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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Our Guides Were
Discouraged; They Wished To Go Back, And We Had Great Difficulty In
Preventing Them.
In the midst of the mist I made trial of the electrometer of Volta,
armed with a smoking match.
Though very near a thick wood of
heliconias, I obtained very sensible signs of atmospheric
electricity. It often varied from positive to negative, its
intensity changing every instant. These variations, and the
conflict of several small currents of air, which divided the mist,
and transformed it into clouds, the borders of which were visible,
appeared to me infallible prognostics of a change in the weather.
It was only two o'clock in the afternoon; we entertained some hope
of reaching the eastern summit of the Silla before sunset, and of
re-descending into the valley separating the two peaks, intending
there to pass the night, to light a great fire, and to make our
negroes construct a hut with the leaves of the heliconia. We sent
off half of our servants with orders to hasten the next morning to
meet us, not with olives, but with a supply of salt beef.
We had scarcely made these arrangements when the east wind began to
blow violently from the sea. The thermometer rose to 12.5 degrees.
It was no doubt an ascending wind, which, by heightening the
temperature, dissolved the vapours. In less than two minutes the
clouds dispersed, and the two domes of the Silla appeared to us
singularly near. We opened the barometer in the lowest part of the
hollow that separates the two summits, near a little pool of very
muddy water.
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