Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 159 of 779 - First - Home
We
Were Absolutely Without Water; Our Guides, Not Satisfied With
Drinking Clandestinely The Little Supply Of Malmsey Wine, For Which
We Were Indebted To Don Cologan's Kindness, Had Broken Our Water
Jars.
Happily the bottle which contained the air of the crater
escaped unhurt.
We at length enjoyed the refreshing breeze in the beautiful region
of the arborescent erica and fern; and we were enveloped in a thick
bed of clouds stationary at six hundred toises above the plain. The
clouds having dispersed, we remarked a phenomenon which afterwards
became familiar to us on the declivities of the Cordilleras. Small
currents of air chased trains of cloud with unequal velocity, and
in opposite directions: they bore the appearance of streamlets of
water in rapid motion and flowing in all directions, amidst a great
mass of stagnant water. The causes of this partial motion of the
clouds are probably very various; we may suppose them to arise from
some impulsion at a great distance; from the slight inequalities of
the soil, which reflects in a greater or less degree the radiant
heat; from a difference of temperature kept up by some chemical
action; or perhaps from a strong electric charge of the vesicular
vapours.
As we approached the town of Orotava, we met great flocks of
canaries.* (* Fringilla Canaria. La Caille relates, in the
narrative of his voyage to the Cape, that on Salvage Island these
canaries are so abundant, that you cannot walk there in a certain
season without breaking their eggs.) These birds, well known in
Europe, were in general uniformly green.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 159 of 779
Words from 42969 to 43231
of 211363
