeavour to join it; and also that information received by him at Cuba had induced him to relinquish plans subsequently formed, and re-embark for the continent of South America, with the view of proceeding to Guayaquil or Lima, where he expected to meet the navigators. Accordingly he went to Carthagena, where he learned that the season was too far advanced for sailing from Panama to Guayaquil. Giving up, therefore, his intention of crossing the isthmus of Panama, he passed some days in the forests of Turbaco, and afterwards made preparations for ascending the Rio Magdalena.

This river, from its sources near the equator, flows almost directly north. “Nature,” says a traveller who sailed up it in 1823, “seems to have designedly dug the bed of the Magdalena in the midst of the cordilleras of Colombia, to form a canal of communication between the mountains and the sea; yet it would have made nothing but an unnavigable torrent, had not its course been stopped in many parts by masses of rock disposed in such a manner as to break its violence. Its waters thus arrested flow gently into the plains of the provinces of Santa Martha and Carthagena, which they fertilize and refresh by their evaporation.

From the chain of mountains which borders the Lake of Valencia toward the south, there stretches in the same direction a vast extent of level land, constituting the Llanos or Savannahs of Caraccas; and from the cultivated and populous district of Aragua, embellished with mountains and rivers and teeming with vegetation, one descends into a parched desolate plain, bounded by the horizon. On this route we now accompany our travellers, who on the 6th March left the valleys of Aragua, and keeping along the south-west side of the lake, passed over a rich champaign country covered with calabashes, water-melons, and plantains. The rising of the sun was announced by the howling of monkeys, of which they saw numerous bands moving as in procession from one tree to another. These creatures (the Simia ursina) execute their evolutions with singular uniformity. When the boughs of two trees do not touch each other, the leader of the party swings himself by the tail upon the nearest twigs, the rest following in regular succession. The distance to which their howlings may be heard was ascertained by Humboldt to be 1705 yards. The Indians assert that one always chants as leader of the choir; and the missionaries say that when a female is on the point of bringing forth, the howlings are suspended till the moment when the young appears.

Leaving the capital of New Spain our travellers descended to the port of Vera Cruz, which is situated among sand-hills, in a burning and unhealthy climate. They happily escaped the yellow-fever,—which prevails there and attacks persons who have arrived from the elevated districts as readily as Europeans who have come by sea,—and embarked in a Spanish frigate for Havannah, where they had left part of their specimens. They remained there two months; after which they set sail for the United States, on their passage to which they encountered a violent storm that lasted seven days. Arriving at Philadelphia, and afterwards visiting Washington, they spent eight weeks in that interesting country, for the purpose of studying its political constitution and commercial relations. In August 1804 they returned to Europe, carrying with them the extensive collections which they had made during their perilous and fatiguing journeys.

The results of this expedition, conducted with so much courage and zeal, have been of the highest importance to science. With respect to natural history, it may be stated generally, that the mass of information already laid before the public, as obtained from the observation of six years, exceeds any thing that had been presented by the most successful cultivators of the same field during a whole lifetime. Much light has been thrown on the migrations and relations of the indigenous tribes of America, their origin, languages, and manners.

Having sailed from Santa Cruz on the evening of the 25th of June, with a strong wind from the north-east, our travellers soon lost sight of the Canary Islands, the mountains of which were covered with reddish vapour, the Peak alone appearing at intervals in the breaks. The passage from Teneriffe to Cumana was performed in twenty days, the distance being 3106 miles.

The wind gradually subsided as they retired from the African coast. Short calms of several hours occasionally took place, which were regularly interrupted by slight squalls, accompanied by masses of dark clouds, emitting a few large drops of rain, but without thunder. To the north of the Cape Verd Islands they met with large patches of floating seaweed (Fucus natans), which grows on submarine rocks, from the equator to forty degrees of latitude on either side. These scattered plants, however, must not be confounded with the vast beds, said by Columbus to resemble extensive meadows, and which inspired with terror the crew of the Santa Maria. From a comparison of numerous journals it appears that there are two such fields of seaweed in the Atlantic. The largest occurs a little to the west of the meridian of Fayal, one of the Azores, between 25° and 36° of latitude. The temperature of the ocean there is between 60·8° and 68°; and the north-west winds, which blow sometimes with impetuosity, drive floating islands of those weeds into low latitudes, as far as the parallels of 24° and even 20°.

The city of Cumana, the capital of New Andalusia, is a mile distant from the landing-place, and in proceeding towards it our travellers crossed a large sandy plain, which separates the suburb inhabited by the Guayqueria Indians from the seashore. The excessive heat of the atmosphere was increased by the reflection of the sun's rays from a naked soil, the thermometer immersed in which rose to 99·9°. In the little pools of salt water it remained at 86·9°, while the surface of the sea in the port generally ranges from 77·4° to 79·3°. The first plant gathered by them was the Avicennia tomentosa, which is remarkable for occurring also on the Malabar coast, and belongs to the small number that live in society, like the heaths of Europe, and are seen in the torrid zone only on the shores of the ocean and the elevated platforms of the Andes.

Crossing the Indian suburb, the streets of which were very neat, they were conducted by the captain of the Pizarro to the governor of the province, Don Vicente Emparan, who received them with frankness; expressed his satisfaction at the resolution which they had taken of remaining for some time in New Andalusia; showed them cottons dyed with native plants and furniture made of indigenous wood; and surprised them with questions indicative of scientific attainments. On disembarking their instruments, they had the pleasure of finding that none of them had been damaged.

Leaving the city of Caraccas, on their way to the Orinoco, our travellers slept the first night at the base of the woody mountains which close the valley toward the south-west. They followed the right bank of the Rio Guayra, as far as the village of Antimano, by an excellent road, partly scooped out of the rock. The mountains were all of gneiss or mica-slate. A little before reaching that hamlet they observed two large veins of gneiss in the slate, containing balls of granular diabase or greenstone, composed of felspar and hornblende, with garnet disseminated. In the vicinity all the orchards were full of peach-trees covered with flowers. Between Antimano and Ajuntas, they crossed the Rio Guayra seventeen times, and proceeded along the bottom of the valley. The river was bordered by a gramineous plant, the Gynerium saccharoides, which sometimes reaches the height of 32 feet, while the huts were surrounded by enormous trees of Laurus persea, covered by creepers. They passed the night in a sugar-plantation. In a square house were nearly eighty negroes, lying on skins of oxen spread on the floor, while a dozen fires were burning in the yard, at which people were cooking.

A great predilection for the culture of the coffeetree was entertained in the province. The young plants were chiefly procured by exposing the seeds to germination between plantain-leaves. They were then sown, and produced shoots better adapted to bear the heat of the sun than such as spring up in the shade of the plantations.

The valley of Caraccas, a few years after Humboldt's visit, became the theatre of one of those physical revolutions which from time to time produce violent alterations upon the surface of our planet; involving the overthrow of cities, the destruction of human life, and a temporary agitation of those elements of nature on which the system of the universe is founded. In the narrative of his Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, he has recorded all that he could collect with certainty respecting the earthquake of the 26th March 1812, which destroyed the city of Caraceas, together with 20,000 inhabitants of the province of Venezuela.

When our travellers visited those countries, they found it to be a general opinion, that the eastern parts of the coasts were most exposed to the destructive effects of such concussions, and that the elevated districts, remote from the shores, were in a great measure secure; but in 1811 all these ideas were proved groundless.

At Humboldt's arrival in Terra Firma, he was struck with the connexion which appeared between the destruction of Cumana in 1797 and the eruption of volcanoes in the smaller West India islands. A similar principle was manifested in 1812, in the case of Caraccas. From the beginning of 1811 till 1813, a vast extent of the earth's surface, limited by the meridian of the Azores, the valley of the Ohio, the cordilleras of New Grenada, the coasts of Venezuela, and the volcanoes of the West Indies, was shaken by subterranean commotions, indicative of a common agency exerted at a great depth in the interior of the globe.

On the 4th of September, at an early hour, our travellers commenced an excursion to the missionary stations of the Chayma Indians, and to the lofty mountains which traverse New Andalusia. The morning was deliriously cool; and from the summit of the hill of San Francisco they enjoyed in the short twilight an extensive view of the sea, the adjacent plain, and the distant peaks. After walking two hours they arrived at the foot of the chain, where they found different rocks, together with a new and more luxuriant vegetation. They observed that the latter was more brilliant wherever the limestone was covered by a quartzy sandstone,—a circumstance which probably depends not so much on the nature of the soil as on its greater humidity; the thin layers of slate-clay which the latter contains preventing the water from filtering into the crevices of the former. In those moist places they always discovered appearances of cultivation, huts inhabited by mestizoes, and placed in the centre of small enclosures, containing papaws, plantains, sugar-canes, and maize. In Europe, the wheat, barley, and other kinds of grain, cover vast spaces of ground, and, in general, wherever the inhabitants live upon corn, the cultivated lands are not separated from each other by the intervention of large wastes; but in the torrid zone, where the fertility of the soil is proportionate to the heat and humidity of the air, and where man has appropriated plants that yield earlier and more abundant crops, an immense population finds ample subsistence on a narrow space.