40 GEOLOGICAL PHENOMENON. 



but what a contrast in the vigour and richness of the veg 

 tation ! The white trunks of the cecropia rise majestically 

 amid bignonias and melastomas. They do not disappear tiJl 

 we are within a hundred toises above the level of the ocean. 

 A small thorny palm-tree extends also to this limit; the 

 slender pinnate leaves of which look as if they had been 

 curled toward the edges. This tree is very common in 

 these mountains ; but not having seen either its fruit or its 

 flowers, we are ignorant whether it be the piritu palm-tree 

 of the Caribbees, or the Cocos aculeata of Jacquin. 



The rock on this road presents a geological phenome- 

 non, the more remarkable as the existence of real stratified 

 granite has lung been disputed. Between La Trinchera and 

 the Hato de Cambury a coarse-grained granite appears, 

 which, from the disposition of the spangles of mica, collected 

 in small groups, scarcely admits of confounding with gneiss, 

 or with rocks of a schistose texture. This granite, divided 

 into ledges of two or three feet thick, is directed 52 north- 

 east, and slopes to the north-west regularly at an angle of 

 from 30 or 40. The feldspar, crystallized in prisms with 

 four unequal sides, about an inch long, passes through every 

 variety of tint from a flesh-red to yellowish white. The 

 mica, united in hexagonal plates, is black, and sometimes 

 green. The quartz predominates in the mass; and is ge- 

 nerally of a milky white. I observed neither hornblende, 

 black schorl, nor rutile titanite, in this granite. In 

 some ledges we recognised round masses, of a blackish 

 gray, very quartzose, and almost destitute of mica. They 

 are from one to two inches diameter; and are found in 

 every zone, in all granite mountains. These are not im- 

 bedded fragments, as at Greiflenstein in Saxony, but aggre- 

 gations of particles which seem to have been subjected to 

 partial attractions. I could not follow the line of junc- 

 tion of the gneiss and granitic formations. According to 

 angles taken in the valleys of Aragua, the gneiss appears to 

 descend below the granite, which must consequently be of 

 a more recent formation. The appearance of a stratified 

 granite excited my attention the more, because, having had 

 the direction of the mines of Fichtelberg in Franconia for 

 several years, I was accustomed to see granites divided into 

 ledges of three or four feet thick, but little inclined, and 



