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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As We Advanced In The Forest, We
Began To Find Little Pathways, Looking As Though They Had Been
Recently Cleared Out By The Hatchet.
Their windings displayed a great
number of new plants:
Mougeotia mollis, Nelsonia albicans, Melampodium
paludosum, Jonidium anomalum, Teucrium palustre, Gomphia lucens, and a
new kind of Composees, the Spiracantha cornifolia. A fine Pancratium
embalmed the air in the humid spots, and almost made us forget that
those gloomy and marshy forests are highly dangerous to health.
After an hour's walk we found, in a cleared spot, several inhabitants
employed in collecting palm-tree wine. The dark tint of the zambos
formed a strong contrast with the appearance of a little man with
light hair and a pale complexion who seemed to take no share in the
labour. I thought at first that he was a sailor who had escaped from
some North American vessel; but I was soon undeceived. This
fair-complexioned man was my countryman, born on the coast of the
Baltic; he had served in the Danish navy and had lived for several
years in the upper part of the Rio Sinu, near Santa Cruz de Lorica. He
had come, to use the words of the loungers of the country para ver
tierras, y pasear, no mas (to see other lands, and to roam about,
nothing else.) The sight of a man who could speak to him of his
country seemed to have no attraction for him; and, as he had almost
forgotten German without being able to express himself clearly in
Spanish, our conversation was not very animated. During the five years
of my travels in Spanish America I found only two opportunities of
speaking my native language. The first Prussian I met with was a
sailor from Memel who served on board a ship from Halifax, and who
refused to make himself known till after he had fired some musket-shot
at our boat. The second, the man we met at the Rio Sinu, was very
amicably disposed. Without answering my questions he continued
repeating, with a smile, that the country was hot and humid; that the
houses in the town of Pomerania were finer than those of Santa Cruz de
Lorica; and that, if we remained in the forest, we should have the
tertian fever (calentura) from which he had long suffered. We had some
difficulty in testifying our gratitude to this good man for his kind
advice; for according to his somewhat aristocratic principles, a white
man, were he bare-footed, should never accept money "in the presence
of those vile coloured people!" (gente parda). Less disdainful than
our European countryman, we saluted politely the group of men of
colour who were employed in drawing off into large calabashes, or
fruits of the Crescentia cujete, the palm-tree wine from the trunks of
felled trees. We asked them to explain to us this operation, which we
had already seen practised in the missions of the Cataracts. The vine
of the country is the palma dolce, the Cocos butyracea, which, near
Malgar, in the valley of the Magdalena, is called the wine palm-tree,
and here, on account of its majestic height, the royal palm-tree.
After having thrown down the trunk, which diminishes but little
towards the top, they make just below the point whence the leaves
(fronds) and spathes issue, an excavation in the ligneous part,
eighteen inches long, eight broad, and six in depth. They work in the
hollow of the tree, as though they were making a canoe; and three days
afterwards this cavity is found filled with a yellowish-white juice,
very limpid, with a sweet and vinous flavour. The fermentation appears
to commence as soon as the trunk falls, but the vessels preserve their
vitality; for we saw that the sap flowed even when the summit of the
palm-tree (that part whence the leaves sprout out) is a foot higher
than the lower end, near the roots. The sap continues to mount as in
the arborescent Euphorbia recently cut. During eighteen to twenty
days, the palm-tree wine is daily collected; the last is less sweet
but more alcoholic and more highly esteemed. One tree yields as much
as eighteen bottles of sap, each bottle containing forty-two cubic
inches. The natives affirm that the flowing is more abundant when the
petioles of the leaves, which remain fixed to the trunk, are burnt.
The great humidity and thickness of the forest forced us to retrace
our steps and to gain the shore before sunset. In several places the
compact limestone rock, probably of tertiary formation, is visible. A
thick layer of clay and mould rendered observation difficult; but a
shelf of carburetted and shining slate seemed to me to indicate the
presence of more ancient formations. It has been affirmed that coal is
to be found on the banks of the Sinu. We met with Zambos carrying on
their shoulders the cylinders of palmetto, improperly called the
cabbage palm, three feet long and five to six feet thick. The stem of
the palm-tree has been for ages an esteemed article of food in those
countries. I believe it to be wholesome although historians relate
that, when Alonso Lopez de Ayala was governor of Uraba, several
Spaniards died after having eaten immoderately of the palmetto, and at
the same time drinking a great quantity of water. In comparing the
herbaceous and nourishing fibres of the young undeveloped leaves of
the palm-trees with the sago of the Mauritia, of which the Indians
make bread similar to that of the root of the Jatropha manihot, we
involuntarily recollect the striking analogy which modern chemistry
has proved to exist between ligneous matter and the amylaceous fecula.
We stopped on the shore to collect lichens, opegraphas and a great
number of mosses (Boletus, Hydnum, Helvela, Thelephora) that were
attached to the mangroves, and there, to my great surprise,
vegetating, although moistened by the sea-water.
Before I quit this coast, so seldom visited by travellers and
described by no modern voyager, I may here offer some information
which I acquired during my stay at Carthagena.
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