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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The Curiosity Excited By Physical
Phenomena Is Naturally Great In Countries Undermined By Volcanic
Fires, And In A Climate Where Nature Is At Once So Majestic And So
Mysteriously Convulsed.
When we remember, that in the United States of North America,
newspapers are published in small towns not containing
More than
three thousand inhabitants, it seems surprising that Caracas, with
a population of forty or fifty thousand souls, should have
possessed no printing office before 1806; for we cannot give the
name of a printing establishment to a few presses which served only
from year to year to promulgate an almanac of a few pages, or the
pastoral letter of a bishop. Though the number of those who feel
reading to be a necessity is not very considerable, even in the
Spanish colonies most advanced in civilization, yet it would be
unjust to reproach the colonists for a state of intellectual
lassitude which has been the result of a jealous policy. A
Frenchman, named Delpeche, has the merit of having established the
first printing office in Caracas. It appears somewhat extraordinary
that an establishment of this kind should have followed, and not
preceded, a political revolution.
In a country abounding in such magnificent scenery, and at a period
when, notwithstanding some symptoms of popular commotion, most of
the inhabitants seem only to direct attention to physical objects,
such as the fertility of the year, the long drought, or the
conflicting winds of Petare and Catia, I expected to find many
individuals well acquainted with the lofty surrounding mountains.
But I was disappointed; and we could not find in Caracas a single
person who had visited the summit of the Silla. Hunters do not
ascend so high on the ridges of mountains; and in these countries
journeys are not undertaken for such purposes as gathering alpine
plants, carrying a barometer to an elevated point, or examining the
nature of rocks. Accustomed to a uniform and domestic life, the
people dread fatigue and sudden changes of climate. They seem to
live not to enjoy life, but only to prolong it.
Our walks led us often in the direction of two coffee plantations,
the proprietors of which, Don Andres de Ibarra and M. Blandin, were
men of agreeable manners. These plantations were situated opposite
the Silla de Caracas. Surveying, by a telescope, the steep
declivity of the mountains, and the form of the two peaks by which
it is terminated, we could form an idea of the difficulties we
should have to encounter in reaching its summit. Angles of
elevation, taken with the sextant at our house, had led me to
believe that the summit was not so high above sea-level as the
great square of Quito. This estimate was far from corresponding
with the notions entertained by the inhabitants of the city.
Mountains which command great towns, have acquired, from that very
circumstance, an extraordinary celebrity in both continents. Long
before they have been accurately measured, a conventional height is
assigned to them; and to entertain the least doubt respecting that
height is to wound a national prejudice.
The captain-general, Senor de Guevara, directed the teniente of
Chacao to furnish us with guides to conduct us on our ascent of the
Silla. These guides were negroes, and they knew something of the
path leading over the ridge of the mountain, near the western peak
of the Silla. This path is frequented by smugglers, but neither the
guides, nor the most experienced of the militia, accustomed to
pursue the smugglers in these wild spots, had been on the eastern
peak, forming the most elevated summit of the Silla. During the
whole month of December, the mountain (of which the angles of
elevation made me acquainted with the effects of the terrestrial
refractions) had appeared only five times free of clouds. In this
season two serene days seldom succeed each other, and we were
therefore advised not to choose a clear day for our excursion, but
rather a time when, the clouds not being elevated, we might hope,
after having crossed the first layer of vapours uniformly spread,
to enter into a dry and transparent air. We passed the night of the
2nd of January in the Estancia de Gallegos, a plantation of
coffee-trees, near which the little river of Chacaito, flowing in a
luxuriantly shaded ravine, forms some fine cascades in descending
the mountains. The night was pretty clear; and though on the day
preceding a fatiguing journey it might have been well to have
enjoyed some repose, M. Bonpland and I passed the whole night in
watching three occultations of the satellites of Jupiter. I had
previously determined the instant of the observation, but we missed
them all, owing to some error of calculation in the Connaissance
des Temps. The apparent time had been mistaken for mean time.
I was much disappointed by this accident; and after having observed
at the foot of the mountain the intensity of the magnetic forces,
before sunrise, we set out at five in the morning, accompanied by
slaves carrying our instruments. Our party consisted of eighteen
persons, and we all walked one behind another, in a narrow path,
traced on a steep acclivity, covered with turf. We endeavoured
first to reach a hill, which towards the south-east seems to form a
promontory of the Silla. It is connected with the body of the
mountain by a narrow dyke, called by the shepherds the Gate, or
Puerta de la Silla. We reached this dyke about seven. The morning
was fine and cool, and the sky till then seemed to favour our
excursion. I saw that the thermometer kept a little below 14
degrees (11.2 degrees Reaum.). The barometer showed that we were
already six hundred and eighty-five toises above the level of the
sea, that is, nearly eighty toises higher than at the Venta, where
we enjoyed so magnificent a view of the coast. Our guides thought
that it would require six hours more to reach the summit of the
Silla.
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