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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Every Part Of The Landscape Was Familiar To Us; The Forest
Of Cactus, The Scattered Huts And That Enormous Ceiba, Beneath Which
We Loved To Bathe At The Approach Of Night.
Our friends at Cumana came
out to meet us:
Men of all castes, whom our frequent herborizations
had brought into contact with us, expressed the greater joy at sight
of us, as a report that we had perished on the banks of the Orinoco
had been current for several months. These reports had their origin
either in the severe illness of M. Bonpland, or in the fact of our
boat having been nearly lost in a gale above the mission of Uruana.
We hastened to visit the governor, Don Vicente Emparan, whose
recommendations and constant solicitude had been so useful to us
during the long journey we had just terminated. He procured for us, in
the centre of the town, a house which, though perhaps too lofty in a
country exposed to violent earthquakes, was extremely useful for our
instruments. We enjoyed from its terraces a majestic view of the sea,
of the isthmus of Araya, and the archipelago of the islands of
Caracas, Picuita and Borracha. The port of Cumana was every day more
and more closely blockaded, and the vain expectation of the arrival of
Spanish packets detained us two months and a half longer. We were
often nearly tempted to go to the Danish islands which enjoyed a happy
neutrality; but we feared that, if we left the Spanish colonies, we
might find some obstacles to our return. With the ample freedom which
in a moment of favour had been granted to us, we did not consider it
prudent to hazard anything that might give umbrage to the local
authorities. We employed our time in completing the Flora of Cumana,
geologically examining the eastern part of the peninsula of Araya, and
observing many eclipses of satellites, which confirmed the longitude
of the place already obtained by other means. We also made experiments
on the extraordinary refractions, on evaporation and on atmospheric
electricity.
The living animals which we had brought from the Orinoco were objects
of great curiosity to the inhabitants of Cumana. The capuchin of the
Esmeralda (Simia chiropotes), which so much resembles man in the
expression of its physiognomy; and the sleeping monkey (Simia
trivirgata), which is the type of a new group; had never yet been seen
on that coast. We destined them for the menagerie of the Jardin des
Plantes at Paris. The arrival of a French squadron which had failed in
an attack upon Curacao furnished us, unexpectedly, with an excellent
opportunity for sending them to Guadaloupe; and General Jeannet,
together with the commissary Bresseau, agent of the executive power at
the Antilles, promised to convey them. The monkeys and birds died at
Guadaloupe but fortunately the skin of the Simia chiropotes, the only
one in Europe, was sent a few years ago to the Jardin des Plantes,
where the couxio (Simia satanas) and the stentor or alouate of the
steppes of Caracas (Simia ursina) had been already received.
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