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 Cows Yield Milk Plentifully Enough In The Lower
Regions Of The Torrid Zone, Wherever Good Pasturage Is Found.
I call
attention to this fact, because local circumstances have spread
through the Indian Archipelago the prejudice of considering hot
climates as repugnant to the secretion of milk.
We may conceive the
indifference of the inhabitants of the New World for a milk diet, the
country having been originally destitute of animals capable of
furnishing it*; (* The reindeer are not domesticated in Greenland as
they are in Lapland; and the Esquimaux care little for their milk. The
bisons taken very young accustom themselves, on the west of the
Alleghenies, to graze with herds of European cows. The females in some
districts of India yield a little milk, but the natives have never
thought of milking them. What is the origin of that fabulous story
related by Gomara (chapter 43 page 36) according to which the first
Spanish navigators saw, on the coast of South Carolina, stags led to
the savannahs by herdsmen? The female bisons, according to Mr.
Buchanan and the philosophical historian of the Indian Archipelago,
Mr. Crawford, yield more milk than common cows.) but how can we avoid
being astonished at this indifference in the immense Chinese
population, living in great part beyond the tropics, and in the same
latitude with the nomad and pastoral tribes of central Asia? If the
Chinese have ever been a pastoral people, how have they lost the
tastes and habits so intimately connected with that state, which
precedes agricultural institutions? These questions are interesting
with respect both to the history of the nations of oriental Asia, and
to the ancient communications that are supposed to have existed
between that part of the world and the north of Mexico.
We went down the Orinoco in two days, from Carichana to the mission of
Uruana, after having again passed the celebrated strait of Baraguan.
We stopped several times to determine the velocity of the river, and
its temperature at the surface, which was 27.4 degrees. The velocity
was found to be two feet in a second (sixty-two toises in 3 minutes 6
seconds) in places where the bed of the Orinoco was more than twelve
thousand feet broad, and from ten to twelve fathoms deep. The slope of
the river is in fact extremely gentle from the Great Cataracts to
Angostura; and, if a barometric measurement were wanting, the
difference of height might be determined by approximation, by
measuring from time to time the velocity of the stream, and the extent
of the section in breadth and depth. We had some observations of the
stars at Uruana. I found the latitude of the mission to be 7 degrees 8
minutes; but the results from different stars left a doubt of more
than 1 minute. The stratum of mosquitos, which hovered over the
ground, was so thick that I could not succeed in rectifying properly
the artificial horizon. I tormented myself in vain; and regretted that
I was not provided with a mercurial horizon.
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