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Alexander von Humboldt: „Humboldt’s Travels“, in: ders., Sämtliche Schriften digital, herausgegeben von Oliver Lubrich und Thomas Nehrlich, Universität Bern 2021. URL: <https://humboldt.unibe.ch/text/1819-Baron_Humboldts_Personal_Heft1-03-neu> [abgerufen am 20.04.2024].
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| Titel | Humboldt’s Travels | ||||||
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| Jahr | 1819 | ||||||
| Ort | London | ||||||
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Nachweis in: The British Press 5230 (11. September 1819), [o. S.].
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| Sprache | Englisch | ||||||
| Typografischer Befund | Antiqua; Spaltensatz; Auszeichnung: Kursivierung. | ||||||
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|Spaltenumbruch|
The following interesting description of the lastdreadful catastrophe which befel the city of Ca-raccas, is taken from Humboldt’s Travels, justpublished:— “A great drought prevailed at this period in theprovince of Venezuela. Not a single drop ofrain had fallen at Caraccas, or in the country ninetyleagues round, during the five months which pre-ceded the destruction of the capital. The 26th ofMarch was a remarkably hot day. The air wascalm and the sky unclouded. It was Holy Thurs-day, and a great part of the population was assem-bled in the churches. Nothing seemed to presagethe calamities of the day. At seven minutes afterfour in the afternoon the first shock was felt; itwas sufficiently powerful to make the bells of thechurches toll; it lasted five or six seconds, duringwhich time, the ground was in a continual undu-lating movement, and seemed to heave up like aboiling liquid. The danger was thought to bepast, when a tremendous subterraneous noise washeard, resembling the rolling of thunder, butlouder, and of longer continuance, than that heardwithin the tropics in time of storms. This noisepreceded a perpendicular motion of three or fourseconds, followed by an undulatory movementsomewhat longer. The shocks were in oppositedirections, from north to south and from east towest. Nothing could resist the movement frombeneath upward, and undulations crossing eachother. The town of Caraccas was entirely over-thrown. Thousands of the inhabitants (betweennine and ten thousand) were buried under the ruinsof the houses and churches. The procession hadnot yet set out; but the crowd was so great in thechurches, that nearly three or four thousand personswere crushed by the fall of their vaulted roofs.The explosion was stronger toward the north, inthat part of the town situate nearest the moun-tain of Avila, and the Silla. The churches of LaTrinidad and Alta Gracia, which were more than150 feet high, and the naves of which were sup-ported by pillars of twelve or fifteen feet diameter,left a mass of ruins scarcely exceeding five or sixfeet in elevation. The sinking of the ruins hasbeen so considerable, that there now scarcely re-main any vestiges of pillars or columns. The bar-racks called El Quartel del San Carlos, situatefarther north of the church of the Trinity, on theroad from the Custom-house de la Pastora, almostentirely disappeared. A regiment of troops of theline, that was assembled under arms, ready to jointhe procession, was, with the exception of a fewmen, buried under the ruins of this great edifice.Nine-tenths of the fine town of Caraccas were en-tirely destroyed. The walls of the houses thatwere not thrown down, as those of the street SanJuan, near the Capuchin Hospital, were cracked insuch a manner, that it was impossible to run therisk of inhabiting them. The effects of the earth-quake were somewhat less violent in the westernand southern parts of the city, between the princi-pal square and the ravin of Caraguata. There thecathedral, supported by enormous buttresses, re-mains standing. “Estimating at nine or ten thousand the num-ber of the dead in the city of Caraccas, we do notinclude those unhappy persons, who, dangerouslywounded, perished several months after, for wantof food and proper care. The night of HolyThursday presented the most distressing scene ofdesolation and sorrow. That thick cloud of dust,which, rising above the ruins, darkened the skylike a fog, had settled on the ground. No shockwas felt, and never was a night more calm, or moreserene. The moon, nearly full, illumined therounded domes of the Silla, and the aspect of thesky formed a perfect contrast to that of the earth,covered with the dead, and heaped with ruins.Mothers were seen bearing in their arms their chil-dren, whom they hoped to recal to life. Desolatefamilies wandered through the city seeking a bro-ther, a husband, a friend, of whose fate they wereignorant, and whom they believed to be lost in thecrowd. The people pressed along the streets, whichcould no more be recognised but by long lines ofruins. “All the calamities experienced in the great ca-tastrophes of Lisbon, Messina, Lima, and Rio-bamba were renewed on the fatal day of the 26thof March, 1812; the wounded, buried under theruins, implored by their cries the help of thepassers by, and nearly two thousand were dug out.Never was pity displayed in a more affecting man-ner; never had it been seen more ingeniously ac-tive, than in the efforts employed to save the mi-serable victims, whose groans reached the ear. Im-plements for digging, and clearing away the ruinswere entirely wanting; and the people were obligedto use their bare hands, to disinter the living. Thewounded, as well as the sick who had escaped fromthe hospitals, were laid on the banks of the smallriver Guayra. They found no shelter but the fo-liage of trees. Beds, linen to dress the wounds,instruments of surgery, medicines, and objects ofthe most urgent necessity, were buried under theruins. Every thing, even food, was wanting dur-ing the first days. Water became alike scarce inthe interior of the city. The commotion had rentthe pipes of the fountains; the falling in of theearth had choked up the springs that suppliedthem; and it became necessary, in order to havewater, to go down to the river Guayra, which was |Spaltenumbruch|considerably swelled; and then vessels to conveythe water were wanting. “There remained a duty to be fulfilled towardthe dead, enjoined at once by piety, and the dreadof infection. It being impossible to inter so manythousand corpses, half-buried under the ruins, com-missaries were appointed to burn the bodies: andfor this purpose funeral piles were erected betweenthe heaps of ruins. This ceremony lasted severaldays. Amid so many public calamities, the peopledevoted themselves to those religious duties, whichthey thought were the most fitted to appease thewrath of Heaven. Some, assembling in processions,sang funeral hymns; others, in a state of distraction,confessed themselves aloud in the streets. In thistown was now repeated what had been remarked inthe province of Quito, after the tremendous earth-quake of 1797; a number of marriages were con-tracted between persons, who had neglected for manyyears to sanction their union by the sacerdotal bene-diction; children found parents, by whom they hadnever till then been acknowledged; restitutions werepromised by persons, who had never been accusedof fraud; and families, who had long been ene-mies, were drawn together by the tie of commoncalamity.”—pp. 12—17. Humboldt also gives the following curious ac-count of the manner in which the Indians catchthe Gymnoti, or electrical eels, by driving horsesinto the pools, and driving them out of the mud inwhich they lodge themselves:— “The extraordinary noise caused by the horses’hoofs makes the fish issue from the mud, and ex-cites them to combat. These yellowish and livideels, resembling large aquatic serpents, swim on thesurface of the water, and crowd under the belliesof the horses and mules. A contest between ani-mals of so different an organization furnishes a verystriking spectacle. The Indians, provided withharpoons and long slender reeds, surround thepool closely; and some climb upon the trees, thebranches of which extend horizontally over the sur-face of the water. By their wild cries, and thelength of their reeds, they prevent the horses fromrunning away and reaching the bank of the pool.The eels, stunned by the noise, defend them-selves by the repeated discharge of their electricbatteries. During a long time they seem to provevictorious. Several horses sink beneath the violenceof the invisible strokes, which they receive fromall sides in organs the most essential to life; andstunned by the force and frequency of the shocksdisappear under the water. Others, panting, withmane erect and haggard eyes, expressing anguish,raise themselves, and endeavour to flee from thestorm by which they are overtaken. They aredriven back by the Indians into the middle of thewater; but a small number succeed in eluding theactive vigilance of the fishermen. These regainthe shore, stumbling at every step, and stretchthemselves on the sand, exhausted with fatigue,and their limbs benumbed by the electric shocksof the gymnoti. “In less than five minutes two horses weredrowned. The eel, being five feet long, and press-ing itself against the belly of the horses, makesa discharge along the whole extent of its electricorgan. It attacks at once the heart, the intestines,and the plexus cœliacus of the abdominal nerves.It is natural that the effect felt by the horses shouldbe more powerful than that produced upon man bythe touch of the same fish at only one of his ex-tremities. The horses are probably not killed butonly stunned. They are drowned from the impos-sibility of rising amid the prolonged struggle be-tween the other horses and the eels. “We had little doubt that the fishing wouldterminate by killing successively all the animalsengaged; but by degrees the impetuosity of thisunequal combat diminished, and the weariedgymnoti dispersed. They require a long rest, andabundant nourishment, to repair what they havelost of galvanic force. The mules and horses ap-pear less frightened; their manes are no longerbristled, and their eyes express less dread. Thegymnoti approach timidly the edge of the marsh,where they are taken by means of small harpoonsfastened to long cords. When the cords are verydry the Indians feel no shock in raising the fish intothe air. In a few minutes we had five large eels,the greater part of which were but slightly wounded.Some were taken by the same means toward theevening.”—pp. 348—350. M. de Humboldt says it would be temerity toexpose oneself to the first shocks of a large andstrongly irritated gymnotus; that a stroke fromsuch a fish is productive of more pain and numbnessthan from the discharge of a large Leyden jar; andthat he received so dreadful a shock by imprudentlyplacing his feet on one just taken out of the water,that he was affected the rest of the day with a vio-lent pain in the knees, and in almost every joint.He adds, that the electric action of the fish dependsentirely on its will, and that it has the power ofdirecting the action of its organs to any particularpart of the external object that may affect it, ortowards the point where it finds itself the moststrongly irritated. We have now a dissertation of about twentypages on the nature and quality of the electricalaction of fishes, of which we can only find roomfor the following curious paragraph:— “The presence of the gymnoti is considered asthe principal cause of the want of fish in the pondsand pools of the Llanos. The gymnoti kill manymore than they devour; and the Indians told us,that when they take young alligators and gymnotiat the same time in very strong nets, the latternever display the slightest trace of a wound, be-cause they disable the young alligators before theyare attacked by them. All the inhabitants of thewaters dread the society of the gymnoti. Lizards,tortoises, and frogs seek the pools, where they aresecure from their action. It became necessary tochange the direction of a road near Uritucu, be-cause these electrical eels were so numerous in oneriver, that they every year killed a great number ofmules of burden as they forded the water.”—p. 374. In the following anecdote he describes the man- |2||Spaltenumbruch|ner in which the natives resist the attacks of thecrocodile:— “They related to us the history of a young girlof Uritucu, who by singular intrepidity and pre-sence of mind saved herself from the jaws of a cro-codile. When she felt herself seized, she soughtthe eyes of the animal, and plunged her fingersinto them with such violence, that the pain forcedthe crocodile to let her loose, after having bittenoff the lower part of her left arm. The girl, not-withstanding the enormous quantity of blood shelost, happily reached the shore, swimming with thehand she had still left. In those desert countries,where man is ever wrestling with nature, discoursedaily turns on the means that may be em-ployed to escape from a tiger, a boa or tragavenado, or a crocodile; every one prepares himselfin some sort for the dangers that await him.“I knew,” said the young girl of Uritucu coolly,“that the cayman lets go his hold, if you pushyour fingers into his eyes.” Long after my returnto Europe, I learned, that in the interior of Africathe negroes know and practice the same means.Who does not recollect with a lively interest Isaaco, the guide of the unfortunate Mungo Park, seizedtwice, near Boulinkombou, by a crocodile, andtwice escaping from the jaws of the monster, hav-ing succeeded in placing his fingers under water inboth his eyes? The African Isaaco, and theyoung American, owed their safety to the samepresence of mind, and the same combination ofideas.”—pp. 423, 424.
HUMBOLDT’S TRAVELS.
The following interesting description of the lastdreadful catastrophe which befel the city of Ca-raccas, is taken from Humboldt’s Travels, justpublished:— “A great drought prevailed at this period in theprovince of Venezuela. Not a single drop ofrain had fallen at Caraccas, or in the country ninetyleagues round, during the five months which pre-ceded the destruction of the capital. The 26th ofMarch was a remarkably hot day. The air wascalm and the sky unclouded. It was Holy Thurs-day, and a great part of the population was assem-bled in the churches. Nothing seemed to presagethe calamities of the day. At seven minutes afterfour in the afternoon the first shock was felt; itwas sufficiently powerful to make the bells of thechurches toll; it lasted five or six seconds, duringwhich time, the ground was in a continual undu-lating movement, and seemed to heave up like aboiling liquid. The danger was thought to bepast, when a tremendous subterraneous noise washeard, resembling the rolling of thunder, butlouder, and of longer continuance, than that heardwithin the tropics in time of storms. This noisepreceded a perpendicular motion of three or fourseconds, followed by an undulatory movementsomewhat longer. The shocks were in oppositedirections, from north to south and from east towest. Nothing could resist the movement frombeneath upward, and undulations crossing eachother. The town of Caraccas was entirely over-thrown. Thousands of the inhabitants (betweennine and ten thousand) were buried under the ruinsof the houses and churches. The procession hadnot yet set out; but the crowd was so great in thechurches, that nearly three or four thousand personswere crushed by the fall of their vaulted roofs.The explosion was stronger toward the north, inthat part of the town situate nearest the moun-tain of Avila, and the Silla. The churches of LaTrinidad and Alta Gracia, which were more than150 feet high, and the naves of which were sup-ported by pillars of twelve or fifteen feet diameter,left a mass of ruins scarcely exceeding five or sixfeet in elevation. The sinking of the ruins hasbeen so considerable, that there now scarcely re-main any vestiges of pillars or columns. The bar-racks called El Quartel del San Carlos, situatefarther north of the church of the Trinity, on theroad from the Custom-house de la Pastora, almostentirely disappeared. A regiment of troops of theline, that was assembled under arms, ready to jointhe procession, was, with the exception of a fewmen, buried under the ruins of this great edifice.Nine-tenths of the fine town of Caraccas were en-tirely destroyed. The walls of the houses thatwere not thrown down, as those of the street SanJuan, near the Capuchin Hospital, were cracked insuch a manner, that it was impossible to run therisk of inhabiting them. The effects of the earth-quake were somewhat less violent in the westernand southern parts of the city, between the princi-pal square and the ravin of Caraguata. There thecathedral, supported by enormous buttresses, re-mains standing. “Estimating at nine or ten thousand the num-ber of the dead in the city of Caraccas, we do notinclude those unhappy persons, who, dangerouslywounded, perished several months after, for wantof food and proper care. The night of HolyThursday presented the most distressing scene ofdesolation and sorrow. That thick cloud of dust,which, rising above the ruins, darkened the skylike a fog, had settled on the ground. No shockwas felt, and never was a night more calm, or moreserene. The moon, nearly full, illumined therounded domes of the Silla, and the aspect of thesky formed a perfect contrast to that of the earth,covered with the dead, and heaped with ruins.Mothers were seen bearing in their arms their chil-dren, whom they hoped to recal to life. Desolatefamilies wandered through the city seeking a bro-ther, a husband, a friend, of whose fate they wereignorant, and whom they believed to be lost in thecrowd. The people pressed along the streets, whichcould no more be recognised but by long lines ofruins. “All the calamities experienced in the great ca-tastrophes of Lisbon, Messina, Lima, and Rio-bamba were renewed on the fatal day of the 26thof March, 1812; the wounded, buried under theruins, implored by their cries the help of thepassers by, and nearly two thousand were dug out.Never was pity displayed in a more affecting man-ner; never had it been seen more ingeniously ac-tive, than in the efforts employed to save the mi-serable victims, whose groans reached the ear. Im-plements for digging, and clearing away the ruinswere entirely wanting; and the people were obligedto use their bare hands, to disinter the living. Thewounded, as well as the sick who had escaped fromthe hospitals, were laid on the banks of the smallriver Guayra. They found no shelter but the fo-liage of trees. Beds, linen to dress the wounds,instruments of surgery, medicines, and objects ofthe most urgent necessity, were buried under theruins. Every thing, even food, was wanting dur-ing the first days. Water became alike scarce inthe interior of the city. The commotion had rentthe pipes of the fountains; the falling in of theearth had choked up the springs that suppliedthem; and it became necessary, in order to havewater, to go down to the river Guayra, which was |Spaltenumbruch|considerably swelled; and then vessels to conveythe water were wanting. “There remained a duty to be fulfilled towardthe dead, enjoined at once by piety, and the dreadof infection. It being impossible to inter so manythousand corpses, half-buried under the ruins, com-missaries were appointed to burn the bodies: andfor this purpose funeral piles were erected betweenthe heaps of ruins. This ceremony lasted severaldays. Amid so many public calamities, the peopledevoted themselves to those religious duties, whichthey thought were the most fitted to appease thewrath of Heaven. Some, assembling in processions,sang funeral hymns; others, in a state of distraction,confessed themselves aloud in the streets. In thistown was now repeated what had been remarked inthe province of Quito, after the tremendous earth-quake of 1797; a number of marriages were con-tracted between persons, who had neglected for manyyears to sanction their union by the sacerdotal bene-diction; children found parents, by whom they hadnever till then been acknowledged; restitutions werepromised by persons, who had never been accusedof fraud; and families, who had long been ene-mies, were drawn together by the tie of commoncalamity.”—pp. 12—17. Humboldt also gives the following curious ac-count of the manner in which the Indians catchthe Gymnoti, or electrical eels, by driving horsesinto the pools, and driving them out of the mud inwhich they lodge themselves:— “The extraordinary noise caused by the horses’hoofs makes the fish issue from the mud, and ex-cites them to combat. These yellowish and livideels, resembling large aquatic serpents, swim on thesurface of the water, and crowd under the belliesof the horses and mules. A contest between ani-mals of so different an organization furnishes a verystriking spectacle. The Indians, provided withharpoons and long slender reeds, surround thepool closely; and some climb upon the trees, thebranches of which extend horizontally over the sur-face of the water. By their wild cries, and thelength of their reeds, they prevent the horses fromrunning away and reaching the bank of the pool.The eels, stunned by the noise, defend them-selves by the repeated discharge of their electricbatteries. During a long time they seem to provevictorious. Several horses sink beneath the violenceof the invisible strokes, which they receive fromall sides in organs the most essential to life; andstunned by the force and frequency of the shocksdisappear under the water. Others, panting, withmane erect and haggard eyes, expressing anguish,raise themselves, and endeavour to flee from thestorm by which they are overtaken. They aredriven back by the Indians into the middle of thewater; but a small number succeed in eluding theactive vigilance of the fishermen. These regainthe shore, stumbling at every step, and stretchthemselves on the sand, exhausted with fatigue,and their limbs benumbed by the electric shocksof the gymnoti. “In less than five minutes two horses weredrowned. The eel, being five feet long, and press-ing itself against the belly of the horses, makesa discharge along the whole extent of its electricorgan. It attacks at once the heart, the intestines,and the plexus cœliacus of the abdominal nerves.It is natural that the effect felt by the horses shouldbe more powerful than that produced upon man bythe touch of the same fish at only one of his ex-tremities. The horses are probably not killed butonly stunned. They are drowned from the impos-sibility of rising amid the prolonged struggle be-tween the other horses and the eels. “We had little doubt that the fishing wouldterminate by killing successively all the animalsengaged; but by degrees the impetuosity of thisunequal combat diminished, and the weariedgymnoti dispersed. They require a long rest, andabundant nourishment, to repair what they havelost of galvanic force. The mules and horses ap-pear less frightened; their manes are no longerbristled, and their eyes express less dread. Thegymnoti approach timidly the edge of the marsh,where they are taken by means of small harpoonsfastened to long cords. When the cords are verydry the Indians feel no shock in raising the fish intothe air. In a few minutes we had five large eels,the greater part of which were but slightly wounded.Some were taken by the same means toward theevening.”—pp. 348—350. M. de Humboldt says it would be temerity toexpose oneself to the first shocks of a large andstrongly irritated gymnotus; that a stroke fromsuch a fish is productive of more pain and numbnessthan from the discharge of a large Leyden jar; andthat he received so dreadful a shock by imprudentlyplacing his feet on one just taken out of the water,that he was affected the rest of the day with a vio-lent pain in the knees, and in almost every joint.He adds, that the electric action of the fish dependsentirely on its will, and that it has the power ofdirecting the action of its organs to any particularpart of the external object that may affect it, ortowards the point where it finds itself the moststrongly irritated. We have now a dissertation of about twentypages on the nature and quality of the electricalaction of fishes, of which we can only find roomfor the following curious paragraph:— “The presence of the gymnoti is considered asthe principal cause of the want of fish in the pondsand pools of the Llanos. The gymnoti kill manymore than they devour; and the Indians told us,that when they take young alligators and gymnotiat the same time in very strong nets, the latternever display the slightest trace of a wound, be-cause they disable the young alligators before theyare attacked by them. All the inhabitants of thewaters dread the society of the gymnoti. Lizards,tortoises, and frogs seek the pools, where they aresecure from their action. It became necessary tochange the direction of a road near Uritucu, be-cause these electrical eels were so numerous in oneriver, that they every year killed a great number ofmules of burden as they forded the water.”—p. 374. In the following anecdote he describes the man- |2||Spaltenumbruch|ner in which the natives resist the attacks of thecrocodile:— “They related to us the history of a young girlof Uritucu, who by singular intrepidity and pre-sence of mind saved herself from the jaws of a cro-codile. When she felt herself seized, she soughtthe eyes of the animal, and plunged her fingersinto them with such violence, that the pain forcedthe crocodile to let her loose, after having bittenoff the lower part of her left arm. The girl, not-withstanding the enormous quantity of blood shelost, happily reached the shore, swimming with thehand she had still left. In those desert countries,where man is ever wrestling with nature, discoursedaily turns on the means that may be em-ployed to escape from a tiger, a boa or tragavenado, or a crocodile; every one prepares himselfin some sort for the dangers that await him.“I knew,” said the young girl of Uritucu coolly,“that the cayman lets go his hold, if you pushyour fingers into his eyes.” Long after my returnto Europe, I learned, that in the interior of Africathe negroes know and practice the same means.Who does not recollect with a lively interest Isaaco, the guide of the unfortunate Mungo Park, seizedtwice, near Boulinkombou, by a crocodile, andtwice escaping from the jaws of the monster, hav-ing succeeded in placing his fingers under water inboth his eyes? The African Isaaco, and theyoung American, owed their safety to the samepresence of mind, and the same combination ofideas.”—pp. 423, 424.