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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Prussian, A Pole, Or A Swede, Is More Exposed On His Arrival At The
Islands Or On The Continent, Than A Spaniard, An Italian, Or Even
An Inhabitant Of The South Of France.
With respect to the people of
the north, the difference of the mean temperature is from nineteen
to twenty-one degrees, while to the people of southern countries it
is only from nine to ten.
We were fortunate enough to pass safely
through the interval during which a European recently landed runs
the greatest danger, in the extremely hot, but very dry climate of
Cumana, a city celebrated for its salubrity.
On the morning of the 15th, when nearly on a line with the hill of
St. Joseph, we were surrounded by a great quantity of floating
seaweed. Its stems had those extraordinary appendages in the form
of little cups and feathers, which Don Hippolyto Ruiz remarked on
his return from the expedition to Chile, and which he described in
a separate memoir as the generative organs of the Fucus natans. A
fortunate accident allowed us the means of verifying a fact which
had been but once observed by naturalists. The bundles of fucus
collected by M. Bonpland were completely identical with the
specimens given us by the learned authors of the Flora of Peru. On
examining both with the microscope, we found that the supposed
parts of fructification, the stamina and pistils, belong to a new
genus, of the family of the Ceratophytae.
The coast of Paria stretches to the west, forming a wall of rocks
of no great height, with rounded tops and a waving outline.
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