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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I Had Visited The
Beautiful Grotto Of Treshemienshiz, In The Carpathian Mountains,
The Caverns Of The Hartz, And Those Of Franconia, Which Are Vast
Cemeteries,* Containing Bones Of Tigers, Hyenas, And Bears, As
Large As Our Horses.
(* The mould, which has covered for thousands
of years the soil of the caverns of Gaylenreuth and Muggendorf in
Franconia, emits even now choke-damps, or gaseous mixtures of
hydrogen and nitrogen, which rise to the roof of the caves.
This
fact is known to the persons who show these caverns to travellers;
and when I was director of the mines of the Fichtelberg, I observed
it frequently in the summer-time. M. Laugier found in the mould of
Muggendorf, besides phosphate of lime, 0.10 of animal matter. I was
struck, during my stay at Steeben, with the ammoniacal and fetid
smell produced by it, when thrown on a red-hot iron.) Nature in
every zone follows immutable laws in the distribution of rocks, in
the form of mountains, and even in those changes which the exterior
crust of our planet has undergone. So great a uniformity led me to
believe that the aspect of the cavern of Caripe would differ little
from what I had observed in my preceding travels. The reality far
exceeded my expectations. If the configuration of the grottoes, the
splendour of the stalactites, and all the phenomena of inorganic
nature, present striking analogies, the majesty of equinoctial
vegetation gives at the same time an individual character to the
aperture of the cavern.
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