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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Everything Indicates That The
Valley Is The Bottom Of An Ancient Lake.
The mountains, which in
ancient times formed its shores, all rise perpendicularly in the
direction of the plain.
The only outlet for the waters of the lake
was on the side of Arenas. In digging foundations, beds of round
pebbles, mixed with small bivalve shells, are found; and according
to the report of persons worthy of credit, there were discovered,
thirty years ago, at the bottom of the ravine of San Juanillo, two
enormous femoral bones, four feet long, and weighing more than
thirty pounds. The Indians imagined that these were giants' bones;
whilst the half-learned sages of the country, who assume the right
of explaining everything, gravely asserted that they were mere
sports of nature, and little worthy of attention; an opinion
founded on the circumstance that human bones decay rapidly in the
soil of Cumanacoa. In order to decorate their churches on the
festival of the dead, they take skulls from the cemeteries on the
coast, where the earth is impregnated with saline substances. These
pretended thigh-bones of giants were carried to the port of Cumana,
where I sought for them in vain; but from the analogy of some
fossil bones which I brought from other parts of South America, and
which have been carefully examined by M. Cuvier, it is probable
that the gigantic femoral bones of Cumanacoa belonged to elephants
of a species now extinct. It may appear surprising that they were
found in a place so little elevated above the present level of the
waters; since it is a remarkable fact, that the fragments of the
mastodons and fossil elephants which I brought from the equinoctial
regions of Mexico, New Grenada, Quito, and Peru, were not found in
low regions (as were the megatherium of Rio Luxan* (* One league
south-east from the town of Buenos Ayres.) and Virginia,* (* The
megatherium of Virginia is the megalonyx of Mr. Jefferson.
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