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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We Were
Long Without Perceiving The Bold Coasts Of The Island Of Margareta,
Where We Were To Stop For The Purpose Of Ascertaining Whether We
Could Touch At Guayra.
We had learned, by altitudes of the sun,
taken under very favourable circumstances, how incorrect at that
period were the most highly-esteemed marine charts.
On the morning
of the 15th, when the time-keeper placed us in 66 degrees 1 minute
15 seconds longitude, we were not yet in the meridian of Margareta
island; though according to the reduced chart of the Atlantic ocean,
we ought to have passed the very lofty western cape of this island,
which is laid down in longitude 66 degrees 0 minutes. The
inaccuracy with which the coasts were delineated previously to the
labours of Fidalgo, Noguera, and Tiscar, and I may venture to add,
before the astronomical observations I made at Cumana, might have
become dangerous to navigators, were not the sea uniformly calm in
those regions. The errors in latitude were still greater than those
in longitude, for the coasts of New Andalusia stretch to the
westward of Cape Three Points (or tres Puntas) fifteen or twenty
miles more to the north, than appears in the charts published
before the year 1800.
About eleven in the morning we perceived a very low islet, covered
with a few sandy downs, and on which we discovered with our glasses
no trace of habitation or culture. Cylindrical cactuses rose here
and there in the form of candelabra.
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