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Electric machines, electric eels |
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In Calabozo, in the middle of the llanos, we found an electric machine with great discs, electrophori, batteries and electrometers; an apparatus as comlete as any found in Europe. These objects had not been bought inAmerica but made by a man who had never seen any instruments,… and who knew about electricity only from reading… Franklin's Mémoires.… With me I had electronmeters mounted in straw, pithballs and gold leaf, as well as a small Leyden jar that could be charged by rubbing…. We also showed him the effects of the contract of different metals on the nerves of frogs. The names of Galvani and Volta had not yet echoed in these vast solitudes.After the electric apparatus, … nothing interested us more in Calabozo than the gymnoti, living electric apparatuses. I had busied myself daily over many years with the phenomenon of Galvanic electricity…. I had built real batteries by placing metal discs on top of each other and alternating them with bits of muscle flesh, or other humid matter, and so was eager, after arriving at Cumaná, to obtain electric eels.…The eel is the largest of the electric fish; I have measured one that is 5 feet 3 inches long.… It would be dangerous to expose yourself to the shocks from a large excited eel. |
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from Alexander von Humboldt, Jaguars & Electric Eels, translated by Jason Wilson. |
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Humboldt's travel through the Americas began in 1799 and ended in 1804. The "Personal Narrative" comprises the final three volumes of his "Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent", which comprises thirty-five volumes, and was written betweeen 1805 and 1834. Thus Humboldt is recollecting events and emotions that span not only the years of his travel, but those well before it; and he wrote his narration after the travel (sometimes many years after its end). The title "Jaguars & Electric Eels" was supplied for this translation and edition, and is not by Humboldt. |