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 279 of 635 - First - Home
The Inequalities Of This Coral Rock Are Covered By A
Detritus Of Shells And Madrepores.
Whatever rises above the surface of
the water is composed of broken pieces, cemented by carbonate of lime,
in which grains of quartzose sand are set.
Whether rocks formed by
polypi still living are found at great depth below this fragmentary
rock of coral or whether these polypi are raised on the Jura formation
are questions which I am unable to answer. Pilots believe that the sea
diminishes in these latitudes, because they see the chain of rocks
augment and rise, either by the earth which the waves heave up, or by
successive agglutinations. It is not impossible that the enlarging of
the channel of Bahama, by which the waters of the Gulf-stream issue,
may cause, in the lapse of ages, a slight lowering of the waters south
of Cuba, and especially in the gulf of Mexico, the centre of the great
current which runs along the shores of the United States, and casts
the fruits of tropical plants on the coast of Norway.* (* "The
Gulf-stream, between the Bahamas and Florida, is very little wider
than Behring's Strait; and yet the water rushing through this passage
is of sufficient force and quantity to put the whole Northern Atlantic
in motion, and to make its influence be felt in the distant strait of
Gibraltar and on the more distant coast of Africa." Quarterly Review
February 1818.) The configuration of the coast, the direction, the
force and the duration of certain winds and currents, the changes
which the barometric heights undergo through the variable predominance
of those winds, are causes, the concurrence of which may alter, in a
long space of time, and in circumscribed limits of extent and height,
the equilibrium of the seas.* (* I do not pretend to explain, by the
same causes, the great phenomena of the coast of Sweden, where the sea
has, on some points, the appearance of a very unequal lowering of from
three to five feet in one hundred years.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 279 of 635
Words from 76087 to 76428
of 174507
