Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 39 of 208 - First - Home
The Aspect Of The Country Here
Reminds Us, But On A Much Larger Scale, Of The Plains Of Lombardy,
Which
Also are only fifty or sixty toises above the level of the
ocean; and are directed first from La Brenta
To Turin, east and west;
and then from Turin to Coni, north and south. If we were authorized,
from other geological facts, to regard the three great plains of the
Lower Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Rio de la Plata as basins of
ancient lakes,* (* In Siberia, the great steppes between the Irtish
and the Obi, especially that of Baraba, full of salt lakes (Tchabakly,
Tchany, Karasouk, and Topolony), appear to have been, according to the
Chinese traditions, even within historical times, an inland sea.) we
should imagine we perceived in the plains of the Rio Vichada and the
Meta, a channel by which the waters of the upper lake (those of the
plains of the Amazon) forced their way towards the lower basin, (that
of the Llanos of Caracas,) separating the Cordillera of La Parime from
that of the Andes. This channel is a kind of land-strait. The ground,
which is perfectly level between the Guaviare, the Meta, and the
Apure, displays no vestige of a violent irruption of the waters; but
on the edge of the Cordillera of Parime, between the latitudes of 4
and 7 degrees, the Orinoco, flowing in a westerly direction from its
source to the mouth of the Guaviare, has forced its way through the
rocks, directing its course from south to north. All the great
cataracts, as we shall soon see, are within the latitudes just named.
When the river has reached the mouth of the Apure in that very low
ground where the slope towards the north is met by the counter-slope
towards the south-east, that is to say, by the inclination of the
plains which rise imperceptibly towards the mountains of Caracas, the
river turns anew and flows eastward. It appeared to me, that it was
proper to fix the attention of the reader on these singular inflexions
of the Orinoco because, belonging at once to two basins, its course
marks, in some sort, even on the most imperfect maps, the direction of
that part of the plains intervening between New Grenada and the
western border of the mountains of La Parime.
The Llanos or steppes of the Lower Orinoco and of the Meta, like the
deserts of Africa, bear different names in different parts. From the
mouths of the Dragon the Llanos of Cumana, of Barcelona, and of
Caracas or Venezuela,* follow, running from east to west. (* The
following are subdivisions of these three great Llanos, as I marked
them down on the spot. The Llanos of Cumana and New Andalusia include
those of Maturin and Terecen, of Amana, Guanipa, Jonoro, and Cari. The
Llanos of Nueva Barcelona comprise those of Aragua, Pariaguan, and
Villa del Pao. We distinguish in the Llanos of Caracas those of
Chaguaramas, Uritucu, Calabozo or Guarico, La Portuguesa, San Carlos,
and Araure.) Where the steppes turn towards the south and
south-south-west, from the latitude of 8 degrees, between the
meridians of 70 and 73 degrees, we find from north to south, the
Llanos of Varinas, Casanare, the Meta, Guaviare, Caguau, and Caqueta.*
(* The inhabitants of these plains distinguish as subdivisions, from
the Rio Portuguesa to Caqueta, the Llanos of Guanare, Bocono, Nutrius
or the Apure, Palmerito near Quintero, Guardalito and Arauca, the
Meta, Apiay near the port of Pachaquiaro, Vichada, Guaviare, Arriari,
Inirida, the Rio Hacha, and Caguan. The limits between the savannahs
and the forests, in the plains that extend from the sources of the Rio
Negro to Putumayo, are not sufficiently known.) The plains of Varinas
contain some few monuments of the industry of a nation that has
disappeared. Between Mijagual and the Cano de la Hacha, we find some
real tumuli, called in the country the Serillos de los Indios. They
are hillocks in the shape of cones, artificially formed of earth, and
probably contain bones, like the tumuli in the steppes of Asia. A fine
road is also discovered near Hato de la Calzada, between Varinas and
Canagua, five leagues long, made before the conquest, in the most
remote times, by the natives. It is a causeway of earth fifteen feet
high, crossing a plain often overflowed. Did nations farther advanced
in civilization descend from the mountains of Truxillo and Merido to
the plains of the Rio Apure? The Indians whom we now find between this
river and the Meta, are in too rude a state to think of making roads
or raising tumuli.
I calculated the area of these Llanos from the Caqueta to the Apure,
and from the Apure to the Delta of the Orinoco, and found it to be
seventeen thousand square leagues twenty to a degree. The part running
from north to south is almost double that which stretches from east to
west, between the Lower Orinoco and the littoral chain of Caracas. The
Pampas on the north and north-west of Buenos Ayres, between this city
and Cordova, Jujuy, and the Tucuman, are of nearly the same extent as
the Llanos; but the Pampas stretch still farther on to the length of
18 degrees southward; and the land they occupy is so vast, that they
produce palm-trees at one of their extremities, while the other,
equally low and level, is covered with eternal frost.
The Llanos of America, where they extend in the direction of a
parallel of the equator, are three-fourths narrower then the great
desert of Africa. This circumstance is very important in a region
where the winds constantly blow from east to west. The farther the
plains stretch in this direction, the more ardent is their climate.
The great ocean of sand in Africa communicates by Yemen* with Gedrosia
and Beloochistan, as far as the right bank of the Indus. (* We cannot
be surprised that the Arabic should be richer than any other language
of the East in words expressing the ideas of desert, uninhabited
plains, and plains covered with gramina.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 39 of 208
Words from 38809 to 39833
of 211397