I twice visited the island of Cuba, living there first for three months, and then for six weeks. Bonpland and I visited the neighbourhood of Havana, the beautiful Guines valley, and the coast between Batabanó and the port of Trinidad.
The way Havana looks as you enter the port makes it one of the most pleasant and picturesque places on the American equinoctial coasts.136 Celebrated by travellers from all over the world, this site is not like the luxurious vegetation along the Guayaquil banks, nor the wild majesty of Rio de Janeiro’s rocky coasts, but the charms that in our climates embellish cultivated nature are here joined to the power and organic vigour of tropical nature. In this sweet blend of impressions, the European forgets the dangers that threaten him in crowded West Indian cities; he tries to seize all the diverse elements in this vast countryside and contemplate the forts that crown the rocks to the east of the port, the inland basin surrounded by villages and farms, the palm trees reaching amazing heights, a town half hidden by a forest of ships’ masts and sails. You enter Havana harbour between the Morro fort (Castillo de los Santos Reyes) and the San Salvador de la Punta fort: the opening is barely some 170 to 200 toises wide, and remains like this for one fifth of a mile. Leaving this neck, and the beautiful San Carlos de la Cabaña castle and the Casa Blanca to the north, you reach the basin shaped like a clover whose great axis, stretching south-south-west to north-north-east, is about 2.2 miles long. This basin links up with three creeks, one of which, the Atares, is supplied with fresh water. The city of Havana, surrounded by walls, forms a promontory limited to the south by the arsenal; to the north by the Punta fort. Passing some sunken ships, and the Luz shoals, the water becomes some 5 to 6 fathoms deep. The castles defend the town from the west. The rest of the land is filled with suburbs (arrabales orbarrios extra muros), which year by year shrink the Field of Mars (Campo de Marte). Havana’s great buildings, the cathedral, the Casa del Gobierno, the admiral’s house, the arsenal, the correo or post office, and the tobacco factory are less remarkable for their beauty than for their solidity; most of the streets are very narrow and are not yet paved. As stones come from Veracruz, and as transporting them is expensive, someone had recently come up with the strange idea of using tree trunks instead of paving-stones. This project was quickly abandoned, though recently arrived travellers could see fine cahoba (mahogany) tree trunks sunk into the mud. During my stay, few cities in Spanish America could have been more unpleasant due to the lack of a strong local government. You walked around in mud up to your knees, while the amount of four-wheeled carriages or volantes so typical of Havana, carts loaded with sugar cane, and porters who elbowed passers-by made being a pedestrian annoying and humiliating. The stench of tasajo, or poorly dried meat, stank out the houses and tortuous streets. I have been assured that the police have now remedied these inconveniences, and cleaned up the streets. Houses are more aerated; but here, as in ancient European cities, correcting badly planned streets is a slow process.
There are two fine walks, one (the Alameda) between the Paula hospital and the theatre, redecorated by an Italian artist in 1803 in fine taste; the other between the Punta fort and the Puerta de la Muralla. This last one, also called the Paseo Extra Muros, is a deliciously fresh walk: after sunset many carriages come here. Near the Campo de Marte there is a botanical garden, and something else, which disgusts me – the huts in front of which the slaves are put to be sold. It is along this walk that a marble statue of Charles III was meant to be erected. Originally this site was meant for a monument to Columbus, whose ashes were brought from Santo Domingo to Cuba. Fernando Cortés’s ashes had been transferred the same year to Mexico from one church to another. At the end of the eighteenth century the two greatest men in the history of the conquest of America were given new tombs.
The most majestic palm tree of its tribe, the palma real, gives the countryside around Havana its special character. It is the Oreodoxa regia in our description of American palms; its tall trunk, swelling slightly in the middle, rises 60 to 80 feet high; its upper part shines with a tender green, newly formed by the closing and dilation of the petioles, and contrasts with the rest, which is whitish and fissured. It looks like two columns, one on top of the other. The Cuban palma real has feathery leaves rising straight up towards the sky, curving only at the tips. The form of this plant reminded us of the vadgiai palm covering the rocks on the Orinoco cataracts, balancing its long arrows above the mist of foam. Here, like everywhere, as the population increases so vegetation diminishes. Around Havana, in the Regla amphitheatre, these palms that so delighted me are now disappearing year by year. The marshy places covered with bamboos have been cultivated and are drying out. Civilization progresses; and today I am told that the land offers only a few traces of its former savage abundance. From the Punta to San Lázaro, from the Cabaña to Regla, from Regla to Atares, everything is covered with houses: those circling the bay are lightly and elegantly built. The owners draw a plan and order a house from the United States, as if ordering furniture. As long as yellow fever rages in Havana, people will retire to their country houses and enjoy fresher air. In the cool nights, when ships cross the bay and leave long phosphorescent tracks in the water, these rural sites become a refuge for those who flee a tumultuous, over-populated city.137
At the end of April Bonpland and I had completed the observations we intended to make at the northern extreme of the torrid zone and were about to leave for Veracruz with Admiral Ariztizabal’s fleet. But we were misled by false information concerning Captain Baudin’s journey and decided to forgo our plan of passing Mexico on our way to the Philippine Islands. A newspaper announced that the two French sloops, the Géographie and the Naturaliste, had set sail for Cape Horn and would call in at Chile and Peru on their way to New Holland. This news shook me. I was reminded of my original intention in Paris when I had asked the Directorate to hasten Captain Baudin’s departure.138
On leaving Spain I had promised to join his expedition wherever I could reach it. Bonpland, as active and optimistic as usual, and I immediately decided to split our herbals into three lots to avoid the risk of losing what had taken so much trouble to collect on the banks of the Orinoco, Atabapo and Río Negro. We sent one collection by way of England to Germany, another via Cádiz to France, and the third we left in Havana. We had reason to congratulate ourselves on this prudence. Each collection contained virtually the same species; if the cases were taken by pirates there were instructions to send them to Sir Joseph Banks or to the natural history museum in Paris. Luckily I did not send my manuscripts to Cádiz with our friend and fellow traveller Father Juan Gonzalez, who left Cuba soon after us but whose vessel sank off Africa, with the loss of all life. We lost duplicates of our herbal collection, and all the insects Bonpland had gathered. For over two years we did not receive one letter from Europe; and those we got in the following three years never mentioned earlier letters. You may easily guess how nervous I was about sending a journal with my astronomical observations and barometrical measurements when I had not had the patience to make a copy. After visiting New Granada, Peru and Mexico I happened to be reading a scientific journal in the public library in Philadelphia and saw: ‘M. de Humboldt’s manuscripts have arrived at his brother’s house in Paris via Spain.’ I could scarcely suppress an exclamation of joy.
While Bonpland worked day and night dividing our herbal collections, thousands of obstacles prevented our departure from Havana. No ship would take us to Porto Bello or Cartagena. People seemed to enjoy exaggerating the difficulties faced crossing the isthmus and the time it takes to go by ship from Guayaquil to Lima. They reproached me for not continuing to explore those vast rich Spanish American lands that for over fifty years had not been open to any foreign travellers. Finding no boat I had to hire a Catalonian sloop anchored at Batabanó to take me to Porto Bello or Cartagena, depending on how the Santa Marta gales might blow. The prosperity of Havana, and its mercantile links with pacific ports, allowed me to procure funds for several years. I was able to exchange my revenues in Prussia for a part of General Don Gonzalo O’Farrill’s, who was Minister to the Spanish Court in Prussia. On the 6th of March the sloop I had hired was ready to sail.
The road from Río Blanco to Batabanó crossed uncultivated land, half covered in jungle, with wild indigo and cotton trees in the clearings. Several friends, including Señor de Mendoza, captain of Valparaíso harbour, and brother of the famous astronomer who had lived so long in London, accompanied us to Potrero de Mopox. While herborizing we found a new palm tree with fan leaves (Corypha maritima).
Batabanó was then a poor village, and its church had only just been finished. The ciénaga begins about half a league from the village, a marsh stretching about 60 leagues from west to east. At Batabanó it is thought that the sea is encroaching on the land. Nothing is sadder than these marshes. Not even a shrub breaks the monotony; a few stunted palm trees rise like broken masts among tufts of reeds. As we stayed only one night there I regretted not being able to investigate the two species of crocodile, or cocodrilo, infesting the ciénaga. One the locals call a cayman. The crocodile is said to be very daring, and even climbs into boats when it can. It often wanders a league inland just to devour pigs. It reaches some 15 feet long, and even chases (so they say) men on horseback, while the caymans are so shy that people can bathe in the water when they are around.
On my second visit to Havana in 1804139 I could not return to the Batabanó ciénaga and so I had these two species brought to me at great expense. Two crocodiles arrived alive. The eldest was 4 feet 3 inches long. They were captured with great difficulty and arrived on mules with their snouts muzzled and bound. They were lively and ferocious. In order to observe them we let them loose in a great hall, and from high pieces of furniture watched them attack large dogs. Having lived on the Orinoco, the Apure and the Magdalena for six months among crocodiles we enjoyed observing this strange animal before leaving for Europe, as they change from immobility to frenzied action quite suddenly. I counted thirty-eight teeth in the upper jaw and thirty in the lower. In the description that Bonpland and I made on the spot we deliberately marked that the lower fourth tooth rises over the upper jaw. The cayman sent from Batabanó died on the way and stupidly was not brought to us, so we could not compare the two species.
We set sail on the 9th of March before dawn, nervous about the uncomfortable narrow boat in which we had to sleep on deck. The cabin (cámara de pozo) had no light or air and was merely a hold for provisions; we could only just fit our instruments in there. These inconveniences lasted only twenty days.
Batabanó Gulf, surrounded by a low marshy coast, looks like a vast desert. The sea is a greenish-brown. Our sloop was the only boat in the gulf, for this sea route is used only by smugglers or, as they are politely called here, ‘traders’ (los tratantes). One large island called Isla de Pinos, with mountains covered with pines, rises in this bay. We sailed east-south-east to clear the archipelago that Spanish pilots called Jardines (Gardens) and Jardinillos (Bowers), reaching the rocky island of Cayo de Piedras. Columbus named them the Queen’s Gardens in 1494 when on his second voyage he struggled for fifty-eight days with the winds and currents between Pinos Island and the eastern cape of Cuba. A part of these so-called gardens is indeed beautiful; the scene changes all the time and the green contrasts with the white, barren sands. The sand seems to undulate in the sun’s heat as if it were liquid.
Despite the small size of our boat, and the boasted skill of our pilot, we often ran aground. The bottom was soft so there was no danger of sinking. At sunset we preferred to lie at anchor. The first night was beautifully serene, with countless shooting stars all falling in the same direction. This area is completely deserted, while in Columbus’s time it was inhabited by great numbers of fishermen. These Cuban inhabitants used a small fish to catch the great sea-turtles. They tied this fish to a long cord of the revés (the Spanish name for the echeneis). This ‘fisher-fish’ fixed itself on the shell of the turtle by means of its suckers. The Indians pulled both sucker fish and turtle ashore. It took three days to pass through this labyrinth of Jardines and Jardinillos. As we moved east the sea got rougher.
We visited the Cayo Bonito, which deserves its name (pretty) as it is covered with lush vegetation. On a layer of sand and shells 5 to 6 inches thick rises a forest of mangroves. From their shape and size they look from afar like laurels. What characterizes these coral islands is the wonderful Tournefortia gnaphalioides of jacquin, with silvery leaves, which we found here for the first time. This is a shrub some 4 to 5 feet high that gives off a pleasing scent. While we were botanizing our sailors looked for lobsters among the rocks. Irritated at not finding any they took revenge by climbing into the mangroves and slaughtering young alcatras nesting in pairs. This alcatras builds its nest where several branches meet, and four or five nest on the same trunk. The younger birds tried to defend themselves with their long beaks, while the older ones flew above our heads making hoarse, plaintive cries. Blood streamed from the trees for the sailors were armed with long sticks and machetes. We tried to prevent this pointless cruelty but sailors, after years at sea, enjoy slaughtering animals. The ground was littered with wounded birds struggling against death. When we arrived on the scene it was strangely silent, as if saying, ‘man has passed this way’.
On the 14th of March we entered the Guaurabo river at one of Trinidad de Cuba’s two ports, to put our práctico, or pilot, who had steered us through the Jardinillos and run us aground, ashore. We also hoped to catch a correo marítimo (mail-boat) to Cartagena. Towards evening I landed and began to set up Borda’s azimuth compass and the artificial horizon to observe the stars when a party of pulperos, or small traders, who had dined on board a foreign ship cheerfully invited us to accompany them into town. These good people asked us to mount two each to a horse; as it was excessively hot we accepted their offer. The road to Trinidad runs across a plain covered with vegetation where the miraguama, a silver-leafed palm tree, stands out. This fertile soil, although of tierra colorada, needs only to be tilled to yield rich harvests. After emerging from a forest we saw a curtain of hills whose southern slope was covered with houses. This is Trinidad, founded in 1514 on account of the ‘rich gold mines’ said to lie in the Armani river valley. The streets of Trinidad are all very steep and again show why people complain, as they do over all Spanish America, of how badly the conquistadores chose the sites of new towns.
We spent a very agreeable evening in the house of Don Antonio Padrón, one of the richest inhabitants, where we found all Trinidad society gathered in a tertulia. We were again struck by how vivacious Cuban women are. Though lacking the refinements of European civilization, the primitive simplicity of their charms pleased us. We left Trinidad on March the 15th. The mayor had us driven down to the mouth of the Guaurabo river in a fine carriage lined with old crimson damask. To add to our confusion a priest, the local poet, dressed in a velvet suit despite the heat, celebrated our voyage to the Orinoco with a sonnet.
On the road to the harbour we were struck by the countless phosphorescent insects (Cocuyo, Elater noctilucus). The grass, the branches and the leaves of trees all shone with that reddish, flickering light. It seemed as if the stars had fallen on to the savannah! In the poorest hut in the country fifteen cocuyos, placed in a gourd pierced with holes, give sufficient light to look for things at night. Shaking the gourd excites the animals and increases the luminous discs on their bodies. A young woman at Trinidad told us that during a long passage from the mainland she used the phosphorescent cocuyos when she wanted to nurse her baby at night. The captain of the ship would use only cocuyos lights so as not to attract pirates.
Our journey from Cuba to the South American coast near the Sinu river took sixteen days. On the 30th of March we doubled Punta Gigantes, and made for the Boca Chica, the present entrance to Cartagena harbour. From there to our anchorage the distance is 7 or 8 miles. We took a práctico to pilot us but repeatedly touched sandbanks. On landing I learned with great satisfaction that M. Fidalgo’s coastal surveying expedition140 had not yet set out to sea. This enabled me to fix astronomical positions of several towns on the shore. The passage from Cartagena to Porto Bello, and the isthmus along the Chagres and Cruces rivers, is short and easy. But we were warned that we might stay in Panama a while before finding a boat for Guayaquil, and then it would take ages to sail against the winds and currents. I reluctantly gave up my plan to level the isthmus mountains with my barometer, though I never guessed that as I write today (1827) people would still be ignorant of the height of the ridge dividing the waters of the isthmus.141 Everybody agreed that a land journey via Bogotá, Popayán, Quito and Cajamaraca would be better than a sea journey, and would enable us to explore far more. The European preference for the tierras frías, the cold, temperate climate of the Andes, helped us make our decision. The distances were known, but not the time we finally took. We had no idea it would take us eighteen months to cross from Cartagena to Lima. This change in our plan and direction did allow me to trace the map of the Magdalena river, and astronomically determine eighty points inland, collect several thousand new plants and observe volcanoes.
The result of my labours have long since been published. My map of the Magdalena river appeared in 1816. Till then no traveller had ever described New Granada, and the public, except in Spain, knew how to navigate the Magdalena only from some lines traced by Bouguer.142 Travel books have multiplied, and political events have drawn travellers to countries with free institutions who publish their journals too hurriedly on returning to Europe. They have described the towns they visited and stayed in, as well as the beautiful landscape; they give information about the people, the means of travel in boat, on mule or on men’s backs. Though these works have familiarized the Old World with Spanish America, the absence of a proper knowledge of Spanish and the little care taken to establish the names of rivers, places and tribes have led to extraordinary mistakes.143
During our six-day stay at Cartagena, our most interesting excursions were to the Boca Grande and the Popa hill with its fine view. The port, or bahía, is 9.5 miles long. The unhealthiness of Cartagena comes from the great marshes surrounding the town on the east and north. The Ciénaga de Tesca is more than 15 miles long. A sad vegetation of cactus, Jatropha gossypifolia, croton and mimosa covers the arid slopes of Cerro de la Popa. While botanizing on these wild spots our guides pointed out a thick Acacia cornigera bush infamous for a deplorable event. This acacia is armed with very sharp thorns, and extraordinarily large ants live on it. A woman, annoyed by her husband’s well-founded jealousy, planned a barbarous revenge. With the help of her lover she tied her husband up with rope, and at night chucked him into this Acacia cornigera bush. The more violently he struggled the more the sharp thorns tore his skin. His screams were heard by some passers-by who found him after several hours covered with blood and dreadfully stung by ants. This crime is without example in the history of human perversion; the violence of its passion derives from the coarseness of manners, not from the Tropics. My most important work at Cartagena was comparing my observations with the astronomical positions fixed by Fidalgo’s officers.
We prolonged our stay in Cartagena as long as our work and my comparisons with Fidalgo’s astronomical observations demanded. The company of this excellent sailor and Pombo and Don Ignacio Cavero (once Secretary to Viceroy Góngora) taught us a lot about statistics. I often quoted Pombo’s notes about trade in quinquina and the state of the province of Cartagena’s population and agriculture. We also came across a curious collection of drawings, machine models and minerals from New Granada in an artillery officer’s house. The Pascua (Easter) processions enabled us to see how civilized the customs of the lower classes are. The temporary altars are decorated with thousands of flowers, including the shiny Plumeria alba and Plumeria rubra. Nothing can be compared with the strangeness of those who ‘took the main parts in the procession. Beggars with crowns of thorns asked for alms, with crucifixes in their hands. They were covered in black cloth and went from house to house having paid the priest a few piastres for the right to collect. Pilate was dressed in a suit of striped silk; the apostles sitting round a long table laid with sweet foods were carried on the shoulders of zambos. At sunset you saw dummies of Jews dressed as Frenchmen, filled with straw and rockets, hanging from strings like our own street lights. People waited for the moment when these judíos (Jews) would be set on fire. They complained that this year the Jews did not burn as well as they had in others because it was so damp. These ‘holy recreations’ (the name given to this barbarous spectacle) in no way improves manners.
Frightened about being exposed too long to the unhealthy Cartagena airs we moved to the Indian village of Turbaco (once called Tarasco) on the 6th of April. It is situated in a delicious place where the jungle begins some 5 leagues south-south-east of Pipa. We were happy to leave a foul inn (fonda) packed with soldiers left over from General Rochambeau’s unfortunate expedition.144 Interminable discussions about the need to be cruel to the blacks of Santo Domingo reminded me of the opinions and horrors of the sixteenth-century conquistadores. Pombo lent us his beautiful house in Turbaco, built by Archbishop Viceroy Góngora. We stayed as long as it took us to prepare for our journey up the Magdalena, and then the long land trip from Honda to Bogotá, Popoyán and Quito. Few stays in the Tropics have pleased me more. The village lies some 180 toises above sea-level. Snakes are very common and chase rats into the houses. They climb on to roofs and wage war with the bats, whose screaming annoyed us all night. The Indian huts covered a steep plateau so that everywhere you can view shady valleys watered by small streams. We especially enjoyed being on our terrace at sunrise and sunset as it faced the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, some 3 5 leagues distant. The snow-covered peaks – probably San Lorenzo – are clearly seen from Turbaco when the wind blows and brings cooler air. Thick vegetation covers the hills and plains between the Mahates dyke and the snowy mountains: they often reminded us of the beautiful Orinoco mountains. We were surprised to find, so close to the coast in a land frequented by Europeans for over three centuries, gigantic trees belonging to completely unknown species, such as the Rhinocarpus excelsa (which the creoles call caracoli because of its spiral-shaped fruit), the Ocotea turbacensis and the mocundo or Cavanillesia platanifolia, whose large fruit resemble oiled paper lanterns hanging at the tip of each branch.
Every day we went botanizing in the Turbaco forests from five in the morning until dark: these long walks would have been a delight in this fertile marshy soil if we had not been devoured by mosquitoes, zancudos, chigoes and numberless insects already described in the Orinoco part of this narrative. In the midst of these wonderful forests, smelling the flowers of the Crinum erubescens and Pancratium littorale, we often came across Indian conucos, little banana and maize plantations where Indians, ever ready to flee from whites, live during the rainy season. This taste for the jungle and isolation typifies the American Indian. Though the Spanish population has mixed with the Indian population in Turbaco, the latter display the same lack of culture as in the Guianan missions. Examining their farming tools, the way they build their bamboo huts, their clothes and crude arts, I ask myself what the copper race has earned by contact with European civilization.
People in Turbaco out botanizing with us often spoke of a marshy land in the middle of a palm-tree forest that they called ‘little volcanoes’, los volcancitos. A village tradition claims that this land had once been in flames but that a good priest, known for his piety, cast holy water and put the underground fire out, changing the volcano of fire into a volcano of water, volcán de agua. This tale reminded me of the geological disputes between Neptunists and Vulcanists of the last century. The local wise man, the Turbaco priest, assured us that the volcancitos were simply thermal waters swimming with sulphur, erupting during storms with ‘moans’. We had been too long in the Spanish colonies not to doubt these marvellous fantasies coming more from superstitious whites than from Indians, half-castes and African slaves. We were led to the volcancitos in the jungle by Indians and found salses, or air volcanoes.
In the Turbaco forest, full of palm trees, there is a clearing about 800 square feet in size without any vegetation, bordered by tufts of Bromelia kavatas, whose leaf is like a pineapple’s. The surface of the ground was composed of layers of cracked grey-black clay. What they call volcancitos are fifteen to twenty small truncated cones rising in the middle of the clearing. They are some 3 to 4 toises high. The high edges are filled with water and they periodically release large air bubbles. I counted five explosions in two minutes. The force of the rising air makes you think of a powerful pressure deep in the earth. Indian children who came with us helped us block some of the smaller craters with clay, but the gas always pushed the earth away. According to the Indians the number and shape of the cones near the path had not changed for over twenty years, and they remain full of water even in droughts. The heat of the water was the same as that of the air. With long sticks we could reach some 6 to 7 feet down inside a cone. Leaving the water in a glass it became quite clear, and tasted slightly of alum.
Our stay in Turbaco was extremely agreeable, and useful for our botanical collection. Even today those bamboo forests, the wild fertility of the land, the orchids carpeting the old ocotea and Indian fig-tree trunks, the majestic view of the snowy mountains, the light mist covering the valleys at sunrise, bunches of gigantic trees like green islands above a sea of mist, all return incessantly to my imagination. Our life at Turbaco was simple and hard-working; we were young, linked by similar tastes and characters, always full of hope in the future, on the eve of a journey that would take us to the highest Andean peaks, and volcanoes on fire in a country where earthquakes are common. We felt happier than at any other moment in our expedition. The years that have passed since then, not without bitterness and hardships, have added to the charms of these impressions; I would like to think that in his exile in the Southern hemisphere, in the isolation of Paraguay, my unfortunate friend Bonpland145 might still recall our delightful herborizings.
As Bonpland’s health had cruelly suffered during our journey on the Orinoco and Casiquiare we decided to follow the advice of the locals and supply ourselves with all the comforts possible on our trip up the Magdalena. Instead of sleeping in hammocks or lying on the ground on skins, exposed to the nightly torment of mosquitoes,, we did what was done in the country, and got hold of a mattress, a country-bed that was easy to unfold, as well as a toldo, a cotton sheet, which could fold under the mattress and make a kind of closed-off tent that no insects could penetrate. Two of these beds, rolled into cylinders of thick leather, were packed on to a mule. I could not praise this system more; it is far superior to the mosquito net.
We had as travelling companions a Frenchman, Dr Rieux from Carcassonne, and the young son of the ill-fated Nariño. The bad luck of these two moved us, reminding us of the state of oppression in this unhappy country. Dr Rieux, a charming, educated man, had come from Europe as doctor to Viceroy Ezpeleta. He was accused of interfering in politics, dragged out of his house in Honda in 1794, clapped in irons and taken to the inquisition prison in Cartagena. This damp place caused him a chronic blindness. For more than a year his wife had no news of his whereabouts. His belongings were dispersed and, as nothing could be proved, he was sent (bajo partido de registro) to Cádiz prison where his case would be forgotten. He managed to escape off the African coast.
We left Turbaco on a fresh and very dark night, walking through a bamboo forest. Our muleteers had difficulty finding the track, which was narrow and very muddy. Swarms of phosphorescent insects lit up the tree-tops like moving clouds, giving off a soft bluish light. At dawn we found ourselves at Arjona where the bamboo forest ends and arborescent grasses begin.
We waited nearly the whole day in the miserable village of Mahates for the animals carrying our belongings to the landing-stage on the Magdalena river. It was suffocatingly hot; at this time of year there is not a breath of wind. Feeling depressed we lay on the ground in the main square. My barometer had broken and it was the last one I had. I had anticipated measuring the slope of the river and fixing the speed of its current and the position of different stages through astronomical observations. Only travellers know how painful it is to suffer such accidents, which continued to dog me in the Andes and in Mexico; each time this happened I felt the same. Of all the instruments a traveller should carry the barometer is the one, despite all its imperfections, that caused me the most worry and whose loss I felt the most. Only chronometers, which sometimes suddenly and unpredictably change their rates, give rise to the same sense of loss. Indeed, after travelling thousands of leagues over land with astronomical and physical instruments, you are tempted to cry out: ‘Lucky are those who travel without instruments that break, without dried plants that get wet, without animal collections that rot; lucky are those who travel the world to see it with their own eyes, trying to understand it, and recollecting the sweet emotions that nature inspires!’
We saw several beautiful species of large aras (guacamayos) in the hands of Indians who had killed them in the nearby jungle to eat them. We began to dissect their enormous brains, though they are far less intelligent than parrots. I sketched the parts while Bonpland cut them apart; I examined the hyoid bone and the lower larynx, which cause this bird’s raucous sounds. It was the kind of research that Cuvier had recently instigated in anatomy and it appealed to me. I began to console myself for the loss of my barometer. Night did not allow me to determine our latitude through the stars. On the 20th of April at three in the morning, while it was still delightfully fresh, we set off for the Magdalena river landing-stage in the village of Barancas Nuevas. We were still in the thick jungle of bamboos, Palma amarga and mimosas, especially the inga with purple flowers. Halfway between Mahates and Barancas we came across some huts raised on bamboo trunks inhabited by zambos. This mixture of negro and Indian is very common around here. Copper-coloured women are very attracted to African men and many negroes from Choco, Antioquia province and Simitarra, once they gained their freedom by working hard, have settled in this river valley. We have often reminded you how the wisdom of the oldest Spanish laws favoured the freeing of black slaves while other European nations, boasting of a high degree of civilization, have hindered and continue to hinder this absurd and inhuman law.146