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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We Traversed The Forest By A Narrow Path, Along A Rivulet, Which
Rolls Foaming Over A Bed Of Rocks.
We observed, that the vegetation
was more brilliant, wherever the Alpine limestone was covered by a
quartzose sandstone without petrifactions, and very different from
the breccia of the sea-coast.
The cause of this phenomenon depends
probably not so much on the nature of the ground, as on the greater
humidity of the soil. The quartzose sandstone contains thin strata
of a blackish clay-slate,* (* Schieferthon.) which might easily be
confounded with the secondary thonschiefer; and these strata hinder
the water from filtering into the crevices, of which the Alpine
limestone is full. This last offers to view here, as in Saltzburg,
and on the chain of the Apennines, broken and steep beds. The
sandstone, on the contrary, wherever it is seated on the calcareous
rock, renders the aspect of the scene less wild. The hills which it
forms appear more rounded, and the gentler slopes are covered with
a thicker mould.
In humid places, where the sandstone envelopes the Alpine
limestone, some trace of cultivation is constantly found. We met
with huts inhabited by mestizoes in the ravine of Los Frailes, as
well as between the Cuesta de Caneyes, and the Rio Guriental. Each
of these huts stands in the centre of an enclosure, containing
plantains, papaw-trees, sugar-canes, and maize. We might be
surprised at the small extent of these cultivated spots, if we did
not recollect that an acre planted with plantains* (* Musa
paradisiaca.) produces nearly twenty times as much food as the same
space sown with corn.
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