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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We May Be Surprised At The Small Elevation Of These
Summits, Which, Viewed From The Sea, Wear So Majestic A Form; But
Nothing Is More Uncertain Than Our Judgment On The Greatness Of
Angles, Which Are Subtended By Objects Close To The Horizon.
From
illusions of this sort it arose, that before the measures of
Messrs.
De Churruca and Galleano, at Cape Pilar, navigators
considered the mountains of the straits of Magellan, and those of
Terra del Fuego, to be extremely elevated.
The island of Lancerota bore formerly the name of Titeroigotra. On
the arrival of the Spaniards, its inhabitants were distinguished
from the other Canarians by marks of greater civilization. Their
houses were built with freestone, while the Guanches of Teneriffe
dwelt in caverns. At Lancerota, a very singular custom prevailed at
that time, of which we find no example except among the people of
Thibet. A woman had several husbands, who alternately enjoyed the
prerogatives due to the head of a family. A husband was considered
as such only during a lunar revolution, and whilst his rights were
exercised by others, he remained classed among the household
domestics. In the fifteenth century the island of Lancerota
contained two small distinct states, divided by a wall; a kind of
monument which outlives national enmities, and which we find in
Scotland, in China, and Peru.
We were forced by the winds to pass between the islands of
Alegranza and Montana Clara, and as none on board the sloop had
sailed through this passage, we were obliged to be continually
sounding. We found from twenty-five to thirty-two fathoms. The lead
brought up an organic substance of so singular a structure that we
were for a long time doubtful whether it was a zoophyte or a kind
of seaweed. The stem, of a brownish colour and three inches long,
has circular leaves with lobes, and indented at the edges. The
colour of these leaves is a pale green, and they are membranous and
streaked like those of the adiantums and Gingko biloba. Their
surface is covered with stiff whitish hairs; before their opening
they are concave, and enveloped one in the other. We observed no
mark of spontaneous motion, no sign of irritability, not even on
the application of galvanic electricity. The stem is not woody, but
almost of a horny substance, like the stem of the Gorgons. Azote
and phosphorus having been abundantly found in several cryptogamous
plants, an appeal to chemistry would be useless to determine
whether this organized substance belonged to the animal or
vegetable kingdom. Its great analogy to several sea-plants, with
adiantum leaves, especially the genus caulerpa of M. Lamoureux, of
which the Fucus proliter of Forskael is one of the numerous
species, engaged us to rank it provisionally among the sea-wracks,
and give it the name of Fucus vitifolius. The bristles which cover
this plant are found in several other fuci.* (* Fucus
lycopodioides, and F. hirsutus.) The leaf, examined with a
microscope at the instant we drew it up from the water, did not
present, it is true, those conglobate glands, or those opaque
points, which the parts of fructification in the genera of ulva and
fucus contain; but how often do we find seaweeds in such a state
that we cannot yet distinguish any trace of seeds in their
transparent parenchyma.
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