File:The earth and its inhabitants (1894) (14766009352).jpg

Identifier: earthitsinhabita941recl (find matches)
Title: The earth and its inhabitants ..
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Reclus, Elisée, 1830-1905 Ravenstein, Ernest George, 1834-1913 Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry), 1833-1912
Subjects: Geography
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: MBLWHOI Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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her westflows the true Rio Zulia, which, however, communicates with the Escalante throughthe Catatumbo, forming a network of channels and a large marshy lagoon known asthe Lagon de Zulia. By this waterway Colombia sends its coffee and other producedown to the great market of Maracaibo. The same natural route also connects theVenezuelan towns of Tovar, Bailadores, and Grita with Maracaibo. This place, the Nueva Zamora of its Spanish founders, dates from the year1571, though a first settlement of the same name had been destroyed by corsairsthree years previously. It stood on the same beach where the conqueror Alfingerhad, in 1529, built some large shelters for the women and children captured MAEACAIBO. 119 during his plundering and murderous expeditions. Being conveniently situatedon the west side of the channel between the Gulf of Venezuela, properly so called,and the inner basin, the settlement rapidly attracted to itself all the trade Fig. 41.—Lake op Maeacaibo.Scale 1 : 2,200,000.
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.h ;• %.- ■■mi ■fe ^.i; -imau Depths. 0 to 10 Fa thorns. 10 Fathomsand upwards. 44 Miles. previously enjoyed by the station of Gibraltar, which had been founded on thesouth side of the lake, but which had been burnt by the pirate LOlonais in 1668.Since that time Maracaibo has always remained the commercial centre of thewhole of this region, for it commands the outlet of the vast basin comprisedbetween the Eastern Cordilleras, the Santander mountains, and the Sierra de 120 SOUTH AMERICA—THE ANDES EEGIONS. Perijaa in Colombia. It is thus the natural emporium of the traffic with Cucuta,Pamplona, and the other surrounding markets of the conterminous republic. Atpresent some fifteen steamers ply on the lake and its navigable affluents, and com-munications must ere long be opened with the middle valley of the Magdalenathrough the town of Ocana. Stretching along the beach amid its fringing coconut-groves, Maracaibopresents a pleasanter aspect seen from the lake than it does to the

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