Notes of a Botanist on the Amazon & Andes: Being Records of Travel on the Amazon and Its Tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga and Pastasa; as Also to the Cataracts of the Orinoco, Along the Eastern Side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the Shores of the Pacific, During the Years 1849-1864, Volume 2

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Macmillan, 1908 - Amazon River Valley - 542 pages

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Page iv - The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite ; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.
Page iv - Where Andes, giant of the western star, With meteor standard to the winds unfurl'd, • Looks, from his throne of clouds, o'er half the world.
Page 399 - Thus would I do to mine enemy (naming him by his name) were this he !" In about ten minutes the excitement has passed off, and the Indian grows calm, but appears exhausted. Were he at home in his hut, he would sleep off the remaining fumes, but now he must shake off his drowsiness by renewing the dance.
Page 476 - Having passed the night there, go on thy way the following day through the forest in the same direction, till thou reach another deep dry ravine, across which thou must throw a bridge and pass over it slowly and cautiously, for the ravine is very deep; that is, if thou succeed not in finding the pass which exists. Go forward and look for the signs of another sleeping-place, which, I assure thee, thou canst not fail to see in the fragments of pottery and other marks, because the Indians are continually...
Page 476 - On this side thou wilt find a pajondl [pasture] in a small plain which having crossed thou wilt come on a canon between two hills, which is the way of the Inca. From thence as thou goest along thou shalt see the entrance of the socabon [tunnel], which is in the form of a church-porch. Having come through the canon, and gone a good distance beyond, thou wilt perceive a cascade which descends from an offshoot of the...
Page 475 - Anteojos' [the spectacles] from having between them a point of land like to a nose. "From this place thou mayest again descry the Cerros Llanganati, the same as thou sawest them from the top of Guapa, and I warn thee to leave the said lakes on the left, and that in front of the point or 'nose' there is a plain, which is the sleeping-place. There thou must leave thy horses, for they can go no further. Following now on foot in the same direction, thou shalt come on a great black lake, the which leave...
Page 477 - ... so that putting in thy hand what thou shalt gather at the bottom is grains of gold. To ascend the mountain, leave the bog and go along to the right, and pass above the cascade, going round the offshoot of the mountain. And if by chance the mouth of the socab6n be closed with certain herbs which they call ' Salvaje,' remove them, and thou wilt find the entrance.
Page 475 - ... first night) a good distance above it ; and ask there for the mountain of Guapa, from whose top, if the day be fine, look to the east, so that thy back be towards the town of Ambato, and from thence thou shalt perceive the three Cerros Llanganati, in the form of a triangle, on whose declivity there is a lake, made by hand, into which the ancients threw the gold they had prepared for the ransom of the Inca when they heard of his death. From the same Cerro Guapa thou mayest see also the forest,...
Page 408 - His eyes started from his head ; his mouth contracted ; his limbs trembled. It was fearful to see him; he was obliged to sit down, or he would have fallen ; he was drunk, but this intoxication lasted but five minutes; he was then gayer.
Page 400 - I, who never in my life smoked a cigar or pipe of tobacco. Above all this, I must drink a large cup of palm-wine, and it will readily be understood that the effect of such a complex dose was a strong inclination to vomit, which was only overcome by lying down in a hammock and drinking a cup of coffee.

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