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 Not A Central Point Of Commerce, Like Mexico,
Santa Fe De Bogota, And Quito.
Each of the seven provinces united
in one capitania-general has a port, by which its produce is
exported.
It is sufficient to consider the position of the
provinces, their respective degree of intercourse with the Windward
Islands, the direction of the mountains, and the course of the
great rivers, to perceive that Caracas can never exercise any
powerful political influence over the territories of which it is
the capital. The Apure, the Meta, and the Orinoco, running from
west to east, receive all the streams of the llanos, or the region
of pasturage. St. Thomas de la Guiana will necessarily, at some
future day, be a trading-place of high importance, especially when
the flour of New Grenada, embarked above the confluence of the Rio
Negro and the Umadea, and descending by the Meta and Orinoco, shall
be preferred at Caracas and Guiana to the flour of New England. It
is a great advantage to the provinces of Venezuela, that their
territorial wealth is not directed to one point, like that of
Mexico and New Grenada, which flows to Vera Cruz and Carthagena;
but that they possess a great number of towns equally well peopled,
and forming various centres of commerce and civilization.
The city of Caracas is seated at the entrance of the plain of
Chacao, which extends three leagues eastward, in the direction of
Caurimare and the Cuesta de Auyamas, and is two leagues and a half
in breadth. This plain, through which runs the Rio Guayra, is at
the elevation of four hundred and fourteen toises above the level
of the sea. The ground on which the city of Caracas is built is
uneven, and has a steep slope from north-north-west to
south-south-east. To form an accurate idea of the situation of
Caracas, we must bear in mind the general direction of the
mountains of the coast, and the great longitudinal valleys by which
they are traversed. The Rio Guayra rises in the group of primitive
mountains of Higuerote, which separates the valley of Caracas from
that of Aragua. It is formed near Las Ajuntas, by the junction of
the little rivers of San Pedro and Macarao, and runs first eastward
as far as the Cuesta of Auyamas, and then southward, uniting its
waters with those of the Rio Tuy, below Yare. The Rio Tuy is the
only considerable river in the northern and mountainous part of the
province.
The river flows in a direct course from west to east, the distance
of thirty leagues, and it is navigable along more than three
quarters of that distance. By barometrical measurements I found the
slope of the Tuy along this length, from the plantation of
Manterola* (* At the foot of the high mountain of Cocuyza, 3 east
from Victoria.) to its mouth, east of Cape Codera, to be two
hundred and ninety-five toises. This river forms in the chain of
the coast a kind of longitudinal valley, while the waters of the
llanos, or of five-sixths of the province of Caracas, follow the
slope of the land southward, and join the Orinoco.
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