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Superbe Orenoque

From: Garmt de Vries <G.deVries~at~phys.uu.nl>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:15:33 +0200 (MET DST)
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~math.technion.ac.il>

Hi all,

I am currently rereading Le Superbe Orenoque, and I'd like to share some
thoughts with you.

- It is not clear from the novel who actually discovered the sources of
the Orinoco. In Ch. I, Verne mentions Diaz de la Fuente, Bobadilla and
Schomburgk who 'remonterent l'Orenoque presque jusqu'a sa source', and
Chaffanjon, who reached the slopes of the Parima, but he never tells us
who really discovered the sources. Britannica.com says:

In 1744 Jesuit missionaries reached the Casiquiare River. Alexander von
Humboldt, the German naturalist, traveled more than 1,700 miles through
the Orinoco basin in 1800. By 1860 steamships were navigating the Orinoco.
The source of the river remained in dispute, however, until a Venezuelan
expedition finally identified it in 1951.

So Jules Verne may make fun of Felipe and Varinas, but apparently the
issue remained a point of debate until 1951!

- I think that Le Superbe Orenoque is the novel in which Jules Verne
mentions his source most explicitly and frequently. Hardly a chapter in
which Jean Chaffanjon is not often cited or referred to. Moreover, a lot
of people who are mentioned in Chaffanjon's book appear in the novel: M.
Marchal, M. Mirabal, Manuel Assomption. This makes me wonder if these
people knew that they were mentioned in a novel by Jules Verne...

Regards,
Garmt.
Received on Wed 18 Jul 2001 - 14:20:12 IDT

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