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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It Has Proved
Fatal Not Only To The Troops Newly Arrived From Spain, But Also To
Those Levied In Parts Remote From The Coasts, In The Llanos Between
Calabozo And Uritucu, Regions Almost As Hot As La Guayra, But
Favourable To Health.
This latter fact would seem more surprising,
did we not know, that even the natives of Vera Cruz, who are not
attacked with typhus in their own town, sometimes sink under it
during the epidemics of the Havannah and the United States.
As the
black vomit finds an insurmountable barrier at the Encero (four
hundred and seventy-six toises high), on the declivity of the
mountains of Mexico, in the direction of Xalapa, where oaks begin
to appear, and the climate begins to be cool and pleasant, so the
yellow fever scarcely ever passes beyond the ridge of mountains
which separates La Guayra from the valley of Caracas. This valley
has been exempt from the malady for a considerable time; for we
must not confound the vomito and the yellow fever with the
irregular and bilious fevers. The Cumbre and the Cerro do Avila
form a very useful rampart to the town of Caracas, the elevation of
which a little exceeds that of the Encero, but of which the mean
temperature is above that of Xalapa.
I have published in another work* (* Nouvelle Espagne tome 2.) the
observations made by M. Bonpland and myself on the locality of the
towns periodically subject to the visitation of yellow fever; and I
shall not hazard here any new conjectures on the changes observed
in the pathogenic constitution of particular localities.
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