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Supposing, as is probable, that the thibaudias and the rhododendron of the Andes, or befaria, exist in the paramo of Niquitao and in the Sierra de Merida, covered with eternal snow, these plants would nevertheless want a ridge sufficiently lofty and long for their migration towards the Silla of Caracas.
The Cordillera, to which we have given the name of eastern, that of the lake of Sebondoy, widens considerably between Pansitara and Ceja. The knot of the Paramo de las Papas and of Socoboni gives birth to the great rivers of Cauca and Magdalena, and is divided into two chains, latitude 2 degrees 5 minutes east and west of La Plata, Vieja and Timana.
Paramo, in Peruvian puna, is a denomination found on all the maps of Spanish America. In the colonies it signifies neither a desert nor a heath, but a mountainous place covered with stunted trees, exposed to the winds, and in which a damp cold perpetually reigns. In the torrid zone, the paramos are generally from one thousand six hundred to two thousand toises high.
It is indeed considered as a colossal mountain in those countries; and this celebrity gives a precise idea of the mean height of Parima and of all the mountains of eastern America. To the east of the Sierra Nevada de Merida, as well as to the south-east of the Paramo de las Rosas, none of the chains that extend in the same parallel line reach the height of the central ridge of the Pyrenees.
I asked him what object he had in view in coming in this direction. "I am proceeding to Llano Grande, for the purpose of collecting horses, and training them for our cavalry, as a large number of those in my troop have died from hard work and exposure on the Paramo of Purace, when we crossed the mountains to attack the Spanish convoy.
It stretches at first northward by Huacrachuco, Chachapoyas, Moyobamba, and the Paramo of Piscoguannuna; then it progressively lowers toward Peca, Copallin, and the Mission of Santiago, at the eastern extremity of the province of Jaen de Bracamoros. The third, or easternmost chain, skirts the right bank of the Rio Guallaga, and loses itself in the seventh degree of latitude.
It is a land the more interesting in a geognostical point of view, as no map has yet made known the mountainous ramifications which the paramos of Niquitao and Las Rosas send out towards the north-east. Between Tocuyo, Araure, and Barquisimeto, rises the group of the Altar Mountains, connected on the south-east with the paramo of Las Rosas.
According to the astronomical observations I took on the banks of the Atabapo, and on the western declivity of the Cordillera of the Andes, near the Paramo de la suma Paz, the distance is one hundred and seven leagues only from San Fernando to the first villages of the provinces of Caguan and San Juan de los Llanos.
It was not without reason that we dreaded passing across this bleak region. The name of Paramo is given to those inhospitable desert-regions high up among the mountains, of which there are so many in the Andes. No human being can exist in them without keeping in incessant and violent motion. Artificial means are incapable of sustaining life while a person is exposed to the inclement air.
In order to have an exact idea of the plains, their configuration, and their limits, we must know the chains of mountains that form their boundaries. We have already described the Cordillera of the coast, of which the highest summit is the Silla de Caraccas, and which is linked by the Paramo de las Rosas to the Nevada de Merida, and the Andes of New Grenada.
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