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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Our Fellow
Travellers Would Have Returned By The Shortest Way, That Of The
Pimichin And The Small Rivers; But M. Bonpland Preferred, Like Me,
Persisting In The Plan Of The Voyage, Which We Had Traced For
Ourselves In Passing The Great Cataracts.
We had already travelled one
hundred and eighty leagues in a boat from San Fernando de Apure to San
Carlos, on the Rio Apure, the Orinoco, the Atabapo, the Temi, the
Tuamini, and the Rio Negro.
In again entering the Orinoco by the
Cassiquiare we had to navigate three hundred and twenty leagues, from
San Carlos to Angostura. By this way we had to struggle against the
currents during ten days; the rest was to be performed by going down
the stream of the Orinoco. It would have been blamable to have
suffered ourselves to be discouraged by the fear of a cloudy sky, and
by the mosquitos of the Cassiquiare. Our Indian pilot, who had been
recently at Mandavaca, promised us the sun, and those great stars that
eat the clouds, as soon as we should have left the black waters of the
Guaviare. We therefore carried out our first project of returning to
San Fernando de Atabapo by the Cassiquiare; and, fortunately for our
researches, the prediction of the Indian was verified. The white
waters brought us by degrees a more serene sky, stars, mosquitos, and
crocodiles.
We passed between the islands of Zaruma and Mini, or Mibita, covered
with thick vegetation; and, after having ascended the rapids of the
Piedra de Uinumane, we entered the Rio Cassiquiare at the distance of
eight miles from the small fort of San Carlos. The Piedra, or granitic
rock which forms the little cataract, attracted our attention on
account of the numerous veins of quartz by which it is traversed.
These veins are several inches broad, and their masses proved that
their date and formation are very different. I saw distinctly that,
wherever they crossed each other, the veins containing mica and black
schorl traversed and drove out of their direction those which
contained only white quartz and feldspar. According to the theory of
Werner, the black veins were consequently of a more recent formation
than the white. Being a disciple of the school of Freyberg, I could
not but pause with satisfaction at the rock of Uinumane, to observe
the same phenomena near the equator, which I had so often seen in the
mountains of my own country. I confess that the theory which considers
veins as clefts filled from above with various substances, pleases me
somewhat less now than it did at that period; but these modes of
intersection and driving aside, observed in the stony and metallic
veins, do not the less merit the attention of travellers as being one
of the most general and constant of geological phenomena. On the east
of Javita, all along the Cassiquiare, and particularly in the
mountains of Duida, the number of veins in the granite increases.
These veins are full of holes and druses; and their frequency seems to
indicate that the granite of these countries is not of very ancient
formation.
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