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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We Have
Now To Speak Of A Fourth Formation, Which Probably Rests* On The
Calcareous Sandstone Of Araya, I Mean The Muriatiferous Clay.
(* It
were to be wished that mineralogical travellers would examine more
particularly the Cerro de la Vela.
The limestone of the Penas
Negras rests on a slate-clay, mixed with quartzose sand; but there
is no proof of the muriatiferous clay of the salt-works being of
more ancient formation than this slate-clay, or of its alternating
with banks of sandstone. No well having been dug in these
countries, we can have no information respecting the superposition
of the strata. The banks of calcareous sandstone, which are found
at the mouth of the salt lake, and near the fishermen's huts on the
coast opposite Cape Macano, appeared to me to lie beneath the
muriatiferous clay.) This clay, hardened, impregnated with
petroleum, and mixed with lamellar and lenticular gypsum, is
analogous to the salzthon, which in Europe accompanies the sal-gem
of Berchtesgaden, and in South America that of Zipaquira. It is
generally of a smoke-grey colour, earthy, and friable; but it
encloses more solid masses of a blackish brown, of a schistose, and
sometimes conchoidal fracture. These fragments, from six to eight
inches long, have an angular form. When they are very small, they
give the clay a porphyroidal appearance. We find disseminated in
it, as we have already observed, either in nests or in small veins,
selenite, and sometimes, though seldom, fibrous gypsum. It is
remarkable enough, that this stratum of clay, as well as the banks
of pure sal-gem and the salzthon in Europe, scarcely ever contains
shells, while the rocks adjacent exhibit them in great abundance.
Although the muriate of soda is not found visible to the eye in the
clay of Araya, we cannot doubt of its existence. It shows itself in
large crystals, if we sprinkle the mass with rain-water and expose
it to the sun. The lagoon to the east of the castle of Santiago
exhibits all the phenomena which have been observed in the salt
lakes of Siberia, described by Lepechin, Gmelin, and Pallas. This
lagoon receives, however, only the rain-waters, which filter
through the banks of clay, and unite at the lowest point of the
peninsula. While the lagoon served as a salt-work to the Spaniards
and the Dutch, it did not communicate with the sea; at present this
communication has been interrupted anew, by faggots placed at the
place where the waters of the ocean made an irruption in 1726.
After great droughts, crystallized and very pure muriate of soda,
in masses of three or four cubic feet, is still drawn from time to
time from the bottom of the lagoon. The salt waters of the lake,
exposed to the heat of the sun, evaporate at their surface; crusts
of salt, formed in a saturated solution, fall to the bottom; and by
the attraction between crystals of a similar nature and form, the
crystallized masses daily augment. It is generally observed that
the water is brackish wherever lagoons are formed in clayey ground.
It is true, that for the new salt-work near the battery of Araya,
the seawater is received into pits, as in the salt marshes of the
south of France; but in the island of Margareta, near Pampatar,
salt is manufactured by employing only fresh water, with which the
muriatiferous clay has first been lixiviated.
We must not confound the salt disseminated in these clayey soils
with that contained in the sands of the seashore, on the coasts of
Normandy. These phenomena, considered in a geognostical point of
view, have scarcely any properties in common. I have seen
muriatiferous clay at the level of the ocean at Punta Araya, and at
two thousand toises' height in the Cordilleras of New Grenada. If
in the former of these places it lies on very recent shelly
breccia, it forms, on the contrary, in Austria near Ischel, a
considerable stratum in the Alpine limestone, which, though equally
posterior to the existence of organic life on the globe, is
nevertheless of high antiquity, as is proved by the great number of
rocks with which it is covered. We shall not question, that
sal-gem, either pure or mixed with muriatiferous clay, may have
been deposited by an ancient sea; but everything evinces that it
was formed during an order of things bearing no resemblance to that
in which the sea at present, by a slower operation, deposits a few
particles of muriate of soda on the sands of our shores. In the
same manner as sulphur and coal belong to periods of formation very
remote from each other, the sal-gem is also found sometimes in
transition gypsum,* (* Uebergangsgyps, in the transition slate of
White Alley (l'Allee Blanche), and between the grauwacke and black
transition limestone near Bex, below the Dent de Chamossaire,
according to M. von Buch.) sometimes in the Alpine limestone,* (*
At Halle in the Tyrol.) sometimes in a muriatiferous clay lying on
a very recent sandstone,* (* At Punta Araya.) and lastly, sometimes
in a gypsum* posterior to the chalk. (* Gypsum of the third
formation among the secondary gypsums. The first formation contains
the gypsum in which are found the brine-springs of Thuringia, and
which is placed either in the Alpine limestone or zechstein, to
which it essentially belongs (Freiesleben Geognost. Arbeiten tome 2
page 131), or between the zechstein and the limestone of the Jura,
or between the zechstein and the new sandstone. It is the ancient
gypsum of secondary formation of Werner's school (alterer
flozgyps), which we almost preferably call muriatiferous gypsum.
The second formation is composed of fibrous gypsum, placed either
in the molasse or new sandstone, or between this and the upper
limestone. It abounds in common clay, which differs essentially
from the salzthon or muriatiferous clay. The third formation of
gypsum is more recent than chalk. To this belongs the bony gypsum
of Paris; and, as appears from the researches of Mr. Steffens
(Geogn.
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