Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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It Appeared
To Me More Probable That These Enormous Masses Had Some Primitive Or
Volcanic Rock For A Basis, To Which They Adhered At Small Depths.
The
formation, partly compact and lithographic, partly bulbous, of the
limestone of Guines, had followed us as far as Batabano.
It is
somewhat analogous to Jura limestone; and, judging from their external
aspect, the Cayman Islands are composed of the same rock. If the
mountains of the island of Pinos, which present at the same time (as
it is said by the first historians of the conquest) the pineta and
palmeta, be visible at the distance of twenty sea leagues, they must
attain a height of more than five hundred toises: I have been assured
that they also are formed of a limestone altogether similar to that of
Guines. From these facts I expected to find the same rock (Jura
limestone) in the Jardinillos: but I saw, in the chain of rocks that
rises generally five to six inches above the surface of the water,
only a fragmentary rock, in which angular pieces of madrepores are
cemented by quartzose sand. Sometimes the fragments form a mass of
from one to two cubic feet and the grains of quartz so disappear that
in several layers one might imagine that the polypi have remained on
the spot. The total mass of this chain of rocks appears to me a
limestone agglomerate, somewhat analogous to the earthy limestone of
the peninsula of Araya, near Cumana, but of much more recent
formation.
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