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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The
Points Of Junction Are Between Truxillo And The Lake Of Valencia.
The eastern chain of New Grenada stretches north-east by the Sierra
Nevada de Merida, as well as by the four Paramos of Timotes, Niquitao,
Bocono and Las Rosas, of which the absolute height cannot be less than
from 1400 to 1600 toises.
After the Paramo of Las Rosas, which is more
elevated than the two preceding, there is a great depression, and we
no longer see a distinct chain or ridge, but merely hills, and high
table-lands surrounding the towns of Tocuyo and Barquisimeto. We know
not the height even of Cerro del Altar, between Tocuyo and Caranacatu;
but we know by recent measures that the most inhabited spots are from
300 to 350 toises above sea-level. The limits of the mountainous land
between Tocuyo and the valleys of Aragua are, the plains of San Carlos
on the south, and the Rio Tocuyo on the north; the Rio Siquisique
flows into that river. From the Cerro del Altar on the north-east
towards Guigue and Valencia, succeed, as culminant points, the
mountains of Santa Maria (between Buria and Nirgua); then the Picacho
de Nirgua, supposed to be 600 toises high; and finally Las Palomeras
and El Torito (between Valencia and Nirgua). The line of
water-partition runs from west to east, from Quibor to the lofty
savannahs of London, near Santa Rosa. The waters flow on the north,
towards the Golfo triste of the Caribbean Sea; and on the south,
towards the basins of the Apure and the Orinoco. The whole of this
mountainous country, by which the littoral chain of Caracas is linked
to the Cordilleras of Cundinamarca, was celebrated in Europe in the
middle of the nineteenth century; for that part of the territory
formed of gneiss-granite, and lying between the Rio Tocuyo and the Rio
Yaracui, contains the auriferous veins of Buria, and the copper-mine
of Aroa which is worked at the present day. If, across the knot of the
mountains of Barquisimeto, we trace the meridians of Aroa, Nirgua and
San Carlos, we find that on the north-west that knot is linked with
the Sierra de Coro, and on the north-east with the mountains of
Capadare, Porto Cabello and the Villa de Cura. It may be said to form
the eastern wall of that vast circular depression of which the lake of
Maracaybo is the centre and which is bounded on the south and west by
the mountains of Merida, Ocana, Perija and Santa Marta.
The littoral chain of Venezuela presents towards the centre and the
east the same phenomena of structure as those observed in the Andes of
Peru and New Grenada; namely, the division into several parallel
ranges and the frequency of longitudinal basins or valleys. But the
irruptions of the Caribbean Sea having apparently overwhelmed, at a
very remote period, a part of the mountains of the shore, the ranges
or partial chains are interrupted and some basins have become oceanic
gulfs.
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