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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It
Thickens By The Contact Of The Air, Without Growing Yellow, And It
Appears Singularly Glossy.
We have already mentioned that the
caoutchouc is the oily part, the butter of all vegetable milk.
It is,
no doubt, a particular modification of caoutchouc that forms this
coagulum, this white and glossy skin, that seems as if covered with
copal varnish. If different colours could be given to this milky
varnish, a very expeditious method would be found of painting and
varnishing our carriages by one process. The more we study vegetable
chemistry in the torrid zone, the more we shall discover, in remote
spots, and half-prepared in the organs of plants, products which we
believe belong only to the animal kingdom, or which we obtain by
processes which are often tedious and difficult. Already we have found
the wax that coats the palm-tree of the Andes of Quindiu, the silk of
the palm-tree of Mocoa, the nourishing milk of the palo de vaca, the
butter-tree of Africa, and the caseous substances obtained from the
almost animalized sap of the Carica papaya. These discoveries will be
multiplied, when, as the political state of the world seems now to
indicate, European civilization shall flow in a great measure toward
the equinoctial regions of the New Continent.
The marshy tract between Javita and the embarcadero of Pimichin is
infested with great numbers of vipers. Before we took possession of
the deserted hut, the Indians killed two great mapanare serpents.* (*
This name is given in the Spanish colonies to very different species.
The Coluber mapanare of the province of Caracas has one hundred and
forty-two ventral plates, and thirty-eight double caudal scales.
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