Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Whole Of This Vast Plain Consists Of Secondary Formations Which To
The Southward Rest Immediately On The Granitic Mountains Of The
Orinoco.
On the north-west they are separated by a narrow band of
transition-rocks from the primitive mountains of
The shore of Caracas.
This abundance of secondary rocks, covering without interruption a
space of more than seven thousand square leagues,* is a phenomenon the
more remarkable in that region of the globe, because in the whole of
the Sierra da la Parima, between the right bank of the Orinoco and the
Rio Negro, there is, as in Scandinavia, a total absence of secondary
formations. (* Reckoning only that part of the Llanos which is bounded
by the Rio Apure on the south, and by the Sierra Nevada de Merida and
the Parima de las Rosas on the west.) The red sandstone, containing
some vestiges of fossil wood (of the family of monocotyledons) is seen
everywhere in the plains of Calabozo: farther east it is overlaid by
calcareous and gypseous rocks which conceal it from the research of
the geologist. The marly gypsum, of which we collected specimens near
the Carib mission of Cachipo, appeared to me to belong to the same
formation as the gypsum of Ortiz. To class it according to the type of
European formations I would range it among the gypsums, often
muriatiferous, that cover the Alpine limestone or zechstein. Farther
north, in the direction of the mission of San Josef de Curataquiche,
M. Bonpland picked up in the plain some fine pieces of riband jasper,
or Egyptian pebbles.
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