Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 697 of 777 - First - Home
The Lake Parima, The
Sierra Mey, And The Springs Which Separate At The Point Where They
Issue From The Earth, Were Entirely Unknown At Esmeralda.
We were
repeatedly assured that no one had ever been to the east of the Raudal
of the Guaharibos;
And that beyond that point, according to the
opinion of some of the natives, the Orinoco descends like a small
torrent from a group of mountains, inhabited by the Coroto Indians.
Father Gili, who was living on the banks of the Orinoco when the
expedition of the boundaries arrived, says expressly that Don
Apollinario Diez was sent in 1765 to attempt the discovery of the
source of the Orinoco; that he found the river, east of Esmeralda,
full of shoals; that he returned for want of provision; and that he
learned nothing, absolutely nothing, of the existence of a lake. This
statement perfectly accords with what I heard myself thirty-five years
later at Esmeralda. The probability of a fact is powerfully shaken
when it can be proved to be totally unknown on the very spot where it
ought to be known best; and when those by whom the existence of the
lake is affirmed contradict each other, not in the least essential
circumstances, but in all that are the most important.
When travellers judge only by their own sensations they differ from
each other respecting the abundance of the mosquitos as they do
respecting the progressive increase or diminution of the temperature.
The state of our organs, the motion of the air, its degree of humidity
or dryness, its electric intensity, a thousand circumstances
contribute at once to make us suffer more or less from the heat and
the insects.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 697 of 777
Words from 189608 to 189892
of 211397
