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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By That Catastrophe The Town Of Caracas
Was Destroyed, And More Than Twenty Thousand Persons Perished
Throughout The Extent Of The Province Of Venezuela.
The intercourse
which I have kept up with persons of all classes has enabled me to
compare the description given by many eye-witnesses, and to
interrogate them on objects that may throw light on physical
science in general.
The traveller, as the historian of nature,
should verify the dates of great catastrophes, examine their
connection and their mutual relations, and should mark in the rapid
course of ages, in the continual progress of successive changes,
those fixed points with which other catastrophes may one day be
compared. All epochs are proximate to each other in the immensity
of time comprehended in the history of nature. Years which have
passed away seem but a few instants; and the physical descriptions
of a country, even when they offer subjects of no very powerful and
general interest, have at least the advantage of never becoming
old. Similar considerations, no doubt, led M. de la Condamine to
describe in his Voyage a l'Equateur, the memorable eruptions of the
volcano of Cotopaxi,* which took place long after his departure
from Quito. (* Those of the 30th of November, 1744, and of the 3rd
of September, 1750.) I feel the less hesitation in following the
example of that celebrated traveller, as the events I am about to
relate will help to elucidate the theory of volcanic reaction, or
the influence of a system of volcanoes on a vast space of
circumjacent territory.
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