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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The Little Coasting Vessels Are Favoured At Once By The Wind
And By The Currents, Which Run With More Or Less Force From East To
West, Along The Coasts Of Terra Firma, Particularly From Cape Paria
To The Cape Of Chichibacoa.
The road by land from Cumana to New
Barcelona, and thence to Caracas, is nearly in the same state as
that in which it was before the discovery of America.
The traveller
has to contend with the obstacles presented by a miry soil, large
scattered rocks, and strong vegetation. He must sleep in the open
air, pass through the valleys of the Unare, the Tuy, and the
Capaya, and cross torrents which swell rapidly on account of the
proximity of the mountains. To these obstacles must be added the
dangers arising from the extreme insalubrity of the country. The
very low lands, between the sea-shore and the chain of hills
nearest the coast, from the bay of Mochima as far as Coro, are
extremely unhealthy. But the last-mentioned town, which is
surrounded by an immense wood of thorny cactuses, owes its great
salubrity, like Cumana, to its barren soil and the absence of rain.
In returning from Caracas to Cumana, the road by land is sometimes
preferred to the passage by sea, to avoid the adverse current. The
postman from Caracas is nine days in performing this journey. We
often saw persons, who had followed him, arrive at Cumana ill of
nervous and miasmatic fevers. The tree of which the bark* furnishes
a salutary remedy for those fevers (* Cortex Angosturae of our
pharmacopaeias, the bark of the Bonplandia trifoliata.), grows in
the same valleys, and upon the edge of the same forests which send
forth the pernicious exhalations.
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