On the influence exercised by trees on the climate of a country : being reports to the Madras Government / by Edward Balfour, William Cullen and Charles J. Smith.

  • Edward Green Balfour
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the influence exercised by trees on the climate of a country : being reports to the Madras Government / by Edward Balfour, William Cullen and Charles J. Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    with the greatest care, I have found that its waters have precisely the same elevation as those of Ubata. It is now nearly two centuries since this lake was visited by Don Lucas Fernandes de Piedrahita, Bishop of Panama, to whom we are indebted for the History of the conquest of New Grenada. This author, whose accuracy I have frequently had occasion to admire and more especially as it respects distances, gives the length of the lake Fuquena at ten leagues, and its breadth at three. By a very happy coincidence Dr. Roulin a few years ago had occasion to construct a plan of this same lake, and he found the dimensions to be a league and a half in length and half a league in breadth. It may be conceived by some, that the dimensions adopted by Piedrahita are exaggerated. But this is not my opinion, and support- ing myself on the one side by my barometrical observations, and on the other by the silence which all the ancient historians have main- tained respecting the lake of Ubata, a silence which is the more remarkable since they have described far less considerable bodies of water, I am inclined to believe that at the time that the Bishop of Panama visited this country there existed only a single lake, which extended without interruption from Ubata to Fuquena. In this view the calculation of Piedrahita is in no degree exaggerated. At any rate, the fact of the retreat of the waters is much more impor- tant than the estimate of the extent of surface which is left bare, a fact which is not questioned by any one. All the inhabitants of Fuquena know well that the village was built quite close to the lake, and now it is about three miles distant from it. In former times it was an easy matter to procure timber for building in the environs of Fuquena. The mountains, which rise on all sides of the valley, used to be quite covered to a certain height with the trees peculiar to these elevated regions. There was the Cordillera oak (encinos) in abun- dance ; and also a great many laurels (myrica,) from which great quantities of wax were procured. Now the mountains are nearly entirely bare, which great change is chiefly owing to the working the salt springs of Taosa and Enemocon. To all these authentic facts, whose number might be increased, it may be replied that the disappearance of the water, however incontestible, might possibly have occurred had there been no clearing of the ground, and it might be contended that their failure is owing to a wholly different
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