SITE OF CITY. 11 



Trees of magnificent growth, festooned -with hanging 

 moss and pendant vines, their trunks and giant limbs 

 covered with parasitic plants of rich, brilliant hues, stand 

 alone in their majestic grandeur, or, by their united crowns 

 of fadeless green, bedecked with flowers of rare delicacy 

 and beauty, form picturesque bowers and arcades. Tow- 

 ering and crested palms, with their plumes wafted by the 

 breezes, adorn alike the forest and the plain with their 

 stately, graceful foi-ms. Giant vegetation, in that variety 

 and beauty elsewhere imknown, springs up on every side, 

 while amid and beneath all — 



" There spring the hving herbs, pi-ofusely wild, 

 O'er all the deep-green earth, beyond the power 

 Of botanists to number up their tribe." 



Enclosing this beautiful valley, are lofty, rugged, and 

 barren mountain-cliffs, which break the sti'ength of the 

 equinoctial winds, and shut out the burning atmosphere 

 of the jDlain on the coast. The contrast presented by 

 these barren ranges, and the stern, forbidding aspect of 

 their chilling peaks which rise into the region of the 

 clouds, only add to the loveliness of the valley which lies 

 encircled within their embrace' Here the sweeping pesti- 

 lence is seldom known, for those lofty Cordilleras, which 

 serve as a barrier to the winds, also prevent an approach 

 of those malignant diseases which are the scourges of 

 southern ports. It seems scarcely possible that a spot 

 within the equatorial regions, less than five miles in a di- 

 rect line from where the earth is parched by the burning 

 heat of a tropical sun, could ;gossess such a cool, salubri- 

 ous climate, and the luxuries of both temperate and torrid 

 zones. 



At the western extremity of the valley, situated upon 

 a steep slope which inclines toward the southeast, is 

 Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. At the base of this 



