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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The Basin Of The West Indies Forms, As We Have
Already Observed, A Mediterranean With Several Issues, The Influence
Of
Which on the political destinies of the New Continent depends at
once on its central position and the great fertility
Of its islands.
The outlets of the basin, of which the four largest* are 75 miles
broad, are all on the eastern side, open towards Europe, and agitated
by the current of the tropics. (* Between Tobago and Grenada; Saint
Martin and the Virgin Isles; Porto Rico and Saint Domingo; and between
the Little Bank of Bahama and Cape Canaveral of Florida.) In the same
manner as we recognize, in our Mediterranean, the vestiges of three
ancient basins by the proximity of Rhodes, Scarpanto, Candia, and
Cerigo, as well as by that of Cape Sorello of Sicily, the island of
Pantelaria and Cape Bon, in Africa; so the basin of the West India
Islands, which exceeds the Mediterranean in extent, seems to present
the remains of ancient dykes which join* Cape Catoche of Yucatan to
Cape San Atonio of the island of Cuba (* I do not pretend that this
hypothesis of the rupture and the ancient continuity of lands can be
extended to the eastern foot of the basin of the West Indies, that is,
to the series of the volcanic islands in a line from Trinidad to Porto
Rico.); and that island to Cape Tiburon of St. Domingo; Jamaica, the
Bank of La Vibora and the rock of Serranilla to Cape Gracias a Dios on
the Mosquito Shore.
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