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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Till Now He Had Enjoyed Only The
Astonishment And Admiration Produced By His Experiments On Persons
Destitute Of All Information, And Who Had Never Quitted The Solitude
Of The Llanos; Our Abode At Calabozo Gave Him A Satisfaction
Altogether New.
It may be supposed that he set some value on the
opinions of two travellers who could compare his apparatus with those
constructed in Europe.
I had brought with me electrometers mounted
with straw, pith-balls, and gold-leaf; also a small Leyden jar which
could be charged by friction according to the method of Ingenhousz,
and which served for my physiological experiments. Senor del Pozo
could not contain his joy on seeing for the first time instruments
which he had not made, yet which appeared to be copied from his own.
We also showed him the effect of the contact of heterogeneous metals
on the nerves of frogs. The name of Galvani and Volta had not
previously been heard in those vast solitudes.
Next to his electrical apparatus, the work of the industry and
intelligence of an inhabitant of the Llanos, nothing at Calabozo
excited in us so great an interest as the gymnoti, which are animated
electrical apparatuses. I was impatient, from the time of my arrival
at Cumana, to procure electrical eels. We had been promised them
often, but our hopes had always been disappointed. Money loses its
value as you withdraw from the coast; and how is the imperturbable
apathy of the ignorant people to be vanquished, when they are not
excited by the desire of gain?
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