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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These Savannahs, Partly Inundated During Three
Months, Are Composed Of Paspalum, Eriochloa, And Several Species Of
Cyperaceae.
We sailed on waters that were from four to five feet deep;
their temperature was by day from 33
To 34 degrees of the centigrade
thermometer; they exhaled a strong smell of sulphuretted hydrogen, to
which no doubt some rotten plants of arum and heliconia, that swam on
the surface of the pools, contributed. The waters of the Lagartero
were of a golden yellow by transmitted, and coffee-brown by reflected
light. They are no doubt coloured by a carburet of hydrogen. An
analogous phenomenon is observed in the dunghill-waters prepared by
our gardeners, and in the waters that issue from bogs. May we not also
admit, that it is a mixture of carbon and hydrogen, an extractive
vegetable matter, that colours the black rivers, the Atabapo, the
Zama, the Mataveni, and the Guainia? The frequency of the equatorial
rains contributes no doubt to this coloration by filtration through a
thick mass of grasses. I suggest these ideas only in the form of a
doubt. The colouring principle seems to be in little abundance; for I
observed that the waters of the Guainia or Rio Negro, when subjected
to ebullition, do not become brown like other fluids charged with
carburets of hydrogen.
It is also very remarkable, that this phenomenon of black waters,
which might be supposed to belong only to the low regions of the
torrid zone, is found also, though rarely, on the table-lands of the
Andes.
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