We Measured The Fallen Tree; And Though Its Summit Had Been Burnt, The Length Of Its Trunk Was Still One Hundred And Fifty-Four Feet.* (* French Measure, Nearly Fifty Metres.) It Was Eight Feet In Diameter Near The Roots, And Four Feet Two Inches At The Upper Extremity.

Our guides, less anxious than ourselves to measure the bulk of trees, continually pressed us to proceed onward and seek the 'gold mine.' This part of the ravine is little frequented, and is not uninteresting.

We made the following observations on the geological constitution of the soil. At the entrance of the Quebrada Seca we remarked great masses of primitive saccharoidal limestone, tolerably fine grained, of a bluish tint, and traversed by veins of calcareous spar of dazzling whiteness. These calcareous masses must not be confounded with the very recent depositions of tufa, or carbonate of lime, which fill the plains of the Tuy; they form beds of mica-slate, passing into talc-slate.* (* Talkschiefer of Werner, without garnets or serpentine; not eurite or weisstein. It is in the mountains of Buenavista that the gneiss manifests a tendency to pass into eurite.) The primitive limestone often simply covers this latter rock in concordant stratification. Very near the Hato the talcose slate becomes entirely white, and contains small layers of soft and unctuous graphic ampelite.* (* Zeichenschiefer.) Some pieces, destitute of veins of quartz, are real granular plumbago, which might be of use in the arts. The aspect of the rock is very singular in those places where thin plates of black ampelite alternate with thin, sinuous, and satiny plates of a talcose slate as white as snow.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 755 of 779
Words from 204974 to 205248 of 211363