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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In these grand profiles
the dip of the strata appears to be distinguishable.
Judging from
the fragments of rock found along the coast, and from the hills
near Higuerote, Cape Codera is not composed of granite with a
granular texture, but of a real gneiss with a foliated texture. Its
laminae are very broad and sometimes sinuous.* (* Dickflasriger
gneiss.) They contain large nodules of reddish feldspar and but
little quartz. The mica is found in superposed lamellae, not
isolated. The strata nearest the bay were in the direction of 60
degrees north-east, and dipped 80 degrees to north-west. These
relations of direction and of dip are the same at the great
mountain of the Silla, near Caracas, and to the east of Maniquarez,
in the isthmus of Araya. They seem to prove that the primitive
chain of that isthmus, after having been ruptured or swallowed up
by the sea along a space of thirty-five leagues,* (* Between the
meridians of Maniquarez and Higuerote.) appears anew in Cape
Codera, and continues westward as a chain of the coast.
I was assured that, in the interior of the earth, south of
Higuerote, limestone formations are found. The gneiss did not act
upon the magnetic needle; yet along the coast, which forms a cove
near Cape Codera, and which is covered with a fine forest, I saw
magnetic sand mixed with spangles of mica, deposited by the sea.
This phenomenon occurs again near the port of La Guayra.
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