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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I Was Not Alarmed By This
Prediction, However Serious, Believing Myself To Have Been Long
Acclimated; But I Could Not Resist Yielding To Entreaties, Prompted
By Such Benevolent Feelings.
I swallowed the dose; and the
physician doubtless counted me among the number of those he had
saved.
The road leading from the port to Caracas (the capital of a
government of near 900,000 inhabitants) resembles, as I have
already observed, the passage over the Alps, the road of St.
Gothard, and of the Great St. Bernard. Taking the level of the road
had never been attempted before my arrival in the province of
Venezuela. No precise idea had even been formed of the elevation of
the valley of Caracas. It had indeed been long observed, that the
descent was much less from La Cumbre and Las Vueltas (the latter is
the culminating point of the road towards the Pastora at the
entrance of the valley of Caracas), than towards the port of La
Guayra; but the mountain of Avila having a very considerable bulk,
the eye cannot discern simultaneously the points to be compared. It
is even impossible to form a precise idea of the elevation of
Caracas, from the climate of the valley, where the atmosphere is
cooled by the descending currents of air, and by the mists, which
envelope the lofty summit of the Silla during a great part of the
year.
When in the season of the great heats we breathe the burning
atmosphere of La Guayra, and turn our eyes towards the mountains,
it seems scarcely possible that, at the distance of five or six
thousand toises, a population of forty thousand individuals
assembled in a narrow valley, enjoys the coolness of spring, a
temperature which at night descends to 12 degrees of the centesimal
thermometer.
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