204 INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON SPRINGS. 
Valencia. The fears which the inhabitants of the shores had 
so long entertained were reversed. * * * Those who had 
explained the diminution of the lake by the supposition ot sub¬ 
terranean channels were suspected of blocking them up, to 
prove themselves in the right. 
“ During the twenty-two years which had elapsed, import¬ 
ant political events had occurred. Venezuela no longer be¬ 
longed to Spain. The peaceful valley of Aragua had been the 
theatre of bloody struggles, and a war of extermination had 
desolated these smiling lands and decimated their population. 
At the first cry of independence a great number of slaves 
found their liberty by enlisting under the banners of the new 
republic; the great plantations were abandoned, and the forest, 
which, in the tropics so rapidly encroaches, had soon recovered 
a large proportion of the soil which man had wrested from 
it by more than a century of constant and painful labor. 
u At the time of the growing prosperity of the valley of 
Aragua, the principal affluents of the lake were diverted, to 
serve for irrigation, and the rivers were dry for more than six 
months of the year. At the period of my visit, their waters, 
no longer employed, flowed freely.” 
Boussingault proceeds to state that two lakes near Ubate 
in New Granada, at an elevation of 2,562 metres (= 8,500 
English feet), where there is a constant temperature of 14° to 
16° centigrade [ — 57°, 61° Fahrenheit], had formed but one, 
a century before his visit; that the waters were gradually 
retiring, and the plantations extending over the abandoned 
bed; that, by inquiry of old hunters and by examination of 
parish records, he found that extensive clearings had been 
made and were still going on. 
He found, also, that the length of the Lake of Fuquene, in 
the same valley, had, within two centuries, been reduced from 
ten leagues to one and a half, its breadth from three leagues to 
one. At the former period, timber was abundant, and the 
neighboring mountains were covered, to a certain height, with 
American oaks, laurels, and other trees of indigenous species ; 
but at the time of his visit the mountains had been almost 
