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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Some Planters Are Condemning To
Death All The Male Negro Population Above Six Years Of Age.
They
affirm that those who have not borne arms will be contaminated by the
example of those who have been fighting.
This merciless act is the
consequence of the result of the continued misfortunes of the
colonies. Charault, Reflexions sur Saint Domingue.), the political
re-action in Naples and Spain, I may also add, the massacres of Chio,
Ipsara and Missolonghi, the work of the barbarians of Eastern Europe,
which the civilized nations of the north and west did not deem it
their duty to prevent. In slave countries, where the effect of long
habit tends to legitimize institutions the most adverse to justice, it
is vain to count on the influence of information, of intellectual
culture, or refinement of manners, except in as much as all those
benefits accelerate the impulse given by governments and facilitate
the execution of measures once adopted. Without the directive action
of governments and legislatures a peaceful revolution is a thing not
to be hoped for. The danger becomes the more imminent when a general
inquietude pervades the public mind; when amidst the political
dissensions of neighbouring countries the faults and the duties of
governments have been revealed: in such cases tranquillity can be
restored only by a ruling authority which, in the noble consciousness
of its power and right, sways events by entering itself on the career
of improvement.
CHAPTER 3.32.
GEOGNOSTIC DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH AMERICA, NORTH OF THE RIVER AMAZON,
AND EAST OF THE MERIDIAN OF THE SIERRA NEVADA DE MERIDA.
The object of this memoir is to concentrate the geological
observations which I collected during my journeys among the mountains
of New Andalusia and Venezuela, on the banks of the Orinoco and in the
Llanos of Barcelona, Calabozo and the Apure; consequently, from the
coast of the Caribbean Sea to the valley of the Amazon, between 2 and
10 1/2 degrees north latitude.
The extent of country which I traversed in different directions was
more than 15,400 square leagues. It has already formed the subject of
a geological sketch, traced hastily on the spot, after my return from
the Orinoco, and published in 1801. At that period the direction of
the Cordillera on the coast of Venezuela and the existence of the
Cordillera of Parime were unknown in Europe. No measure of altitude
had been attempted beyond the province of Quito; no rock of South
America had been named; there existed no description of the
superposition of rocks in any region of the tropics. Under these
circumstances an essay tending to prove the identity of the formations
of the two hemispheres could not fail to excite interest. The study of
the collections which I brought back with me, and four years of
journeying in the Andes, have enabled me to rectify my first views,
and to extend an investigation which, by reason of its novelty, had
been favourably received. That the most remarkable geological
relations may be the more easily seized, I shall treat aphoristically,
in different sections, the configuration of the soil, the general
division of the land, the direction and inclination of the beds and
the nature of the primitive, intermediary, secondary and tertiary
rocks.
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