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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We Were Anxious To Behold In Their Native Site, The
Beautiful Plants Which Bose And Bredemeyer Had Collected During
Their Journey To The Continent, And Which Adorn The Conservatories
Of Schoenbrunn And Vienna.
It would have been painful to have
touched at Cumana, or at Guayra, without visiting the interior of a
country so little frequented by naturalists.
The resolution we formed during the night of the 14th of July, had
a happy influence on the direction of our travels; for instead of a
few weeks, we remained a whole year in this part of the continent.
Had not the fever broken out on board the Pizarro, we should never
have reached the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, or even the limits of
the Portuguese possessions on the Rio Negro. To this direction
given to our travels we were perhaps also indebted for the good
health we enjoyed during so long an abode in the equinoctial
regions.
It is well known, that Europeans, during the first months after
their arrival under the scorching sky of the tropics, are exposed
to the greatest dangers. They consider themselves to be safe, when
they have passed the rainy season in the West India islands, at
Vera Cruz, or at Carthagena. This opinion is very general, although
there are examples of persons, who, having escaped a first attack
of the yellow fever, have fallen victims to the same disease in one
of the following years. The facility of becoming acclimated, seems
to be in the inverse ratio of the difference that exists between
the mean temperature of the torrid zone, and that of the native
country of the traveller, or colonist, who changes his climate;
because the irritability of the organs, and their vital action, are
powerfully modified by the influence of the atmospheric heat. A
Prussian, a Pole, or a Swede, is more exposed on his arrival at the
islands or on the continent, than a Spaniard, an Italian, or even
an inhabitant of the South of France. With respect to the people of
the north, the difference of the mean temperature is from nineteen
to twenty-one degrees, while to the people of southern countries it
is only from nine to ten. We were fortunate enough to pass safely
through the interval during which a European recently landed runs
the greatest danger, in the extremely hot, but very dry climate of
Cumana, a city celebrated for its salubrity.
On the morning of the 15th, when nearly on a line with the hill of
St. Joseph, we were surrounded by a great quantity of floating
seaweed. Its stems had those extraordinary appendages in the form
of little cups and feathers, which Don Hippolyto Ruiz remarked on
his return from the expedition to Chile, and which he described in
a separate memoir as the generative organs of the Fucus natans. A
fortunate accident allowed us the means of verifying a fact which
had been but once observed by naturalists. The bundles of fucus
collected by M. Bonpland were completely identical with the
specimens given us by the learned authors of the Flora of Peru.
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