Leaving the island of Cuba the travellers proceeded in a S.S.E. direction, and on the morning of the 17th approached the group of the Little Caymans, in the neighbourhood of which they saw numerous turtles of extraordinary size, accompanied by multitudes of sharks. Passing a second time over the great bank of Vibora, they remarked that the colour of the troubled waters upon it was of a dirty-gray, and made observations on the changes of temperature at the surface produced by the varying depth of the sea. On quitting this shoal they sailed between the Baxo Nueva and the lighthouse of Camboy. The weather was remarkably fine, and the surface of the bay was of an indigo-blue or violet tint, on account of the medusæ which covered it. Haloes of small dimensions appeared round the moon. The disappearance of one of them was followed by the formation of a great black cloud, which emitted some drops of rain; but the sky soon resumed its serenity, and a long series of falling-stars and fire-balls were seen moving in a direction contrary to the wind in the lower regions of the atmosphere, which blew from the north. During the whole of the 23d March not a single cloud was seen in the firmament, although the air and the horizon were tinged with a fine red colour; but towards evening large bluish clouds formed, and when they disappeared, converging bands of fleecy vapours were seen at an immense height.

With the name of Humboldt we associate all that is interesting in the physical sciences. No traveller who has visited remote regions of the globe, for the purpose of observing the varied phenomena of nature, has added so much to our stock of positive knowledge. While the navigator has explored the coasts of unknown lands, discovered islands and shores, marked the depths of the sea, estimated the force of currents, and noted the more obvious traits in the aspect of the countries at which he has touched; while the zoologist has investigated the multiplied forms of animal life, the botanist the diversified vegetation, the geologist the structure and relations of the rocky masses of which the exterior of the earth is composed; and while each has thus contributed to the illustration of the wonderful constitution of our planet, the distinguished traveller whose discoveries form the subject of this volume stands alone as uniting in himself a knowledge of all these sciences. Geography, meteorology, magnetism, the distribution of heat, the various departments of natural history, together with the affinities of races and languages, the history of nations, the political constitution of countries, statistics, commerce, and agriculture,—all have received accumulated and valuable additions from the exercise of his rare talents. The narrative of no traveller therefore could be more interesting to the man of varied information.

Caraccas, the capital of the former captain-generalship of Venezuela, is more known to Europeans on account of the earthquakes by which it was desolated than from its importance in a political or commercial point of view. At the present day it is the chief city of a district of the same name, forming part of the republic of Columbia; though, at the time of Humboldt's visit, it was the metropolis of a Spanish colony which contained nearly a million of inhabitants, and consisted of New Andalusia, or the province of Cumana, New Barcelona, Venezuela or Caraccas, Coro, and Maracaybo, along the coast; and in the interior, the provinces of Varinas and Guiana.

In a general point of view Venezuela presents three distinct zones. Along the shore, and near the chain of mountains which skirts it, we find cultivated land; behind this, savannahs or pasturages; and beyond the Orinoco, a mass, of forests, penetrable only by means of the rivers by which it is traversed. In these three belts, the three principal stages of civilisation are found more distinct than in almost any other region. We have the life of the wild hunter in the woody district—the pastoral life in the savannahs—and the agricultural in the valleys and plains which descend to various parts of the coast. Missionaries and a few soldiers occupy advanced posts on the southern frontiers.

Humboldt and his companion sailed from the Road of New Barcelona on the 24th November at nine in the evening, and next day at noon reached the island of Tortuga, remarkable for its lowness and want of vegetation. On the 26th there was a dead calm, and about nine in the morning a fine halo formed round the sun, while the temperature of the air fell three degrees. The circle of this meteor, which was one degree in breadth, displayed the most beautiful colours of the rainbow, while its interior and the whole vault of the sky was azure without the least haze. The sea was covered with a bluish scum, which under the microscope appeared to be formed of filaments, that seemed to be fragments of fuci. On the 27th they passed near the island of Orchila, composed of gneiss and covered with plants, and toward sunset discovered the summits of the Roca de Afuera, over which the clouds were accumulated. Indications of stormy weather increased, the waves rose, and waterspouts threatened. On the night of the 2d December a curious optical phenomenon presented itself. The full moon was very high. On its side, forty-five minutes before its passage over the meridian, a great arc suddenly appeared, having the prismatic colours, but of a gloomy aspect. It seemed higher than the moon, had a breadth of nearly two degrees, and remained stationary for several minutes; after which it gradually descended, and sank below the horizon.

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.