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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Travellers Are Accustomed To Halt
Near A Fine Spring, Known By The Name Of Fuente De Sanchorquiz,
Which Flows Down From The Sierra On Sloping Strata Of Gneiss.
I
found its temperature 16.4 degrees; which, for an elevation of
seven hundred and twenty-six toises, is
Considerably cool, and it
would appear much cooler to those who drink its limpid water, if,
instead of gushing out between La Cumbre and the temperate valley
of Caracas, it were found on the descent towards La Guayra. But at
this descent on the northern side of the mountain, the rock, by an
uncommon exception in this country, does not dip to north-west, but
to south-east, which prevents the subterranean waters from forming
springs there.
We continued to descend from the small ravine of Sanchorquiz to la
Cruz de la Guayra, a cross erected on an open spot, six hundred and
thirty-two toises high, and thence (entering by the custom-house
and the quarter of the Pastora) to the city of Caracas. On the
south side of the mountain of Avila, the gneiss presents several
geognostical phenomena worthy of the attention of travellers. It is
traversed by veins of quartz, containing cannulated and often
articulated prisms of rutile titanite two or three lines in
diameter. In the fissures of the quartz we find, on breaking it,
very thin crystals, which crossing each other form a kind of
network. Sometimes the red schorl occurs only in dendritic crystals
of a bright red.* (* Especially below the Cross of La Guayra, at
594 toises of absolute elevation.) The gneiss of the valley of
Caracas is characterized by the red and green garnets it contains;
they however disappear when the rock passes into mica-slate.
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