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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Scarcely Had We Attained The Summit Of
The Mountain When We Beheld With Astonishment The Singular Aspect Of
The Surrounding Country.
The foamy bed of the waters is filled with an
archipelago of islands covered with palm-trees.
Westward, on the left
bank of the Orinoco, the wide-stretching savannahs of the Meta and the
Casanare resembled a sea of verdure. The setting sun seemed like a
globe of fire suspended over the plain, and the solitary Peak of
Uniana, which appeared more lofty from being wrapped in vapours which
softened its outline, all contributed to augment the majesty of the
scene. Immediately below us lay a deep valley, enclosed on every side.
Birds of prey and goatsuckers winged their lonely flight in this
inaccessible circus. We found a pleasure in following with the eye
their fleeting shadows, as they glided slowly over the flanks of the
rock.
A narrow ridge led us to a neighbouring mountain, the rounded summit
of which supported immense blocks of granite. These masses are more
than forty or fifty feet in diameter; and their form is so perfectly
spherical, that, as they appear to touch the soil only by a small
number of points, it might be supposed, at the least shock of an
earthquake, they would roll into the abyss. I do not remember to have
seen anywhere else a similar phenomenon, amid the decompositions of
granitic soils. If the balls rested on a rock of a different nature,
as in the blocks of Jura, we might suppose that they had been rounded
by the action of water, or thrown out by the force of an elastic
fluid; but their position on the summit of a hill alike granitic,
makes it more probable that they owe their origin to the progressive
decomposition of the rock.
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