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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The Trunks Of The Latter Are Not Very Thick, And
Are Of A Black Colour Towards The Summit, As If Burnt By The Oxygen
Of The Atmosphere.
We are surprised to find so noble a tree, which
has the port of the theophrasta and the palm-tree, bearing
generally only eight or ten terminal leaves.
The ants, which
inhabit the trunk of the guarumo, or jarumo, and destroy its
interior cells, seem to impede its growth. We had already made one
herborization in the temperate mountains of the Higuerote in the
month of December, accompanying the capitan-general, Senor de
Guevara, in an excursion with the intendant of the province to the
Valles de Aragua. M. Bonpland then found in the thickest part of
the forest some plants of aguatire, the wood of which, celebrated
for its fine red colour, will probably one day become an article of
exportation to Europe. It is the Sickingia erythroxylon described
by Bredemeyer and Willdenouw.
Descending the woody mountain of the Higuerote to the south-west,
we reached the small village of San Pedro, situated in a basin
where several valleys meet, and almost three hundred toises lower
than the table-land of Buenavista. Plantain-trees, potatoes,* (*
Solanum tuberosum.) and coffee are cultivated together on this
spot. The village is very small, and the church not yet finished.
We met at an inn (pulperia) several European Spaniards employed at
the government tobacco farm. Their dissatisfaction formed a strange
contrast to our feelings. They were fatigued with their journey,
and they vented their displeasure in complaints and maledictions on
the wretched country, or to use their own phrase, estas tierras
infelices, in which they were doomed to live. We, on the other
hand, were enchanted with the wild scenery, the fertility of the
soil, and the mildness of the climate. Near San Pedro, the talcose
gneiss of Buenavista passes into a mica-slate filled with garnets,
and containing subordinate beds of serpentine. Something analogous
to this is met with at Zoblitz in Saxony. The serpentine, which is
very pure and of a fine green, varied with spots of a lighter tint,
often appears only superimposed on the mica-slate. I found in it a
few garnets, but no metaloid diallage.
The valley of San Pedro, through which flows the river of the same
name, separates two great masses of mountains, the Higuerote and
Las Cocuyzas. We ascended westward in the direction of the small
farms of Las Lagunetos and Garavatos. These are solitary houses,
which serve as inns, and where the mule-drivers obtain their
favourite beverage, the guarapo, or fermented juice of the
sugar-cane: intoxication is very common among the Indians who
frequent this road. Near Garavatos there is a mica-slate rock of
singular form; it is a ridge, or steep wall, crowned by a tower. 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. The fibres of the full-grown
leaves furnish cords of extraordinary strength.* (* At the clock of
the cathedral of Caracas, a cord of maguey, half an inch in
diameter, sustained for fifteen years a weight of 350 pounds.)
Leaving the mountains of the Higuerote and Los Teques, we entered a
highly cultivated country, covered with hamlets and villages;
several of which would in Europe be called towns. From east to
west, on a line of twelve leagues in extent, we passed La Victoria,
San Mateo, Turmero, and Maracay, containing together more than 28,
000 inhabitants. The plains of the Tuy may be considered as the
eastern extremity of the valleys of Aragua, extending from Guigne,
on the borders of the lake of Valencia, as far as the foot of Las
Cocuyzas. A barometrical measurement gave me 295 toises for the
absolute height of the Valle del Tuy, near the farm of Manterola,
and 222 toises for that of the surface of the lake. The Rio Tuy,
flowing from the mountains of Las Cocuyzas, runs first towards the
west, then turning to the south and to the east, it takes its
course along the high savannahs of Ocumare, receives the waters of
the valley of Caracas, and reaches the sea near cape Codera. It is
the small portion of its basin in the westward direction which,
geologically speaking, would seem to belong to the valley of
Aragua, if the hills of calcareous tufa, breaking the continuity of
these valleys between Consejo and La Victoria, did not deserve some
consideration.
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