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 Here
Indicate Only The Elements Of The Loftiest Group, For We Shall Soon
See That Towards South-East The
Mountainous country, in lowering,
draws near the equator, as well as to French and Portuguese Guiana.
The Sierra Parime extends
Most in the direction north 85 degrees west
and the partial chains into which it separates on the westward
generally follow the same direction. It is less a Cordillera or a
continuous chain in the sense given to those denominations when
applied to the Andes and Caucasus than an irregular grouping of
mountains separated the one from the other by plains and savannahs. I
visited the northern, western and southern parts of the Sierra Parime,
which is remarkable by its position and its extent of more than 25,000
square leagues. From the confluence of the Apure, as far as the delta
of the Orinoco, it is uniformly three or four leagues removed from the
right bank of the great river; only some rocks of gneiss-granite,
amphibolic slate and greenstone advance as far as the bed of the
Orinoco and create the rapids of Torno and of La Boca del Infierno.*
(* To this series of advanced rocks also belong those which pierce the
soil between the Rio Aquire and the Rio Barima; the granitic and
amphibolic rocks of the Vieja Guayana and of the town of Angostura;
the Cerro de Mono on the south-east of Muitaco or Real Corono; the
Cerro of Taramuto near the Alta Gracia, etc.) I shall name
successively, from north-north-east to south-south-west, the different
chains seen by M. Bonpland and myself as we approached the equator and
the river Amazon.
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