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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(* As At Carthago And
Ibague In New Grenada.) What Can We Conceive To Be More Delightful
Than A Temperature Which
In the day keeps between 20 and 26 degrees
(Between 16 and 20.8 degrees Reaum.); and at night between
16 and
18 degrees (Between 12.8 and 14.4 degrees Reaum.), which is equally
favourable to the plantain, the orange-tree, the coffee-tree, the
apple, the apricot, and corn? Jose de Oviedo y Banos, the
historiographer of Venezuela, calls the situation of Caracas that
of a terrestrial paradise, and compares the Anauco and the
neighbouring torrents to the four rivers of the Garden of Eden.
It is to be regretted that this delightful climate is generally
inconstant and variable. The inhabitants of Caracas complain of
having several seasons in one and the same day; and of the rapid
change from one season to another. In the month of January, for
instance, a night, of which the mean temperature is 16 degrees, is
sometimes followed by a day when the thermometer during eight
successive hours keeps above 22 degrees in the shade. In the same
day, we may find the temperature of 24 and 18 degrees. These
variations are extremely common in our temperate climates of
Europe, but in the torrid zone, Europeans themselves are so
accustomed to the uniform action of exterior stimulus, that they
suffer from a change of temperature of 6 degrees. At Cumana, and
everywhere in the plains, the temperature from eleven in the
morning to eleven at night changes only 2 or 3 degrees.
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