Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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From The Top Of A Hill Of Sandstone, Which Overlooks The Spring Of
Quetepe, We Had A Magnificent View Of The Sea, Of Cape Macanao, And
The Peninsula Of Maniquarez.
At our feet an immense forest extended
to the edge of the ocean.
The tops of the trees, intertwined with
lianas, and crowned with long wreaths of flowers, formed a vast
carpet of verdure, the dark tint of which augmented the splendour
of the aerial light. This picture struck us the more forcibly, as
we then first beheld those great masses of tropical vegetation. On
the hill of Quetepe, at the foot of the Malpighia cocollobaefolia,
the leaves of which are extremely coriaceous, we gathered, among
tufts of the Polygala montana, the first melastomas, especially
that beautiful species described under the name of the Melastoma
rufescens.
As we advanced toward the south-west, the soil became dry and
sandy. We climbed a group of mountains, which separate the coast
from the vast plains, or savannahs, bordered by the Orinoco. That
part of the group, over which passes the road to Cumanacoa, is
destitute of vegetation, and has steep declivities both on the
north and the south. It has received the name of the Imposible,
because it is believed that, in the case of hostile invasion, this
ridge of mountains would be inaccessible to the enemy, and would
offer an asylum to the inhabitants of Cumana. We reached the top a
little before sunset, and I had scarcely time to take a few horary
angles, to determine the longitude of the place by means of the
chronometer.
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