102 ARRIVAL AT NUEVA BAECELOHA. 



the desert, and of which travellers often make mention, with 

 mere scattered fragments. These facts seem to prove that 

 the blocks of Scandinavian granite, which cover the sandy 

 countries on the south of the Baltic, and those of Westphalia 

 and Holland, must be traced to some local revolution. The 

 ancient conglomerate (red sandstone) which covers a great 

 part of the Llanos of Venezuela and of the basin of the 

 Amazon, contains no doubt fragments of the same primitive 

 rocks which constitute the neighbouring mountains; but the 

 convulsions, of which these mountains exhibit evident marks, 

 do not appear to have been attended with circumstances 

 favourable to the removal of great blocks. This geognostic 

 phenomenon was to me the more unexpected, since there 

 exists, nowhere in the world, so smooth a plain eiitirelj 

 granitic. Before my departure from Europe, I had observed 

 with surprise that there were no primitive blocks in Lom- 

 bardy, and in the great plain of Bavaria, which appears to be 

 the bottom of an ancient lake, and which is situated two 

 hundred and fifty toises above the level of the ocean. It is 

 bounded on the north by the granites of the Upper Pala- 

 tinate ; and on the south by Alpine limestone, transition- 

 thonschiefer, and the mica-slates of the Tyrol. 



We arrived, on the 23rd of July, at the town of Nueva 

 Barcelona, less fatigued by the heat of the Llanos, to which 

 we had been long accustomed, than annoyed by the winds of 

 sand, which occasion painful chaps in the skin. Seven months 

 previously, in going from Cumana to Caracas, we had rested 

 a few hours at the Morro de Barcelona, a fortified rock, which, 

 near the village of Pozuelos, is joined to the continent only 

 by a neck of land. We were received with the kindest hos- 

 pitality in the house of Don Pedro Lavie, a wealthy merchant 

 of French extraction. This gentleman, who was accused of 

 having given refuge to the unfortunate Espafia, when a 

 fugitive on these coasts in 1796, was arrested by order of 

 the Audiencia, and conveyed as a prisoner to Caracas. The 

 friendship of the governor of Cumana, and the remem- 

 brance of the services he had rendered to the rising com- 

 merce of those countries, contributed to procure his liberty. 

 "We had endeavoured to alleviate his captivity by visiting 

 him in prison; and we had now the satisfaction of finding 

 him in the midst of his family. Illness under which he was 



