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 Shall Not
However Admit With M. Vieyra, "That The Play Of The Terrestrial
Refractions May Render Visible To The
Inhabitants of the Canaries
the islands of Cape Verd, and even the Apalachian mountains of
America."* (* The American fruits, frequently
Thrown by the sea on
the coasts of the islands of Ferro and Gomera, were formerly
supposed to emanate from the plants of the island of San Borondon.
This island, said to be governed by an archbishop and six bishops,
and which Father Feijoa believed to be the image of the island of
Ferro, reflected on a fog-bank, was ceded in the 16th century, by
the King of Portugal, to Lewis Perdigon, at the time the latter was
preparing to take possession of it by conquest.)
The cold we felt on the top of the Peak, was very considerable for
the season. The centigrade thermometer, at a distance from the
ground, and from the apertures that emitted the hot vapours, fell
in the shade to 2.7 degrees. The wind was west, and consequently
opposite to that which brings to Teneriffe, during a great part of
the year, the warm air that floats above the burning desert of
Africa. As the temperature of the atmosphere, observed at the port
of Orotava by M. Savagi, was 22.8 degrees, the decrement of caloric
was one degree every 94 toises. This result perfectly corresponds
with those obtained by Lamanon and Saussure on the summits of the
Peak and Etna, though in very different seasons. The tall slender
form of these mountains facilitates the means of comparing the
temperature of two strata of the atmosphere, which are nearly in
the same perpendicular plane; and in this point of view the
observations made in an excursion to the volcano of Teneriffe
resemble those of an ascent in a balloon. We must nevertheless
remark, that the ocean, on account of its transparency and
evaporation, reflects less caloric than the plains, into the upper
regions of the air; and also that summits which are surrounded by
the sea are colder in summer, than mountains which rise from a
continent; but this circumstance has very little influence on the
decrement of atmospherical heat; the temperature of the low regions
being equally diminished by the proximity of the ocean.
It is not the same with respect to the influence exercised by the
direction of the wind, and the rapidity of the ascending current;
the latter sometimes increases in an astonishing manner the
temperature of the loftiest mountains. I have seen the thermometer
rise, on the slope of the volcano of Antisana, in the kingdom of
Quito, to 19 degrees, when we were 2837 toises high. M.
Labillardiere has seen it, on the edge of the crater of the peak of
Teneriffe, at 18.7 degrees, though he had used every possible
precaution to avoid the effect of accidental causes.
On the summit of the Peak, we beheld with admiration the azure
colour of the sky. Its intensity at the zenith appeared to
correspond to 41 degrees of the cyanometer. We know, by Saussure's
experiment, that this intensity increases with the rarity of the
air, and that the same instrument marked at the same period 39
degrees at the priory of Chamouni, and 40 degrees at the top of
Mont Blanc. This last mountain is 540 toises higher than the
volcano of Teneriffe; and if, notwithstanding this difference, the
sky is observed there to be of a less deep blue, we must attribute
this phenomenon to the dryness of the African air, and the
proximity of the torrid zone.
We collected on the brink of the crater, some air which we meant to
analyse on our voyage to America. The phial remained so well
corked, that on opening it ten days after, the water rushed in with
impetuosity. Several experiments, made by means of nitrous gas in
the narrow tube of Fontana's eudiometer, seemed to prove that the
air of the crater contained 0.09 degrees less oxygen than the air
of the sea; but I have little confidence in this result obtained by
means which we now consider as very inexact. The crater of the Peak
has so little depth, and the air is renewed with so much facility,
that it is scarcely probable the quantity of azote is greater there
than on the coasts. We know also, from the experiments of MM.
Gay-Lussac and Theodore de Saussure, that in the highest as well as
in the lowest regions of the atmosphere, the air equally contains
0.21 of oxygen.* (* During the stay of M. Gay-Lussac and myself at
the hospice of Mont Cenis, in March 1805, we collected air in the
midst of a cloud loaded with electricity. This air, analysed in
Volta's eudiometer, contained no hydrogen, and its purity did not
differ 0.002 of oxygen from the air of Paris, which we had carried
with us in phials hermetically sealed.)
We saw on the summit of the Peak no trace of psora, lecidea, or
other cryptogamous plants; no insect fluttered in the air. We found
however a few hymenoptera adhering to masses of sulphur moistened
with sulphurous acid, and lining the mouths of the funnels. These
are bees, which appear to have been attracted by the flowers of the
Spartium nubigenum, and which oblique currents of air had carried
up to these high regions, like the butterflies found by M. Ramond
at the top of Mont Perdu. The butterflies perished from cold, while
the bees on the Peak were scorched on imprudently approaching the
crevices where they came in search of warmth.
Notwithstanding the heat we felt in our feet on the edge of the
crater, the cone of ashes remains covered with snow during several
months in winter. It is probable, that under the cap of snow
considerable hollows are found, like those existing under the
glaciers of Switzerland, the temperature of which is constantly
less elevated than that of the soil on which they repose.
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