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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It Is Not Suprising That Persons Who Have Travelled Only In The North
Of Africa, In Sicily, Or In Spain, Cannot Conceive That, Of All Large
Trees, The Palm Is The Most Grand And Beautiful In Form.
Incomplete
analogies prevent Europeans from having a just idea of the aspect of
the torrid zone.
All the world knows, for instance, that this zone is
embellished by the contrasts exhibited in the foliage of the trees,
and particularly by the great number of those with pinnate leaves. The
ash, the service-tree, the inga, the acacia of the United States, the
gleditsia, the tamarind, the mimosa, the desmanthus, have all pinnate
leaves, with foliolae more or less long, slender, tough, and shining.
But can a group of ash-trees, of service-trees, or of sumach, recall
the picturesque effect of tamarinds or mimosas, when the azure of the
sky appears through their small, slender, and delicately pinnated
leaves? These considerations are more important than they may at first
seem. The forms of plants determine the physiognomy of nature; and
this physiognomy influences the moral dispositions of nations. Every
type comprehends species, which, while exhibiting the same general
appearance, differ in the varied development of the similar organs.
The palm-trees, the scitamineae, the malvaceae, the trees with pinnate
leaves, do not all display the same picturesque beauties; and
generally the most beautiful species of each type, in plants as in
animals, belong to the equinoctial zone.
The proteaceae,* (* Rhopalas, which characterise the vegetation of the
Llanos.) crotons, agaves, and the great tribe of the cactuses, which
inhabit exclusively the New World, disappear gradually, as we ascend
the Orinoco above the Apure and the Meta. It is, however, the shade
and humidity, rather than the distance from the coast, which oppose
the migration of the cactuses southward. We found forests of them
mingled with crotons, covering a great space of arid land to the east
of the Andes, in the province of Bracamoros, towards the Upper
Maranon. The arborescent ferns seem to fail entirely near the
cataracts of the Orinoco; we found no species as far as San Fernando
de Atabapo, that is, to the confluence of the Orinoco and the
Guaviare.
Having now examined the vicinity of the Atures, it remains for me to
speak of the rapids themselves, which occur in a part of the valley
where the bed of the river, deeply ingulfed, has almost inaccessible
banks. It was only in a very few spots that we could enter the Orinoco
to bathe, between the two cataracts, in coves where the waters have
eddies of little velocity. Persons who have dwelt in the Alps, the
Pyrenees, or even the Cordilleras, so celebrated for the fractures and
the vestiges of destruction which they display at every step, can
scarcely picture to themselves, from a mere narration, the state of
the bed of the river. It is traversed, in an extent of more than five
miles, by innumerable dikes of rock, forming so many natural dams, so
many barriers resembling those of the Dnieper, which the ancients
designated by the name of phragmoi.
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