The Plain, Then Thinly Inhabited, Was Filled With Brushwood, Interspersed With Trunks Of Scattered Trees And Parasite Plants, Enveloped With A Thick Sward, Less Capable Of Emitting Radiant Caloric Than The Soil That Is Cultivated And Consequently Not Sheltered From The Rays Of The Sun.

With the destruction of the trees, and the increase of the cultivation of sugar, indigo, and cotton, the springs, and all the natural supplies of the lake of Valencia, have diminished from year to year.

It is difficult to form a just idea of the enormous quantity of evaporation which takes place under the torrid zone, in a valley surrounded with steep declivities, where a regular breeze and descending currents of air are felt towards evening, and the bottom of which is flat, and looks as if levelled by the waters. It has been remarked, that the heat which prevails throughout the year at Cura, Guacara, Nueva Valencia, and on the borders of the lake, is the same as that felt at midsummer in Naples and Sicily. The mean annual temperature of the valleys of Aragua is nearly 25.5 degrees; my hygrometrical observations of the month of February, taking the mean of day and night, gave 71.4 degrees of the hair hygrometer. As the words great drought and great humidity have no determinate signification, and air that would be called very dry in the lower regions of the tropics would be regarded as humid in Europe, we can judge of these relations between climates only by comparing spots situated in the same zone.

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