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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He Affirms That At A Small Distance From The Shore The Lead
Finds No Bottom; And That Large Floating Islands Cover The Surface Of
The Waters, Which Are Constantly Agitated By The Winds.
No importance
can be attached to estimates which, without being founded on any
measurement, are expressed in leagues (leguas)
Reckoned in the
colonies at three thousand, five thousand, and six thousand six
hundred and fifty varas.* (* Seamen being the first, and for a long
time the only, persons who introduced into the Spanish colonies any
precise ideas on the astronomical position and distances of places,
the legua nautica of 6650 varas, or of 2854 toises (20 in a degree),
was originally used in Mexico and throughout South America; but this
legua nautica has been gradually reduced to one-half or one-third, on
account of the slowness of travelling across steep mountains, or dry
and burning plains. The common people measure only time directly; and
then, by arbitrary hypotheses, infer from the time the space of ground
travelled over. In the course of my geographical researches, I have
had frequent opportunities of examining the real value of these
leagues, by comparing the itinerary distances between points lying
under the same meridian with the difference of latitudes.) Oviedo, who
must so often have passed over the valleys of Aragua, asserts that the
town of Nueva Valencia del Rey was built in 1555, at the distance of
half a league from the lake; and that the proportion between the
length of the lake and its breadth, is as seven to three.
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