Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 746 of 779 - First - Home
We
Opened The Barometer At The Highest Point Of The Mountain Las
Cocuyzas,* (* Absolute Height 845 Toises.) And Found Ourselves
Almost At The Same Elevation As On The Table-Land Of Buenavista,
Which Is Scarcely Ten Toises Higher.
The prospect at Las Lagunetas is extensive, but rather uniform.
This mountainous and uncultivated tract of ground between the
sources of the Guayra and the Tuy is more than twenty-five square
leagues in extent.
We there found only one miserable village, that
of Los Teques, south-east of San Pedro. The soil is as it were
furrowed by a multitude of valleys, the smallest of which, parallel
with each other, terminate at right angles in the largest valleys.
The back of the mountains presents an aspect as monotonous as the
ravines; it has no pyramidal forms, no ridges, no steep
declivities. I am inclined to think that the undulation of this
ground, which is for the most part very gentle, is less owing to
the nature of the rocks, (to the decomposition of the gneiss for
instance), than to the long presence of the water and the action of
currents. The limestone mountains of Cumana present the same
phenomenon north of Tumiriquiri.
From Las Lagunetas we descended into the valley of the Rio Tuy.
This western slope of the mountains of Los Teques bears the name of
Las Cocuyzas, and it is covered with two plants with agave leaves;
the maguey of Cocuyza, and the maquey of Cocuy. The latter belongs
to the genus Yucca.* (* Yucca acaulis, Humb.) Its sweet and
fermented juice yields a spirit by distillation; and I have seen
the young leaves of this plant eaten.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 746 of 779
Words from 202582 to 202859
of 211363
