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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From All These
Considerations It Follows, First, That The New Continent Possesses
Spices, Aromatics, And Very Active Vegetable Poisons, Peculiar
To
itself, and differing specifically from those of the Old World;
secondly, that the primitive distribution of species in the
Torrid
zone cannot be explained by the influence of climate solely, or by the
distribution of temperature, which we observe in the present state of
our planet; but that this difference of climates leads us to perceive
why a given type of organization develops itself more vigorously in
such or such local circumstances. We can conceive that a small number
of the families of plants, for instance the musaceae and the palms,
cannot belong to very cold regions, on account of their internal
structure, and the importance of certain organs; but we cannot explain
why no one of the family of the Melastomaceae vegetates north of the
parallel of the thirtieth degree of latitude, or why no rose-tree
belongs to the southern hemisphere. Analogy of climates is often found
in the two continents, without identity of productions.
The Rio Vichada, which has a small raudal at its confluence with the
Orinoco, appeared to me, next to the Meta and the Guaviare, to be the
most considerable river coming from the west. During the last forty
years no European has navigated the Vichada. I could learn nothing of
its sources; they rise, I believe, with those of the Tomo, in the
plains that extend to the south of Casimena. Fugitive Indians of Santa
Rosalia de Cabapuna, a village situate on the banks of the Meta, have
arrived even recently, by the Rio Vichada, at the cataract of
Maypures; which sufficiently proves that the sources of this river are
not very distant from the Meta. Father Gumilla has preserved the names
of several German and Spanish Jesuits, who in 1734 fell victims to
their zeal for religion, by the hands of the Caribs on the now desert
banks of the Vichada.
Having passed the Cano Pirajavi on the east, and then a small river on
the west, which issues, as the Indians say, from a lake called Nao, we
rested for the night on the shore of the Orinoco, at the mouth of the
Zama, a very considerable river, but as little known as the Vichada.
Notwithstanding the black waters of the Zama, we suffered greatly from
insects. The night was beautiful, without a breath of wind in the
lower regions of the atmosphere, but towards two in the morning we saw
thick clouds crossing the zenith rapidly from east to west. When,
declining toward the horizon, they traversed the great nebulae of
Sagittarius and the Ship, they appeared of a dark blue. The light of
the nebulae is never more splendid than when they are in part covered
by sweeping clouds. We observe the same phenomenon in Europe in the
Milky Way, in the aurora borealis when it beams with a silvery light;
and at the rising and setting of the sun in that part of the sky that
is whitened* from causes which philosophers have not yet sufficiently
explained.
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