Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 366 of 777 - First - Home
These Enormous Stony Masses Appear Sometimes In Rhombs,
Sometimes Under Those Hemispheric Forms, Peculiar To Granitic Rocks
When They Separate In Blocks.
They give the landscape a singularly
gloomy aspect; their colour being in strong contrast with that of the
foam of the river which covers them, and of the vegetation by which
they are surrounded.
The Indians say, that the rocks are burnt (or
carbonized) by the rays of the sun. We saw them not only in the bed of
the Orinoco, but in some spots as far as five hundred toises from its
present shore, on heights which the waters now never reach even in
their greatest swellings.
What is this brownish black crust, which gives these rocks, when they
have a globular form, the appearance of meteoric stones? What idea can
we form of the action of the water, which produces a deposit, or a
change of colour, so extraordinary? We must observe, in the first
place, that this phenomenon does not belong to the cataracts of the
Orinoco alone, but is found in both hemispheres. At my return from
Mexico in 1807, when I showed the granites of Atures and Maypures to
M. Roziere, who had travelled over the valley of Egypt, the coasts of
the Red Sea, and Mount Sinai, this learned geologist pointed out to me
that the primitive rocks of the little cataracts of Syene display,
like the rocks of the Orinoco, a glossy surface, of a blackish-grey,
or almost leaden colour, and of which some of the fragments seem
coated with tar.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 366 of 777
Words from 98969 to 99229
of 211397
