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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I Nowhere Saw The Limestone Of Cumanacoa (Of Which I Treat
Specially In This Article) Resting On The Sandstone Of The Llanos; If
There Be Any Such Superposition It Must Be Found On Descending The
Table-Land Of Cocollar Towards The Mesa De Amana.
On the southern
coast of the gulf of Cariaco the limestone formation probably covers,
without the interposition of another rock, a mica-slate which passes
to carburetted clay-slate.
In the northern part of the gulf I
distinctly saw this clayey formation at the depth of two or three
fathoms in the sea. The submarine hot springs appeared to me to gush
from mica-slate like the petroleum of Maniquarez. If any doubts remain
as to the rock on which the limestone of Cumanacoa is immediately
superposed, there is none respecting the rocks which cover it, such as
(1) the tertiary limestone of Cumana near Punta Delgada and at Cerro
de Meapire; (2) the sandstone of Quetepe and Turimiquiri, which,
forming layers also in the limestone of Cumanacoa, belongs properly to
the latter soil; the limestone of Caripe which we have often
identified in the course of this work with Jura limestone, and of
which we shall speak in the following article.
8. FORMATION OF THE COMPACT LIMESTONE OF CARIPE.
Descending the Cuchillo de Guanaguana towards the convent of Caripe,
we find another more recent formation, white, with a smooth or
slightly conchoidal fracture, and divided in very thin layers, which
succeeds to the bluish grey limestone formation of Cumanacoa. I call
this in the first instance the limestone formation of Caripe, on
account of the cavern of that name, inhabited by thousands of
nocturnal birds. This limestone appeared to me identical (1) with the
limestone of the Morro de Barcelona and the Chimanas Islands, which
contains small layers of black kieselschiefer (slaty jasper) without
veins of quartz, and breaking into fragments of parallelopiped form;
(2) with the whitish grey limestone with smooth fracture of Tisnao,
which seems to cover the sandstone of the Llanos. We find the
formation of Caripe in the island of Cuba (between the Havannah and
Batabano and between the port of Trinidad and Rio Guaurabo), as well
in the small Cayman Islands.
I have hitherto described the secondary limestone formations of the
littoral chain without giving them the systematic names which may
connect them with the formations of Europe. During my stay in America
I took the limestone of Cumanacoa for zechstein or Alpine limestone,
and that of Caripe for Jura limestone. The carburetted and slightly
bituminous marl of Cumanacoa, analogous to the strata of bituminous
slate, which are very numerous* in the Alps of southern Bavaria (* I
found them also in the Peruvian Andes near Montau, at the height of
1600 toises.), appeared to me to characterize the former of these
formations; while the dazzling whiteness of the cavernous stratum of
Caripe, and the form of those shelves of rocks rising in walls and
cornices, forcibly reminded me of the Jura limestone of Streitberg in
Franconia, or of Oitzow and Krzessowic in Upper Silesia.
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