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 Winter Temperature At London And
Paris Is 4.2 And 3.7; At Montpelier, 6.7; At Rome, 7.7 Degrees.
In
that part of Mexico, and the Terra Firma, where we saw the most active
species of the sarsaparilla growing (that which supplies the trade of
the Spanish and Portuguese colonies), the temperature is from twenty
to twenty-six degrees.
The roots of another family of monocotyledons
(of some cyperaceae) possess also diaphoretic and resolvent
properties. The Carex arenaria, the C. hirta, etc. furnish the German
sarsaparilla of druggists. According to Clusius, Europe received the
first sarsaparilla from Yucatan, and the island of Puna, opposite
Guayaquil.) In reading the works of Clusius, it can scarcely be
conceived why our writers on the Materia Medica persist in considering
a plant of the United States as the most ancient type of the officinal
species of the genus smilax.
We found in the possession of the Indians of the Rio Negro some of
those green stones, known by the name of Amazon stones, because the
natives pretend, according to an ancient tradition, that they come
from the country of the women without husbands (Cougnantainsecouima),
or women living alone (Aikeambenano*). (* This word is of the Tamanac
language; these women are the sole Donne of the Italian missionaries.)
We were told at San Carlos, and in the neighbouring villages, that the
sources of the Orinoco, which we found east of the Esmeralda, and in
the missions of the Carony and at Angostura, that the sources of the
Rio Branco are the native spots of the green stones.
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