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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A
Fact Which Must Have Struck Palasson And Saussure Is That In General
The Direction Of The Strata, Even In Those Which Are Far Distant From
The Principal Ridges, Is Identical With The Direction Of Mountain
Chains; That Is To Say, With Their Longitudinal Axis.
Venezuela is one of the countries in which the parallelism of the
strata of gneiss-granite, mica-slate and clay-slate, is most strongly
marked.
The general direction of these strata is north 50 degrees
east, and the general inclination from 60 to 70 degrees north-west.
Thus I observed them on a length of more than a hundred leagues, in
the littoral chain of Venezuela; in the stratified granite of Las
Trincheras at Porto Cabello; in the gneiss of the islands of the lake
of Valencia, and in the vicinity of the Villa de Cura; in the
transition-slate and greenstone on the north of Parapara; in the road
from La Guayra to the town of Caracas, and through all the Sierra de
Avila in Cape Codera; and in the mica-slate and clay-slate of the
peninsula of Araya. The same direction from north-east to south-west,
and this inclination to north-west, are also manifest, although less
decidedly, in the limestones of Cumanacoa at Cuchivano and between
Guanaguana and Caripe. The exceptions to this general law are
extremely rare in the gneiss-granite of the littoral Cordillera; it
may even be affirmed that the inverse direction (from south-east to
north-west) often bears with it the inclination towards south-west.
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