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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This Light By Degrees Becomes Dazzlingly White; And, Deceived
Like Most Travellers, We Thought That The Peak Was Still Covered
With Snow, And That We Should With Difficulty Reach The Edge Of The
Crater.
We have remarked, in the Cordillera of the Andes, that the conical
mountains, such as Cotopaxi and Tungurahua, are
Oftener seen free
from clouds, than those of which the tops are broken into bristly
points, like Antisana and Pichincha; but the peak of Teneriffe,
notwithstanding its pyramidical form, is a great part of the year
enveloped in vapours, and is sometimes, during several weeks,
invisible from the road of Santa Cruz. Its position to the west of
an immense continent, and its insulated situation in the midst of
the sea, are no doubt the causes of this phenomenon. Navigators are
well aware that even the smallest islets, and those which are
without mountains, collect and harbour the clouds. The decrement of
heat is also different above the plains of Africa, and above the
surface of the Atlantic; and the strata of air, brought by the
trade winds, cool in proportion as they advance towards the west.
If the air has been extremely dry above the burning sands of the
desert, it is very quickly saturated when it enters into contact
with the surface of the sea, or with the air that lies on that
surface. It is easy to conceive, therefore, why vapours become
visible in the atmospherical strata, which, at a distance from the
continent, have no longer the same temperature as when they began
to be saturated with water.
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