Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 378 of 407 - First - Home
(Trinidad, Which Is Traversed By A
Chain Of Primitive Slate, Appears To Have Anciently Formed A Part
Of The Littoral Chain Of Cumana, And Not Of The System Of The
Mountains Of The Caribbee Islands.)) Each Island Is Not The Effect
Of One Single Heaving-Up:
Most of them appear to consist of
isolated masses which have been progressively united together.
The
matter has not been emitted from one crater, but from several; so
that a single island of small extent contains a whole system of
volcanoes, regions purely basaltic, and others covered with recent
lavas. The volcanoes still burning are those of St. Vincent, St.
Lucia, and Guadaloupe. The first threw out lava in 1718 and 1812;
in the second there is a continual formation of sulphur by the
condensation of vapours, which issue from the crevices of an
ancient crater. The last eruption of the volcano of Guadaloupe took
place in 1797. The Solfatara of St. Christopher's was still burning
in 1692. At Martinique, Vauclin, Montagne Pelee, and the crater
surrounded by the five Paps of Carbet, must be considered as three
extinguished volcanoes. The effects of thunder have been often
confounded in that place with subterranean fire. No good
observation has confirmed the supposed eruption of the 22nd of
January, 1792. The group of volcanoes in the Caribbee Islands
resembles that of the volcanoes of Quito and Los Pastos; craters
with which the subterranean fire does not appear to communicate are
ranged on the same line with burning craters, and alternate with
them.
Notwithstanding the intimate connection manifested in the action of
the volcanoes of the smaller West India Islands and the earthquakes
of Terra Firma, it often happens that shocks felt in the volcanic
archipelago are not propagated to the island of Trinidad, or to the
coasts of Caracas and Cumana. This phenomenon is in no way
surprising: even in the Caribbees the commotions are often confined
to one place. The great eruption of the volcano in St. Vincent's
did not occasion an earthquake at Martinique or Guadaloupe. Loud
explosions were heard there as well as at Venezuela, but the ground
was not convulsed.
These explosions must not be confounded with the rolling noise
which everywhere precedes the slightest commotions; they are often
heard on the banks of the Orinoco, and (as we were assured by
persons living on the spot) between the Rio Arauca and Cuchivero.
Father Morello relates that at the Mission of Cabruta the
subterranean noise so much resembles discharges of small cannon
(pedreros) that it has seemed as if a battle were being fought at a
distance. On the 21st of October, 1766, the day of the terrible
earthquake which desolated the province of New Andalusia, the
ground was simultaneously shaken at Cumana, at Caracas, at
Maracaybo, and on the banks of the Casanare, the Meta, the Orinoco,
and the Ventuario. Father Gili has described these commotions at
the Mission of Encaramada, a country entirely granitic, where they
were accompanied by loud explosions.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 378 of 407
Words from 196168 to 196668
of 211363
