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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The Night Was Beautiful, Without A Breath Of Wind In The
Lower Regions Of The Atmosphere, But Towards Two In The Morning We Saw
Thick Clouds Crossing The Zenith Rapidly From East To West.
When,
declining toward the horizon, they traversed the great nebulae of
Sagittarius and the Ship, they appeared of a dark blue.
The light of
the nebulae is never more splendid than when they are in part covered
by sweeping clouds. We observe the same phenomenon in Europe in the
Milky Way, in the aurora borealis when it beams with a silvery light;
and at the rising and setting of the sun in that part of the sky that
is whitened* from causes which philosophers have not yet sufficiently
explained. (* The dawn: in French aube (alba, albente coelo.))
The vast tract of country lying between the Meta, the Vichada, and the
Guaviare, is altogether unknown a league from the banks; but it is
believed to be inhabited by wild Indians of the tribe of Chiricoas,
who fortunately build no boats. Formerly, when the Caribs, and their
enemies the Cabres, traversed these regions with their little fleets
of rafts and canoes, it would have been imprudent to have passed the
night near the mouth of a river running from the west. The little
settlements of the Europeans having now caused the independent Indians
to retire from the banks of the Upper Orinoco, the solitude of these
regions is such, that from Carichana to Javita, and from Esmeralda to
San Fernando de Atabapo, during a course of one hundred and eighty
leagues, we did not meet a single boat.
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