Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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On
The East Of The Ridge Of Meapire The Southern Chain Sinks Abruptly
Towards The Rio Arco And The Guarapiche;
But, on quitting the main
land, we again see it rising on the southern coast of the island of
Trinidad
Which is but a detached portion of the continent, and of
which the northern side unquestionably presents the vestiges of the
northern chain of Venezuela, that is, of the Montana de Paria (the
Paradise of Christopher Columbus), the peninsula of Araya and the
Silla of Caracas. The observations of latitude I made at the Villa de
Cura (10 degrees 2 minutes 47 seconds), the farm of Cocollar (10
degrees 9 minutes 37 seconds) and the convent of Caripe (10 degrees 10
minutes 14 seconds), compared with the more anciently known position
of the south coast of Trinidad (latitude 10 degrees 6 minutes), prove
that the southern chain, south of the basins of Valencia and of Tuy*
(* The bottom of the first of these four basins bounded by parallel
chains is from 230 to 460 toises above, and that of the two latter
from 30 to 40 toises below the present sea-level. Hot springs gush
from the bottom of the gulf of the basin of Cariaco, as from the
bottom of the basin of Valencia on the continent.) and of the gulfs of
Cariaco and Paria, is still more uniform in the direction from west to
east than the northern chain from Porto Cabello to Punta Galera. It is
highly important to know the southern limit of the littoral Cordillera
of Venezuela because it determines the parallel at which the Llanos or
the savannahs of Caracas, Barcelona and Cumana begin. On some
well-known maps we find erroneously marked between the meridians of
Caracas and Cumana two Cordilleras stretching from north to south, as
far as latitude 8 3/4 degrees, under the names of Cerros de Alta
Gracia and del Bergantin, thus describing as mountainous a territory
of 25 leagues broad, where we should seek in vain a hillock of a few
feet in height.
Turning to the island of Marguerita, composed, like the peninsula of
Araya, of micaceous slate, and anciently linked with that peninsula by
the Morro de Chacopata and the islands of Coche and Cubagua, we seem
to recognize in the two mountainous groups of Macanao and La Vega de
San Juan traces of a third coast-chain of the Cordillera of Venezuela.
Do these two groups of Marguerita, of which the most westerly is above
600 toises high, belong to a submarine chain stretching by the isle of
Tortuga, towards the Sierra de Santa Lucia de Coro, on the parallel of
11 degrees? Must we admit that in latitude 11 1/4 and 12 1/2 degrees a
fourth chain, the most northerly of all, formerly stretched out in the
direction of the island of Hermanos, by Blanquilla, Los Roques,
Orchila, Aves, Buen Ayre, Curacao and Oruba, towards Cape Chichivacoa?
These important problems can only be solved when the chain of islands
parallel with the coast has been properly examined.
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