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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On The Seashore, And In The
Gulf, We Find Flocks Of Fishing Herons, And Alcatras Of A Very
Unwieldy Form,
Which swim, like the swan, raising their wings.
Nearer the habitation of man, thousands of galinazo vultures, the
jackals of
The winged tribe, are ever busy in disinterring the
carcases of animals.* (* Buffon Hist. Nat. des Oiseaux tome 1 page
114.) A gulf, containing hot and submarine springs, divides the
secondary from the primary and schistose rocks of the peninsula of
Araya. Each of these coasts is washed by a tranquil sea, of azure
tint, and always gently agitated by a breeze from one quarter. A
bright clear sky, with a few light clouds at sunset, reposes on the
ocean, on the treeless peninsula, and on the plains of Cumana,
while we see the storms accumulate and descend in fertile showers
among the inland mountains. Thus on these coasts, as well as at the
foot of the Andes, the earth and the sky present the extremes of
clear weather and fogs, of drought and torrents of rain, of
absolute nudity and never-ceasing verdure.
The analogies which we have just indicated, between the sea-coasts
of New Andalusia and those of Peru, extend also to the recurrence
of earthquakes, and the limits which nature seems to have
prescribed to these phenomena. We have ourselves felt very violent
shocks at Cumana; and we learned on the spot, the most minute
circumstances that accompanied the great catastrophe of the 14th
December, 1797.
It is a very generally received opinion on the coasts of Cumana,
and in the island of Margareta, that the gulf of Cariaco owes its
existence to a rent of the continent attended by an irruption of
the sea. The remembrance of that great event was preserved among
the Indians to the end of the fifteenth century; and it is related
that, at the time of the third voyage of Christopher Columbus, the
natives mentioned it as of very recent date. In 1530, the
inhabitants were alarmed by new shocks on the coasts of Paria and
Cumana. The land was inundated by the sea, and the small fort,
built by James Castellon at New Toledo,* was entirely destroyed. (*
This was the first name given to the city of Cumana - Girolamo
Benzoni Hist. del Mondo Nuovo pages 3, 31, and 33. James Castellon
arrived at St. Domingo in 1521, after the appearance of the
celebrated Bartholomew de las Casas in these countries. On
attentively reading the narratives of Benzoni and Caulin, we find
that the fort of Castellon was built near the mouth of the
Manzanares (alla ripa del fiume de Cumana); and not, as some modern
travellers have asserted, on the mountain where now stands the
castle of San Antonio.) At the same time an enormous opening was
formed in the mountains of Cariaco, on the shores of the gulf
bearing that name, when a great body of salt-water, mixed with
asphaltum, issued from the micaceous schist. Earthquakes were very
frequent about the end of the sixteenth century; and, according to
the traditions preserved at Cumana, the sea often inundated the
shores, rising from fifteen to twenty fathoms.
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