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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Sloping And Very Low Roofs
Give The Drying Place The Appearance Of Hot-Houses At Some
Distance.
In the valley of Cumanacoa, the fermentation of the plant
is produced with astonishing rapidity.
It lasts in general but four
or five hours. This short duration can be attributed only to the
humidity of the climate, and the absence of the sun during the
development of the plant. I think I have observed, in the course of
my travels, that the drier the climate, the slower the vat works,
and the greater the quantity of indigo, at the minimum of
oxidation, contained in the stalks. In the province of Caracas,
where 562 cubic feet of the plant slightly piled up yield
thirty-five or forty pounds of dry indigo, the liquid does not pass
into the beater till after twenty, thirty, or thirty-five hours. It
is probable that the inhabitants of Cumanacoa would extract more
colouring matter if they left the plants longer steeping in the
first vat.* (* The planters are pretty generally of opinion, that
the fermentation should never continue less than ten hours.
Beauvais-Raseau, Art de l'Indigotier page 81.) During my abode at
Cumana I made solutions of the indigo of Cumanacoa, which is
somewhat heavy and coppery, and that of Caracas, in sulphuric acid,
in order to compare them, and the solution of the former appeared
to me to be of a much more intense blue.
The plain of Cumanacoa, spotted with farms and small plantations of
indigo and tobacco, is surrounded with mountains, which towards the
south rise to considerable height.
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