336 Historical 



the others, the most peculiar ones, seek the cause of the symptoms 

 in something other than the fall of the barometer. We shall begin 

 with the latter. 



Pestilential exhalations. The explanations which put forward 

 pestilential exhalations, either from the ground or from toxic 

 plants, must be given a moment of our time. 



They have their origin in the absolute ignorance of the native 

 peoples about the very existence of an atmosphere. Therefore the 

 Indians and the Tartars of the Himalayas, the Redskins of the 

 Andes and their successors, almost as uncivilized as they, did not 

 hesitate to attribute the symptoms which struck them and their 

 domestic animals to some mysterious poisoning. In the Andes, the 

 frequent presence of metallic ores and the evident effect of moun- 

 tain sickness upon the unfortunate miners gave rise to the belief 

 that there issued from buried metals, and particularly from anti- 

 mony, "which plays," says Tschudi, "an important part in their 

 physics and metallurgy," emanations dangerous to all those who 

 passed over their veins. Hence the name soroche, which means 

 both antimony and mountain sickness. 



In central Asia, the idea of exhalations from the earth also 

 occurred to the people, especially towards China; we saw that 

 Father Hue did not hesitate, with his usual credulity, to declare 

 that the symptoms of Bourhan-Bota were due to carbonic acid 

 from the ground (page 238) . 



Volcanic mountains, like Etna, the Peak of Teneriffe, the moun- 

 tains of North America, because of deleterious vapors which rise 

 from certain crevasses, have caused among travellers a much more 

 pardonable confusion between the effect of the altitude and that 

 of the mephitic gases; we have seen examples of it. 



All through the Himalayas, the mountaineers do not hesitate 

 to attribute the distress from which they suffer to volatile poisons 

 emanating from flowers or plants. Generally the narratives of the 

 travellers limit themselves to these vague expressions; but when 

 they are more exact, the strangest divergences appear. 



The Chinese author whom we quoted (page 129) gives rhubarb 

 as the cause. When Fraser's coolies complain of the seran and 

 blame the flowers which cover the ground, he looks around him 

 and finds primroses, heather, and polyanthus (page 132) . For Mis- 

 tress Hervey, whose distress we have narrated, it is a sort of moss, 

 the boottee, which the natives show her as the cause of all her 

 troubles (page 148) . They could not show Cheetam the dewaighas, 

 the mysterious and toxic plant (page 153) . Henderson reports that 

 they blamed artemisia (page 295) , and Drew, the onion (page 295) . 



