Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Unfortunate Captain Tuckey Relates,*
(* Expedition To Explore The River Zahir, 1818.) That The Centigrade
Thermometer Keeps There Generally In The Night At 34 Degrees, And By
Day From 40 To 44 Degrees.
We shall soon see that, even in the
westernmost part of the steppes of Caracas, we seldom found the
temperature of the air, in the shade, above 37 degrees.
These physical considerations on the steppes of the New World are
linked with others more interesting, inasmuch as they are connected
with the history of our species. The great sea of sand in Africa, the
deserts without water, are frequented only by caravans, that take
fifty days to traverse them.* (* This is the maximum of the time,
according to Major Rennell, Travels of Mungo Park volume 2.)
Separating the Negro race from the Moors, and the Berber and Kabyle
tribes, the Sahara is inhabited only in the oases. It affords
pasturage only in the eastern part, where, from the effect of the
trade-winds, the layer of sand being less thick, the springs appear at
the surface of the earth. In America, the steppes, less vast, less
scorching, fertilized by fine rivers, present fewer obstacles to the
intercourse of nations. The Llanos separate the chain of the coast of
Caracas and the Andes of New Grenada from the region of forests; from
that woody region of the Orinoco which, from the first discovery of
America, has been inhabited by nations more rude, and farther removed
from civilization, than the inhabitants of the coast, and still more
than the mountaineers of the Cordilleras.
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