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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Travellers Suffer From The Dust In Winter, While In The Rainy
Season The Place Is Changed Into A Slough.
On descending the
table-land of Buenavista, about fifty toises to the south-east, an
abundant spring, gushing from the gneiss, forms several cascades
surrounded with thick vegetation.
The path leading to the spring is
so steep that we could touch with our hands the tops of the
arborescent ferns, the trunks of which reach a height of more than
twenty-five feet. The surrounding rocks are covered with
jungermannias and hypnoid mosses. The torrent, formed by the
spring, and shaded with heliconias, uncovers, as it falls, the
roots of the plumerias,* (* The red jasmine-tree, frangipanier of
the French West India Islands. The plumeria, so common in the
gardens of the Indians, has been very seldom found in a wild state.
It is mixed here with the Piper flagellare, the spadix of which
sometimes reaches three feet long. With the new kind of fig-tree
(which we have called Ficus gigantea, because it frequently attains
the height of a hundred feet), we find in the mountains of
Buenavista and of Los Teques, the Ficus nymphaeifolia of the garden
of Schonbrunn, introduced into our hot-houses by M. Bredemeyer. I
am certain of the identity of the species found in the same places;
but I doubt really whether it be really the F. nymphaeifolia of
Linnaeus, which is supposed to be a native of the East Indies.)
cupeys,* (* In the experiments I made at Caracas, on the air which
circulates in plants, I was struck with the fine appearance
presented by the petioles and leaves of the Clusia rosea, when cut
open under water, and exposed to the rays of the sun.
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