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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I Brought To Europe Some Powders With
Metallic Lustre, Taken From Very Old Trunks Of Meniscium And
Aspidium.
In proportion as we descended the mountain of Santa Maria, we saw
the arborescent ferns diminish, and the number of palm-trees
increase.
The beautiful large-winged butterflies (nymphales), which
fly at a prodigious height, became more common. Everything denoted
our approach to the coast, and to a zone in which the mean
temperature of the day is from 28 to 30 degrees.
The weather was cloudy, and led us to fear one of those heavy
rains, during which from 1 to 1.3 inches of water sometimes falls
in a day. The sun at times illumined the tops of the trees; and,
though sheltered from its rays, we felt an oppressive heat. Thunder
rolled at a distance; the clouds seemed suspended on the top of the
lofty mountains of the Guacharo; and the plaintive howling of the
araguatoes, which we had so often heard at Caripe, denoted the
proximity of the storm. We now for the first time had a near view
of these howling apes. They are of the family of the alouates,* (*
Stentor, Geoffroy.) the different species of which have long been
confounded one with another. The small sapajous of America, which
imitate in whistling the tones of the passeres, have the bone of
the tongue thin and simple, but the apes of large size, as the
alouates and marimondes,* (* Ateles, Geoffroy.) have the tongue
placed on a large bony drum.
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