411 



heaved up by the elastic forces, that still act in 

 the interior of our planet? We may be per- 

 mitted to meditate a little on the origin of 

 mountains, after having seen* the disposition 

 of the Mexican volcanoes, and of the summits 

 of vent-holes on an elongated crevice ; having 

 found in the Andes of South America primitive 

 and volcanic rocks in a straight line in the same 

 chain ; and when we recollect that island, three 

 miles in circumference, and of a great height, 

 which in our days issued from the depths of the 

 ocean near Oonalashka. 



The banks of the Cassiquiare are embellished 

 by the chiriva palm tree with pinnate leaves 

 silvery beneath. The rest of the forest fur- 

 nishes only trees with large, coriaceous, glossy 

 leaves, that have plain edges. This peculiar 

 physiognomy^ of the vegetation of the Guainia, 

 the Tuamini, and the Cassiquiare, is owing to 



* See vol. iv, p. 38, and my Polit. Essay on New Spain, 

 vol. i, p. 45, 253. Langsdorf's Travels, vol. 2, p. 30, 242, and 

 particularly the new facts published by Mr. JLeopold von 

 Buch, in two celebrated memoirs Sur les Crateres de Soulfoe- 

 ment, and the astonishing revolutions, which the island of 

 Lancerota underwent from 1730 to 1736. The Russians 

 call the new island, near Oonalashka, Gromofsin, the Child of 

 Thunder. 



f This physiognomy struck us forcibly in the vast forest of 

 Spanish Guyana only between the latitudes of two and three 

 degrees north. 



