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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In One Of These Wells Only, The
Temperature Of Which Is 56.2 Degrees, Bubbles Of Air Are Evolved At
Nearly Regular Intervals Of Two Or Three Minutes.
I observed that
these bubbles constantly rose from the same points, which are four in
number; and that it
Was not possible to change the places from which
the gas is emitted, by stirring the bottom of the basin with a stick.
These places correspond no doubt to holes or fissures on the gneiss;
and indeed when the bubbles rise from one of the apertures, the
emission of gas follows instantly from the other three. I could not
succeed in inflaming the small quantities of gas that rise above the
thermal waters, or those I collected in a glass phial held over the
springs, an operation that excited in me a nausea, caused less by the
smell of the gas, than by the excessive heat prevailing in this
ravine. Is this sulphuretted hydrogen mixed with a great proportion of
carbonic acid or atmospheric air? I am doubtful of the first of these
mixtures, though so common in thermal waters; for example at Aix la
Chapelle, Enghien, and Bareges. The gas collected in the tube of
Fontana's eudiometer had been shaken for a long time with water. The
small basins are covered with a light film of sulphur, deposited by
the sulphuretted hydrogen in its slow combustion in contact with the
atmospheric oxygen. A few plants near the springs were encrusted with
sulphur.
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