Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The
Moral Feeling Is No Longer Harrowed Up By The Sight Of Slavery, The
Presence Of Which Is So Revolting In The West Indies, And In Every
Other Place To Which European Colonists Have Conveyed What They
Call Their Civilization And Their Industry.
In winter the climate of Laguna is extremely foggy, and the
inhabitants often complain of the cold.
A fall of snow, however,
has never been seen; a fact which may seem to indicate that the
mean temperature of this town must be above 18.7 degrees (15
degrees R.), that is to say, higher than that of Naples. I do not
lay this down as an unexceptional conclusion, for in winter the
refrigeration of the clouds does not depend so much on the mean
temperature of the whole year, as on the instantaneous diminution
of heat to which a district is exposed by its local situation. The
mean temperature of the capital of Mexico, for instance, is only
16.8 degrees (13.5 degrees R.), nevertheless, in the space of a
hundred years snow has fallen only once, while in the south of
Europe and in Africa it snows in places where the mean temperature
is above 19 degrees.
The vicinity of the sea renders the climate of Laguna more mild in
winter than might be expected, arising from its elevation above the
level of the ocean. I was astonished to learn that M. Broussonnet
had planted in the midst of this town, in the garden of the Marquis
de Nava, the bread-fruit tree (Artocarpus incisa), and
cinnamon-tree (Laurus Cinnamomum). These valuable productions of
the South Sea and the East Indies are naturalized there as well as
at Orotava.
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