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 Indians Say, That The Rocks Are Black Only Where
The Waters Are White.
They ought, perhaps, to add, where the waters
acquire great swiftness, and strike with force against the rocks of
the banks.
Cementation seems to explain why the crusts augment so
little in thickness.
I know not whether it be an error, but in the Missions of the Orinoco,
the neighbourhood of bare rocks, and especially of the masses that
have crusts of carbon, oxide of iron, and manganese, are considered
injurious to health. In the torrid zone, still more than in others,
the people multiply pathogenic causes at will. They are afraid to
sleep in the open air, if forced to expose the face to the rays of the
full moon. They also think it dangerous to sleep on granite near the
river; and many examples are cited of persons, who, after having
passed the night on these black and naked rocks, have awakened in the
morning with a strong paroxysm of fever. Without entirely lending
faith to the assertions of the missionaries and natives, we generally
avoided the laxas negras, and stretched ourselves on the beach covered
with white sand, when we found no tree from which to suspend our
hammocks. At Carichana, the village is intended to be destroyed, and
its place changed, merely to remove it from the black rocks, or from a
site where, for a space of more than ten thousand square toises, banks
of bare granite form the surface. From similar motives, which must
appear very chimerical to the naturalists of Europe, the Jesuits Olmo,
Forneri, and Mellis, removed a village of Jaruros to three different
spots, between the Raudal of Tabaje and the Rio Anaveni.
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