SUPPOSED OUTLET. 
K 
midst of brushwood, on small flats (four, six, and even eight 
toises height above the surface of the lake,) fine sand mixed 
with helicites, anciently deposited by the waters. In each of 
these islands may be perceived the most certain traces of the 
gradual sinking of the waters. But still farther (and this 
accident is regarded by the inhabitants as a marvellous phe- 
nomenon) in 1796 thfee new islands appeared to the east 
of the island Caiguira, in the same direction as the islands 
Burro, Otama, and Zorro. These new islands, called by the 
people Los nuevos Penones, or Los Aparecidos* form a kind 
of banks with surfaces quite flat. They rose, in 1800, more 
than a foot above the mean level of the water. 
It has already been observed that the lake of Valencia, 
like the lakes of the valley of Mexico, forms the centre 
of a little system of rivers, none of which have any com- 
munication with the ocean. These rivers, most of which 
deserve only the name of torrents, or brooks, f are twelve 
or fourteen in number. The inhabitants, little acquainted 
with the effects of evaporation, have long imagined that 
the lake has a subterranean outlet, by which a quantity of 
water runs out equal to that which flows in by the rivers. 
Some suppose that this outlet communicates with grottos, 
supposed to be at great depth; others believe that the 
water flow's through an oblique channel into the basin 
of the ocean. These bold hypotheses on the communi- 
cation between two neighbouring basins have presented 
themselves in every zone to the imagination of the igno- 
rant, as well as to that of the learned; for the latter, 
without confessing it, sometimes repeat popular opinions 
in scientific language. We hear of subterranean gulfs and 
outlets in the New World, as on the shores of the Caspian 
sea, though the lake of Taearigua is two hundred and 
twenty-two toises higher, and the Caspian sea fifty-four 
toises lower, than the sea; and though it is well known, 
that fluids find the same level, when they communicate by a 
lateral channel. 
* Los Nuevos Penones (the New Rocks). Los Aparecidos (the Un- 
expectedly-appeared'/. 
•f The following are their names : Rios de Aragua, Turmero, Maracay, 
Tapatapa, Aguas Calientes, Mariara, Cura, Guacara, Guataparo, Valencia, 
Cailo Gtande de Cambury, &c. 
