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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"What Would These Animals Eat, If
We Did Not Pass This Way?" Say The Creoles, In Going Through Countries
Where
There are only crocodiles covered with a scaly skin, and hairy
monkeys.) the activity of the venom varying in the
Same species, are
very remarkable facts; which find their analogy, however, in the
classes of large animals. The crocodile of Angostura pursues men,
while at Nueva Barcelona you may bathe tranquilly in the Rio Neveri
amidst these carnivorous reptiles. The jaguars of Maturin, Cumanacoa,
and the isthmus of Panama, are timid in comparison of those of the
Upper Orinoco. The Indians well know that the monkeys of some valleys
are easily tamed, while others of the same species, caught elsewhere,
will rather die of hunger than submit to slavery.* (* I might have
added the example of the scorpion of Cumana, which it is very
difficult to distinguish from that of the island of Trinidad, Jamaica,
Carthagena, and Guayaquil; yet the former is not more to be feared
than the Scorpio europaeus (of the south of France), while the latter
produces consequences far more alarming than the Scorpio occitanus (of
Spain and Barbary). At Carthagena and Guayaquil, the sting of the
scorpion (alacran) instantly causes the loss of speech. Sometimes a
singular torpor of the tongue is observed for fifteen or sixteen
hours. The patient, when stung in the legs, stammers as if he had been
struck with apoplexy.)
The common people in America have framed systems respecting the
salubrity of climates and pathological phenomena, as well as the
learned of Europe; and their systems, like ours, are diametrically
opposed to each other, according to the provinces into which the New
Continent is divided.
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