Jungle River!

In April of 1800, Baron von Humboldt plodded up the Orinoco River in canoes, in northeastern South America, and returned with over 6,000 previously unknown species of plants.  No wonder scientists would brave unknown dangers to search for the new biological treasures.  Ernest G. Holt made the same journey in a wood-burning steamer primarily to mark the boundary between Brazil and Venezuala, South America, but also to collect specimens of birds.  "Four hundred years after its discovery, the Orinoco remains much the same, and, at least in its upper course, almost as little known as when Diego de Ordaz (the original discoverer for Europe) entered its mouth," "In Humbolt's Wake: Narrative of a National Geographic Society Expedition Up the Orinoco and Through the Strange Casiquiare Canal to Amazonian Waters," National Geographic Magazine, November, 1931, p. 621.  The trip up the river is 1,118 miles in length; it is the third longest river in South America.

Holt compares the Orinoco with the Amazon River and concludes that while it can not compare in size, "the Orinoco is the more picturesque of the two.  Flocks of waterfowl, and numerous caymans lying like watersoaked logs on the margins of the beaches, add life (and danger!) to every scene" (pp. 627-630).  At one point, the author did the local women washing their laundry a large favor by shooting a cayman venturing too near.

The river periodically floods.  "When the Orinoco is at low stage, thousands of turtles assemble on two sand islands above the village of La Urbana to deposit their eggs.  In turtle season, the river people eat practically no other meat" (photo caption, p. 633).  The turtles appear to be half as large as a man!

The goal of finding the international boundary was difficult but they attained it.  "Every foot of line had to be hewn with ax and machete, the men often standing waistdeep in muck and water" (photo caption, 644).  A never-ending aggravation was the constant hordes of insects which frequented not only the rivers but the thatched huts in which they sometimes stayed.  The Holt group found all the natives friendly and helpful.

There were several treacherous long rapids around which the boats had to be painstakingly dragged.

Mr. Holt particularly enjoyed the many strange and beautiful birds in the forests living the river banks.  "Birds, birds, no end of them!  Tiny manakins, whose heads shine as brilliant spots of color in the shadows; jacamors, like giant humming birds, burnished bronze and green. . . But I am not writing a book. . . suffice it to say, that many that we collected now repose in the cabinets of the United States National Museum.  . available for study by the ornithologists. . . of many generations to come" (p. 644).