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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They Are
Supposed To Be Owing To A Hydrostatic Pressure Existing In
Subterraneous Channels, Communicating With The Lofty Mountains Of
Trinidad.
Small vessels sometimes take in water there; and, what is
well worthy of observation, large manatees remain habitually in those
spots.
I have already called the attention of naturalists to the
crocodiles which advance from the mouth of rivers far into the sea.
Analogous circumstances may have caused, in the ancient catastrophes
of our planet, that singular mixture of pelagian and fluviatile bones
and petrifactions, which is observed in some rocks of recent
formation.
Our stay at Carichana was very useful in recruiting our strength after
our fatigues. M. Bonpland bore with him the germs of a cruel malady;
he needed repose; but as the delta of the tributary streams included
between the Horeda and Paruasi is covered with a rich vegetation, he
made long herbalizations, and was wet through several times in a day.
We found, fortunately, in the house of the missionary, the most
attentive care; we were supplied with bread made of maize flour, and
even with milk. The cows yield milk plentifully enough in the lower
regions of the torrid zone, wherever good pasturage is found. I call
attention to this fact, because local circumstances have spread
through the Indian Archipelago the prejudice of considering hot
climates as repugnant to the secretion of milk. We may conceive the
indifference of the inhabitants of the New World for a milk diet, the
country having been originally destitute of animals capable of
furnishing it*; (* The reindeer are not domesticated in Greenland as
they are in Lapland; and the Esquimaux care little for their milk.
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