Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 138 of 407 - First - Home
I Have Seen Indian Children, Of The
Tribe Of The Chaymas, Draw Out From The Earth And Eat Millipedes Or
Scolopendras* Eighteen Inches Long, And Seven Lines Broad.
(*
Scolopendras are very common behind the castle of San Antonio, on
the summit of the hill.) Whenever the soil is turned up, we are
struck with the mass of organic substances, which by turns are
developed, transformed, and decomposed.
Nature in these climates
appears more active, more fruitful, we may even say more prodigal,
of life.
On this shore, and near the dairies just mentioned, we enjoy,
especially at sunrise, a very beautiful prospect over an elevated
group of calcareous mountains. As this group subtends an angle of
three degrees only at the house where we dwelt, it long served me
to compare the variations of the terrestrial refraction with the
meteorological phenomena. Storms are formed in the centre of this
Cordillera; and we see from afar thick clouds resolve into abundant
rains, while during seven or eight months not a drop of water falls
at Cumana. The Brigantine, which is the highest part of this chain,
raises itself in a very picturesque manner behind Brito and
Tataraqual. It takes its name from the form of a very deep valley
on the northern declivity, which resembles the interior of a ship.
The summit of this mountain is almost bare of vegetation, and is
flat like that of Mowna Roa, in the Sandwich Islands. It is a
perpendicular wall, or, to use a more expressive term of the
Spanish navigators, a table (mesa). This peculiar form, and the
symmetrical arrangement of a few cones which surround the
Brigantine, made me at first think that this group, which is wholly
calcareous, contained rocks of basaltic or trappean formation.
The governor of Cumana sent, in 1797, a band of determined men to
explore this entirely desert country, and to open a direct road to
New Barcelona, by the summit of the Mesa. It was reasonably
expected that this way would be shorter, and less dangerous to the
health of travellers, than the route taken by the couriers along
the coasts; but every attempt to cross the chain of the mountains
of the Brigantine was fruitless. In this part of America, as in
Australia* to the west of Sydney, it is not so much the height of
the mountain chains, as the form of the rocks, that presents
obstacles difficult to surmount. (* The Blue Mountains of
Australia, and those of Carmarthen and Lansdowne, are not visible,
in clear weather, beyond fifty miles. - Peron, Voyage aux Terres
Australes page 389. Supposing the angle of altitude half a degree,
the absolute height of these mountains would be about 620 toises.)
The longitudinal valley formed by the lofty mountains of the
interior and the southern declivity of the Cerro de San Antonio, is
intersected by the Rio Manzanares. This plain, the only thoroughly
wooded part in the environs of Cumana, is called the Plain of the
Charas,* on account of the numerous plantations which the
inhabitants have begun, for some years past, along the river.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 138 of 407
Words from 71368 to 71883
of 211363