DELIGHTFUL CLIMATE. 
405 
of; Caracas, and the adjacent quarter of Trinidad. Beneath 
this misty sky, I could scarcely imagine myself to be in one 
of the temperate valleys of the torrid zone; but rather in the 
north of Germany, among the pines and the larches that 
cover the mountains of the Hartz, 
But this gloomy aspect, this contrast between the clear- 
ness of morning and the cloudy sky of evening, is not 
observable in the midst of summer. The nights of June 
and J uly are clear and delicious. The atmosphere then pre- 
serves, almost without interruption, the purity and trans- 
parency peculiar to the table-lands and elevated valleys of 
these regions in calm weather, as long as the winds do not 
mingle together strata of air of unequal temperature. That 
is the season for enjoying the beauty of the landscape, 
which, however, I saw clearly illumined only during a few 
days at the end of January. ‘The two rounded summits of 
the Silla are seen at Caracas, almost under the same angles 
of elevation* as the peak of Teneriffe at the port of Orotava. 
The first half of the mountain is covered with short grass ; 
then succeeds the zone of evergreen trees, reflecting a purple 
light at the season when the befaria, the alpine rose-treet 
of equinoctial America, is in blossom. The rocky masses 
rise above this wooded zone in the form of domes. Being 
destitute of vegetation, they increase by the nakedness of 
their surface the apparent height of a mountain which, in 
the temperate parts of Europe, would scarcely rise to the 
limit of perpetual snow. The cultivated region of the valley, 
and the gay plains of Chacao, Petare, and La Vega, form 
an agreeable contrast to the imposing aspect of the Silla, 
and the great irregularities of the ground on the north of 
the town. 
The climate of Caracas has often been called a perpetual 
spring. The same sort of climate exists everywhere, half- 
u ay up the Cordilleras of equinoctial America, between four 
hundred and nine hundred toises of elevation, except in 
places where the great breadth of the valleys, combined with 
an arid soil, causes an extraordinary intensity J of radiant 
I found, at the square of Trinidad, the apparent height of the Silla 
to be 11° 12' 49". It was about four thousand five hundred toises 
distant. 
f Rhododendron ferrugineum of the Alps. 
I As at Carthago and Ibague in New Grenada. 
