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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The Object Of This Memoir Is To Concentrate The Geological
Observations Which I Collected During My Journeys Among The Mountains
Of New Andalusia and Venezuela, on the banks of the Orinoco and in the
Llanos of Barcelona, Calabozo and the
Apure; consequently, from the
coast of the Caribbean Sea to the valley of the Amazon, between 2 and
10 1/2 degrees north latitude.
The extent of country which I traversed in different directions was
more than 15,400 square leagues. It has already formed the subject of
a geological sketch, traced hastily on the spot, after my return from
the Orinoco, and published in 1801. At that period the direction of
the Cordillera on the coast of Venezuela and the existence of the
Cordillera of Parime were unknown in Europe. No measure of altitude
had been attempted beyond the province of Quito; no rock of South
America had been named; there existed no description of the
superposition of rocks in any region of the tropics. Under these
circumstances an essay tending to prove the identity of the formations
of the two hemispheres could not fail to excite interest. The study of
the collections which I brought back with me, and four years of
journeying in the Andes, have enabled me to rectify my first views,
and to extend an investigation which, by reason of its novelty, had
been favourably received. That the most remarkable geological
relations may be the more easily seized, I shall treat aphoristically,
in different sections, the configuration of the soil, the general
division of the land, the direction and inclination of the beds and
the nature of the primitive, intermediary, secondary and tertiary
rocks.
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