Aimé Bonpland

“ In these scattered features of the landscape, in this character of solitude and of greatness, we recognize the course of the Orinoco, one of the most majestic rivers of the New World. The water, like the land, displays everywhere a characteristic and peculiar aspect. The bed of the Orinoco resembles not the bed of the Meta, the Guaviare, the Rio Negro, or the Amazon. These differences do not depend altogether on the breadth or the velocity of the current; they are connected with a multitude of impressions which it is easier to perceive upon the spot than to define with precision. ”

“ Here, as in every place where the population is concentrated, vegetation diminishes. Those palm-trees round the Havannah and in the amphitheatre of Regla on which I delighted to gaze are disappearing by degrees. The marshy places which I saw covered with bamboos are cultivated and drained. Civilization advances; and the soil, gradually stripped of plants, scarcely offers any trace of its wild abundance. From the Punta to San Lazaro, from Cabana to Regla and from Regla to Atares the road is covered with houses, and those that surround the bay are of light and elegant construction. ”

“ In the open plains and amid the gloom of forests, almost all the remembrances of Europe are effaced; for it is vegetation that determines the character of a landscape, and acts upon the imagination by its mass, the contrast of its forms, and the glow of its colours. In proportion as impressions are powerful and new, they weaken antecedent impressions, and their force imparts to them the character of duration. I appeal to those who, more sensible to the beauties of nature than to the charms of society, have long resided in the torrid zone. ”

“ The beasts of the forests retire to the thickets; the birds hide themselves beneath the foliage of the trees, or in the crevices of the rocks. Yet, amidst this apparent silence, when we lend an attentive ear to the most feeble sounds transmitted through the air, we hear a dull vibration, a continual murmur, a hum of insects, filling, if we may use the expression, all the lower strata of the air. Nothing is better fitted to make man feel the extent and power of organic life. Myriads of insects creep upon the soil, and flutter round the plants parched by the heat of the sun. ”

“ When the shock of an earthquake is felt, when the earth which we had deemed so stable is shaken on its old foundations, one instant suffices to destroy long-fixed illusions. It is like awakening from a dream; but a painful awakening. We feel that we have been deceived by the apparent stability of nature; we become observant of the least noise; we mistrust for the first time the soil we have so long trod with confidence. ”

“ If civilization, instead of extending, were to change its place; if, after great and deplorable convulsions in Europe, America, between Cape Hatteras and the Missouri, were to become the principal seat of the light of Christianity, what a spectacle would be presented by that centre of civilization, where, in the sanctuary of liberty, we could attend a sale of negroes after the death of a master, and hear the sobbings of parents who are separated from their children! ”

“ The foamy bed of the waters is filled with an archipelago of islands covered with palm-trees. Westward, on the left bank of the Orinoco, the wide-stretching savannahs of the Meta and the Casanare resembled a sea of verdure. The setting sun seemed like a globe of fire suspended over the plain, and the solitary Peak of Uniana, which appeared more lofty from being wrapped in vapours which softened its outline, all contributed to augment the majesty of the scene. Immediately below us lay a deep valley, enclosed on every side. ”

“ The moon, then nearly at the full, illumined the rounded domes of the Silla, and the aspect of the sky formed a perfect contrast to that of the earth, which was covered with the bodies of the dead, and heaped with ruins. Mothers were seen bearing in their arms their children, whom they hoped to recall to life. Desolate families were wandering through the city, seeking a brother, a husband, or a friend, of whose fate they were ignorant, and whom they believed to be lost in the crowd. The people pressed along the streets, which could be traced only by long lines of ruins. ”

“ I call the country of the Anglo-Americans the United States, without adding of North America, although other United States exist in South America. It is embarrassing to speak of nations who play a great part on the scene of the world without having collective names. The term American can no longer be applied solely to the citizens of the United States of North America; and it were to be wished that the nomenclature of the independent nations of the New Continent should be fixed in a manner at once convenient, harmonious, and precise. ”

“ Granite rocks rise like islets amidst vast meadows. From their tops we discerned towards the north the Llanos of Calabozo bounding the horizon. We had been so long accustomed to the aspect of forests, that this view made a powerful impression on us. The steppes after sunset assume a tint of greenish gray. The visual ray being intercepted only by the rotundity of the earth, the stars seemed to rise as from the bosom of the ocean, and the most experienced mariner would have fancied himself placed on a projecting cape of a rocky coast. Our host was a Frenchman who lived amidst his numerous herds. ”

“ He who is alive to the charms of nature finds in this delicious island remedies still more potent than the climate. No abode appeared to me more fitted to dissipate melancholy, and restore peace to the perturbed mind, than that of Teneriffe or Madeira. These advantages are the effect not of the beauty of the site and the purity of the air alone: the moral feeling is no longer harrowed up by the sight of slavery, the presence of which is so revolting in the West Indies, and in every other place to which European colonists have conveyed what they call their civilization and their industry. ”

“ If the Bergantin be more than eight hundred toises high, it may be seen supposing only an ordinary refraction of one fourteenth of the arch, at the distance of twenty-seven nautical leagues; but the state of the atmosphere long concealed from us the majestic view of this curtain of mountains. It appeared at first like a fog-bank which hid the stars near the pole at their rising and setting; gradually this body of vapour seemed to augment and condense, to assume a bluish tint, and become bounded by sinuous and fixed outlines. ”

“ The distribution of these spots, the clusters of small trees with coriaceous and shining leaves scattered in the savannahs, the limpid rills that dig channels across the rocks, and wind alternately through fertile places and over bare shelves of granite, all call to mind the most lovely and picturesque plantations and pleasure-grounds of Europe. We seem to recognise the industry of man, and the traces of cultivation, amid this wild scenery. ”

“ What a wonderful combination of cells and vessels exist in these vegetable masses, in these gigantic trees of the torrid zone, which without interruption, perhaps during the space of a thousand years, prepare nutritious fluids, raise them to the height of one hundred and eighty feet, convey them down again to the ground, and conceal, beneath a rough and hard bark, under inanimate layers of ligneous matter, all the movements of organic life! ”

“ Doubtless, in consequence of the great revolutions which human society undergoes, the public fortune, the common patrimony of civilization, is found differently divided among the nations of the old and the new world: but by degrees the equilibrium is restored; and it is a fatal, I had almost said an impious prejudice, to consider the growing prosperity of any other part of our planet as a calamity to Europe. The independence of the colonies will not contribute to isolate them from the old civilized nations, but will rather bring all more closely together. ”

“ The sun does not merely enlighten, it colours the objects, and wraps them in a thin vapour, which, without changing the transparency of the air, renders its tints more harmonious, softens the effects of the light, and diffuses over nature a placid calm, which is reflected in our souls. To explain this vivid impression which the aspect of the scenery in the two Indies produces, even on coasts but thinly wooded, it is sufficient to recollect that the beauty of the sky augments from Naples to the equator, almost as much as from Provence to the south of Italy. ”

“ How difficult to recognize in this infancy of society, in this assemblage of dull, silent, inanimate Indians, the primitive character of our species! Human nature does not here manifest those features of artless simplicity, of which poets in every language have drawn such enchanting pictures. The savage of the Orinoco appeared to us to be as hideous as the savage of the Mississippi, described by that philosophical traveller Volney, who so well knew how to paint man in different climates. ”

“ The hills by which the convent is backed, are crowned with palm-trees and arborescent ferns. In the evenings, when the sky denotes rain, the air resounds with the monotonous howling of the alouate apes, which resembles the distant sound of wind when it shakes the forest. Yet amid these strange sounds, these wild forms of plants, and these prodigies of a new world, nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice familiar to him. ”