Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 81 of 332 - First - Home
The Ancient
Conglomerate (Red Sandstone) Which Covers A Great Part Of The Llanos
Of Venezuela And Of The Basin Of
The Amazon contains no doubt
fragments of the same primitive rocks which constitute the
neighbouring mountains; but the convulsions of
Which these mountains
exhibit evident marks, do not appear to have been attended with
circumstances favourable to the removal of great blocks. This
geognostic phenomenon was to me the more unexpected since there exists
nowhere in the world so smooth a plain entirely granitic. Before my
departure from Europe I had observed with surprise that there were no
primitive blocks in Lombardy and in the great plain of Bavaria which
appears to be the bottom of an ancient lake, and which is situated two
hundred and fifty toises above the level of the ocean. It is bounded
on the north by the granites of the Upper Palatinate; and on the south
by Alpine limestone, transition-thonschiefer, and the mica-slates of
the Tyrol.
We arrived, on the 23rd of July, at the town of Nueva Barcelona, less
fatigued by the heat of the Llanos, to which we had been long
accustomed, than annoyed by the winds of sand which occasion painful
chaps in the skin. Seven months previously, in going from Cumana to
Caracas, we had rested a few hours at the Morro de Barcelona, a
fortified rock, which, near the village of Pozuelos, is joined to the
continent only by a neck of land. We were received with the kindest
hospitality in the house of Don Pedro Lavie, a wealthy merchant of
French extraction. This gentleman, who was accused of having given
refuge to the unfortunate Espana when a fugitive on these coasts in
1796, was arrested by order of the Audiencia, and conveyed as a
prisoner to Caracas. The friendship of the governor of Cumana and the
remembrance of the services he had rendered to the rising commerce of
those countries contributed to procure his liberty. We had endeavoured
to alleviate his captivity by visiting him in prison; and we had now
the satisfaction of finding him in the midst of his family. Illness
under which he was suffering had been aggravated by confinement; and
he sank into the grave without seeing the dawn of those days of
independence, which his friend Don Joseph Espana had predicted on the
scaffold prior to his execution. "I die," said that man, who was
formed for the accomplishment of grand projects, "I die an ignominious
death; but my fellow citizens will soon piously collect my ashes, and
my name will reappear with glory." These remarkable words were uttered
in the public square of Caracas, on the 8th of May, 1799.
In 1790 Nueva Barcelona contained scarcely ten thousand inhabitants,
and in 1800, its population was more than sixteen thousand. The town
was founded in 1637 by a Catalonian conquistador, named Juan Urpin. A
fruitless attempt was then made, to give the whole province the name
of New Catalonia. As our maps often mark two towns, Barcelona and
Cumanagoto, instead of one, and as the two names are considered as
synonymous, it may be well to explain the cause of this error.
Anciently, at the mouth of the Rio Neveri, there was an Indian town,
built in 1588 by Lucas Faxardo, and named San Cristoval de los
Cumanagotos.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 81 of 332
Words from 42144 to 42699
of 174507