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 town of Cumana, properly so called, occupies the ground lying
between the castle of San Antonio and the small rivers of
Manzanares and Santa Catalina.
The Delta, formed by the bifurcation
of the first of these rivers, is a fertile plain covered with
Mammees, Sapotas (achras), plantains, and other plants cultivated
in the gardens or charas of the Indians. The town has no remarkable
edifice, and the frequency of earthquakes forbids such
embellishments. It is true, that strong shocks occur less
frequently in a given time at Cumana than at Quito, where we
nevertheless find sumptuous and very lofty churches. But the
earthquakes of Quito are violent only in appearance, and, from the
peculiar nature of the motion and of the ground, no edifice there
is overthrown. At Cumana, as well as at Lima, and in several cities
situated far from the mouths of burning volcanoes, it happens that
the series of slight shocks is interrupted after a long course of
years by great catastrophes, resembling the effects of the
explosion of a mine. We shall have occasion to return to this
phenomenon, for the explanation of which so many vain theories have
been imagined, and which have been classified according to
perpendicular and horizontal movements, shock, and oscillation.* (*
This classification dates from the time of Posidonius. It is the
successio and inclinatio of Seneca; but the ancients had already
judiciously remarked, that the nature of these shocks is too
variable to permit any subjection to these imaginary laws.)
The suburbs of Cumana are almost as populous as the ancient town.
They are three in number:
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