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 The Wonder Of The Country.
The Prefect Of The Capuchins Completed The Building Of This Church
In Less Than Two Summers, Though He Employed Only The Indians Of
His Village.
The mouldings of the capitals, the cornices, and a
frieze decorated with suns and arabesques, are executed in clay
mixed with pounded brick.
If we are surprised to find churches in
the purest Grecian style on the confines of Lapland,* (* At
Skelefter, near Torneo. - Buch, Voyage en Norwege.) we are still
more struck with these first essays of art, in a region where
everything indicates the wild state of man, and where the basis of
civilization has not been laid by Europeans more than forty years.
I stopped at the Mission of San Antonio only to open the barometer,
and to take a few altitudes of the sun. The elevation of the great
square above Cumana is 216 toises. After having crossed the
village, we forded the rivers Colorado and Guarapiche, both of
which rise in the mountains of the Cocollar, and blend their waters
lower down towards the east. The Colorado has a very rapid current,
and becomes at its mouth broader than the Rhine. The Guarapiche, at
its junction with the Rio Areo, is more than twenty-five fathoms
deep. Its banks are ornamented by a superb gramen, of which I made
a drawing two years afterward on ascending the river Magdalena. The
distich-leaved stalk of this gramen often reaches the height of
fifteen or twenty feet.* (* Lata, or cana brava.
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