Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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After Three Days' Journey We Began To Perceive The Chain Of The
Mountains Of Cumana, Which Separates The Llanos, Or, As They Are Often
Called Here, The Great Sea Of Verdure,* From The Coast Of The
Caribbean Sea.
(* Los Llanos son como un mar de yerbas - The Llanos are
like a vast sea of grass - is an
Observation often repeated in these
regions.) If the Bergantin be more than eight hundred toises high, it
may be seen supposing only an ordinary refraction of one fourteenth of
the arch, at the distance of twenty-seven nautical leagues; but the
state of the atmosphere long concealed from us the majestic view of
this curtain of mountains. It appeared at first like a fog-bank which
hid the stars near the pole at their rising and setting; gradually
this body of vapour seemed to augment and condense, to assume a bluish
tint, and become bounded by sinuous and fixed outlines. The same
effects which the mariner observes on approaching a new land present
themselves to the traveller on the borders of the Llano. The horizon
began to enlarge in some part and the vault of heaven seemed no longer
to rest at an equal distance on the grass-covered soil. A llanero, or
inhabitant of the Llanos, is happy only when, as expressed in the
simple phraseology of the country, he can see everywhere well around
him. What appears to European eyes a covered country, slightly
undulated by a few scattered hills, is to him a rugged region bristled
with mountains.
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