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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It Is Generally Observed That
The Water Is Brackish Wherever Lagoons Are Formed In Clayey Ground.
It Is True, That
For the new salt-work near the battery of Araya,
the seawater is received into pits, as in the salt
Marshes of the
south of France; but in the island of Margareta, near Pampatar,
salt is manufactured by employing only fresh water, with which the
muriatiferous clay has first been lixiviated.
We must not confound the salt disseminated in these clayey soils
with that contained in the sands of the seashore, on the coasts of
Normandy. These phenomena, considered in a geognostical point of
view, have scarcely any properties in common. I have seen
muriatiferous clay at the level of the ocean at Punta Araya, and at
two thousand toises' height in the Cordilleras of New Grenada. If
in the former of these places it lies on very recent shelly
breccia, it forms, on the contrary, in Austria near Ischel, a
considerable stratum in the Alpine limestone, which, though equally
posterior to the existence of organic life on the globe, is
nevertheless of high antiquity, as is proved by the great number of
rocks with which it is covered. We shall not question, that
sal-gem, either pure or mixed with muriatiferous clay, may have
been deposited by an ancient sea; but everything evinces that it
was formed during an order of things bearing no resemblance to that
in which the sea at present, by a slower operation, deposits a few
particles of muriate of soda on the sands of our shores.
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