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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In Regions Where Organized Nature Is So Powerful And
Active, Man Summons As Auxiliaries In His Defence The Carnivorous
Reptile, And The Plant With Its Formidable Armour Of Thorns.
The castle is only thirty toises above the level of the water in
the gulf of Cariaco.
Standing on a naked and calcareous hill, it
commands the town, and has a very picturesque effect when viewed
from a vessel entering the port. It forms a bright object against
the dark curtains of those mountains which raise their summits to
the clouds, and of which the vaporous and bluish tint blends with
the azure sky. On descending from Fort San Antonio to the
south-west, we find on the slope of the same rock the ruins of the
old castle of Santa Maria. This site is delightful to those who
wish to enjoy at the approach of sunset the freshness of the breeze
and the view of the gulf. The lofty summits of the island of
Margareta are seen above the rocky coast of the isthmus of Araya,
and towards the west the small islands of Caracas, Picuita, and
Boracha, recall to mind the catastrophes that have overwhelmed the
coasts of Terra Firma. These islets resemble fortifications, and
from the effect of the mirage (while the inferior strata of the
air, the ocean, and the soil, are unequally heated by the sun),
their points appear raised like the extremity of the great
promontories of the coast. It is pleasing, during the day, to
observe these inconstant phenomena; we see, as night approaches,
these stony masses which had been suspended in the air, settle down
on their bases; and the luminary, whose presence vivifies organic
nature, seems by the variable inflection of its rays to impress
motion on the stable rock, and give an undulating movement to
plains covered with arid sands.* (* The real cause of the mirage,
or the extraordinary refraction which the rays undergo when strata
of air of different densities lie over each other, was guessed at
by Hooke.
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