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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We Often Visited This Mountain,
For We Were Never Weary Of Gazing On This Astonishing Spectacle.
From
the summit of the rock is descried a sheet of foam, extending the
length of a whole mile.
Enormous masses of stone, black as iron, issue
from its bosom. Some are paps grouped in pairs, like basaltic hills;
others resemble towers, fortified castles, and ruined buildings. Their
gloomy tint contrasts with the silvery splendour of the foam. Every
rock, every islet is covered with vigorous trees, collected in
clusters. At the foot of those paps, far as the eye can reach, a thick
vapour is suspended over the river, and through this whitish fog the
tops of the lofty palm-trees shoot up. What name shall we give to
these majestic plants? I suppose them to be the vadgiai, a new species
of the genus Oreodoxa, the trunk of which is more than eighty feet
high. The feathery leaves of this palm-tree have a brilliant lustre,
and rise almost straight toward the sky. At every hour of the day the
sheet of foam displays different aspects. Sometimes the hilly islands
and the palm-trees project their broad shadows; sometimes the rays of
the setting sun are refracted in the cloud that hangs over the
cataract, and coloured arcs are formed which vanish and appear
alternately.
Such is the character of the landscape discovered from the top of the
mountain of Manimi, which no traveller has yet described. I do not
hesitate to repeat, that neither time, nor the view of the
Cordilleras, nor any abode in the temperate valleys of Mexico, has
effaced from my mind the powerful impression of the aspect of the
cataracts.
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