576 PHYSICAL GEOGKAP1IY. 



Quick through the slender line and polish'd wand 

 It darts; and tingles in th' offending hand. 

 The palsied fisherman, in dumb surprise, 

 Feels through his frame the chilling vapours rise : 

 Drops the lost rod. and seems, in stiffening pain, 

 Some frost-fix'd wanderer on the polar plain." 



Though this is an exaggerated picture, it is still true that an electric shock is equally 

 inflicted by the torpedo, whether the fish is touched by the naked hand or by the 

 medium of a stick. The trembler, or the Silurus clcctricus of the African rivers, displays 

 the same property, and yet more remarkably, the Gynmotus clectricus, found in the basins 

 of stagnant water on the llanos of South America, and in the confluents of the Orinoco. 

 Placing his two feet upon one of the gymnoti, or electrical eels, just taken out of the 

 water, Humboldt received a shock mere violent and alarming than he ever experienced 

 from the discharge of a large Lcyden jar ; and for the rest of the day he felt an acute 

 pain in his knees, and almost all his joints. He gives a spirited account of the manner 

 in which the animal is taken. On the 19th of March, at an early hour, he set off with 

 Bonpland for the village of Ilastro de Abaxo, whence they were conducted by the 

 natives to a stream, which in the dry season forms a pool of muddy water, surrounded by 

 trees. It being very difficult to catch the gymnoti with nets, on account of their 

 extreme agility, it was resolved to procure some by intoxicating or benumbing them 

 with the roots of certain plants, which when thrown into the water produce that effect. 

 At this juncture the Indians informed them that they would fish with horses, and soon 

 brought from the savannah about thirty of these animals, which they drove into the pool. 

 The result may be given in the words of the traveller : 



" The extraordinary noise caused by the horses' hoofs makes the fishes issue from the 

 mud, and excites them to combat. These yellowish and livid eels, resembling large 

 aquatic snakes, swim at the surface of the water, and crowd under the bellies of the 

 horses and mules. The struggle between animals of so different an organisation affords 

 a very interesting sight. The Indians, furnished with harpoons and long slender reeds, 

 closely surround the pool. Some of them climb the trees, whose branches stretch 

 horizontally over the water. By their wild cries and their long reeds, they prevent the 

 horses from coming to the edge of the basin. The eels, stunned by the noise, defend 

 themselves by repeated discharges of their electrical batteries, and for a long time seem 

 likely to obtain the victory. Several horses sink under the violence of the invisible blows 

 which they receive in the organs most essential to life, and, benumbed by the force and 

 frequency of the shocks, disappear beneath the surface. Others, panting, with erect mane 

 and haggard eyes expressive of anguish, raise themselves, and endeavour to escape from the 

 storm which overtakes them, but are driven back by the Indians. A few, however, succeed 

 in eluding the active vigilance of the fishers; they gain the shore, stumble at every step, 

 and stretch themselves out on the sand, exhausted with fatigue, and having their limbs 

 benumbed by the electric shocks of the gymnoti. In less than five minutes two horses 

 were killed. The eel, which is five feet long, presses itself against the belly of the horse, 

 and makes a discharge along the whole extent of its electric organ. It attacks at once the 

 heart, the viscera, and the coeliac plexus of the abdominal nerves. It is natural that the 

 effect which a horse experiences should be more powerful than that produced by the same 

 fish on man, when he touches it only by one of the extremities. The horses are probably 

 not killed, but only stunned ; they are drowned from the impossibility of rising amid the 

 prolonged struggle between the other horses and eels." Some of the gymnoti, having 

 expended their energy, were afterwards secured, and were found to be from five to six 

 feet in length, of a fine olive-green colour. They are objects of dread to the natives, and 



