Equinoctial Regions of America, vol 2 | Page 8

of the water exposes to
view a vast extent of ground covered with fertile mud and organic
remains.* (* This I observed daily in the Lake of Mexico.) In
proportion as the lake retires, cultivation advances towards the new
shore. These natural desiccations, so important to agriculture, have
been considerable during the last ten years, in which America has
suffered from great droughts. Instead of marking the sinuosities of the

present banks of the lake, I have advised the rich landholders in these
countries to fix columns of granite in the basin itself, in order to
observe from year to year the mean height of the waters. The Marquis
del Toro has undertaken to put this design into execution, employing
the fine granite of the Sierra de Mariara, and establishing limnometers,
on a bottom of gneiss rock, so common in the lake of Valencia.
It is impossible to anticipate the limits, more or less narrow, to which
this basin of water will one day be confined, when an equilibrium
between the streams flowing in and the produce of evaporation and
filtration, shall be completely established. The idea very generally
spread, that the lake will soon entirely disappear, seems to me
chimerical. If in consequence of great earthquakes, or other causes
equally mysterious, ten very humid years should succeed to long
droughts; if the mountains should again become clothed with forests,
and great trees overshadow the shore and the plains of Aragua, we
should more probably see the volume of the waters augment, and
menace that beautiful cultivation which now trenches on the basin of
the lake.
While some of the cultivators of the valleys of Aragua fear the total
disappearance of the lake, and others its return to the banks it has
deserted, we hear the question gravely discussed at Caracas, whether it
would not be advisable, in order to give greater extent to agriculture, to
conduct the waters of the lake into the Llanos, by digging a canal
towards the Rio Pao. The possibility* of this enterprise cannot be
denied, particularly by having recourse to tunnels, or subterranean
canals. (The dividing ridge, namely, that which divides the waters
between the valleys of Aragua and the Llanos, lowers so much towards
the west of Guigue, as we have already observed, that there are ravines
which conduct the waters of the Cano de Cambury, the Rio Valencia,
and the Guataparo, in the time of floods, to the Rio Pao; but it would be
easier to open a navigable canal from the lake of Valencia to the
Orinoco, by the Pao, the Portuguesa, and the Apure, than to dig a
draining canal level with the bottom of the lake. This bottom, according
to the sounding, and my barometric measurements, is 40 toises less
than 222, or 182 above the surface of the ocean. On the road from
Guigue to the Llanos, by the table-land of La Villa de Cura, I found, to
the south of the dividing ridge, and on its southern declivity, no point

of level corresponding to the 182 toises, except near San Juan. The
absolute height of this village is 194 toises. But, I repeat that, farther
towards the west, in the country between the Cano de Cambury and the
sources of the Rio Pao, which I was not able to visit, the point of level
of the bottom of the lake is much further north.) The progressive retreat
of the waters has given birth to the beautiful and luxuriant plains of
Maracay, Cura, Mocundo, Guigue, and Santa Cruz del Escoval, planted
with tobacco, sugar-canes, coffee, indigo, and cacao; but how can it be
doubted for a moment that the lake alone spreads fertility over this
country? If deprived of the enormous mass of vapour which the surface
of the waters sends forth daily into the atmosphere, the valleys of
Aragua would become as dry and barren as the surrounding mountains.
The mean depth of the lake is from twelve to fifteen fathoms; the
deepest parts are not, as is generally admitted, eighty, but thirty-five or
forty deep. Such is the result of soundings made with the greatest care
by Don Antonio Manzano. When we reflect on the vast depths of all
the lakes of Switzerland, which, notwithstanding their position in high
valleys, almost reach the level of the Mediterranean, it appears
surprising that greater cavities are not found at the bottom of the lake of
Valencia, which is also an Alpine lake. The deepest places are between
the rocky island of Burro and the point of Cana Fistula, and opposite
the high mountains of Mariara. But in general the southern part of the
lake is deeper than the northern: nor must we forget that, if all the
shores be now low, the southern part of the basin is the nearest