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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Three Great Parallel Chains Extend From East To West.
The two most
northerly chains are primitive, and contain the mica-slates of
Macanao, and the San Juan Valley, of Maniquarez, and of
Chuparipari.
These we shall distinguish by the names of Cordillera
of the island of Margareta, and Cordillera of Araya. The third
chain, the most southerly of the whole, the Cordillera of the
Brigantine and of the Cocollar, contains rocks only of secondary
formation; and, what is remarkable enough, though analogous to the
geological constitution of the Alps westward of St. Gothard, the
primitive chain is much less elevated than that which was composed
of secondary rocks.* (* In New Andalusia, the Cordillera of the
Cocollar nowhere contains primitive rocks. If these rocks form the
nucleus of this chain, and rise above the level of the neighbouring
plains, which is scarcely probable, we must suppose that they are
all covered with limestone and sandstone. In the Swiss Alps, on the
contrary, the chain which is designated under the too vague
denomination of lateral and calcareous, contains primitive rocks,
which, according to the observations of Escher and Leopold von
Buch, are often visible to the height of eight hundred or a
thousand toises.) The sea has separated the two northern
Cordilleras, those of the island of Margareta and the peninsula of
Araya; and the small islands of Coche and of Cubagua are remnants
of the land that was submerged. Farther to the south, the vast gulf
Cariaco stretches away, like a longitudinal valley formed by the
irruption of the sea, between the two small chains of Araya and the
Cocollar, between the mica-slate and the Alpine limestone. We shall
soon see that the direction of the strata, very regular in the
first of these rocks, is not quite parallel with the general
direction of the gulf. In the high Alps of Europe, the great
longitudinal valley of the Rhone also sometimes cuts at an oblique
angle the calcareous banks in which it has been excavated.
The two parallel chains of Araya and the Cocollar were connected,
to the east of the town of Cariaco, between the lakes of Campoma
and Putaquao, by a kind of transverse dyke, which bears the name of
Cerro de Meapire, and which in distant times, by resisting the
impulse of the waves, has hindered the waters of the gulf of
Cariaco from uniting with those of the gulf of Paria. Thus, in
Switzerland, the central chain, that which passes by the Col de
Ferrex, the Simplon, St. Gothard, and the Splugen, is connected on
the north and the south with two lateral chains, by the mountains
of Furca and Maloya. It is interesting to recall to mind those
striking analogies exhibited in both continents by the external
structure of the globe.
The primitive chain of Araya ends abruptly in the meridian of the
village of Maniquarez; and the western slope of the peninsula, as
well as the plains in the midst of which stands the castle of San
Antonio, is covered with very recent formations of sandstone and
clay mixed with gypsum.
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