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Schombergh once saw an enormous cayman seize one of a smaller species, and bear it away not, however, without a desperate struggle. In a short time the monsters reappeared, wildly beating the surface with their tails. Now a huge head rose up, now a tail, indistinctly seen in the seething whirlpool.
Above these again are more than forty falls and rapids, called by Schombergh the Christmas Cataracts, and which cost him and his companions immense labour to surmount. On their return, one of the party, rashly standing on the thwarts of the canoe while shooting the falls, upset it and was drowned.
It is the principal watershed, from which various streams flow in different directions into the three great rivers Amazon, Orinoco, and Essequibo. Hillhouse and Schombergh describe the side of the mountain as composed of cliffs, fifteen hundred feet in height, of compact sandstone, as perpendicular as if erected with the plumb-line, and overhung in part with low shrubs.
Wallace observed a company of birds engaged in this singular way, though he says that no females or young birds were present. Schombergh describes a similar scene. A troop of these beautiful birds was celebrating its dances on the smooth surface of a rock.
In the upper waters of its streams the magnificent Victoria Regia, so long unknown to the eyes of civilised man, was discovered by Schombergh not forty years ago.
Schombergh, who visited them, says they made a great feast in his honour, when there was a grand display of gorgeous plumes, and head-dresses, the whole winged tribe having apparently been put in requisition to furnish forth the most brilliant of their feathers.
It is looked upon as an important and somewhat mysterious operation. Waterton and Schombergh describe it. The Indian, when preparing to concoct this deadly compound, goes into the wilds where grows a vine the strychnos toxifera. After this he collects a number of bundles, and then takes up a root with an especially bitter taste.
The alligator, far from being a silent animal, as is generally supposed, makes a hideous noise at times, bellowing with so singular a cadence and loud a din, that he can even outroar the jaguars and mycetes. Sir Richard Schombergh describes the way in which the alligator seizes its prey. He secured a bird or fish to a piece of wood, and then turned it adrift on the river.
At that instant the daring Llanero plunged his dagger up to the very hilt into the arm-pit the most vital part of the monster when, with a tremendous splash, it instantly sank beneath the waves. The tenacity of life exhibited by these monsters is often marvellous. Sir Robert Schombergh gives an account of shooting one when ascending the River Berbice.
Within and around it are islands and, rocks of mica, slate, and talc; "the materials," observes Humboldt, "out of which has been formed that gorgeous capital, whose temples and houses were overlaid with beaten plates of gold." Schombergh, who visited the lake, agrees with the German philosopher.
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