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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They are
carefully collected, and sent to the sick at Cariaco, and other
places of the low regions, where fevers are generally prevalent.
As we continued to advance into the cavern, we followed the banks
of the small river which issues from it, and is from twenty-eight
to thirty feet wide. We walked on the banks, as far as the hills
formed of calcareous incrustations permitted us. Where the torrent
winds among very high masses of stalactites, we were often obliged
to descend into its bed, which is only two feet deep. We learned
with surprise, that this subterranean rivulet is the origin of the
river Caripe, which, at the distance of a few leagues, where it
joins the small river of Santa Maria, is navigable for canoes. It
flows into the river Areo under the name of Cano do Terezen. We
found on the banks of the subterranean rivulet a great quantity of
palm-tree wood, the remains of trunks, on which the Indians climb
to reach the nests hanging from the roofs of the cavern. The rings,
formed by the vestiges of the old footstalks of the leaves, furnish
as it were the steps of a ladder perpendicularly placed.
The Grotto of Caripe preserves the same direction, the same
breadth, and its primitive height of sixty or seventy feet, to the
distance of 472 metres, or 1458 feet, accurately measured. We had
great difficulty in persuading the Indians to pass beyond the
anterior portion of the grotto, the only part which they annually
visit to collect the fat.
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