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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But We Could Not Long Avail Ourselves Of The Advantage Arising From
The Position Of The Silla, In Commanding All The Neighbouring
Summits.
While we were examining with our glasses that part of the
sea, the horizon of which was clearly defined,
And the chain of the
mountains of Ocumare, behind which begins the unknown world of the
Orinoco and the Amazon, a thick fog from the plains rose to the
elevated regions, first filling the bottom of the valley of
Caracas. The vapours, illumined from above, presented a uniform
tint of a milky white. The valley seemed overspread with water, and
looked like an arm of the sea, of which the adjacent mountains
formed the steep shore. In vain we waited for the slave who carried
Ramsden's great sextant. Eager to avail myself of the favourable
state of the sky, I resolved to take a few solar altitudes with a
sextant by Troughton of two inches radius. The disk of the sun was
half-concealed by the mist. The difference of longitude between the
quarter of the Trinidad and the eastern peak of the Silla appears
scarcely to exceed 0 degrees 3 minutes 22 seconds.* (* The difference
of longitude between the Silla and La Guayra, according to Fidalgo,
is 0 degrees 6 minutes 40 seconds.)
Whilst, seated on the rock, I was determining the dip of the
needle, I found my hands covered with a species of hairy bee, a
little smaller than the honey-bee of the north of Europe.
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