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A597.5a Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. Into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 5, part 1. Text

-trees, to force the tree, they say, to yield an ample produce the following year. The people pay for this operation, as the Monguls, the Moors, and the nations still nearer to us, pay the chamans, the marabous, and other classes of priests, to drive away by mystic words, or by prayers, the white ants and the locusts, or to procure a cessation of continued rain, and invert the order of the seasons. Tengo en mi pueblo la fabrica de loza*, said father Zea, when conducting us to an Indian family, who

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A597.5a Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. Into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 5, part 1. Text

imperceptible. How often must she have been stopped by the thorny lianas, that form a network around the trunks they entwine! How often must she have swum across the rivulets, that run into the Atabapo! This unfortunate woman was asked how she had sustained herself during four days? She said, that exhausted with fatigue, she could find no other nourishment than those great black ants called vachacos, which climb the trees in long bands, to suspend on them their resinous nests. We pressed the

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A597.5a Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. Into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 5, part 1. Text

arrived at a small farm, in the puerto or landing place of Pimichin. We were shown a cross erected near the road, which marked the spot where a poor capuchin missionary had been killed by wasps. I repeat what we were told by the monks of Javita and the Indians. They talk much in these countries of wasps and venomous ants, but we saw neither one nor the other of these insects. It is well known, that in the torrid zone slight stings often cause fits of fever almost as violent as those, that with

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A597.5a Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. Into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 5, part 1. Text

ground, and on the top of a small hill an Indian hut. Four natives were seated round a fire of brush-wood, and eating a sort of white paste with black spots, which much excited our curiosity. These were vachacos, large ants, the hinder parts of which resemble a lump of grease. They had been dried, and blackened by smoke. We saw several bags of them suspended above the fire. These good people paid little attention to us; yet there were more than fourteen persons in this confined hut, lying naked

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A597.5a Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. Into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 5, part 1. Text

west are almost deserted. The natives subsist during a part of the year on those large ants, of which I have spoken above. These insects are as much esteemed here, as the spiders of the tribe of epe r in the southern hemisphere, where the savages of New Holland deem them delicious. We found at Mandavaca the good old missionary, who had already spent twenty years of moschettoes in the bosques del Cassiquiare, and whose legs were so spotted by the stings of insects, that the whiteness of the

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A597.5a Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. Into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 5, part 1. Text

all fell sick, and would no more eat monk or layman. If the Caribbees of the Oroonoko, since the commencement of the sixteenth century, have differed in their manners from those of the West India islands; if it be always erroneously, that they are accused of anthropophagy; it is difficult to attribute this difference to a melioration of their social state. The strangest contrasts are found blended in this mixture of nations, some of whom live only upon fish, monkeys, and ants; while others are

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A597.5a Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. Into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 5, part 1. Text

large ants, that march in close bands, and direct their attacks so much the more on cultivated plants, as these are her * See my Polit. Essay, vol. ii, p. 447. Eighty-seven degrees. Sauss. VOL. V. 2 F [page] 43

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A597.5a Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. Into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 5, part 1. Text

ants, which pursue their migration in a right line, and, not knowing what vegetates above, seldom turn from their course to climb up stakes, that are stripped of their bark. I mention this circumstance, to prove how difficult, within the tropics, on the banks of great rivers, are the first attempts of man to appropriate to himself a little spot of earth in that vast domain of nature, invaded by animals, and covered by spontaneous plants. May the 13th. I had obtained during the night some

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A597.5a Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. Into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 5, part 1. Text

succeeded in appeasing our appetite for several hours. The ants and the moschettoes occupied us more than the humidity and the want of food. Notwithstanding the wants to which we were exposed during our excursions in the Cordilleras, the navigation from Mandavaca to Esmeralda has always appeared to us the most painful part of our travels in America. I advise those, who are not very desirous of seeing the great bifurcation of the Oroonoko, to take the way of the Atabapo in preference to that of the

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A597.5b Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. Into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 5, part 2. Text

missionaries arrive every where first, because they find facilities, which are wanting to every other traveller. You boast of your journeys beyond Lake Superior, said an Indian of Canada to some fur traders of the United States;. you forget then, that the black coats passed it long before you; and that it was they who showed you the way to the west. Our canoe was not ready to receive us till near three o'clock in the afternoon. It had been filled with an innumerable quantity of ants during the

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A597.5b Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. Into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 5, part 2. Text

blood. When the Indians, after a quarrel at night, commit a murder, they throw the dead body into the river, fearing that some manifest indications of the violence exercised on the deceased might be observed. Every time, said father Bueno, that I see the women fetch water from a part of the shore, to which they are not accustomed to go for it, I suspect, that a murder has been committed in my mission. We found in the Indian huts at Uruana the same vegetable substance (touchwood of ants*), * Yesca

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A597.7 Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 7. Text Image

. A gloomy vegetation of Cactus, Jatropha gossypifolia, Croton, and Mimosa, covers the barren declivity of Cerro de la Popa. In herbalizing in those wild spots, our guides shewed us a thick bush of Acacia cornigera, become celebrated by a deplorable event. Of all the species of Mimosa, the Acacia is that which is armed with the sharpest thorns; they are sometimes two inches long, and being hollow, serve for the habitation of ants of an extraordinary size. A woman, wearied of the jealousy and well

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A597.7 Beagle Library: Humboldt, Alexander von. 1819-1829. Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, and trans. into English by Helen Maria Williams. 7 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. vol. 7. Text Image

sons who were passing, and he was found after several hours of suffering, covered with blood, and cruelly tormented by the ants. This species of correction, inflicted on a jealous husband, is perhaps without example in the history of human perversity; it characterizes in the low classes of society, a violence of passion of which we should less accuse the climate than the barbarism of manners. My most important occupation at Carthagena was the comparison of my observations with the astronomical

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A738.01 Beagle Library: Aubuisson de Voisins, Jean Francois d'. 1819. Traité de géognosie: exposé des connaissances actuelles sur la constitution physique et minérale du globe terrestre. 2 vols. Strasbourg et Paris: F.G.Levrault. vol. 1. Text

dixaine de m tres de long, et un demi-m tre d' paisseur. Leur position la plus ordinaire est verticale; et un assemblage de prismes ainsi pos s pr sente l'aspect de colonnes prismatiques dress es les unes contre les autres. C'est dans cet tat qu'ils forment les fameuses colonnades basaltiques que l'on voit en plusieurs endroits du Vivarais, de l'Auvergne, de la Saxe, de l'Irlande, etc.; une de celles de ce dernier pays est particuli rement c l bre sous le nom de Chauss e des g ants (1). Quelquefois

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A738.01 Beagle Library: Aubuisson de Voisins, Jean Francois d'. 1819. Traité de géognosie: exposé des connaissances actuelles sur la constitution physique et minérale du globe terrestre. 2 vols. Strasbourg et Paris: F.G.Levrault. vol. 1. Text

est form par la t te des masses prismatiques, M. Pictet croyait tre sur un pav carreaux hexagones, comme on croit y tre lorsqu'on marche sur la chauss e des G ants d'Irlande (1). Les fissures qui produisent la division prismatique, ne s' tendent pas toujours une grande distance, et elles n'existent souvent que dans une partie de la masse basaltique ou porphyrique; de sorte que cette masse est ainsi divis e en prismes dans une portion de son tendue, et qu'elle forme un tout continu dans l'autre

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