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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It Is Not Yet A Century Since The
First Coffee-Trees Were Planted At Surinam And In The West India
Islands, And Already The Produce Of America Amounts To Fifteen
Millions Of Piastres, Reckoning The Quintal Of Coffee At Fourteen
Piastres Only.
On the eighth of February we set out at sunrise, to cross the
Higuerote, a group of lofty mountains, separating the two
longitudinal valleys of Caracas and Aragua.
After passing, near Las
Ajuntas, the junction of the two small rivers San Pedro and
Macarao, which form the Rio Guayra, we ascended a steep hill to the
table-land of La Buenavista, where we saw a few lonely houses. The
view extends on the north-west to the city of Caracas, and on the
south to the village of Los Teques. The country has a very wild
aspect, and is thickly wooded. We had now gradually lost the plants
of the valley of Caracas.* (* The Flora of Caracas is characterized
chiefly by the following plants, which grow between the heights of
four hundred and six hundred toises. Cipura martinicensis, Panicum
mieranthum, Parthenium hysterophorus, Vernonia odoratissima,
(Pevetera, with flowers having a delicious odour of heliotropium),
Tagetes caracasana, T. scoparia of Lagasca (introduced by M.
Bonpland into the gardens of Spain), Croton hispidus, Smilax
scabriusculus, Limnocharis Humboldti, Rich., Equisetum
ramosissimum, Heteranthera alismoides, Glycine punctata, Hyptis
Plumeri, Pavonia cancellata, Cav., Spermacoce rigida, Crotalaria
acutifolia, Polygala nemorosa, Stachytarpheta mutabilis,
Cardiospermum ulmaceum, Amaranthus caracasanus, Elephantopus
strigosus, Hydrolea mollis, Alternanthera caracasana, Eupatorium
amydalinum, Elytraria fasciculata, Salvia fimbriata, Angelonia
salicaria, Heliotropium strictum, Convolvulus batarilla, Rubus
jamaicensis, Datura arborea, Dalea enneaphylla, Buchnera rosea,
Salix Humboldtiana, Willd., Theophrasta longifolia, Tournefortia
caracasana, Inga cinerea, I. ligustrina, I. sapindioides, I.
fastuosa, Schwenkia patens, Erythrina mitis. The most agreeable
places for herborizing near Caracas are the ravines of Tacagua,
Tipe, Cotecita, Catoche, Anauco, and Chacaito.) We were eight
hundred and thirty-five toises above the level of the ocean, which
is almost the height of Popayan; but the mean temperature of this
place is probably only 17 or 18 degrees. The road over these
mountains is much frequented; we met continually long files of
mules and oxen; it is the great road leading from the capital to La
Victoria, and the valleys of Aragua. This road is cut out of a
talcose gneiss* in a state of decomposition. (* The direction of
the strata of gneiss varies; it is either hor. 3.4, dipping to the
north-west or hor. 8.2, dipping to the south-east.) A clayey soil
mixed with spangles of mica covered the rock, to the depth of three
feet. Travellers suffer from the dust in winter, while in the rainy
season the place is changed into a slough. On descending the
table-land of Buenavista, about fifty toises to the south-east, an
abundant spring, gushing from the gneiss, forms several cascades
surrounded with thick vegetation. The path leading to the spring is
so steep that we could touch with our hands the tops of the
arborescent ferns, the trunks of which reach a height of more than
twenty-five feet. The surrounding rocks are covered with
jungermannias and hypnoid mosses. The torrent, formed by the
spring, and shaded with heliconias, uncovers, as it falls, the
roots of the plumerias,* (* The red jasmine-tree, frangipanier of
the French West India Islands. The plumeria, so common in the
gardens of the Indians, has been very seldom found in a wild state.
It is mixed here with the Piper flagellare, the spadix of which
sometimes reaches three feet long. With the new kind of fig-tree
(which we have called Ficus gigantea, because it frequently attains
the height of a hundred feet), we find in the mountains of
Buenavista and of Los Teques, the Ficus nymphaeifolia of the garden
of Schonbrunn, introduced into our hot-houses by M. Bredemeyer. I
am certain of the identity of the species found in the same places;
but I doubt really whether it be really the F. nymphaeifolia of
Linnaeus, which is supposed to be a native of the East Indies.)
cupeys,* (* In the experiments I made at Caracas, on the air which
circulates in plants, I was struck with the fine appearance
presented by the petioles and leaves of the Clusia rosea, when cut
open under water, and exposed to the rays of the sun. Each trachea
gives out a current of gas, purer by 0.08 than atmospheric air. The
phenomenon ceases the moment the apparatus is placed in the shade.
There is only a very slight disengagement of air at the two
surfaces of the leaves of the clusia exposed to the sun without
being cut open. The gas enclosed in the capsules of the
Cardiospermum vesicarium appeared to me to contain the same
proportion of oxygen as the atmosphere, while that contained
between the knots, in the hollow of the stalk, is generally less
pure, containing only from 0.12 to 0.15 of oxygen. It is necessary
to distinguish between the air circulating in the tracheae, and
that which is stagnant in the great cavities of the stems and
pericarps.) browneas, and Ficus gigantea. This humid spot, though
infested by serpents, presents a rich harvest to the botanist. The
Brownea, which the inhabitants call rosa del monte, or palo de
cruz, bears four or five hundred purple flowers together in one
thyrsus; each flower has invariably eleven stamina, and this
majestic plant, the trunk of which grows to the height of fifty or
sixty feet, is becoming rare, because its wood yields a highly
valued charcoal. The soil is covered with pines (ananas),
hemimeris, polygala, and melastomas. A climbing gramen* (* Carice.
See Chapter 6.) with its light festoons unites trees, the presence
of which attests the coolness of the climate of these mountains.
Such are the Aralia capitata,* (* Candelero. We found it also at La
Cumbre, at a height of 700 toises.) the Vismia caparosa, and the
Clethra fagifolia. Among these plants, peculiar to the fine region
of the arborescent ferns,* (* Called by the inhabitants of the
country Region de los helechos.) some palm-trees rise in the
openings, and some scattered groups of guarumo, or cecropia with
silvery leaves.
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