Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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How Vivid Is The Impression
Produced By The Calm Of Nature, At Noon, In These Burning Climates!
The Beasts Of The Forests Retire To The Thickets; The Birds Hide
Themselves Beneath The Foliage Of The Trees, Or In The Crevices Of The
Rocks.
Yet, amidst this apparent silence, when we lend an attentive
ear to the most feeble sounds transmitted through the air, we hear a
dull vibration, a continual murmur, a hum of insects, filling, if we
may use the expression, all the lower strata of the air.
Nothing is
better fitted to make man feel the extent and power of organic life.
Myriads of insects creep upon the soil, and flutter round the plants
parched by the heat of the sun. A confused noise issues from every
bush, from the decayed trunks of trees, from the clefts of the rocks,
and from the ground undermined by lizards, millepedes, and cecilias.
These are so many voices proclaiming to us that all nature breathes;
and that, under a thousand different forms, life is diffused
throughout the cracked and dusty soil, as well as in the bosom of the
waters, and in the air that circulates around us.
The sensations which I here recall to mind are not unknown to those
who, without having advanced to the equator, have visited Italy,
Spain, or Egypt. That contrast of motion and silence, that aspect of
nature at once calm and animated, strikes the imagination of the
traveller when he enters the basin of the Mediterranean, within the
zone of olives, dwarf palms, and date-trees.
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