Welcome to Cosmographia — a newsletter dedicated to exploring the world and our place in it. This post is part of our Atlas’ Notebook series, featuring art, poetry, literature, cartography, and photography, all centred on a particular place. For the full map of Cosmographia posts, see here.
The first European to ever set eyes on the Venezuelan coast was none other than Christopher Columbus. On his third voyage to the New World, still looking for passage through to India, he entered the Gulf of Paria and beheld the vast Orinoco River delta.
He believed he had found the long lost Garden of Eden.
I. In Art
Ferdinand Bellermann was a German painter and naturalist. His first big break came when he sold a landscape painting to King Frederick William IV of Prussia in 1840. He later met a merchant from Hamburg who was putting together an expedition to Venezuela in a chance encounter, and was invited along. Bellermann ended up staying in the newly independent nation for three years, sketching and painting the flora, fauna, and people. Above are two scenes depicting the Orinoco.
The Orinoco, one of South America's longest rivers, flows through Colombia and Venezuela before disgorging into the Atlantic Ocean. The river boasts a wealth of biological diversity, serving as a habitat for a wide range of wildlife, including jaguars, river dolphins, and the critically endangered Orinoco crocodile, while also supporting millions of humans.
