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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A Series Of Thermometric Observations Shows, That La Guayra Is One
Of The Hottest Places On The Earth; That The
Quantity of heat which
it receives in the course of a year is a little greater than that
felt at
Cumana; but that in the months of November, December, and
January (at equal distance from the two passages of the sun through
the zenith of the town), the atmosphere cools more at La Guayra.
May not this cooling, much slighter than that which is felt almost
at the same time at Vera Cruz and at the Havannah, be the effect of
the more westerly position of La Guayra? The aerial ocean, which
appears to form only one mass, is agitated by currents, the limits
of which are fixed by immutable laws; and its temperature is
variously modified by the configuration of the lands and seas by
which it is sustained. It may be subdivided into several basins,
which overflow into each other, and of which the most agitated (for
instance, that over the gulf of Mexico, or between the sierra of
Santa Martha and the gulf of Darien) have a powerful influence on
the refrigeration and the motion of the neighbouring columns of
air. The north winds sometimes cause influxes and counter-currents
in the south-west part of the Caribbean Sea, which seem, during
particular months, to diminish the heat as far as Terra Firma.
At the time of my abode at La Guayra, the yellow fever, or
calentura amarilla, had been known only two years; and the
mortality it occasioned had not been very great, because the
confluence of strangers on the coast of Caracas was less
considerable than at the Havannah or Vera Cruz.
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