INFLUENCE OF AGRICULTURE ON CLIMATE. 499 



continuous N.E. wind was sufficient to flood the road which led 

 from Maracaibo to New Valencia ; in short, the fears which the in- 

 habitants of the lake had entertained for so long a period had entirely 

 changed their nature ; they were now no longer afraid of the lake dry- 

 ing up ; they saw with dismay that if the water continued to rise as 

 it had done lately, it would in no long space of time have drowned 

 some of the most valuable estates, &c. Those who had explained 

 the diminution of the lake by supposing subterraneous canals, now 

 hastened to close them up in order to find a cause for the rise in the 

 level of the water. 



In the course of the last twenty-two years important political 

 events had transpired. Venezuela no longer belonged to Spain ; the 

 peaceful valley d'Aragua had been the theatre of many a bloody con- 

 test ; war to the knife had desolated this beautiful country and deci- 

 mated its inhabitants. On the first cry of independence raised, a 

 great number of slaves found freedom by enlisting under the banners 

 of the new republic ; agricultural operations of any extent were 

 abandoned, and the forest, which makes such rapid progress in the 

 tropics, had soon regained possession of the surface which man had 

 won from it by something like a century of sustained and painful 

 toil. With the increasing prosperity of the valley many of the prin- 

 cipal tributaries to the lake had been turned aside to serve as means 

 of irrigation, so that the beds of some of the rivers were absolutely 

 dry for more than six months in the year. At the period which I 

 now refer to, the water was no longer used in this way, and the beds 

 of the rivers were full. Thus with the growth of agricultural indus- 

 try in the Valley d'Aragua, when the extent of cleared surface was 

 continually on the increase, and when great farming establishments 

 were multiplied, the level of the water sunk ; but by and by, during 

 a period of disasters, happily passing in their nature, the process of 

 clearing is arrested, the lands formerly won from the forest are in 

 part restored to it, and then the waters first cease to fall in their le- 

 vel, and by and by show an unequivocal disposition to rise. 



I shall now, without, however, quitting America, carry my read- 

 ers into a district where the climate is analogous to that of Europe, 

 where the surface is occupied by immense fields, covered with the 

 cereals as with us. I speak of the table-knds of New Granada, of 

 those valleys raised from 10,000 to 13,000 and 14,000 feet above 

 the level of the sea, in which the mean temperature throughout the 

 year ranges from 58° to about 62° Fahr. Lakes are frequent in the 

 Cordilleras ; and it would be easy for me to describe a great num- 

 ber ; I shall, however, confine myself to those which became subjects 

 of observation in former times. 



The village of Ubate is now situated in the neighborhood of two 

 lakes. Some seventy years ago these two lakes formed but one ; 

 the old inhabitants saw the water shrinking and new fields pre- 

 senting themselves year after year. At this present time fields of 

 wheat of extraordinary luxuriance occupy levels that were com- 

 pletely inundated 30 years ago. 



It is enough indeed to perambulate the neighborhood of Ubate 



