Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 248 of 635 - First - Home
(* The Surface Of These Shelves, Blackened
And Excavated By The Waters, Presents Ramifications Like The
Cauliflower, As They Are Observed On The Currents Of Lava.
Is the
change of colour produced by the waters owing to the manganese which
we recognize by some dendrites?
The sea, entering into the clefts of
the rocks, and in a cavern at the foot of the Castillo del Morro,
compresses the air and makes it issue with a tremendous noise. This
noise explains the phenomena of the baxos roncadores (snoring
bocabeoos), so well known to navigators who cross from Jamaica to the
mouth of Rio San Juan of Nicaragua, or to the island of San Andres.)
We are at first tempted to admit that the whole of this limestone
rock, which constitutes the principal portion of the island of Cuba,
may be traced to an uninterrupted operation of nature - to the action
of productive organic forces - an action which continues in our days in
the bosom of the ocean; but this apparent novelty of limestone
formations soon vanishes when we quit the shore, and recollect the
series of coral rocks which contain the formations of different ages,
the muschelkalk, the Jura limestone and coarse limestone. The same
coral rocks as those of the Castillo and La Punta are found in the
lofty inland mountains, accompanied with petrifications of bivalve
shells, very different from those now seen on the coasts of the
Antilles. Without positively assigning a determinate place in the
table of formations to the limestone of Guines, which is that of the
Castillo and La Punta, I have no doubt of the relative antiquity of
that rock with respect to the calcareous agglomerate of the Cayos,
situated south of Batabano, and east of the island of Pinos.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 248 of 635
Words from 67829 to 68122
of 174507
