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 Was On A Sunday Night, And The
Slaves Were Dancing To The Music Of The Guitar.
The people of
Africa, of negro race, are endowed with an inexhaustible store of
activity and gaiety.
After having ended the labours of the week,
the slaves, on festival days, prefer to listless sleep the
recreations of music and dancing.
The bark in which we passed the gulf of Cariaco was very spacious.
Large skins of the jaguar, or American tiger, were spread for our
repose during the night. Though we had yet scarcely been two months
in the torrid zone, we had already become so sensible to the
smallest variation of temperature that the cold prevented us from
sleeping; while, to our surprise, we saw that the centigrade
thermometer was as high as 21.8 degrees. This fact is familiar to
those who have lived long in the Indies, and is worthy the
attention of physiologists. Bouguer relates, that when he reached
the summit of Montagne Pelee, in the island of Martinique, he and
his companions shivered with cold, though the heat was above 21.5
degrees. In reading the interesting narrative of captain Bligh,
who, in consequence of a mutiny on board the Bounty, was forced to
make a voyage of twelve hundred leagues in an open boat, we find
that that navigator, in the tenth and twelfth degrees of south
latitude, suffered much more from cold than from hunger. During our
abode at Guayaquil, in the month of January 1803, we observed that
the natives covered themselves, and complained of the cold, when
the thermometer sank to 23.8 degrees, whilst they felt the heat
suffocating at 30.5 degrees.
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