140 



humboldt's cuba. 



with hornblende often giving way to diorite, without 

 jasper, in layers, and sometimes containing rich 

 veins of copper (Silesia, Mussinet in Piedmont, Pyre- 

 nees, Parapara in Venezuela, Copper mountains of 

 Western America). This last-named formation of 

 the euphotides is that which, from its mixture with 

 diorite, blends with hypersthenite, in which, in Scot- 

 land and IsTorway, strata of true serpentine is some- 

 times found. 'No volcanic rocks of a more recent 

 epoch, as, for example, trachytes, solerite, and basalt, 

 have been discovered in the island of Cuba ; and I 

 am not aware if there are any in the other Great 

 Antilles, whose geognostic constitution differs essen- 

 tially from that of the series of limestone and volcanic 

 islands, that extends from the island of Trinidad to 

 the Yirgin Isles. 



Earthquakes are much less disastrous in Cuba 

 than in Puerto Rico and Haiti, and are experienced 

 most in the eastern part between Cape Maysi, St. 

 Jago de Cuba, and Puerto Principe. Perhaps there 

 extends toward those regions some lateral action 

 from the great fissure which is believed to extend 

 across the granitic tongue of land between Port au 

 Prince and Cape Tiburon (in St. Domingo), in which 

 entire mountains were sunk in 1770. 1 The cavern- 



1 Dupuget, in the " Diario de Minas," vol. I. p. 58, and Leopold de 

 Buch, Pay. Bescbr. der Canar. Inseln., 1825, p. 403. — H. 



