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 Ancient
Conglomerate (Red Sandstone) Which Covers A Great Part Of The Llanos
Of Venezuela And Of The Basin Of
The Amazon contains no doubt
fragments of the same primitive rocks which constitute the
neighbouring mountains; but the convulsions of
Which these mountains
exhibit evident marks, do not appear to have been attended with
circumstances favourable to the removal of great blocks. This
geognostic phenomenon was to me the more unexpected since there exists
nowhere in the world so smooth a plain entirely granitic. Before my
departure from Europe I had observed with surprise that there were no
primitive blocks in Lombardy and in the great plain of Bavaria which
appears to be the bottom of an ancient lake, and which is situated two
hundred and fifty toises above the level of the ocean. It is bounded
on the north by the granites of the Upper Palatinate; and on the south
by Alpine limestone, transition-thonschiefer, and the mica-slates of
the Tyrol.
We arrived, on the 23rd of July, at the town of Nueva Barcelona, less
fatigued by the heat of the Llanos, to which we had been long
accustomed, than annoyed by the winds of sand which occasion painful
chaps in the skin. Seven months previously, in going from Cumana to
Caracas, we had rested a few hours at the Morro de Barcelona, a
fortified rock, which, near the village of Pozuelos, is joined to the
continent only by a neck of land. We were received with the kindest
hospitality in the house of Don Pedro Lavie, a wealthy merchant of
French extraction.
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