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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In The Town Of Cumana There Is Prepared A Great Quantity Of
Cocoa-Nut Oil, Which Is Limpid, Without Smell, And Very Fit For
Burning.
The trade in this oil is not less active than that on the
coast of Africa for palm-oil, which is obtained from the Elais
guineensis, and is used as food.
I have often seen canoes arrive at
Cumana laden with 3000 cocoa-nuts.
We did not quit the farm of Pericantral till after sunset. The
south coast of the gulf presents a most fertile aspect, while the
northern coast is naked, dry, and rocky. In spite of this aridity,
and the scarcity of rain, of which sometimes none falls for the
space of fifteen months,* the peninsula of Araya, like the desert
of Canound in India, produces patillas, or water-melons, weighing
from fifty to seventy pounds. (* The rains appear to have been more
frequent at the beginning of the 16th century. At any rate, the
canon of Granada (Peter Martyr d'Anghiera), speaking in the year
1574, of the salt-works of Araya, or of Haraia, described in the
fifth chapter of this work, mentions showers (cadentes imbres) as a
very common phenomenon. The same author, who died in 1526, affirms
that the Indians wrought the salt-works before the arrival of the
Spaniards. They dried the salt in the form of bricks; and our
writer even then discussed the geological question, whether the
clayey soil of Haraia contained salt-springs, or whether it had
been impregnated with salt by the periodical inundations of the
ocean for ages.) In the torrid zone, the vapours contained by the
air form about nine-tenths of the quantity necessary to its
saturation:
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