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 508 of 777 - First - Home
The
Granite Of Those Countries, Owing To The Position Of The Thin Laminae
Of Black Mica, Sometimes Resembles Graphic Granite; But Most
Frequently (And This Determines The Age Of Its Formation) It Passes
Into A Real Gneiss.
Its beds, very regularly stratified, run from
south-west to north-east, as in the Cordillera on the shore of
Caracas.
The dip of the granite-gneiss is 70 degrees north-west. It is
traversed by an infinite number of veins of quartz, which are
singularly transparent, and three or four, and sometimes fifteen
inches thick. I found no cavity (druse), no crystallized substance,
not even rock-crystal; and no trace of pyrites, or any other metallic
substance. I enter into these particulars on account of the chimerical
ideas that have been spread ever since the sixteenth century, after
the voyages of Berreo and Raleigh,* "on the immense riches of the
great and fine empire of Guiana." (* Raleigh's work bears the high
sounding title of The Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful
Empire of Guiana, London 1596. See also Raleghi admiranda Descriptio
Regni Guianae, auri abundantissimi, Hondius Noribergae 1599.)
The river Atabapo presents throughout a peculiar aspect; you see
nothing of its real banks formed by flat lands eight or ten feet high;
they are concealed by a row of palms, and small trees with slender
trunks, the roots of which are bathed by the waters. There are many
crocodiles from the point where you quit the Orinoco to the mission of
San Fernando, and their presence indicates that this part of the river
belongs to the Rio Guaviare and not to the Atabapo.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 508 of 777
Words from 137929 to 138200
of 211397