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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It Seemed As Though The Starry Firmament Reposed On The
Savannah.
In the hut of the poorest inhabitants of the country,
fifteen cocuyos, placed in a calabash pierced with holes, afford
sufficient light to search for anything during the night.
To shake the
calabash forcibly is all that is necessary to excite the animal to
increase the intensity of the luminous discs situated on each side of
its body. The people of the country remark, with a simple truth of
expression, that calabashes filled with cocuyos are lanterns always
ready lighted. They are, in fact, only extinguished by the sickness or
death of the insects, which are easily fed with a little sugar-cane. A
young woman at Trinidad de Cuba told us that during a long and
difficult passage from the main land, she always made use of the
phosphorescence of the cocuyos, when she gave suck to her child at
night; the captain of the ship would allow no other light on board,
from the fear of corsairs.
As the breeze freshened in the direction of north-east we sought to
avoid the group of the Caymans but the current drove us towards those
islands. Sailing to south 1/4 south-east, we gradually lost sight of
the palm-covered shore, the hills rising above the town of Trinidad
and the lofty mountains of the island of Cuba. There is something
solemn in the aspect of land from which the voyager is departing and
which he sees sinking by degrees below the horizon of the sea.
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