42 VALLEYS OF AEAGUA AND VALENCIA. 



increasing rapidity, and immense tracts of land, which 

 were formerly inundated, are now fertile and ciiltivated 

 plains ; as the country bordering the lake is so low and 

 level, that the lowering of a few inches in the surface of 

 the water lays dry a wide belt of land. The same nature 

 of the circumambient 2>lain also causes considerable por- 

 tions to be submerged during the rainy period of the 

 year, preventing the planting of maize at that season. 



There are twenty-two streams, some of them of con- 

 siderable size, that flow into the lake, but, as it has no dis- 

 coverable outlet, the waters must be removed wholly by 

 evaporation. Of the quantity of water which empties into 

 the basin of Valencia, some idea may be formed from the 

 calculations of Cordozzi, in his Res'Cimen de la Geograf'ta 

 de Venezuela, published in 1841. This writer gives the 

 size of the lake as twenty-two squai-e leagues, and the 

 area of the valleys of Caribobo and Aragua, which, from 

 their configuration, give their waters to the basin of Va- 

 lencia, as eighty-six square leagues. This, united to the 

 twenty-two of the lake, gives a surface of one hundred 

 and eight square leagues, over which it is said there year- 

 ly fall seventy-two inches of rain. This estimate will en- 

 able us to conceive how rapidly evaporation goes on in 

 the dry and heated atmosphere of the troj^ics. Certain 

 local causes have tended to greatly accelerate the desicca- 

 tion of the lake. The mountains which enclose the basin 

 were formerly covered with forest, which retained the 

 moisture of the earth, and produced copious springs that 

 fed the streams. This natural protection to the soil has 

 been removed, the land has become parched, streams 

 dried up, the heat of the valley augmented, and evapora- 

 tion has consequently become more rapid. The Pao, 

 which was the largest river that flowed into the lake, was, 

 at the close of the seventeenth century, diverted from its 

 original channel for the purpose of irrigating the country 



