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Updated: June 3, 2025
If in the valleys of Aragua, instead of abandoning the indigo grounds, and leaving them fallow, they were covered during several years, not with corn, but with other alimentary plants and forage; if among these plants such as belong to different families were preferred, and which shade the soil by their large leaves, the amelioration of the fields would be gradually accomplished, and they would be restored to a part of their former fertility.
Turmero, Maracay, Cura, Guacara, every point of the valley of Aragua, has its mountain-road, which terminates at one of the small ports on the coast. On quitting the village of Turmero, we discover, at a league distant, an object, which appears at the horizon like a round hillock, or tumulus, covered with vegetation.
When we reflect on the easy communication afforded by the valleys of Aragua with the Llanos and the rivers that flow into the Orinoco; when we recognize the possibility of opening an inland navigation, by the Rio Pao and the Portuguesa, as far as the mouths of the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Amazon, it may be conceived that the capital of the vast provinces of Venezuela would have been better placed near the fine harbour of Porto Cabello, beneath a pure and serene sky, than near the unsheltered road of La Guayra, in a temperate but constantly foggy valley.
We find at first, in the Sierra de Mariara, which belongs to the northern branch of the Cordillera of the coast, a coarse-grained granite; then, in the valleys of Aragua, on the borders of the lake, and in the islands, it contains, as in the southern branch of the chain of the coast, gneiss and mica-slate.
During my stay in the valleys of the Tuy and Aragua the zodiacal light appeared almost every night with extraordinary brilliancy. I had perceived it for the first time between the tropics at Caracas, on the 18th of January, after seven in the evening. The point of the pyramid was at the height of 53 degrees.
Here, therefore, as almost everywhere within the tropics, it was less the absolute degree of heat than its duration that affected our sensations. The eastern part of the Llanos through which we passed, between Angostura and Nueva Barcelona, presents the same wild aspect as the western part, through which we had passed from the valleys of Aragua to San Fernando de Apure.
We had already observed, in the valleys of Aragua from the 18th and 19th of February, clouds forming at the commencement of the night. In the beginning of the month of March the accumulation of the vesicular vapours, visible to the eye, and with them signs of atmospheric electricity, augmented daily.
But this direct route would have deprived us of the opportunity of surveying the valleys of Aragua, which are the finest and most cultivated portion of the province; of taking the level of an important part of the chain of the coast by means of the barometer; and of descending the Rio Apure as far as its junction with the Orinoco.
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.
This prolongation forms the northern chain of the Cordillera of Venezuela and is traversed in going from south to north, either from Valencia and the valleys of Aragua, to Burburata and Turiamo, or from Caracas to La Guayra.
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