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 Is A
Perpendicular Wall, Or, To Use A More Expressive Term Of The
Spanish Navigators, A Table (Mesa).
This peculiar form, and the
symmetrical arrangement of a few cones which surround the
Brigantine, made me at first think that this group, which is wholly
calcareous, contained rocks of basaltic or trappean formation.
The governor of Cumana sent, in 1797, a band of determined men to
explore this entirely desert country, and to open a direct road to
New Barcelona, by the summit of the Mesa. It was reasonably
expected that this way would be shorter, and less dangerous to the
health of travellers, than the route taken by the couriers along
the coasts; but every attempt to cross the chain of the mountains
of the Brigantine was fruitless. In this part of America, as in
Australia* to the west of Sydney, it is not so much the height of
the mountain chains, as the form of the rocks, that presents
obstacles difficult to surmount. (* The Blue Mountains of
Australia, and those of Carmarthen and Lansdowne, are not visible,
in clear weather, beyond fifty miles. - Peron, Voyage aux Terres
Australes page 389. Supposing the angle of altitude half a degree,
the absolute height of these mountains would be about 620 toises.)
The longitudinal valley formed by the lofty mountains of the
interior and the southern declivity of the Cerro de San Antonio, is
intersected by the Rio Manzanares. This plain, the only thoroughly
wooded part in the environs of Cumana, is called the Plain of the
Charas,* on account of the numerous plantations which the
inhabitants have begun, for some years past, along the river.
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