INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON SPRINGS. 219 



Tise of the water completely inundated it. A protracted north 

 wind sufficed to flood the road between Mai-acay and New Yar 

 lencia. The feai'S which the inhabitants of the shores had so long 

 entertained wese reversed. Those who had explained the dimi- 

 nution of the lake by the supposition of subterranean channels 

 were suspected of blocldug them up, to prove themselves in the 

 right. 



Dm'ing the twenty-two years which had elaj^sed, the valley of 

 Aragua had been the theatre of bloody struggles, and war had 

 desolated these smiling lauds and decimated their population. At 

 the first cry of independence a great number of slaves found their 

 liberty by enhsting under the banners of the new republic ; the 

 great plantations were abandoned, and the forest, which in the 

 tropics so rapidly encroaches, had soon recovered a large propor- 

 tion of the soil which man had wrested from it by more than a 

 century of constant and painful labor. 



Boussingault proceeds to state that two lakes near Ubate, in 

 Kew Granada, had formed but one, a century before his visit ; 

 that the waters were gradually retu'ing, and the plantations ex- 

 tending over the abandoned bed ; that, by inquiry of old hunters 

 and by examination of parish records, he found that extensive 

 clearings had been made and were still going on. 



He found, also, that the length of the Lake of Fuquene, in the 

 same valley, had, within two centuries, been reduced from ten 

 leagues to one and a half, its breadth from three leagues to one. 

 At the former period, the neighboring mountains were well 

 wooded, but at the time of his visit they had been almost en- 

 tirely stripped of their wood. Our author adds that other cases, 

 similar to those already detailed, might be cited, and he proceeds 

 to show, by several examples, that the waters of other lakes in the 

 same regions, where the valleys had always been bare of wood 

 or where the forests had not been disturbed, had undergone no 

 change of level. 



Boussingault further states that the lakes of Switzerland have 

 sustained a depression of level since the too prevalent destruction 

 of the woods, and arrives at the general conclusion that, " in coun- 

 tries where great clearings have been made, there has most prob- 

 ably been a diminution in the living waters which flow upon the 

 surface of the ground." This conclusion he further supports by 



