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 moriche grows best in moist places; and
it may rather be said that the water attracts the tree.
The natives of
the Orinoco, by analogous reasoning, admit, that the great serpents
contribute to preserve humidity in a province. "You would look in vain
for water-serpents," said an old Indian of Javita to us gravely,
"where there are no marshes; because the water ceases to collect when
you imprudently kill the serpents that attract it."
We suffered greatly from the heat in crossing the Mesa de Calabozo.
The temperature of the air augmented sensibly every time that the wind
began to blow. The air was loaded with dust; and during these gusts
the thermometer rose to 40 or 41 degrees. We went slowly forward, for
it would have been dangerous to leave the mules that carried our
instruments. Our guides advised us to fill our hats with the leaves of
the rhopala, to diminish the action of the solar rays on the hair and
the crown of the head. We found relief from this expedient, which was
particularly agreeable, when we could procure the thick leaves of the
pothos or some other similar plant.
It is impossible to cross these burning plains, without inquiring
whether they have always been in the same state; or whether they have
been stripped of their vegetation by some revolution of nature. The
stratum of mould now found on them is in fact very thin. The natives
believe that the palmares and the chaparales (the little groves of
palm-trees and rhopala) were more frequent and more extensive before
the arrival of the Spaniards. Since the Llanos have been inhabited and
peopled with cattle become wild, the savannah is often set on fire, in
order to ameliorate the pasturage. Groups of scattered trees are
accidentally destroyed with the grasses. The plains were no doubt less
bare in the fifteenth century, than they now are; yet the first
Conquistadores, who came from Coro, described them then as savannahs,
where nothing could be perceived but the sky and the turf, generally
destitute of trees, and difficult to traverse on account of the
reverberation of heat from the soil. Why does not the great forest of
the Orinoco extend to the north, on the left bank of that river? Why
does it not fill that vast space that reaches as far as the Cordillera
of the coast, and which is fertilized by numerous rivers? These
questions are connected with all that relates to the history of our
planet. If, indulging in geological reveries, we suppose that the
steppes of America, and the desert of Sahara, have been stripped of
their vegetation by an irruption of the ocean, or that they formed
originally the bottom of an inland sea, we may conceive that thousands
of years have not sufficed for the trees and shrubs to advance from
the borders of the forests, from the skirts of the plains either naked
or covered with turf, toward the centre, and darken so vast a space
with their shade.
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