DIP OF THE STRATA. 115 



of water; the goats for want of grass died by hundreds. 

 During our stay at the Orinoco, the order of the seasons 

 seemed to be entirely changed. At Araya, Cochen, and 

 even in the island of Margareta, it had rained abundantly; 

 and those showers were remembered by the inhabitants in 

 the same way as a fall of aerolites would be noted in the 

 recollection of the naturalists of Europe. 



The Indian who was our guide scarcely knew in what 

 direction we should find the alum ; he was ignorant of its real 

 position. This ignorance of localities characterises almost 

 all the guides here, who are chosen from among the most 

 indolent class of the people. We wandered for eight or 

 nine hours among rocks totally bare of vegetation. The 

 mica-slate passes sometimes to clay-slate of a darkish grey. 

 I was again struck by the extreme regularity in the direction 

 and inclination of the strata. They run north 50 east, 

 inclining from 60 to 70 north-west. This is the general 

 direction which I had observed in the gneiss-granite of 

 Caracas and the Orinoco, in the hornblende-slates of An- 

 gostura, and even in the greater part of the secondary 

 rocks we had just examined. The beds, over a vast extent 

 of land, make the same angle with the meridian of the 

 place ; they present a parallelism, which may be considered 

 aa one of the great geologic laws capable of being veri- 

 fied by precise measures. Advancing toward Cape Chupa- 

 ruparu, the veins of quartz that cross the mica-slate in- 

 crease in size. "YVe found some from one to two toises 

 broad, full of small fasciculated crystals of rutile titanite. 

 A\'c sought in vain for cyanite, which we had discovered in 

 some blocks near Maniquarez. Farther on, the mica-slate 

 presents not veins, but little beds of graphite or carburetted 

 iron. They are from two to three inches thick, and have 

 precisely the same direction and inclination as the rock. 

 (Iraphite, in primitive soils, marks the first appearance of 

 carbon on the globe, that of carbon uncombined with 

 hydrogen. It is anterior to the period when the surface ot 

 the earth became covered with monocotyledonous plants. 

 From the summit of those wild mountains there is a majestic 

 TI'CW of the island of Margareta. Two groups of mountains 

 already mentioned, those of Macanao, and La Vega de San 

 Juau, rise from the bosom of the waters. The capital of 



12 



