Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Or Is It The Love Of The Marvellous, Which Has Given
Rise To The Tradition Of The Bellowings (Bramidos) Of Paraguaxo?
The
lustre emitted from the sides of the mountain recalls to mind what we
have mentioned above of the miraculous rocks of Calitamini, and the
island Ipomucena, in the imaginary Lake Dorado.
In one of the Spanish
letters intercepted at sea by Captain George Popham, in 1594, it is
said, "Having inquired of the natives whence they obtained the
spangles and powder of gold, which we found in their huts, and which
they stick on their skin by means of some greasy substances, they told
us that in a certain plain they tore up the grass, and gathered the
earth in baskets, to subject it to the process of washing." Raleigh
page 109. Can this passage be explained by supposing that the Indians
sought thus laboriously, not for gold, but for spangles of mica, which
the natives of Rio Caura still employ as ornaments, when they paint
their bodies?) When we examine the structure of mountains and embrace
in one point of view an extensive surface of the globe, distances
disappear; and places the most remote insensibly draw near each other.
The basin of the Upper Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the Amazon is
bounded by the mountains of Parime on the north, and by those of Minas
Geraes, and Matogrosso on the south. The opposite slopes of the same
valley often display an analogy in their geological relations.
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