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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How Many Substances Are
Perhaps Contained In A State Of Suspension In Those Mixtures Of
Carbonic Acid And Hydrogen, Which
Are called deleterious miasmata,
and which rise everywhere within the tropics, in marshy grounds, on
the sea-shore, and in
Forests where the soil is strewed with dead
leaves, rotten fruits, and putrefying insects.)
If the troubles of St. Domingo, the temporary rise in the price of
colonial produce, and the emigration of French planters, were the
first causes of the establishment of coffee plantations on the
continent of America, in the island of Cuba, and in Jamaica; their
produce has far more than compensated the deficiency of the
exportation from the French West India Islands. This produce has
augmented in proportion to the population, the change of customs,
and the increasing luxury of the nations of Europe. The island of
St. Domingo exported, in 1700, at the time of Necker's
administration, nearly seventy-six million pounds of coffee.* (*
French pounds, containing 9216 grains. 112 English pounds = 105
French pounds; and 160 Spanish pounds = 93 French pounds. The
island of St. Domingo was at that time, it must be remembered, a
French colony.)
Tea could be cultivated as well as coffee in the mountainous parts
of the provinces of Caracas and Cumana. Every climate is there
found rising in stages one above another; and this new culture
would succeed there as well as in the southern hemisphere, where
the government of Brazil, protecting at the same time industry and
religious toleration, suffered at once the introduction of Chinese
tea and of the dogmas of Fo. It is not yet a century since the
first coffee-trees were planted at Surinam and in the West India
Islands, and already the produce of America amounts to fifteen
millions of piastres, reckoning the quintal of coffee at fourteen
piastres only.
On the eighth of February we set out at sunrise, to cross the
Higuerote, a group of lofty mountains, separating the two
longitudinal valleys of Caracas and Aragua. After passing, near Las
Ajuntas, the junction of the two small rivers San Pedro and
Macarao, which form the Rio Guayra, we ascended a steep hill to the
table-land of La Buenavista, where we saw a few lonely houses. The
view extends on the north-west to the city of Caracas, and on the
south to the village of Los Teques. The country has a very wild
aspect, and is thickly wooded. We had now gradually lost the plants
of the valley of Caracas.* (* The Flora of Caracas is characterized
chiefly by the following plants, which grow between the heights of
four hundred and six hundred toises. Cipura martinicensis, Panicum
mieranthum, Parthenium hysterophorus, Vernonia odoratissima,
(Pevetera, with flowers having a delicious odour of heliotropium),
Tagetes caracasana, T. scoparia of Lagasca (introduced by M.
Bonpland into the gardens of Spain), Croton hispidus, Smilax
scabriusculus, Limnocharis Humboldti, Rich., Equisetum
ramosissimum, Heteranthera alismoides, Glycine punctata, Hyptis
Plumeri, Pavonia cancellata, Cav., Spermacoce rigida, Crotalaria
acutifolia, Polygala nemorosa, Stachytarpheta mutabilis,
Cardiospermum ulmaceum, Amaranthus caracasanus, Elephantopus
strigosus, Hydrolea mollis, Alternanthera caracasana, Eupatorium
amydalinum, Elytraria fasciculata, Salvia fimbriata, Angelonia
salicaria, Heliotropium strictum, Convolvulus batarilla, Rubus
jamaicensis, Datura arborea, Dalea enneaphylla, Buchnera rosea,
Salix Humboldtiana, Willd., Theophrasta longifolia, Tournefortia
caracasana, Inga cinerea, I. ligustrina, I. sapindioides, I.
fastuosa, Schwenkia patens, Erythrina mitis.
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