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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Beneath This Misty Sky, I Could Scarcely Imagine Myself
To Be In One Of The Temperate Valleys Of The Torrid Zone; But
Rather In The North Of Germany, Among The Pines And The Larches
That Cover The Mountains Of The Hartz.
But this gloomy aspect, this contrast between the clearness of
morning and the cloudy sky of evening, is not observable in the
midst of summer.
The nights of June and July are clear and
delicious. The atmosphere then preserves, almost without
interruption, the purity and transparency peculiar to the
table-lands and elevated valleys of these regions in calm weather,
as long as the winds do not mingle together strata of air of
unequal temperature. That is the season for enjoying the beauty of
the landscape, which, however, I saw clearly illumined only during
a few days at the end of January. The two rounded summits of the
Silla are seen at Caracas, almost under the same angles of
elevation* as the peak of Teneriffe at the port of Orotava.* (* I
found, at the square of Trinidad, the apparent height of the Silla
to be 11 degrees 12 minutes 49 seconds. It was about four thousand
five hundred toises distant.) The first half of the mountain is
covered with short grass; then succeeds the zone of evergreen trees,
reflecting a purple light at the season when the befaria, the
alpine rose-tree* (* Rhododendron ferrugineum of the Alps.) of
equinoctial America, is in blossom. The rocky masses rise above
this wooded zone in the form of domes. Being destitute of
vegetation, they increase by the nakedness of their surface the
apparent height of a mountain which, in the temperate parts of
Europe, would scarcely rise to the limit of perpetual snow. The
cultivated region of the valley, and the gay plains of Chacao,
Petare, and La Vega, form an agreeable contrast to the imposing
aspect of the Silla, and the great irregularities of the ground on
the north of the town.
The climate of Caracas has often been called a perpetual spring.
The same sort of climate exists everywhere, halfway up the
Cordilleras of equinoctial America, between four hundred and nine
hundred toises of elevation, except in places where the great
breadth of the valleys, combined with an arid soil, causes an
extraordinary intensity* of radiant caloric. (* As at Carthago and
Ibague in New Grenada.) What can we conceive to be more delightful
than a temperature which in the day keeps between 20 and 26 degrees
(Between 16 and 20.8 degrees Reaum.); and at night between 16 and
18 degrees (Between 12.8 and 14.4 degrees Reaum.), which is equally
favourable to the plantain, the orange-tree, the coffee-tree, the
apple, the apricot, and corn? Jose de Oviedo y Banos, the
historiographer of Venezuela, calls the situation of Caracas that
of a terrestrial paradise, and compares the Anauco and the
neighbouring torrents to the four rivers of the Garden of Eden.
It is to be regretted that this delightful climate is generally
inconstant and variable.
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