CXXXV111 NOTES. ' 



C 552 ) p. 402. Karsten's Archiv fur Mineralogie, Bd. i. 1829, S. 243. 



( 553 ) p. 402. Humboldt, Essai politique sur la Nouv. Esp. t. i. p. 266; 

 t. ii. p. 310. 



( M4 ) p. 402. According to a manuscript which I was enabled to avail 

 myself of in 1803 in the archives of Mexico, the whole coast from Nootka to 

 what was subsequently called Cook's Inlet was visited in 1774 by the expedition 

 of Juan Perez and Estevan Jose' Martinez. (Essai pol. sur la Nouv. Esp. t. ii. 

 296298). 



( 555 ) p. 406. In the Antilles, volcanic activity is confined to the lesser 

 islands; three or four still active volcanoes having broken forth on a rather 

 curved fissure, approaching to a north and south direction, and tolerably parallel 

 to the volcanic fissure of Central America. I have elsewhere on the occasion 

 of the considerations suggested by the simultaneity of the earthquakes in the 

 valleys of the Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas Rivers with those in the valley of 

 the Orinoco and on the coast of Venezuela described the Caribbean Sea as 

 forming, according to geognostical views, in connection with the Gulf of 

 Mexico and the great plain of Louisiana between the Alleghanies and the Rocky 

 Mountains, one great ancient basin. (Voyage aux Regions e'quinoxiales, t. ii. 

 p. 5 and 19.) This basin is traversed, through its centre, between 18 and 

 22 N. lat., by a plutonic mountain range from Cape Catoche on the peninsula 

 of Yucatan to the islands of Tortola and Virgen gorda. Cuba, Haiti, and Porto 

 Rico form a west and east range running parallel to the granite and gneiss 

 chain of Caracas. On the other hand, the mostly volcanic small Antilles con- 

 nect the above alluded to plutonic chain of the greater Antilles and that of the 

 coast of Venezuela with each other, and close the southern portion of the basiu 

 on its eastern side. The still active volcanoes of the lesser Antilles are between 

 the parallels of 13 and 16. Proceeding from south to north, they are as 

 follows : 



The volcano in the island of St. Vincent, estimated sometimes at 3200, some- 

 times at 5050 feet. After its eruption in 1718, it was at rest until a fresh one 

 occurred on the 27th of April 1812, sending forth an enormous quantity of lava. 

 The first movements, near the crater, began in May 1811, three months after 

 the island of Sabrina had risen from the sea in the Azores. In the mountain 

 valley of Caracas, 3496 feet above the sea, they began to be faintly felt in 

 December of the same year. The complete destruction of the large town of 

 Caracas took place on the 26th of March of the following year, 1812. As the 

 earthquake which destroyed Cumana on the 14th Dec. 1796 was with reason 

 ascribed to the eruption of the volcano of Guadeloupe at the end of September 

 1796, so the destruction of Caracas appears to have been an effect of the reaction 



