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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(* To Prove The Extent Of The
Continuity Of This Granitic Stratum, It Will Suffice To Observe That
M. Leschenault De
La Tour collected in the bars of the river Mana, in
French Guiana, the same gneiss-granites (with a little
Amphibole)
which I observed three hundred leagues more to the west, near the
confluence of the Orinoco and the Guaviare.) Granite is most commonly
found in its granular composition and independent formation, near
Encaramada, at the strait of Baraguan, and in the vicinity of the
mission of the Esmeralda. It often contains, like the granites of the
Rocky Mountains (latitude 38 to 40 degrees), the Pyrenees and Southern
Tyrol, amphibolic crystals,* disseminated in the mass, but without
passing to syenite. (* I did not observe this mixture of amphibole in
the granite of the littoral chain of Venezuela except at the summit of
the Silla of Caracas.) Those modifications are observed on the banks
of the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, the Atabapo, and the Tuamini. The
blocks heaped together, which are found in Europe on the ridge of
granitic mountains (the Riesengebirge in Silesia, the Ochsenkopf in
Franconia), are especially remarkable in the north-west part of the
Sierra Parime, between Caycara, the Encaramada and Uruana, in the
cataracts of the Maypures and at the mouth of the Rio Vichada. It is
doubtful whether these masses, which are of cylindrical form,
parallelopipedons rounded on the edge, or balls of 40 to 50 feet in
diameter, are the effect of a slow decomposition, or of a violent and
instantaneous upheaving. The granite of the south-eastern part of
Sierra Parime sometimes passes to pegmatite,* composed of laminary
felspar, enclosed in curved masses of crystalline quartz. (*
Schrift-granit. It is a simple modification of the composition and
texture of granite, and not a subordinate layer. It must not be
confounded with the real pegmatite, generally destitute of mica, or
with the geographic stones (piedras mapajas) of the Orinoco, which
contain streaks of dark green mica irregularly disposed.) I saw gneiss
only in subordinate layers;* (* The magnetic sands of the rivers that
furrow the granitic chain of the Encaramada seem to denote the
proximity of amphibolic or chloritic slate (hornblende or
chloritschiefer), either in layers in the granite, or superposed on
that rock.); but, between Javita, San Carlos del Rio Negro, and the
Peak of Duida, the granite is traversed by numerous veins of different
ages, abounding with rock-crystal, black tourmalin and pyrites. It
appears that these open veins become more common on the east of the
Peak of Duida, in the Sierra Pacaraina, especially between Xurumu and
Rupunuri (tributaries of the Rio Branco and the Essequibo), where
Hortsmann discovered, instead of diamonds* and emeralds, a mine (four)
of rock-crystal. (* These legends of diamonds are very ancient on the
coast of Paria. Petrus Martyr relates that, at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, a Spaniard named Andres Morales bought of a young
Indian of the coast of Paria admantem mire pretiosum, duos infantis
digiti articulos longum, magni autem pollicis articulum aequantem
crassitudine, acutum utrobique et costis octo pulchre formatis
constantem.
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