Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 165 of 779 - First - Home
Does This Unknown Cause Act
At An Immense Depth; Or Does This Chemical Action Take Place In
Secondary Rocks Lying On Granite?
The farther we are from finding a solution of these problems in the
numerous works hitherto published on Etna and Vesuvius, the greater
is the desire of the traveller to see with his own eyes.
He hopes
to be more fortunate than those who have preceded him; he wishes to
form a precise idea of the geological relations which the volcano
and the neighbouring mountains bear to each other: but how often is
he disappointed, when, on the limits of the primitive soil,
enormous banks of tufa and puzzolana render every observation on
the position and stratification impossible! We reach the inside of
the crater with less difficulty than we at first expect; we examine
the cone from its summit to its base; we are struck with the
difference in the produce of each eruption, and with the analogy
which still exists between the lavas of the same volcano; but,
notwithstanding the care with which we interrogate nature, and the
number of partial observations which present themselves at every
step, we return from the summit of a burning volcano less satisfied
than when we were preparing to visit it. It is after we have
studied them on the spot, that the volcanic phenomena appear still
more isolated, more variable, more obscure, than we imagine them
when consulting the narratives of travellers.
These reflections occurred to me on descending from the summit of
the peak of Teneriffe, the first unextinct volcano I had yet
visited.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 165 of 779
Words from 44540 to 44805
of 211363
