Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 338 of 407 - First - Home
It May Even Be Said, That The Expression Of Vanity
And Self-Love Becomes Less Offensive, When It Retains Something Of
Simplicity And Frankness.
I found in several families at Caracas a love of information, an
acquaintance with the masterpieces of French and
Italian
literature, and a marked predilection for music, which is greatly
cultivated, and which (as always results from a taste for the fine
arts) brings the different classes of society nearer to each other.
The mathematical sciences, drawing, and painting, cannot here boast
of any of those establishments with which royal munificence and the
patriotic zeal of the inhabitants have enriched Mexico. In the
midst of the marvels of nature, so rich in interesting productions,
it is strange that we found no person on this coast devoted to the
study of plants and minerals. In a Franciscan convent I met, it is
true, with an old monk who drew up the almanac for all the
provinces of Venezuela, and who possessed some accurate knowledge
of astronomy. Our instruments interested him deeply, and one day
our house was filled with all the monks of San Francisco, begging
to see a dipping-needle. The curiosity excited by physical
phenomena is naturally great in countries undermined by volcanic
fires, and in a climate where nature is at once so majestic and so
mysteriously convulsed.
When we remember, that in the United States of North America,
newspapers are published in small towns not containing more than
three thousand inhabitants, it seems surprising that Caracas, with
a population of forty or fifty thousand souls, should have
possessed no printing office before 1806; for we cannot give the
name of a printing establishment to a few presses which served only
from year to year to promulgate an almanac of a few pages, or the
pastoral letter of a bishop. Though the number of those who feel
reading to be a necessity is not very considerable, even in the
Spanish colonies most advanced in civilization, yet it would be
unjust to reproach the colonists for a state of intellectual
lassitude which has been the result of a jealous policy. A
Frenchman, named Delpeche, has the merit of having established the
first printing office in Caracas. It appears somewhat extraordinary
that an establishment of this kind should have followed, and not
preceded, a political revolution.
In a country abounding in such magnificent scenery, and at a period
when, notwithstanding some symptoms of popular commotion, most of
the inhabitants seem only to direct attention to physical objects,
such as the fertility of the year, the long drought, or the
conflicting winds of Petare and Catia, I expected to find many
individuals well acquainted with the lofty surrounding mountains.
But I was disappointed; and we could not find in Caracas a single
person who had visited the summit of the Silla. Hunters do not
ascend so high on the ridges of mountains; and in these countries
journeys are not undertaken for such purposes as gathering alpine
plants, carrying a barometer to an elevated point, or examining the
nature of rocks.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 338 of 407
Words from 175332 to 175844
of 211363