Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/240

 opposite direction to that of the Napo. An account of this journey was sent by D'Aguirre, in a letter to the King of Spain, from which Humboldt has given an extract in his narrative. As it is a good specimen of the quaintness of style and looseness of statement exhibited by these early narrators of adventures in South America, I will give a translation of it. "We constructed rafts, and, leaving behind our horses and baggage, sailed down the river (the Ucayali) with great risk, until we found ourselves in a gulf of fresh water. In this river Marañon we continued more than ten months and a half, down to its mouth, where it falls into the sea. We made one hundred days' journey, and travelled 1500 leagues. It is a great and fearful stream, has 80 leagues of fresh water at its mouth, vast shoals, and 800 leagues of wilderness without any kind of inhabitants, as your Majesty will see from the true and correct narrative of the journey which we have made. It has more than 6000 islands. God knows how we came out of this fearful sea." Many expeditions were undertaken in the course of the eighteenth century; in fact, the crossing of the continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic, by way of the Amazons, seems to have become by this time a common occurrence. The only voyage, however, which yielded much scientific information to the European public was that of the French astronomer, La Condamine, in 1743–4. The most complete account