From This Situation Of The Most Prominent Islands And Capes Of The Continent, There Results A Division Into Three Partial Basins.

The most northerly has long been distinguished by a particular denomination, that of the Gulf of Mexico; the intermediary

Or central basin may be called the Sea of Honduras, on account of the gulf of that name which makes a part of it; and the southern basin, comprehended between the Caribbean Islands and the coast of Venezuela, the isthmus of Panama, and the country of the Mosquito Indians, would form the Caribbean Sea. The modern volcanic rocks distributed on the two opposite banks of the basin of the West Indies on the east and west, but not on the north and south, is also a phenomenon worthy of attention. In the Caribbean Islands, a group of volcanoes, partly extinct and partly burning, stretches from 12 to 18 degrees; and in the Cordilleras of Guatimala and Mexico from latitude 9 to 19 1/2 degrees. I noticed on the north-west extremity of the basin of the West Indies that the secondary formations dip towards south-east; along the coast of Venezuela rocks of gneiss and primitive mica-slate dip to north-west. The basalts, amygdaloids, and trachytes, which are often surmounted by tertiary limestones, appear only towards the eastern and western banks.

3. THE BASIN OF THE LOWER ORINOCO, OR THE PLAINS OF VENEZUELA.

This basin, like the plains of Lombardy, is open to the east. Its limits are the littoral chain of Venezuela on the north, the eastern Cordillera of New Grenada on the west, and the Sierra Parime on the south; but as the latter group extends on the west only to the meridian of the cataracts of Maypures (longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes), there remains an opening or land-strait, running from north to south, by which the Llanos of Venezuela communicate with the basin of the Amazon and the Rio Negro.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 536 of 635
Words from 147009 to 147334 of 174507