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 Is Difficult To Imagine
A More Picturesque Spot.
It recalled forcibly to my remembrance the
valleys of Derbyshire, and the cavernous mountains of Muggendorf,
in Franconia.
Instead of the beeches and maple trees of Europe we
here find the statelier forms of the ceiba and the palm-tree, the
praga and irasse. Numberless springs gush from the sides of the
rocks which encircle the basin of Caripe, and of which the abrupt
slopes present, towards the south, profiles of a thousand feet in
height. These springs issue, for the most part, from a few narrow
crevices. The humidity which they spread around favours the growth
of the great trees; and the natives, who love solitary places, form
their conucos along the sides of these crevices. Plantains and
papaw trees are grouped together with groves of arborescent fern;
and this mixture of wild and cultivated plants gives the place a
peculiar charm. Springs are distinguished from afar, on the naked
flanks of the mountains, by tufted masses of vegetation* which at
first sight seem suspended from the rocks, and descending into the
valley, they follow the sinuosities of the torrents.* (* Among the
interesting plants of the valley of Caripe, we found for the first
time a calidium, the trunk of which was twenty feet high (C.
arboreum); the Mikania micrantha, which may probably possess some
of the alexipharmic properties of the famous guaco of the Choco;
the Bauhinia obtusifolia, a very large tree, called guarapa by the
Indians; the Weinnannia glabra; a tree psychotria, the capsules of
which, when rubbed between the fingers, emit a very agreeable
orange smell; the Dorstenia Houstoni (raiz de resfriado); the
Martynia Craniolaria, the white flowers of which are six or seven
inches long; a scrophularia, having the aspect of the Verbascum
miconi, and the leaves of which, all radical and hairy, are marked
with silvery glands.)
We were received with great hospitality by the monks of Caripe.
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