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 22 of 407 - First - Home
From The Few Observations I Personally Made, The
Interior Of Spain Forms A Vast Plain, Elevated Three Hundred Toises
(Five Hundred And Eighty-Four Metres) Above The Level Of The Ocean,
Is Covered With Secondary Formations, Grit-Stone, Gypsum, Sal-Gem,
And The Calcareous Stone Of Jura.
The climate of the Castiles is
much colder than that of Toulon and Genoa; its mean temperature
scarcely rises to 15 degrees of the centigrade thermometer.
We are astonished to find that, in the latitude of Calabria,
Thessaly, and Asia Minor, orange-trees do not flourish in the open
air. The central elevated plain is encircled by a low and narrow
zone, where the chamaerops, the date-tree, the sugar-cane, the
banana, and a number of plants common to Spain and the north of
Africa, vegetate on several spots, without suffering from the
rigours of winter. From the 36th to 40th degrees of latitude, the
medium temperature of this zone is from 17 to 20 degrees; and by a
concurrence of circumstances, which it would be too long to
explain, this favoured region has become the principal seat of
industry and intellectual improvement.
When, in the kingdom of Valencia, we ascend from the shore of the
Mediterranean towards the lofty plains of La Mancha and the
Castiles, we seem to discern, far inland, from the lengthened
declivities, the ancient coast of the Peninsula. This curious
phenomenon recalls the traditions of the Samothracians, and other
historical testimonies, according to which it is supposed that the
irruption of the waters through the Dardanelles, augmenting the
basin of the Mediterranean, rent and overflowed the southern part
of Europe. If we admit that these traditions owe their origin, not
to mere geological reveries, but to the remembrance of some ancient
catastrophe, we may conceive the central elevated plain of Spain
resisting the efforts of these great inundations, till the draining
of the waters, by the straits formed between the pillars of
Hercules, brought the Mediterranean progressively to its present
level, lower Egypt emerging above its surface on the one side, and
the fertile plains of Tarragona, Valencia, and Murcia, on the
other. Everything that relates to the formation of that sea,* (*
Some of the ancient geographers believed that the Mediterranean,
swelled by the waters of the Euxine, the Palus Maeotis, the Caspian
Sea, and the Sea of Aral, had broken the pillars of Hercules;
others admitted that the irruption was made by the waters of the
ocean. In the first of these hypotheses, the height of the land
between the Black Sea and the Baltic, and between the ports of
Cette and Bordeaux, determine the limit which the accumulation of
the waters may have reached before the junction of the Black Sea,
the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic, as well to the north of the
Dardanelles, as to the east of this strip of land which formerly
joined Europe to Mauritania, and of which, in the time of Strabo,
certain vestiges remained in the Islands of Juno and the Moon.)
which has had so powerful an influence on the first civilization of
mankind, is highly interesting.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 22 of 407
Words from 10932 to 11450
of 211363
