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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Near The Equator, Hurricanes And
Tempests Belong To Islands Only, To Deserts Destitute Of Plants, And
To Those Spots Where Parts Of The Atmosphere Repose Upon Surfaces From
Which The Radiation Of Heat Is Very Unequal.
The mountain of Manimi forms the eastern limit of a plain which
furnishes for the history of vegetation, that is, for its progressive
development in bare and desert places, the same phenomena which we
have described above in speaking of the raudal of Atures.
During the
rainy season, the waters heap vegetable earth upon the granitic rock,
the bare shelves of which extend horizontally. These islands of mould,
decorated with beautiful and odoriferous plants, resemble the blocks
of granite covered with flowers, which the inhabitants of the Alps
call gardens or courtils, and which pierce the glaciers of
Switzerland.
In a place where we had bathed the day before, at the foot of the rock
of Manimi, the Indians killed a serpent seven feet and a half long.
The Macos called it a camudu. Its back displayed, upon a yellow
ground, transverse bands, partly black, and partly inclining to a
brown green: under the belly the bands were blue, and united in
rhombic spots. This animal, which is not venomous, is said by the
natives to attain more than fifteen feet in length. I thought at
first, that the camudu was a boa; but I saw with surprise, that the
scales beneath the tail were divided into two rows. It was therefore a
viper (coluber); perhaps a python of the New Continent:
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