Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Llanos, However, Notwithstanding The Apparent Uniformity Of Their
Surface, Present Two Kinds Of Inequalities, Which Cannot Escape The
Observation Of The Traveller.
The first is known by the name of banks
(bancos); they are in reality shoals in the basin of the steppes,
fractured strata of sandstone, or compact limestone, standing four or
five feet higher than the rest of the plain.
These banks are sometimes
three or four leagues in length; they are entirely smooth, with a
horizontal surface; their existence is perceived only by examining
their margins. The second species of inequality can be recognised only
by geodesical or barometric levellings, or by the course of rivers. It
is called a mesa or table, and is composed of small flats, or rather
convex eminences, that rise insensibly to the height of a few toises.
Such are, towards the east, in the province of Cumana, on the north of
the Villa de la Merced and Candelaria, the Mesas of Amana, of Guanipa,
and of Jonoro, the direction of which is south-west and north-east;
and which, in spite of their inconsiderable elevation, divide the
waters between the Orinoco and the northern coast of Terra Firma. The
convexity of the savannah alone occasions this partition: we there
find the dividing of the waters (divortia aquarum* (* "C. Manlium
prope jugis [Tauri] ad divortia aquarum castra posuisse." Livy lib. 38
c. 75.)), as in Poland, where, far from the Carpathian mountains, the
plain itself divides the waters between the Baltic and the Black Sea.
Geographers, who suppose the existence of a chain of mountains
wherever there is a line of division, have not failed to mark one in
the maps, at the sources of the Rio Neveri, the Unare, the Guarapiche,
and the Pao.
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