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 Has
Been Several Times Proposed To The Government, But Without Success,
To Construct A Dyke At The First Ipure, In Order To Form Artificial
Irrigations In The Plain Of Charas; For, Notwithstanding Its
Apparent Sterility, The Soil Is Extremely Productive, Wherever
Humidity Is Combined With The Heat Of The Climate.
The cultivators
were gradually to refund the money advanced for the construction of
the sluices.
Meanwhile, pumps worked by mules, and other hydraulic
but imperfect machines, have been erected, to serve till this
project is carried into execution.
The banks of the Manzanares are very pleasant, and are shaded by
mimosas, erythrinas, ceibas, and other trees of gigantic growth. A
river, the temperature of which, in the season of the floods,
descends as low as twenty-two degrees, when the air is at thirty
and thirty-three degrees, is an inestimable benefit in a country
where the heat is excessive during the whole year, and where it is
so agreeable to bathe several times in the day. The children pass a
considerable part of their lives in the water; all the inhabitants,
even the women of the most opulent families, know how to swim; and
in a country where man is so near the state of nature, one of the
first questions asked on meeting in the morning is, whether the
water is cooler than it was on the preceding evening. One of the
modes of bathing is curious. We every evening visited a family, in
the suburb of the Guayquerias.
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