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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I Shall Soon Prove That The Colossal Group Of The Sierra
De Santa Marta Is Almost Entirely Separate From The
Mountains of Ocana
and Pamplona which belong to the eastern Cordillera of New Grenada.
The hot plains through which runs
The Rio Cesar, and which extend
towards the valley of Upar, separate the Sierra Nevada from the Paramo
de Cacota, south of Pamplona. The ridge which divides the waters
between the gulf of Maracaibo and the Rio Magdalena is in the plain on
the east of the Laguna Zapatoza. If, on the one hand, the Sierra de
Santa Marta has been erroneously considered (on account of its eternal
snow, and its longitude) to be a continuation of the Cordillera of the
Andes, on the other hand, the connexion of that same Cordillera with
the coast mountains of the provinces of Cumana and Caracas has not
been recognized. The littoral chain of Venezuela, of which the
different ranges form the Montana de Paria, the isthmus of Araya, the
Silla of Caracas and the gneiss-granite mountains north and south of
the lake of Valencia, is joined between Porto Cabello, San Felipe and
Tocuyo to the Paramos de las Rosas and Niquitao, which form the
north-east extremity of the Sierra de Merida, and the eastern
Cordillera of the Andes of New Grenada. It is sufficient here to
mention this connexion, so important in a geological point of view;
for the denominations of Andes and Cordilleras being altogether in
disuse as applied to the chains of mountains extending from the
eastern gulf of Maracaibo to the promontory of Paria, we shall
continue to designate those chains (stretching from west to east) by
the names of littoral chain, or coast-chain of Venezuela.
Of the three insulated groups of mountains, that is to say, those
which are not branches of the Cordillera of the Andes and its
continuation towards the shore of Venezuela, one is on the north, and
the other two on the west of the Andes: that on the north is the
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; the two others are the Sierra de la
Parime, between 4 and 8 degrees of north latitude, and the mountains
of Brazil, between 15 and 28 degrees south latitude. This singular
distribution of great inequalities of soil produces three plains or
basins, comprising a surface of 420,600 square leagues, or four-fifths
of all South America, east of the Andes. Between the coast-chain of
Venezuela and the group of the Parime, the plains of the Apure and the
Lower Orinoco extend; between the group of Parime and the Brazil
mountains are the plains of the Amazon, of the Rio Negro and the
Madeira, and between the groups of Brazil and the southern extremity
of the continent are the plains of Rio de la Plata and of Patagonia.
As the group of the Parime in Spanish Guiana, and of the Brazil
mountains (or of Minas Geraes and Goyaz), do not join the Cordillera
of the Andes of New Grenada and Upper Peru towards the west, the three
plains of the Lower Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Rio de la Plata, are
connected by land-straits of considerable breadth.
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