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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The Proprietor Of The Farm, Who Spent His Evenings With
Us, Seemed To Enjoy The Astonishment Produced On Europeans Newly
Transplanted To The Tropics, By That Vernal Freshness Of The Air
Which Is Felt On The Mountains After Sunset.
In those distant
regions, where men yet feel the full value of the gifts of nature,
a land-holder
Boasts of the water of his spring, the absence of
noxious insects, the salutary breeze that blows round his hill, as
we in Europe descant on the conveniences of our dwellings, and the
picturesque effect of our plantations.
Our host had visited the new world with an expedition which was to
form establishments for felling wood for the Spanish navy on the
shores of the gulf of Paria. In the vast forests of mahogany,
cedar, and brazil-wood, which border the Caribbean Sea, it was
proposed to select the trunks of the largest trees, giving them in
a rough way the shape adapted to the building of ships, and sending
them every year to the dockyard near Cadiz. White men, unaccustomed
to the climate, could not support the fatigue of labour, the heat,
and the effect of the noxious air exhaled by the forests. The same
winds which are loaded with the perfume of flowers, leaves, and
woods, infuse also, as we may say, the germs of dissolution into
the vital organs. Destructive fevers carried off not only the
ship-carpenters, but the persons who had the management of the
establishment; and this bay, which the early Spaniards named Golfo
Triste (Melancholy Bay), on account of the gloomy and wild aspect
of its coasts, became the grave of European seamen.
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