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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During
Two Days We Heard It Everywhere Spoken Of As A Very Extraordinary
Circumstance, That An Inhabitant Of Maniquarez Had Lost A Goat, On
Which It Was Probable That A Neighbouring Family Had Regaled
Themselves.
Among the Mulattoes, whose huts surround the salt lake, we found it
shoemaker of Castilian descent.
He received us with the air of
gravity and self-sufficiency which in those countries characterize
almost all persons who are conscious of possessing some peculiar
talent. He was employed in stretching the string of his bow, and
sharpening his arrows to shoot birds. His trade of a shoemaker
could not be very lucrative in a country where the greater part of
the inhabitants go barefooted; and he only complained that, on
account of the dearness of European gunpowder, a man of his quality
was reduced to employ the same weapons as the Indians. He was the
sage of the plain; he understood the formation of the salt by the
influence of the sun and full moon, the symptoms of earthquakes,
the marks by which mines of gold and silver are discovered, and the
medicinal plants, which, like all the other colonists from Chile to
California, he classified into hot and cold.* (* Exciting or
debilitating, the sthenic and asthenic, of Brown's system.) Having
collected the traditions of the country, he gave us some curious
accounts of the pearls of Cubagua, objects of luxury, which he
treated with the utmost contempt. To show us how familiar to him
were the sacred writings he took a pride in reminding us that Job
preferred wisdom to all the pearls of the Indies. His philosophy
was circumscribed to the narrow circle of the wants of life. The
possession of a very strong ass, able to carry a heavy load of
plantains to the embarcadero, was the consummation of all his
wishes.
After a long discourse on the emptiness of human greatness, he drew
from a leathern pouch a few very small opaque pearls, which he
forced us to accept, enjoining us at the same time to note on our
tablets that a poor shoemaker of Araya, but a white man, and of
noble Castilian race, had been enabled to give us something which,
on the other side of the sea,* was sought for as very precious. (*
'Por alla,' or, 'del otro lado del charco,' (properly 'beyond,' or
'on the other side of the great lake'), a figurative expression, by
which the people in the Spanish colonies denote Europe.) I here
acquit myself of the promise I made to this worthy man, who
disinterestedly refused to accept of the slightest retribution. The
Pearl Coast presents the same aspect of misery as the countries of
gold and diamonds, Choco and Brazil; but misery is not there
attended with that immoderate desire of gain which is excited by
mineral wealth.
The pearl-breeding oyster (Avicula margaritifera, Cuvier) abounds
on the shoals which extend from Cape Paria to Cape la Vela. The
islands of Margareta, Cubagua, Coche, Punta Araya, and the mouth of
the Rio la Hacha, were, in the sixteenth century, as celebrated as
were the Persian Gulf and the island of Taprobana among the
ancients.
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