Equinoctial Regions of America, vol 2 | Page 5

lake,) fine sand mixed with helicites, anciently deposited by the waters.
(Isla de Cura and Cabo Blanco. The promontory of Cabrera has been
connected with the shore ever since the year 1750 or 1760 by a little
valley, which bears the name of Portachuelo.) In each of these islands
may be perceived the most certain traces of the gradual sinking of the
waters. But still farther (and this accident is regarded by the inhabitants
as a marvellous phenomenon) in 1796 three new islands appeared to the
east of the island Caiguira, in the same direction as the islands Burro,
Otama, and Zorro. These new islands, called by the people Los nuevos
Penones, or Los Aparecidos,* (* Los Nuevos Penones, the New Rocks.
Los Aparecidos, the Unexpectedly-appeared.) form a kind of banks
with surfaces quite flat. They rose, in 1800, more than a foot above the
mean level of the water.
It has already been observed that the lake of Valencia, like the lakes of
the valley of Mexico, forms the centre of a little system of rivers, none
of which have any communication with the ocean. These rivers, most
of which deserve only the name of torrents, or brooks,* are twelve or
fourteen in number. (* The following are their names: Rios de Aragua,
Turmero, Maracay, Tapatapa, Agnes Calientes, Mariara, Cura, Guacara,
Guataparo, Valencia, Cano Grande de Cambury, etc.) The inhabitants,
little acquainted with the effects of evaporation, have long imagined
that the lake has a subterranean outlet, by which a quantity of water
runs out equal to that which flows in by the rivers. Some suppose that
this outlet communicates with grottos, supposed to be at great depth;
others believe that the water flows through an oblique channel into the

basin of the ocean. These bold hypotheses on the communication
between two neighbouring basins have presented themselves in every
zone to the imagination of the ignorant, as well as to that of the learned;
for the latter, without confessing it, sometimes repeat popular opinions
in scientific language. We hear of subterranean gulfs and outlets in the
New World, as on the shores of the Caspian sea, though the lake of
Tacarigua is two hundred and twenty-two toises higher, and the
Caspian sea fifty-four toises lower, than the sea; and though it is well
known, that fluids find the same level, when they communicate by a
lateral channel.
The changes which the destruction of forests, the clearing of plains, and
the cultivation of indigo, have produced within half a century in the
quantity of water flowing in on the one hand, and on the other the
evaporation of the soil, and the dryness of the atmosphere, present
causes sufficiently powerful to explain the progressive diminution of
the lake of Valencia. I cannot concur in the opinion of M. Depons*
(who visited these countries since I was there) "that to set the mind at
rest, and for the honour of science," a subterranean issue must be
admitted. (* In his Voyage a la Terre Ferme M. Depons says, "The
small extent of the surface of the lake renders impossible the
supposition that evaporation alone, however considerable within the
tropics, could remove as much water as the rivers furnish." In the
sequel, the author himself seems to abandon what he terms "this occult
case, the hypothesis of an aperture.") By felling the trees which cover
the tops and the sides of mountains, men in every climate prepare at
once two calamities for future generations; want of fuel and scarcity of
water. Trees, by the nature of their perspiration, and the radiation from
their leaves in a sky without clouds, surround themselves with an
atmosphere constantly cold and misty. They affect the copiousness of
springs, not, as was long believed, by a peculiar attraction for the
vapours diffused through the air, but because, by sheltering the soil
from the direct action of the sun, they diminish the evaporation of
water produced by rain. When forests are destroyed, as they are
everywhere in America by the European planters, with imprudent
precipitancy, the springs are entirely dried up, or become less abundant.
The beds of the rivers, remaining dry during a part of the year, are
converted into torrents whenever great rains fall on the heights. As the

sward and moss disappear with the brushwood from the sides of the
mountains, the waters falling in rain are no longer impeded in their
course; and instead of slowly augmenting the level of the rivers by
progressive filtrations, they furrow, during heavy showers, the sides of
the hills, bearing down the loosened soil, and forming sudden and
destructive inundations. Hence it results, that the clearing of forests, the
want of permanent springs, and the existence of torrents, are three
phenomena closely connected together. Countries situated in opposite
hemispheres, as,