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 The
Months Of September, October, And November, The Current Often Flows
Eastward For Fifteen Or Twenty Days In Succession; And Vessels On
Their Way From Guayra To Porto Cabello Have Sometimes Been Unable
To Stem The Current Which Runs From West To East, Although They
Have Had The Wind Astern.
The cause of these anomalies is not yet
discovered.
The pilots think they are the effect of gales of wind
from the north-west in the gulf of Mexico.
On the 21st of November, at sunrise, we were to the west of Cape
Codera, opposite Curuao. The coast is rocky and very elevated, the
scenery at once wild and picturesque. We were sufficiently near
land to distinguish scattered huts surrounded by cocoa-trees, and
masses of vegetation, which stood out from the dark ground of the
rocks. The mountains are everywhere perpendicular, and three or
four thousand feet high; their sides cast broad and deep shadows
upon the humid land, which stretches out to the sea, glowing with
the freshest verdure. This shore produces most of those fruits of
the hot regions, which are seen in such great abundance in the
markets of the Caracas. The fields cultivated with sugar-cane and
maize, between Camburi and Niguatar, stretch through narrow
valleys, looking like crevices or clefts in the rocks: and
penetrated by the rays of the sun, then above the horizon, they
presented the most singular contrasts of light and shade.
The mountain of Niguatar and the Silla of Caracas are the loftiest
summits of this littoral chain.
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