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 several times thought we saw on the horizon
the figures of tumuli and towers, which disappeared at intervals,
without our being able to discern the real shape of the objects.
They
were perhaps hillocks, or small eminences, situated beyond the
ordinary visual horizon. I need not mention those tracts destitute of
vegetation, which appear like large lakes with an undulating surface.
This phenomenon, observed in very remote times, has occasioned the
mirage to receive in Sanscrit the expressive name of desire of the
antelope. We admire the frequent allusions in the Indian, Persian, and
Arabic poets, to the magical effects of terrestrial refraction. It was
scarcely known to the Greeks and Romans. Proud of the riches of their
soil, and the mild temperature of the air, they would have felt no
envy of this poetry of the desert. It had its birth in Asia; and the
oriental poets found its source in the nature of the country they
inhabited. They were inspired with the aspect of those vast solitudes,
interposed like arms of the sea or gulfs, between lands which nature
had adorned with her most luxuriant fertility.
The plain assumes at sunrise a more animated aspect. The cattle, which
had reposed during the night along the pools, or beneath clumps of
mauritias and rhopalas, were now collected in herds; and these
solitudes became peopled with horses, mules, and oxen, that live here
free, rather than wild, without settled habitations, and disdaining
the care and protection of man. In these hot climates, the oxen,
though of Spanish breed, like those of the cold table-lands of Quito,
are of a gentle disposition. A traveller runs no risk of being
attacked or pursued, as we often were in our excursions on the back of
the Cordilleras, where the climate is rude, the aspect of the country
more wild, and food less abundant. As we approached Calabozo, we saw
herds of roebucks browsing peacefully in the midst of horses and oxen.
They are called matacani; their flesh is good; they are a little
larger than our roes, and resemble deer with a very sleek skin, of a
fawn-colour, spotted with white. Their horns appear to me to have
single points. They had little fear of the presence of man: and in
herds of thirty or forty we observed several that were entirely white.
This variety, common enough among the large stags of the cold climates
of the Andes, surprised us in these low and burning plains. I have
since learned, that even the jaguar, in the hot regions of Paraguay,
sometimes affords albino varieties, the skin of which is of such
uniform whiteness that the spots or rings can be distinguished only in
the sunshine. The number of matacani, or little deer,* (* They are
called in the country Venados de tierras calientes (deer of the warm
lands.)) is so considerable in the Llanos, that a trade might be
carried on with their skins.* (* This trade is carried on, but on a
very limited scale, at Carora and at Barquesimeto.) A skilful hunter
could easily kill more than twenty in a day; but such is the indolence
of the inhabitants, that often they will not give themselves the
trouble of taking the skin.
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