[page 274]

206.

where the viceroy resides. The other cities are Chilly, St. Yago etc. There is also the most beautiful mountain that one can see and that is described geographically as being the highest of all the earth; indeed it rises as high as the clouds, so much so that one can never see it in its entirety because of the cloud cover.

allwo der Vitzen-König sein Aufenthalt hat. Die übrige Städte seyn Chilly, St Yago etc. Auch ist alda das höchste Gebürg daß man sehen mag, und auch würcklich in denen Welt-Beschreibung vor das höchste Gebürg in der gantzen Welt beschrieben wird ; welches sich auch in der That biß in die Wolcken erstreckt, so daß man es selten gantz sehen kan von wegen dem Gewölcke welches sich darieber ziehet.

Moreover, in the land of the Amazon there is one of the largest rivers in the world, which flows across the whole country over a length of 900 hours[357]; it separates the savages from the Amazonians whose security it ensures; otherwise no one could live in these regions because of the savages who eat men if they catch them[358].

Auch zehlet man im Land Amazon einen der grösten Flüßen in der Welt, welcher das gantze Land durchstreichet in der Länge von 900 Stund, er scheidet auch die Wilden von denen Amazoner Einwohner welcher Fluß auch ihre Sicherheit ist, son[st] könte niemand in selbigen Gegenden wohnen von wegen den wilden Leute welche die Menschen fressen thun wann sie bekomen.

On April 3^rd, the detachment group that had stayed in Curaçao set off for Puerto Cabello, but this was a failure. In the morning, around 8 o’clock it left the port of Curaçao with good winds. Around 9 o’clock we[359] had already left the land of Curaçao. When we were near the Petit Bonheure island

Den 3ten Aprill machte sich das Detachement welches in Cirasau zurück geblieben ist auch auf den Weg nach Porto-Cappello zu fahren, welches aber fehl-schluge. Morgens gegen 8 Uhr fuhr es zum Hafen von Ciracau hinaus mit gutem Wind. Gegen 9 Uhr hatten wir das Land von Ciracau schon zurück gelegt. Als wir in die Höhe von der Insel Klein-Bonheure

[réclame]

kamen

https://gallica.bnf.fr/iiif/ark:/12148/btv1b10110846m/f138/pct:0,0,50,100/,700/0/native.jpg

Strasbourg, Médiathèque André Malraux, ms f 15, p. 274.

[agrandir]

Notes

357. Cf. Samuel Fritz, Cours du fleuve Maragnon, autrement dit des Amazones, map, 1717 [reproduction en ligne - Gallica].

358. Cf. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Cannibales, oil painting, circa 1800, Besançon, Musée des beaux-arts et d’archéologie [reproduction en ligne - base POP].

359. This passage reveals all the ambiguity of Flohr’s use of the first person. In the following sentence, “we” refers to the detachment group from the Royal Deux-Ponts, to which Flohr did not belong because at that date, he was with the rest of his regiment in Puerto Cabello. The detachment group in question is, in all likelihood, the one he mentions on pages 177-178 of the manuscript (“During our stay there we had to provide a detachment group for a trade ship, made up of 27 soldiers, a drummer, 4 corporals, 2 sergeants, a lieutenant, a chief mate. This detachment group was provided by our company alone.”) Flohr was not aboard this trade ship captured by the English, and consequently, Flohr was never in Jamaica, where the English captain brought the captive soldiers and crew. The precision of the account suggests that Flohr might have heard it directly from the mouth of one of his comrades. On the subject of their captivity, the only element that could be connected to this episode is found in Baron von Closen’s diary, on page 313: [March 31, 1783] “Only the Marquis de Lafayette, on which there are 50 men from our regiment, is still missing.”