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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The Littoral Chain Of Venezuela, Of Which The
Different Ranges Form The Montana De Paria, The Isthmus Of Araya, The
Silla of Caracas and the gneiss-granite mountains north and south of
the lake of Valencia, is joined between Porto
Cabello, San Felipe and
Tocuyo to the Paramos de las Rosas and Niquitao, which form the
north-east extremity of the Sierra de Merida, and the eastern
Cordillera of the Andes of New Grenada. It is sufficient here to
mention this connexion, so important in a geological point of view;
for the denominations of Andes and Cordilleras being altogether in
disuse as applied to the chains of mountains extending from the
eastern gulf of Maracaibo to the promontory of Paria, we shall
continue to designate those chains (stretching from west to east) by
the names of littoral chain, or coast-chain of Venezuela.
Of the three insulated groups of mountains, that is to say, those
which are not branches of the Cordillera of the Andes and its
continuation towards the shore of Venezuela, one is on the north, and
the other two on the west of the Andes: that on the north is the
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; the two others are the Sierra de la
Parime, between 4 and 8 degrees of north latitude, and the mountains
of Brazil, between 15 and 28 degrees south latitude. This singular
distribution of great inequalities of soil produces three plains or
basins, comprising a surface of 420,600 square leagues, or four-fifths
of all South America, east of the Andes.
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