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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We Enjoyed An Agreeable Coolness
When The Breeze Arose; The Windows Were Without Glass, And Even
Without Those Paper Panes Which Are Often Substituted For Glass At
Cumana.
The whole of the passengers of the Pizarro left the vessel,
but the recovery of those who had been attacked by the fever was
very slow.
We saw some who, a month after, notwithstanding the care
bestowed on them by their countrymen, were still extremely weak and
reduced. Hospitality, in the Spanish colonies, is such, that a
European who arrives, without recommendation or pecuniary means, is
almost sure of finding assistance, if he land in any port on
account of sickness. The Catalonians, the Galicians, and the
Biscayans, have the most frequent intercourse with America. They
there form as it were three distinct corporations, which exercise a
remarkable influence over the morals, the industry, and commerce of
the colonies. The poorest inhabitant of Siges or Vigo is sure of
being received into the house of a Catalonian or Galician pulpero,*
(* A retail dealer.) whether he land in Chile or the Philippine
Islands.
Among the sick who landed at Cumana was a negro, who fell into a
state of insanity a few days after our arrival; he died in that
deplorable condition, though his master, almost seventy years old,
who had left Europe to settle at San Blas, at the entrance of the
gulf of California, had attended him with the greatest care. I
relate this fact as affording evidence that men born under the
torrid zone, after having dwelt in temperate climates, sometimes
feel the pernicious effects of the heat of the tropics.
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