152 



Sierra de Mariara, and establishing limhometers f 

 on a bottom of gneiss rock, so common in the 

 lake of Valencia. 



It is impossible to anticipate the limits, more 

 or less narrow, to which this basin of water will 

 one day be confined, when an equilibrium, be- 

 tween the streams flowing in and the produce 

 of evaporation and filtration, shall be completely 

 established. The idea very generally spread,, 

 that the lake will soon entirely disappear, seems 

 to me chimerical. If in consequence of great 

 earthquakes, or other causes equally mysterious, 

 ten very humid years should succeed to long 

 droughts ; if the mountains should clothe them- 

 selves anew with forests, and great trees over- 

 shadow the shore and the plains of Aragua ; we 

 should more probably see the volume of the 

 waters augment, and menace that beautiful cul- 

 tivation, which now trenches on the basin of 

 the lake. 



While some of the cultivators of the valleys 

 of Aragua fear the total disappearance of the 

 lake, and others it's return toward the banks it 

 has deserted, we hear the question gravely dis- 

 cussed at Caraccas, whether it would not be 

 advisable, in order to give greater extent to 

 agriculture, to conduct the waters of the lake 

 into the Llanos, by digging a canal toward the 

 Rio Pao. The possibility* of this enterprise 



* The dividing ridge, namely, that which divides the waters 



