Humboldt's travels and discoveries in South America

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J.W. Parker, 1840 - 278 pages

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Page 115 - These yellowish and livid eels, resembling large aquatic serpents, swim on the surface of the water, and crowd under the bellies of the horses and mules. A contest between animals of so different an organization presents a very striking spectacle.
Page 95 - American oak, and the fruit, from the kernel of which, first dried in the sun, the butter is prepared by boiling the kernel in water, has somewhat the appearance of a Spanish olive. The kernel is enveloped in a sweet pulp, under a thin green rind ; and the butter produced from it, besides the advantage of its keeping the whole year without salt, is whiter, firmer, and to my palate of a richer flavour than the best butter I ever tasted made of cow's milk.
Page 143 - They attach great importance to certain forms of the body ; and a mother would be accused of culpable indifference toward her children, if she did not employ artificial means, to shape the calf of the leg after the fashion of the country. As none of our Indians of Apure understood the Caribbee language, we could obtain no information from the Cacique of Panama respecting the encampments, that are made at this season in several islands of the Oroonoko for collecting turtles
Page 116 - It is natural that the effect felt by the horses should be more powerful than that produced upon man by the touch of the same fish at only one of his extremities. The horses are probably not killed, but only stunned. They are drowned from the impossibility of rising amid the prolonged struggle between the other horses and the eels. We...
Page 96 - Its branches appear dead and dried, but when the trunk is pierced, there flows from it a sweet and nourishing milk. It is at the rising of the sun, that this vegetable fountain is most abundant. The blacks and natives are then seen hastening from all quarters, furnished with large bowls to receive the milk, which grows yellow, and thickens at its surface.
Page 211 - It was the rainy season, and the night was profoundly dark. Forests till then believed to be impenetrable separated the mission of Javita from that of San Fernando, which was twenty-five leagues distant in a straight line.
Page 74 - Nine-tenths of the fine town of Caraccas were entirely destroyed. The walls of the houses that were not thrown down, as those of the street San Juan, near the Capuchin Hospital, were cracked in such a manner that it was impossible to run the risk of inhabiting them.
Page 211 - She succeeded by the help of her teeth in breaking them entirely ; disappeared during the night; and at the fourth rising sun was seen at the mission of San Fernando, hovering around the hut where her children were confined. ' What that woman performed,' added the missionary who gave us this sad narrative, ' the most robust Indian would not have ventured to undertake.
Page 74 - TH».CHTT. so great in the churches, that nearly three or four thousand persons were crushed by the fall of their vaulted roofs. The explosion was stronger towards the north, in that part of the town situate nearest the mountain of Avila, and the Silla.
Page 157 - These are so many voices proclaiming to us, that all nature breathes ; and that, under a thousand different forms, life is diffused throughout the cracked and dusty soil, as well as in the bosom of the waters, and in the air that circulates around us.

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