Chamisso et. al. - "Peter Schlemihl etc."

A. F. Pollard - "The History of England"

G. A. Henty - "Among Malay Pirates"

J. D. Hooker - "Himalayan Journals V2."

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Equinoctial Regions of America V3

A >> Alexander von Humboldt >> Equinoctial Regions of America V3




A phenomenon which fixed the attention of De Luc and which in these
latter years has furnished a subject of speculation to geologists,
occupied us much during our journey across the Llanos. I allude not to
those blocks of primitive rock which occur, as in the Jura, on the
slope of limestone mountains, but to those enormous blocks of granite
and syenite which, in limits very distinctly marked by nature, are
found scattered on the north of Holland, Germany and the countries of
the Baltic. It seems to be now proved that, distributed as in radii,
they came at the time of the ancient revolutions of our globe from the
Scandinavian peninsula southward; and that they did not primitively
belong to the granitic chains of the Harz and Erzgeberg, which they
approach without, however, reaching their foot.* (* Leopold von Buch,
Voyage en Norwege volume 1 page 30.) I was surprised at not seeing one
of these blocks in the Llanos of Venezuela, though these immense
plains are bounded on the south by the Sierra Parima, a group of
mountains entirely granitic and exhibiting in its denticulated and
often columnar peaks traces of the most violent destruction. Northward
the granitic chain of the Silla de Caracas and Porto Cabello are
separated from the Llanos by a screen of mountains that are schistose
between Villa de Cura and Parapara, and calcareous between the
Bergantin and Caripe. I was no less struck by this absence of blocks
on the banks of the Amazon. La Condamine affirms that from the Pongo
de Manseriche to the Strait of Pauxis not the smallest stone is to be
found. Now the basin of the Rio Negro and of the Amazon is also a
Llano, a plain like those of Venezuela and Buenos Ayres. The
difference consists only in the state of vegetation. The two Llanos
situated at the northern and southern extremities of South America are
covered with gramina; they are treeless savannahs; but the
intermediate Llano, that of the Amazon, exposed to almost continual
equatorial rains, is a thick forest. I do not remember having heard
that the Pampas of Buenos Ayres or the savannahs of the Missouri* and
New Mexico contain granitic blocks. (* Are there any isolated blocks
in North America northward of the great lakes?) The absence of this
phenomenon appears general in the New World as it probably also is in
Sahara, in Africa; for we must not confound the rocky masses that
pierce the soil in the midst of the desert, and of which travellers
often make mention, with mere scattered fragments. These facts seem to
prove that the blocks of Scandinavian granite which cover the sandy
countries on the south of the Baltic, and those of Westphalia and
Holland, must be traced to some local revolution. The ancient
conglomerate (red sandstone) which covers a great part of the Llanos
of Venezuela and of the basin of the Amazon contains no doubt
fragments of the same primitive rocks which constitute the
neighbouring mountains; but the convulsions of which these mountains
exhibit evident marks, do not appear to have been attended with
circumstances favourable to the removal of great blocks. This
geognostic phenomenon was to me the more unexpected since there exists
nowhere in the world so smooth a plain entirely granitic. Before my
departure from Europe I had observed with surprise that there were no
primitive blocks in Lombardy and in the great plain of Bavaria which
appears to be the bottom of an ancient lake, and which is situated two
hundred and fifty toises above the level of the ocean. It is bounded
on the north by the granites of the Upper Palatinate; and on the south
by Alpine limestone, transition-thonschiefer, and the mica-slates of
the Tyrol.

We arrived, on the 23rd of July, at the town of Nueva Barcelona, less
fatigued by the heat of the Llanos, to which we had been long
accustomed, than annoyed by the winds of sand which occasion painful
chaps in the skin. Seven months previously, in going from Cumana to
Caracas, we had rested a few hours at the Morro de Barcelona, a
fortified rock, which, near the village of Pozuelos, is joined to the
continent only by a neck of land. We were received with the kindest
hospitality in the house of Don Pedro Lavie, a wealthy merchant of
French extraction. This gentleman, who was accused of having given
refuge to the unfortunate Espana when a fugitive on these coasts in
1796, was arrested by order of the Audiencia, and conveyed as a
prisoner to Caracas. The friendship of the governor of Cumana and the
remembrance of the services he had rendered to the rising commerce of
those countries contributed to procure his liberty. We had endeavoured
to alleviate his captivity by visiting him in prison; and we had now
the satisfaction of finding him in the midst of his family. Illness
under which he was suffering had been aggravated by confinement; and
he sank into the grave without seeing the dawn of those days of
independence, which his friend Don Joseph Espana had predicted on the
scaffold prior to his execution. "I die," said that man, who was
formed for the accomplishment of grand projects, "I die an ignominious
death; but my fellow citizens will soon piously collect my ashes, and
my name will reappear with glory." These remarkable words were uttered
in the public square of Caracas, on the 8th of May, 1799.

In 1790 Nueva Barcelona contained scarcely ten thousand inhabitants,
and in 1800, its population was more than sixteen thousand. The town
was founded in 1637 by a Catalonian conquistador, named Juan Urpin. A
fruitless attempt was then made, to give the whole province the name
of New Catalonia. As our maps often mark two towns, Barcelona and
Cumanagoto, instead of one, and as the two names are considered as
synonymous, it may be well to explain the cause of this error.
Anciently, at the mouth of the Rio Neveri, there was an Indian town,
built in 1588 by Lucas Faxardo, and named San Cristoval de los
Cumanagotos. This town was peopled solely by natives who came from the
saltworks of Apaicuare. In 1637 Urpin founded, two leagues farther
inland, the Spanish town of Nueva Barcelona, which he peopled with
some of the inhabitants of Cumanagoto, together with some Catalonians.
For thirty-four years, disputes were incessantly arising between the
two neighbouring communities till in 1671, the governor Angulo
succeeded in persuading them to establish themselves on a third spot,
where the town of Barcelona now stands. According to my observations
it is situated in latitude 10 degrees 6 minutes 52 seconds.* (* These
observations were made on the Plaza Major. They are merely the result
of six circum-meridian heights of Canopus, taken all in one night. In
Las Memorias de Espinosa the latitude is stated to be 10 degrees 9
minutes 6 seconds. The result of M. Ferrer's observations made it 10
degrees 8 minutes 24 seconds.) The ancient town of Cumanagoto is
celebrated in the country for a miraculous image of the Virgin,* which
the Indians say was found in the hollow trunk of an old tutumo, or
calabash-tree (Crescentia cujete). (* La milagrosa imagen de Maria
Santissima del Socorro, also called La Virgen del Tutumo.) This image
was carried in procession to Nueva Barcelona; but whenever the clergy
were dissatisfied with the inhabitants of the new city, the Virgin
fled at night, and returned to the trunk of the tree at the mouth of
the river. This miracle did not cease till a fine convent (the college
of the Propaganda) was built, to receive the Franciscans. In a similar
case, the Bishop of Caracas caused the image of Our Lady de los
Valencianos to be placed in the archives of the bishopric, where she
remained thirty years under seal.

The climate of Barcelona is not so hot as that of Cumana but it is
extremely damp and somewhat unhealthy in the rainy season. M. Bonpland
had borne very well the irksome journey across the Llanos; and had
recovered his strength and activity. With respect to myself, I
suffered more at Barcelona than I did at Angostura, immediately after
our passage on the rivers. One of those extraordinary tropical rains
during which, at sunset, drops of enormous size fall at great
distances from one another, caused me to experience sensations which
seemed to threaten an attack of typhus, a disease then prevalent on
that coast. We remained nearly a month at Barcelona where we found our
friend Fray Juan Gonzales, of whom I have often spoken, and who had
traversed the Upper Orinoco before us. He expressed regret that we had
not been able to prolong our visit to that unknown country; and he
examined our plants and animals with that interest which must be felt
by even the most uninformed man for the productions of a region he has
long since visited. Fray Juan had resolved to go to Europe and to
accompany us as far as the island of Cuba. We were together for the
space of seven months, and his society was most agreeable: he was
cheerful, intelligent and obliging. How little did we anticipate the
sad fate that awaited him. He took charge of a part of our
collections; and a friend of his own confided to his care a child who
was to be conveyed to Spain for its education. Alas! the collection,
the child and the young ecclesiastic were all buried in the waves.

South-east of Nueva Barcelona, at the distance of two Leagues, there
rises a lofty chain of mountains, abutting on the Cerro del Bergantin,
which is visible at Cumana. This spot is known by the name of the hot
waters, (aguas calientes). When I felt my health sufficiently
restored, we made an excursion thither on a cool and misty morning.
The waters, which are loaded with sulphuretted hydrogen, issue from a
quartzose sandstone, lying on compact limestone, the same as that we
had examined at the Morro. We again found in this limestone
intercalated beds of black hornstein, passing into kieselschiefer. It
is not, however, a transition rock; by its position, its division into
small strata, its whiteness and its dull and conchoidal fractures
(with very flattened cavities), it rather approximates to the
limestone of Jura. The real kieselschiefer and Lydian-stone have not
been observed hitherto except in the transition-slates and limestones.
Is the sandstone whence the springs of the Bergantin issue of the same
formation as the sandstone of the Imposible and the Tumiriquiri? The
temperature of the thermal waters is only 43.2 degrees centigrade (the
atmosphere being 27). They flow first to the distance of forty toises
over the rocky surface of the ground; then they rush down into a
natural cavern; and finally they pierce through the limestone to issue
out at the foot of the mountain on the left bank of the little river
Narigual. The springs, while in contact with the oxygen of the
atmosphere, deposit a good deal of sulphur. I did not collect, as I
had done at Mariara, the bubbles of air that rise in jets from these
thermal waters. They no doubt contain a large quantity of nitrogen
because the sulphuretted hydrogen decomposes the mixture of oxygen and
nitrogen dissolved in the spring. The sulphurous waters of San Juan
which issue from calcareous rock, like those of the Bergantin, have
also a low temperature (31.3 degrees); while in the same region the
temperature of the sulphurous waters of Mariara and Las Trincheras
(near Porto Cabello), which gush immediately from gneiss-granite, is
58.9 degrees the former, and 90.4 degrees the latter. It would seem as
if the heat which these springs acquire in the interior of the globe
diminishes in proportion as they pass from primitive to secondary
superposed rocks.

Our excursion to the Aguas Calientes of Bergantin ended with a
vexatious accident. Our host had lent us one of his finest
saddle-horses. We were warned at the same time not to ford the little
river of Narigual. We passed over a sort of bridge, or rather some
trunks of trees laid closely together, and we made our horses swim,
holding their bridles. The horse I had ridden suddenly disappeared
after struggling for some time under water: all our endeavours to
discover the cause of this accident were fruitless. Our guides
conjectured that the animal's legs had been seized by the caymans
which are very numerous in those parts. My perplexity was extreme:
delicacy and the affluent circumstances of my host forbade me to think
of repairing his loss; and M. Lavie, more considerate of our situation
than sensible of his own misfortune, endeavoured to tranquillize us by
exaggerating the facility with which fine horses were procurable from
the neighbouring savannahs.

The crocodiles of the Rio Neveri are large and numerous, especially
near the mouth of the river; but in general they are less fierce than
the crocodiles of the Orinoco. These animals manifest in America the
same contrasts of ferocity as in Egypt and Nubia: this fact is obvious
when we compare with attention the narratives of Burckhardt and
Belzoni. The state of cultivation in different countries and the
amount of population in the proximity of rivers modify the habits of
these large saurians: they are timid when on dry ground and they flee
from man, even in the water, when they are not in want of food and
when they perceive any danger in attacking. The Indians of Nueva
Barcelona convey wood to market in a singular manner. Large logs of
zygophyllum and caesalpinia* are thrown into the river and carried
down by the stream, while the owners of the wood swim here and there
to float the pieces that are stopped by the windings of the banks. (*
The Lecythis ollaria, in the vicinity of Nueva Barcelona, furnishes
excellent timber. We saw trunks of this tree seventy feet high. Around
the town, beyond that arid zone of cactus which separates Nueva
Barcelona from the steppe, grow the Clerodendrum tenuifolium, the
Ionidium itubu, which resembles the Viola, and the Allionia violacea.)
This could not be done in the greater part of those American rivers in
which crocodiles are found. The town of Barcelona has not, like
Cumana, an Indian suburb; and the only natives who are seen there are
inhabitants of the neighbouring missions or of huts scattered in the
plain. Neither the one nor the other are of Carib race, but a mixture
of the Cumanagotos, Palenkas and Piritus; short, stunted, indolent and
addicted to drinking. Fermented cassava is here the favourite
beverage; the wine of the palm-tree, which is used on the Orinoco,
being almost unknown on the coast. It is curious to observe that men
in different zones, to satisfy the passion of inebriety, employ not
only all the families of monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants,
but even the poisonous Agaric (Amanita muscaria) of which, with
disgusting economy, the Coriacs have learnt to drink the same juice
several times during five successive days.* (* Mr. Langsdor
(Wetterauisches Journal part 1 page 254) first made known this very
extraordinary physiological phenomenon, which I prefer describing in
Latin: Coriaecorum gens, in ora Asiae septentrioni opposita, potum
sibi excogitavit ex succo inebriante agarici muscarii. Qui succus
(aeque ut asparagorum), vel per humanum corpus transfusus, temulentiam
nihilominus facit. Quare gens misera et inops, quo rarius mentis sit
suae, propriam urinam bibit identidem: continuoque mingens rursusque
hauriens eundem succum (dicas, ne ulla in parte mundi desit ebrietas),
pauculis agaricis producere in diem quintum temulentiam potest.)

The packet boats (correos) from Corunna bound for the Havannah and
Mexico had been due three months; and it was believed they had been
taken by the English cruisers stationed on this coast. Anxious to
reach Cumana, in order to avail ourselves of the first opportunity
that might offer for our passage to Vera Cruz, we hired an open boat
called a lancha, a sort of craft employed habitually in the latitudes
east of Cape Codera where the sea is scarcely ever rough. Our lancha,
which was laden with cacao, carried on a contraband trade with the
island of Trinidad. For this reason the owner imagined we had nothing
to fear from the enemy's vessels, which then blockaded all the Spanish
ports. We embarked our collection of plants, our instruments and our
monkeys; and, the weather being delightful, we hoped to make a very
short passage from the mouth of the Rio Neveri to Cumana: but we had
scarcely reached the narrow channel between the continent and the
rocky isles of Borracha and the Chimanas, when to our great surprise
we came in sight of an armed boat, which, whilst hailing us from a
great distance, fired some musket-shot at us. The boat belonged to a
privateer of Halifax; and I recognized among the sailors a Prussian, a
native of Memel. I had found no opportunity, since my arrival in
America, of expressing myself in my native language, and I could have
wished to have spoken it on a less unpleasant occasion. Our
protestations were without effect: we were carried on board the
privateer, and the captain, affecting not to recognize the passports
delivered by the governor of Trinidad for the illicit trade, declared
us to be a lawful prize. Being a little in the habit of speaking
English, I entered into conversation with the captain, begging not to
be taken to Nova Scotia, but to be put on shore on the neighbouring
coast. While I endeavoured, in the cabin, to defend my own rights and
those of the owner of the lancha, I heard a noise on deck. Something
was whispered to the captain, who left us in consternation. Happily
for us, an English sloop of war, the Hawk, was cruising in those
parts, and had signalled the captain to bring to; but the signal not
being promptly answered, a gun was fired from the sloop and a
midshipman sent on board our vessel. He was a polite young man, and
gave me hopes that the lancha, which was laden with cacao, would be
given up, and that on the following day we might pursue our voyage. In
the meantime he invited me to accompany him on board the sloop,
assuring me that his commander, Captain Garnier, would furnish me with
better accommodation for the night than I should find in the vessel
from Halifax.

I accepted these obliging offers and was received with the utmost
kindness by Captain Garnier, who had made the voyage to the north-west
coast of America with Vancouver, and who appeared to be highly
interested in all I related to him respecting the great cataracts of
Atures and Maypures, the bifurcation of the Orinoco and its
communication with the Amazon. He introduced to me several of his
officers who had been with Lord Macartney in China. I had not, during
the space of a year, enjoyed the society of so many well-informed
persons. They had learned from the English newspapers the object of my
enterprise. I was treated with great confidence and the commander gave
me up his own state-room. They gave me at parting the astronomical
Ephemerides for those years which I had not been able to procure in
France or Spain. I am indebted to Captain Garnier for the observations
I was enabled to make on the satellites beyond the equator and I feel
it a duty to record here the gratitude I feel for his kindness. Coming
from the forests of Cassiquiare, and having been confined during whole
months to the narrow circle of missionary life, we felt a high
gratification at meeting for the first time with men who had sailed
round the world, and whose ideas were enlarged by so extensive and
varied a course. I quitted the English vessel with impressions which
are not yet effaced from my remembrance, and which rendered me more
than ever satisfied with the career on which I had entered.

We continued our passage on the following day; and were surprised at
the depth of the channels between the Caracas Islands, where the sloop
worked her way through them almost touching the rocks. How much do
these calcareous islets, of which the form and direction call to mind
the great catastrophe that separated from them the mainland, differ in
aspect from the volcanic archipelago on the north of Lanzerote where
the hills of basalt seem to have been heaved up from the bottom of the
sea! Numbers of pelicans and of flamingos, which fished in the nooks
or harassed the pelicans in order to seize their prey, indicated our
approach to the coast of Cumana. It is curious to observe at sunrise
how the sea-birds suddenly appear and animate the scene, reminding us,
in the most solitary regions, of the activity of our cities at the
dawn of day. At nine in the morning we reached the gulf of Cariaco
which serves as a roadstead to the town of Cumana. The hill, crowned
by the castle of San Antonio, stood out, prominent from its whiteness,
on the dark curtain of the inland mountains. We gazed with interest on
the shore, where we first gathered plants in America, and where, some
months later, M. Bonpland had been in such danger. Among the cactuses,
that rise in columns twenty feet high, appear the Indian huts of the
Guaykeries. Every part of the landscape was familiar to us; the forest
of cactus, the scattered huts and that enormous ceiba, beneath which
we loved to bathe at the approach of night. Our friends at Cumana came
out to meet us: men of all castes, whom our frequent herborizations
had brought into contact with us, expressed the greater joy at sight
of us, as a report that we had perished on the banks of the Orinoco
had been current for several months. These reports had their origin
either in the severe illness of M. Bonpland, or in the fact of our
boat having been nearly lost in a gale above the mission of Uruana.

We hastened to visit the governor, Don Vicente Emparan, whose
recommendations and constant solicitude had been so useful to us
during the long journey we had just terminated. He procured for us, in
the centre of the town, a house which, though perhaps too lofty in a
country exposed to violent earthquakes, was extremely useful for our
instruments. We enjoyed from its terraces a majestic view of the sea,
of the isthmus of Araya, and the archipelago of the islands of
Caracas, Picuita and Borracha. The port of Cumana was every day more
and more closely blockaded, and the vain expectation of the arrival of
Spanish packets detained us two months and a half longer. We were
often nearly tempted to go to the Danish islands which enjoyed a happy
neutrality; but we feared that, if we left the Spanish colonies, we
might find some obstacles to our return. With the ample freedom which
in a moment of favour had been granted to us, we did not consider it
prudent to hazard anything that might give umbrage to the local
authorities. We employed our time in completing the Flora of Cumana,
geologically examining the eastern part of the peninsula of Araya, and
observing many eclipses of satellites, which confirmed the longitude
of the place already obtained by other means. We also made experiments
on the extraordinary refractions, on evaporation and on atmospheric
electricity.

The living animals which we had brought from the Orinoco were objects
of great curiosity to the inhabitants of Cumana. The capuchin of the
Esmeralda (Simia chiropotes), which so much resembles man in the
expression of its physiognomy; and the sleeping monkey (Simia
trivirgata), which is the type of a new group; had never yet been seen
on that coast. We destined them for the menagerie of the Jardin des
Plantes at Paris. The arrival of a French squadron which had failed in
an attack upon Curacao furnished us, unexpectedly, with an excellent
opportunity for sending them to Guadaloupe; and General Jeannet,
together with the commissary Bresseau, agent of the executive power at
the Antilles, promised to convey them. The monkeys and birds died at
Guadaloupe but fortunately the skin of the Simia chiropotes, the only
one in Europe, was sent a few years ago to the Jardin des Plantes,
where the couxio (Simia satanas) and the stentor or alouate of the
steppes of Caracas (Simia ursina) had been already received. The
arrival of so great a number of French military officers and the
manifestation of political and religious opinions not altogether
conformable with the interests of the governments of Europe excited
singular agitation in the population of Cumana. The governor treated
the French authorities with the forms of civility consistent with the
friendly relations subsisting at that period between France and Spain.
In the streets the coloured people crowded round the agent of the
French Directory, whose dress was rich and theatrical. White men, too,
with indiscreet curiosity, whenever they could make themselves
understood, made enquiries concerning the degree of influence granted
by the republic to the colonists in the government of Guadaloupe. The
king's officers doubled their zeal in furnishing provision for the
little squadron. Strangers, who boasted that they were free, appeared
to these people troublesome guests; and in a country of which the
growing prosperity depended on clandestine communication with the
islands, and on a freedom of trade forced from the ministry, the
European Spaniards extolled the wisdom of the old code of laws (leyes
de Indias) which permitted the entrance of foreign vessels into their
ports only in extreme cases of want or distress. These contrasts
between the restless desires of the colonists and the distrustful
apathy of the government, throw some light on the great political
events which, after long preparation, have separated Spain from her
colonies.