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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A Load Of Eight Arrobas Sells
At Caracas For Twenty-Four Piastres.)
This gypsum generally forms only small beds, and is mixed with a great
deal of fibrous gypsum.
Is it of the same formation as that of Guire,
on the coast of Paria, which contains sulphur? or do the masses of
this latter substance, found in the valley of Buen Pastor and on the
banks of the Orinoco, belong, with the argillaceous gypsum of the
Llanos, to a secondary formation much more recent.
These questions are very interesting in the study of the relative
antiquity of rocks, which is the principal basis of geology. I know
not of any salt-deposits in the Llanos. Horned cattle prosper here
without those famous bareros, or muriatiferous lands, which abound in
the Pampas of Buenos Ayres.* (* Known in North America under the name
of salt-licks.)
After having wandered for a long time, and without any traces of a
road, in the desert savannahs of the Mesa de Pavones, we were
agreeably surprised when we came to a solitary farm, the Hato de Alta
Gracia, surrounded with gardens and basins of limpid water. Hedges of
bead-trees encircled groups of icacoes laden with fruit. Farther on we
passed the night near the small village of San Geronymo del Guayaval,
founded by Capuchin missionaries. It is situated near the banks of the
Rio Guarico, which falls into the Apure. I visited the missionary, who
had no other habitation than his church, not having yet built a house.
He was a young man, and he received us in the most obliging manner,
giving us all the information we desired. His village, or to use the
word established among the monks, his Mission, was not easy to govern.
The founder, who had not hesitated to establish for his own profit a
pulperia, in other words, to sell bananas and guarapo in the church
itself, had shown himself to be not very nice in the choice of the new
colonists. Many marauders of the Llanos had settled at Guayaval,
because the inhabitants of a Mission are exempt from the authority of
secular law. Here, as in Australia, it cannot be expected that good
colonists will be formed before the second or third generation.
We passed the Guarico, and encamped in the savannahs south of
Guayaval. Enormous bats, no doubt of the tribe of Phyllostomas,
hovered as usual over our hammocks during a great part of the night.
Every moment they seemed to be about to fasten on our faces. Early in
the morning we pursued our way over low grounds, often inundated. In
the season of rains, a boat may be navigated, as on a lake, between
the Guarico and the Apure. We arrived on the 27th of March at the
Villa de San Fernando, the capital of the Mission of the Capuchins in
the province of Varinas. This was the termination of our journey over
the Llanos; for we passed the three months of April, May, and June on
the rivers.
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