The Invention of Nature

As they went further, the forest came so close to the river that it was difficult to find any space for their nightly camps. They were running low on food and they filtered the fetid river water through linen cloth. They ate fish, turtle eggs and sometimes fruit, as well as smoked ants crushed up in cassava flour which Father Zea declared an excellent ant pâté. When they couldn’t find food they suppressed their hunger by eating small portions of dry cacao powder. For three weeks they paddled south on the Orinoco and then further south for another two weeks on a network of tributaries along the Rio Atabapo and Rio Negro. Then, as they reached the most southerly point of their river expedition, with their supplies at their lowest, they found huge nuts which they cracked open for their nutritious seeds – the magnificent Brazil nut that Humboldt subsequently introduced to Europe.

Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa) (Illustration Credit 5.4)

Though food was scarce, the floral riches abounded. Wherever they turned, there was something new, but collecting plants was more often than not frustrating. What they could pick up on the forest floor were trifles compared to the sculptural blossoms they could see swaying high above them in the canopy – tantalizingly close but too far away for them to reach. And what they could collect often disintegrated before their eyes in the humidity. Bonpland lost most of the specimens that he had so painfully dried in the hornitos. They heard birds they never saw and animals they couldn’t catch. They often failed to describe them properly. The scientists in Europe, Humboldt mused, would be disappointed. It was a shame, he wrote in his diary, that the monkeys didn’t open their mouths as their canoe passed them so that they could ‘count their teeth’.

Humboldt was interested in everything: the plants, the animals, the rocks and the water. Like a wine connoisseur, he sampled the water of the various different rivers. The Orinoco had a singular flavour that was particularly disgusting, he noted, while the Rio Apure tasted different at various locations and the Rio Atabapo was ‘delicious’. He observed the stars, described the landscape and was curious about the indigenous people they met and always wanted to learn more. He was fascinated by their worship of nature and thought them ‘excellent geographers’ because they could find their way even through the densest jungle. They were the best observers of nature he had ever encountered. They knew every plant and animal in the rainforest, and could distinguish trees by the taste of their bark alone – an experiment that Humboldt tried and failed miserably. All fifteen of the trees he sampled tasted exactly the same to him.

Unlike most Europeans, Humboldt did not regard the indigenous people as barbaric, but instead was captivated by their culture, beliefs and languages. In fact, he talked about the ‘barbarism of civilised man’ when he saw how the local people were treated by colonists and missionaries. When Humboldt returned to Europe, he brought with him a completely new portrayal of the so-called ‘savages’.

His only frustration came when the Indians failed to answer his many questions – questions that were often posed through a chain of interpreters, as one local language had to be translated into another, and then another until someone knew that language as well as Spanish. Often the content was lost in translation and the Indians would just smile and nod in affirmation. That was not what Humboldt wanted, accusing them of an ‘indolent indifference’, although he accepted that they must be ‘tired with our questions’. To these tribal societies, Humboldt said, Europeans must seem as if always in a rush and ‘chased by demons’.

One night, as the rain fell in torrents, Humboldt lay in his hammock fastened to palm trees in the jungle. The lianas and climbing plants formed a protective shield high above him. He looked up into what seemed like a natural trellis decorated with the long dangling orange blossoms of heliconias and other strangely shaped flowers. Their campfire lit up this natural vault, the light of the flames licking the palm trunks up to sixty feet high. The blossoms whirled in and out of these flickering illuminations, while the white smoke of the fire spiralled into the sky which remained invisible behind the foliage. It was bewitchingly beautiful, Humboldt said.