Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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(*
Chacra, By Corruption Chara, Signifies A Hut Or Cottage Surrounded
By A Garden.
The word ipure has the same signification.) A narrow
path leads from the hill of San Francisco across the
Forest to the
hospital of the Capuchins, a very agreeable country-house, which
the Aragonese monks have built as a retreat for old infirm
missionaries, who can no longer fulfil the duties of their
ministry. As we advance to the west, the trees of the forest become
more vigorous, and we meet with a few monkeys,* (* The common
machi, or weeping monkey.) which, however, are very rare in the
environs of Cumana. At the foot of the capparis, the bauhinia, and
the zygophyllum with flowers of a golden yellow, there extends a
carpet of Bromelia,* (* Chihuchihue, of the family of the ananas.)
akin to the B. karatas, which from the odour and coolness of its
foliage attracts the rattlesnake.
The waters of the Manzanares are very limpid in quality, and this
river has no resemblance to the Manzanares of Madrid, which appears
the more magnificent in contrast with the fine bridge by which it
is crossed. It takes its source, like all the rivers of New
Andalusia, in the savannahs (llanos) known by the names of the
plateaux of Jonoro, Amana, and Guanipa,* (* These three eminences
bear the names of mesas, tables. An immense plain has an almost
imperceptible rise from both sides to the middle, without any
appearance of mountains or hills.) and it receives, near the Indian
village of San Fernando, the waters of the Rio Juanillo. It has
been several times proposed to the government, but without success,
to construct a dyke at the first ipure, in order to form artificial
irrigations in the plain of Charas; for, notwithstanding its
apparent sterility, the soil is extremely productive, wherever
humidity is combined with the heat of the climate. The cultivators
were gradually to refund the money advanced for the construction of
the sluices. Meanwhile, pumps worked by mules, and other hydraulic
but imperfect machines, have been erected, to serve till this
project is carried into execution.
The banks of the Manzanares are very pleasant, and are shaded by
mimosas, erythrinas, ceibas, and other trees of gigantic growth. A
river, the temperature of which, in the season of the floods,
descends as low as twenty-two degrees, when the air is at thirty
and thirty-three degrees, is an inestimable benefit in a country
where the heat is excessive during the whole year, and where it is
so agreeable to bathe several times in the day. The children pass a
considerable part of their lives in the water; all the inhabitants,
even the women of the most opulent families, know how to swim; and
in a country where man is so near the state of nature, one of the
first questions asked on meeting in the morning is, whether the
water is cooler than it was on the preceding evening. One of the
modes of bathing is curious.
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