112 A. SCIENTIFIC NATIVE. 



electrometers; an apparatus nearly as complete as our 

 first scientific men in Europe possess. All these articles 

 had not been purchased in the United States; they were 

 the work of a man who had never seen any instrument, 

 who had no person to consult, and who was acquainted with 

 the phenomena of electricity only by reading the treatise of 

 De Lafond, and Franklin's Memoirs. Sefior Carlos del 

 Pozo, the name of this enlightened and ingenious man, had 

 begun to make cylindrical electrical machines, by employing 

 large glass jars, after having cut off the necks. It was only 

 within a few years he had been able to procure, by way of 

 Philadelphia, two plates, to construct a plate machine, and 

 fco obtain more considerable effects. It is easy to judge 

 what difficulties Sefior Pozo had to encounter, since the first 

 works upon electricity had fallen into his hands, and that 

 he had the courage to resolve to procure himself, by hia 

 own industry, all that he had seen described in his books. 

 Till now he had enjoyed only the astonishment and admi- 

 ration produced by his experiments on persons destitute of 

 all information, and who had never quitted the solitude of 

 the Llanos; our abode at Calabozo gave him a satisfaction 

 altogether new. It may be supposed that he set some value 

 on the opinions of two travellers who could compare his 

 apparatus with those constructed in Europe. I had brought 

 with me electrometers mounted with straw, pith-balls, and 

 gold-leaf; also a small Ley den jar which could be charged 

 by friction according to the method of Ingenhousz, and 

 which served for my physiological experiments. Sefior del 

 Pozo could not contain his joy on seeing for the first time 

 instruments which he had not made, yet which appeared to 

 be copied from his own. "We also showed him the effect of 

 the contact of heterogeneous metals on the nerves of frogs. 

 The name of Gralvani and Volta had not previously been 

 heard in those vast solitudes. 



Next to his electrical apparatus, th* work of the industry 

 and intelligence of an inhabitant of the Llanos, nothing at 

 Calabozo excited in us so great an interest as the gymnoti, 

 which are animated electrical apparatuses. I was impatient, 

 from the time of my arrival at Cuinana, to procure electrical 

 eels. We had been promised them often, but our ho oca 

 had always been disappointed Money loses its value aa 



