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Updated: September 21, 2025
The missionary assured us that verdure of perpetual freshness prevails in the vicinity of the cataracts, produced by the quantity of vapour which the river, broken into torrents and cascades for the length of three or four thousand toises, diffuses in the air.
It is true that from all existing records of revolutions of this kind, the perpendicular height of the stony nucleus appears never to have exceeded one hundred and fifty or two hundred toises; even taking into the account the depth of the sea, the bottom of which had been lifted up: but when considering the great effects of nature, and the intensity of its forces, the bulk of the masses must not deter the geologist in his speculations.
Going from the plains of Lombardy, and penetrating into the Alps of the Tyrol, by a line perpendicular to the axis of the chain, we advance more than 20 marine leagues towards the north, yet we find the bottom of the valley of the Adige and of Eysack near Botzen, to be only 182 toises of absolute height, an elevation which exceeds but 117 toises that of Milan.
No barometer has yet been carried into the Sahara. With respect to the Llanos of America, I found by barometric heights observed at Calabozo, at the Villa del Pao, and at the mouth of the Meta, that their height is only forty or fifty toises above the level of the sea.
The course of these rivers once led me to believe, that the plains formed table-lands, raised at least from one hundred to one hundred and fifty toises above the level of the ocean. I supposed that the deserts of interior Africa were also at a considerable height; and that they rose one above another as in tiers, from the coast to the interior of the continent.
When in the season of the great heats we breathe the burning atmosphere of La Guayra, and turn our eyes towards the mountains, it seems scarcely possible that, at the distance of five or six thousand toises, a population of forty thousand individuals assembled in a narrow valley, enjoys the coolness of spring, a temperature which at night descends to 12 degrees of the centesimal thermometer.
We distinguished clearly the round summit of the Turimiquiri and the lofty peaks or, as they are called, the Cucuruchos, covered with thick vegetation, and infested by tigers which are hunted for the beauty of their skin. This round summit, which is covered with turf, is 707 toises above the level of the ocean.
Is the sandstone whence the springs of the Bergantin issue of the same formation as the sandstone of the Imposible and the Tumiriquiri? They flow first to the distance of forty toises over the rocky surface of the ground; then they rush down into a natural cavern; and finally they pierce through the limestone to issue out at the foot of the mountain on the left bank of the little river Narigual.
But as this cone is only 80 toises high, by 40 in breadth at its summit, it has recently been a question whether, from the diminutiveness of its mass, it can be visible at distances which exceed 40 leagues; and whether it be not probable, that navigators distinguish the peaks as a small cloud above the horizon, only when the base of the Piton begins to be visible on it.
This range of very low mountains, often interrupted from the mouth of the Rio Tuy to that of the Rio Neveri, rises abruptly on the east of Nueva Barcelona, first in the rocky island of Chimanas, and then in the Cerro del Bergantin, elevated probably more than 800 toises, but of which the astronomical position and the precise height are yet alike unknown.
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