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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But
Still Farther (And This Accident Is Regarded By The Inhabitants As A
Marvellous Phenomenon) In 1796 Three New Islands Appeared To The East
Of The Island Caiguira, In The Same Direction As The Islands Burro,
Otama, And Zorro.
These new islands, called by the people Los nuevos
Penones, or Los Aparecidos,* (* Los Nuevos Penones, the New Rocks.
Los
Aparecidos, the Unexpectedly-appeared.) form a kind of banks with
surfaces quite flat. They rose, in 1800, more than a foot above the
mean level of the water.
It has already been observed that the lake of Valencia, like the lakes
of the valley of Mexico, forms the centre of a little system of
rivers, none of which have any communication with the ocean. These
rivers, most of which deserve only the name of torrents, or brooks,*
are twelve or fourteen in number. (* The following are their names:
Rios de Aragua, Turmero, Maracay, Tapatapa, Agnes Calientes, Mariara,
Cura, Guacara, Guataparo, Valencia, Cano Grande de Cambury, etc.) The
inhabitants, little acquainted with the effects of evaporation, have
long imagined that the lake has a subterranean outlet, by which a
quantity of water runs out equal to that which flows in by the rivers.
Some suppose that this outlet communicates with grottos, supposed to
be at great depth; others believe that the water flows through an
oblique channel into the basin of the ocean. These bold hypotheses on
the communication between two neighbouring basins have presented
themselves in every zone to the imagination of the ignorant, as well
as to that of the learned; for the latter, without confessing it,
sometimes repeat popular opinions in scientific language. We hear of
subterranean gulfs and outlets in the New World, as on the shores of
the Caspian sea, though the lake of Tacarigua is two hundred and
twenty-two toises higher, and the Caspian sea fifty-four toises lower,
than the sea; and though it is well known, that fluids find the same
level, when they communicate by a lateral channel.
The changes which the destruction of forests, the clearing of plains,
and the cultivation of indigo, have produced within half a century in
the quantity of water flowing in on the one hand, and on the other the
evaporation of the soil, and the dryness of the atmosphere, present
causes sufficiently powerful to explain the progressive diminution of
the lake of Valencia. I cannot concur in the opinion of M. Depons*
(who visited these countries since I was there) "that to set the mind
at rest, and for the honour of science," a subterranean issue must be
admitted. (* In his Voyage a la Terre Ferme M. Depons says, "The small
extent of the surface of the lake renders impossible the supposition
that evaporation alone, however considerable within the tropics, could
remove as much water as the rivers furnish." In the sequel, the author
himself seems to abandon what he terms "this occult case, the
hypothesis of an aperture.") By felling the trees which cover the tops
and the sides of mountains, men in every climate prepare at once two
calamities for future generations; want of fuel and scarcity of water.
Trees, by the nature of their perspiration, and the radiation from
their leaves in a sky without clouds, surround themselves with an
atmosphere constantly cold and misty. They affect the copiousness of
springs, not, as was long believed, by a peculiar attraction for the
vapours diffused through the air, but because, by sheltering the soil
from the direct action of the sun, they diminish the evaporation of
water produced by rain. When forests are destroyed, as they are
everywhere in America by the European planters, with imprudent
precipitancy, the springs are entirely dried up, or become less
abundant. The beds of the rivers, remaining dry during a part of the
year, are converted into torrents whenever great rains fall on the
heights. As the sward and moss disappear with the brushwood from the
sides of the mountains, the waters falling in rain are no longer
impeded in their course; and instead of slowly augmenting the level of
the rivers by progressive filtrations, they furrow, during heavy
showers, the sides of the hills, bearing down the loosened soil, and
forming sudden and destructive inundations. Hence it results, that the
clearing of forests, the want of permanent springs, and the existence
of torrents, are three phenomena closely connected together. Countries
situated in opposite hemispheres, as, for example, Lombardy bordered
by the Alps, and Lower Peru inclosed between the Pacific and the
Cordillera of the Andes, afford striking proofs of the justness of
this assertion.
Till the middle of the last century, the mountains round the valleys
of Aragua were covered with forests. Great trees of the families of
mimosa, ceiba, and the fig-tree, shaded and spread coolness along the
banks of the lake. 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.
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