Jaguars and Electric Eels (Penguin Great Journeys) by Alexander von Humboldt

Author:Alexander von Humboldt [Humboldt, Alexander von]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780141025452
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2007-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Journey up the Apure River

Only after Diamante do you enter territory inhabited by tigers, crocodiles and chiguires, a large species of Linnaeus’s genus Cavia (capybara). We saw flocks of birds pressed against each other flash across the sky like a black cloud changing shape all the time. The river slowly grew wider. One of the banks is usually arid and sandy due to flooding. The other is higher, covered with full-grown trees. Sometimes the river is lined with jungle on both sides and becomes a straight canal some 150 toises wide. The arrangement of the trees is remarkable. First you see the sauso shrubs (Hermesia castaneifolia), a hedge some 4 feet high as if cut by man. Behind this hedge a brushwood of cedar, Brazil-wood and gayac. Palms are rare; you see only scattered trunks of corozo and thorny piritu. The large quadrupeds of these regions, tigers, tapirs and peccaries, have opened passages in the sauso hedge. They appear through these gaps to drink water. They are not frightened of the canoes, so we see them skirting the river until they disappear into the jungle through a gap in the hedge. I confess that these often repeated scenes greatly appeal to me. The pleasure comes not solely from the curiosity a naturalist feels for the objects of his studies, but also to a feeling common to all men brought up in the customs of civilization. You find yourself in a new world, in a wild, untamed nature. Sometimes it is a jaguar, the beautiful American panther, on the banks; sometimes it is the hocco (Crax alector) with its black feathers and tufted head, slowly strolling along the sauso hedge. All kinds of animals appear, one after the other. ‘Es como en el paraíso’ (‘It is like paradise’) our old Indian pilot said. Everything here reminds you of that state of the ancient world revealed in venerable traditions about the innocence and happiness of all people; but when carefully observing the relationships between the animals you see how they avoid and fear each other. The golden age has ended. In this paradise of American jungles, as everywhere else, a long, sad experience has taught all living beings that gentleness is rarely linked to might.

Where the shore is very wide, the line of sausos remains far from the river. In the intermediate zone up to ten crocodiles can be seen stretched out in the sand. Immobile, with their jaws wide open at right angles, they lie next to each other without the least sign of sociability, unlike those animals that live in groups. The troop separates as soon as it leaves the shore; however, it consists probably of one male and numerous females as males are rare due to the rutting season when they fight and kill each other. There were so many of these great reptiles that all along the river we could always see at least five or six of them, although the fact that the Apure had not yet flooded meant that hundreds more of these saurians remained buried in the savannah’s mud.

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