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 Anchored For Some Hours In The Road Of New Barcelona, At The
Mouth Of The River Neveri, Of Which The Indian (Cumanagoto) Name Is
Enipiricuar.
This river is full of crocodiles, which sometimes
extend their excursions into the open sea, especially in calm
weather.
They are of the species common in the Orinoco, and bear so
much resemblance to the crocodile of Egypt, that they have long
been confounded together. It may easily be conceived that an
animal, the body of which is surrounded with a kind of armour, must
be nearly indifferent to the saltness of the water. Pigafetta
relates in his journal recently published at Milan that he saw, on
the shores of the island of Borneo, crocodiles which inhabit alike
land and sea. These facts must be interesting to geologists, since
attention has been fixed on the fresh-water formations, and the
curious mixture of marine and fluviatile petrifactions sometimes
observed in certain very recent rocks.
The port of Barcelona has maintained a very active commerce since
1795. From Barcelona is exported most of the produce of those vast
steppes which extend from the south side of the chain of the coast
as far as the Orinoco, and in which cattle of every kind are almost
as abundant as in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. The commercial
industry of these countries depends on the demand in the West India
Islands for salted provision, oxen, mules, and horses. The coasts
of Terra Firma being opposite to the island of Cuba, at a distance
of fifteen or eighteen days' sail, the merchants of the Havannah
prefer, especially in time of peace, obtaining their provision from
the port of Barcelona, to the risk of a long voyage in another
hemisphere to the mouth of the Rio de la Plata.
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