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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The Village Is Very Small, And The Church Not Yet Finished.
We Met At An Inn (Pulperia) Several European Spaniards Employed At
The Government Tobacco Farm.
Their dissatisfaction formed a strange
contrast to our feelings.
They were fatigued with their journey,
and they vented their displeasure in complaints and maledictions on
the wretched country, or to use their own phrase, estas tierras
infelices, in which they were doomed to live. We, on the other
hand, were enchanted with the wild scenery, the fertility of the
soil, and the mildness of the climate. Near San Pedro, the talcose
gneiss of Buenavista passes into a mica-slate filled with garnets,
and containing subordinate beds of serpentine. Something analogous
to this is met with at Zoblitz in Saxony. The serpentine, which is
very pure and of a fine green, varied with spots of a lighter tint,
often appears only superimposed on the mica-slate. I found in it a
few garnets, but no metaloid diallage.
The valley of San Pedro, through which flows the river of the same
name, separates two great masses of mountains, the Higuerote and
Las Cocuyzas. We ascended westward in the direction of the small
farms of Las Lagunetos and Garavatos. These are solitary houses,
which serve as inns, and where the mule-drivers obtain their
favourite beverage, the guarapo, or fermented juice of the
sugar-cane: intoxication is very common among the Indians who
frequent this road. Near Garavatos there is a mica-slate rock of
singular form; it is a ridge, or steep wall, crowned by a tower.
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