(* I Stated In Another Place The Influence Of That Great Catastrophe On The Counter-Revolution Which The Royalist Party Succeeded In Bringing About At That Time In Venezuela.

It is impossible to conceive anything more curious than the negociation opened on the 5th of April, by the

Republican government, established at Valencia in the valleys of Aragua, with Archbishop Prat (Don Narciso Coll y Prat), to engage him to publish a pastoral letter calculated to tranquilize the people respecting the wrath of the deity. The Archbishop was permitted to say that this wrath was merited on account of the disorder of morals; but he was enjoined to declare positively that politics and systematic opinions on the new social order had nothing in common with it. Archbishop Prat lost his liberty after this singular correspondence.) The elastic forces which agitate the ground, the still-burning volcanoes, the hot sulphurous springs, sometimes containing fluoric acid, the presence of asphaltum and naphtha in primitive strata, all point to the interior of our planet, the high temperature of which is perceived even in mines of little depth, and which, from the times of Heraclitus of Ephesus, and Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, to the Plutonic theory of modern days, has been considered as the seat of all great disturbances of the globe.

The sketch I have just traced contains all the formations known in that part of Europe which has served as the type of positive geology. It is the fruit of sixteen months' labour, often interrupted by other occupations. Formations of quartzose porphyry, pyroxenic porphyry and trachyte, of grauwacke, muschelkalk and quadersandstein, which are frequent towards the west, have not yet been seen in Venezuela; but it may be also observed that in the system of secondary rocks of the old continent muschelkalk and quadersandstein are not always clearly developed, and are often, by the frequency of their marls, confounded with the lower layers of Jura limestone. The muschelkalk is almost a lias with encrinites; and quadersandstein (for there are doubtless many above the lias or limestone with gryphites) seems to me to represent the arenaceous layers of the lower shelves of Jura limestone.

I have thought it right to give at some length this geologic description of South America, not only on account of the novel interest which the study of the formations in the equinoctial regions is calculated to excite, but also on account of the honourable efforts which have recently been made in Europe to verify and extend the working of the mines in the Cordilleras of Columbia, Mexico, Chile and Buenos Ayres. Vast sums of money have been invested for the attainment of this useful end. In proportion as public confidence has enlarged and consolidated those enterprises, from which both continents may derive solid advantage, it becomes the duty of persons who have acquired a local knowledge of these countries to publish information calculated to create a just appreciation of the relative wealth and position of the mines in different parts of Spanish America.

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