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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The Situation Of
Barcelona Is Singularly Advantageous For The Trade In Cattle.
The
animals have only three days' journey from the llanos to the port,
while it requires eight or nine days to reach Cumana, on account of
the chain of mountains of the Brigantine and the Imposible.
Having landed on the right bank of the Neveri, we ascended to a
little fort called El Morro de Barcelona, situated at the elevation
of sixty or seventy toises above the level of the sea. The Morro is
a calcareous rock which has been lately fortified.
The view from the summit of the Morro is not without beauty. The
rocky island of Boracha lies on the east, the lofty promontory of
Unare is on the west, and below are seen the mouth of the river
Neveri, and the arid shores on which the crocodiles come to sleep
in the sun. Notwithstanding the extreme heat of the air, for the
thermometer, exposed to the reflection of the white calcareous
rock, rose to 38 degrees, we traversed the whole of the eminence. A
fortunate chance led us to observe some very curious geological
phenomena, which we again met with in the Cordilleras of Mexico.
The limestone of Barcelona has a dull, even, or conchoidal
fracture, with very flat cavities. It is divided into very thin
strata, and exhibits less analogy with the limestone of Cumanacoa,
than with that of Caripe, forming the cavern of the Guacharo. It is
traversed by banks of schistose jasper,* (Kieselschiefer of Werner.
)* black, with a conchoidal fracture, and breaking into fragments
of a parallelopipedal figure.
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