Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Negro
Was A Young Man, Eighteen Years Of Age, Very Robust, And Born On
The Coast Of Guinea; An
Abode of some years on the high plain of
Castile, had imparted to his organization that kind of irritability
which
Renders the miasma of the torrid zone so dangerous to the
inhabitants of the countries of the north.
The site on which Cumana is built is part of a tract of ground,
very remarkable in a geological point of view. The chain of the
calcareous Alps of the Brigantine and the Tataraqual stretches east
and west from the summit of the Imposible to the port of Mochima
and to Campanario. The sea, in times far remote, appears to have
divided this chain from the rocky coasts of Araya and Maniquarez.
The vast gulf of Cariaco has been caused by an irruption of the
sea; and no doubt can be entertained but that the waters once
covered, on the southern bank, the whole tract of land impregnated
with muriate of soda, through which flows the Manzanares. The slow
retreat of the waters has turned into dry ground this extensive
plain, in which rises a group of small hills, composed of gypsum
and calcareous breccias of very recent formation. The city of
Cumana is backed by this group, which was formerly an island of the
gulf of Cariaco. That part of the plain which is north of the city,
is called Plaga Chica, or the Little Plain, and extends eastwards
as far as Punta Delgada, where a narrow valley, covered with yellow
gomphrena, still marks the point of the ancient outlet of the
waters.
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