Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 300 of 777 - First - Home
I Found The River Eight
Hundred And Eighty-Nine Toises Broad.
In order to conceive how this
passage bears the name of a strait, we must recollect that the breadth
of the river from Uruana to the junction of the Meta is in general
from 1500 to 2500 toises.
In this place, which is extremely hot and
barren, I measured two granite summits, much rounded: one was only a
hundred and ten, and the other eighty-five, toises. There are higher
summits in the interior of the group, but in general these mountains,
of so wild an aspect, have not the elevation that is assigned to them
by the missionaries.
We looked in vain for plants in the clefts of the rocks, which are as
steep as walls, and furnish some traces of stratification. We found
only an old trunk of aubletia* (* Aubletia tiburba.), with large
apple-shaped fruit, and a new species of the family of the apocyneae.*
(* Allamanda salicifolia.) All the stones were covered with an
innumerable quantity of iguanas and geckos with spreading and
membranous fingers. These lizards, motionless, with heads raised, and
mouths open, seemed to suck in the heated air. The thermometer placed
against the rock rose to 50.2 degrees. The soil appeared to undulate,
from the effect of mirage, without a breath of wind being felt. The
sun was near the zenith, and its dazzling light, reflected from the
surface of the river, contrasted with the reddish vapours that
enveloped every surrounding object.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 300 of 777
Words from 81030 to 81279
of 211397
