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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The Proximity Of The Port Of
Carthagena Would Also Render The Neglected Cultivation Of Cinchona An
Object Of Great Importance To European Trade.
That precious tree
vegetates at the source of the Rio Sinu, as in the mountains of Abibe
and Maria.
The real febrifuge cinchona, with a hairy corolla, is
nowhere else found so near the coast, if we except the Sierra Nevada
of Santa Marta.
The Rio Sinu and the Gulf of Darien were not visited by Columbus. The
most eastern point at which that great man touched land, on the 26th
November, 1503, is the Puerto do Retreto, now called Punta de
Escribanos, near the Punta of San Blas, in the isthmus of Panama. Two
years previously, Rodrigo de Bastidas and Alanso do Ojeda, accompanied
by Amerigo Vespucci, had discovered the whole coast of the main land,
from the Gulf of Maracaybo as far as the Puerto de Retreto. Having
often had occasion in the preceding volumes to speak of New Andalusia,
I may here mention that I found that denomination, for the first time,
in the convention made by Alonso de Ojeda with the Conquistador Diego
de Sicuessa, a powerful man, say the historians of his time, because
he was a flattering courtier and a wit. In 1508 all the country from
the Cabo de la Vela to the Gulf of Uraba, where the Castillo del Oro
begins, was called New Andalusia, a name since restricted to the
province of Cumana.
A fortunate chance led me to see, during the course of my travels, the
two extremities of the main land, the mountainous and verdant coast of
Paria, which Columbus supposes to have been the cradle of the human
race, and the low and humid coast extending from the mouth of the Sinu
towards the Gulf of Darien.
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