Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The
Cavity Containing The Lichen Was Found Closed On All Sides By
Enormous Masses Of Stalactite.)
The caverns in mountains of gypsum often contain mephitic
emanations and deleterious gases.
It is not the sulphate of lime
that acts on the atmospheric air, but the clay slightly mixed with
carbon, and the fetid limestone, so often mingled with the gypsum.
We cannot yet decide, whether the swinestone acts as a
hydrosulphuret, or by means of a bituminous principle.* (* That
description of fetid limestone called by the German mineralogists
stinkstein is always of a blackish brown colour. It is only by
decomposition that it becomes white, after having acted on the
surrounding air. The stinkstein which is of secondary formation,
must not be confounded with a very white primitive granular
limestone of the island of Thasos, which emits, when scraped, a
smell of sulphuretted hydrogen. This marble is coarser grained than
Carrara (Marmor lunense). It was frequently employed by the Grecian
sculptors, and I often picked up fragments of it at the Villa
Adriani, near Rome.) Its property of absorbing oxygen gas is known
to all the miners of Thuringia. It is the same as the action of the
carburetted clay of the gypseous grottoes, and of the great
chambers (sinkwerke) dug in mines of fossil salt which are worked
by the introduction of fresh water. The caverns of calcareous
mountains are not exposed to those decompositions of the
atmospheric air, unless they contain bones of quadrupeds, or the
mould mixed with animal gluten and phosphate of lime, from which
arise inflammable and fetid gases.
Though we made many enquiries among the inhabitants of Caripe,
Cumanacoa, and Cariaco, we did not learn that they had ever
discovered in the cavern of Guacharo either the remains of
carnivorous animals, or those bony breccias of herbivorous animals,
which are found in the caverns of Germany and Hungary, and in the
clefts of the calcareous rocks of Gibraltar. The fossil bones of
the megatherium, of the elephant, and of the mastodon, which
travellers have brought from South America, have all been found in
the light soil of the valleys and table-lands. Excepting the
megalonyx,* a kind of sloth of the size of an ox, described by Mr.
Jefferson, I know not a single instance of the skeleton of an
animal buried in a cavern of the New World. (* The megalonyx was
found in the caverns of Green Briar, in Virginia, at the distance
of 1500 leagues from the megatherium, which resembles it very much,
and is of the size of the rhinoceros.) The extreme scarcity of this
geological phenomenon will appear the less surprising to us, if we
recollect, that in France, England, and Italy, there are also a
great number of grottoes in which we have never met with any
vestige of fossil bones.
Although, in primitive nature, whatever relates to ideas of extent
and mass is of no great importance, yet I may observe, that the
cavern of Caripe is one of the most spacious known to exist in
limestone formations. It is at least 900 metres or 2800 feet in
length.* (* The famous Baumannshohle in the Hartz, according to
Messrs. Gilbert and Ilsen, is only 578 feet in length; the cavern
of Scharzfeld 350; that of Gaylenreuth 304; that of Antiparos 300.
But according to Saussure, the Grotto of Balme is 1300 feet.) Owing
to the different degrees of solubility in rocks, it is generally
not in calcareous mountains, but in gypseous formations, that we
find the most extensive succession of grottoes. In Saxony there are
some in gypsum several leagues in length; for instance, that of
Wimelburg, which communicates with the cavern of Cresfield.
The determination of the temperature of grottoes presents a field
for interesting observation. The cavern of Caripe, situated nearly
in the latitude of 10 degrees 10 minutes, consequently in the
centre of the torrid zone, is elevated 506 toises above the level
of the sea in the gulf of Cariaco. We found that, in every part of
it, in the month of September, the temperature of the internal air
was between 18.4 and 18.9 degrees of the centesimal thermometer;
the external atmosphere being at 16.2 degrees. At the entrance of
the cavern, the thermometer in the open air was at 17.6 degrees;
but when immersed in the water of the little subterranean river, it
marked, even to the end of the cavern, 16.8 degrees. These
experiments are very interesting, if we reflect on the tendency to
equilibrium of heat, in the waters, the air, and the earth. When I
left Europe, men of science were regretting that they had not
sufficient data on what is called the temperature of the interior
of the globe; and it is but very recently that efforts have been
made, and with some success, to solve the grand problem of
subterranean meteorology. The stony strata that form the crust of
our planet, are alone accessible to our examination; and we now
know that the mean temperature of these strata varies not only with
latitudes and heights, but that, according to the position of the
several places, it performs also, in the space of a year, regular
oscillations round the mean heat of the neighbouring atmosphere.
The time is gone by when men were surprised to find, in other
zones, the heat of grottoes and wells differing from that observed
in the caves of the observatory at Paris. The same instrument which
in those caves marks 12 degrees, rises in the subterraneous caverns
of the island of Madeira, near Funchal, to 16.2 degrees; in
Joseph's Well, at Cairo* to 21.2 degrees (* At Funchal (latitude 32
degrees 37 minutes) the mean temperature of the air is 20.4
degrees, and at Cairo (latitude 30 degrees 2 minutes), according to
Nouet, it is 22.4 degrees.); in the grottoes of the island of Cuba
to 22 or 23 degrees.* (* The mean temperature of the air at the
Havannah, according to Mr. Ferrer, is 25.6 degrees.) This increase
is nearly in proportion to that of the mean temperature of the
atmosphere, from latitude 48 degrees to the tropics.
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