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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We Attempted Every Instant, But
Always Without Success, To Amend Our Situation.
While one of us hid
himself under a sheet to ward off the insects, the other insisted on
having green wood lighted beneath the toldo, in the hope of driving
away the mosquitos by the smoke.
The painful sensations of the eyes,
and the increase of heat, already stifling, rendered both these
contrivances alike impracticable. With some gaiety of temper, with
feelings of mutual good-will, and with a vivid taste for the majestic
grandeur of these vast valleys of rivers, travellers easily support
evils that become habitual.
Our Indians showed us, on the right bank of the river, the place which
was formerly the site of the Mission of Pararuma, founded by the
Jesuits about the year 1733. The mortality occasioned by the smallpox
among the Salive Indians was the principal cause of the dissolution of
the mission. The few inhabitants who survived this cruel epidemic,
removed to the village of Carichana. It was at Pararuma, that,
according to the testimony of Father Roman, hail was seen to fall
during a great storm, about the middle of the last century. This is
almost the only instance of it I know in a plain that is nearly on a
level with the sea; for hail falls generally, between the tropics,
only at three hundred toises of elevation. If it form at an equal
height over plains and table-lands, we must suppose that it melts as
it falls, in passing through the lowest strata of the atmosphere, the
mean temperature of which is from 27.5 to 24 degrees of the centigrade
thermometer.
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