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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It Has Received The Name Of The Imposible,
Because It Is Believed That, In The Case Of Hostile Invasion, This
Ridge Of Mountains Would Be Inaccessible To The Enemy, And Would
Offer An Asylum To The Inhabitants Of Cumana.
We reached the top a
little before sunset, and I had scarcely time to take a few horary
angles, to determine the longitude of the place by means of the
chronometer.
The view from the Imposible is finer and more extensive than that
from the table-land of Quetepe. We distinguished clearly by the
naked eye the flattened top of the Brigantine (the position of
which it would be important to fix accurately), the embarcadero or
landing-place, and the roadstead of Cumana. The rocky coast of the
peninsula of Araya was discernible in its whole length. We were
particularly struck with the extraordinary configuration of a port,
known by the name of Laguna Grande, or Laguna del Obispo. A vast
basin, surrounded by high mountains, communicates with the gulf of
Cariaco by a narrow channel which admits only of the passage of one
ship at a time. This port is capable of containing several
squadrons at once. It is an uninhabited place, but annually
frequented by vessels, which carry mules to the West India Islands.
There are some pasture grounds at the farther end of the bay. We
traced the sinuosities of this arm of the sea, which, like a river,
has dug a bed between perpendicular rocks destitute of vegetation.
This singular prospect reminded us of the fanciful landscape which
Leonardo da Vinci has made the back-ground of his famous portrait
of Mona Lisa, the wife of Francisco del Giacondo.
We could observe by the chronometer the moment when the disk of the
sun touched the horizon of the sea. The first contact was at 6
hours 8 minutes 13 seconds; the second, at 6 hours 10 minutes 26
seconds; mean time. This observation, which is not unimportant for
the theory of terrestrial refractions, was made on the summit of
the mountain, at the absolute height of 296 toises. The setting of
the sun was attended by a very rapid cooling of the air. Three
minutes after the last apparent contact of the disk with the
horizon of the sea, the thermometer suddenly fell from 25.2 to 21.3
degrees. Was this extraordinary refrigeration owing to some
descending current? The air was however calm, and no horizontal
wind was felt.
We passed the night in a house where there was a military post
consisting of eight men, under the command of a Spanish serjeant.
It was an hospital, built by the side of a powder magazine. When
Cumana, after the capture of Trinidad by the English, in 1797, was
threatened with an attack, many of the inhabitants fled to
Cumanacoa, and deposited whatever articles of value they possessed
in sheds hastily constructed on the top of the Imposible. It was
then resolved, in case of any unforeseen invasion, to abandon the
castle of San Antonio, after a short resistance, and to concentrate
the whole force of the province round the mountains, which may be
considered as the key of the Llanos.
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