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 Say Apparent Dryness, For My
Hygrometric Observations Prove That The Atmosphere Of Cumana And Araya
Contains Nearly Nine-Tenths Of The Quantity Of Watery Vapour Necessary
To Its Perfect Saturation.
It is this air, at once hot and humid, that
nourishes those vegetable reservoirs, the cucurbitaceous plants, the
agaves and melocactuses half-buried in the sand.
When we visited the
peninsula the preceding year there was a great scarcity of water; the
goats for want of grass died by hundreds. During our stay at the
Orinoco the order of the seasons seemed to be entirely changed. At
Araya, Cochen, and even in the island of Margareta it had rained
abundantly; and those showers were remembered by the inhabitants in
the same way as a fall of aerolites would be noted in the recollection
of the naturalists of Europe.
The Indian who was our guide scarcely knew in what direction we should
find the alum; he was ignorant of its real position. This ignorance of
localities characterises almost all the guides here, who are chosen
from among the most indolent class of the people. We wandered for
eight or nine hours among rocks totally bare of vegetation. The
mica-slate passes sometimes to clay-slate of a darkish grey. I was
again struck by the extreme regularity in the direction and
inclination of the strata. They run north 50 degrees east, inclining
from 60 to 70 degrees north-west. This is the general direction which
I had observed in the gneiss-granite of Caracas and the Orinoco, in
the hornblende-slates of Angostura, and even in the greater part of
the secondary rocks we had just examined. The beds, over a vast extent
of land, make the same angle with the meridian of the place; they
present a parallelism, which may be considered as one of the great
geologic laws capable of being verified by precise measures. Advancing
toward Cape Chuparuparu, the veins of quartz that cross the mica-slate
increase in size. We found some from one to two toises broad, full of
small fasciculated crystals of rutile titanite. We sought in vain for
cyanite, which we had discovered in some blocks near Maniquarez.
Farther on the mica-state presents not veins, but little beds of
graphite or carburetted iron. They are from two to three inches thick
and have precisely the same direction and inclination as the rock.
Graphite, in primitive soils, marks the first appearance of carbon on
the globe - that of carbon uncombined with hydrogen. It is anterior to
the period when the surface of the earth became covered with
monocotyledonous plants. From the summit of those wild mountains there
is a majestic view of the island of Margareta. Two groups of mountains
already mentioned, those of Macanao and La Vega de San Juan, rise from
the bosom of the waters. The capital of the island, La Asuncion, the
port of Pampatar, and the villages of Pueblo de la Mar, Pueblo del
Norte and San Juan belong to the second and most easterly of these
groups. The western group, the Macanao, is almost entirely
uninhabited. The isthmus that divides these large masses of mica-slate
was scarcely visible; its form appeared changed by the effect of the
mirage and we recognized the intermediate part, through which runs the
Laguna Grande, only by two small hills of a sugarloaf form, in the
meridian of the Punta de Piedras. Nearer we look down on the small
desert archipelago of the four Morros del Tunal, the Caribbee and the
Lobos Islands.
After much vain search we at length found, before we descended to the
northern coast of the peninsula of Araya, in a ravine of very
difficult access (Aroyo del Robalo), the mineral which had been shown
to us at Cumana. The mica-slate changed suddenly into carburetted and
shining clay-slate. It was an ampelite; and the waters (for there are
small springs in those parts, and some have recently been discovered
near the village of Maniquarez) were impregnated with yellow oxide of
iron and had a styptic taste. We found the sides of the neighbouring
rocks lined with capillary sulphate of alumina in effervescence; and
real beds, two inches thick, full of native alum, extending as far as
the eye could reach in the clay slate. The alum is greyish white,
somewhat dull on the surface and of an almost glassy lustre
internally. Its fracture is not fibrous but imperfectly conchoidal. It
is slightly translucent when its fragments are thin; and has a
sweetish and astringent taste without any bitter mixture. When on the
spot, I proposed to myself the question whether this alum, so pure,
and filling beds in the clay-slate without leaving the smallest void,
be of a formation contemporary with the rock, or whether it be of a
recent, and in some sort secondary, origin, like the muriate of soda,
found sometimes in small veins, where strongly concentrated springs
traverse beds of gypsum or clay. In these parts nothing seems to
indicate a process of formation likely to be renewed in our days. The
slaty rock exhibits no open cleft; and none is found parallel with the
direction of the slates. It may also be inquired whether this
aluminous slate be a transition-formation lying on the primitive
mica-slate of Araya, or whether it owe its origin merely to a change
of composition and texture in the beds of mica-slate. I lean to the
latter proposition; for the transition is progressive, and the
clay-slate (thonschiefer) and mica-slate appear to me to constitute
here but one formation. The presence of cyanite, rutile-titanite, and
garnets, and the absence of Lydian stone, and all fragmentary or
arenaceous rocks, seem to characterise the formation we describe as
primitive. It is asserted that even in Europe ampelite and green stone
are found, though rarely, in slates anterior to transition-slate.
When, in 1785, after an earthquake, a great rocky mass was broken off
in the Aroyo del Robalo, the Guaykeries of Los Serritos collected
fragments of alum five or six inches in diameter, extremely pure and
transparent.
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