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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In The Midst Of This Tract Of Trap-Formation, The Morros Of San Juan
Rise Like Two Castles In Ruins.
They appear linked to the mornes of
St. Sebastian, and to La Galera which bounds the Llanos like a rocky
wall.
The Morros of San Juan are formed of limestone of a crystalline
texture; sometimes very compact, sometimes spongy, of a greenish-grey,
shining, composed of small grains, and mixed with scattered spangles
of mica. This limestone yields a strong effervescence with acids. I
could not find in it any vestige of organized bodies. It contains in
subordinate strata, masses of hardened clay of a blackish blue, and
carburetted. These masses are fissile, very heavy, and loaded with
iron; their streak is whitish, and they produce no effervescence with
acids. They assume at their surface, by their decomposition in the
air, a yellow colour. We seem to recognize in these argillaceous
strata a tendency either to the transition-slates, or to the
kieselschiefer (schistose jasper), which everywhere characterise the
black transition-limestones. When in fragments, they might be taken at
first sight for basalt or hornblende.* (* I had an opportunity of
examining again, with the greatest care, the rocks of San Juan, of
Chacao, of Parapara, and of Calabozo, during my stay at Mexico, where,
conjointly with M. del Rio, one of the most distinguished pupils of
the school of Freyberg, I formed a geognostical collection for the
Colegio de Mineria of New Spain.) Another white limestone, compact,
and containing some fragments of shells, backs the Morros de San Juan.
I could not see the line of junction of these two limestones, or that
of the calcareous formation and the diabasis.
The transverse valley which descends from Piedras Negras and the
village of San Juan, towards Parapara and the Llanos, is filled with
trap-rocks, displaying close affinity with the formation of green
slates, which they cover. Sometimes we seem to see serpentine,
sometimes grunstein, and sometimes dolerite and basalt. The
arrangement of these problematical masses is not less extraordinary.
Between San Juan, Malpaso, and Piedras Azules, they form strata
parallel to each other; and dipping regularly northward at an angle of
40 or 50 degrees, they cover even the green slates in concordant
stratification. Lower down, towards Parapara and Ortiz, where the
amygdaloids and phonolites are connected with the grunstein,
everything assumes a basaltic aspect. Balls of grunstein heaped one
upon another, form those rounded cones, which are found so frequently
in the Mittelgebirge in Bohemia, near Bilin, the country of
phonolites. The following is the result of my partial observations.
The grunstein, which at first alternated with strata of serpentine, or
was connected with that rock by insensible transitions, is seen alone,
sometimes in strata considerably inclined, and sometimes in balls with
concentric strata, imbedded in strata of the same substance. It lies,
near Malpaso, on green slates, steatitic, mingled with hornblende,
destitute of mica and grains of quartz, dipping, like the grunsteins,
45 degrees toward the north, and directed, like them, 75 degrees
north-west.
A great sterility prevails where these green slates predominate, no
doubt on account of the magnesia they contain, which (as is proved by
the magnesian-limestone of England*) is very hurtful to vegetation. (*
Magnesian limestone is of a straw-yellow colour, and contains
madrepores: it lies beneath red marl, or muriatiferous red sandstone.)
The dip of the green slates continues the same; but by degrees the
direction of their strata becomes parallel to the general direction of
the primitive rocks of the chain of the coast. At Piedras Azules these
slates, mingled with hornblende, cover in concordant stratification a
blackish-blue slate, very fissile, and traversed by small veins of
quartz. The green slates include some strata of grunstein, and even
contain balls of that substance. I nowhere saw the green slates
alternate with the black slates of the ravine of Piedras Azules: at
the line of junction these two slates appear rather to pass one into
the other, the green slates becoming of a pearl-grey in proportion as
they lose their hornblende.
Farther south, towards Parapara and Ortiz, the slates disappear. They
are concealed under a trap-formation more varied in its aspect. The
soil becomes more fertile; the rocky masses alternate with strata of
clay, which appear to be produced by the decomposition of the
grunsteins, the amygdaloids, and the phonolites.
The grunstein, which farther north was less granulous, and passed into
serpentine, here assumes a very different character. It contains balls
of mandelstein, or amygdaloid, eight or ten inches in diameter. These
balls, sometimes a little flattened, are divided into concentric
layers: this is the effect of decomposition. Their nucleus is almost
as hard as basalt, and they are intermingled with little cavities,
owing to bubbles of gas, filled with green earth, and crystals of
pyroxene and mesotype. Their basis is greyish blue, rather soft, and
showing small white spots which, by the regular form they present, I
should conceive to be decomposed feldspar. M. von Buch examined with a
powerful lens the species we brought. He discovered that each crystal
of pyroxene, enveloped in the earthy mass, is separated from it by
fissures parallel to the sides of the crystal. These fissures seem to
be the effect of a contraction which the mass or basis of the
mandelstein has undergone. I sometimes saw these balls of mandelstein
arranged in strata, and separated from each other by beds of grunstein
of ten or fourteen inches thick; sometimes (and this situation is most
common) the balls of mandelstein, two or three feet in diameter, are
found in heaps, and form little mounts with rounded summits, like
spheroidal basalt. The clay which separates these amygdaloid
concretions arises from the decomposition of their crust. They acquire
by the contact of the air a very thin coating of yellow ochre.
South-west of the village of Parapara rises the little Cerro de
Flores, which is discerned from afar in the steppes. Almost at its
foot, and in the midst of the mandelstein tract we have just been
describing, a porphyritic phonolite, a mass of compact feldspar of a
greenish grey, or mountain-green, containing long crystals of vitreous
feldspar, appears exposed.
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