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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One Chest Contained A Sextant, A Dipping-Needle, An
Apparatus To Determine The Magnetic Variation, A Few Thermometers,
And Saussure's Hygrometer.
The greatest changes in the pressure of
the air in these climates, on the coasts, amount only to 1
To 1.3
of a line; and if at any given hour or place the height of the
mercury be once marked, the variations which that height
experiences throughout the whole year, at every hour of the day or
night, may with some accuracy be determined.
The morning was deliciously cool. The road, or rather path, which
leads to Cumanacoa, runs along the right bank of the Manzanares,
passing by the hospital of the Capuchins, situated in a small wood
of lignum-vitae and arborescent capparis.* (* These caper-trees are
called in the country, by the names pachaca, olivo, and ajito: they
are the Capparis tenuisiliqua, Jacq., C. ferruginea, C. emarginata,
C. elliptica, C. reticulata, C. racemosa.) On leaving Cumana we
enjoyed during the short duration of the twilight, from the top of
the hill of San Francisco, an extensive view over the sea, the
plain covered with bera* and its golden flowers (* Palo sano,
Zygophyllum arboreum, Jacq. The flowers have the smell of vanilla.
It is cultivated in the gardens of the Havannah under the strange
name of the dictanno real (royal dittany).), and the mountains of
the Brigantine. We were struck by the great proximity in which the
Cordillera appeared before the disk of the rising sun had reached
the horizon.
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