Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Ancient
Mines Of Aroa, After Having Been Long Neglected, Have Been Wrought
Anew By The Care Of Don Antonio Henriquez, Whom We Met At San Fernando
On The Borders Of The Apure.
The total produce of metallic copper is
twelve or fifteen hundred quintals a year.
This copper, known at Cadiz
by the name of Caracas copper, is of excellent quality. It is even
preferred to that of Sweden, and of Coquimbo in Chile. Part of the
copper of Aroa is employed for making bells, which are cast on the
spot. Some ores of silver have been recently discovered between Aroa
and Nirgua, near Guanita, in the mountain of San Pablo. Grains of gold
are found in all the mountainous lands between the Rio Yaracuy, the
town of San Felipe, Nirgua, and Barquesimeto; particularly in the Rio
de Santa Cruz, in which the Indian gold-gatherers have sometimes found
lumps of the value of four or five piastres. Do the neighbouring rocks
of mica-slate and gneiss contain veins? or is the gold disseminated
here, as in the granites of Guadarama in Spain, and of the Fichtelberg
in Franconia, throughout the whole mass of the rock? Possibly the
waters, in filtering through it, bring together the disseminated
grains of gold; in which case every attempt to work the rock would be
useless. In the Savana de la Miel, near the town of Barquesimeto, a
shaft has been sunk in a black shining slate resembling ampelite. The
minerals extracted from this shaft, which were sent to me at Caracas,
were quartz, non-auriferous pyrites, and carbonated lead, crystallized
in needles of a silky lustre.
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