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 Must Not Designate The
Latter By The Name Of Nagelfluhe, Because That Term Indicates Rounded
Fragments, While The Fragments Of Cabo Blanco Are Generally Angular,
And Composed Of Gneiss, Hyaline Quartz And Chloritic Slate, Joined By
A Limestone Cement.
This cement contains magnetic sand,* (* This
magnetic sand no doubt owes its origin to chloritous slate, which, in
these latitudes, forms the bed of the sea.) madrepores, and vestiges
of bivalve sea shells.
The different fragments of tertiary strata
which I found in the littoral Cordillera of Venezuela, on the two
slopes of the northern chain, seem to be superposed near Cumana
(between Bordones and Punta Delgada); in the Cerro of Meapire; on the
[Alpine] limestone of Cumanacoa; between Porto Cabello and the Rio
Guayguaza; as well as in the valleys of Aragua; on granite; on the
western declivity of the hill formed by Cabo Blanco, on gneiss; and in
the peninsula of Araya, on saliferous clay. But this is perhaps merely
the effect of apposition.* (* An-nicht Auflagerung, according to the
precise language of the geologists of my country.) If we would range
the different members of the tertiary series according to the age of
their formation we ought, I believe, to regard the breccia of Cabo
Blanco with fragments of primitive rocks as the most ancient, and make
it be succeeded by the arenaceous limestone of the castle of Cumana,
without horned silex, yet somewhat analogous to the coarse limestone
of Paris, and the fresh-water soil of Victoria.
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