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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Though I Have Expressed My Doubts Of The Existence Of An Unknown
Species Of Large Monkey In A Continent Which
Appears entirely
destitute of quadrumanous animals of the family of the orangs,
cynocephali, mandrils, and pongos; yet it should be
Remembered that
almost all matters of popular belief, even those most absurd in
appearance, rest on real facts, but facts ill observed. In treating
them with disdain, the traces of a discovery may often be lost, in
natural philosophy as well as in zoology. We will not then admit, with
a Spanish author, that the fable of the man of the woods was invented
by the artifice of Indian women, who pretended to have been carried
off, when they had been long absent unknown to their husbands.
Travellers who may hereafter visit the missions of the Orinoco will do
well to follow up our researches on the salvaje or great devil of the
woods; and examine whether it be some unknown species of bear, or some
very rare monkey analogous to the Simia chiropotes, or Simia satanas,
which may have given rise to such singular tales.
After having spent two days near the cataract of Atures, we were not
sorry when our boat was reladen, and we were enabled to leave a spot
where the temperature of the air is generally by day twenty-nine
degrees, and by night twenty-six degrees, of the centigrade
thermometer. This temperature seemed to us to be still much more
elevated, from the feeling of heat which we experienced.
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