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
Gaseous Emanations, Which Are The Vehicles Of This Aroma, Seem To
Be Evolved In Proportion Only As The Mould, Containing The Spoils
Of An Innumerable Quantity Of Reptiles, Worms, And Insects, Begins
To Be Impregnated With Water.
I have seen Indian children, of the
tribe of the Chaymas, draw out from the earth and eat millipedes or
scolopendras* eighteen inches long, and seven lines broad.
(*
Scolopendras are very common behind the castle of San Antonio, on
the summit of the hill.) Whenever the soil is turned up, we are
struck with the mass of organic substances, which by turns are
developed, transformed, and decomposed. Nature in these climates
appears more active, more fruitful, we may even say more prodigal,
of life.
On this shore, and near the dairies just mentioned, we enjoy,
especially at sunrise, a very beautiful prospect over an elevated
group of calcareous mountains. As this group subtends an angle of
three degrees only at the house where we dwelt, it long served me
to compare the variations of the terrestrial refraction with the
meteorological phenomena. Storms are formed in the centre of this
Cordillera; and we see from afar thick clouds resolve into abundant
rains, while during seven or eight months not a drop of water falls
at Cumana. The Brigantine, which is the highest part of this chain,
raises itself in a very picturesque manner behind Brito and
Tataraqual. It takes its name from the form of a very deep valley
on the northern declivity, which resembles the interior of a ship.
The summit of this mountain is almost bare of vegetation, and is
flat like that of Mowna Roa, in the Sandwich Islands. It is a
perpendicular wall, or, to use a more expressive term of the
Spanish navigators, a table (mesa). This peculiar form, and the
symmetrical arrangement of a few cones which surround the
Brigantine, made me at first think that this group, which is wholly
calcareous, contained rocks of basaltic or trappean formation.
The governor of Cumana sent, in 1797, a band of determined men to
explore this entirely desert country, and to open a direct road to
New Barcelona, by the summit of the Mesa. It was reasonably
expected that this way would be shorter, and less dangerous to the
health of travellers, than the route taken by the couriers along
the coasts; but every attempt to cross the chain of the mountains
of the Brigantine was fruitless. In this part of America, as in
Australia* to the west of Sydney, it is not so much the height of
the mountain chains, as the form of the rocks, that presents
obstacles difficult to surmount. (* The Blue Mountains of
Australia, and those of Carmarthen and Lansdowne, are not visible,
in clear weather, beyond fifty miles. - Peron, Voyage aux Terres
Australes page 389. Supposing the angle of altitude half a degree,
the absolute height of these mountains would be about 620 toises.)
The longitudinal valley formed by the lofty mountains of the
interior and the southern declivity of the Cerro de San Antonio, is
intersected by the Rio Manzanares. This plain, the only thoroughly
wooded part in the environs of Cumana, is called the Plain of the
Charas,* on account of the numerous plantations which the
inhabitants have begun, for some years past, along the river. (*
Chacra, by corruption chara, signifies a hut or cottage surrounded
by a garden. The word ipure has the same signification.) A narrow
path leads from the hill of San Francisco across the forest to the
hospital of the Capuchins, a very agreeable country-house, which
the Aragonese monks have built as a retreat for old infirm
missionaries, who can no longer fulfil the duties of their
ministry. As we advance to the west, the trees of the forest become
more vigorous, and we meet with a few monkeys,* (* The common
machi, or weeping monkey.) which, however, are very rare in the
environs of Cumana. At the foot of the capparis, the bauhinia, and
the zygophyllum with flowers of a golden yellow, there extends a
carpet of Bromelia,* (* Chihuchihue, of the family of the ananas.)
akin to the B. karatas, which from the odour and coolness of its
foliage attracts the rattlesnake.
The waters of the Manzanares are very limpid in quality, and this
river has no resemblance to the Manzanares of Madrid, which appears
the more magnificent in contrast with the fine bridge by which it
is crossed. It takes its source, like all the rivers of New
Andalusia, in the savannahs (llanos) known by the names of the
plateaux of Jonoro, Amana, and Guanipa,* (* These three eminences
bear the names of mesas, tables. An immense plain has an almost
imperceptible rise from both sides to the middle, without any
appearance of mountains or hills.) and it receives, near the Indian
village of San Fernando, the waters of the Rio Juanillo. It has
been several times proposed to the government, but without success,
to construct a dyke at the first ipure, in order to form artificial
irrigations in the plain of Charas; for, notwithstanding its
apparent sterility, the soil is extremely productive, wherever
humidity is combined with the heat of the climate. The cultivators
were gradually to refund the money advanced for the construction of
the sluices. Meanwhile, pumps worked by mules, and other hydraulic
but imperfect machines, have been erected, to serve till this
project is carried into execution.
The banks of the Manzanares are very pleasant, and are shaded by
mimosas, erythrinas, ceibas, and other trees of gigantic growth. A
river, the temperature of which, in the season of the floods,
descends as low as twenty-two degrees, when the air is at thirty
and thirty-three degrees, is an inestimable benefit in a country
where the heat is excessive during the whole year, and where it is
so agreeable to bathe several times in the day. The children pass a
considerable part of their lives in the water; all the inhabitants,
even the women of the most opulent families, know how to swim; and
in a country where man is so near the state of nature, one of the
first questions asked on meeting in the morning is, whether the
water is cooler than it was on the preceding evening.
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