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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It Would Seem As If The Carbon And Iron, Which In
Other Places Colour The Primitive Rocks, Are Here Concentrated In
The Subordinate Strata.
Turning westward we reached at length the ravine of gold (Quebrada
del Oro).
On examining the slope of a hill, we could hardly
recognize the vestige of a vein of quartz. The falling of the earth
caused by the rains had changed the surface of the ground, and
rendered it impossible to make any observation. Great trees were
growing in the places where the gold-washers had worked twenty
years before. It is probable that the mica-slate contains here, as
near Goldcronach in Franconia, and in Salzburgh, auriferous veins;
but how is it possible to judge whether they be worth the expense
of being wrought, or whether the ore is only in nodules, and in the
less abundance in proportion as it is rich? We made a long
herborization in a thick forest, extending beyond the Hato, and
abounding in cedrelas, browneas, and fig-trees with nymphaea
leaves. The trunks of these last are covered with very odoriferous
plants of vanilla, which in general flower only in the month of
April. We were here again struck with those ligneous excrescences,
which in the form of ridges, or ribs, augment to the height of
twenty feet above the ground, the thickness of the trunk of the
fig-trees of America. I found trees twenty-two feet and a half in
diameter near the roots. These ligneous ridges sometimes separate
from the trunk at a height of eight feet, and are transformed into
cylindrical roots two feet thick.
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