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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These Plains Or Savannahs Which Are Covered With Forests Only In The
Vicinity Of The Rivers Do Not, However, Exhibit The Same Uniform
Continuity As The Llanos Of The Lower Orinoco, Of The Meta And Of
Buenos Ayres.
They are interrupted by groups of hills (Cerros de
Daribapa) and by insulated rocks of grotesque form which pierce the
soil and from a distance fix the attention of the traveller.
These
granitic and often stratified masses resemble the ruins of pillars or
edifices. The same force which upheaved the whole group of the Sierra
Parime has acted here and there in the plains as far as beyond the
equator. The existence of these steeps and sporadic hills renders it
difficult to determine the precise limits of a system in which the
mountains are not longitudinally ranged as in a vein. As we advance
towards the frontier of the Portuguese province of the Rio Negro the
high rocks become more rare and we no longer find the shelves or dykes
of gneiss-granite which cause rapids and cataracts in the rivers.
Such is the surface of the soil between 68 1/2 and 70 1/2 degrees of
longitude, between the meridian of the bifurcation of the Orinoco and
that of San Fernando de Atabapo; further on, westward of the Upper Rio
Negro, towards the source of that river, and its tributary streams the
Xie and the Uaupes (latitude 1 to 2 1/4 degrees, longitude 72 to 74
degrees) lies a small mountainous tableland, in which Indian
traditions place a Laguna de oro, that is, a lake surrounded with beds
of auriferous earth.* (* According to the journals of Acunha and Fritz
the Manao Indians (Manoas) obtained from the banks of the Yquiari
(Iguiare or Iguare) gold of which they made thin plates.
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