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 Irruption Of
The River Is Effected Between The Mouths Of The Toparo And The
Sanariapo, At The Western Extremity Of This Majestic Amphitheatre.
The waters of the Orinoco now roll at the foot of the eastern chain of
the mountains, and have receded from the west, where, in a deep
valley, the ancient shore is easily recognized.
A savannah, scarcely
raised thirty feet above the mean level of the river, extends from
this valley as far as the cataracts. There the small church of
Maypures has been constructed. It is built of trunks of palm-trees,
and is surrounded by seven or eight huts. The dry valley, which runs
in a straight line from south to north, from the Cameji to the Toparo,
is filled with granitic and solitary mounds, all resembling those
found in the shape of islands and shoals in the present bed of the
river. I was struck with this analogy of form, on comparing the rocks
of Keri and Oco, situated in the deserted bed of the river, west of
Maypures, with the islets of Ouivitari and Caminitamini, which rise
like old castles amid the cataracts to the east of the mission. The
geological aspect of these scenes, the insular form of the elevations
farthest from the present shore of the Orinoco, the cavities which the
waves appear to have hollowed in the rock Oco, and which are precisely
on the same level (twenty-five or thirty toises high) as the
excavations perceived opposite to them in the isle of Ouivitari; all
these appearances prove that the whole of this bay, now dry, was
formerly covered by water.
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