Travels, Comprising Observations Made During a Residence in the Tarentaise, and Various Parts of the Grecian and Pennine Alps, and in Switzerland and Auvergne, in the Years 1820, 1821, and 1822 Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1823 edition. Excerpt: ...position they are also found extending from the bottom to the top of a mountain, and preserving nearly the same thickness throughout their whole extent. In such instances, and they are of frequent occurrence, we must admit that the strata have changed their original position, and have been elevated either by a subsidency of one part of the strata, or by the action of some power from beneath, upheaving the whole mass with a force which was most intense, near the present centre of the mountain. The latter appears the more probable supposition, in all those cases where the strata dip in opposite directions on the opposite sides of a mountain, and are nearly flat at the top. To this breaking up of the strata, when the mountains were first raised, and to diluvial currents which have in remote periods passed over them, I am persuaded, we must resort to explain their present appearance in this part of Savoy. 'Water-courses, or atmospheric agency, however considerable their effects in the course of ages, appear altogether inadequate to occasion the changes the strata have obviously undergone; at least it will be admitted that no atmospheric action could bend strata of vast thickness into deep curves, or change their position from' horizontal to vertical. i Whether the caps of limestone on the summits of the mountains in this part of Savoy are all parts of one vast bed, or of different beds, I will not pretend to determine, as there is more than one considerable bed of sandstone interstratified with this lime stone, and the mineralogical characters of the upper and lower beds of limestone are frequently so similar, that they are not to be distinguished. While we were at Chateau Duing, I visited a coal mine near the Lake of Annecy, ...