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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We Detached Some Blocks Containing
Oysters Eight Inches In Diameter, Pectens, Venuses, And Lithophyte
Polypi.
I recommend to naturalists better versed in the knowledge of
fossils than I then was, to examine with care this mountainous coast
(which is easy of access to European vessels) in their way to Cumana,
Guayra or Curacao.
It would be curious to discover whether any of
these shells and these species of petrified zoophytes still inhabit
the seas of the West Indies, as M. Bonpland conjectured, and as is the
case in the island of Timor and perhaps in Guadaloupe.
We sailed on the 4th of November, at one o'clock in the morning, in
search of the mine of native alum. I took with me the chronometer and
my large Dollond telescope, intending to observe at the Laguna Chica
(Small Lake), east of the village of Maniquarez, the immersion of the
first satellite of Jupiter; this design, however, was not
accomplished, contrary winds having prevented our arrival before
daylight. The spectacle of the phosphorescence of the ocean and the
sports of the porpoises which surrounded our canoe somewhat atoned for
this disappointment. We again passed those spots where springs of
petroleum gush from mica-slate at the bottom of the sea and the smell
of which is perceptible from a considerable distance. When it is
recollected that farther eastward, near Cariaco, the hot and submarine
waters are sufficiently abundant to change the temperature of the gulf
at its surface, we cannot doubt that the petroleum is the effect of
distillation at an immense depth, issuing from those primitive rocks
beneath which lies the focus of all volcanic commotion.
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