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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I Saw This
Latter Peak From The Heights That Surrounded The Village Of Turbaco,
South Of Carthagena.
No precise measurement has hitherto given us the
height of the Sierra Nevada, which Dampier affirms to be one of the
highest mountains of the northern hemisphere.
Calculations founded on
the maximum of distance at which the group is discerned at sea, give a
height of more than 3004 toises. That the group of the mountains of
Santa Marta is insulated is proved by the hot climate of the lands
(tierras calientes) that surround it. Low ridges and a succession of
hills indicate, perhaps, an ancient connection between the Sierra
Nevada de Santa Marta on one side, by the Alto de las Minas, with the
phonolitic and granitic rocks of the Penon and Banca, and on the
other, by the Sierra de Perija, with the mountains of Chiliguana and
Ocana, which are the spurs of the eastern chain of the Andes of New
Grenada. In this latter chain, the febrifuge species of cinchona
(corollis hirsutis, staminibus inclusis) are found in the Sierra
Nevada de Merida; but the real cinchona, the most northern of South
America, is found in the temperate region of the Sierra Nevada de
Santa Marta.
3. LITTORAL CHAIN OF VENEZUELA.
This is the system of mountains the configuration and direction of
which have excited so powerful an influence on the cultivation and
commerce of the ancient Capitania General of Venezuela. It bears
different names, as the mountains of Coro, of Caracas, of the
Bergantin, of Barcelona, of Cumana, and of Paria; but all these names
belong to the same chain, of which the northern part runs along the
coast of the Caribbean Sea.
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