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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That Is The Season For Enjoying The Beauty Of
The Landscape, Which, However, I Saw Clearly Illumined Only During
A Few Days At The End Of January.
The two rounded summits of the
Silla are seen at Caracas, almost under the same angles of
elevation* as the peak of Teneriffe at the port of Orotava.* (* I
found, at the square of Trinidad, the apparent height of the Silla
to be 11 degrees 12 minutes 49 seconds.
It was about four thousand
five hundred toises distant.) The first half of the mountain is
covered with short grass; then succeeds the zone of evergreen trees,
reflecting a purple light at the season when the befaria, the
alpine rose-tree* (* Rhododendron ferrugineum of the Alps.) of
equinoctial America, is in blossom. The rocky masses rise above
this wooded zone in the form of domes. Being destitute of
vegetation, they increase by the nakedness of their surface the
apparent height of a mountain which, in the temperate parts of
Europe, would scarcely rise to the limit of perpetual snow. The
cultivated region of the valley, and the gay plains of Chacao,
Petare, and La Vega, form an agreeable contrast to the imposing
aspect of the Silla, and the great irregularities of the ground on
the north of the town.
The climate of Caracas has often been called a perpetual spring.
The same sort of climate exists everywhere, halfway up the
Cordilleras of equinoctial America, between four hundred and nine
hundred toises of elevation, except in places where the great
breadth of the valleys, combined with an arid soil, causes an
extraordinary intensity* of radiant caloric.
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