188 



METEOEOLOGY. 



On the road from tlie colony to Caracas we pass through a region 

 in which this procestj is going on ; the reeds giving gradually way to 

 the smaller grasses. Here the great number of half burnt yet stand- 

 ing trunks of the wax palm tell plainl}'^ enough that there existed not 

 long ago a dense and humid forest, in which they luxuriated in all 

 their beauty, for these palms are never found, in their natural state, 

 growing in any other but humid forests. Here they stand isolated 

 in the midst of reeds. Most of them have died already, but many 

 linger yet in a dying condition, until their last green leaf has turned 

 brown, and then they stand like tall and slender pillars, the mournful 

 remnants of a once stately forest. 



This is the same extensive region of which I spoke in my first letter, 

 where a strong southern breeze-, sometimes amounting to a gale, 

 sweeps constantly over the mountain ridge towards the sea. I have 

 traversed this region since at four different times, in the months of 

 August and September, and found every tiaie the same southern wind 

 blowing there, only somewhat more violent. 



Before closing this letter I wish to add to the statement made in 

 my first letter* about the gale of December 24, 1853, that my inform- 

 ant here, in saying that the gale was felt at Laguayra^ forgot to men- 

 tion that it was felt only in the unprecedented agitation of the ocean, 

 but not in the atmosphere. This agitation of the sea is observed every 

 time a violent gale from the north has been blowing in the higher 

 latitudes, not the least breeze from the north being felt at the same 

 time at Laguayra, although it is an open roadstead, not in the least 

 sheltered against the north winds. This agitation of the sea, when 

 the air was perfectly calm, I have seen myself several times at La- 

 guayra; but at the time above mentioned the sea was so unusually 

 high that long, enormous, foam-crested waves rolled up to the very 

 parapet of the custom-house, a phenomenon scarcely ever seen before. 



During my stay in Victoria, a town twenty miles south of the 

 colony, situate in a valley about 1,700 feet above the level of the sea, 

 I made the following observations as to the temperature of that place: 



The dry season has already set in, and my time is so much taken up 

 by botanical labors, on which my sustenance depends, that I am un- 

 able to give at present a more full and extended account of the climate 

 and other atmospherical phenomena of this region. 



See page 183. 



