The Mighty Orinoco

By Jules Verne, Stanford L Luce and Arthur B. Evans (Editor)

Jules Verne (1828-1905) was the first author to popularize the literary genre of science fiction. Written in 1898 and part of the author's famous series Voyages Extraordinaires, The Mighty Orinoco tells the story of a young man's search for his father along the then-uncharted Orinoco River of Venezuela. The text contains all the ingredients of a classic Verne scientific-adventure tale: exploration and discovery, humor and drama, dastardly villains and intrepid heroes, and a host of near-fatal encounters with crocodiles, jungle fever, Indians and outlaws — all set in a wonderfully exotic locale. The Mighty Orinoco also includes a unique twist that will appeal to feminists — readers will need to discover it for themselves. This Wesleyan edition features notes, and a critical introduction by renowned Verne scholar Walter James Miller, as well as reproductions of the illustrations from the original French edition.

CONTRIBUTORS: Walter James Miller, Stanford Luce, Arthur B. Evans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780819574572

Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was born in the seaport of Nantes, France, in 1828 and was destined to follow his father into the legal profession. In Paris to train for the bar, he took more readily to literary life, befriending Alexander Dumas and Victor Hugo, and living by theatre managing and libretto-writing. His first science-based novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, was issued by the influential publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel in 1862, and made him famous. Verne and Hetzel collaborated to write dozens more such adventures, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1869 and Around the World in 80 Days in 1872. In later life Verne entered local politics at Amiens, where had had a home. He also kept a house in Paris, in the street now named Boulevard Jules Verne, and a beloved yacht, the Saint Michel, named after his son. He died in 1905.

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INTRODUCTION

You hold in your hands a work that brings us closer to the climax of a decades-long effort to present the complete and the real Jules Verne to the English-speaking world. For this is the first time that his Le Superbe Orénoque, published in French in 1898, has appeared in English. And add this bonus, perhaps in partial recompense for Anglo-American publishers’ long neglect of the essential Verne: we English-speaking admirers can boast that we are the first—in his international audience—to honor him with such annotated critical editions.¹

This Wesleyan University Press edition helps correct a long-standing censorship of the Great Romancer—for The Mighty Orinoco was the first of his works to be totally suppressed in English, largely for political reasons. The work you now contemplate also helps destroy two hoary myths about Verne: that he rarely wrote about women and love, and that he seldom attempted to portray the working class. Many such misunderstandings of Verne have been based on the persistent unavailability of several of his titles and on the gruesome fact that, with few exceptions, the standard translations of most other titles were greatly abridged—omitting from 20 to 40 percent of Verne’s originals.

The Mighty Orinoco also gives us one more sterling example of how Verne regarded science as inseparable from life. His reputation as a futurist is here reaffirmed as he involves his characters in a major nineteenth-century scientific question that would remain unsolved for fifty-seven years after he started to write this book—that is, until the middle of the twentieth century.

In Orinoco he further proves his enduring literary value by his masterful handling of a beautiful and ingenious plot and of such themes as the Quest for the Father and, more daunting, the basic androgyny of human personality. With deep intuition he recreates perfectly that nagging anguish of modernity, as Edmund J. Smyth so aptly terms it.² This angst is produced, in part, by our conflicts over our self-righteous, self-serving idea of progress on the one hand and the human rights of those with alternative programs on the other.

Verne measures up to the challenge that these themes inevitably pose. He creates an array of unique characters who can successfully face such conflicts. These include a young French adventurer capable of rapid psychological growth, a builder of a utopia on the model set by Bishop Bartolomeo de las Casas, a charming Indian boy caught too early in one of life’s great crises, and several heroic, skillful boatmen.

This edition will also help us understand why Verne has been such a powerful influence on world literature in those countries where he could be read in his original French or in complete (e.g., Spanish, Russian, German) translations.

Some of the questions I’ve raised so far are best answered in detail later, in my notes; they cannot be developed here without destroying your enjoyment of Verne’s delicious suspense. But a few of these questions can and should be explored now because they will help us to keep Jules Verne’s novel and Stanford L. Luce’s translation in better perspective.

Most urgent perhaps is the question of suppression, for which leading scholars see a build-up of three cumulative causes. First, as Arthur B. Evans points out, Verne was the victim of his own success. By the end of the nineteenth century he had so popularized his new genre, the scientific romance, that a veritable host of ‘Verne school’ writers—mainly imitators—was now tapping his market. On that ground alone, English publishers grew wary about new translations. And, in those days, American publishers took their cues from the English.³

Second, translations of the earlier works—like From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870)—had been so shamelessly bungled and cut that Verne’s reputation in the English-speaking world had suffered almost irreparably. And so, of course, did sales. Just one example of his undeserved humiliation: in 1961, Galaxy magazine published an article on The Watery Wonders of Captain Nemo, in which Theodore L. Thomas discussed egregious errors in mathematics and science that he claimed he had found in Verne. As a result of such attacks, Verne was judged by critics and readers as unfit for even the juvenile market. This, mind you, about an author famous the world over for his ability to excite and satisfy readers from eight to eighty!

Shortly thereafter, I discovered how thoroughly Thomas had misrepresented Verne when Simon and Schuster asked me to prepare a new edition of the standard translation by the Reverend Lewis Page Mercier (who hid his sins behind a pen name: Mercier Lewis). Checking Lewis against the original French, I discovered that almost all the multitudinous errors the critics had attributed to Verne were actually the translator’s. Thomas and his editors, as well as many others in publishing, had simply failed to check whether the errors were actually in the original Verne. Lewis not only made childish mistakes in science and mathematics, he omitted 23 percent of Verne’s text. This omission, nearly a quarter of the novel, included most of the intellectual, theoretical, scientific, and—here’s the rub—political passages. Later, in doing an annotated translation of From the Earth to the Moon, I found that Lewis had gutted that work too for the English-speaking adult market.⁴

The third reason for suppressing Verne in English is best expressed by Brian Taves, senior author of The Jules Verne Encyclopedia. He flatly states that by 1898 political questions became the deciding factor in whether Verne books were translated into English. Heretofore censorship, alterations, and rewritings had sufficed to mute Verne’s politics, but now Verne books were suppressed by simply not translating them at all.⁵

What were these political questions that helped deprive English readers of the genuine Verne? Just as I had discovered in my annotated editions, Taves found that many other Verne works had been censored in whole or in part because they dealt with questions of injustice and colonialism.⁶ For example, take Verne’s recurrent discussion of England’s oppression of India. Lewis cut the indicting passage from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea; W. H. G. Kingston rewrote such passages in The Mysterious Island; I. O. Evans simply omitted a whole chapter about English treatment of India from The Steam House.⁷

Verne’s oeuvre contains numerous attacks on imperialism. In From the Earth to the Moon, he satirizes American militarists who cannot keep their eyes off Mexico. In one of his short stories, an indigenous Peruvian dies heroically leading a rebellion against Spanish conquistadors (Martin Paz, 1875). In Purchase of the North Pole (1890), Verne challenges the very premise of colonial conquest. Mistress Branican (1891) contains the pronouncement that annihilation of a race of human beings is the final word in colonial progress.

Taves sees The Mighty Orinoco as portraying colonial depredations within a tale of three … expeditions exploring the South American river. In the opening chapter, Verne gives us his first hint that the white man’s standard description of the Indians is often false and tendentious. Note how slyly he uses the word sometimes in a sentence about massacres and looting (p. 13). Throughout the novel he portrays many nonwhites sympathetically, often warmly; the only genuine villain in Orinoco is a European. He accurately depicts a land dominated by a resented foreign race. Then he sums up these views by reminding readers that Jean Chaffanjon, France’s esteemed nineteenth-century explorer, had risked his life to prove that certain accusations, including the charges that the Guaharibos were dangerous and that Indians were all cannibals, were unjust. These were the accusations that had been used to justify the depredations the foreign rulers had visited on them.

The year Orinoco appeared in French, 1898, was the year procolonialist Anglo-American publishers decided to end their twenty-five-year tradition of promptly offering Verne’s latest work in English. The translation would have appeared between the time the United States took Cuba and Puerto Rico and the time Rudyard Kipling urged Americans to crush Filipino patriots as America’s part in taking up the white man’s burden—when an American general thought it would be necessary to kill half the Filipino rebels in order to civilize the other half. At the same time, the major powers were all rushing to plunder big chunks of Africa and Asia. Suppression of an anticolonialist writer was ideologically well timed.

Yet when you go from this introduction to the text of Orinoco itself, you will be properly perplexed. In the very opening chapter, Verne drops an unpleasant remark about Negro blood. Throughout, he disparages many Indians and half-breeds, using the word savages all too recklessly. He fails now and then to think of the Indians’ side of the story: they cannot forget that for centuries they have been invaded and enslaved by the white man.

But there are background circumstances that become relevant here. All his life Verne waxed hot and cold about the idea of progress. Scholars used to think that he was optimistic on that subject mainly at the beginning of his career and grew more pessimistic as his life wore on. But the recent discovery of the manuscript of Paris in the XXth Century (written in 1863 but not published until 1994) makes it clear that Verne had been deeply ambivalent about progress from the very start. The pessimism of Paris caused his publisher to reject it; not until Verne was famous could he once again reveal that side of himself.

Progress, colonialism, and race stand in a reliable relationship to each other in Verne’s moods. When he felt confident about progress, he saw it as the work of civilization, which in his day meant the advances of the white race. Any race opposing the spread of civilization (like the Sioux in Around the World in Eighty Days) was unfortunately standing in the way of the white race’s manifest destiny. But whenever Verne doubted progress, his tolerance of so-called anti-progress forces flourished. Verne himself usually opposes colonialism, which is what spreading civilization tends to be all about. And whenever he examines a nonwhite close up—as when he portrays Gomo in Orinoco—his basic human sympathy dominates all other considerations. Gomo is not nonwhite—he is a fellow person, an equal.

We must consider too the climate created by Darwin. Although Verne was not an out-and-out Darwinist, he, like most nineteenth-century intellectuals, was aware that history involves evolution. The prevailing idea—even among many social scientists—was that the white race was the first to reach the top rung on the evolutionary ladder. Other races were still evolving, presumably up the same ladder. Well into the twentieth century it was customary for prominent international leaders such as Herbert Hoover to speak of the lower races. Missionaries—of whom we meet a few in Orinoco—saw it as their duty to help these people hasten their climb up the ladder. But the imperialists’ purpose often overrode the clergy’s.

One other important idea: Verne seemed compelled to give voice—in his more than sixty books—to virtually every point of view, from anarchism and anti-Semitism to fascism and socialism. And here it’s urgent to take an honest look at literary history. We simply must admit that, from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Dickens, our greatest writers imbibed such biases as anti-Semitism and male supremacy as part of their normal religious upbringing, their everyday hearsay. As late as 1940, one of our leading poets, W. H. Auden, an Oxford graduate, told me that it was impossible to escape such taint even in the great British universities. (Admirers of the 1981 film Chariots of Fire will understand the subtleties in what Auden meant.) It’s a sobering realization that Jules Verne (1828–1905) and Charles Dickens (1812–1870), when compared to most of their contemporaries, prove to be quite broadminded.

So which of Verne’s conflicting attitudes toward colonialism represents his own deepest feelings? For Jean Chesneaux, author of the authoritative work on the subject,⁸ for Taves, and for me, Verne’s dominant tone, the stronger underlying emotion, the full power of Verne’s Id, connote anti-imperialism.

From the viewpoint of his publishers in English-speaking lands, Verne’s lapses into colonialist and racist attitudes did not outweigh his frequent condemnations of imperialism. So they first bowdlerized Verne’s books and then discontinued them. After all, there were hordes of writers taking a 100 percent procolonialist stance, glorifying the major powers for taking up the … burden. There was no need to continue publishing a writer who had mixed feelings about progress, civilization, and imperialism. And, at the risk of committing presentism, we will examine the ramifications of Verne’s conflict more thoroughly in the notes.

Verne usually juxtaposes Romanticist imagination against Positivist logic. As Evans has demonstrated in his Jules Verne Rediscovered (1988), this proves to be one of Verne’s best ways of achieving narrative tension.⁹ In The Mighty Orinoco he also uses an additional version of this approach: he juxtaposes the Quest for the Father against the experience of androgyny. The first is patriarchal in nature, the second egalitarian. Both are archetypal in their appeal. Verne launches the Father Quest early in his story and unveils the androgyny question midway through. Both themes involve the use of disguise; add surprises about the real identity of a character or two, and we have an example of perfect plotting.

In the Quest for the Father, Verne immerses us in a mainstream theme in Western literature at least as old as Homer (eighth century B.C.E.?). Ever since Telemachus set out to find his king-father Odysseus in The Odyssey, writers frequently remind us that in patriarchal society the male parent symbolizes the center of organization and authority, a source of meaning, purpose, and identity, a landmark of continuity. As the Freudians see it, one cannot achieve one’s own full development until one comes to terms with one’s father. As Jung expands the concept, that means exploring one’s legacy from both the male and female sides (a point that also becomes pertinent in our story).

The Vernian Quest, though, need not be for one’s biological father, as it is in Orinoco and in The Children of Captain Grant (1868). It can be an unconscious search for a perfect father, a father figure stronger or more influential than the biological father. In Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Professor Aronnax’s irrational attraction to Captain Nemo has been seen as fulfilling such a deep psychological need. And Conseil’s blind dependence on the professor is an extreme example. (It illustrates, too, Verne’s use of counterpoint, a technique prominent also in Orinoco.) French psychoanalytic critics have viewed Verne’s portrayals of father-seeking characters, as in Orinoco, as reflecting his own search for and reliance on his own perfect father, his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel. And indeed, Verne paints the father found in Orinoco as a perfectly idealized patriarch.

It’s possible that Verne chose the problem of the Father Quest because it provides a beautiful parallel to his main scientific theme: the hunt for the source of the mighty Orinoco. This scientific search gives Verne his chance to introduce this work with a comic scene, with slapstick characters; comedy is often his way of educating his reader painlessly about a question in science. But this theme, too, has its serious psychological aspects. Going upstream is a symbolic way of going back in one’s own life, learning about its many tributaries, its continuous variations within one central, domineering, inexorable flow. In this larger sense, several of the characters are heading toward the discovery of their own nature. And readers are unconsciously but gratefully associating to their own sources and flow.

Symbolic too is the fact that the upstream struggle leads us to a utopia that not only, as suggested earlier, seems based on the de las Casas approach, but also matches other classic utopian efforts. The Orinoco utopia, like Plato’s, thrives under a philosopher-king and, like Sir Thomas More’s, is created by an outsider. One might not want to live in this particular utopia, but it serves the usual function of such fictional good places/no places: it prompts us to dream up our own solution.¹⁰

As his narrative representative of the Positivist approach, Verne creates Jacques Helloch, a young scientist on an official mission for the French government. His is a supreme mind that can expand beyond his geographical sciences to solve psychological and paramilitary problems that complicate his professional and personal quests. Not the least of these is a major Romanticist situation that proves to be larger than love of Nature. Verne gives Helloch an associate, Germain Paterne, whose very name (cousinly and kind) aptly describes the manly bond between them and provides a bit of irony, for Germain is far from paternal in action, but much so in understanding.

In creating Sergeant Martial, Verne pulls off an unexpected tour de force in characterization. At the beginning, Verne tricks us into seeing the retired noncom simply as a stereotype of the crusty old soldier. We only gradually realize that Martial is a man with volcanic internal problems that cause his brusqueness and lapses in politeness and clear thinking. A tiny example: He has reluctantly gone on a serious mission that requires him to violate a direct order from his beloved colonel. This creates an understandable internal conflict for Martial, yet near the end of the story he resolves some serious questions with just a few quick words, and is allowed at last to function like a decisive military mind.

These promises about the joys of Verne’s characterizations must stop here in order to preserve your right to savor suspense. Discussion of other characters and the androgyny theme must wait for the notes. You might appreciate, however, a few reminders about the political situation in South America at the time of Verne’s story—the kinds of things Verne’s original audience knew and that he would spell out if he were writing for us today.

For centuries, Spain had controlled her American colonies with a firm racist policy. Only men born in Spain itself (peninsulares) could serve in colonial governments; even whites born in the Americas (Creoles, criollos) were given little chance to gain any administrative experience. Of course, persons of mixed white and Indian blood (mestizos), of mixed white and African blood (mulattoes), and of mixed Indian and black heritage (zambos), as well as full-blooded Indians and Africans all had less and less chance, in that descending order.

Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), The Liberator, solved some of these problems but created many new ones. He headed the political faction that wanted to transfer political power in Venezuela from the peninsulares to the Creole aristocrats, continuing to exclude the mixed masses from government. When the Spaniards were finally thrown out in the 1820s, the civilians remaining—even the Creoles—had insufficient know-how to take over the reins of administration. In the ensuing chaos (essentially a complex class and race struggle), only the caudillos, the military leaders, had the resources and experience to govern—and they did so in their own way.¹¹

As our story opens, in 1893, the first three Venezuelans we meet—and many thereafter—are of European descent. With his Positivist mind-set, Verne carefully identifies most of the succeeding characters according to their places in the scheme we’ve outlined here. The first high government official we meet is a military governor. The president is a general. We shall monitor the details as they demand notes.

As you head upstream with Verne, you’ll make discoveries gustatory as well as geographic, social, and psychological. According to his grandson, Jean Jules-Verne, the author was no gourmet. He sat in a low chair at table to be nearer his plate, able to shovel his food down more easily. But in his imagination, at least, he actually savored and judged the whole world’s menus. In Verne’s Extraordinary Voyages, Andrew Martin points out, diet, no less than travel (the two are effectively inseparable), furnishes an organizing metaphor … to the accumulation of knowledge. Nutrition and cognition … are serviced by an identical vocabulary and coupled by a unitary philosophy.¹²

So prepare now for the oily toughness of possum, the surprise of stewed earthworm, cooked lice, and termites, but also for fragrant ducks better than any European variety and monkey roasted until a golden brown, truly a succulent meal.

And let the Quest—for father, fulfillment, and food—begin.

WALTER JAMES MILLER

Professor of English

School of Continuing and Professional Studies

New York University

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

M. Miguel and His Two Colleagues

There is not the slightest reason to believe that this discussion can come to an end, said M. Miguel, who was seeking to intervene between the two fiery discussants.

Well, it won’t end, answered M. Felipe, not if it means sacrificing my views to those of M. Varinas!

Nor by abandoning my ideas for those of M. Felipe! replied M. Varinas.

For nearly three full hours, these stubborn scholars had been arguing about the Orinoco Question, neither giving an inch. Did this well-known river of South America, the primary waterway of Venezuela, flow in the first part of its course from east to west, as the most recent maps indicated, or did it flow from the southwest? In the latter case, were not the Guaviare or the Atabapo wrongfully considered to be its tributaries?¹

The Atabapo is really the Orinoco, M. Felipe affirmed stubbornly.

It’s the Guaviare, affirmed M. Varinas no less energetically.

As for M. Miguel, he sided with the geographers of the day. According to them, the Orinoco’s sources are located in that section of Venezuela bordering on Brazil and British Guyana, making this river Venezuelan throughout its entire length. But M. Miguel tried in vain to convince his two friends, who were bickering over a point of no little importance.

No, one kept repeating, the source of the Orinoco is in the Colombian Andes. The Guaviare, which you claim is a mere tributary, is quite simply the Orinoco itself, Colombian in its upper course, Venezuelan in its lower course.

Totally erroneous, the other avowed. It’s the Atabapo that is the true Orinoco, and not the Guaviare.

Come now, my friends, answered M. Miguel. I prefer believing that one of the most beautiful rivers in America at least belongs to our own country.

Three geographers: MM. Miguel, Filipe, and Varinas.

It’s not a question of self-esteem, replied M. Varinas, but rather of geographic fact. The Guaviare—

No! The Atabapo! exclaimed M. Felipe.

And the two adversaries, who had sprung to their feet, glared into the whites of each other’s eyes.

Gentlemen … gentlemen! repeated M. Miguel, a fine man and very conciliatory by nature.

There was a map hanging on a wall of the room, which was shaking from the outbursts of this discussion. On that map, in great detail, was an area of nine hundred seventy-two thousand square kilometers of the Spanish-American country of Venezuela. Political events had greatly modified it since the year 1499 when Hojeda, companion of the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci,² disembarked on the shore of the Gulf of Maracaibo³ and discovered a village built on pilings in the middle of the lagoons, to which he gave the name Venezuela, or Little Venice. Then came the war of independence and the heroism of Simón Bolívar,⁴ then the founding of the military post in Caracas, then the separation that took place in 1839 between Colombia and Venezuela, a separation that turned the latter into an independent republic—the map represented Venezuela according to its present legal status. Colored lines separated the region of Orinoco into three provinces: Varinas, Guyana, Apure. The elevations of its orographic relief and the branchings of its hydrographic system stood out clearly by the multiple hachures and the network of its rivers and streams. One could also make out its maritime border along the Caribbean Sea, extending from the province of Maracaibo, with its capital city of the same name, to the mouths of the Orinoco, which separate it from British Guyana.

M. Miguel was looking at the map, which by all evidence proved him to be more right than his colleagues, Felipe and Varinas. Indeed, on the surface of Venezuela, meticulously drawn, a great river was marked by an elegant semicircle. Both along its first curve, which was fed by the waters of a tributary, the Apure, as well as along its second, where the Guaviare and the Atabapo brought to it the waters of the Andean Cordilleras, it was uniquely baptized with the magnificent name of Orinoco along its entire course.⁵

Why then did Varinas and Felipe persist in seeking the origins of this watercourse in the mountains of Colombia and not in those of the Sierra Parima next to the gigantic military column of Mount Roraima, 2,300 meters high, at the intersection of these three South American states of Venezuela, Brazil, and British Guyana?

The Orinoco River.

It is only fair to mention that these two geographers were not the only ones to profess such an opinion. Despite the assertions of intrepid explorers who had gone up the Orinoco practically to its source, Diaz de la Fuente in 1760, Bobadilla in 1764, and Robert Schomburgk in 1840, and despite the exploration by the Frenchman M. Chaffanjon, the daring traveler who had raised the French flag on the slopes of the Parima as it oozed out the first drops of water of the Orinoco—yes! despite so many reports which appeared to be conclusive, the question was still not resolved for certain tenacious minds, disciples of Saint Thomas, who were as demanding about proof as was this ancient patron of incredulity.⁶

However, to claim that this question impassioned the public of that day, in the year of 1893, would be exposing oneself to the charge of exaggeration. If, two years before, people had taken an interest in the drawing of borders when Spain, charged with the arbitration, set the definitive limits between Colombia and Venezuela, so be it. Likewise if it had involved an exploration to determine the border with Brazil. But out of 2,250,000 inhabitants, which include 325,000 Indians, tamed or independent in the middle of their forests and their prairies, and 50,000 blacks, then of mixed blood, half-breeds, whites, and foreigners of English, Italian, Dutch, French or German origin there was no doubt that only a very small minority could become worked up over this hydrographic thesis. In any case, there were at least two Venezuelans who were—Varinas, who claimed for the Guaviare the right to be called the Orinoco, and Felipe, who claimed the same right for the Atabapo—without counting a few partisans who, if need be, would lend them support.

One should nevertheless not believe that M. Miguel and his two friends were just any old scholars, encrusted in science, bald-headed and with white beards. No! They were scholars who all three enjoyed a deserved reputation which went beyond the limits of their country. The oldest, M. Miguel, was forty-five, and the other two were a few years younger. Very intense and demonstrative, they were true to their Basque origins, much like the illustrious Bolívar or even the majority of whites in those republics of South America who sometimes had a bit of Corsican or Indian blood in their veins but not a single drop of Negro blood.⁷

These three geographers would get together every day at the library of the University of Ciudad Bolívar. There both Varinas and Felipe, as determined as they were not to start it all over, let themselves be carried away in an interminable discussion about the Orinoco. Even after the very convincing exploration of the French traveler, the defenders of the Atabapo and the Guaviare stuck to their beliefs.

This was clear in the few replies reported at the beginning of this story. And the dispute went on, continuing with greater intensity, despite M. Miguel, who was powerless to dampen the enthusiasm of his two colleagues.

He was, however, an impressive person with his tall stature, his noble, aristocratic demeanor, his brown beard with a few silver strands in it, his position of authority, and his top hat, which he wore like the founder of the Spanish-American independence did.

And that day M. Miguel repeated in a strong, calm, penetrating voice, Don’t lose your tempers, my friends! Whether it flows from the east or the west the Orinoco is nonetheless a Venezuelan river, the father of the waters of our republic!

It’s not a question of knowing whose father it is, replied the boiling Varinas, but whose son it is, if it was born on the Sierra Parima or in the Colombian Andes.

In the Andes … in the Andes! countered M. Felipe, shrugging his shoulders.

Obviously, neither man would capitulate on the subject of the birth certificate, each attributing a different father.

Come, come, dear colleagues, went on M. Miguel, desirous of bringing them to an agreement. It is enough to cast your eyes on this map to recognize the following: wherever it comes from, and especially if it comes from the east, the Orinoco forms a graceful curve, a semicircle better shaped than that awkward zigzag that either the Atabapo or the Guaviare would give it—

So what difference does it make whether the shape is harmonious or not? exclaimed M. Felipe.

As long as it’s exact and conforms to the nature of the territory! added M. Varinas.

And, indeed, it was of little importance whether the curves were or were not artistically drawn. It was a purely geographical question, not a question of art. M. Miguel’s argument missed the point, but that was the way he felt. So the thought came to him to throw into the discussion a new element that would change its focus. It would, no doubt, not be the way to bring the two adversaries together. But, perhaps, like hunting dogs turned aside from their prey, they would charge off fiercely in pursuit of another wild boar.

Fine, said M. Miguel, let’s forget about that way of looking at it. You claim, Felipe, and with such obstinacy! that the Atabapo, far from being a tributary of our great river, is the river itself.

That’s what I claim!

And you hold the view, Varinas, and with equal obstinacy! that, on the contrary, the Guaviare must be the Orinoco in person.

That’s my view.

Well, replied M. Miguel, whose finger followed on the map the watercourse under discussion, why wouldn’t you both be making a mistake?

Both of us? exclaimed M. Felipe.

One of us is indeed wrong, affirmed M. Varinas, and it’s not me!

Then listen to what I have to say, said M. Miguel. And don’t give me your answer until you’ve heard me out. There exist other affluents than the Guaviare and the Atabapo that flow into the Orinoco, tributaries with important characteristics in the routes they follow and the amount of water they contribute. Such are the Caura in the northern section, the Apure and the Meta in the western section, the Cassiquiare and the Iquapo in the southern area. Do you see them there, on this map? Well, I ask you, why should not one of these feeder streams be the Orinoco rather than your Guaviare, my dear Varinas, and your Atabapo, my dear Felipe?

It was the first time that this proposition had ever been suggested, and it is not surprising that the two opponents remained quite speechless at first upon hearing him spell it all out. What? The question was not limited simply to the Atabapo and the Guaviare? What did he mean, other candidates might emerge?

Come now! exclaimed M. Varinas. That’s not reasonable. You’re not talking seriously, M. Miguel!

Very seriously, on the contrary! And I find the opinion quite natural, logical, and thus entirely admissible that other tributaries can contest the honor of being the true Orinoco.

Surely you’re joking! retorted M. Felipe.

I never joke when it’s a question of geography, M. Miguel responded gravely. On the right bank of the upper reach of the Padamo—

Your Padamo is but a stream compared to my Guaviare! countered M. Varinas.

A stream that geographers consider as important as the Orinoco itself, answered M. Miguel. On the left bank you’ll find the Cassiquiare—

Your Cassiquiare is but a brook compared to my Atabapo! shouted M. Felipe.

A brook that communicates between the Venezuelan and Amazonian basins! On the same shore there’s the Meta—

But your Meta is only the faucet of a fountain!

A faucet that turns out a flow of water that economists look upon as being the future route between Europe and the Colombian territories.

It was evident that M. Miguel was well documented and had an answer for all occasions, as he continued.

On the same bank, he said, there’s the Apure, the prairie river that ships can go up for more than five hundred kilometers.

Neither M. Felipe nor M. Varinas contested this affirmation. The reason for this was that they were half suffocated by M. Miguel’s nerve.

Well, added M. Miguel, on the right bank, you’ll find the Cuchivero, the Caura, the Caroni—

When you get done with all the nomenclature— said M. Felipe.

We’ll discuss the subject, added M. Varinas, who had just folded his arms.

I’m done, answered M. Miguel, and if you want to know my personal opinion—

Is it worthwhile? retorted M. Varinas in a tone of supreme irony.

Not very likely! declared M. Felipe.

Here’s what I think, anyway, my dear colleagues. None of these affluents could be considered the mainstream, the one that is legitimately called the Orinoco. So I believe that this name can neither be applied to the Atabapo, recommended by my friend Felipe—

An error! replied the latter.

—nor to the Guaviare, recommended by my friend Varinas!

Heresy! responded friend Varinas.

And I conclude, added M. Miguel, that the name of Orinoco should be saved for the upper region of the river whose sources are situated in the Sierra Parima. It flows entirely across the territory of our republic and it does not irrigate any other. The Guaviare and the Atabapo should be willing to take on the role of simple tributaries, which is, after all, a very acceptable geographic situation.

That I do not accept! replied M. Felipe.

That I refuse! echoed M. Varinas.

The lone result of M. Miguel’s intervention in that hydrographic discussion was that now three people rather than two were at each other’s throats over which was the true source, the Guaviare, the Orinoco, or the Atabapo. The quarrel continued for another hour and would perhaps never have come to an end if M. Felipe on the one hand and M. Varinas on the other had not exclaimed, Well, let’s go!

Go? responded M. Miguel, who was scarcely expecting such a proposal.

Yes! added M. Felipe, let’s head for San Fernando and there, if I can’t prove to you right off that the Atabapo is really the Orinoco—

And I, retorted M. Varinas, if I can’t prove once and for all that the Orinoco is the Guaviare—

That’s because, said M. Miguel, I will have forced you to recognize that the Orinoco is just the Orinoco!

And this is how, as a result of this discussion, these three people resolved to undertake such a trip. Perhaps this new expedition would finally decide once and for all the real course of the Venezuelan river, provided that it had not been already so determined by the latest explorers.

Moreover, it was only a question of going up to the village of San Fernando, to the bend in the river where the mouths of the Guaviare and the Atabapo are located, only a few kilometers apart from each other. If it could be established that neither one nor the other was or could be anything more than a simple affluent, then it would be necessary to yield to M. Miguel and to confer upon the Orinoco its official status as the main river, which these unworthy streams would no longer be able to deny.

One should not be greatly surprised if this resolution, born in the course of a stormy spat, was soon to be followed by an immediate effect. Nor should one be surprised by the immediate repercussions it produced in the scientific world, among the upper classes of Ciudad Bolívar, and soon among the whole Venezuelan republic.

With some cities, it is just like with some men: before setting up a fixed and definitive residence, they hesitate, they feel their way along. That is what happened to the provincial capital of Guyana from the date of its appearance in 1576, on the right bank of the Orinoco.⁸ After being established at the mouth of the Caroni under the name of San Tome, it had been reported ten years later at a location fifteen leagues downstream. Destroyed by fire under the orders of the famous Sir Walter Raleigh,⁹ it had moved, in 1764, some hundred and fifty kilometers upstream, to a site where the width of the river was reduced to less than eight hundred yards. Hence the name of Angostura, the narrows, that was given to it until it eventually became Ciudad Bolívar.

This provincial capital is situated about a hundred leagues from the Orinoco delta, whose low-water mark, indicated by the Midio Rock rising up in the middle of the current, varies considerably from the dry season of January to May, the rainy season.¹⁰

This city, which was given some eleven or twelve thousand inhabitants by the latest census, includes the suburb of Soledad on the left bank. It extends from the Alameda promenade up to the Dry-dog quarter, which has a rather curious name since this low-lying district, more than any other, is subject to flooding caused by the sudden and copious high waters of the Orinoco.¹¹ The main street, with its public buildings, its elegant stores, its covered galleries, the houses spread over the flank of the schistose hill which rises above the city, the spread of rural houses under the trees which cradle them, the sort of lakes that the river forms as it widens both up and downstream, the movement and animation of the port, the numerous ships of both sail and steam attesting to its bustling river commerce, which is supplemented by its substantial trade on land—all this contributed to make the area quite charming and picturesque.

Through Soledad, where the railroad is to end, Ciudad Bolívar will not be long in linking up with Caracas, the capital of Venezuela.¹² Its exports in cow and deer hides, in coffee, cotton, indigo, cacao, and tobacco will thus be expanded, adding to its already sizeable increases due to the mining of deposits of gold-bearing quartz, discovered in 1840 in the valley of Yurauri.

So the news that the three scientists, members of the Geographic Society of Venezuela, were going on an expedition to settle the question of the Orinoco and its two tributaries in the southwest caused a great stir throughout the country. The Bolívarians are a demonstrative sort, passionate and fiery by nature. The newspapers soon became involved, taking sides with the Atabapoists, Guaviarians, and the Orinocophiles. Public sentiment became inflamed. One might really have thought that these waterways were threatening to rise up from their beds, to leave the country, to emigrate to some other state in the New World if they were not treated fairly.

Did this journey upriver hold any serious dangers? Yes, especially for travelers with only themselves to rely on. So would it not have been appropriate for the government to make a few sacrifices to solve this critical problem? Was not this a clear opportunity to use the militia, which could put 250,000 men in the field but which has never called up more than a tenth of them? Why not assign the explorers a unit of 6,000 soldiers from this standing army whose upper ranks include, according to Elisée Reclus who is always so perfectly documented in such ethnographic curiosities,¹³ up to 7,000 generals plus a lavish assortment of other officers?¹⁴

But MM. Miguel, Felipe, and Varinas asked for no such help. They would travel at their own expense, escorted only by the laborers, ranchers, boatmen, and guides who reside along the banks of the river. They would proceed in the same fashion as all other pioneers of science before them. Besides, they did not have to go beyond the village of San Fernando, which had been built at the junction of the Atabapo and Guaviare. Further, it is mainly in the lands along the upper reaches of the river that there is a danger of attack by Indians from independent tribes who are difficult to contain and who are sometimes justly blamed for the massacres and looting in those parts, which is not surprising in a region that used to be inhabited by the Caribes.

To be sure, downstream of San Fernando in the lands opposite the mouth of the Meta, it is also wise to avoid both the Guahibo Indians,

[Aiton667 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It is surprising how Jules Verne managed to capture so many details of the ethnicities, geography, fauna, and flora of the Orinoco and its banks, without ever having left France, committing few errors or inaccuracies. The adventure is vibrant and not without drama, in a lively narrative typical of a youthful style, with some shadows of racism and chauvinism characteristic of the Europeanists of the time (which still exist). The misadventures and misfortunes of his characters (heroes and villains) in the river itself and in the plains and jungles surrounding it, seasoned with facts about the regions, retain that flavor of youth that has inspired so many readers for more than a century. (Translated from Spanish)