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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Nearer We Look Down On The Small
Desert Archipelago Of The Four Morros Del Tunal, The Caribbee And The
Lobos Islands.
After much vain search we at length found, before we descended to the
northern coast of the peninsula of Araya, in a ravine of very
difficult access (Aroyo del Robalo), the mineral which had been shown
to us at Cumana.
The mica-slate changed suddenly into carburetted and
shining clay-slate. It was an ampelite; and the waters (for there are
small springs in those parts, and some have recently been discovered
near the village of Maniquarez) were impregnated with yellow oxide of
iron and had a styptic taste. We found the sides of the neighbouring
rocks lined with capillary sulphate of alumina in effervescence; and
real beds, two inches thick, full of native alum, extending as far as
the eye could reach in the clay slate. The alum is greyish white,
somewhat dull on the surface and of an almost glassy lustre
internally. Its fracture is not fibrous but imperfectly conchoidal. It
is slightly translucent when its fragments are thin; and has a
sweetish and astringent taste without any bitter mixture. When on the
spot, I proposed to myself the question whether this alum, so pure,
and filling beds in the clay-slate without leaving the smallest void,
be of a formation contemporary with the rock, or whether it be of a
recent, and in some sort secondary, origin, like the muriate of soda,
found sometimes in small veins, where strongly concentrated springs
traverse beds of gypsum or clay. In these parts nothing seems to
indicate a process of formation likely to be renewed in our days. The
slaty rock exhibits no open cleft; and none is found parallel with the
direction of the slates. It may also be inquired whether this
aluminous slate be a transition-formation lying on the primitive
mica-slate of Araya, or whether it owe its origin merely to a change
of composition and texture in the beds of mica-slate. I lean to the
latter proposition; for the transition is progressive, and the
clay-slate (thonschiefer) and mica-slate appear to me to constitute
here but one formation. The presence of cyanite, rutile-titanite, and
garnets, and the absence of Lydian stone, and all fragmentary or
arenaceous rocks, seem to characterise the formation we describe as
primitive. It is asserted that even in Europe ampelite and green stone
are found, though rarely, in slates anterior to transition-slate.
When, in 1785, after an earthquake, a great rocky mass was broken off
in the Aroyo del Robalo, the Guaykeries of Los Serritos collected
fragments of alum five or six inches in diameter, extremely pure and
transparent. It was sold in my time at Cumana to the dyers and
tanners, at the price of two reals* per pound, while alum from Spain
cost twelve reals. (* The real is about 6 1/2 English pence.) This
difference of price was more the result of prejudice and of the
impediments to trade, than of the inferior quality of the alum of the
country, which is fit for use without undergoing any purification.
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