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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Unfortunately, The Toldo Or Roof Of Leaves,
That Covered This Lattice-Work, Was So Low That We Were Obliged To
Lie
down, without seeing anything, or, if seated, to sit nearly double.
The necessity of carrying the canoe across the
Rapids, and even from
one river to another; and the fear of giving too much hold to the
wind, by making the toldo higher, render this construction necessary
for vessels that go up towards the Rio Negro. The toldo was intended
to cover four persons, lying on the deck or lattice-work of
brush-wood; but our legs reached far beyond it, and when it rained
half our bodies were wet. Our couches consisted of ox-hides or
tiger-skins, spread upon branches of trees, which were painfully felt
through so thin a covering. The fore part of the boat was filled with
Indian rowers, furnished with paddles, three feet long, in the form of
spoons. They were all naked, seated two by two, and they kept time in
rowing with a surprising uniformity, singing songs of a sad and
monotonous character. The small cages containing our birds and our
monkeys, the number of which augmented as we advanced, were hung some
to the toldo and others to the bow of the boat. This was our
travelling menagerie. Notwithstanding the frequent losses occasioned
by accidents, and above all by the fatal effects of exposure to the
sun, we had fourteen of these little animals alive at our return from
the Cassiquiare. Naturalists, who wish to collect and bring living
animals to Europe, might cause boats to be constructed expressly for
this purpose at Angostura, or at Grand Para, the two capitals situated
on the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazon, the fore-deck of which
boats might be fitted up with two rows of cages sheltered from the
rays of the sun. Every night, when we established our watch, our
collection of animals and our instruments occupied the centre; around
these were placed first our hammocks, then the hammocks of the
Indians; and on the outside were the fires which are thought
indispensable against the attacks of the jaguar. About sunrise the
monkeys in our cages answered the cries of the monkeys of the forest.
These communications between animals of the same species sympathizing
with one another, though unseen, one party enjoying that liberty which
the other regrets, have something melancholy and affecting.
In a canoe not three feet wide, and so incumbered, there remained no
other place for the dried plants, trunks, a sextant, a dipping-needle,
and the meteorological instruments, than the space below the
lattice-work of branches, on which we were compelled to remain
stretched the greater part of the day. If we wished to take the least
object out of a trunk, or to use an instrument, it was necessary to
row ashore and land. To these inconveniences were joined the torment
of the mosquitos which swarmed under the toldo, and the heat radiated
from the leaves of the palm-trees, the upper surface of which was
continually exposed to the solar rays. We attempted every instant, but
always without success, to amend our situation. While one of us hid
himself under a sheet to ward off the insects, the other insisted on
having green wood lighted beneath the toldo, in the hope of driving
away the mosquitos by the smoke. The painful sensations of the eyes,
and the increase of heat, already stifling, rendered both these
contrivances alike impracticable. With some gaiety of temper, with
feelings of mutual good-will, and with a vivid taste for the majestic
grandeur of these vast valleys of rivers, travellers easily support
evils that become habitual.
Our Indians showed us, on the right bank of the river, the place which
was formerly the site of the Mission of Pararuma, founded by the
Jesuits about the year 1733. The mortality occasioned by the smallpox
among the Salive Indians was the principal cause of the dissolution of
the mission. The few inhabitants who survived this cruel epidemic,
removed to the village of Carichana. It was at Pararuma, that,
according to the testimony of Father Roman, hail was seen to fall
during a great storm, about the middle of the last century. This is
almost the only instance of it I know in a plain that is nearly on a
level with the sea; for hail falls generally, between the tropics,
only at three hundred toises of elevation. If it form at an equal
height over plains and table-lands, we must suppose that it melts as
it falls, in passing through the lowest strata of the atmosphere, the
mean temperature of which is from 27.5 to 24 degrees of the centigrade
thermometer. I acknowledge it is very difficult to explain, in the
present state of meteorology, why it hails at Philadelphia, at Rome,
and at Montpelier, during the hottest months, the mean temperature of
which attains 25 or 26 degrees; while the same phenomenon is not
observed at Cumana, at La Guayra, and in general, in the equatorial
plains. In the United States, and in the south of Europe, the heat of
the plains (from 40 to 43 degrees latitude) is nearly the same as
within the tropics; and according to my researches the decrement of
caloric equally varies but little. If then the absence of hail within
the torrid zone, at the level of the sea, be produced by the melting
of the hailstones in crossing the lower strata of the air, we must
suppose that these hail-stones, at the moment of their formation, are
larger in the temperate than in the torrid zone. We yet know so little
of the conditions under which water congeals in a stormy cloud in our
climates, that we cannot judge whether the same conditions be
fulfilled on the equator above the plains. The clouds in which we hear
the rattling of the hailstones against one another before they fall,
and which move horizontally, have always appeared to me of little
elevation; and at these small heights we may conceive that
extraordinary refrigerations are caused by the dilatation of the
ascending air, of which the capacity for caloric augments; by currents
of cold air coming from a higher latitude, and above all, according to
M. Gay Lussac, by the radiation from the upper surface of the clouds.
I shall have occasion to return to this subject when speaking of the
different forms under which hail and hoar-frost appear on the Andes,
at two thousand and two thousand six hundred toises of height; and
when examining the question whether we may consider the stratum of
clouds that envelops the mountains as a horizontal continuation of the
stratum which we see immediately above us in the plains.
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