United States or Costa Rica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Thermometrical observations, made at the same heights and in the same latitudes, render it probable that, at the Pejual of the Silla, one thousand toises above the Caribbean Sea, the mean temperature of the air is still 17 or 18 degrees; and that the thermometer keeps, in the coolest season, between 15 and 20 degrees in the day, and in the night between 10 and 12 degrees. At the hospital of St.

We relinquished our design of passing the night between the two summits of the Silla, and having again found the path we had cut through the thick wood of heliconia, we soon arrived at the Pejual, the region of odoriferous and resinous plants. The beauty of the befarias, and their branches covered with large purple flowers, again rivetted our attention.

When, in these climates, a botanist gathers plants to form his herbal, he becomes difficult in his choice in proportion to the luxuriance of vegetation. He casts away those which have been first cut, because they appear less beautiful than those which were out of reach. Though loaded with plants before quitting the Pejual, we still regretted not having made a more ample harvest.

We spent a long time in examining the fine resinous and fragrant plants of the Pejual. The sky became more and more cloudy, and the thermometer sank below 11 degrees, a temperature at which, in this zone, people begin to suffer from the cold. Quitting the little thicket of alpine plants, we found ourselves again in a savannah.

When nature does not present the same species, she loves to repeat the same genera. Neighbouring species are often placed at enormous distances from each other, in the low regions of the temperate zone, and on the alpine heights of the equator. We found the same Thibaudia glandulosa at the entrance of the table-land of Bogota, and in the Pejual of the Silla.