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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Northward
The Granitic Chain Of The Silla De Caracas And Porto Cabello Are
Separated From The Llanos By A Screen Of Mountains That Are Schistose
Between Villa De Cura And Parapara, And Calcareous Between The
Bergantin And Caripe.
I was no less struck by this absence of blocks
on the banks of the Amazon.
La Condamine affirms that from the Pongo
de Manseriche to the Strait of Pauxis not the smallest stone is to be
found. Now the basin of the Rio Negro and of the Amazon is also a
Llano, a plain like those of Venezuela and Buenos Ayres. The
difference consists only in the state of vegetation. The two Llanos
situated at the northern and southern extremities of South America are
covered with gramina; they are treeless savannahs; but the
intermediate Llano, that of the Amazon, exposed to almost continual
equatorial rains, is a thick forest. I do not remember having heard
that the Pampas of Buenos Ayres or the savannahs of the Missouri* and
New Mexico contain granitic blocks. (* Are there any isolated blocks
in North America northward of the great lakes?) The absence of this
phenomenon appears general in the New World as it probably also is in
Sahara, in Africa; for we must not confound the rocky masses that
pierce the soil in the midst of the desert, and of which travellers
often make mention, with mere scattered fragments. These facts seem to
prove that the blocks of Scandinavian granite which cover the sandy
countries on the south of the Baltic, and those of Westphalia and
Holland, must be traced to some local revolution.
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