VOLCAMC BADGES. 
4G5 
the southern coast of Porto Eico, St. Domingo, and the 
island of Cuba their uniform configuration. This suppo- 
sition of an oceanic irruption has been the source of two 
other hypotheses on the origin of the smaller West India 
Islands. Some geologists admit that the uninterrupted 
chain of islands from Trinidad to Florida exhibits the 
remains of an ancient chain of mountains. They connect 
this chain sometimes with the granite of French Guiana, 
sometimes with the calcareous mountains of Pari. Others, 
struck with the difference of geological constitution between 
the primitive mountains of the Greater and the volcanic 
cones of the Lesser Antilles, consider the latter as having 
risen from the bottom of the sea. 
If we recollect that volcanic upheavings, when they tak« 
place through elongated crevices, usually take a straight 
direction, we shall find it difficult to judge from the dis- 
E osition of the craters alone, whether the volcanos have 
elonged to the same chain, or have always been isolated. 
Supposing an irruption of the oceau to take place either 
into the eastern part of the island of Java* or into the Cor- 
dilleras of Guatemala and Nicaragua, where so many bumiug 
mountains form but one chain, that chain would be divided 
into several islands, and would perfectly resemble the Carib- 
bean Archipelago. The union of primitive formations and 
volcanic rocks in the same range of mountain is not extra- 
ordinary ; it is very distinctly seen in my geological sections 
of the Cordillera of the Andes. The trachytes and basalts 
of Popayan are separated from the system of the volcanos 
of Quito by the mica-slates of Aimaguer; the volcanos of 
Quito from the trachytes of Assuay by the gneiss of Con- 
dorasta and Guasunto. There does not exist a real chain 
of mountains running south-east and north-west from Oya- 
poc to the mouths of the Orinoco, and of which the smallei 
West India Islands might be a northern prolongation 
The granites of Guiana, as well as the hornblende-slates, 
which I saw near Angostura, on the banks of the Lower 
Orinoco, belong to the mountains of Pacaraimo and of 
• Raffles, History of Java, 1817, pp. 23 — 28. Tho principal line of 
the volcanos of Java, on a distance of 160 leagues, runs from west to east, 
through the mountains of Gagak, Gede, Tankuban-Prahu, Ungararg 
Merapi, Lawu, Wilis, Arjuna, Dasar, and Tashem. 
VOL. t, 2 H 
