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. Senor 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 
to obtain more considerable effects. It is easy to judge 
what difficulties Senor 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 his 
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 Leyden jar which could be charged 
by friction according to the method of Ingenhousz, and 
which served for my physiological experiments. Senor 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 Galvani and Volta had not previously been 
heard in those vast solitudes. 
Next to his electrical apparatus, the 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 Cumana, to procure electrical 
eels. We had been promised them often, but our hooes 
had always been disappointed Money loses its value as 
