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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From Guayavo We Proceed For
Half An Hour Over A Smooth Table-Land, Covered With Alpine Plants.
This Part Of The Way, On Account Of Its Windings, Is Called Las
Vueltas.
We find a little higher up the barracks or magazines of
flour, which were constructed in a spot of cool temperature by the
Guipuzcoa Company, when they had the exclusive monopoly of the
trade of Caracas, and supplied that place with provision.
On the
road to Las Vueltas we see for the first time the capital, situated
three hundred toises below, in a valley luxuriantly planted with
coffee and European fruit-trees. Travellers are accustomed to halt
near a fine spring, known by the name of Fuente de Sanchorquiz,
which flows down from the Sierra on sloping strata of gneiss. I
found its temperature 16.4 degrees; which, for an elevation of
seven hundred and twenty-six toises, is considerably cool, and it
would appear much cooler to those who drink its limpid water, if,
instead of gushing out between La Cumbre and the temperate valley
of Caracas, it were found on the descent towards La Guayra. But at
this descent on the northern side of the mountain, the rock, by an
uncommon exception in this country, does not dip to north-west, but
to south-east, which prevents the subterranean waters from forming
springs there.
We continued to descend from the small ravine of Sanchorquiz to la
Cruz de la Guayra, a cross erected on an open spot, six hundred and
thirty-two toises high, and thence (entering by the custom-house
and the quarter of the Pastora) to the city of Caracas. On the
south side of the mountain of Avila, the gneiss presents several
geognostical phenomena worthy of the attention of travellers. It is
traversed by veins of quartz, containing cannulated and often
articulated prisms of rutile titanite two or three lines in
diameter. In the fissures of the quartz we find, on breaking it,
very thin crystals, which crossing each other form a kind of
network. Sometimes the red schorl occurs only in dendritic crystals
of a bright red.* (* Especially below the Cross of La Guayra, at
594 toises of absolute elevation.) The gneiss of the valley of
Caracas is characterized by the red and green garnets it contains;
they however disappear when the rock passes into mica-slate. This
same phenomenon has been remarked by Von Buch in Sweden; but in the
temperate parts of Europe garnets are in general contained in
serpentine and mica-slates, not in gneiss. In the walls which
enclose the gardens of Caracas, constructed partly of fragments of
gneiss, we find garnets of a very fine red, a little transparent,
and very difficult to detach. The gneiss near the Cross of La
Guayra, half a league from Caracas, presented also vestiges of
azure copper-ore* (* Blue carbonate of copper.) disseminated in
veins of quartz, and small strata of plumbago (black lead), or
earthy carburetted iron. This last is found in pretty large masses,
and sometimes mingled with sparry iron-ore, in the ravine of
Tocume, to the west of the Silla.
Between the spring of Sanchorquiz and the Cross of La Guayra, as
well as still higher up, the gneiss contains considerable beds of
saccharoidal bluish-grey primitive limestone, coarse-grained,
containing mica, and traversed by veins of white calcareous spar.
The mica, with large folia, lies in the direction of the dip of the
strata. I found in the primitive limestone a great many
crystallized pyrites, and rhomboidal fragments of sparry iron-ore
of Isabella yellow. I endeavoured, but without success, to find
tremolite (Grammatite of Hauy. The primitive limestone above the
spring of Sanchorquiz, is directed, as the gneiss in that place,
hor. 5.2, and dips 45 degrees north; but the general direction of
the gneiss is, in the Cerro de Avila, hor. 3.4 with 60 degrees of
dip north-west. Exceptions merely local are observed in a small
space of ground near the Cross of La Guayra (hor. 6.2, dip 8
degrees north); and higher up, opposite the Quebrada of Tipe (hor.
12, dip 50 degrees west).), which in the Fichtelberg, in Franconia,
is common in the primitive limestone without dolomite. In Europe
beds of primitive limestone are generally observed in the
mica-slates; but we find also saccharoidal limestone in gneiss of
the most ancient formation, in Sweden near Upsala, in Saxony near
Burkersdorf, and in the Alps in the road over the Simplon. These
situations are analogous to that of Caracas. The phenomena of
geognosy, particularly those which are connected with the
stratification of rocks, and their grouping, are never solitary;
but are found the same in both hemispheres. I was the more struck
with these relations, and this identity of formations, as, at the
time of my journey in these countries, mineralogists were
unacquainted with the name of a single rock of Venezuela, New
Grenada, and the Cordilleras of Quito.
CHAPTER 1.12.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE PROVINCES OF VENEZUELA.
DIVERSITY OF THEIR INTERESTS.
CITY AND VALLEY OF CARACAS.
CLIMATE.
In all those parts of Spanish America in which civilization did not
exist to a certain degree before the Conquest (as it did in Mexico,
Guatimala, Quito, and Peru), it has advanced from the coasts to the
interior of the country, following sometimes the valley of a great
river, sometimes a chain of mountains, affording a temperate
climate. Concentrated at once in different points, it has spread as
if by diverging rays. The union into provinces and kingdoms was
effected on the first immediate contact between civilized parts, or
at least those subject to permanent and regular government. Lands
deserted, or inhabited by savage tribes, now surround the countries
which European civilization has subdued. They divide its conquests
like arms of the sea difficult to be passed, and neighbouring
states are often connected with each other only by slips of
cultivated land. It is less difficult to acquire a knowledge of the
configuration of coasts washed by the ocean, than of the
sinuosities of that interior shore, on which barbarism and
civilization, impenetrable forests and cultivated land, touch and
bound each other.
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