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 Sight Of Two White Men, Who Said They Had Lost
Their Way, Led Him At First To Suspect Some Trick.
We found it
difficult to inspire him with confidence; he at last consented to
guide us to the farm of the Cayman, but without slackening the gentle
trot of his horse.
Our guides assured us that "they had already begun
to be uneasy about us;" and, to justify this inquietude, they gave a
long enumeration of persons who, having lost themselves in the Llanos,
had been found nearly exhausted. It may be supposed that the danger is
imminent only to those who lose themselves far from any habitation, or
who, having been stripped by robbers, as has happened of late years,
have been fastened by the body and hands to the trunk of a palm-tree.
In order to escape as much as possible from the heat of the day, we
set off at two in the morning, with the hope of reaching Calabozo
before noon, a small but busy trading-town, situated in the midst of
the Llanos. The aspect of the country was still the same. There was no
moonlight; but the great masses of nebulae that spot the southern sky
enlighten, as they set, a part of the terrestrial horizon. The solemn
spectacle of the starry vault, seen in its immense expanse - the cool
breeze which blows over the plain during the night - the waving motion
of the grass, wherever it has attained any height; everything recalled
to our minds the surface of the ocean. The illusion was augmented when
the disk of the sun appearing on the horizon, repeated its image by
the effects of refraction, and, soon losing its flattened form,
ascended rapidly and straight towards the zenith.
Sunrise in the plains is the coolest moment of the day; but this
change of temperature does not make a very lively impression on the
organs. We did not find the thermometer in general sink below 27.5;
while near Acapulco, at Mexico, and in places equally low, the
temperature at noon is often 32, and at sunrise only 17 or 18 degrees.
The level surface of the ground in the Llanos, which, during the day,
is never in the shade, absorbs so much heat that, notwithstanding the
nocturnal radiation toward a sky without clouds, the earth and air
have not time to cool very sensibly from midnight to sunrise.
In proportion as the sun rose towards the zenith, and the earth and
the strata of superincumbent air took different temperatures, the
phenomenon of the mirage displayed itself in its numerous
modifications. This phenomenon is so common in every zone, that I
mention it only because we stopped to measure with some precision the
breadth of the aerial distance between the horizon and the suspended
object. There was a constant suspension, without inversion. The little
currents of air that swept the surface of the soil had so variable a
temperature that, in a drove of wild oxen, one part appeared with the
legs raised above the surface of the ground, while the other rested on
it. The aerial distance was, according to the distance of the animal,
from 3 to 4 minutes. Where tufts of the moriche palm were found
growing in long ranges, the extremities of these green rows were
suspended like the capes which were, for so long a time, the subject
of my observations at Cumana. A well-informed person assured us, that
he had seen, between Calabozo and Uritucu, the image of an animal
inverted, without there being any direct image. Niebuhr made a similar
observation in Arabia. We several times thought we saw on the horizon
the figures of tumuli and towers, which disappeared at intervals,
without our being able to discern the real shape of the objects. They
were perhaps hillocks, or small eminences, situated beyond the
ordinary visual horizon. I need not mention those tracts destitute of
vegetation, which appear like large lakes with an undulating surface.
This phenomenon, observed in very remote times, has occasioned the
mirage to receive in Sanscrit the expressive name of desire of the
antelope. We admire the frequent allusions in the Indian, Persian, and
Arabic poets, to the magical effects of terrestrial refraction. It was
scarcely known to the Greeks and Romans. Proud of the riches of their
soil, and the mild temperature of the air, they would have felt no
envy of this poetry of the desert. It had its birth in Asia; and the
oriental poets found its source in the nature of the country they
inhabited. They were inspired with the aspect of those vast solitudes,
interposed like arms of the sea or gulfs, between lands which nature
had adorned with her most luxuriant fertility.
The plain assumes at sunrise a more animated aspect. The cattle, which
had reposed during the night along the pools, or beneath clumps of
mauritias and rhopalas, were now collected in herds; and these
solitudes became peopled with horses, mules, and oxen, that live here
free, rather than wild, without settled habitations, and disdaining
the care and protection of man. In these hot climates, the oxen,
though of Spanish breed, like those of the cold table-lands of Quito,
are of a gentle disposition. A traveller runs no risk of being
attacked or pursued, as we often were in our excursions on the back of
the Cordilleras, where the climate is rude, the aspect of the country
more wild, and food less abundant. As we approached Calabozo, we saw
herds of roebucks browsing peacefully in the midst of horses and oxen.
They are called matacani; their flesh is good; they are a little
larger than our roes, and resemble deer with a very sleek skin, of a
fawn-colour, spotted with white. Their horns appear to me to have
single points. They had little fear of the presence of man: and in
herds of thirty or forty we observed several that were entirely white.
This variety, common enough among the large stags of the cold climates
of the Andes, surprised us in these low and burning plains.
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