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had escaped from the hospitals, were laid on the banks of the small river Guayra. They found no shelter but the foliage of trees. Beds, linen to dress the wounds, instruments of surgery, medicines, and objects of the most urgent necessity, were buried under the ruins. Every thing, even food, was wanting during the first days. Water became alike scarce in the interior of the city. The commotion had rent the pipes of the fountains; the falling in of the earth had choaked up the springs that supplied them; and it became necessary, in order to have water, to go down to the river Guayra, which was considerably swelled; and then vessels to convey the water were wanting.

There remained a duty to be fulfilled toward the dead, enjoined at once by piety, and the dread of infection. It being impossible to inter so many thousand corpses, half-buried under the ruins, commissaries were appointed to burn the bodies: and for this purpose funeral piles were erected between the heaps of ruins. This ceremony lasted several days. Amid so many public calamities, the people devoted themselves to those religious duties, which they thought were the most fitted to appease the wrath of heaven. Some, as sembling in processions, sung funeral hymns; others, in a state of distraction, confessed themselves aloud in the streets. In this town was now repeated what had been remarked in the province of Quito, after the tremendous earthquake of 1797; a number of marriages were con

tracted between persons, who had neglected for many years to sanction their union by the sacerdotal benediction. Children found parents, by whom they had never till then been acknowledged; restitutions were promised by persons, who had never been accused of fraud; and families, who had long been enemies, were drawn together by the tie of common calamity." If this feeling seemed to calm the passions of some, and open the heart to pity, it had a contrary effect on others, rendering them more rigid and inhuman. In great calamities vulgar minds preserve still less goodness than strength: misfortune acts in the same manner, as the pursuits of literature and the study of nature; their happy influence is felt only by a few, giving more ardour to sentiment, more elevation to the thoughts, and more benevolence to the disposition.

SCENERY ON THE RIO APURE.

[From the same.]

During the whole of my voyage from San Fernando to San Carlos del Rio Negro, and thence to the town of Angostura, I confined myself to writing day by day, either in the boat, or where we disembarked at night, what appeared to me worthy of observation. Violent rains, and the prodigious quantity of moschettoes with which the air is filled on the banks of the Oroonoko and the Cassiquiare, necessarily occasioned some breaks in this labour; which I supplied by notes taken a few days after. The following pages are extracts from

my

my journal. Whatever is written while the objects we describe are before our eyes bears a character of truth, I had almost said of individuality, which gives attraction to things the least important.

In order to avoid useless repetitions, I have sometimes added to this journal the notions I afterward acquired respecting the objects I had described. The more nature appears great and awful in forests traversed by immense rivers, the more we should preserve in our pictures of the scenery that character of simplicity, which constitutes the principal and often the sole merit of a first sketch.

March the 31st. A contrary wind obliged us to remain on shore till noon. We saw a part of some cane-fields laid waste by the effect of a conflagration, which had spread from a neighbouring forest. The wandering Indians every where set fire to the forest where they have encamped at night; and during the season of drought, vast provinces would be the prey of these conflagrations, if the extreme hardness of the wood did not prevent the trees from being entirely consumed. We found trunks of desmanthus, and mahogany (cahoba), that were scarcely charred two inches deep.

Having passed the Diamante, we entered a land inhabited only by tigers, crocodiles, and chiguires, a large species of the genus cavia of Linneus. We saw flocks of birds, crowded so close together, as to appear against the sky like a dark cloud, that every instant changed it's form. The

river widens by degrees. One of it's banks is generally barren and sandy from the effect of inundations: the other is higher, and covered with lofty trees. Sometimes the river is bordered by forests on each side, and forms a straight canal a hundred and fifty toises broad. The manner in which the trees are disposed is very remarkable. We first find bushes of sauso, forming a kind of hedge four feet high; and appearing as if they had been clipped by the hand of man. A copse of cedars, brazillettoes, and lignum vitæ, rises behind this hedge. Palm-trees are rare; we saw only a few scattered trunks of the thorny piritu and corozo. The large quadrupeds of those regions, the tigers, tapirs, and pecaris, have made openings in the hedge of sausos which we have just described. Through these the wild animals pass, when they come to drink at the river. As they fear but little the approach of a boat, we had the pleasure of viewing them pace slowly along the shore, till they disappeared in the forest, which they entered by one of the narrow passes left here and there between the bushes. I confess that these scenes, which were often repeated, had ever for me a peculiar attraction. The pleasure they excite, is not owing solely to the interest, which the naturalist takes in the objects of his study; it is connected with a feeling common to all men, who have been brought up in the habits of civilization. You find yourself in a new world, in the midst of untamed and savage nature. Now it is the jaguar,

the

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the beautiful panther of America, that appears upon the shore; and now the hocco with it's black plumage and it's tufted head, that moves slowly along the sausoes. Animals of the most different classes succeed each other. "Esse como en el Paradiso," said our pilot, an old Indian of the missions. Every thing indeed here recalls to mind that state of the primitive world, the innocence and felicity of which ancient and venerable traditions have transmitted to all nations: but, in carefully observing the manners of animals between themselves, we see that they mutually avoid and fear each other. The golden age has ceased; and in this Paradise of the American forests, as well as every where else, sad and long experience has taught all beings, that benignity is seldom found in alliance with strength.

When the shore is of considerable breadth, the hedge of sauso remains at a distance from the river. In this intermediate ground we see crocodiles, sometimes to the number of eight or ten, stretched on the sand. Motionless, the jaws opened at right angles, they repose by each other without displaying any of those marks of affection, observed in other animals that live in society. The troop separates as soon as they quit the shore. It is, however, probably composed of one male only, and many females; for, as Mr. Descourtils, who has so much studied the crocodiles of Saint Domingo, observed before me, the males are rare, because they kill one another in fighting

during the season of their loves. These monstrous reptiles are so numerous, that throughout the whole course of the river we had almost at every instant five or six in view.

The crocodiles of the Apure find abundant nourishment in the chiguires (the thick-nosed tapir of naturalists), which live fifty or sixty together in troops on the banks of the river. These unfortunate animals, as large as our pigs, have no weapons of defence; they swim somewhat better than they run: yet they become the prey of the crocodiles in the water, as of the tigers on land. It is difficult to conceive, how, persecuted by two powerful enemies, they can become so numerous; but they breed with the same rapidity as the cobayas, or little guinea-pigs, which come to us from Brazil.

Near the Joval nature assumes an awful and savage aspect. We there saw the largest tiger we had ever met with. The natives themselves were astonished at it's prodigious length, which surpassed that of all the tigers of India I had seen in the collections of Europe. The animal lay stretched beneath the shade of a large zamang. It had just killed a chiguire, but had not yet touched it's prey, on which it kept one of it's paws. The zamuroes, a species of vulture which we have compared above to the percnopterus of Lower-Egypt, were assembled in flocks to devour the remains of the jaguar's repast. They afforded the most curious spectacle, by a singular mixture of boldness and timidity.

They

1

They advanced within the distance of two feet from the jaguar, but at the least movement the beast made they drew back. In order to observe more nearly the manners of these animals, we went into the little boat, that accompanied our canoe. Tigers very rarely attack boats by swimming to them; and never but when their ferocity is heightened by a long privation of food. The noise of our oars led the animal to rise slowly, and hide itself behind the sauso bushes, that bordered the shore. The vultures tried to profit by this moment of absence to devour the chiguire: but the tiger, notwithstanding the proximity of our boat, leaped into the midst of them; and in a fit of rage, expressed by his gait and the movement of his tail, carried off his prey to the forest. The Indians regretted, that they were not provided with their lances, in order to go on shore, and attack the tiger. They are accustomed to this weapon, and were right in not trusting to our musquets, which, in an air so excessively humid, often miss fire.

Continuing to descend the river, we met with the great herd of

chiguires, which the tiger had put to flight, and from which he had selected his prey. These animals saw us land with great tranquillity; some of them were seated, and gazed upon us, moving the upper lip like rabbits. They seem not to be afraid of men, but the sight of our great dog put them to flight. Their hind legs being longer than their fore legs, their pace is a slight gallop, but with so little swiftness, that we succeeded in catching two of them. The chiguire, which swims with the greatest agility, utters a short moan in running, as if it's respiration were impeded. It is the largest of the family of gnawing animals. It defends itself only at the last extremity, when it is surrounded and wounded. Having great strength in it's grinding teeth, particularly the hinder ones, which are pretty long, it can tear the paw of a tiger, or the leg of a horse, with it's bite. It's flesh has a smell of musk somewhat disagreeable; yet hams are made of it in this country, which almost justifies the name of water hog, given to the chiguire by some of the older naturalists.

POETRY.

POETRY.

I

TO BRITAIN.

[Montgomery's Greenland.]

LOVE Thee, O my native Isle !
Dear as my mother's earliest smile;
Sweet as my father's voice to me
Is all I hear, and all I see,

When, glancing o'er thy beauteous land,
In view thy Public Virtues stand,
The guardian angels of thy coast,
Who watch the dear domestic Host,
The Heart's Affections, pleased to roam
Around the quiet haven of home.

I love Thee,-when I mark thy soil
Flourish beneath the peasant's toil,
And from its lap of verdure throw
Treasures, which neither Indies know.
I love Thee,-when I hear around
Thy looms, and wheels, and anvils sound,
Thine engines heaving all their force,
Thy waters labouring on their course,
And arts, and industry, and wealth
Exulting in the joys of health.

I love Thee, when I trace thy tale
To the dim point where records fail;
Thy deeds of old renown inspire
My bosom with our fathers' fire;
A proud inheritance I claim

In all their sufferings, all their fame;

Nor less delighted when I stray

Down history's lengthening, widening way,
And hail Thee in thy present hour,
From the meridian arch of power,
Shedding the lustre of thy reign,
Like sunshine, over land and main.

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