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 Clayton, engraved by Dcdziel. 
 
 Lindsay’s (Lord) Letters on Egypt, 
 
 Edom, and the Holy Land. New Edition, 
 enlarged. Thirty-six beautiful Engrav- 
 ings, and 2 Maps. 
 
 Lodge’s Portraits of Illustrious Per- 
 sonages of Great Britain, with Memoirs. 
 / Two Hundred and Forty Portraits, beau- 
 tifully engraved on Steel. 8 vols. , 
 
PERSONAL NARRATIVE 
 
 OP 
 
 TKAYELS 
 
 TO THE 
 
 EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS 
 OE AMERICA, 
 
 DURING THE YEARS 1 799 — 1 804. 
 
 BY ALEXANDER YON HUMBOLDT AND AThlTR BONPLAND. 
 
 WHITTEN IN FRENCH BY 
 
 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT : 
 
 TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY THOMASINA ROSS 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COTENT GARDEN. 
 1852. 
 
 OSffQN ««MERE LIBRARY 
 efiESTNITT HIT L, MASS, 
 
w*** / o 
 
 ■//m 
 
 M. ! 
 
 PRINTED BT HARRISON AND SONS, 
 LONDON GAZETTE OFFICE, ST. MARTIN’S LANE. 
 
 BÏÏSÏ88 «HUES* LJBMRÏ 
 
 cmrm tyu. ha g2&7 
 
EDITOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 The increasing interest attached to all that part of the 
 American Continent situated within and near the tropics, 
 has suggested the publication of the present edition of 
 Humboldt’s celebrated work, as a portion of the Scientific 
 Library. 
 
 Prior to the travels of Humboldt and Bonpland, the 
 countries described in the following narrative were but 
 imperfectly known to Europeans. Eor our partial acquaint- 
 ance with them we were chiefly indebted to the early 
 navigators, and to some of the followers of the Spanish 
 Conquistadores. The intrepid men whose courage and 
 enterprise prompted them to explore unknown seas for the 
 discovery of a New World, have left behind them narratives 
 of their adventures, and descriptions of the strange lands 
 and people they visited, which must* ever be perused with 
 curiosity and interest ; and some of the followers of Pizarro 
 and Cortez, as well as many learned Spaniards who pro- 
 ceeded to South America soon after the conquest, were the 
 authors of historical and other works of high value. But 
 these writings of a past age, however curious and inte- 
 resting, are deficient in that spirit of scientific investigation 
 which enhances the importance and utility of accounts of 
 travels in distant regions. In more recent times, the re- 
 searches of La Condamine tended in a most important 
 degree to promote geographical knowledge ; and he, as well 
 as other eminent botanists who visited the coasts of South 
 
 a 2 
 
IV 
 
 EDITOE S PEEFACE. 
 
 America, and even ascended the Andes, contributed by their 
 discoveries and collections to augment the vegetable riches 
 of the Old "World. But, in their time, geology as a science 
 had little or no existence. Of the structure of the giant 
 mountains of our globe scarcely anything was understood ; 
 whilst nothing was known beneath the earth in the New 
 World, except what related to her mines of gold and silver. 
 
 It remained for Humboldt to supply all that was wanting, 
 by the publication of his Personal Narrative. In this, 
 ihore than in any other of his works, he shows his power 
 of contemplating nature in all her grandeur and variety. 
 
 The researches and discoveries of Humboldt’s able coad- 
 jutor and companion, M. Bonpland, afford not only a com- 
 plete picture of the botany of the equinoctial regions of 
 America, but of that of other places visited by the tra- 
 vellers on their voyage thither. The description of the 
 Island of Teneriffe and the geography of its vegetation, 
 show how much was discovered by Humboldt and Bonpland 
 which had escaped the observation of discerning travellers 
 who had pursued the same route before them. Indeed, the 
 whole account of the Canary Islands presents a picture 
 which cannot be contemplated without the deepest interest, 
 even by persons comparatively indifferent to the study of 
 nature. * 
 
 It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to remind the reader 
 that since the time when this work was first published in 
 Paris, the separation of the Spanish Colonies from the 
 mother-country, together with subsequent political events, 
 have wrought great changes in the governments of the 
 South American States, as well as in the social condition 
 of their inhabitants. One consequence of these changes has 
 been to render obsolete some facts and observations relating 
 to subjects, political, commercial, and statistical, interspersed 
 through this work. However useful such matter might 
 have been on its original publication, it is wholly irrelevant 
 
editor’ s' preeace. 
 
 V 
 
 to the existing state of things, and consequently it has 
 been deemed advisable to omit it. By this curtailment, 
 together with that of some meteorological tables and dis- 
 cussions of very limited interest, the work has been divested 
 of its somewhat lengthy and discursive character, and con- 
 densed within dimensions better adapted to the taste and 
 requirements of the present time. 
 
 An English translation of this work by Helen Maria 
 Williams, was published many years ago, and is now out 
 of print. Though faultless as respects correctness of inter- 
 pretation, it abounds in foreign turns of expression, and is 
 somewhat deficient in that fluency of style without which 
 a translated work is unsatisfactory to the English reader- 
 In the edition now presented to the public it is hoped that 
 these objections are in some degree removed. 
 
 A careful English version is given of all the Spanish and 
 Portuguese terms, phrases, and quotations which occur in 
 this work. Though the author has only in some few in- 
 stances given a Erench translation of these passages, yet 
 it is presumed that the interpretation of the whole in 
 English will not be deemed superfluous ; this new edition 
 of the “ Personal Narrative” having been undertaken with 
 the view of presenting the work in the form best suited 
 for the instruction and entertainment of the general reader. 
 
 T. R. 
 
 London, December 1851. 
 
VI 
 
 For the sake of accuracy, the French Measures, as given 
 by the Author, and the indications of the Centigrade Ther- 
 mometer, are retained in the translation. The following 
 tables may, therefore, be found useful. 
 
 Table of Linear Measure. 
 
 1 toise = 6 ft. 4'73in. lfoot = 12*78in. 1 metre = 3ft. 3 , 37in. 
 
 Centigrade Thermometer reduced to Fahrenheit’s Scale. 
 
 Cent. 
 
 Fahr. 
 
 Cent. 
 
 Fahr. 
 
 Cent. 
 
 Fahr. 
 
 Cent. 
 
 Fahr. 
 
 100 
 
 212 
 
 
 65 
 
 149 
 
 
 30 
 
 86 
 
 5 
 
 23 
 
 99 
 
 210 
 
 2 
 
 64 
 
 147 
 
 2 
 
 29 
 
 84-2 
 
 6 
 
 21 -2 
 
 98 
 
 208 
 
 4 
 
 63 
 
 145 
 
 4 
 
 28 
 
 82 -4 
 
 7 
 
 19 4 
 
 97 
 
 206 
 
 6 
 
 62 
 
 143 
 
 6 
 
 27 
 
 80 6 
 
 8 
 
 17 6 
 
 96 
 
 204 
 
 8 
 
 61 
 
 141 
 
 8 
 
 26 
 
 78 -8 
 
 9 
 
 15 -8 
 
 95 
 
 203 
 
 
 60 
 
 140 
 
 
 25 
 
 77 
 
 10 
 
 14 
 
 94 
 
 201 
 
 2 
 
 59 
 
 138 
 
 2 
 
 24 
 
 75 2 
 
 11 
 
 12 2 
 
 93 
 
 199 
 
 4 
 
 58 
 
 136 
 
 4 
 
 23 
 
 73 4 
 
 12 
 
 10 4 
 
 92 
 
 197 
 
 6 
 
 57 
 
 134 
 
 6 
 
 22 
 
 71 -6 
 
 13 
 
 8-6 
 
 91 
 
 195. 
 
 8 
 
 56 
 
 132 
 
 8 
 
 21 
 
 69-8 
 
 14 
 
 6 8 
 
 90 
 
 194 
 
 
 55 
 
 131 
 
 
 20 
 
 68 
 
 15 
 
 5 
 
 89 
 
 192 
 
 2 
 
 54 
 
 129 
 
 2 
 
 19 
 
 66 2 
 
 16 
 
 3 -2 
 
 88 
 
 190 
 
 4 
 
 53 
 
 127 
 
 4 
 
 18 
 
 64 "4 
 
 17 
 
 1 -4 
 
 87 
 
 188 
 
 6 
 
 52 
 
 125. 
 
 6 
 
 17 
 
 62 -6 
 
 18 
 
 —0-4 
 
 86 
 
 186 
 
 8 
 
 51 
 
 123 
 
 8 
 
 16 
 
 60 8 
 
 19 
 
 2.2 
 
 85 
 
 185 
 
 
 50 
 
 122 
 
 
 15 
 
 59 
 
 20 
 
 4 
 
 84 
 
 183 
 
 2 
 
 49 
 
 120 
 
 2 
 
 14 
 
 57 -2 
 
 21 
 
 5-8 
 
 83 
 
 181 
 
 4 
 
 48 
 
 118 
 
 4 
 
 13 
 
 55 ’4 
 
 22 
 
 76 
 
 82 
 
 179 
 
 6 
 
 47 
 
 116 
 
 6 
 
 12 
 
 53 -6 
 
 23 
 
 9-4 
 
 81 
 
 177 
 
 8 
 
 46 
 
 114 
 
 8 
 
 11 
 
 51-8 
 
 24 
 
 11 -2 
 
 80 
 
 176 
 
 
 45 
 
 113 
 
 
 10 
 
 50 
 
 25 
 
 13 
 
 79 
 
 174 
 
 2 
 
 44 
 
 111 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 48 2 
 
 26 
 
 14-8 
 
 78 
 
 172 
 
 4 
 
 43 
 
 109 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 46 4 
 
 27 
 
 16 6 
 
 77 
 
 170 
 
 6 
 
 42 
 
 107 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 44*6 
 
 28 
 
 18-4 
 
 76 
 
 168 
 
 8 
 
 41 
 
 105 
 
 8 
 
 6 
 
 42-8 
 
 29 
 
 20 -2 
 
 75 
 
 167 
 
 
 40 
 
 104 
 
 
 5 
 
 41 
 
 30 
 
 22 
 
 74 
 
 165 
 
 2 
 
 39 
 
 102 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 39 2 
 
 31 
 
 23 -8 
 
 73 
 
 163 
 
 4 
 
 38 
 
 100 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 37 4 
 
 32 
 
 25 6 
 
 72 
 
 161 
 
 6 
 
 37 
 
 98 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 356 
 
 33 
 
 27-4 
 
 71 
 
 159 
 
 8 
 
 36 
 
 96 
 
 8 
 
 1 
 
 33 8 
 
 34 
 
 29 -2 
 
 70 
 
 158 
 
 
 35 
 
 95 
 
 
 0 
 
 32 
 
 35 
 
 31 
 
 69 
 
 156 
 
 2 
 
 34 
 
 93 
 
 2 
 
 —1 
 
 30 -2 
 
 36 
 
 32 -8 
 
 68 
 
 154 
 
 4 
 
 33 
 
 91 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 28 -4 
 
 37 
 
 34 -6 
 
 67 
 
 152 
 
 6 
 
 32 
 
 89 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 
 26 6 
 
 38 
 
 36 -4 
 
 66 
 
 150 
 
 8 • 
 
 31 
 
 87 
 
 8 
 
 4 
 
 24 8 
 
 39 
 
 38 -2 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 VOLUME THE EIEST. 
 
 Page 
 
 Editor’s Preface . . . . . iii 
 
 Introduction by the Author . . . .is 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Preparations — Instruments — Departure from Spain — Landing at 
 
 the Canary Islands . . . . .1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Stay at Teneriffe —Journey from Santa Cruz to Orotava — Excursion 
 
 to the summit of the Peak of Teyde . . .45 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Passage from Teneriffe to South America— The Island of Tobago — 
 
 Arrival at Cumana . . . . .126 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Eirst abode at Cumana — Banks of the Manzanares . .147 
 
 * CHAPTER V. 
 
 Peninsula of Araya — Salt-marshes— Ruins of the Castle of Santiago 173 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Mountains of New Andalusia — Valley of the Cumanaco — Summit 
 
 of the Cocollar— Missions of the Chayma Indians . . 200 
 
 l 
 
vin 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 Convent of Caripe — Cavern of the Guacharo — Nocturnal Birds 
 
 Page 
 
 251 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Departure from Caripe — Mountain and Forest of Santa Maria — 
 
 Mission of Catuaro — Port of Cariaco . . . 272 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Physical Constitution and Manners of the Chaymas — Their Lan- 
 guage — Filiation of the Nations which inhabit New Andalusia 
 — Pariagotos seen by Columbus .... 293 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Second abode at Cumana — Earthquakes — Extraordinary Meteors 343 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Passage from Cumana to La Guayra — Morro of Nueva Barcelona 
 
 —Codera — Road. from La Guayra to Caracas . . 360 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 General View of the Provinces of Venezuela — Diversity of their 
 
 Interests — City and Valley of Caracas — Climate . . 392 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Abode at Caracas — Mountains in the vicinity of the Town — 
 
 Excursion to the summit of Silla — Indications of Mines . 412 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Earthquakes at Caracas — Connexion of those Phenomena with the 
 
 Volcanic Eruptions of the West India Islands . . 445 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Departure from Caracas — Mountains of San Pedro and of Los 
 
 Têques — La Victoria — Valleys of Aragua . . . 473 
 
INTRODUCTION, 
 
 BT 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Many years have elapsed since" I quitted Europe, to explore 
 the interior of the New Continent. Devoted from my earliest 
 youth to the study of nature, feeling with enthusiasm the wild 
 beauties of a country guarded by mountains and shaded by 
 ancient forests, I experienced in my travels, enjoyments which 
 have amply compensated for the privations inseparable from a 
 laborious and often agitated life. These enjoyments, which I 
 endeavoured to impart to my readers in my £ Remarks upon the 
 Steppes,’ and in the ‘ Essay on the Physiognomy of Plants,’ were 
 not the only fruits I reaped from an undertaking formed with 
 the design of contributing to the progress of natural philosophy. 
 I had long prepared myself for the observations which were the 
 principal object of my journey to the torrid zone. I was provided 
 with instruments of easy and convenient use, constructed by the 
 ablest makers, and I enjoyed the special protection of a govern- 
 ment which, far from presenting obstacles to my investigations, 
 constantly honoured me with every mark of regard and confi- 
 dence. I was aided by a courageous and enlightened friend, and 
 it was singularly propitious to the success of our participated 
 labour, that the zeal and equanimity of that friend never failed, 
 amidst the fatigues and dangers to .which we were sometimes 
 exposed. 
 
 Under these favourable circumstances, traversing regions which 
 for ages have remained almost unknown to most of the nations 
 of Europe, I might add even to Spain, M. Bonpland and myself 
 collected a considerable number of materials, the publication of 
 which may throw some light on the history of nations, and 
 advance the study of nature. 
 
 I had in view a two-fold purpose in the travels of which I now 
 publish the historical narrative. I wished to make known the 
 countries I had visited ; and to collect such facts as are fitted 
 to elucidate a science of which we as yet possess scarcely the 
 outline, and which has been vaguely denominated Natural His- 
 
 b 2 
 
X 
 
 INTRODUCTION'. 
 
 tory of the World, Theory of the Earth, or Physical Geography. 
 The last of these two objects seemed to me the most important. 
 I was passionately devoted to botany and certain parts of zoology, 
 and I flattered myself that our investigations might add some new 
 species to those already known, both in the animal and vegetable 
 kingdoms ; but preferring the connection of facts which have been 
 long observed, to the knowledge of insulated facts, although new, 
 the discovery of an unknown genus seemed to me far less interest- 
 ing than an observation on the geographical relations of the vege- 
 table world, on the migrations of the social plants, and the limit 
 of the height which their different tribes attain on the flanks of 
 the Cordilleras. 
 
 The natural sciences are connected by the same ties which link 
 together all the phenomena of nature. The classification of the 
 species, which must be considered as the fundamental part of 
 botany, and the study of which is rendered attractive and easy 
 by the introduction of natural methods, is to the geography 
 of plants what descriptive mineralogy is to the indication of the 
 rocks constituting the exterior crust of the globe. To compre- 
 hend the laws observed in the position of these rocks, to deter- 
 mine the age of their successive formations, and their identity 
 in the most distant regions, the geologist should be previously 
 acquainted with the simple fossils which compose the mass of 
 mountains, and of which the names and character are the object 
 of oryctognostical knowledge. It is the same with that part of 
 the natural history of the globe which treats of the relations 
 plants have to each other, to the soil whence they spring, or 
 to the air which they inhale and modify. The progress of the 
 geography of plants depends in a great measure on that of de- 
 scriptive botany ; and it would be injurious to the advancement 
 of science, to attempt rising to general ideas, whilst neglecting 
 the knowledge of particular facts. 
 
 I have been guided by these considerations in the course of my 
 inquiries ; they were always present to my mind during the period 
 of my preparatory studies. When I began to read the numerous 
 narratives of travels, which compose so interesting a part of 
 modern literature, I regretted that travellers, the most enlight- 
 ened in the insulated branches of natural history, were seldom 
 possessed of sufficient variety of knowledge to avail themselves 
 of every advantage arising from their position. It appeared to 
 me, that the importance of the results hitherto obtained did 
 not keep pace with the immense progress which, at the end of 
 the eighteenth century, had been made in several departments of 
 science, particularly geology, the history of the modifications of 
 the atmosphere, and the physiology of animals and plants. I 
 saw with regret, (and all scientific men have shared this feeling) 
 that whilst the number of accurate instruments was daily in- 
 
I2TTE0DUCTI0K. 
 
 XI 
 
 creasing, we were still ignorant of the height of many moun- 
 tains and elevated plains ; of the periodical oscillations of the 
 aerial ocean; of the limit of perpetual snow within the polar 
 circle and on the borders of the torrid zone ; of the variable 
 intensity of the magnetic forces, and of many other phenomena 
 equally important. 
 
 Maritime expeditions and circumnavigatory voyages have con- 
 ferred just celebrity on the names of the naturalists and astro- 
 nomers who have been appointed by various governments to 
 share the dangers of those undertakings ; but though these 
 eminent men have given us precise notions of the external 
 configuration of countries, of the natural history of the ocean, 
 and of the productions of islands and coasts, it must be admitted 
 that maritime expeditions are less fitted to advance the progress 
 of geology and other parts of physical science, than travels into 
 the interior of a continent. The advancement of the natural 
 sciences has been subordinate to that of geography and nautical 
 astronomy. During a voyage of several years, the land but 
 seldom presents itself to the observation of the mariner ; and 
 when, after lengthened expectation, it is descried, he often finds it 
 stripped of its most beautiful productions. Sometimes, beyond 
 a barren coast, he perceives a ridge of mountains covered with 
 verdure, but its distance forbids examination, and the view serves 
 only to excite regret. 
 
 Journeys by land are attended with considerable difficulties in 
 the conveyance of instruments and collections, but these diffi- 
 culties are compensated by advantages which it is unnecessary to 
 enumerate. It is not by sailing along a coast that we can 
 discover the direction of chains of mountains, and their geolo- 
 gical constitution, the climate of each zone, and its influence 
 on the forms and habits of organized beings. In proportion to 
 the extent of continents, the greater on the surface of the soil 
 are the riches of animal and vegetable productions ; the more 
 distant the central chain of mountains from the sea-shore, the 
 greater is the variety in the bosom of the earth, of those stony 
 strata, the regular succession of which unfolds the history of our 
 planet. As every being considered apart is impressed with a 
 particular type, so, in like manner, we find the same distinctive 
 impression in the arrangement of brute matter organized in 
 . rocks, and also in the distribution and mutual relations of plants 
 and animals. The great problem of the physical description of 
 the globe, is the determination of the form of these types, the 
 laws of their relations with each other, and the eternal ties which 
 link the phenomena of life, and those of inanimate nature. 
 
 Having stated the general object I had in view in my expe- 
 ditions, I will now hasten to give a slight sketch of the whole of 
 the collections and observations which we have accumulated, 
 
Xll 
 
 INTBODTJCTION. 
 
 and the union of which is the aim and end of every scientific 
 journey. The maritime war, during our abode in America, having 
 rendered communication with Europe very uncertain, we found 
 ourselves compelled, in order to diminish the chance of losses, 
 to form three different collections. Of these, the first was em- 
 barked for Spain and France, the second for the United States 
 and England, and the third, which was the most considerable, re- 
 mained almost constantly under our own eyes. Towards the close 
 of our expedition, this last collection formed forty-two boxes, 
 containing an herbal of six thousand equinoctial plants, seeds, 
 shells, insects, and (what had hitherto never been brought to 
 Europe) geological specimens, from the Chimborazo, New Gre- 
 nada, and the banks of the river Amazon. 
 
 After our journey to the Orinoco, we left a part of these collec- 
 tions at the island of Cuba, intending to take them on our return 
 from Peru to Mexico. The rest followed us during the space of 
 five years, on the chain of the Andes, across New Spain, from 
 the shores of the Pacific to the coasts of the Caribbean Sea. The 
 conveyance of these objects, and the minute care they required, 
 occasioned embarrassments scarcely conceiveable even by those 
 who have traversed the most uncultivated parts of Europe. Our 
 progress was often retarded by the necessity of dragging after 
 us, during expeditions of five or six months, twelve, fifteen, and 
 sometimes more than twenty loaded mules, exchanging these ani- 
 mals every eight or ten days, and superintending the Indians who 
 were employed in driving the numerous caravan. Often, in order 
 to add to our collections of new mineral substances, we found 
 ourselves obliged to throw away others, which we had collected 
 a considerable time before. These sacrifices were not less vex- 
 atious than the losses we accidentally sustained. Sad experience 
 taught us but too late, that from the sultry humidity of the 
 climate, and the frequent falls of the beasts of burden, we could 
 preserve neither the skins of animals hastily prepared, nor the 
 fishes and reptiles placed in phials filled with alcohol. I enter 
 into these details, because, though little interesting in them- 
 selves, they serve to show that we had no means of bringing 
 back, in their natural state, many objects of zoology and compa- 
 rative anatomy, of which we have published descriptions and 
 drawings. Notwithstanding some obstacles, and the expense occa- 
 sioned by the carriage of these articles, I had reason to applaud 
 the resolution I had taken before my departure, of sending to 
 Europe the duplicates only of the productions we collected. 
 I cannot too often repeat, that when the seas are infested with 
 privateers, a traveller can be sure only of the objects in his own 
 possession. A very few of the duplicates, which we shipped for 
 Europe during our abode in America, were saved; the greater 
 part fell into the hands of persons who feel no interest for 
 
INTEODTTCTICXN'. 
 
 Tin 
 
 science. When a ship is condemned in a foreign port, boxes 
 containing only dried plants or stones, instead of being sent to 
 the scientific men to whom they are addressed, are put aside and 
 forgotten. Some of our geological collections taken in the Pacific 
 were, however, more fortunate. We were indebted for their pre- 
 servation to the generous activity of Sir Joseph Banks, President 
 of the Royal Society of London, who, amidst the political agita- 
 tions of Europe, unceasingly laboured to strengthen the bonds of 
 union between scientific men of all nations. 
 
 In our investigations we have considered each phenomenon 
 under different aspects, and classed our remarks according to the 
 relations they bear to each other. To afford an idea of the 
 method we have followed, I will here add a succinct enumeration 
 of the materials with which we were furnished for describing 
 the volcanos of Antisana and Pichincha, as well as that of 
 Jorullo : the latter, during the night of the 20th of September, 
 1759, rose from the earth one thousand five hundred and seventy- 
 eight French feet above the surrounding plains of Mexico. The 
 position of these singular mountains in longitude and latitude 
 was ascertained by astronomical observations. We took the 
 heights of the different parts by the aid of the barometer, and 
 determined the dip of the needle and the intensity of the mag- 
 netic forces. Our collections contain the plants which are spread 
 over the flanks of these volcanos, and specimens of different 
 rocks which, superposed one upon another, constitute their ex- 
 ternal coat. We are enabled to indicate, by measures sufficiently 
 exact, the height above the level of the ocean, at which we found 
 each group of plants, and each volcanic rock. Our journals 
 furnish us with a series of observations on the humidity, the 
 temperature, the electricity, and the degree of transparency of 
 the air on the brinks of the craters of Pichincha and Jorullo ; they 
 also contain topographical plans and geological profiles of these 
 mountains, founded in part on the measure of vertical bases, and 
 on angles of altitude. Each observation has been calculated ac- 
 cording to the tables and the methods which are considered 
 most exact in the present state of our knowledge ; and in order 
 to judge of the degree of confidence which the results may claim, 
 we have preserved the whole detail of our partial operations. 
 
 It would have been possible to blend these different materials 
 in a work devoted wholly to the description of the volcanos of 
 Peru and New Spain. Had I given the physical description of 
 a single province, I could have treated separately everything 
 relating to its geography, mineralogy, and botany ; but how could 
 I interrupt the narrative of a journey, a disquisition on the 
 manners of a people, or the great phenomena of nature, by an 
 enumeration of the productions of the country, the description 
 of new species of animals and plants, or the detail of astrono- 
 
XIV 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 mical observations. Had I adopted a mode of composition which 
 would have included in one and the same chapter all that has 
 been observed on one particular point of the globe, I should 
 have prepared a work of cumbrous length, and devoid of that 
 clearness which arises in a great measure from the methodical 
 distribution of matter. Notwithstanding the efforts I have made 
 to avoid, in this narrative, the errors I had to dread, I feel con- 
 scious that I have not always succeeded in separating the obser- 
 vations of detail from those general results which interest every 
 enlightened mind. These results comprise in one view the 
 climate and its influence on organized beings, the aspect of the 
 country, varied according to the nature of the soil and its vege- 
 table covering, the direction of the mountains and rivers which ■ 
 separate races of men as well as tribes of plants ; and finally, the 
 modifications observable in the condition of people living in 
 different latitudes, and in circumstances more or less favourable 
 to the development of their faculties. I do not fear having too 
 much enlarged on objects so worthy of attention : one of the 
 noblest characteristics which distinguish modern civilization from 
 that of remoter times is, that it has enlarged the mass of our con- 
 ceptions, rendered us more capable of perceiving the connection . 
 between the physical and intellectual world, and thrown a more 
 general interest over objects which heretofore occupied only a 
 few scientific men, because those objects were contemplated 
 separately, and from a narrower point of view. 
 
 As it is probable that these volumes will obtain the attention of 
 a greater number of readers than the detail of my observations 
 merely scientific, or my researches on the population, the com- 
 merce, and the mines of New Spain, I may be permitted here to 
 enumerate all the works which I have hitherto published con- 
 jointly with M. Bonpland. When several works are interwoven 
 in some sort with each other, it may perhaps be interesting to 
 the reader to know the sources whence he may obtain more 
 circumstantial information. 
 
 I. Astronomical observations , trigonometrical operations, and ba- 
 rometrical measurements made during the course of a journey to the 
 equinoctial regions of the New Continent, from 1799 to 1804. This 
 work, to which are added historical researches on the position 
 of several points important to navigators, contains, first, the 
 original observations which I made from the twelfth degree of 
 southern to the forty-first degree of northern latitude ; the tran- 
 sits of the sun and stars over the meridian ; distances of the 
 moon from the sun and the stars ; occultations of the satel- 
 lites ; eclipses of the sun and moon ; transits of Mercury over the 
 disc of the sun ; azimuths ; circum-meridian altitudes of the 
 moon, to determine the longitude by the differences of declina- 
 tion ; researches on the relative intensity of the light of the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XV 
 
 austral stars ; geodesical measures, <fec. Secondly, a treatise on 
 the astronomical refractions in the torrid zone, considered as 
 the effect of the decrement of caloric in the strata of the air ; 
 thirdly, the barometric measurement of the Cordillera of the 
 Andes, of Mexico, of the province of Venezuela, of the kingdom 
 of Quito, and of New Grenada ; followed by geological observa- 
 tions, and containing the indication of four hundred and fifty- 
 three heights, calculated according to the method of M. Laplace, 
 and the new co-efficient of M. Ramond ; fourthly, a table of near 
 seven hundred geographical positions on the New Continent ; 
 two hundred and thirty-five of which have been determined by 
 my own observations, according to the three co-ordinates of 
 longitude, latitude, and height. 
 
 II. Equinoctial plants collected in Mexico , in the island of Cuba , in 
 the provinces of Caracas , Cumana , and Barcelona , on the Andes of 
 New Grenada , Quito , and Peru , and on the banks of the Rio Negro , 
 the Orinoco , and the River Amazon. M. Bonpland has in this work 
 given figures of more than forty new genera of plants of the 
 torrid zone, classed according to their natural families. The 
 methodical descriptions of the species are both in French and 
 in Latin, and are accompanied by observations on the medicinal 
 properties of the plants, their use in the arts, and the climate 
 of the countries in which they are found. 
 
 III. Monography of the Melastoma , Rhexia , and other genera of 
 this order of plants, comprising upwards of a hundred and fifty 
 species of melastomaceæ, which we collected during the course of 
 our expeditions, and which form one of the most beautiful orna- 
 ments of tropical vegetation. M. Bonpland has added the plants 
 of the same family, which, among many other rich stores of 
 natural history, M. Richard collected in his interesting expedi- 
 tion to the Antilles and French Guiana, and the descriptions 
 of which he has communicated to us. 
 
 IV. Essay on the geography of plants , accompanied by a phy- 
 sical table of the equinoctial regions , founded on measures taken 
 from the tenth degree of northern to the tenth degree of southern 
 latitude. I have endeavoured to collect in one point of view the 
 whole of the physical phenomena of that part of the New Con- 
 tinent comprised within the limits of the torrid zone from the 
 level of the Pacific*to the highest summit of the Andes ; namely, 
 the vegetation, the animals, the geological relations, the cultiva- 
 tion of the soil, the temperature of the air, the limit of perpetual 
 snow, the chemical constitution of the atmosphere, its electrical 
 intensity, its barometrical pressure, the decrement of gravitation, 
 the intensity of the azure colour of the sky, the diminution of 
 
 ( light during its passage through the successive strata of the air, 
 the horizontal refractions, and the heat of boiling water at 
 different heights. Fourteen scales, disposed side by side with a 
 
 l 
 
XVI 
 
 INTEODU CTION. 
 
 profile of the Andes, indicate the modifications to which these 
 phenomena are subject from the influence of the elevation of 
 the soil above the level of the sea. Each group of plants is 
 placed at the height which nature has assigned to it, and we may 
 follow the prodigious variety of their forms from the region of 
 the palms and arborescent ferns to those of the johannesia (chu- 
 quiraga, Juss.), the gramineous plants, and lichens. These regions 
 form the natural divisions of the vegetable empire ; and as per- 
 petual snow is found in each climate at a determinate height, 
 so, in like manner, the febrifuge species of the quinquina (cin- 
 chona) have their fixed limits, which I have marked in the bota- 
 nical chart belonging to this essay. 
 
 Y. Observations on Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. I have 
 comprised in this work the history of the condor ; experiments 
 on the electrical action of the gymnotus ; a treatise on the 
 larynx of the crocodiles, the quadrumani, and birds of the 
 tropics ; the description of several new species of reptiles, fishes, 
 birds, monkeys, and other mammalia but little known. M. 
 Cuvier has enriched this work with a very comprehensive treatise 
 on the axolotl of the lake of Mexico, and on the genera of the 
 Protei. That naturalist has also recognized two new species of 
 mastodons and an elephant among the fossil bones of quadrupeds 
 which we brought from North and South America. For the des- 
 cription of the insects collected by M. Bonpland we are indebted 
 to M. Latreille, whose labours have so much contributed to the 
 progress of entomology in our times. The second volume of this 
 work contains figures of the Mexican, Peruvian, and Aturian 
 skulls, which we have deposited in the Museum of Natural His- 
 tory at Paris, and respecting which Blumenbach has published ob- 
 servations in the 1 Decas quinta Craniorum diversarum gentium.’ 
 
 YI. Political essay on the kingdom of New Spain , with a phy- 
 sical and geographical Atlas , founded on astronomical observations 
 and trigonometrical and barometrical measurements. This work, 
 based on numerous official memoirs, presents, in six divisions, 
 considerations on the extent and natural appearance of Mexico, 
 on the population, on the manners of the inhabitants, their 
 ancient civilization, and the political division of their territory. 
 It embraces also the agriculture, the mineral riches, the ma- 
 nufactures, the commerce, the finances, and the military defence 
 of that vast country. In treating these different subjects I have 
 endeavoured to consider them under a general point of view ; 
 I have drawn a parallel not only between New Spain, the 
 other Spanish colonies, and the United States of North America, 
 but also between New Spain and the possessions of the Eng- 
 lish in Asia ; I have compared the agriculture of the countries 
 situated in the torrid zone with that of the temperate cli- 
 mates ; and I have examined the quantity of colonial produce 
 
INTBODTJCTIOK. 
 
 XYU 
 
 necessary to Europe in the present state of civilization. In 
 tracing the geological description of the richest mining dis- 
 tricts in Mexico, I have, in short, given a statement of the 
 mineral produce, the population, the imports and exports of 
 the whole of Spanish America. I have examined several ques- 
 tions which, for want of precise data, had not hitherto been 
 treated with the attention they demand, such as the influx and 
 reflux of metals, their progressive accumulation in Europe and 
 Asia, and the quantity of gold and silver which, since the disco- 
 very of America down to our own times, the Old World has re- 
 ceived from the New. The geographical introduction at the be- 
 ginning of this work contains the analysis of the materials which 
 have been employed in the construction of the Mexican Atlas. 
 
 VII. Views of the Cordilleras , and monuments of the indigenous 
 nations of the New Continent.* This work is intended to represent 
 a few of the grand scenes which nature presents in the lofty chain 
 of the Andes, and at the same time to throw some light on the 
 ancient civilization of the Americans, through the study of their 
 monuments of architecture, their hieroglyphics, their religious 
 rites, and their astrological reveries. I have given in this work 
 a description of the teocalli , or Mexican pyramids, and have com- 
 pared their structure with that of the temple of Belus. I have 
 described the arabesques which cover the ruins of Mitla, the idols 
 in basalt ornamented with the calantica of the heads of Isis ; and 
 also a considerable number of symbolical paintings, representing 
 the serpent-woman (the Mexican Eve), the deluge of Coxcox, 
 and the first migrations of the natives of the Aztec race. I have 
 endeavoured to prove the striking analogies existing between 
 the calendar of the Toltecs and the catasterisms of their zodiac, 
 and the division of time of the people of Tartary and Thibet, as 
 well as the Mexican traditions on the four regenerations of the 
 globe, the pralayas of the Hindoos, and the four ages of Hesiod. 
 In this work I have also included (in addition to the hierogly- 
 phical paintings I brought to Europe), fragments of all the Aztec 
 manuscripts, collected in Rome, Veletri, Vienna, and Dresden, 
 and one of which reminds us, by its lineary symbols, of the kouas 
 of the Chinese. Together with the rude monuments of the abo- 
 rigines of America, this volume contains picturesque views of 
 the mountainous countries which those people inhabited; for 
 example, the cataract of Tequendama, Chimborazo, the volcano 
 of Jorullo, and Cayambe, the pyramidal summit of which, covered 
 with eternal ice, is situated directly under the equinoctial line. 
 In every zone the configuration of the ground, the physiognomy 
 * Atlas Pittoresque, ou Vues des Cordillères, 1 vol. folio, with 69 
 plates, part of which are coloured, accompanied by explanatory treatises. 
 This work may be considered as the Atlas to the historical narrative of 
 the travels. 
 
XV111 
 
 INTEODUCTIOir. 
 
 of the plants, and the aspect of lovely or wild scenery, have great 
 influence on the progress of the arts, and on the style which 
 distinguishes their productions. This influence is so much the 
 more perceptible in proportion as man is farther removed from 
 civilization. 
 
 I could have added to this work researches on the character of 
 languages, which are the most durable monuments of nations. 
 I have collected a number of materials on the languages of Ame- 
 rica, of which MM. Frederic Schlegel and Yater have made use ; 
 the former in his Considerations on the Hindoos, the latter in his 
 Continuation of the Mithridates of Adelung, in the Ethnographical 
 Magazine, and in his Inquiries into the Population of the Hew 
 Continent. These materials are now in the hands of my brother, 
 William von Humboldt, who, during his travels in Spain, and a 
 long abode at Rome, formed the richest collection of American 
 vocabularies in existence. His extensive knowledge of the ancient 
 and modern languages has enabled him to trace some curious 
 analogies in relation to this subject, so important to the philo- 
 sophical study of the history of man. A part of his labours will 
 find a place in this narrative. 
 
 Of the different works which I have here enumerated, the 
 second and third were composed by M. Bonpland, from the 
 observations which he made in a botanical journal. This journal 
 contains more than four thousand methodical descriptions of 
 equinoctial plants, a ninth part only of which have been made 
 by me. They appear in a separate publication, under the title 
 of Nova Genera et Species Plantai'um. In this work will be 
 found, not only the new species we collected, which, after a care- 
 ful examination by one of the first botanists of the age, Prof. 
 Willdenow, are computed to amount to fourteen or fifteen hun- 
 dred, but also the interesting observations made by M. Bonpland 
 on plants hitherto imperfectly described. The plates of this 
 work are all engraved according to the method followed by 
 M. Labillardière, in the Specimen Plantarum Novce Hollandice , a 
 work remarkable for profound research and clearness of arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 After having distributed into separate works all that belongs 
 to astronomy, botany, zoology, the political description of Hew 
 Spain, and the history of the ancient civilization of certain 
 nations of the Hew Continent, there still remained many general 
 results and local descriptions, which I might have collected into 
 separate treatises. I had, during my journey, prepared papers 
 on the races of men in South America ; on the Missions of the 
 Orinoco ; on the obstacles to the progress of society in the torrid 
 zone arising from the climate and the strength of vegetation ; 
 on the character of the landscape in the Cordilleras of the Andes 
 compared with that of the Alps in Switzerland ; on the analogies 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XIX 
 
 between the rocks of the two hemispheres ; on the physical 
 constitution of the air in the equinoctial regions, &c. I had left 
 Europe with the firm intention of not writing what is usually 
 called the historical narrative of a journey, but to publish the 
 fruit of my inquiries in works merely descriptive ; and I had 
 arranged the facts, not in the order in which they successively 
 presented themselves, but according to the relation they bore to 
 each other. Amidst the overwhelming majesty of Nature, and 
 the stupendous objects she presents at every step, the traveller 
 is little disposed to record in his journal matters which relate 
 only to himself, and the ordinary details of life. 
 
 I composed a very brief itinerary during the course of my 
 excursions on the rivers of South America, and in my long 
 journies by land. I regularly described (and almost always on 
 the spot) the visits I made to the summits of volcanos, or 
 mountains remarkable for their height ; but the entries in my 
 journal were interrupted whenever I resided in a town, or when 
 other occupations prevented me from continuing a work which 
 I considered as having only a secondary interest. Whenever I 
 wrote in my journal, I had no other motive than the preserva- 
 tion of some of those fugitive ideas which present themselves to 
 a naturalist, whose life is almost wholly passed in the open air. 
 I wished to make a temporary collection of such facts as I had 
 not then leisure to class, and note down the first impressions, 
 whether agreeable or painful, which I received from nature or 
 from man. Far from thinking at the time that those pages thus 
 hurriedly written would form the basis of an extensive work to 
 be offered to the public, it appeared to me, that my journal, 
 though it might furnish certain data useful to science, would 
 present very few of those incidents, the recital of which con- 
 stitutes the principal charm of an itinerary. 
 
 The difficulties I have experienced since my return, in the 
 composition of a considerable number of treatises, for the purpose 
 -of making known certain classes of phenomena, insensibly over- 
 came my repugnance to write the narrative of my journey. In 
 undertaking this task, I have been guided by the advice of many 
 estimable persons, who honour me with their friendship. I also 
 perceived that such a preference is given to this sort of compo- 
 sition, that scientific men, after having presented in an isolated 
 form the account of their researches on the productions, the 
 manners, and the political state of the countries through which 
 they have passed, imagine that they have not fulfilled their en- 
 gagements with the public, till they have written their itinerary. 
 
 An historical narrative embraces two very distinct objects ; 
 the greater or the less important events connected with the 
 purpose of the traveller, and the observations he nas made during 
 his journey. The unity of composition also, which distinguishes 
 
XX 
 
 rNTEODTJ CTION. 
 
 good works from those on an ill-constructed plan, can he strictly 
 observed only when the traveller describes what has passed 
 under his own eye ; and when his principal attention has been 
 fixed less on scientific observations than on the manners of 
 different people and the great phenomena of nature. Now, the 
 most faithful picture of manners is that which best displays the 
 relations of men towards each other. The character of savage 
 or civilized life is portrayed either in the obstacles a traveller 
 meets with, or in the sensations he feels. It is the traveller 
 himself whom we continually desire to see in contact with the 
 objects which surround him ; and his narration interests us the 
 more, when a local tint is diffused over the description of a 
 country and its inhabitants. Such is the source of the interest 
 excited by the history of those early navigators, who, impelled 
 by intrepidity rather than by science, struggled against the ele- 
 ments in their search for the discovery of a new world. Such is 
 the irresistible charm attached to the fate of that enterprising 
 traveller,* who, full of enthusiasm and energy, penetrated alone 
 into the centre of Africa, to discover amidst barbarous nations 
 the traces of ancient civilization. 
 
 In proportion as travels have been undertaken by persons 
 whose views have been directed to researches into descriptive 
 natural history, geography, or political economy, itineraries have 
 partly lost that unity of composition, and that simplicity which 
 characterized those of former ages. It is now become scarcely 
 possible to connect so many different materials with the detail 
 of other events ; and that part of a traveller’s narrative 
 which we may call dramatic gives way to dissertations merely 
 descriptive. The numerous class of readers who prefer agreeable 
 amusement to solid instruction, have not gained by the exchange ; 
 and I am afraid that the temptation will not be great to follow 
 the course of travellers who are incumbered with scientific in- 
 struments and collections. 
 
 To give greater variety to my work, I have often interrupted 
 the historical narrative by descriptions. I first represent phe- 
 nomena in the order in which they appeared ; and I afterwards 
 consider them in the whole of their individual relations. This 
 mode has been successfully followed in the journey of M. de 
 Saussure, whose most valuable work has contributed more than 
 any other to the advancement of science. Often, amidst dry 
 discussions on meteorology, it contains many charming descrip- 
 tions ; such as those of the modes of life of the inhabitants of 
 the mountains, the dangers of hunting the chamois, and the 
 sensations felt on the summit of the higher Alps. 
 
 There are details of ordinary life which it may be useful to 
 
 * Mungo Park. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XXI 
 
 note in an itinerary, because they serve for the guidance of 
 those who afterwards journey through the same countries. I 
 have preserved a few, but have suppressed the greater part of 
 those personal incidents which present no particular interest, 
 and which can be rendered amusing only by the perfection of 
 style. 
 
 With respect to the country which has been the object of my 
 investigations, I am fully sensible of the great advantages en- 
 joyed by persons who travel in Greece, Egypt, the banks of the 
 Euphrates, and the islands of the Pacific, in comparison with 
 those who traverse the continent of America. In the Old World, 
 nations and the distinctions of their civilization form the prin- 
 cipal points in the picture ; in the New World, man and his 
 productions almost disappear amidst the stupendous display of 
 wild and gigantic nature. The human race in the New World 
 presents only a few remnants of indigenous hordes, slightly ad- 
 vanced in civilization ; or it exhibits merely the uniformity of 
 manners and institutions transplanted by European colonists to 
 foreign shores. Information which relates to the history of our 
 species, to the various forms of government, to monuments of 
 art, to places full of great remembrances, affect us far more than 
 descriptions of those vast solitudes which seem destined only for 
 the development of vegetable life, and to be the domain of wild 
 animals. The savages of America, who have been the objects of 
 so many systematic reveries, and on whom M. Volney has lately 
 published some accurate and intelligent observations, inspire less 
 interest since celebrated navigators have made known to us the 
 inhabitants of the South Sea islands, in whose character we find 
 a striking mixture of perversity and meekness. The state of 
 half-civilization existing among those islanders gives a peculiar 
 charm to the description of their manners. A king, followed 
 by a numerous suite, presents the fruits of his orchard ; or a 
 funeral is performed amidst the shade of the lofty forest. Such 
 pictures, no doubt, have more attraction than those which pour- 
 tray the solemn gravity of the inhabitant of the banks of the 
 Missouri or the Maranon. 
 
 America offers an ample field for the labours of the naturalist. 
 On no other part of the globe is he called upon more powerfully 
 by nature to raise himself to general ideas on the cause of 
 phenomena and their mutual connection. To say nothing of 
 that luxuriance of vegetation, that eternal spring of organic life, 
 those climates varying by stages as we climb the flanks of the 
 Cordilleras, and those majestic rivers which a celebrated writer* 
 has described with such graceful accuracy, the resources which 
 the New World affords for the study of geology and natural 
 
 * M. Chateaubriand. 
 
XXII 
 
 rNTKODTTCTIOir. 
 
 philosophy in general have been long since acknowledged. 
 Happy the traveller who may cherish the hope that he has 
 availed himself of the advantages of his position, and that he has 
 added some new facts to the mass of those previously acquired ! 
 
 Since I left America, one of those great revolutions, which at 
 certain periods agitate the human race, has broken out in the 
 Spanish colouies, and seems to prepare new destinies for a popu- 
 lation of fourteen millions of inhabitants, spreading from the 
 southern to the northern hemisphere, from the shores of the Rio 
 de la Plata and Chile to the remotest part of Mexico. Deep 
 resentments, excited by colonial legislation, and fostered by mis- 
 trustful policy, have stained with blood regions which had en- 
 joyed, for the space of nearly three centuries, what I will not 
 call happiness but uninterrupted peace. At Quito several of the 
 most virtuous and enlightened citizens have perished, victims of 
 devotion to their country. While I am giving the description of 
 regions, the remembrance of which is so dear to me, I continually 
 light on places which recall to my mind the loss of a friend. 
 
 When we reflect on the great political agitations of the New 
 World, we observe that the Spanish Americans are by no means 
 in so favourable a position as the inhabitants of the United 
 States ; the latter having been prepared for independence by the 
 long enjoyment of constitutional liberty. Internal dissensions 
 are chiefly to be dreaded in regions where civilization is but 
 slightly rooted, and where, from the influence of climate, forests 
 may soon regain their empire over cleared lands if their culture 
 be abandoned. It may also be feared that, during a long series 
 ■of years, no foreign traveller will be enabled to traverse all the 
 countries which I have visited. This circumstance may perhaps 
 add to the interest of a work which pourtrays the state of the 
 greater part of the Spanish colonies at the beginning of the 19th 
 century. I even venture to indulge the hope that this work will 
 be thought worthy of attention when passions shall be hushed 
 into peace, and when, under the influence of a new social order, 
 those countries shall have made rapid progress in public welfare. 
 If then some pages of my book are snatched from oblivion, the 
 inhabitant of the banks of the Orinoco and the Atabapo will 
 behold with delight populous cities enriched by commerce, and 
 fertile fields cultivated by the hands of free men, on those very 
 epots where, at the time of my travels, I found only impenetrable 
 forests and inundated lands. 
 
PERSONAL NARRATIVE 
 
 OF A 
 
 J O TJEJSTE Y 
 
 TO THE 
 
 EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE NEW CONTINENT. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 Preparations. — Instruments. — Departure from Spain. — Landing at the 
 Canary Islands. 
 
 From my earliest youth I felt an ardent desire to travel 
 into distant regions, seldom visited by Europeans. This 
 | desire is characteristic of a period of our existence when 
 life appears an unlimited horizon, and when we find an 
 . irresistible attraction in the impetuous agitations of the 
 •i mind, and the image of positive danger. Though educated 
 | in a country which has no direct communication with either 
 ! the East or the West Indies, living amidst mountains remote 
 j from coasts, and celebrated for their numerous mines, I felt 
 t an increasing passion for the sea and distant expeditions. 
 
 Objects with which we are acquainted only by the animated 
 I narratives of travellers have a peculiar charm ; imagination 
 I wanders with delight over that which is vague and unde- 
 i fined ; and the pleasures we are deprived of seem to possess 
 | a fascinating power, compared with which all we daily feel 
 
2 
 
 humboldt’s eably teavels. 
 
 in the narrow circle of sedentary life appears insipid. The 
 taste for herborisation, the study of geology, rapid ex- 
 cursions to Holland, England, and France, with the cele- 
 brated Mr. George Eorster, who had the happiness to accom- 
 pany captain Cook in his second expedition round the globe, 
 contributed to give a determined direction to the plan of 
 travels which I had formed at eighteen years of age. No 
 longer deluded by the agitation of a wandering life, I was 
 anxious to contemplate nature in all her variety of wild and 
 stupendous scenery ; and the hope of collecting some facts 
 useful to the advancement of science, incessantly impelled 
 my wishes towards the luxuriant regions of the torrid zone. 
 As personal circumstances then prevented me from executing 
 the projects by which I was so powerfully influenced, I had 
 leisure to prepare myself during six years for the observa- 
 tions I proposed to make on the New Continent, as well as 
 to visit different parts of Europe, and to explore the lofty 
 chain of the Alps, the structure of which I might after- 
 wards compare with that of the Andes of Quito and of 
 Peru. 
 
 I had traversed a part of Italy in 1795, but had not been 
 able to visit the volcanic regions of Naples and Sicily; and I 
 regretted leaving Europe without having seen Vesuvius, 
 Stromboli, and Etna. I felt, that in order to form a proper 
 judgment of many geological phenomena, especially of the 
 nature of the rocks of trap-formation, it was necessary to j 
 examine the phenomena presented by burning volcanoes. I 
 determined therefore to return to Italy in the month of I 
 November, 1797. I made a long stay at Vienna, where the j 
 fine collections of exotic plants, and the friendship of Messrs. I 
 de Jacquin, and Joseph van der Schott, were highly useful j 
 to my preparatory studies. I travelled with M. Leopold 
 von Buch, through several cantons of Salzburg and Styria, 
 countries alike interesting to the landscape-painter and the 
 geologist ; but just when I was about to cross the Tyrolese 
 Alps, the war then raging in Italy obliged me to abandon 
 the project of going to Naples. 
 
 A short time before, a gentleman passionately fond of the 
 fine arts, and who had visited the coasts of Greece and 
 Illyria to inspect their monuments, made me a proposal to 
 accompany him in an expedition to Upper Egypt. This 
 
CAPTAIN - BAUDIN’ S EXPEDITION. 
 
 3 
 
 
 expedition was to occupy only eight months. Provided with 
 astronomical instruments and able draughtsmen, we were to 
 ascend the Nile as far as Assouan, after minutely examining 
 the positions of the Saïd, between Tentyris and the cataracts. 
 Though my views had not hitherto been fixed on any region 
 but the tropics, I could not resist the temptation of visit- 
 ing countries so celebrated in the annals of human civi- 
 lization. I therefore accepted this proposition, but with 
 the express condition, that on our return to Alexandria I 
 should be at liberty to continue my journey through Syria 
 and Palestine. The studies which I entered upon with a 
 view to this new project, I afterwards found useful, when 
 I examined the relations between the barbarous monuments 
 of Mexico, and those belonging to the nations of the old 
 world. I thought myself on the point of embarking for Egypt, 
 when political events forced me to abandon a plan which 
 promised me so much satisfaction. 
 
 An expedition of discovery in the South Sea, under the 
 direction of captain Baudin, was then preparing in Prance. 
 The plan was great, bold, and worthy of being executed 
 by a more enlightened commander. The purpose of this 
 expedition was to visit the Spanish possessions of South 
 America, from the mouth of the river Plata to the kingdom 
 of Quito and the isthmus of Panama. After visiting the 
 archipelago of the Pacific, and exploring the coasts of New 
 Holland, from Yan Diemen’s Land to that of Nuyts, both 
 vessels were to stop at Madagascar, and return by the Cape 
 of Grood Hope. I was in Paris when the preparations for 
 this voyage were begun. I had but little confidence in the 
 personal character of captain Baudin, who had given cause 
 of discontent to the court of Vienna, when he was commis- 
 sioned to conduct to Brazil one of my friends, the young 
 ! botanist, Yan der Schott ; but as I could not hope, with 
 my own resources, to make a voyage of such extent, and 
 view so fine a portion of the globe, I determined to take 
 the chances of this expedition. I obtained permission to 
 ! embark, with the instruments I had collected, in one of the 
 | vessels destined for the South Sea, and I reserved to myself 
 ! the liberty of leaving captain Baudin whenever I thought 
 I proper. M. Michaux, who had already visited Persia and 
 a part of North America, and M. Bonpland, with whom I 
 
 b 2 
 
 ! 
 
4 
 
 AFRICAN TRAVELS. 
 
 then formed the friendship that still unites us, were ap- 
 pointed to accompany this expedition as naturalists. 
 
 I had flattered myself during several months with the 
 idea of sharing the labours directed to so great and honour- 
 able an object when the war which broke out in Germany and 
 Italy, determined the Trench government to withdraw the 
 funds granted for their voyage of discovery, and adjourn it 
 to an indefinite period. Deeply mortified at finding the 
 plans I had formed during many years of my life overthrown 
 in a single day, I sought at any risk the speediest means of 
 quitting Europe, and engaging in some enterprise which 
 might console me for my disappointment. 
 
 I became acquainted with a Swedish consul, named Skiolde- 
 brand, who having been appointed by his court to carry 
 presents to the dey of Algiers, was passing through Paris, 
 to embark at Marseilles. This estimable man had resided 
 a long time on the coast of Africa ; and being highly respected 
 by the government of Algiers, he could easily procure me 
 permission to visit that part of the chain of the Atlas which 
 had not been the object of the important researches of M. 
 Desfontaines. He despatched every year a vessel for Tunis, 
 where the pilgrims embarked for Mecca, and he promised to 
 convey me by the same medium to Egypt. I eagerly seized 
 so favourable an opportunity, and thought myself on the 
 point of executing a plan which I had formed previously to 
 my arrival in Erance. Ho mineralogist had yet examined 
 that lofty chain of mountains which, in the empire of 
 Morocco, rises to the limits of the perpetual snow. I flat- 
 tered myself, that, after executing some operations in the 
 alpine regions of Barbary, I should receive in Egypt from 
 those illustrious men who had for some months formed the 
 Institute of Cairo, the same kind attentions with which I 
 had been honoured during my abode in Paris. I hastily 
 completed my collection of instruments, and purchased works 
 relating to the countries I was going to visit. I parted from 
 a brother who, by his advice and example, had hitherto 
 exercised a great influence on the direction of my thoughts. 
 He approved the motives which determined me to quit Eu- 
 rope ; a secret voice assured us that we should meet again ; 
 and that hope, which did not prove delusive, assuaged the 
 pain of a long separation. I left Paris with the intention 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 5 
 
 of embarking for Algiers and Egypt ; but by one of those 
 vicissitudes which sway the affairs of this life, I returned to 
 my brother from the river Amazon and Peru, without having 
 touched the continent of Africa. 
 
 The Swedish frigate which was to convey M. Skiolde- 
 brand to Algiers, was expected at Marseilles toward the end 
 of October. M. Bonpland and myself repaired thither with 
 great celerity, for during our journey we were tormented 
 ■with the fear of being too late, and missing our passage. 
 
 M. Skioldebrand was no less impatient than ourselves 
 to reach his place of destination. Several times a day we 
 climbed the mountain of Notre Dame de la Garde, which 
 commands an extensive view of the Mediterranean. Every 
 sail we descried in the horizon excited in us the most eager 
 emotion ; but after two months of anxiety and vain expec- 
 tation, we learned by the public papers, that the Swedish 
 frigate which was to convey us, had suffered greatly in a 
 storm on the coast of Portugal, and had been forced to 
 enter the port of Cadiz, to relit. This news was confirmed 
 by private letters, assuring us that the Jaramas, which was 
 the name of the frigate, would not reach Marseilles before 
 the spring. 
 
 We felt no inclination to prolong our stay in Provence till 
 that period. The country, and especially the climate, were 
 delightful, but the aspect of the sea reminded us of the 
 failure of our projects. In an excursion we made to Hyères 
 and Toulon, we found in the latter port the frigate la Bou- 
 deuse, which had been commanded by M. de Bougainville, in 
 his voyage round the world. She was then fitting out for 
 Corsica. M. de Bougainville had honoured me with parti- 
 cular kindness during my stay in Paris, when I was pre- 
 paring to accompany the expedition of captain Baudin. I 
 cannot describe the impression made upon my mind by the 
 sight of the vessel which had carried Commerson to the 
 islands of the South Sea. In some conditions of the mind, 
 a painful emotion blends itself with all our feelings. 
 
 We still persisted in the intention of visiting the African 
 coast, and were nearly becoming the victims of our perse- 
 verance. A small vessel of Bagusa, on the point of setting 
 sail for Tunis, was at that time in the port of Marseilles ; 
 we thought the opportunity favourable for reaching Egypt and 
 
6 
 
 YISIT TO MADBID. 
 
 Syria, and we agreed with the captain for our passage. 
 The vessel was to sail the following day; but a circum- 
 stance trivial in itself happily prevented our departure. The 
 live-stock intended to serve us for food during our passage, 
 was kept in the great cabin. "We desired that some 
 changes should be made, which were indispensable for the 
 safety of our instruments; and during this interval we 
 learnt at Marseilles, that the government of Tunis perse- 
 cuted the French residing in Barbary, and that every person 
 coming from a French port was thrown into a dungeon. 
 Having escaped this imminent danger, we were compelled 
 to suspend the execution of our projects. We resolved to 
 pass the . winter in Spain, in hopes of embarking the next 
 sprmg, either at Carthagena, or at Cadiz, if the political 
 situation of the East permitted. 
 
 We crossed Catalonia and the kingdom of Valencia, on 
 our way to Madrid. We visited the ruins of Tarragona 
 and those of ancient Saguntum; and from Barcelona we 
 made an excursion to Montserrat, the lofty peaks of which 
 are inhabited by hermits, and where the contrast between 
 luxuriant vegetation and masses of naked and arid rocks, 
 forms a landscape of a peculiar character. I employed myself 
 in ascertaining by astronomical observations the position 
 of several points important for the geography of Spain, and 
 determined by means of the barometer the height of the 
 central plain. I likewise made several observations on the 
 inclination of the needle, and on the intensity of the magnetic 
 forces. 
 
 On my arrival at Madrid I had reason to congratulate my- 
 self on the resolution I had formed of visiting the Peninsula. 
 Baron de Forell, minister from the court of Saxony, treated 
 me with a degree of kindness, of which I soon felt the value. 
 
 He was well versed in mineralogy, and was full of zeal for 
 every undertaking that promoted the progress of know- 
 ledge. He observed to me, that under the administration 
 of an enlightened minister, Don Mariano Luis de Urquijo, 
 
 I might hope to obtain permission to visit, at my own "!| 
 expense, the interior of Spanish America. After the dis- 
 appointments I had suffered, I did not hesitate a moment to 
 adopt this idea. 
 
 I was presented at the court of Aranjuez in March 1799, 
 
NEW PROJECTS. 
 
 7 
 
 and the king received me graciously. I explained to him the 
 motives which led me to undertake a voyage to the new 
 world and the Philippine Islands, and I presented a memoir 
 on the subject to the secretary of state. Senor de Ur- 
 quijo supported my demand, and overcame every obstacle. 
 I obtained two passports, one from the first secretary of 
 state, the other from the council of the Indies. Never had 
 so extensive a permission been granted to any traveller, and 
 never had any foreigner been honoured with more confi- 
 dence on the part of the Spanish government. 
 
 Many considerations might have induced us to prolong 
 our abode in Spain. The abbé Cavanilles, no less remark- 
 able for the variety of his attainments than his acute intel- 
 ligence; M. Nee, who, together with M. Hænke, had, as 
 botanist, made part of the expedition of Malaspina, and 
 who had formed one of the greatest herbals ever seen 
 in Europe; Eon Casimir Ortega, the abbé Pourret, and 
 the learned authors of the Elora of Peru, Messrs’ Ruiz and 
 Pavon, all opened to us without reserve their rich collec- 
 tions. We examined part of the plants of Mexico, dis- 
 covered by Messrs. Sesse, Mocino, and Cervantes, whose 
 drawings had been sent to the Museum of Natural History 
 of Madrid. This great establishment, the direction of which 
 was confided to Senor Clavijo, author of an elegant translation 
 of the works of Buffon, offered us, it is true, no geological 
 representation of the Cordilleras, but M. Proust, so well known 
 by the great accuracy of his chemical labours, and a distin- 
 guished mineralogist, M. Hergen, gave us curious details 
 on several mineral substances of America. It would have 
 been useful to us to have employed a longer time in study- 
 ing the productions of the countries which were to be the 
 objects of our research, but our impatience to take advan- 
 tage of the permission given us by the court was too great 
 to suffer us to delay our departure. For a year past, I had 
 experienced so many disappointments, that I could scarcely 
 persuade myself that my most ardent wishes would be at 
 length fulfilled. 
 
 We left Madrid about the middle of May, crossed a part 
 of Old Castile, the kingdoms of Leon and Galicia, and 
 reached Corunna, whence we were to embark for Cuba. 
 The winter having been protracted and severe, we enjoyed 
 
8 
 
 JOURNEY THROUGH SPAIN. 
 
 during the journey that mild temperature of the spring, 
 which in so soùthern a latitude usually occurs during March 
 and April. The snow still covered the lofty granitic tops 
 of the Guadarama ; but in the deep Tallies of Galicia, which 
 resemble the most picturesque spots of Switzerland and the 
 Tyrol, cistuses loaded with flowers ; and arborescent heaths 
 clothed every rock. We quitted without regret the elevated 
 plain of the two Castiles, which is everywhere devoid of 
 vegetation, and where the severity of the winter’s cold is 
 followed by the overwhelming heat of summer. Prom the 
 few observations I personally made, the interior of Spain 
 forms a vast plain, elevated three hundred toises (five 
 hundred and eighty-four metres) above the level of the 
 ocean, is covered with secondary formations, grit-stone, gyp- 
 sum, sal-gem, and the calcareous stone of Jura. The climate 
 of the Castiles is much colder than that of Toulon and 
 Genoa; its mean temperature scarcely rises to 15° of the 
 centigrade thermometer. 
 
 We are astonished to find that, in the latitude of Calabria, 
 Thessaly, and Asia Minor, orange-trees do not flourish in 
 the open air. The central elevated plain is encircled by a 
 low and narrow zone, where the chamærops, the date-tree, 
 the sugar-cane, the banana, and a number of plants common 
 to Spain and the north of Africa, vegetate on several spots, 
 without suffering from the rigours of winter. Prom the 
 36th to 40th degrees of latitude, the medium temperature 
 of this zone is from 17 to 20 degrees ; and by a concurrence 
 of circumstances, which it would be too long to explain, this 
 favoured region has become the principal seat of industry 
 and intellectual improvement. 
 
 When, in the kingdom of Valencia, we ascend from the 
 shore of the Mediterranean towards the lofty plains of La 
 Mancha and the Castiles, we seem to discern, far inland, from 
 the lengthened declivities, the ancient coast of the Peninsula. 
 This curious phenomenon recalls the traditions of the Samo- 
 thracians, and other historical testimonies, according to which 
 it is supposed that the irruption of the waters through the 
 Dardanelles, augmenting the basin of the Mediterranean, rent 
 and overflowed the southern part of Europe. If we admit 
 that these traditions owe their origin, not to mere geological 
 reveries, but to the remembrance of some ancient catastrophe. 
 
ANCIENT COAST-CHANGES. 
 
 9 
 
 we may conceive the central elevated plain of Spain resisting 
 the efforts of these great inundations, till the draining of the 
 waters, by the straits formed between the pillars of Hercules, 
 brought the Mediterranean progressively to its present level, 
 lower Egypt emerging above its surface on the one side, and 
 the fertile plains of Tarragona, Valencia, and Murcia, on the 
 other. Everything that relates to the formation of that sea, # 
 which has had so powerful an influence on the first civilization 
 of mankind, is highly interesting. We might suppose, that 
 Spain, forming a promontory amidst the waves, was indebted 
 for its preservation to the height of its land ; but in order 
 to give weight to these theoretic ideas, we must clear up 
 the doubts that have arisen respecting the rupture of so many 
 transverse dikes ; — we must discuss the probability of the 
 Mediterranean having been formerly divided into several 
 separate basins, of which Sicily and the island of Candia ap- 
 pear to mark the ancient limits. We will not here risk the 
 solution of these problems, but will satisfy ourselves in fixing 
 attention on the striking contrast in the configuration of the 
 land in the eastern and western extremities of Europe. 
 Between the Baltic and the Black Sea, the ground is at 
 present scarcely fifty toises above the level of the ocean, while 
 the plain of La Mancha, if placed between the sources of the 
 Hiemen and the Borysthenes, would figure as a group of 
 mountains of considerable height. If the causes, which may 
 have changed the surface of our planet, be an interesting 
 speculation, investigations of the phenomena, such as they 
 offer themselves to the measures and observations of the 
 naturalist, lead to far greater certainty'. 
 
 Erom Astorga to Corunna, especially from Lugo, the 
 
 * Some of the ancient geographers believed that the Mediterranean, 
 swelled by the waters of the Euxine, the Palus Mæotis, the Caspian Sea, 
 and the Sea of Aral, had broken the pillars of Hercules; others ad- 
 mitted that the irruption was made by the waters of the ocean. In 
 the first of these hypotheses, the height of the land between the Black 
 Sea and the Baltic, and between the ports of Cette and Bordeaux, deter- 
 mine the limit which the accumulation of the waters may have reached 
 before the junction of the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic, 
 as well to the north of the Dardanelles, as to the east of this strip of 
 land which formerly joined Europe to Mauritania, and of which, in the 
 time of Strabo, certain vestiges remained in the Islands of Juno and the 
 Moon. 
 
10 
 
 TOWEB OF HEBCFLES. 
 
 mountains rise gradually. The secondary formations gently 
 disappear, and are succeeded by the transition rocks, which 
 indicate the proximity of primitive strata. We found con- 
 siderable mountains composed of that ancient gray stone 
 which the mineralogists of the school of Frey berg name 
 grauwakke , and grauwakkenschiefer. I do not know whether 
 this formation, which is not frequent in the south of Europe, 
 has hitherto been discovered in other parts of Spain. Angular 
 fragments of Lydian stone, scattered along the vallies, seemed 
 to indicate that the transition schist is the basis of the strata 
 of graywacke. Near Corunna even granitic ridges stretch 
 as far as Cape Ortegal. These granites, which seem formerly 
 to have been contiguous to those of Britanny and Cornwall, 
 are perhaps the wrecks of a chain of mountains destroyed and 
 sunk in the waves. Large and beautiful crystals of feldspar 
 characterise this rock. Common tin ore is sometimes disco- 
 vered there, but working the mines is a laborious and unpro- 
 fitable operation for the inhabitants of Galicia. 
 
 The first secretary of state had recommended us very par- 
 ticularly to brigadier Lon Raphael Clavijo, who was em- 
 ployed in forming new dock-yards at Corunna. He advised 
 us to embark on board the sloop Pizarro,* which was to sail 
 in company with the Alcudia, the packet-boat of the month 
 of May, which, on account of the blockade, had been detained 
 three weeks in the port. Senor Clavijo ordered the necessary 
 arrangements to be made on board the sloop for placing our 
 instruments, and the captain of the Pizarro received orders 
 to stop at Tenerifle, as long as we should judge necessary to 
 enable us to visit the port of Orotava, and ascend the peak. 
 
 We had yet ten days to wait before we embarked. Luring 
 this interval, we employed ourselves in preparing the plants 
 we had collected in the beautiful vallies of Gralicia, which no 
 naturalist had yet visited: we examined the fuci and the 
 molluscæ which the north-west winds had cast with great 
 profusion at the foot of the steep rock, on which the light- 
 house of the Tower of Hercules is built. This edifice, called 
 also the Iron Tower, was repaired in 1788. It is ninety-two 
 feet high, its walls are four feet and a half thick, and its con- 
 struction clearly proves that it was built by the Romans. An 
 
 * According to the Spanish nomenclature, the Pizarro was a light 
 frigate (fragata lijera). 
 
FEEEOL AXD COEUÎfîTA. 
 
 11 
 
 inscription discovered near its foundation, a copy of which 
 M. Laborde obligingly gave me, informs us, that this pharos 
 was constructed by Caius Sevius Lupus, architect of the city 
 of Aqua Flavia (Chaves), and that it was dedicated to Mars. 
 Why is the Iron Tower called in the country by the name 
 of Hercules ? Was it built by the Homans on the ruins of 
 a Greek or Phoenician edifice ? Strabo, indeed, affirms that 
 Galicia, the country of the Callæci, had been peopled by 
 Greek colonies. According to an extract from the geography 
 of Spain, by Asclepiades the Myrlæan, an ancient tradition 
 stated that the companions of Hercules had settled in these 
 countries. 
 
 The ports of Ferrol and Corunna both communicate with 
 one bay, so that a vessel driven by bad weather towards the 
 coast may anchor in either, according to the wind. This 
 advantage is invaluable where the sea is almost always tem- 
 pestuous, as between capes Ortegal and Finisterre, which 
 are the promontories Trileucum and Artabrum of ancient 
 geography. A narrow passage, flanked by perpendicular 
 rocks of granite, leads to the extensive basin of Ferrol. Ho 
 port in Europe has so extraordinary an anchorage, from its 
 Tery inland position. The narrow and tortuous passage by 
 which vessels enter this port, has been opened, either by the 
 irruption of the waves, or by the reiterated shocks of very 
 violent earthquakes. In the Hew World, on the coasts of 
 Hew Andalusia, the Laguna del Obispo (Bishop’s lake) is 
 formed exactly like the port of Ferrol. The most curious 
 geological phenomena are often repeated at immense dis- 
 tances on the surface of continents ; and naturalists who have 
 examined different parts of the globe, are struck with the 
 extreme resemblance observed in the rents on coasts, in the 
 sinuosities of the vallies, in the aspect of the mountains, and 
 in their distribution by groups. The accidental concurrence 
 of the same causes must have everywhere produced the same 
 effects ; and amidst the variety of nature, an analogy of 
 structure and form is observed in the arrangement of inani- 
 mate matter, as well as in the internal organization of plants 
 and of animals. 
 
 Crossing from Corunna to Ferrol, over a shallow, near 
 the White Signal, in the bay, which according to D’Anville is 
 the Portus Magnus of the ancients, we made several experi- 
 
12 
 
 THERMOMETRICAL SOUND ENG. 
 
 ments by means of a valved tbermometrical sounding lead, on 
 the temperature of the ocean, and on the decrement of caloric 
 in the successive strata of water. The thermometer on the 
 bank, and near the surface, was from 125° to 133° centigrades, 
 while in deep water it constantly marked 15° or 15*3°, the 
 air being at 12 - 8°. The celebrated Franklin and Mr. 
 Jonathan Williams * were the first to invite the attention 
 of naturalists to the phenomena of the temperature of the 
 Atlantic over shoals, and in that zone of tepid and flowing 
 waters which runs from the gulf of Mexico to the banks of 
 Newfoundland and the northern coasts of Europe. The obser- 
 vation, that the proximity of a sand-bank is indicated by a 
 rapid descent of the temperature of the sea at its surface, is 
 not only interesting to the naturalist, but may become also 
 very important for the safety of navigators. The use of the 
 thermometer ought certainly not to lead us to neglect the 
 use of the lead; but experiments sufficiently prove, that 
 variations of temperature, sensible to the most imperfect 
 instruments, indicate danger long before the vessel reaches 
 the shoals. In such cases, the frigidity of the water may 
 induce the pilot to heave the lead in places where he thought 
 himself in the most perfect safety. The waters which cover 
 the shoals owe in a great measure the diminution of their 
 temperature to their mixture with the lower strata of water, 
 which rise towards the surface on the edge of the banks. 
 
 The moment of leaving Europe for the first time is attended 
 with a solemn feeling. We in vain summon to our minds 
 the frequency of the communication between the two worlds; 
 we in vain reflect on the great facility with which, from the 
 improved state of navigation, we traverse the Atlantic, which 
 compared to the Pacific is but a larger arm of the sea ; 
 the sentiment we feel when we first undertake so distant a 
 voyage is not the less accompanied by a deep emotion, unlike 
 any other impression we have hitherto felt. Separated from 
 the objects of our dearest affections, entering in some sort 
 on a new state of existence, we are forced to fall back on 
 our own thoughts, and we feel within ourselves a dreari- 
 ness we have never known before. Among the letters 
 which, at the time of our embarking, I wrote to Mends in 
 
 * Author of a work entitled “ Tbermometrical Navigation,” published 
 at Philadelphia. 
 
O UE. DEPAETUEE. 
 
 13 
 
 France and Germany, one had a considerable influence on the 
 direction of our travels, and on our succeeding operations. 
 "When I left Paris with the intention of visiting the coast 
 of Africa, the expedition for discoveries in the Pacific seemed 
 to be adjourned for several years. I had agreed with captain 
 Baudin, that if, contrary to his expectation, his voyage took 
 place at an earlier period, and intelligence of it should reach 
 me in time, I would endeavour to return from Algiers to a 
 port in Prance or Spain, to join the expedition. I renewed 
 this promise on leaving Europe, and wrote to M. Baudin, that 
 if the government persisted in sending him by Cape Horn, I 
 would endeavour to meet him either at Monte Video, Chile, 
 or Lima, or wherever he should touch in the Spanish colonies. 
 In consequence of this engagement, I changed the plan of 
 my journey, on reading in the American papers, in 1801, that 
 the French expedition had sailed from Havre, to circumna- 
 vigate the globe from east to west. I hi^ed a small vessel 
 from Batabano, in the island of Cuba, to Portobello, and 
 thence crossed the isthmus to the coast of the Pacific ; this 
 mistake of a journalist led M. Bonpland and myself to travel 
 eight hundred leagues through a country we had no intention 
 to visit. It was only at Quito, that a letter from M. De- 
 lambre, perpetual secretary of the first class of the Institute, 
 informed us, that captain Baudin went by the Cape of Good 
 Hope, without touching on the eastern or western coasts of 
 America. 
 
 We spent two days at Corunna, after our instruments 
 were embarked. A thick fog, which covered the horizon, at 
 length indicated the change of weather we so anxiously de- 
 sired. On the 4th of June, in the evening, the wind turned 
 to north-east, a point which, on the coast of Galicia, is con- 
 sidered very constant during the summer. The Pizarro pre- 
 pared to sail on the 5th, though we had intelligence that only 
 a few hours previously an English squadron had been seen 
 from the watch-tower of Sisarga, appearing to stand towards 
 the mouth of the Tagus. Those who saw our ship weigh 
 anchor asserted that we should be captured in three days, 
 and that, forced to follow the fate of the vessel, we should 
 be carried to Lisbon. This prognostic gave us the more 
 uneasiness, as we had known some Mexicans at Madrid, who, 
 in order to return to Vera Cruz, had embarked three times 
 
14 
 
 CAPE EENTSTEBKE. 
 
 at Cadiz, and having been each time taken at the entrance 
 of the port, were at length obliged to return to Spain through 
 Portugal. 
 
 The Pizarro set sail at two in the afternoon. As the long 
 and narrow passage by which a ship sails from the port of 
 Corunna opens towards the north, and the wind was con- 
 trary, we made eight short tacks, three of which were use- 
 less. A fresh tack was made, but very slowly, and we 
 were for some moments in danger at the foot of fort St. 
 Amarro, the current having driven us very near the rock, 
 on which the sea breaks with considerable violence. We 
 remained with our eyes fixed on the castle of St. Antonio, 
 where the unfortunate Malaspina was then a captive in a 
 state prison. On the point of leaving Europe to visit the 
 countries which this illustrious traveller had visited with so 
 much advantage, I could have wished to have fixed my 
 thoughts on some object less affecting. 
 
 At half-past six we passed the Tower of Hercules, which 
 is the lighthouse of Corunna, as already mentioned, and 
 where, from a very remote time, a coal-fire has been kept up 
 for the direction of vessels. The light of this fire is in no 
 way proportionate to the noble construction ot so vast 
 an edifice, being so feeble that ships cannot perceive it till 
 they are in danger of striking on the shore. Towards the 
 close of day the wind increased and the sea ran high. We 
 directed our course to north-west, in order to avoid the 
 English frigates, which we supposed were cruizing off these 
 coasts. About nine we spied the light of a fishing-hut at 
 Sisarga, which was the last object we beheld in the west of 
 Europe. 
 
 On the 7th we were in the latitude of Cape Einisterre. 
 The group of granitic rocks, which forms part of this pro- 
 montory, like that of Torianes and Monte de Corcubion, 
 bears the name of the Sierra de Torinona. Cape Einisterre 
 is lower than the neighbouring lands, but the Torinona is 
 visible at seventeen leagues’ distance, which proves that the 
 elevation of its highest summit is not less than 300 toises 
 (582 metres). Spanish navigators affirm that on these 
 coasts the magnetic variation differs extremely from that 
 observed at sea. M. Eory, it is true, in the voyage of the 
 sloop Amaranth, found in 1751, that the variation of the 
 
ATLANTIC CURRENTS. 
 
 15 
 
 needle determined at the Cape was four degrees less than 
 could have been conjectured from the observations made at 
 the same period along the coasts. In the same manner as 
 the granite of Galicia contains tin disseminated in its mass, 
 that of Cape Finisterre probably contains micaceous iron. 
 In the mountains of the Tipper Palatinate there are granitic 
 rocks in which crystals of micaceous iron take the place of 
 common mica. 
 
 On the 8th, at sunset, we descried from the mast-head an 
 English convoy sailing along the coast, and steering towards 
 south-east. In order to avoid it we altered our course dur- 
 ing the night. From this moment no light was permitted 
 in the great cabin, to prevent our being seen at a distance. 
 This precaution, which was at the time prescribed in the 
 regulations of the packet-ships of the Spanish navy, was 
 extremely irksome to us during the voyages we made in 
 the course of the five following years. We were constantly 
 obliged to make use of dark-lanterns to examine the tem- 
 perature of the water, or to read the divisions on the limb of 
 the astronomical instruments. In the torrid zone, where 
 twilight lasts but a few minutes, our operations ceased 
 almost at six in the evening. This state of things was so 
 much the more vexatious to me as from the nature of my 
 constitution I never was subject to sea-sickness, and feel an 
 extreme ardour for study during the whole time I am at sea. 
 
 On the 9th of June, in latitude 39° 5 $, and longitude 16° 10' 
 west of the meridian of the observatory of Paris, we began 
 to feel the effects of the great current which from the 
 Azores flows towards the straits of Gibraltar and the Canary 
 Islands. This current is commonly attributed to that ten- 
 dency towards the east, which the straits of Gibraltar give 
 to the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. M. de Fleurieu 'ob- 
 serves that the Mediterranean, losing by evaporation more 
 water than the rivers can supply, causes a movement in the 
 neighbouring ocean, and that the influence of the straits is 
 felt at the distance of six hundred leagues. Without dero- 
 gating from the respect I entertain for the opinion of that 
 celebrated navigator, I may be permitted to consider this 
 important object in a far more general point of view. 
 
 When we cast our eyes over the Atlantic, or that deep 
 valley which divides the western coasts of Europe and A frica 
 from the eastern coasts of the new world, we distinguish 
 
16 
 
 THE GULF- STREAM. 
 
 a contrary direction in the motion of the waters. Within 
 the tropics, especially from the coast of Senegal to the 
 Caribbean Sea, the general current, that which was earliest 
 known to mariners, flows constantly from east to west. 
 This is called the equinoctial current. Its mean rapidity, 
 corresponding to different latitudes, is nearly the same in 
 the Atlantic and in the Pacific, and may be estimated 
 at nine or ten miles in twenty-four hours, consequently 
 from 059 to O’ 65 of a foot every second! In those lati- 
 tudes the waters run towards the west with a velocity 
 equal to a fourth of the rapidity of the greater part of the 
 larger rivers of Europe. The movement of the ocean in a 
 direction contrary to that of the rotation of the globe, is pro- 
 bably connected with this last phenomenon only as far as the 
 rotation converts into trade winds* the polar winds, which, 
 in the low regions of the atmosphere bring back the cold air 
 of the high latitudes toward the equator. To the gene- 
 ral impulsion which these trade-winds give the surface of 
 the sea, we must attribute the equinoctial current, the force 
 and rapidity of which are not sensibly modified by the local 
 variations of the atmosphere. 
 
 In the channel which the Atlantic has dug between Guiana 
 and Guinea, on the meridian of 20 or 23 degrees, and from 
 the 8th or 9th to the 2nd or 3rd degrees of northern lati- 
 tude, where the trade-winds are often interrupted by winds 
 blowing from the south and south-south-west, the equinoc- 
 tial current is more inconstant in its direction. Towards 
 the coasts of Africa, vessels are drawn in the direction of 
 south-east ; whilst towards the Bay of All Saints and Cape 
 St. Augustin, the coasts of which are dreaded by navigators 
 sailing towards the mouth of the Plata, the general motion 
 of the waters is masked by a particular current (the effects 
 of which extend from Cape St. Boche to the Isle of Trinidad) 
 running north-west with a mean velocity of a foot and a 
 half every second. 
 
 The equinoctial current is felt, though feebly, even beyond 
 the tropic of Cancer, in the 26th and 28th degrees of lati- 
 tude. In the vast basin of the Atlantic, at six or seven 
 hundred leagues from the coasts of Africa, vessels from 
 Europe bound to the West Indies, find their sailing accele- 
 
 * The limits of the trade winds were, for the first time, determined by 
 Dampier in 1666. 
 
THE GULF-STREAM. 
 
 17 
 
 rated before they reach the torrid zone. More to the north, 
 in 28 and 35 degrees, between the parallels of Teneriffe and 
 Ceuta, in 46 and 48 degrees of longitude, no constant mo- 
 tion is observed : there, a zone of 140 leagues in breadth 
 separates the equinoctial current (the tendency of which is 
 towards the west) from that great mass . of water which runs 
 eastward, and is distinguished for its extraordinary high 
 temperature. To this mass of waters, known by the name 
 of the Gulf-stream,* the attention of naturalists was di- 
 rected in 1776 by the curious observations of Franklin and 
 Sir Charles Blagden. 
 
 The equinoctial current drives the waters of the Atlantic 
 towards the coasts inhabited by the Mosquito Indians, and 
 towards the shores of Honduras. The Hew Continent, stretch- 
 ing from south to north, forms a sort of dyke to this cur- 
 rent. The waters are carried at first north-west, and pas- 
 sing into the Gulf of Mexico through the strait formed by 
 Cape Catoche and Cape St. Antonio, follow the bendings of 
 the Mexican coast, from Vera Cruz to the mouth of the Bio 
 del Horte, and thence to the mouths of the Mississippi, and 
 the shoals west of the southern extremity of Florida. Hav- 
 ing made this vast circuit west, north, east, and south, the 
 current takes a new direction northward, and throws itself 
 with impetuosity into the Gulf of Florida. At the end of 
 the Gulf of Florida, in the parallel of Cape Cannaveral, 
 the Gulf-stream, or current of Florida, runs north-east. 
 Its rapidity resembles that of a torrent, and is sometimes 
 five miles an hour. The pilot may judge, with some cer- 
 tainty, of the proximity of his approach to Hew York, Phi- 
 | ladelphia, or Charlestown when he reaches the edge of the 
 ! stream ; for the elevated temperature of the waters, their 
 j saltness, indigo-blue colour, and the shoals of seaweed which 
 cover their surface, as well as the heat of the surrounding 
 ) atmosphere, all indicate the Gulf-stream. Its rapidity di- 
 minishes towards the north, at the same time that its breadth 
 increases and the waters become cool. Between Cayo Bis- 
 caino and the bank of Bahama the breadth is only 15 leagues, 
 whilst in the latitude of 28|- degrees, it is 17, and in the 
 parallel of Charlestown, opposite Cape Henlopen, from 40 
 
 * Sir Francis Drake observed this extraordinary movement of the 
 waters, but he was unacquainted with their high temperature. 
 
 YOL. I. 0 
 
 1 
 
18 
 
 THE ATLANTIC CURRENTS. 
 
 to 50 leagues. The rapidity of the current is from three to 
 five miles an hour where the stream is narrowest, and is only 
 one mile as it advances towards the north. The waters of 
 the Mexican Gulf, forcibly drawn to north-east, preserve 
 their warm temperature to such a point, that in 40 and 41 
 degrees of latitude I found them at 22 5° (18° R.) when, 
 out of the current, the heat of the ocean at its surface 
 was scarcely 17 5° (14° R.). In the parallel of New York 
 and Oporto, the temperature of the Gulf-stream is conse- 
 quently equal to that of the seas of the tropics in the 18th 
 degree of latitude, as, for instance, in the parallel of Porto 
 Rico and the islands of Cape Yerd. 
 
 To the east of the port of Boston, and on the meridian 
 of Halifax, in latitude 41° 25 r , and longitude 67°, the cur- 
 rent is near 80 leagues broad. From this pomt it turns 
 suddenly to the east, so that its western edge, as it bends, 
 becomes the western limit of the running waters, skirting 
 the extremity of the great bank of Newfoundland, which 
 M. Volney ingeniously calls the bar of the mouth of this 
 enormous sea-river. The cold waters of this bank, which 
 according to my experiments are at a temperature of 8‘7° or 
 10° (7° or 8° R.) present a striking contrast with the waters 
 of the torrid zone, driven northward by the Gulf-stream, 
 the temperature of which is from 21° to 22‘5° (17° to 18° R.). 
 In these latitudes, the caloric is distributed in a singular 
 manner throughout the ocean ; the waters of the bank are 
 9*4° colder than the neighbouring sea ; and this sea is 8° 
 colder than the current. These zones can hare no equili- 
 brium of temperature, having a source of heat, or a cause 
 of refrigeration, which is peculiar to each, and the influence 
 of which is permament. 
 
 Prom the bank of Newfoundland, or from the 52nd degree 
 of longitude to the Azores, the Gulf-stream continues its 
 course to east and east-south-east. The waters are still 
 acted upon by the impulsion they received near a thousand 
 leagues distance, in the straits of Florida, between the island 
 of Cuba and the shoals of Tortoise Island. This distance 
 is double the length of the course of the river Amazon, from 
 Jaen or the straits of Manseriche to Grand Para. On the 
 meridian of the islands of Corvo and Flores, the most western 
 of the group of the Azores, the breadth of the current is 
 
THE ATLANTIC CTJKBENTS. 
 
 19 
 
 160 leagues. "When vessels, on their return from South 
 America to Europe, endeavour to make these two islands 
 to rectify their longitude, they are always sensible of the 
 motion of the waters to south-east. At the 33rd degree of 
 latitude the equinoctial current of the tropics is in the near 
 vicinity of the Gulf-stream. In this part of the ocean, we 
 may in a single day pass from waters that flow towards the 
 west, into those which run to the south-east or east-south- 
 east. 
 
 From the Azores, the current of Florida turns towards 
 the straits of Gibraltar, the isle of Madeira, and the group 
 of the Canary Islands. The opening of the Pillars of Her- 
 cules has no doubt accelerated the motion of the waters 
 towards the east. We may in this point of view assert, 
 that the strait, by which the Mediterranean communicates 
 with the Atlantic, produces its effects at a great distance ; 
 hut it is probable also, that, without the existence of this 
 strait, vessels sailing to Teneriffe would be driven south- 
 east by a cause which we must seek on the coasts of the 
 Hew World. Every motion is the cause of another motion in 
 the vast basin of the seas as well as in the aerial ocean. Tra- 
 cing the currents to their most distant sources, and reflect- 
 ing on their variable celerity, sometimes decreasing as be- 
 tween the gulf of Florida and the bank of Newfoundland ; 
 at other times augmenting, as in the neighbourhood of the 
 straits of Gibraltar, and near the Canary Islands, we can- 
 not doubt but the same cause which impels the waters to 
 make the circuitous sweep of the gulf of Mexico, agitates 
 them also near the island of Madeira. 
 
 On the south of that island, we may follow the current, 
 in its direction S.E. and S.S.E. towards the coast of Africa, 
 between Cape Cantin and Cape Bojador. In those lati- 
 tudes a vessel becalmed is running on the coast, while, 
 according to the uncorrected reckoning, it was supposed to 
 be a good distance out at sea. Were the motion of the 
 waters caused by the opening at the straits of Gibraltar, 
 why, on the south of those straits, should it not follow an 
 opposite direction ? On the contrary, in the 25th and 26th 
 degrees of latitude, the current flows at first direct south, 
 and then south-west. Cape Blanc, which, after Cape Yerd, 
 is the most salient promontory, seems to have an influence 
 
20 
 
 STRENGTH OF THE CURRENTS. 
 
 oh this direction, and in this parallel the waters, of which 
 we have followed the course from the coasts of Honduras to 
 those of Africa, mingle with the great current of the tropics 
 to resume their tour from east to west. Several hundred 
 leagues westward of the Canary Islands, the motion pecu- 
 liar to the equinoctial waters is felt in the temperate zone 
 from the 28th and 29th degrees of north latitude ; but on 
 the meridian of the island of Ferro, vessels sail southward 
 as far as the tropic of Cancer, before they find themselves, 
 by their reckoning, eastward of their right course.* 
 
 We have just seen that between the parallels of 11 and 
 43 degrees, the waters of the Atlantic are driven by the 
 currents in a continual whirlpool. Supposing that a mole- 
 cule of water returns to the same place from which it de- 
 parted, we can estimate, from our present knowledge of the 
 swiftness of currents, than this circuit of 3800 leagues is 
 not terminated in less than two years and ten months. A 
 boat, which may be supposed to receive no impulsion from 
 the winds, would require thirteen months to go from the 
 Canary Islands to the coast of Caracas, ten months to make 
 the tour of the gulf of Mexico and reach Tortoise Shoals 
 opposite the port of the Havannah, while forty or fifty days 
 might be sufficient to carry it from the straits of Florida to 
 the bank of Newfoundland. It would be difficult to fix the 
 rapidity of the retrograde current from this bank to the 
 shores of Africa ; estimating the mean velocity of the waters 
 at seven or eight miles in twenty-four hours, we may allow 
 ten or eleven months for this last distance. Such are the 
 effects of the slow but regular motion which agitates the 
 waters of the Atlantic. Those of the river Amazon take 
 nearly forty-five days to flow from Tomependa to Grand 
 Para. 
 
 A short time before my arrival at Teneriffe, the sea had 
 left in the road of Santa Cruz the trunk of a cedrela odo- 
 rata covered with the bark. This American tree vegetates 
 within the tropics, or in the neighbouring regions. It 
 had no doubt been torn up on the coast of the continent, or 
 of that of Honduras. The nature of the wood, and the 
 lichens which covered its bark, bore evidence that this 
 trunk had not belonged to these submarine forests which 
 * See Humboldt’s Cosmos , vol. i. ; p. 312. Bohn’s edition. 
 
TIDE-EORKE FRUITS, ETC. 
 
 21 
 
 ancient revolutions of the globe have deposited in the 
 polar regions. If the cedrela, instead of having been cast 
 on the strand of Teneriffe, had been carried farther south, 
 it would probably have made the whole tour of the Atlantic, 
 and returned to its native soil with the general current of 
 the tropics. This conjecture is supported by a fact of 
 more ancient date, recorded in the history of the Canaries 
 by the abbé Viera. In 1770, a small vessel laden with 
 corn, and bound from the island of Lancerota, to Santa 
 Cruz, in Teneriffe, was driven out to sea, while none of the 
 crew were on board. The motion of the waters from east 
 to west, carried it to America, where it went on shore at 
 La Guayra, near Caracas. 
 
 Whilst the art of navigation was yet in its infancy, the 
 Gulf-stream suggested to the mind of Christopher Columbus 
 certain indications of the existence of western regions. Two 
 corpses, the features of which indicated a race of unknown 
 men, were cast ashore on the Azores, towards the end of 
 the 15th century. Nearly at the same period, the brother- 
 in-law of Columbus, Peter Correa, governor of Porto Santo, 
 found on the strand of that island pieces of bamboo of ex- 
 traordinary size, brought thither by the western currents. 
 The dead bodies and the bamboos attracted the attention of 
 the Genoese navigator, who conjectured that both came 
 from a continent' situate towards the west. We now know 
 that in the torrid zone the trade-winds and the current of 
 the tropics are in opposition to every motion of the waves 
 in the direction of the earth’s rotation. The productions of 
 the new world cannot reach the old but by the very high 
 latitudes, and in following the direction of the current of 
 Plorida. The fruits of several trees of the Antilles are often 
 washed ashore on the coasts of the islands of Perro and 
 Gomera. Before the discovery of America, the Canarians 
 considered these fruits as coming from the enchanted isle 
 of St. Borondon, which according to the reveries of pilots, 
 and certain legends, was situated towards the west in an 
 unknown part of the ocean, buried, as was supposed, in 
 eternal mists. 
 
 My chief view in tracing a sketch of the currents of the 
 Atlantic is to prove that the motion of the waters towards 
 the south-east, from Cape St. Vincent to the Canary Islands, 
 
22 
 
 TEDE-BOBIVE SEEDS, ETC. 
 
 is the effect of the general motion to which the surface of 
 the ocean is subjected at its western extremity. We shall 
 give but a very succinct account of the arm of the Gulf- 
 stream, which in the 45th and 50th degrees of latitude, near 
 the bank called the Bonnet Flamand, runs from south-west 
 to north-east towards the coasts of Europe. This partial 
 current becomes very strong at those times when the west 
 winds are of long continuance : and, like that which flows 
 along the isles of Ferro and Gomera, it deposits every year 
 on the western coasts of Ireland and Norway the fruit of 
 trees which belong to the torrid zone of America. On the 
 shores of the Hebrides, we collect seeds of Mimosa scandens, 
 of Dolichos urens, of Guilandina bonduc, and several other 
 plants of Jamaica, the isle of Cuba, and of the neighbour- 
 ing continent. The current carries thither also barrels of 
 French wine, well preserved, the remains of the cargoes of 
 vessels wrecked in the West Indian seas. To these examples 
 of the distant migration of the vegetable world, others no 
 less striking may be added. The wreck of an English vessel, 
 the Tilbury, burnt near J amaica, was found on the coast of 
 Scotland. On these same coasts are sometimes found various 
 kinds of tortoises, that inhabit the waters of the Antilles. 
 When the western winds are of long duration, a current is 
 formed in the high latitudes, which runs directly towards 
 east-south-east, from the coasts of Greenland and Labrador, 
 as far as the north of Scotland. Wallace relates, that twice 
 (in 1682 and 1684), American savages of the race of the 
 Esquimaux, driven out to sea in their leathern canoes, during' 
 a storm, and left to the guidance of the currents, reached 
 the Orkneys. This last example is the more worthy of 
 attention, as it proves at the same time how, at a period 
 when the art of navigation was yet in its infancy, the motion 
 of the waters of the ocean may have contributed to disse- 
 minate the different races of men over the face of the globe. 
 
 In reflecting on the causes of the Atlantic currents, we 
 find that they are much more numerous than is generally 
 believed ; for the waters of the sea may be put in motion by 
 an external impulse, by difference of heat and saltness, by 
 the periodical melting of the polar ice, or by the inequality 
 of evaporation, in different latitudes. Sometimes several of 
 these causes concur to one and the same effect, and some- 
 
CAUSES OE CUBBEîïTS. 
 
 23 
 
 times they produce several contrary effects. Winds that 
 are light, but which, like the trade-winds, are continually 
 acting on the whole of a zone, cause a real movement of 
 transition, which we do not observe in the heaviest tempests, 
 "because these last are circumscribed within a small space. 
 When, in a great mass of water, the particles at the surface 
 acquire a different specific gravity, a superficial current is 
 formed, which takes its direction towards the point where 
 the water is coldest, or where it is most saturated with 
 muriate of soda, sulphate of lime, and muriate or sulphate 
 of magnesia. In the seas of the tropics we find, that at 
 great depths the thermometer marks 7 or 8 centesimal 
 degrees. Such is the result of the numerous experiments 
 of commodore Ellis and of M. Peron. The temperature of 
 the air in those latitudes being never below 19 or 20 degrees, 
 it is not at the surface that the waters can have acquired a 
 degree of cold so near the point of congelation, and of the 
 maximum of the density of water. The existence of this 
 cold stratum in the low latitudes is an evident proof of the 
 existence of an under-current, which runs from the poles 
 towards the equator: it also proves that the saline sub- 
 stances which alter the specific gravity of the water, are 
 distributed in the ocean, so as not to annihilate the effect 
 produced by the differences of temperature. 
 
 Considering the velocity of the molecules, which, on 
 account of the rotatory motion of the globe, vary with the 
 parallels, we may be tempted to admit that every current, in 
 the direction from south to north, tends at the same time 
 eastward, while the waters which run from the pole towards 
 the equator, have a tendency to deviate westward. We may 
 also be led to think that these tendencies diminish to a 
 certain point the speed of the tropical current, in the same 
 manner as they change the direction of the polar current, 
 which in July and August, is regularly perceived during the 
 melting of the ice, on the parallel of the bank of New- 
 foundland, and farther north. Very old nautical observa- 
 tions, which I have had occasion to confirm by comparing 
 the longitude given by the chronometer with that which the 
 pilots obtained by their reckoning, are, however, contrary 
 to these theoretical ideas. In both hemispheres, the polar 
 currents, when they are perceived, decline a little to the 
 
24 
 
 CAUSES OE THE. CURRENTS. 
 
 east ; and it would seem that the cause of this phenomenon 
 should be sought in the constancy of the westerly winds 
 which prevail in the high latitudes. Besides, the particles 
 of water do not move with the same rapidity as the particles 
 of air ; and the currents of the ocean, which we consider as 
 most rapid, have only a swiftness of eight or nine feet a 
 second; it is consequently very probable, that the water, 
 in passing through different parallels, gradually acquires a 
 velocity correspondent to those parallels, and that the 
 rotation of the earth does not change the direction of the 
 currents. 
 
 The variable pressure on the surface of the sea, caused by 
 the changes in the weight of the air, is another cause 
 of motion which deserves particular attention. It is well 
 known, that the barometric variations do not in general 
 take place at the same moment in two distant points, which 
 are on the same level. If in one of these points the barome- 
 ter stands a few lines lower than in the other, the water will 
 rise where it finds the least pressure of air, and this local intu- 
 mescence will continue, till, from the effect of the wind, the 
 equilibrium of the air is restored. M. Vaucher thinks 
 that the tides in the lake of Geneva, known by the name of 
 the seiches , arise from the same cause. We know not whether 
 it be the same, when the movement of progression, which 
 must not be confounded with the oscillation of the waves, 
 is- the effect of an external impulse. M. de Fleurieu, in his 
 narrative of the voyage of the Isis, cites several facts, which 
 render it probable that the sea is not so still at the bottom 
 as naturalists generally suppose. Without entering here 
 into a discussion of this question, we shall only observe that, 
 if the external impulse is constant in its action, like that of 
 the trade-winds, the friction of the particles of water on each 
 other must necessarilly propagate the motion of the surface 
 of the ocean even to the lower strata ; and in fact this pro- 
 pagation in the Gulf-stream has long been admitted by 
 navigators, who think they discover the effects in the great 
 depth of the sea wherever it is traversed by the current of 
 Florida, even amidst the sand-banks which surround the 
 northern coasts of the United States. This immense river 
 of hot waters, after a course of fifty days, from the 24th to 
 the 45th degree of latitude, or 450 leagues, does not lose, 
 
THE IE VARIABLE DIRECTION. 
 
 25 
 
 amidst the rigours of winter in the temperate zone, more 
 than 3 or 4 degrees of the temperature it had under the 
 tropics. The greatness of the mass, and the small conduct- 
 ibihty of water for heat, prevent a more speedy refrigeration. 
 If, therefore, the Gulf-stream has dug a channel at the bottom 
 of the Atlantic ocean, and if its waters are in motion to 
 considerable depths, they must also in their inferior strata 
 keep up a lower temperature than that observed in the same 
 parallel, in a part of the sea which has neither currents nor 
 deep shoals. These questions can be cleared up only by 
 direct experiments, made by thermometrical soundings. 
 
 Sir Erasmus Glower remarks, that, in the passage from 
 England to the Canary islands, the current, which carries 
 vessels towards the south-east, begins at the 39th degree of 
 latitude. During our voyage from Corunna to the coast of 
 South America, the effect of this motion of the waters was 
 perceived farther north. Erom the 37th to the 30th degree, 
 the deviation was very unequal ; the daily average effect 
 was 12 miles, that is, our sloop drove towards the east 75 
 miles in six days. In crossing the parallel of the straits of 
 Gibraltar, at a distance of 140 leagues, we had occasion 
 to observe, that in those latitudes the maximum of the 
 rapidity does not correspond with the mouth of the straits, 
 but with a more northerly point, which lies on the prolonga- 
 tion of a line passing through the strait and Cape St. Tin- 
 cent. This line is parallel to the direction which the waters 
 follow from the Azores to Cape Cantin. We should more- 
 over observe (and this fact is not uninteresting to those 
 who examine the nature of fluids), that in this part of the 
 retrograde current, on a breadth of 120 or 140 leagues, the 
 whole mass of water has not the same rapidity, nor does it 
 follow precisely the same direction. When the sea is per- 
 fectly calm, there appears at the surface narrow stripes, like 
 small rivulets, in which the waters run with a murmur very 
 sensible to the ear of an experienced pilot. On the 13th 
 of June, in 34° 36' north latitude, we found ourselves in 
 the midst of a great number of these beds of currents. W e 
 took their direction with the compass ; and some ran north- 
 east, others east-north-east, though the general movement 
 of the ocean, indicated by comparing the reckoning with the 
 chronometrical longitude, continued to be south-east. It 
 
 
26 
 
 SHOAL OF MEDUSAS. 
 
 I 
 
 is very common to see a mass of motionless waters crossed 
 by threads of water, which run in different directions, and 
 we may daily observe this phenomenon on the surface of 
 lakes; but it is much less frequent to find partial move- 
 ments, impressed by local causes on small portions of waters 
 in the midst of an oceanic river, which occupies an immense 
 space, and which moves, though slowly, in a constant direc- 
 tion. In the conflict of currents, as in the oscillation of 
 the waves, our imagination is struck by those movements 
 which seem to penetrate each other, and by which the ocean 
 is continually agitated. 
 
 We passed Cape St. Yincent, which is of basaltic forma- 
 tion, at the distance of more than eighty leagues. It is not 
 distinctly seen at a greater distance than 15 leagues, but 
 the granitic mountain called the Foya de Monchique, situated 
 near the Cape, is perceptible, as pilots allege, at the distance 
 of 26 leagues. If this assertion be exact, the Foya is 700 
 toises (1363 metres), and consequently 116 toises (225 
 metres) higher than Vesuvius. 
 
 From Corunna to the 36th degree of latitude we had 
 scarcely seen any organic being, excepting sea-swallows and 
 a few dolphins. We looked in vain for sea- weeds (fuci) 
 and mollusca, when on the 11th of June we were struck 
 with a curious sight which afterwards was frequently renewed 
 in the southern ocean. We entered on a zone where the 
 whole sea was covered with a prodigious quantity of medusas. 
 The vessel was almost becalmed, but the mollusca were 
 borne towards the south-east, with a rapidity four times 
 greater than the current. Their passage lasted near three 
 quarters of an hour. We then perceived but a few scat- 
 tered individuals, following the crowd at a distance as if 
 tired with their journey. Do these animals come from 
 the bottom of the sea, which is perhaps in these latitudes 
 some thousand fathoms deep ? or do they make distant 
 voyages in shoals? We know that the mollusca haunt 
 banks ; and if the eight rocks, near the surface, which 
 captain Yobonne mentions having seen in 1732, to the north 
 of Porto Santo, really exist, we may suppose that this innu- 
 merable quantity of medusas had been thence detached ; for 
 we were but 28 leagues from the reef. We found, beside 
 the Medusa aurita of Baster, and the Medusa pelagica of 
 
 
PHOSPHOBIC LIGHT. 
 
 27 
 
 Bose with eight tentacula (Pelagia dentieulata, Pérou), a 
 third species which resembles the Medusa hysocella, and 
 which Pandelli found at the mouth of the Tagus. It is 
 known by its brownish-yellow colour, and by its tentacula, 
 which are longer than the body. Several of these sea-net- 
 tles were four inches in diameter : their reflection was 
 almost metallic : their changeable colours of violet and pur- 
 ple formed an agreeable contrast with the azure tint of the 
 ocean. 
 
 In the midst of these medusas M. Bonpland observed 
 bundles of Dagysa notata, a mollusca of a singular construc- 
 tion, which Sir Joseph Banks first discovered. These are 
 small gelatinous bags, transparent, cylindrical, sometimes 
 polygonal, thirteen lines long and two or three in diameter. 
 These bags are open at both ends. In one of these open- 
 ings, we observed a hyaline bladder, marked with a yellow 
 spot. The cylinders he longitudinally, one against another, 
 like the cehs of a bee-hive, and form chaplets from six to 
 eight inches in length. I tried the galvanic electricity on 
 these mollusca, but it produced no contraction. It appears 
 that the genus dagysa, formed at the time of Cook’s first 
 voyage, belongs to the salpas (biphores of Bruguière), to 
 which M. Cuvier joins the Thalia of Brown, and the Tethys 
 vagina of Tilesius. The salpas journey also by groups, join- 
 ing in chaplets, as we have observed of the dagysa. 
 
 On the morning of the 13th of June, in 31° 33' latitude, we 
 saw large masses of this last mollusca in its passage, the sea 
 being perfectly calm. ¥e observed during the night, that, 
 of three species of medusas which we collected, none yielded 
 any light but at the moment of a very slight shock. This 
 property does not belong exclusively to the Medusa noc- 
 tiluca, which Porskæl has described in his Pauna Ægyptiaca, 
 and which Grmelin has applied to the Medusa pelagica of 
 Lcefling, notwithstanding its red tentacula, and the brownish 
 tuberosities of its body. If we place a very irritable medusa 
 on a pewter plate, and strike against the plate with any sort 
 of metal, the slight vibrations of the plate are sufficient to 
 make this animal emit light. Sometimes, in galvanising the 
 medusa, the phosphorescence appears at the moment that 
 the chain closes, though the exciters are not in immediate 
 contact with the organs of the animal. The fingers with 
 
28 
 
 FALLING STAES. 
 
 ■which we touch it remain luminous for two or three minutes, 
 as is observed in breaking the shell of the pholades. If we 
 rub wood with the body of a medusa, and the part rubbed 
 ceases shining, the phosphorescence returns if we pass a dry 
 hand over the wood. When the light is extinguished a 
 second time, it can no longer be reproduced, though the 
 place rubbed be still humid and viscous. In what manner 
 ought we to consider the effect of the friction, or that of the 
 shock? This is a question of difficult solution. Is it a 
 slight augmentation of temperature which favours the phos- 
 phorescence ? or does the light return, because the surface 
 is renewed, by putting the animal parts proper to disengage 
 the phosphoric hydrogen in contact with the oxygen of the 
 atmospheric air ? I have proved by experiments published 
 in 1797, that the shining of wood is extinguished in hydro- 
 gen gas, and in pure azotic gas, and that its light reappears 
 whenever we mix with it the smallest bubble of oxygen gas. 
 These facts, to which several others may be added, tend to 
 explain the causes of the phosphorescence of the sea, and of 
 that peculiar influence which the shock of the waves exer- 
 cises on the production of light. 
 
 When we were between the island of Madeira and the 
 coast of Africa, we had slight breezes and dead calms, very 
 favourable for the magnetic observations, which occupied me 
 during this passage. We were never weary of admiring 
 the beauty of the nights ; nothing can be compared to the 
 transparency and serenity of an African sky. We were 
 struck with the innumerable quantity of falling stars, which 
 appeared at every instant. The farther progress we made 
 towards the south, the more frequent was this phenomenon, 
 especially near the Canaries. I have observed dtiring my 
 travels, that these igneous meteors are in general more 
 common and luminous in some regions of the globe than in 
 others ; but I have never beheld them so multiplied as in the 
 vicinity of the volcanoes of the province of Quito, and in 
 that part of the Pacific ocean which bathes the volcanic 
 coasts of G-uatimala. The influence which place, climate, and 
 season appear to exercise on the falling stars, distinguishes 
 this class of meteors from those to which we trace stones 
 that drop from the sky (aerolites), and which probably exist 
 beyond the boundaries of our atmosphere. According to 
 
THE CANARY ISLANDS. 
 
 29 
 
 the observations of Messrs. Benzenberg and Brandes, many 
 of the falling stars seen in Europe have been only thirty 
 thousand toises high. One was even measured which did 
 not exceed fourteen thousand toises, or five nautical leagues. 
 These measures, which can give no result hut by approxima- 
 tion, deserve well to be repeated. In warm climates, espe- 
 cially within the tropics, falling stars leave a tail behind them, 
 which remains luminous 12 or 1 5 seconds : at other times 
 they seem to burst into sparks, and they are generally lower 
 than those in the north of Europe. We perceive them only 
 in a serene and azure sky ; they have perhaps never been 
 below a cloud. Ealling stars often follow the same direc- 
 tion for several hours, which direction is that of the wind. 
 In the bay of Naples, M. Gray-Lussac and myself observed 
 luminous phenomena very analogous to those which fixed 
 my attention during a long abode at Mexico and Quito. 
 These meteors are perhaps modified by the nature of the 
 soil and the air, like certain effects of the looming or mirage, 
 i and of the terrestiai refraction peculiar to the coasts of 
 I Calabria and Sicily. 
 
 When we were forty leagues east of the island of Ma- 
 i deira, a swallow* perched on the topsail-yard. It was so 
 | fatigued, that it suffered itself to be easily taken. It was 
 | remarkable that a bird, in that season, and in calm weather, 
 i should fly so far. In the expedition of d’Entrecasteaux, a 
 j common swallow was seen 60 leagues distant from Cape 
 Blanco ; but this was towards the end of October, and 
 M. Labillardière thought it had newly arrived from Europe. 
 We crossed these latitudes in June, at a period when the 
 i seas had not for a long time been agitated by tempests. I 
 [mention this last circumstance, because small birds and 
 even butterflies, are sometimes forced out to sea by the 
 impetuosity of the winds, as we observed in the Pacific 
 j ocean, when we were on the western coast of Mexico. 
 
 1 The Pizarro had orders to touch at the isle of Lancerota, 
 
 , one of the seven great Canary Islands ; and at five in the 
 afternoon of the 16th of June, that island appeared so dis- 
 tinctly in view that I was able to take the angle of altitude 
 of a conic mountain, which towered majestically over the 
 * Hirundo rustica, Linn. 
 
 \ 
 
 I 
 
30 
 
 VOLCANO OP LASTCEBOTA. 
 
 other summits, and which we thought was the great vol- 
 cano which had occasioned such devastation on the night of 
 the 1st of September, 1730. 
 
 The current drew us toward the coast more rapidly than . 
 we wished. As we advanced, we discovered at first the 
 island of Forteventura, famous for its numerous camels ;* 
 and a short time after we saw the small island of Lobos in 
 the channel which separates Forte ventura from Lancerota. 
 We spent part of the night on deck. The moon illumined 
 the volcanic summits of Lancerota, the flanks of which, 
 covered with ashes, reflected a silver light. Antares threw 
 out its resplendent rays near the lunar disk, which was but 
 a few degrees above the horizon. The night was beautifully 
 serene and cool. Though we were but a little distance 
 from the African coast, and on the limit of the torrid zone, 
 the centigrade thermometer rose no higher than 18°. The 
 phosphorescence of the ocean seemed to augment the mass 
 of light diffused through the air. After midnight, great 
 black clouds rising behind the volcano shrouded at intervals 
 the moon and the beautiful constellation of the Scorpion. 
 We beheld lights carried to and fro on shore, which were 
 probably those of fishermen preparing for their labours. 
 We had been occasionally employed, during our passage, in 
 reading the old voyages of the Spaniards, and these moving 
 lights recalled to our fancy those which Pedro Gutierrez, 
 page of Queen Isabella, saw in the isle of Guanahani, on the 
 memorable night of the discovery of the New World. 
 
 On the 17th, in the morning, the horizon was foggy, and , 
 the sky slightly covered with vapour. The outlines of the 
 mountains of Lancerota appeared stronger: the humidity, 
 increasing the transparency of the air, seemed at the same 
 time to have brought the objects nearer our view. This 
 phenomenon is well known to all who have made hygrome- ; 
 
 * These camels, which serve for labour, and sometimes for food, 
 did not exist till the Béthencourts made the conquest of the Cana- 
 ries. In the sixteenth century, asses were so abundant in the island of , 
 Forteventura, that they became wild and were hunted. Several thousands 
 were killed to save the harvest. The horses of Forteventura are of singu- » 
 lar beauty, and of the Barbary race. — “ Noticias de la Historia General 
 de las Islas Canarias,” por Don José de Viera, tom. 2, p. 436. 
 
GEOLOGIC EOE^IATIOXS. 
 
 31 
 
 trical observations in places whence the chain of the Higher 
 Alps or of the Andes is seen. We passed through the channel 
 which divides the isle of Adegranza from Montana Clara, 
 taking soundings the whole way; and we examined the 
 archipelago of small islands situated northward of Lan- 
 cerota. In the midst of this archipelago, which is seldom 
 visited by vessels bound for Tenerife, we were singularly 
 struck with the configuration of the coasts. We thought 
 ourselves transported to the Euganean mountains in the 
 Yicentin, or the banks of the Bhme near Bonn. The form 
 of organized beings varies according to the climate, and it is 
 that extreme variety which renders the study of the 
 geography of plants and animals so attractive ; but rocks, 
 more ancient perhaps than the causes which have produced 
 the difference of the climate on the globe, are the same 
 in both hemispheres. The porphyries containing vitreous 
 feldspar and hornblende, the phonolite, the greenstone, the 
 amygdaloids, and the basalt, have forms almost as invariable 
 as simple crystallized substances. In the Canary Islands, 
 and in the mountains of Auvergne, in the Mittelgebirge in 
 Bohemia, in Mexico, and on the banks of the Granges, the 
 formation of trap is indicated by a symmetrical disposition 
 of the mountains, by truncated cones, sometimes insulated, 
 sometimes grouped, and by elevated plains, both extremities 
 of which are crowned by a conical rising. 
 
 The whole western part of Lancerota, of which we had a 
 near view, bears the appearance of a country recently con- 
 vulsed by volcanic eruptions. Everything is black, parched, 
 and stripped of vegetable mould. We distinguished, with 
 our glasses, stratified basalt in thin and steeply-sloping 
 i strata. Several hills resembled the Monte Novo, near Naples, 
 or those hillocks of scoria and ashes which the opening 
 earth threw up in a single night at the foot of the volcano of 
 Jorullo, in Mexico. In fact, the abbé Viera relates, that 
 in 1730, more than half the island changed its appearance. 
 
 J The great volcano, which we have just mentioned, and which 
 the inhabitants call the volcano of Temanfaya, spread deso- 
 lation over a most fertile and highly cultivated region : nine 
 villages were entirely destroyed by the lavas. This catas- 
 i trophe had been preceded by a tremendous earthquake, and 
 
 
32 
 
 SINGULAR CUST01I. 
 
 for several years shocks equally violent were felt. This last 
 phenomenon is so much the more singular, as it seldom 
 happens after an eruption, when the elastic vapours 
 have found vent by the crater, after the ejection of the 
 melted matter. The summit of the great volcano is a 
 rounded hill, but not entirely conic. From the angles of 
 altitude which I took at different distances, its absolute 
 elevation did not appear to exceed three hundred toises. 
 The neighbouring hills, and those of Alegranza and Isla 
 Clara, were scarcely above one hundred or one hundred and 
 twenty toises. We may be surprised at the small eleva- 
 tion of these summits, which, viewed from the sea, wear so 
 majestic a form; but nothing is more uncertain than our 
 judgment on the greatness of angles, which are subtended 
 by objects close to the horizon. From illusions of this sort 
 it arose, that before the measures of Messrs, de Churruca 
 and Gralleano, at Cape Pilar, navigators considered the 
 mountains of the straits of Magellan, and those of Terra del 
 Fuego, to be extremely elevated. 
 
 The island of Lancerota bore formerly the name of 
 Titeroigotra. On the arrival of the Spaniards, its inha- 
 bitants were distinguished from the other Canarians by 
 marks of greater civilization. Their houses were built 
 with freestone, while % the Gruanches of Teneriffe dwelt 
 in caverns. At Lancerota, a very singular custom prevailed 
 at that time, of which we find no example except among the 
 people of Thibet. A woman had several husbands, who 
 alternately enjoyed the prerogatives due to the head of a 
 family. A husband was considered as such only during a 
 lunar revolution, and whilst his rights were exercised by 
 others, he remained classed among the household domestics. 
 In the fifteenth century the island of Lancerota contained 
 two small distinct states, divided by a wall ; a kind of monu- 
 ment which outlives national enmities, and which we find in 
 Scotland, in China, and Peru. 
 
 We were forced by the winds to pass between the islands 
 of Alegranza and Montana Clara, and as none on board the 
 sloop had sailed through this passage, we were obliged to be 
 continually sounding. We found from twenty-five to thirty- 
 two fathoms. The lead brought up an organic substance of 
 
SE A- VEGETATION. 
 
 33 
 
 bo singular a structure that we were for a long time doubt- 
 ful whether it was a zoophyte or a kind of seaweed. The 
 stem, of a brownish colour and three inches long, has cir- 
 cular leaves with lobes, and indented at the edges. The 
 colour of these leaves is a pale green, and they are mem- 
 branous and streaked like those of the adiantums and 
 Gingko biloba. Their surface is covered with stiff whitish 
 hairs; before their opening they are concave, and enveloped 
 one in the other. "W e observed no mark of spontaneous motion, 
 no sign of irritability, not even on the application of galvanic 
 electricity. The stem is not woody, but almost of a homy 
 substance, like the stem of the Gorgons. Azote and phos- 
 phorus having been abundantly found in several crypto- 
 gamous plants, an appeal to chemistry would be useless to 
 determine whether this organized substance belonged to the 
 animal or vegetable kingdom. Its great analogy to several 
 sea-plants, with adiantum leaves, especially the genus caul- 
 erpa of M. Lamcureux, of which the Fucus proliter of 
 Forskael is one of the numerous species, engaged us to rank 
 it provisionally among the sea-wracks, and give it the name 
 of Fucus vitifolius. The bristles which cover this plant are 
 found in several other fuciA The leaf, examined with a 
 microscope at the instant we drew it up from the water, did 
 not present, it is true, those conglobate glands, or those 
 opaque points, which the parts of fructification in the genera 
 of ulva and fucus contain ; but how often do we find sea- 
 weeds in such a state that we cannot yet distinguish any 
 trace of seeds in thëir transparent parenchyma. 
 
 The vine-leaved fucus presents a physiological phenomenon 
 of the greatest interest. Fixed to a piece of madrepore, this 
 : seaweed vegetates at the bottom of the ocean, at the depth 
 of 192 feet, notwithstanding which we found its leaves as 
 green as those of our grasses. According to the experiments 
 of Bouguer, light is weakened after a passage of 180 feet in 
 the ratio of 1 to 1477'8. The seaweed of Alegranza conse- 
 quently presents a new example of plants which vegetate in 
 great obscurity without becoming white. Several germs, 
 ! enveloped in the bulbs of the lily tribes, the embryo of the 
 ’ malvaceæ, of the rhamnoïdes, of the pistacea, the viscum, 
 • and the citrus, the branches of some subterraneous plants ; 
 
 * Fucus lycopodioïdes, and F. hirsutus. 
 
 TOL. I. D 
 
 I 
 
34 
 
 A CTTBIOUS MISTAKE. 
 
 in short, vegetables transported into mines, where the am- 
 bient air contains hydrogen or a great quantity of azote, 
 become green without light. From these facts we are in- 
 clined to admit that it is not exclusively by the influence of 
 the solar rays that this carburet of hydrogen is formed in 
 the organs of plants, the presence of which makes the 
 parenchyma appear of a lighter or darker green, according 
 as ‘the carbon predominates in the mixture. 
 
 Mr. Turner, who has so well made known the family of 
 the seaweeds, as well as many other celebrated botanists, are 
 of opinion that most of the fuci which we gather on the 
 surface of the ocean, and which, from the 23rd to the 35th 
 degree of latitude and 32nd of longitude, appear to the 
 mariner like a vast inundated meadow, grow primitively at 
 the bottom of the ocean, and float only in their ripened 
 state, when torn up by the motion of the waves. If this 
 opinion be well founded, we must agree that the family of 
 seaweeds offers formidable difficulties to naturalists, who per- 
 sist in thinking that absence of light always produces white- 
 ness ; for how can we admit that so many species of ulvaceae 
 and dictyoteæ, with stems and green leaves, which float on the 
 ocean, have vegetated on rocks near the surface of the water ? 
 
 From some notions which the captain of the Pizarro had 
 collected in an old Portuguese itinerary, he thought him- 
 self opposite to a small fort, situated north of Teguisa, the 
 capital of the ' island of Lancerota. Mistaking a rock of 
 basalt for a castle, he saluted it by hoisting the Spanish flag, 
 and sent a boat with an officer to inquire of the commandant 
 whether any English vessels were cruizing in the roads. We 
 were not a little surprised to learn that the land which we 
 had considered as a prolongation of the coast of Lancerota, 
 was the small island of Grraciosa, and that for several leagues 
 there was not an inhabited placq. We took advantage of 
 the boat to survey the land, which enclosed a large bay. 
 
 The small part of the island of GTraciosa which we traversed, 
 resembles those promontories of lava seen near Naples, 
 between Portici and Torre del Grreco. The rocks are naked, 
 with no marks of vegetation, and scarcely any of vegetable 
 soil. A few crustaceous lichen-like variolariæ, leprariæ, and 
 urceolariæ, were scattered about upon the basalts. The lavas 
 which are not covered with volcanic ashes remain for ages 
 
ISLAND OF GEACIOSA. 
 
 35 
 
 without any appearance of vegetation. On the African soil 
 excessive heat and lengthened drought retard the growth of 
 cryptogamous plants. 
 
 The basalts of Graciosa are not in columns, but are 
 divided into strata ten or fifteen inches thick. These strata 
 are inclined at an angle of 80 degrees to the north-west. 
 The compact basalt alternates with the strata of porous 
 basalt and marl. The rock does not contain hornblende, 
 but great crystals of foliated olivine, which have a triple 
 cleavage.* This substance is decomposed with great diffi- 
 culty. M. Haüy considers it a variety of the pyroxene. The 
 porous basalt, which passes into mandelstein, has oblong 
 cavities from two to eight lines in diameter, lined with chal- 
 cedony, enclosing fragments of compact basalt. I did not 
 remark that these cavities had the same direction, or that 
 the porous rock lay on compact strata, as happens in the 
 currents of lava of Etna and Vesuvius. The marl,f which 
 alternates more than a hundred times with the basalts, is 
 yellowish, friable by decomposition, very coherent in the 
 inside, and often divided into irregular prisms, analogous 
 to the basaltic prisms. The sun discolours their surface, as 
 it whitens several schists, by reviving a hydro-carburetted 
 principle, which appears to be combined with the earth. 
 The marl of Graciosa contains a great quantity of chalk, 
 
 I and strongly effervesces with nitric acid, even on points 
 i where it is found in contact with the basalt. This fact is 
 the more remarkable, as this substance does not fill the 
 I fissures of the rock, but its strata are parallel to those of 
 the basalt ; whence we may conclude that both fossils are of 
 I the same formation, and have a common origin. The phe- 
 | nomenon of a basaltic rock containing masses of indurated 
 marl split into small columns, is also foimd in the Mittelge- 
 I birge, in Bohemia. Visiting those countries in 1792, in 
 I company with Mr. Ereiesleben, we even recognized in the 
 | marl of the Stiefelberg the imprint of a plant nearly resem- 
 L bling the Cerastium, or the Alsine. Are these strata, con- 
 I tained in the trappean mountains, owing to muddy irrup- 
 
 I tions, or must we consider them as sediments of water, 
 K which alternate with volcanic deposits ? This last hypo- 
 
 II thesis seems so much the less admissible, since, from the 
 
 * Blættriger olivin. + Mergel. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 ISLAND OP GRACIOSA. 
 
 researches of Sir James Hall on the influence of pressure 
 in fusions, the existence of carbonic acid in substances con- 
 tained in basalt presents nothing surprising. Several lavas 
 of Vesuvius present similar phenomena. In Lombardy, 
 between Vicenza and Albano, where the calcareous stone of 
 the Jura contains great masses of basalt, I have seen the 
 latter enter into effervescence with the acids wherever it 
 touches the calcareous rock. 
 
 We had not time to reach the summit of a hill very re- 
 markable for having its base formed of banks of clay under 
 strata of basalt, like a mountain in Saxony, called the 
 Scheibenbergen Hügel, which is become celebrated on ac- 
 count of the disputes of volcanean and neptunean geolo- 
 gists. These basalts were covered with a mammiform 
 substance, which I vainly sought on the Peak of Teneriffe, 
 and which is known by the names of volcanic glass, glass of 
 Muller, or hyalite : it is the transition from the opal to the 
 chalcedony. We struck off with difficulty some fine speci- 
 mens, leaving masses that were eight or ten inches square 
 untouched. I never saw in Europe such fine hyalites as I 
 found in the island of Graciosa, and on the rock of por- 
 phyry called el Benol de los Banos , on the bank of the lake 
 of Mexico. 
 
 Two kinds of sand cover the shore; one is black and 
 basaltic, the other white and quartzose. In a place exposed 
 to the rays of the sun, the first raised the thermometer to 
 512° (41° E.) and the second to 40° (32° E.) The tem- 
 perature of the air in the shade was 27 , 7° or 7*5°. higher 
 than that of the air over the sea. The quartzose sand con- 
 tains fragments of feldspar. It is thrown back by the water, 
 and forms, in some sort, on the surface of the rocks, small 
 islets on which seaweed vegetates. Fragments of granite 
 have been observed at Teneriffe ; the island of Gomora, 
 from the details furnished me by M. Broussonnet, con- 
 tains a nucleus of micaceous schist: — the quartz dissemi- 
 nated in the sand, which we found on the shore of Gra- 
 ciosa, is a different substance from the lavas and the trap- 
 pean porphyries so intimately connected with volcanic pro- 
 ductions. From these facts it seems to be evident that in 
 the Canary Islands, as well as on the Andes of Quito, in 
 Auvergne, in Greece, and throughout the greater part of 
 
PICTURESQUE SCENERY. 
 
 37 
 
 the globe, subterraneous fires have pierced through the 
 rocks of primitive formation. In treating hereafter of the 
 great number of warm springs which we have seen issuing 
 from granite, gneiss, and micaceous schist, we shall have 
 occasion to return to this subject, which is one of the most 
 important of the physical history of the globe. 
 
 We re-embarked at sunset, and hoisted sail, but the breeze 
 was too feeble to permit us to continue our course to Tene- 
 riffe. The sea was calm ; a reddish vapour covered the 
 horizon, and seemed tt> magnify every object. In this soli- 
 tude, amidst so many uninhabited islets, we enjoyed for 
 a long time the view of rugged and wild scenery. The 
 black mountains of Graciosa appeared like perpendicular 
 walls five or six hundred feet high. Their shadows, thrown 
 over the surface of the ocean, gave a gloomy aspect to the 
 scenery. Bocks of basalt, emerging from the bosom of the 
 waters, wore the resemblance of the ruins of some vast 
 edifice, and carried our thoughts back to the remote 
 period when submarine volcanoes gave birth to new is- 
 lands, or rent continents asunder. Every thing which sur- 
 rounded us seemed to indicate destruction and sterility; 
 but the back-ground of the picture, the coasts of Lance- 
 rota presented a more smiling aspect. In a narrow pass 
 between two hills, crowned with scattered tufts of trees, 
 marks of cultivation were visible. The last rays of the sun 
 gilded the corn ready for the sickle. Even the desert is 
 animated wherever we can discover a trace of the industry 
 of man. 
 
 We endeavoured to get out of this bay by the pass which 
 separates Alegranza from Montana Clara, and through which 
 we had easily entered to land at the northern point of Gra- 
 ciosa. The wind having fallen, the currents drove us very 
 near a rock, on which the sea broke with violence, and 
 which is noted in the old charts under the name of Hell, or 
 Infierno. As we examined this rock at the distance of two 
 cables’ length, we found that it was a mass of lava three or 
 four toises high, full of cavities, and covered with scoriae 
 resembling coke. We may presume that this rock,* which 
 
 * I must here observe, that this rock is noted on the celebrated Vene- 
 tian chart of Andrea Bianco, but that the name of Infierno is given, as 
 in the more ancient chart of Picigano, made in 1367, to Tenerifie, without 
 
38 
 
 BASALTIC BOCKS. 
 
 modern charts call the West Rock (Roca del Oeste), was 
 raised by volcanic fire ; and it might heretofore have been 
 much higher ; for the new island of the Azores, which rose 
 from the sea at successive periods, in 1638 and 1719, had 
 reached 354 feet when it totally disappeared in 1723, to the 
 depth of 480 feet. This opinion on the origin of the basaltic 
 mass of the Infierno is confirmed by a phenomenon, which 
 was observed about the middle of the last century in these 
 same latitudes . At the time of the eruption of the volcano 
 of Temanfaya, two pyramidal hills of lithoid lava rose from 
 the bottom of the ocean, and gradually united themselves 
 with the island of Lancerota. 
 
 As we were prevented by the fall of the wind, and by the 
 currents, from repassing the channel of Alegranza, we 
 resolved on tacking during the night between the island of 
 Clara and the West Rock. This resolution had nearly proved 
 fatal. A calm is very dangerous near this rock, towards 
 which the current drives with considerable force. We began 
 to feel the effects of this current at midnight. The proxi- 
 mity of the stony masses, which rise perpendicularly above 
 the water, deprived us of the little wind which blew : the 
 sloop no longer obeyed the helm, and we dreaded striking 
 every instant. It is difficult to conceive how a mass of 
 basalt, insulated in the vast expanse of the ocean, can cause 
 so considerable a motion of the waters. These phenomena, 
 worthy the attention of naturalists, are well known to 
 mariners ; they are extremely to be dreaded in the Pacific 
 ocean, particularly in the small archipelago of the islands 
 of Grallipagos. The difference of temperature which exists 
 between the fluid and the mass of rocks does not explain the 
 direction which these currents take ; and how can we admit 
 that the water is engulfed at the base of these rocks, (which 
 often are not of volcanic origin) and that this continual 
 engulfing determines the particles of water to fill up the 
 vacuum that takes place. 
 
 The wind having freshened a little towards the morning 
 on the 18th, we succeeded in passing the channel. We 
 drew very near the Infierno the second time, and remarked 
 the large crevices, through which the gaseous fluids probably 
 
 doubt because the Guanches considered the peak as the entrance into 
 hell. In the same latitudes an island made its appearance in 1811. 
 
LOBOS AST) FOBTEYENTUBA. 
 
 39 
 
 issued, when this basaltic mass was raised. We lost sight 
 of the small islands of Alegranza, Montana Clara, and Gra- 
 ciosa, which appear never to have been inhabited by the 
 Guanches. They are now visited only for the purpose of 
 gathering archil, which production is, however, less sought 
 after, since so many other lichens of the north of Europe 
 have been found to yield materials proper for dyeing. Mon- 
 tana Clara is noted for its beautiful canary-birds. The note 
 of these birds varies with their flocks, like that of our chaf- 
 finches, which often differs in two neighbouring districts. 
 Montana Clara yields pasture for goats, a fact which proves 
 that the interior of this islet is less arid than its coasts. 
 The name of Alegranza is synonymous with the Joyous, (La 
 Joyeuse,) which denomination it received from the first con- 
 querors of the Canary Islands, the two Norman barons, Jean 
 de Béthencourt and Gadifer de Salle. This was the first 
 point on which they landed. After remaining several days 
 at Graciosa, a small part of which we examined, they con- 
 ceived the project of taking possession of the neighbouring 
 island of Lancerota, where they were welcomed by Guadarfia, 
 sovereign of the Guanches, with the same hospitality that 
 Cortez found in the palace of Montezuma. The shepherd 
 king, who had no other riches than his goats, became the 
 victim of base treachery, like the sultan of Mexico. 
 
 We sailed along the coasts of Lancerota, of the island of 
 Lobos, and of Forteventura. The second of these islands 
 seems to have anciently formed part of the two others. 
 This geological hypothesis was started in the seventeenth 
 century by the Franciscan, Juan Galindo. That writer 
 supposed that king Juba had named six Canary Islands 
 only, because, in his time, three among them were contigu- 
 ous. Without admitting the probability of this hypothesis, 
 some learned geographers have imagined they recognized, in 
 the two islands Nivaria and Ombrios, the Canaria and 
 Capraria of the ancients. 
 
 The haziness of the horizon prevented us, during the 
 whole of our passage from Lancerota to Tenenffe, from dis- 
 covering the summit of the peak of Teyde. If the height 
 of this volcano is 1905 toises, as the last trigonometrical 
 measure of Borda indicates, its summit ought to be visible 
 at a distance of 43 leagues, supposing the eye on a level 
 
40 
 
 PEAK or TEYDE. 
 
 with the ocean, and a refraction equal to 0 - 079 of distance. 
 It has been doubted whether the peak has ever been seen 
 from the channel which separates Lancerota from Eorte- 
 ventura, and which is distant from the volcano, according to 
 the chart of Varela, 2° 29', or nearly 50 leagues. This phe- 
 nomenon appears nevertheless to have been verified by 
 several officers of the Spanish navy. I had in my hand, 
 on board the Pizarro, a journal, in which it was noted, 
 that the peak of Teneriffe had been seen at 135 miles dis- 
 tance, near the southern cape of Lancerota, called Pichi- 
 guera. Its summit was discovered under an angle consi- 
 derable enough to lead the observer, Don Manual Baruti, to 
 conclude that the volcano might have been visible at nine 
 miles farther. It was in September, towards evening, and 
 in very damp weather. Beckoning fifteen feet for the ele- 
 vation of the eye, I find, that to render an account of this 
 phenomenon, we must suppose a refraction equal to 0T58 of 
 the arch, which is not very extraordinary for the temperate 
 zone. According to the observations of General Boy, the 
 refractions vary in England from one-twentieth to one-third; 
 and if it be true that they reach these extreme limits on 
 the coast of Africa, (which I much doubt,) the peak, in cer- 
 tain circumstances, may be seen on the deck of a vessel as 
 far off as 61 leagues. 
 
 Navigators who have much frequented these latitudes, 
 and who can reflect on the physical causes of the pheno- 
 mena, are surprised that the peaks of Teyde and of the 
 Azores* are sometimes visible at a very great distance, 
 though at other times they are not seen when the distance 
 is much less, and the sky appears serene and the horizon 
 free from fogs. These circumstances are the more worthy 
 
 * The height of this peak of the Azores, according to Fleurieu, is 1,100 
 toises; to Ferrer, 1,238 toises; and to Tofino, 1,260 toises: but these 
 measures are only approximative estimates. The captain of the Pizarro, 
 Don Manuel Cagigal, proved to me, by his journal, that he observed the 
 peak of the Azores at the distance of 37 leagues, when he was sure of his 
 latitude within two minutes. The volcano was seen at 4° S. E., so that 
 the error in longitude must have an almost imperceptible influence in. 
 the estimation of the distance. Nevertheless, the angle which the peak 
 of the Azores subtended was so great, that the captain of the Pizarro was 
 of opinion this volcano must be visible at more than 40 or 42 leagues. 
 The distance of 37 leagues supposes an elevation of 1,431 toises. 
 
ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA. 
 
 41 
 
 of attention because vessels returning to Europe, some- 
 times wait impatiently for a sight of these mountains, to 
 rectify their longitude; and think themselves much farther 
 off than they really are, when in fine weather these peaks 
 are not perceptible at distances where the angles subtended 
 must be very considerable. The constitution of the atmos- 
 phere has a great influence on the visibility of distant 
 objects. It may be admitted, that in general the peak of 
 Teneriffe is seldom seen at a great distance, in the warm and 
 dry months of July and August ; and that, on the contrary, 
 it is seen at very extraordinary distances in the months of 
 January and Eebruary, when the sky is slightly clouded, 
 and immediately after a heavy rain, or a few hours before 
 it falls. It appears that the transparency of the air is prodi- 
 giously increased, as we have already observed, when a certain 
 quantity of water is uniformly diffused through the atmos- 
 phere. Independent of these observations, it is not astonish- 
 ing, that the peak of Teyde should be seldomer visible at a 
 very remote distance, than the summits of the Andes, to 
 which, during so long a time, my observations were directed. 
 This peak, inferior in height to those parts of the chain of 
 Mount Atlas at the foot of which is the city of Morocco, is 
 not, like those points, covered with perpetual snows. The 
 Piton, or Sugar-loaf, which terminates the peak, no doubt 
 reflects a great quantity of light, owing to the whitish colour 
 of the pumice-stone thrown up by the crater ; but the height 
 of that little truncated cone does not form a twenty-second 
 part of the total elevation. The flanks of the volcano are 
 i covered either with blocks of black and scorified lava, or 
 with a luxuriant vegetation, the masses of which reflect the 
 less light, as the leaves of the trees are separated from each 
 other by shadows of more considerable extent than that of 
 the part enlightened. 
 
 Hence it results that, setting aside the Piton, the peak 
 of Teyde belongs to that class of mountains, which, accord- 
 1 in g to the expression of Bouger, are seen at considerable 
 I distances only in a negative manner , because they intercept 
 I the light which is transmitted to us from the extreme limits 
 of the atmosphere ; and we perceive their existence only on 
 I account of the difference of intensity subsisting between the 
 j aerial light which surrounds them, and that which is reflected 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
42 
 
 OPTICAL EFFECTS. 
 
 by the particles of air placed between the mountains and the 
 eye of the observer. As we withdraw from the isle of Tene- 
 riffe, the Piton or Sugar-loaf is seen for a considerable space 
 of time in a positive manner , because it reflects a whitish 
 light, and clearly detaches itself from the sky. But as this 
 cone is only 80 toises high, by 40 in breadth at its summit, 
 it has recently been a question whether, from the diminutive- 
 ness of its mass, it can be visible at distances which exceed 
 40 leagues ; and whether it be not probable, that navigators 
 distinguish the peaks as a small cloud above the horizon, only 
 when the base of the Piton begins to be visible on it. If we 
 admit, that the mean breadth of the Sugar-loaf is 100 toises, 
 we find that the little cone, at 40 leagues distance, still 
 subtends, in the horizontal direction, an angle of more than 
 three minutes. This angle is considerable enough to render 
 an object visible ; and if the height of the Piton greatly ex- 
 ceeded its base, the angle in the horizontal direction might 
 be still smaller, and the object still continue to make an 
 impression on our visual organs ; for micrometrical observa- 
 tions have proved that the limit of vision is but a minute 
 only, when the dimensions of the objects are the same in 
 every direction. We distinguish at a distance, by the eye 
 only, trunks of trees insulated in a vast plain, though the 
 subtended angle be under twenty-five seconds. 
 
 As the visibility of an object detaching itself in a brown 
 colour, depends on the quantities of light which the eye 
 meets on two lines, one of which ends at the mountain, and 
 the other extends to the surface of the aerial ocean, it follows 
 that the farther we remove from the object, the smaller the 
 difference becomes between the fight of the surrounding 
 atmosphere, and that of the strata of air before the mountain. 
 Por this reason, when less elevated summits begin to appear 
 above the horizon, they present themselves at first under a 
 darker hue than those we discern at very great distances. In 
 the same manner, the visibility of mountains seen only in a 
 negative manner, does not depend solely on the state of the 
 lower regions of the air, to which our meteorological obser- 
 vations are limited, but also on the transparency and physical 
 constitution of the air in the most elevated parts ; for the 
 image detaches itself better in proportion as the aerial fight, 
 which comes from the limits of the atmosphere, has been 
 
EEFKACTIO^ AïsD EEELECTIOF. 
 
 43 
 
 originally more intense, or has undergone less loss in its 
 passage. This consideration explains to a certain point, why, 
 under a perfectly serene sky, the state of the thermometer 
 and the hygrometer being precisely the same in the air 
 nearest the earth, the peak is sometimes visible, and at other 
 times invisible, to navigators at equal distances. It is even 
 probable, that the chance of perceiving this volcano would 
 not be greater, if the ashy cone, at the summit of which is 
 the mouth of the crater, were equal, as in Vesuvius, to a 
 quarter of the total height. These ashes, being pumice-stone 
 crumbled into dust, do not reflect as much light as the snow 
 of the Andes ; and they cause the mountain, seen from afar, 
 to detach itself not in a bright, but in a dark hue. The ashes 
 also contribute, if we may use the expression, to equalize the 
 portions of aerial light, the variable difference of which 
 renders the object more or less distinctly visible. Calcareous 
 mountains, devoid of vegetable earth, summits covered with 
 granitic sand, the high savannahs of the Cordilleras,* which 
 are of a golden yellow, are undoubtedly distinguished at small 
 distances better than objects which are seen in a negative 
 manner; but the theory indicates a certain limit, beyond 
 which these last detach themselves more distinctly from the 
 azure vault of the sky. 
 
 The colossal summits of Quito and Peru, towering above 
 the limit of the perpetual snows, concentre all the peculiari- 
 ties which must render them visible at very small angles. 
 The circular summit of the peak of Teneriffe is only a hun- 
 dred toises in diameter. According to the measures I made 
 at Riobamba, in 1803, the dome of the Chimborazo, 153 
 toises below its summit, consequently in a point which is 
 1300 toises higher than the peak, is still 673 toises (1312 
 metres) in breadth. The zone of perpetual snows also forms 
 a fourth of the height of the mountain ; and the base of this 
 zone, seen on the coast of the Pacific, fills an extent of 3437 
 toises (6700 metres). But though Chimborazo is two-thirds 
 higher than the peak, we do not see it, on account of the 
 curve of the globe, at more than 38 miles and a third farther 
 distant. The radiant brilliancy of its snows, when, at the 
 port of Guayaquil, at the close of the rainy season, Chimbo- 
 
 * Los Pajonales, from paja, straw. This is the name given to the 
 region of the gramina, which encircles the zone of the perpetual snows. 
 
NATURAL LANDMARKS. 
 
 44 
 
 razo is discerned on the horizon, may lead us to suppose, that 
 it must be seen at a very great distance in the South Sea. 
 Pilots highly worthy of credit have assured me, that they 
 have seen it from the rock of Muerto, to the south west of 
 the isle of Puna, at a distance of 47 leagues. Whenever it 
 has been seen at a greater distance, the observers, uncertain 
 of their longitude, have not been in a situation to furnish 
 precise data. 
 
 Aerial light, projected on mountains, increases the visibi- 
 lity of those which are seen positively ; its power diminishes, 
 on the contrary, the visibility of objects which, like the peak 
 of TenerifFe and that of the Azores, detach themselves in a 
 brown tint. Bouguer, relying on theoretical considerations, 
 was of opinion that, according to the constitution of our 
 atmosphere, mountains seen negatively cannot be perceived 
 at distances exceeding 35 leagues. It is important here to 
 observe, that these calculations are contrary to experience. 
 The peak of Teneriffe has been often seen at the distance of 
 36, 38, and even at 40 leagues. Moreover, in the vicinity of 
 the Sandwich Islands, the summit of Mowna-Poa, at a season 
 when it was without snows, has been seen on the skirt of the 
 horizon, at the distance of 53 leagues. This is the most 
 striking example we have hitherto known of the visibility of 
 a mountain ; and it is the more remarkable, that an object 
 seen negatively furnishes this example. 
 
 The volcanoes of Teneriffe, and of the Azores, the Sierra 
 Nevada of St. Martha,, the peak of Orizaba, the Silla of 
 Caracas, Mowna-Poa, and Mount St. Elias, insulated in the 
 vast extent of the seas, or placed on the coasts of continents, 
 serve as sea-marks to direct the pilot, when he has no 
 means of determining the position of the vessel by the 
 observation of the stars ; everything which has a relation to 
 the visibility of these natural seamarks, is interesting to the 
 safety of navigation. 
 
THE CASAEY ISLANDS. 
 
 45 
 
 Chapteb II. 
 
 Stay at Teneriffe. — Journey from Santa Cruz to Orotava. — Excursion to 
 the summit of the Peak of Teyde. 
 
 Feoh the time of our departure from Graciosa, the 
 horizon continued so hazy, that, notwithstanding the con- 
 siderable height of the mountains of Canary,* we did not 
 discover that island till the evening of the 18th of June. 
 It is the granary of the archipelago of the Fortunate Islands ; 
 and, what is very remarkable in a region situated beyond the 
 limits of the tropics, we were assured, that in some districts, 
 there are two wheat harvests in the year ; one in February, 
 and the other in June. Canary has never been visited by a 
 learned mineralogist ; yet this island is so much the more 
 worthy of observation, as the physiognomy of its mountains, 
 disposed in parallel chains, appeared to me to differ entirely 
 from that of the summits of Lancerota and Teneriffe. 
 Nothing is more interesting to the geologist, than to ob- 
 serve the relations, on the same point of the globe, between 
 volcanic countries, and those which are primitive or secon- 
 dary. When the Canary Islands shall have been examined, 
 in all the parts which compose the system of these moun- 
 tains, we shall find that we have been too precipitate in con- 
 sidering the whole group as raised by the action of submarine 
 fires. 
 
 On the morning of the 19th, we discovered the point of 
 Naga, but the peak of Teneriffe was still invisible : the land, 
 obscured by a thick mist, presented forms that were vague 
 and confused. As we. approached the road of Santa Cruz, 
 we observed that the mist, driven by the winds, drew nearer 
 to us. The sea was strongly agitated, as it most commonly 
 is in those latitudes. We anchored after several soundings, 
 for the mist was so thick, that we could scarcely distinguish 
 objects at a few cables’ distance ; but at the moment we 
 ; began to salute the place, the fog was instantly dispelled. 
 The peak of Teyde appeared in a break above the clouds, 
 
 I and the first rays of the sun, which had not yet risen on us, 
 
 ! illumined the summit of the volcano. 
 
 We hastened to the prow of the vessel to behold the mag- 
 * Isla de la Gran Canaria. 
 
 I 
 
46 
 
 TOWN OF SANTA CEÜZ. 
 
 nificent spectacle, and at the same instant we saw four Eng- 
 lish vessels lying to, and very near our stern. "We had 
 passed without being perceived, and the same mist which 
 had concealed the peak from our view, had saved us from 
 the risk of being carried back to Europe. The Pizarro stood 
 in as close as possible to the fort, to be under its protection. 
 It was on this shore, that, in the landing attempted by the 
 English two years before our arrival, in July 1797, admiral 
 Nelson had his arm carried off by a cannon-ball. 
 
 The situation of the town of Santa Cruz is very similar to 
 that of La Guayra, the most frequented port of the province 
 of Caraccas. The heat is excessive in both places, and from 
 the same causes ; but the aspect of Santa Cruz is more 
 gloomy. On a narrow and sandy beach, houses of dazzling 
 whiteness, with flat roofs, and windows without glass, are 
 built close against a wall of black perpendicular rock, devoid 
 of vegetation. A fine mole, built of freestone, and the public 
 walk planted with poplars, are the only objects which break 
 the sameness of the landscape. The view of the peak, as it 
 presents itself above Santa Cruz, is much less picturesque 
 than that we enjoy from the port of Orotava. There, a highly 
 cultured and smiling plain presents a pleasing contrast to 
 the wild aspect of the volcano. Erom the groups of palm 
 trees and bananas which line the coast, to the region of the 
 arbutus, the laurel, and the pine, the volcanic rock is crowned 
 with luxuriant vegetation. W e easily conceive how the in- 
 habitants, even of the beautiful climates of Greece and Italy, 
 might fancy they recognised one of the Eortunate Isles in 
 the western part of Teneriffe. The eastern side, that of 
 Santa Cruz, on the contrary, is every where stamped with 
 sterility. The summit of the peak is not more arid than the 
 promontory of basaltic lava, which stretches towards the 
 point of Naga, and on which succulent plants, springing up 
 in the clefts of the rocks, scarcely indicate a preparation of 
 soil. At the port of Orotava, the top of the Piton subtends 
 an angle in height of more than eleven degrees and a half; 
 while at the mole of Santa Cruz* the angle scarcely exceeds 
 4° 36'. 
 
 Notwithstanding this difference, and though in the latter 
 
 * The oblique distances from the top of the volcano to Orotava and to 
 Santa Cruz are nearly 8,600 toises and 22,500 toises. 
 
PEAK OP TEKEïtIFFE. 
 
 47 
 
 place the volcano rises above the horizon scarcely as much 
 as Vesuvius seen from the mole of Naples, the aspect of the 
 peak is still very majestic, when those who anchor in the 
 road discern it for the first time. The Piton alone was 
 visible to us ; its cone projected itself on a sky of the purest 
 blue, whilst dark thick clouds enveloped the rest of the 
 mountain to the height of 1800 toises. The pumice-stone, 
 illumined by the first rays of the sun, reflected a reddish 
 light, like that which tinges the summits of the higher Alps, 
 This light by degrees becomes dazzlingly white ; and, deceived 
 like most travellers, we thought that the peak was still covered 
 with snow, and that we should with difficulty reach the edge 
 of the crater. 
 
 We have remarked, in the Cordillera of the Andes, that 
 the conical mountains, such as Cotopaxi and Tungurahua, 
 are oftener seen free from clouds, than those of which the 
 tops are broken into bristly points, like Antisana and 
 Pichincha; but the peak of Teneriffe, notwithstanding its 
 pyramidical form, is a great part of the year enveloped in 
 vapours, and is sometimes, during several weeks, invisible 
 from the road of Santa Cruz. Its position to the west of an 
 immense continent, and its insulated situation in the midst 
 of the sea, are no doubt the causes of this phenomenon. 
 Navigators are well aware that even the smallest islets, and 
 those which are without mountains, collect and harbour the 
 clouds. The decrement of heat is also different above the 
 plains of Africa, and above the surface of the Atlantic; 
 and the strata of air, brought by the trade winds, cool in 
 proportion as they advance towards the west. If the air has 
 been extremely dry above the burning sands of the desert, it 
 is very quickly saturated when it enters into contact with 
 the surface of the sea, or with the air that lies on that sur- 
 i face. It is easy to conceive, therefore, why vapours become 
 ■ visible in the atmospherical strata, which, at a distance from 
 1 the continent, have no longer the same temperature as when 
 I they began to be saturated with water. The considerable 
 j mass of a mountain, rising in the midst of the Atlantic, is 
 also an obstacle to the clouds, which are driven out to sea by 
 the winds. 
 
 On entering the streets of Santa Cruz, we felt a suffo- 
 ; eating heat, though the thermometer was not above twenty- 
 
 
48 
 
 TROPICAL VEGETATION. 
 
 five degrees. Those who have for a long time inhaled the 
 air of the sea suffer every time they land ; not because this 
 air contains more oxygen than the air on shore, as has been 
 erroneously supposed, but because it is less charged with those 
 gaseous combinations, which the animal and vegetable sub- 
 stances, and the mud resulting from their decomposition, 
 pour into the atmosphere. Miasms that escape chemical 
 analysis have a powerful effect on our organs, especially 
 when they have not for a long while been exposed to the 
 same kind of irritation. 
 
 Santa Cruz, the Anaza of the Guanches, is a neat town, 
 with a population of 8000 souls. I was not struck with the 
 vast number of monks and secular ecclesiastics, which tra- 
 vellers have thought themselves bound to find in every coun- 
 try under the Spanish government ; nor shall I stop to enter 
 into the description of the churches; the library of the 
 Dominicans, which contains scarcely a few hundred volumes ; 
 the mole, where the inhabitants assemble to inhale the fresh- 
 ness of the evening breeze ; or the famed monument of 
 Carrara marble, thirty feet high, dedicated to Our Lady of 
 Candelaria , in memory of the miraculous appearance of the J 
 Virgin, in 1392, at Chimisay, near Guimar. The port of 
 Santa Cruz may be considered as a great caravanserai, on 
 the road to America and the Indies. Every traveller who 
 writes the narrative of his adventures, begins by a descrip- , 
 tion of Madeira and Teneriffe ; and if in the natural history I 
 of these islands there yet remains an immense field un- ' 
 trodden, we must admit that the topography of the little j 
 towns of Eunchal, Santa Cruz, Laguna, and Orotava, leaves 
 scarcely anything untold. 
 
 The recommendation of the court of Madrid procured for 
 us, in the Canaries, as in all the other Spanish possessions, 
 the most satisfactory reception. The captain-general gave us j 
 immediate permission to examine the island. Col. Armiaga, I 
 who commanded a regiment of infantry, received us into his I 
 house with kind hospitality. We could not cease admiring I 
 the banana, the papaw tree, the Poinciana pulcherrima, and 1 
 other plants, which we had hitherto seen only in hot-houses, 1 
 cultivated in his garden in the open air. The climate of the 1 
 Canaries however is not warm enough to ripen the real 
 Llatano Arton, with triangular fruit from seven to eight 
 
BOTANICAL EXCTTBSION. 
 
 49 
 
 inches long, and which, requiring a temperature of 24 cen- 
 tesimal degrees, does not flourish even in the valley of 
 Caracas. The bananas of Teneriffe are those named by 
 the Spanish planters Camburis or Guineos, and Dominicos. 
 The Camburi, which suffers least from cold, is cultivated 
 with success even at Malaga, where the temperature is only 
 18 degrees ; hut the fruit we see occasionally at Cadiz comes 
 from the Canary Islands by vessels which make the passage 
 in three or four days. In general, the musa, known by 
 every people under the torrid zone, though hitherto never 
 found in a wild state, has as great a variety of fruit as our 
 apple and pear trees. These varieties, which are confounded 
 by the greater part of botanists, though they require very dif- 
 ferent climates, have become permanent by long cultivation. 
 
 We went to herborize in the evening in the direction of 
 the fort of Passo Alto, along the basaltic rocks that close 
 the promontory of bTaga. We were very little satisfied with 
 our harvest, for the drought and dust had almost destroyed 
 vegetation. The Cacalia Kleinia, the Euphorbia canariensis, 
 and several other succulent, plants, which draw their 
 nourishment from the air rather than the soil on which 
 they grow, reminded us by their appearance, that this group 
 of islands belongs to Africa, and even to the most arid part 
 of that continent. 
 
 Though the captain of the Pizarro had orders to stop long 
 enough at Teneriffe to give us time to scale the summit of 
 the peak, if the snows did not prevent our ascent, we 
 received notice, on account of the blockade of the English 
 ships, not to expect a longer delay than four or five days. 
 We consequently hastened our departure for the port of 
 Orotava, which is situated on the western declivity of the 
 volcano, where we were sure of finding guides. I could 
 find no one at Santa Cruz who had mounted the peak, and 
 I was not surprised at this. The most curious objects 
 become less interesting, in proportion as they are near to 
 us ; and I have known inhabitants of Schaff hausen, in 
 Switzerland, who had never seen the fall of the liliine but at 
 a distance. 
 
 On the 20tli of June, before sunrise, we began our excur- 
 sion by ascending to the Villa de Laguna, estimated to be 
 at the elevation of 350 toises above the port of Santa Cruz. 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
50 
 
 CAMELS OF TEKEBIFFE. 
 
 We could not verify this estimate of the height, the surf not 
 having permitted us to return on hoard during the night, to 
 take our barometers and dipping-needle. As we foresaw 
 that our expedition to the peak would be very precipitate, 
 we consoled ourselves with the reflection that it was well 
 not to expose instruments which were to serve us in coun- 
 tries less known by Europeans. The road by which we 
 ascended to Laguna is on the right of a torrent, or laranco , 
 which in the rainy season forms fine cascades ; it is narrow 
 and tortuous. Near the town we met some white camels, 
 which seemed to be very slightly laden. The chief employ- 
 ment of these animals is to transport merchandise from the 
 custom-house to the warehouses of the merchants. They 
 are generally laden with two chests of Havannah sugar, 
 which together weigh 900 pounds ; but this load may be 
 augmented to thirteen hundred-weight, or 52 arrobas of 
 Castile. Camels are not numerous at Teneriffe, whilst they 
 exist by thousands in the two islands of Lancerota and Eor- 
 teventura ; the climate and vegetation of these islands, which 
 are situated nearer Africa, are more analogous to those of 
 that continent. It is very extraordinary, that this useful 
 animal, which breeds in South America, should be seldom 
 propagated at Teneriffe. In the fertile district of Adexe 
 only, where the plantations of the sugar-cane are most con- 
 siderable, camels have sometimes been known to breed. 
 These beasts of burden, as well as horses, were brought 
 into the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century by the 
 Norman conquerors. The Guanches were previously un- 
 acquainted with them ; and this fact seems to be very well 
 accounted for by the difficulty of transporting an animal of 
 such bulk in frail canoes, without the necessity of consi- 
 dering the Guanches as a remnant of the people of Atlantis, 
 or a different race from that of the western Africans. 
 
 The hill, on which the town of San Christobal de la Laguna 
 is built, belongs to the system of basaltic mountains, which, 
 independent of the system of less ancient volcanic rocks, 
 form a broad girdle around the peak of Teneriffe. The basalt 
 on which we walked was darkish brown, compact, half-de- 
 composed, and when breathed on, emitted a clayey smell. 
 We discovered amphibole, olivine,* and translucid pyrox- 
 * Peridot granuliforme. Hauy. 
 
DECREMENT OF HEAT. 
 
 51 
 
 enes, # with a perfectly lamellar fracture, of a pale olive 
 green, and often crystallized in prisms of six planes. The 
 first of these substances is extremely rare at Teneriffe ; and 
 I never foimd it in the lavas of Vesuvius ; but those of 
 Etna contain it in abundance. Notwithstanding the great 
 number of blocks, which we stopped to break, to the great 
 regret of our guides, we could discover neither nepheline, 
 leucite,+ nor feldspar. This last, which is so common 
 in the basaltic lavas of the island of Ischia, does not begin 
 to appear at Teneriffe, till we approach the volcano. The 
 rock of Laguna is not columnar, but is divided into ledges, 
 of small thickness, and inclined to the east at an angle of 
 30 or 40 degrees. It has nowhere the appearance of a 
 current of lava flowing from the sides of the peak. If the 
 present volcano has given birth to these basalts, we must 
 suppose, that, like the substances which compose the Somma, 
 at the hack of Vesuvius, they are the effect of a submarine 
 effusion, in which the liquid mass has formed strata. A 
 few arborescent Euphorbias, the Cacalia Kleinia, and 
 Indian figs (Cactus), which have become wild in the Canary 
 Islands, as well as in the south of Europe and the whole con- 
 tinent of Africa, are the only plants we see on these arid 
 rocks. The feet of our mules were slipping every moment 
 on beds of stone, which were very steep. ¥e nevertheless 
 recognized the remains of an ancient pavement. In these 
 colonies we discover at every step some traces of that activity 
 which characterized the Spanish nation in the 16th century. 
 
 As we approached Laguna, we felt the temperature of the 
 atmosphere gradually become lower. This sensation was so 
 much the more agreeable, as we found the air of Santa Cruz 
 very oppressive. As our organs are more affected by dis- 
 agreeable impressions, the change of temperature becomes 
 still more sensible when we return from Laguna to the port : 
 we seem then to be drawing near the mouth of a furnace. 
 The same impression is felt, when, on the coast of Caracas, 
 i we descend from the mountain of Avila to the port of La 
 I Guayra. According to the law of the decrement of heat, 
 I three hundred and fifty toises m height produce in this lati- 
 tude only three or four degrees difference in temperature. 
 
 * Augite. — Werner. + Amphigène. — Hauy. 
 
 E 2 
 
 fe 
 
 ■Lb' 
 
52 
 
 TOWN OF LAGUNA. 
 
 The heat which overpowers the traveller on his entrance 
 into Santa Cruz, or La Gruayra, must consequently be at- 
 tributed to the reverberation from the rocks, against which 
 these towns are built. 
 
 The perpetual coolness which prevails at Laguna causes 
 it to be considered in the Canaries a delightful abode. Si- 
 tuated in a small plain, surrounded by gardens, protected 
 by a hill which is crowned by a wood of laurels, myrtle, and 
 arbutus, the capital of Teneriffe is very beautifully placed. 
 We should be mistaken if, relying on the account of some 
 travellers, we believed it seated on the border of a lake. 
 The rain sometimes forms a sheet of water of considerable 
 extent ; and the geologist, who beholds in everything the 
 past rather than the present state of nature, can have ne 
 doubt but that the whole plain is a great basin dried up. 
 Laguna has fallen from its opulence, since the lateral erup- 
 tions of the volcano have destroyed the port of Grarachico, 
 and since Santa Cruz has become the central point of the 
 commerce of the island. It contains only 9000 inhabitants, 
 of w r hom nearly 400 are monks, distributed in six convents. 
 The town is surrounded with a great number of windmills, 
 which indicate the cultivation of wheat in these high coun- 
 tries. I shall observe on this occasion, that different kinds 
 of grain were known to the Gruanches. They called wheat 
 at Teneriffe tano, at Lancerota triffa ; barley, in the grand 
 Canary, bore the name of aramotanoque , and at Lancerota 
 it was called tcvmosen. The flour of roasted barley ( qojio ) 
 and goat’s-milk constituted the principal food of the people, 
 on the origin of which so many systematic fables have been 
 current. These aliments sufficiently .prove that the race of 
 the Gruanches belonged to the nations of the old continent, 
 perhaps to those of Caucasus, and not like the rest of the 
 Atlantides,* to the inhabitants of the New World ; these, 
 before the arrival of the Europeans, were unacquainted with 
 corn, milk, and cheese. 
 
 A great number of chapels, which the Spaniards call ermi- 
 
 * Without entering here into any discussion respecting the existence of 
 the Atlantis, I may cite the opinion of Diodorus Siculus, according to 
 whom the Atlantides were ignorant of the use of corn, because they were 
 separated from the rest of mankind before these gramina were cultivated. 
 
SALTTBBITY OF TEKEBIEFE. 
 
 53 
 
 tas, encircle the town of Laguna. Shaded by trees of per- 
 petual verdure, and erected on small eminences, these chapels 
 add to the picturesque effect of the landscape. The interior 
 of the town is not equal to its external appearance. The 
 houses are solidly built, but very antique, and the streets 
 seem deserted. A botanist ought not to complain of the 
 antiquity of the edifices. The roofs and walls are covered 
 with Canary house-leek and those elegant trichomanes, men- 
 tioned by every traveller. These plants are nourished by 
 the abundant mists. 
 
 Mr. Anderson, the naturalist in the third voyage of cap- 
 tain Cook, advises physicians to send their patients to Tene- 
 riffe, on account of the mildness of the temperature and the 
 equal climate of the Canaries. The ground on these islands 
 rises in an amphitheatre, and presents simultaneously, as in 
 Peru and Mexico, the temperature of every climate, from the 
 heat of Africa to the cold of the higher Alps. Santa Cruz, 
 the port of Orotava, the town of the same name, and that of 
 Laguna, are four places, the mean temperatures of which 
 form a descending series. In the south of Europe the 
 change of the seasons is too sensibly felt to present the same 
 advantages. Teneriffe, on the contrary, situated as it were 
 on the threshold of the tropics, though but a few days’ sail 
 from Spain, shares in the charms which nature has lavished 
 on the equinoctial regions. Vegetation here displays some 
 of her fairest and most majestic forms in the banana and the 
 palm-tree. He who is alive to the charms of nature finds in 
 this delicious island remedies still more potent than the 
 ohm ate. Ho abode appeared to me more fitted to dissipate 
 melancholy, and restore peace to the perturbed mind, than 
 that of Teneriffe or Madeira. These advantages are the 
 effect not of the beauty of the site and the purity of the air 
 alone: the moral feeling is no longer harrowed up by the 
 sight of slavery, the presence of which is so revolting in the 
 West Indies, and in every other place to which European 
 colonists have conveyed what they call their civilization and 
 their industry. 
 
 In winter the climate of Laguna is extremely foggy, and the 
 inhabitants often complain of the cold. A fall of snow, how- 
 ever, has never been seen ; a fact which may seem to indicate 
 
54 
 
 TEMPERATURE OF LAGUKA. 
 
 that the mean temperature of this town must he above 18- 7° 
 (15° R.), that is to say, higher than that of Naples. I do not 
 lay this down as an unexceptional conclusion, for in winter the 
 refrigeration of the clouds does not depend so much on the 
 mean temperature of the whole year, as on the instantaneous 
 diminution of heat to which a district is exposed by its local 
 situation. The mean temperature of the capital of Mexico, 
 for instance, is only 16*8° (135° R.), nevertheless, in the 
 space of a hundred years snow has fallen only once, while 
 in the south of Europe and in Africa it snows in places 
 where the mean temperature is above 19 degrees. 
 
 The vicinity of the sea renders the climate of Laguna 
 more mild in winter than might he expected, arising 
 from its elevation above the level of the ocean. I was 
 astonished to learn that M. Broussonnet had planted in 
 the midst of this town, in the garden of the Marquis de 
 Nava, the bread-fruit tree (Artocarpus incisa), and cinna- 
 mon-tree (Laurus Cinnamomum). These valuable produc- 
 tions of the South Sea and the East Indies are naturalized 
 there as well as at Orotava. Does not this fact prove 
 that the bread-fruit might flourish in Calabria, Sicily, and 
 Granada? The culture of the coffee-tree has not equally 
 succeeded at Laguna, though its fruit ripens at Teguesta, as 
 well as between the port of Orotava and the village of St. 
 Juan de la Rambla. It is probable that some local circum- 
 stances, perhaps the nature of the soil and the winds that 
 prevail in the flowering season, are the cause of this pheno- 
 menon. In other regions, in the neighbourhood of Naples, 
 for instance, the coffee-tree thrives abundantly, though 
 the mean temperature scarcely rises above 18 centigrade 
 degrees. 
 
 No person has ascertained in the island of Teneriffe, the 
 lowest height at which snow falls every year. This fact, 
 though easy of verification by barometrical measurements, 
 has hitherto been generally neglected under every zone. It 
 is nevertheless highly interesting both to agriculture in the 
 colonies and meteorology, and fully as important as the 
 measure of the limit of the perpetual snows. My observa- 
 tions furnished me with the data, set down in the follow- 
 ing table : — 
 
AND or TENERIFFE. 
 
 55 
 
 North 
 
 latitude. 
 
 Lowest height 
 at which 
 snow falls. 
 
 Inferior limit 
 of the 
 
 perpetual snows. 
 
 Difference of the 
 two pre- 
 ceding columns. 
 
 Mean 
 
 temperature. 
 
 
 Toises. 
 
 Metres. 
 
 Toises. 
 
 Metres. 
 
 Toises. 
 
 Metres. 
 
 Cent. 
 
 Reaum. 
 
 0° 
 
 2040 
 
 3976 
 
 2460 
 
 4794 
 
 420 
 
 818 
 
 27° 
 
 21-6° 
 
 20° 
 
 1550 
 
 3020 
 
 2360 
 
 4598 
 
 810 
 
 1578 
 
 24-5° 
 
 19-6° 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 ■V* 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 1540 
 
 3001 
 
 1540 
 
 3001 
 
 17° 
 
 13*6° 
 
 This table presents only the ordinary state of nature, that 
 is to say, the phenomena as they are annually observed. 
 Exceptions founded on particular local circumstances, exist. 
 Thus it sometimes snows, though seldom, at Naples, at Lisbon, 
 and even at Malaga, consequently as low as the 37th degree 
 of latitude : and, as we have just observed, snow has been 
 seen to fall at Mexico, the elevation of which is 1173 toises 
 above the level of the ocean. This phenomenon, which had 
 not been seen for several centuries, took place on the day 
 that the Jesuits were expelled, and was attributed by the 
 people to that act of severity. A more striking exception 
 was found in the climate of Yalladolid, the capital of the 
 province of Mechoacan. According to my measures, the 
 height of this town, situate in latitude 19° 42", is only a 
 thousand toises : and yet, a few years before our arrival in 
 New Spain, the streets were covered with snow for some 
 hours. 
 
 Snow had been seen to fall also at Teneriffe, in a place 
 lying above Esperanza de la Laguna, very near the town of 
 that name, in the gardens of which the artocarpus flourishes. 
 This extraordinary fact was confirmed to M. Eroussonnet by 
 very aged persons. The Erica arborea,the Myrica Eaya, and 
 the Arbutus callicarpa,* did not suffer from the snow ; but 
 it destroyed all the vines in the open air. This observation 
 is interesting to vegetable physiology. In hot countries, the 
 plants are so vigorous, that cold is less injurious to them, 
 
 * This fine arbutus, imported by M. Broussonnet, is very different from 
 the Arbutus laurifolia, with which it has been confounded, but which 
 belongs to North America. 
 
56 
 
 TALLET OE TACOEONTE. 
 
 provided it be of short duration. I have seen the banana 
 cultivated in the island of Cuba, in places where the thermo- 
 meter descends to seven centesimal degrees, and sometimes 
 very near freezing point. In Italy and Spain the orange 
 and date-trees do not perish, though the cold during the 
 night may be two degrees below freezing point. In general 
 it is remarked by cultivators, that the trees which grow in a 
 fertile soil are less delicate, and consequently less affected by 
 great changes in the temperature, than those which grow in 
 land that affords but little nutriment.* 
 
 In order to pass from the town of Laguna to the port of 
 Orotava and the western coast of Teneriffe, we cross at first 
 a hilly region covered with black and argillaceous earth, in 
 which are found some small crystals of pyroxene. The waters 
 most probably detach these crystals from the neighbouring 
 rocks, as at Frascati, near Lome. Unfortunately, strata of 
 ferruginous earth conceal the soil from the researches of the 
 geologist. It is only in some ravines, that we find columnar 
 basalts, somewhat curved, and above them very recent 
 breccia, resembling volcanic tufa. The breccia contain 
 fragments of the same basalts which they cover ; and it is 
 asserted that marine petrifactions are observed in them. 
 The same phenomenon occurs in the Vicentin, near Monte- 
 chio Maggiore. 
 
 The valley of Tacoronte is the entrance into that charming 
 country, of which travellers of every nation have spoken with 
 rapturous enthusiasm. Under the torrid zone I found sites 
 where nature is more majestic, and richer in the display of 
 organic forms ; but after having traversed the banks of the 
 Orinoco, the Cordilleras of Peru, and' the most beautiful 
 valleys of Mexico, I own that I have never beheld a prospect 
 more varied, more attractive, more harmonious in the distri- 
 bution of the masses of verdure and of rocks, than the 
 western coast of Teneriffe. 
 
 * The mulberries, cultivated in the thin and sandy soils of countries 
 bordering on the Baltic Sea, are examples of this feebleness of organiza- 
 tion. The late frosts do more injury to them, than to the mulberries of 
 Piedmont. In Italy a cold of 5° below freezing point does not destroy 
 robust orange trees. According to M. Galesio, these trees, less tender 
 than the lemon and bergamot orange trees, freeze only at ten centesimal 
 degrees below freezing point. 
 
VIEW OF THE PEAK. 
 
 57 
 
 The sea-coast is lined with date and cocoa trees. Groups of 
 the musa, as the country rises, form a pleasing contrast with 
 the dragon-tree, the trunks of which have been justly com- 
 pared to the tortuous form of the serpent. The declivities 
 are covered with vines, w'hich throw their branches over 
 towering poles. Orange trees loaded with flowers, myrtles, 
 and cypress trees encircle the chapels reared to devotion on 
 the isolated hills. The divisions of landed property are 
 marked by hedges formed of the agave and the cactus. An 
 innumerable quantity of cryptogamous plants, among which 
 ferns are the most predominant, cover the walls, and are moist- 
 ened by small springs of limpid water. In winter, when 
 the volcano is buried under ice and snow, this district 
 enjoys perpetual spring. In summer, as the day declines, 
 the breezes from the sea diffuse a delicious freshness. 
 The population of this coast is very considerable ; and it 
 appears to be still greater than it is, because the houses 
 and gardens are distant from each other, which adds to the 
 picturesque beauty of the scene. Unhappily the real wel- 
 fare of the inhabitants does not correspond with the exer- 
 tions of their industry, or with the advantages which nature 
 has lavished on this spot. The farmers are not land-owners; 
 the fruits of their labour belong to the nobles ; and those 
 feudal institutions, which, for so long a time, spread misery 
 throughout Europe, still press heavily on the people of the 
 Canary Islands. 
 
 Erom Tegueste and Tacoronte to the village of St. Juan 
 de la Eambla (which is celebrated for its excellent malmsey 
 wine), the rising hills are cultivated like a garden. I might 
 compare them to the environs of Capua and Yalentia, if the 
 western part of Teneriffe was not infinitely more beautiful on 
 account of the proximity of the peak, which presents on every 
 side a new point of view. The aspect of this mountain is 
 interesting not merely from its gigantic mass ; it excites the 
 mind, by carrying it back to the mysterious source of its 
 volcanic agency. Eor thousands of years, no flames or light 
 have been perceived on the summit of the Piton, neverthe- 
 less enormous lateral eruptions, the last of which took place 
 in 1798, are proofs of the activity of a fire still far from 
 being extinguished. There is also something that leaves a 
 melancholy impression on beholding a crater in the centre 
 
58 
 
 EOTANICAL GARDEN'. 
 
 of a fertile and well cultivated country. The history of the 
 globe informs ns, that volcanoes destroy what they have 
 been a long series of ages in creating. Islands, which the 
 action of submarine fires has raised above the waters, are 
 by degrees clothed in rich and smiling verdure ; but these new 
 lands are often laid waste by the renewed action of the 
 same power which caused them to emerge from the bottom 
 of the ocean. Islets, which are now but heaps of scoriæ 
 and volcanic ashes, were once perhaps as fertile as the hills 
 of Tacoronte and Sauzal. Happy the country, where man 
 has no distrust of the soil on which he lives ! 
 
 Pursuing our course to the port of Orotava, we passed the 
 smiling hamlets of Matanza and Victoria. These names are 
 mingled together in all the Spanish colonies, and they form 
 an unpleasing contrast with the peaceful and tranquil feelings 
 which those countries inspire. Matanza signifies slaughter, 
 or carnage ; and the word alone recalls the price at which 
 victory has been purchased. In the New World it generally 
 indicates the defeat of the natives : at Teneriffe, the village 
 of Matanza was built in a place* where the Spaniards were 
 conquered by those same Guanches who soon after were sold 
 as slaves in the markets of Europe. 
 
 Before we reached Orotava, we visited a botanic garden at 
 a little distance from the port. We there found M. Le Gros, 
 the French vice-consul, who had often scaled the summit of 
 the Peak, and who served us as an excellent guide. He was 
 accompanying captain Baudin in a voyage to the West Indies, 
 when a dreadful tempest, of which M. Le Dru has given 
 an account in the narrative of his voyage to Porto Pico, 
 forced the vessel to put into Teneriffe. There M. Le Gros 
 was led by the beauty of the spot to settle. It was he who 
 augmented scientific knowledge by the first accurate ideas 
 of the great lateral eruption of the Peak, which has been 
 very improperly called the explosion of the volcano of Cha- 
 horra. This eruption took place on the 8th of June, 1798. 
 
 The establishment of a botanical garden at Teneriffe is a 
 very happy idea, on account of the influence it is likely to 
 have on the progress of botany, and on the introduction 
 of useful plants into Europe. Eor the first conception of 
 
 * The ancient Acantejo. 
 
PORT OF OROTAYA. 
 
 59 
 
 it we are indebted to the Marquis de Hava. He under- 
 took, at an enormous expense, to level the hill of Durasno, 
 which rises as an amphitheatre, and which was begun to be 
 planted in 1795. The marquis thought that the Canary 
 Islands, from the mildness of their climate and geographi- 
 cal position, were the most suitable place for naturalising 
 the productions of the East and West Indies, and for 
 inuring the plants gradually to the colder temperature 
 of the south of Europe. The plants of Asia, Africa, and 
 South America, may easily be brought to Orotava; and 
 in order to introduce the bark-tree* into Sicily, Portugal, 
 or Grenada, it should be first planted at Durasno, or at 
 Laguna, and the shoots of this trçe may afterwards be 
 transported into Europe from the Canaries. In happier 
 times, when maritime wars shall no longer interrupt com- 
 munication, the garden of Teneriffe may become extremely 
 useful with respect to the great number of plants which are 
 sent from the Indies to Europe; for ere they reach our 
 coasts, they often perish, owing to the length of the passage, 
 during which they inhale an air impregnated with salt water. 
 These plants would meet at Orotava with the care and 
 climate necessary for their preservation. At Durasno, the 
 protea, the psidium, the jambos, the chirimoya of Peru,f 
 the sensitive plant, and the heliconia, grow in the open air. 
 We gathered the ripened seeds of several beautiful species 
 of glycine from Hew Holland, which the governor of Cu- 
 mana, Mr. Emparan, had successfully cultivated, and which 
 grow wild on the coasts of South America. 
 
 We arrived very late at the port of Orotava, J if we may 
 give the name of port to a road in which vessels are 
 obliged to put to sea whenever the winds blow violently 
 from the north-west. It is impossible to speak of Orotava 
 
 * I speak of the species of bark-tree (cinchona), which at Peru, and 
 in the kingdom of New Granada, flourish on the back of the Cordilleras, 
 at the height of between 1,000 and 1,500 toises, in places where the 
 thermometer is between nine and ten degrees during the day, and from 
 three to four during the night. The orange bark-tree (Cinchona lanci- 
 folia) is much less delicate than the red bark-tree (C. oblongifolia). 
 
 f Annona cherimolia. Lamarck. 
 
 f Puerto de la Cruz. The only fine port of the Canary Islands is that 
 of St. Sebastian, in the isle of Gomara. 
 
CO 
 
 ASCENT OE THE PEAK. 
 
 ■without recalling to the remembrance of the friends of 
 science the name of Don Bernardo Cologan, whose house at 
 all times was open to travellers of every nation. 
 
 We could have wished to have sojourned for some time 
 in Don Bernardo’s house, and to have visited with him the 
 charming scenery of St. Juan de la Bambla and of Bialexo de 
 Abaxo.* But on a voyage such as we had undertaken, the 
 present is but little enjoyed. Continually haunted by the 
 fear of not executing the designs of the morrow, we live in 
 perpetual uneasiness. Persons who are passionately fond of 
 nature and the arts feel the same sensations, when they 
 travel through Switzerland and Italy. Enabled to see but a 
 small portion of the objects which allure them, they are dis- 
 turbed in their enjoyments by the restraints they impose on 
 themselves at every step. 
 
 On the morning of the 21st of June, we were on our 
 way to the summit of the volcano. M. le Gros, whose 
 attentions were unwearied, M. Lalande, secretary to the 
 Erench Consulate at Santa Cruz, and the English gardener 
 at Durasno, joined us on this excursion. The day was not 
 very fine, and the summit of the peak, which is generally 
 visible at Orotava from sunrise till ten o’clock, was covered 
 with thick clouds. 
 
 We were agreeably surprised by the contrast between the 
 vegetation of this part of Teneriffe, and that of the environs of 
 Santa Cruz. Under the influence of a cool and humid climate, 
 the ground was covered with beautiful verdure; while on the 
 road from Santa Cruz to Laguna the plants exhibited nothing 
 but capsules emptied of their seeds. Near the port of Santa 
 Cruz, the strength of the vegetation is an obstacle to geolo- 
 gical research. We passed along the base of two small hills, 
 which rise in the form of bells. Observations made at Vesu- 
 vius and in Auvergne lead us to think that these hills owe 
 their origin to lateral eruptions of the great volcano. The hill 
 called Montaîiita de la Villa seems indeed to have emitted 
 lavas ; and according to the tradition of the Gruanches, an 
 eruption took place in 1430. Colonel Franqui assured Borda, 
 that the place is still to be seen whence the melted matter 
 
 * This last-named village stands at the foot of the lofty mountain of 
 Tygayga. 
 
YILLA DE OBOTAYA. 
 
 61 
 
 issued ; and that the ashes which covered the ground adja- 
 cent, were not yet fertilized. Whenever the rock appeared, 
 we discovered basaltic amygdaloid* covered with hardened 
 clay,f which contains rapilli , or fragments of pumice-stone. 
 This last formation resembles the tufas of Pausilippo, and 
 the strata of puzzolana, which I found in the valley of Quito, 
 at the foot of the volcano of Pichincha. The amygdaloid 
 has very long pores, like the superior strata of the lavas of 
 Vesuvius, arising probably from the action of an elastic fluid 
 forcing its way through the matter in fusion. Notwith- 
 standing these analogies, I must here repeat, that in all 
 the low region of the peak of Tenerifle, on the side of Oro- 
 tava, I have met with no flow of lava, nor any current, the 
 limits of which are strongly marked. Torrents and inun- 
 dations change the surface of the globe, and when a great 
 number of currents of lava meet and spread over a plain, as 
 I have seen at Vesuvius, in the Atrio dei Cavalli, they seem 
 to be confounded together, and wear the appearance of real 
 strata. 
 
 The villa de Orotava has a pleasant aspect at a distance, 
 from the great'abundance of water which runs through the 
 principal streets. The spring of Agua Mansa, collected in 
 two large reservoirs, turns several mills, and is afterward 
 discharged among the vineyards of the adjacent hills. The 
 climate is still more refreshing at the villa than at the port 
 of La Cruz, from the influence of the breeze, which blows 
 strong after ten in the morning. The water, which has been 
 dissolved in the air at a higher temperature, frequently preci- 
 pitates itself, and renders the climate very foggy. The villa, 
 is nearly 160 toises (312 metres) above the level of the sea, 
 consequently 200 toises lower than the site on which Laguna 
 is built: it is observed also, that the same kind of plants 
 flower a month later in this latter place. 
 
 Orotava, the ancient Taoro of the Guanches, is situated 
 on a very steep declivity. The streets seem deserted ; the 
 houses are solidly built, and of a gloomy appearance. We 
 passed along a lofty aqueduct, lined with a great number of 
 floe ferns; and visited several gardens, in which the fruit 
 trees of the north of Europe are mingled with orange trees, 
 
 * Basaltartiger Mandelstein. Werner, 
 f Bimstein-Conglomerat. W. 
 
62 
 
 DEAGOX-TREE OF OROTAVA. 
 
 pomegranate, and date trees. We were assured, that these 
 last were as little productive here as on the coast of Cumana. 
 Although we had been made acquainted, from the narra- 
 tives of many travellers, with the dragon-tree of the garden 
 of M. Franqui, we were not the less struck with its enor- 
 mous magnitude. We were told, that the trunk of this 
 tree, which is mentioned in several very ancient documents 
 as marking the boundaries of a field, was as gigantic in the 
 fifteenth century as it is at the present time. Its height 
 appeared to us to be about 50 or 60 feet ; its circumference 
 near the roots is 45 feet. We could not measure higher, 
 but Sir G-eorge Staunton found that, 10 'feet from the 
 ground, the diameter of the trunk is still 12 English feet ; 
 which corresponds perfectly with the statement of Borda, 
 who found its mean circumference 33 feet 8 inches, French 
 measure. The trunk is divided into a great number of 
 branches, which rise in the form of a candelabrum, and are 
 terminated by tufts of leaves, like the yucca which adorns 
 the valley of Mexico. This division gives it a very different 
 appearance from that of the palm-tree. 
 
 Among organic creations, this tree is undoubtedly, toge- 
 ther with the Adansonia or baobab of Senegal, one of the 
 oldest inhabitants of our globe. The baobabs are of still 
 greater dimensions than the dragon-tree of Orotava. There 
 are some which near the root measure 34 feet in diameter, 
 though their total height is only from 50 to 60 feet. But 
 we should observe, that the Adansonia, like the ochroma, 
 and all the plants of the family of bombax, grow much more 
 rapidly* than the dracœna, the vegetation of which is very 
 slow. That in M. Franqui’s garden still bears every year 
 
 * Tt is the same with the plane-tree (Platanus occidentalis) which 
 M. Michaux measured at Marietta, on the banks of the Ohio, and which, 
 at twenty feet from the ground, was 15 • 7 feet in diameter. — “ Voyage 
 à l’Ouest des Monts Alleghany,” 1804, p. 93. The yew, chesnut, oak, 
 plane-tree, deciduous cypress, bombax, mimosa, cæsalpinia, hymenæa, 
 and dracæna, appear to me to be the plants which, in different climates, 
 present specimens of the most extraordinary growth. An oak, discovered 
 together with some Gallic helmets in 1809, in the turf pits of the depart- 
 ment of the Somme, near the village of Yseux, seven leagues from Abbe- 
 ville, was about the same size as the dragon-tree of Orotava. According 
 to a memoir by M. Traullée, the trunk of this oak was 14 feet in 
 diameter. 
 
PIXO DEL DOBKAJITO. 
 
 63 
 
 both flowers and fruit. Its aspect forcibly exemplifies 
 “that eternal youth of nature,” which is an inexhaustible 
 source of motion and of life. 
 
 The draeæna, which is seen only in cultivated spots in the 
 Canary Islands, at Madeira, and Porto Santo, presents a 
 curious phenomenon with respect to the migration of plants. 
 It has never been found in a wild state on the continent of 
 Africa. The East Indies is its real country. How has this 
 tree been transplanted to Tenerifle, where it is by no means 
 common ? Does its existence prove, that, at some very dis- 
 tant period, the Gruanches had connexions with other nations 
 originally from Asia ? # 
 
 On leaving Orotava, a narrow and stony pathway led us 
 through a beautiful forest of chesnut trees (el monte de Cas - 
 tanos ), to a site covered with brambles, some species of 
 laurels, and arborescent heaths. The trunks of the latter grow 
 to an extraordinary size ; and the flowers with which they 
 are loaded form an agreeable contrast, during a great part 
 of the year, to the Hypericum canariense, which is very 
 abundant at this height. We «topped to take in our pro- 
 vision of water under a solitary fir-tree. This station is 
 known in the country by the name of Pino deb Dornajito. 
 Its height, according to the barometrical measurement of M. 
 de Borda, is 522 toises ; and it commands a magnificent 
 prospect of the sea, and the whole of the northern part of 
 the island. Near Pino del Dornajito, a little on the right 
 of the pathway, is a copious spring of water, into which we 
 plunged the thermometer, which fell to 15.4°. At a hundred 
 toises distance from this spring is another equally limpid. If 
 we admit that these waters indicate nearly the mean heat 
 of the place whence they issue, we may fix the absolute eleva- 
 tion of the station at 520 toises, supposing the mean tempera- 
 
 * The form of the dragon-tree is exhibited in several species of the 
 genus Draeæna, at the Cape of Good Hope, in China, and in New Zea- 
 land. But in New Zealand it is superseded by the form of the yucca ; 
 for the Draeæna borealis of Aiton is a Convallaria, of which it has all the 
 appearance. The astringent juice, known in commerce by the name of 
 dragon’s blood, is, according to the inquiries we made on the spot, the 
 produce of several American plants, which do not belong to the same 
 genus, and of which some are lianas. At Laguna, toothpicks steeped in 
 the juice of the dragon-tree are made in the nunneries, and' are much 
 j extolled as highly useful for keeping the gums in a healthy state. 
 
 | 
 
THE SPRING OF DORNAJITO. 
 
 64 
 
 ture of the coast to be 21 degrees, and allowing one degree 
 for the decrement of caloric corresponding under this zone 
 to 93 toises. We should not be surprised if this spring 
 remained a little below the heat of the air, since it probably 
 takes its source in some more elevated part of the peak, and 
 possibly communicates with the small subterranean glaciers 
 of which we shall speak hereafter. The accordance just ob- 
 served between the barometrical and thermometrical mea- 
 sures is so much more striking, because in mountainous 
 countries, with steep declivities, the springs generally indi- 
 cate too great a decrement of caloric, for they unite small 
 currents of water, which filtrate at different heights, and their 
 température is consequently the mean between the tempera- 
 ture of these currents. The spring of Dornajito has con- 
 siderable reputation in the country ; and at the time I was 
 there, it was the only one known on the road which leads 
 to the summit of the volcano. The formation of springs 
 demands a certain regularity in the direction and inclination 
 of the strata. On a volcanic soil, porous and splintered 
 rocks absorb the rain waters, and convey them to considerable 
 depths. Hence arises that aridity observed in the greater 
 part of the Canary Islands, notwithstanding the considerable 
 height of their mountains, and the mass of clouds which 
 navigators behold incessantly overhanging this archipelago. 
 
 From Pino del Dornajito to the crater of the volcano we 
 continued to ascend without crossing a single valley; for 
 the small ravines ( barancos ) do not merit this name. To' the 
 eye of the geologist the whole island of Teneriffe is but one 
 mountain, the almost elliptical base of which is prolonged to 
 the north-east, and in which may be distinguished several 
 systems of volcanic rocks formed at different epochs. The 
 Chahorra, or Montana Colorada, and the Urea, considered in 
 the country as insulated volcanoes, are only little hills abut- 
 ting on the peak, and masking its pyramidal form. The great 
 volcano, the lateral eruptions of which have given birth to 
 vast promontories, is not however precisely in the centre of 
 the island, and this peculiarity of structure appears the less 
 surprising, if we recollect that, as the learned mineralogist 
 M. Cordier has observed, it is not perhaps the small crater 
 of the Piton which has been the principal agent in the 
 changes undergone by the island of Teneriffe. 
 
ELEYATED PLATEAU. 
 
 G5 
 
 Above the region of arborescent heaths, called Monte 
 Verde, is the region of ferns. Nowhere, in the temperate 
 zone, have I seen such an abundance of the pteris, blechnum, 
 and asplénium ; yet none of these plants have the stateliness 
 of the arborescent ferns which, at the height of five or six 
 hundred toises, form the principal ornament of equinoctial 
 America. The root of the Pteris aquilina serves the inha- 
 bitants of Palma and Gomera for food; they grind it to 
 powder, and mix with it a quantity of barley-meal. This 
 composition, when boiled, is called gofio ; the use of so 
 homely an aliment is a proof of the extreme poverty of the 
 lower order of people in the Canary Islands. 
 
 Monte Verde is intersected by several small and very arid 
 ravines (canadas), and the region of ferns is succeded by a 
 wood of juniper trees and firs, which has suffered greatly 
 from the violence of hurricanes. In this place, mentioned 
 by some travellers under the name of Caravela,* Mr. Eden 
 states that in the year 1705 he saw little flames, which, 
 according to the doctrine of the naturalists of his time, he 
 attributes to sulphurous exhalations igniting spontaneously. 
 We continued to ascend, till we came to the rock of La 
 Gayta and to Portillo : traversing this narrow pass between 
 two basaltic hills, we entered the great plain of Spartium. 
 At the time of the voyage of Lapérouse, M. Manneron had 
 taken the levels of the peak, from the port of Orotava to 
 this elevated plain, near 1400 toises above the level of the 
 sea; but the want of water, and the misconduct of the 
 guides, prevented him from taking the levels to the top 
 of the volcano. The results of the operation, (which was 
 two-thirds completed,) unfortunately were not sent to 
 Europe, and the work is still to be recommenced from the 
 sea-coast. 
 
 We spent two hours and a half in crossing the Llano del 
 Hetama, which appears like an immense sea of sand. Not- 
 withstanding the elevation of this site, the centigrade ther- 
 mometer rose in the shade toward sunset, to 138°, or 3 - 7° 
 higher than toward noon at Monte Verde. This augmenta- 
 tion of heat could be attributed only to the reverberation 
 
 * “Phil. Trans.,” vol. xxix, p. 317. Carabela is the name of a vessel 
 with lateen sails. The pines of the peak formerly were used as masts of 
 vessels. 
 
 YOL. I. x 
 
66 
 
 THE PLAIN OE EE TAMA. 
 
 from the ground, and the extent of the plain. We suffered 
 much from the suffocating dust of the pumice-stone, in 
 which we were continually enveloped. In the midst of this 
 plain are tufts of the rétama , which is the Spartium nubige- 
 num of Aiton. M. de Martinière, one of the botanists who 
 perished in the expedition of Lapérouse, wished to introduce 
 this beautiful shrub into Languedoc, where firewood is very 
 scarce. It grows to the height of nine feet, and is loaded 
 with odoriferous flowers, with which the goat hunters, that 
 we met in our road, had decorated their hats. The goats 
 of the peak, which are of a deep brown colour, are reckoned 
 delicious food ; they browse on the spartium, and have run 
 wild in the deserts from time immemorial. They have been 
 transported to Madeira, where they are preferred to the 
 goats of Europe. 
 
 As far as the rock of G-ayta, or the entrance of the exten- 
 sive Llano del Rétama, the peak of Teneriffe is covered with 
 beautiful vegetation. There are no traces of recent devas- 
 tation. We might have imagined ourselves scaling the 
 side of some volcano, the fire of which had been extin- 
 guished as remotely as that of Monte Cavo, near Rome ; 
 but scarcely had we reached the plain covered with pumice- 
 stone, when the landscape changed its aspect, and at every 
 step we met with large blocks of obsidian thrown out by the 
 volcano. Everything here speaks perfect solitude. A few 
 goats and rabbits only bound across the plain. The barren 
 region of the peak is nine square leagues ; and as the lower 
 regions viewed from this point retrograde in the distance, the 
 island appears an immense heap of torrefied matter, hemmed 
 round by a scanty border of vegetation. 
 
 From the region of the Spartium nubigenum we passed 
 through narrow defiles, and small ravines hollowed at a very 
 remote time by the torrents, first arriving at a more elevated 
 plain (el Monton de Trigo), then at the place where we in- 
 tended to pass the night. This station, which is more than 
 1530 toises above the coast, bears the name of the English 
 Halt (Estancia de los Ingleses*), no doubt because most of 
 
 * This denomination was in use as early as the beginning of the last 
 century. Mr. Eden, who corrupts all Spanish words, as do most travel- 
 lers in our own times, calls it the Stancha : it is the Station des Rochers 
 of M. Borda, as is proved by the barometrical heights there observed. 
 
FIGHT OF THE PEAK. 
 
 67 
 
 the travellers, who formerly visited the peak, were English- 
 men. Two inclined rocks form a kind of cavern, which affords 
 a shelter from the winds. This point, which is higher than 
 the summit of the Canigou, can be reached on the backs of 
 mules ; and here has ended the expedition of numbers of 
 travellers, who on leaving Orotava hoped to have ascended 
 to the brink of the crater. Though in the midst of sum- 
 mer, and under an African sky, we suffered from cold during 
 the night. The thermometer descended as low as to five 
 degrees. Our guides made a large fire with the dry branches 
 of rétama. Having neither tents nor cloaks, we lay down on 
 some masses of rock, and were singularly incommoded by 
 the flame and smoke, which the wind drove towards us. We 
 had attempted to form a kind of screen with cloths tied 
 together, but our enclosure took fire, which we did not per- 
 ceive till the greater part had been consumed by the flames. 
 We had never passed a night on a point so elevated, and 
 we then little imagined that we should, one day, on the ridge 
 of the Cordilleras, inhabit towns higher than the summit of 
 the volcano we were to scale on the morrow. As the tem- 
 perature diminished, the peak became covered with thick 
 clouds. The appproach of night interrupts the play of the 
 ascending current, which, during the day, rises from the 
 plains towards the high regions of the atmosphere ; and the 
 air, in cooling, loses its capacity of suspending water. A 
 strong northerly wind chased the clouds; the moon at 
 intervals, shooting through the vapours, exposed its disk on 
 a firmament of the darkest blue ; and the view of the volcano 
 threw a majestic character over the nocturnal scenery. 
 Sometimes the peak was entirely hidden from our eyes by 
 the fog, at other times it broke upon us in terrific proximity; 
 and, like an enormous pyramid, threw its shadow over the 
 clouds rolling beneath our feet. 
 
 About three in the morning, by the sombrous light of a 
 few fir torches, we started on our journey to the summit of 
 the Piton. We scaled the volcano on the north-east side, 
 where the declivities are extremely steep; and after two 
 
 These heights were in 1803, according to M. Cordier, 19 inches 9'5 lines ; 
 and in 1776, according to Messrs. Borda and Varela, 19 inches 9'8 lines; 
 the barometer at Orotava keeping within nearly a line at the same 
 height. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 NATURAL ICE-HOUSE. 
 
 hours’ toil, we reached a small plain, which, on account of its 
 elevated position, bears the name of Alta Vista. This is the 
 station of the neveros, those natives, whose occupation it is 
 to collect ice and snow, which they sell in the neighbouring 
 towns. Their mules, better practised in climbing mountains 
 than those hired by travellers, reach Alta Vista, and the 
 neveros are obliged to transport the snow to that place on 
 their backs. Above this point commences the Malpays, a 
 term by which is designated here, as well as in Mexico, Peru, 
 and every other country subject to volcanoes, a ground des- 
 titute of vegetable mould, and covered with fragments of 
 lava. 
 
 We turned to the right to examine the cavern of ice, 
 which is at the elevation of 1728 toises, consequently below 
 the limit of the perpetual snows in this zone. Probably 
 the cold which prevails in this cavern, is owing to the same 
 causes which perpetuate the ice in the crevices of Mount 
 Jura and the Apennines, and on which the opinions of 
 naturalists are still much divided. This natural ice-house of 
 the peak has, nevertheless, none of those perpendicular 
 openings, which give emission to the warm air, while the 
 cold air remains undisturbed at the bottom. It would seem 
 that the ice is preserved in it on account of its mass, and 
 because its melting is retarded by the cold, which is the con- 
 sequence of quick evaporation. This small subterraneous 
 glacier is situated in a region, the mean temperature of 
 which is probably not under three degrees ; and it is not, 
 like the true glaciers of the Alps, fed by the snow waters that 
 flow from the summits of the mountains. During winter 
 the cavern is filled with ice and snow ; and as the rays of 
 the sun do not penetrate beyond the mouth, the heats of 
 summer are not sufficient to empty the reservoir. The ex- 
 istence of a natural ice-house depends, consequently, rather 
 on the quantity of snow which enters it in winter, and the 
 small influence of the warm winds in summer, than on the 
 absolute elevation of the cavity, and the mean temperature of 
 the layer of air in which it is situated. The air contained in 
 the interior of a mountain is not easily displaced, as is ex- 
 emplified by Monte Testaccio at Borne, the temperature of 
 which is so different from that of the surrounding atmos- 
 phere. On Chimborazo enormous heaps of ice are found 
 
OPTICAL PHENOMEXOîT. 
 
 69 
 
 covered with sand, and, in the same manner as at the peak, 
 far below the inferior limit of the perpetual snows. 
 
 It was near the Ice-Cavern (Cueva del Hielo), that, in 
 the voyage of Lapérouse, Messrs. Lamanon and Mongès 
 made their experiments on the temperature of boiling water. 
 These naturalists found it 88‘7°, the barometer at nineteen 
 inches one line. In the kingdom of New Grenada, at the 
 chapel of Gruadaloupe, near Santa-Fe de Bogota, I have seen 
 water boil at 89'9°, under a pressure of 19 inches T9 lines. 
 At Tambores, in the province of Popayan, Senor Caldas 
 found the heat of boiling water 89‘5°, the barometer being at 
 18 inches IT 6 lines. These results might lead us to suspect, 
 that, in the experiment of M. Lamanon, the water had not 
 reached the maximum of its temperature. 
 
 Day was beginning to dawn when we left the ice-cavern. 
 We observed, during the twilight, a phenomenon which is not 
 unusual on high mountains, but which the position of the 
 volcano we were scaling rendered very striking. A layer 
 of white and fleecy clouds concealed from us the sight of 
 the ocean, and the lower region of the island. This layer 
 did not appear above 800 toises high ; the clouds were so 
 uniformly spread, and kept so perfect a level, that they wore 
 the appearance of a vast plain covered with snow. The 
 colossal pyramid of the peak, the volcanic summits of Lan- 
 cerota, of Forteventura, and the isle of Palma, were like 
 rocks amidst this vast sea of vapours, and their black tints 
 were in fine contrast with the whiteness of the clouds. 
 
 While we were climbing over the broken lavas of the 
 Malpays, we perceived a very curious optical phenomenon, 
 which lasted eight minutes. We thought we saw on the 
 east side small rockets thrown into the air. Luminous 
 points, about seven or eight degrees above the horizon, 
 appeared first to move in a vertical direction; but their 
 motion was gradually changed into a horizontal oscillation. 
 Our fellow-travellers, our guides even, were astonished at 
 this phenomenon, without our having made any remark on 
 it to them. We thought, at first sight, that these luminous 
 points, which floated in the air, indicated some new erup- 
 tion of the great volcano of Lancerota ; for we recollected 
 that Bouguer and La Condamine, in scaling the volcano of 
 Pichincha, were witnesses of the eruption of Cotopaxi. But 
 
70 
 
 CURIOUS ILLUSION. 
 
 the illusion soon ceased, and we found that the luminous 
 points were the images of several stars magnified by the 
 vapours. These images remained motionless at intervals, 
 they then seemed to rise perpendicularly, descended side- 
 ways, and returned to the point whence they had departed. 
 This motion lasted one or two seconds. Though we had no 
 exact means of measuring the extent of the lateral shifting, 
 we did not the less distinctly observe the path of the lumi- 
 nous point. It did not appear double from an effect of mirage, 
 and left no trace of light behind. Bringing, with the tele- 
 scope of a small sextant by Troughton, the stars into contact 
 with the lofty summit of a mountain in Lancerota, I 
 observed that the oscillation was constantly directed to- 
 wards the same point, that is to say, towards that part of 
 the horizon where the disk of the sun was to appear ; and 
 that, making allowance for the motion of the star in its 
 declination, the image returned always to the same place. 
 These appearances of lateral refraction ceased long before 
 daylight rendered the stars quite invisible. I have faith- 
 fully related what we saw during the twilight, without un- 
 dertaking to explain this extraordinary phenomenon, of 
 which I published an account in Baron Zach’s Astronomical 
 Journal, twelve years ago. The motion of the vesicular 
 vapours, caused by the rising of the sun ; the mingling of 
 several layers of air, the temperature and density of which 
 were very different, no doubt contributed to produce an 
 apparent movement of the stars in the horizontal direction. 
 We see something similar in the strong undulations of the 
 solar disk, when it cuts the horizon ; but these undulations 
 seldom exceed twenty seconds, while the lateral motion 
 of the stars, observed at the peak, at more than 1800 
 toises, was easily distinguished by the naked eye, and seemed 
 to exceed all that we have thought it possible to consider 
 hitherto as the effect of the refraction of the light of the 
 stars. On the top of the Andes, at Antisana, I observed 
 the sun-rise, and passed the whole night at the height of 2100 
 toises, without noting any appearance resembling this phe- 
 nomenon. 
 
 I was anxious to make an exact observation of the instant 
 of sun-rising at an elevation so considerable as that we had 
 reached on the peak of Teneriffe. No traveller, furnished 
 
SUNRISE ON THE PEAK. 
 
 71 
 
 with instruments, had as yet taken such an observation. I 
 had a telescope and a chronometer, which I knew to be 
 exceedingly correct. In the part where the sun was to 
 appear the horizon was free from vapour. We perceived the 
 upper limb at 4 h 48' 55" apparent time, and what is very re- 
 markable, the first luminous point of the disk appeared imme- 
 diately in contact with the limit of the horizon, consequently 
 we saw the true horizon ; that is to say, a part of the sea 
 farther distant than 43 leagues. It is proved by calculation 
 that, under the same parallel in the plain, the rising would 
 have began at 5 h V 50 4/', or 11' 51*3^ later than at the height 
 of the peak. The difference observed was 12' 55", which arose 
 no doubt from the uncertainty of the refraction for a zenith 
 distance, of which observations are wanting. 
 
 We were surprised at the extreme slowness with which 
 the lower limb of the sun seemed to detach itself from the 
 horizon. This limb was not visible till 4 h 56' 56". The 
 disc of the sun, much flattened, was well defined; during 
 the ascent there was neither double image nor lengthening 
 of the lower limb. The duration of the sun’s rising being 
 triple that which we might have expected in this latitude, 
 we must suppose that a fog-bank, very uniformly extended, 
 -concealed the true horizon, and followed the sun in its 
 ascent. Notwithstanding the libration of the stars,* which 
 we had observed towards the east, we could not attribute 
 the slowness of the rising to an extraordinary refraction of 
 the rays occasioned by the horizon of the sea ; for it is pre- 
 cisely at the rising of the sun, as Le Grentil daily observed at 
 Pondicherry, and as I have several times remarked at Cu- 
 mana, that the horizon sinks, on account of the elevation of 
 temperature in the stratum of the air which lies immediately 
 over the surface of the ocean. 
 
 The road, which we were obliged to clear for ourselves 
 across the Malpays, was extremely fatiguing. The ascent is 
 steep, and the blocks of lava rolled from beneath our feet. I 
 can compare this part of the road only to the Moraine of the 
 
 * A celebrated astronomer, Baron Zach, has compared this phenomenon 
 of an apparent libration of the stars to that described in the Georgies 
 (lib. 1, v. 365). But this passage relates only to the falling stars, which 
 the ancients, (like the mariners of modern times) considered as a prognos- 
 tic of wind. 
 
72 
 
 VAPOROUS ERUPTION'S. 
 
 Alps or that mass of pebbly stones which we find at the lower 
 extremity of the glaciers. At the peak the lava, broken into 
 sharp pieces, leaves hollows, in which we risked falling up to 
 our waists. Unfortunately the listlessness of our guides 
 contributed to increase the difficulty of this ascent. Unlike 
 the guides of the valley of Chamouni, or the nimble-footed 
 Guanches, who could, it is asserted, seize the rabbit or wild 
 goat in its course, our Canarian guides were models of the 
 phlegmatic. They had wished to persuade us on the preced- 
 ing evening not to go beyond the station of the rocks. 
 Every ten minutes they sat down to rest themselves, and 
 when unobserved they threw away the specimens of obsidian 
 and pumice-stone, which we had carefully collected. We 
 discovered at length that none of them had ever visited the 
 summit of the volcano. 
 
 After three hours’ walking, we reached, at the extremity 
 of the Malpays, a small plain, called La Rambleta, from the 
 centre of which the Piton, or Sugar-loaf, takes its rise. On 
 the side toward Orotava the mountain resembles those pyra- 
 mids with steps that are seen at Eayoum and in Mexico ; 
 for the elevated plains of Rétama and Rambleta form two 
 tiers, the first of which is four times higher than the 
 second. If we suppose the total height of the Peak to he 
 1901 toises, the Rambleta is 1820 toises above the level of 
 the sea. Here are found those spiracles, which are called 
 hv the natives the Nostrils of the Peak (Narices del Pico). 
 Watery and heated vapours issue at intervals from several 
 crevices in the ground, and the thermometer rose to 43‘2° ; 
 M. Labillardière had found the temperature of these vapours, 
 eight years before us, 53*7°; a difference which does not 
 perhaps prove so much a diminution of activity in the vol- 
 cano, as a local change in the heating of its internal sur- 
 face. The vapours have no smell, and seem to be pure water. 
 A short time before the great eruption of Mount Vesuvius, 
 in 1805, M. Gay-Lussac and myself had observed that water, 
 under the form of vapour, in the interior of the crater, did 
 not redden paper which had been dipped in syrup of violets. 
 I cannot, however, admit the hold hypothesis, according 
 to which the Nostrils of the Peak are to he considered as 
 the vents of an immense apparatus of distillation, the lower 
 part of which is situated below the level of the sea. Since 
 
ASCENT OE THE PITON. 
 
 73 
 
 the time when volcanoes have been carefully studied, and the 
 love of the marvellous has been less apparent in works 
 on geology, well founded doubts have been raised respect- 
 ing these direct and constant communications between the 
 waters of the sea and the focus of the volcanic fire.* We 
 may find a very simple explanation of a phenomenon, that 
 has in it nothing very surprising. The peak is covered with 
 snow during part of the year ; we ourselves found it still so 
 in the plain of Eambleta. Messrs. O’Donnel and Arm- 
 strong discovered in 1806 a very abundant spring in the 
 Malpays, a hundred toises above the cavern of ice, which is 
 perhaps fed partly by this snow. Everything consequently 
 leads us to presume that the peak of Tenerifle, like the vol- 
 canoes of the Andes, and those of the island of Manilla, con- 
 tains within itself great cavities, which are filled with atmo- 
 spherical water, owing merely to filtration. The aqueous 
 vapours exhaled by the Narices and crevices of the crater, 
 are only those same waters heated by the interior surfaces 
 down which they flow. 
 
 We had yet to scale the steepest part of the mountain, the 
 Piton, which forms the summit. The slope of this small 
 cone, covered with volcanic ashes, and fragments of pumice- 
 stone, is so steep, that it would have been almost impossible 
 to reach the top, had we not ascended by an old current of 
 lava, the débris of which have resisted the ravages of time. 
 These débris form a wall of scorious rock, which stretches 
 into the midst of the loose ashes. We ascended the Piton 
 by grasping these half-decomposed scoriæ, which often broke 
 in our hands. We employed nearly half an hour to scale 
 a hill, the perpendicular height of which is scarcely ninety 
 toises. Vesuvius, three times lower than the peak of Tene- 
 riffe, is terminated by a cone of ashes almost three times 
 higher, but with a more accessible and easy slope. Of all 
 
 * This question has been examined with much sagacity by M. Brieslak, 
 in his “ Introduzzione alia Geologia,” t. ii., p. 302, 323, 347. Cotopaxi 
 and Popocatepetl, which I saw ejecting smoke and ashes, in 1804, are 
 farther from both the Pacific and the Gulf of the Antilles, than Greno- 
 ble is from the Mediterranean, and Orleans from the Atlantic. We must 
 not consider the fact as merely accidental, that we have not yet discovered 
 an active volcano more than 40 leagues distant from the ocean; but I 
 consider the hypothesis, that the waters of the sea are absorbed, distilled, 
 and decomposed by volcanoes, as very doubtful. 
 
74 
 
 SUMMIT OF THE PEAK. 
 
 the volcanoes which I have visited, that of Jorullo, in 
 Mexico, is the only one that is more difficult to climb than 
 the Peak, because the whole mountain is covered with loose 
 ashes. 
 
 When the Sugar-loaf (el Piton) is covered with snow, as 
 it is in the beginning of winter, the steepness of its declivity 
 may be very dangerous to the traveller. M. Le Gros showed 
 us the place where captain Baudin was nearly killed when 
 he visited the Peak of Teneriffe. That officer had the 
 courage to undertake, in company with the naturalists 
 Advenier, Mauger, and Biedlé, an excursion to the top of 
 the volcano about the end of December, 1797. Having 
 reached half the height of the cone, he fell, and rolled down 
 as far as the small plain of liambleta ; happily a heap of 
 lava, covered with snow, hindered him from rolling farther 
 with accelerated velocity. I have been told, that in Swit- 
 zerland a traveller was suffocated by rolling down the de- 
 clivity of the Col de Balme, over the compact turf of the 
 Alps. 
 
 When we gained the summit of the Piton,- we were sur- 
 prised to find scarcely room enough to seat ourselves conve- 
 niently. We were stopped by a small circular wall of 
 porphyritic lava, with a base of pitchstone, which concealed 
 from us the view of the crater.* The west wind blew with 
 such violence that we could scarcely stand. It was eight in 
 the morning, and we suffered severely from the cold, though 
 the thermometer kept a little above freezing point. Por a 
 long time we had been accustomed to a very high tempera- 
 ture, and the dry wind increased the feeling of cold, because 
 it carried off every moment the small atmosphere of warm 
 and humid air, which was formed around us from the effect 
 of cutaneous perspiration. 
 
 The brink of the crater of the peak bears no resemblance 
 to those of most of the other volcanoes which I have 
 visited: for instance, the craters of Vesuvius, Jorullo, and 
 Pichincha. In these the Piton preserves its conic figure 
 to the very summit : the whole of their declivity is inclined 
 the same number of degrees, and uniformly covered with a 
 layer of pumice-stone very minutely divided ; when we reach 
 
 * Called La Caldera, or the caldron of the peak, a denomination which 
 recals to mind the Oules of the Pyrenees. 
 
INTERIOR OF THE CRATER. 
 
 75 
 
 the top of these volcanoes, nothing obstructs the view of the 
 bottom of the crater. The peaks of Teneriffe and Cotopaxi, 
 on the contrary, are of very different construction. At their 
 summit a circular wall surrounds the crater ; which wall, at 
 a distance, has the appearance of a small cylinder placed on 
 a truncated cone. On Cotopaxi this peculiar construction 
 is visible to the naked eye at more than 2,000 toises distance ; 
 and no person has ever reached the crater of that volcano. 
 On the peak of Teneriffe, the wall, which surrounds the 
 crater like a parapet, is so high, that it would be impossible 
 to reach the Caldera, if, on the eastern side, there was not a 
 breach, which seems to have been the effect of a flowing of 
 very old lava. We descended through this breach toward 
 the bottom of the funnel, the figure of which is elliptic. Its 
 greater axis has a direction from north-west to south-east, 
 nearly IST. 35° AY. The greatest breadth of the mouth 
 appeared to us to be 300 feet, the smallest 200 feet, which 
 numbers agree very nearly with the measurement of MM. 
 Yerguin, Yarela, and Borda. 
 
 It is easy to conceive, that the size of a crater does not 
 depend solely on the height and mass of the mountain, of 
 which it forms the principal air-vent. This opening is indeed 
 seldom in direct ratio with the intensity of the volcanic fire, 
 or with the activity of the volcano. At Yesuvius, which is 
 but a hill compared with the Peak of Teneriffe, the diameter 
 of the crater is five times greater. When we reflect, that 
 very lofty volcanoes throw out less matter from their summits 
 than from lateral openings, we should be led to think, that 
 the lower the volcanoes, their force and activity being the 
 same, the more considerable ought to be their craters. In 
 fact, there are immense volcanoes in the Andes, which have 
 but very small openings; and we might establish as a 
 geological principle, that the most colossal mountains have 
 craters of little extent at the summits, if the Cordilleras did 
 not present many instances to the contrary.* I shall have 
 occasion, in the progress of this work, to cite a number of 
 facts, which will throw some light on what may be called the 
 external structure of volcanoes. This structure is as varied 
 
 * The great volcanoes of Cotopaxi and Rucupichincha have craters, the 
 diameters of which, according to my measurements, exceed 400 and 700 
 toises. 
 
76 
 
 STEATA OF LAYA. 
 
 as the volcanic phenomena themselves ; and in order to raise 
 ourselves to geological conceptions worthy of the greatness 
 of nature, we must set aside the idea that all volcanoes are 
 formed after the model of Vesuvius, Stromboli, and Etna. 
 
 The external edges of the Caldera are almost perpendi- 
 cular. Their appearance is somewhat like the Somma, seen 
 from the Atrio dei Cavalli. We descended to the bottom 
 of the crater on a train of broken lava, from the eastern 
 breach of the enclosure. The heat was perceptible only in 
 a few crevices, which gave vent to aqueous vapours with a 
 peculiar buzzing noise. Some of these funnels or crevices 
 are on the outside of the enclosure, on the external brink of 
 the parapet that surrounds the crater. We plunged the 
 thermometer into them, and saw it rise rapidly to 68 and 75 
 degrees. It no doubt indicated a higher temperature, but 
 we could not observe the instrument till we had drawn it up, 
 lest we should burn our hands. M. Cordier found several 
 crevices, the heat of which was that of boiling water. It 
 might be thought that these vapours, which are emitted in 
 gusts, contain muriatic or sulphurous acid ; but when con- 
 densed, they have no particular taste; and experiments, 
 which have been made with re-agents, prove that the chim- 
 neys of the peak exhale only pure water. This phenomenon, 
 analogous to that which I observed in the crater of Jorullo, 
 deserves the more attention, as muriatic acid abounds in the 
 greater part of volcanoes, and as M. Vauquelin has dis- 
 covered it even in the porphyritic lavas of Sarcouy in 
 Auvergne. 
 
 I sketched on the spot a view of the interior edge of the 
 crater, as it presented itself in the descent by the eastern 
 break. Nothing is more striking than the manner in which 
 these strata of lava are piled on one another, exhibiting the 
 sinuosities of the calcareous rock of the higher Alps. These 
 enormous ledges, sometimes horizontal, sometimes inclined 
 and undulating, are indicative of the ancient fluidity of the 
 whole mass, and of the combination of several deranging 
 causes, which have determined the direction of each flow. 
 The top of the circular wall exhibits those curious ramifica- 
 tions which we find in coke. The northern edge is most 
 elevated. Towards the south-west the enclosure is consider- 
 ably sunk, and an enormous mass of scorious lava seems 
 
DEPTH OE THE CALDERA. 
 
 77 
 
 glued to tlie extremity of tlie brink. On the west tbe rock 
 is perforated ; and a large opening gives a view of the hori- 
 zon of the sea. The force of the elastic vapours perhaps 
 formed this natural aperture, at the time of some inundation 
 of lava thrown out from the crater. 
 
 The inside of this funnel indicates a volcano, which for 
 thousands of years has vomited no fire but from its sides. 
 This conclusion is not founded on the absence of great open- 
 ings, which might be expected in the bottom of the Caldera. 
 Those whose experience is founded on personal observation, 
 know that several volcanoes, in the intervals of an eruption, 
 appear filled up, and almost extinguished ; but that in these 
 same mountains, the crater of the volcano exhibits layers of 
 scoriæ, rough, sonorous, and shining. We observe hillocks 
 and intumescences caused by the action of the elastic vapours, 
 cones of broken scoriæ, and ashes which cover the funnels. 
 None of these phenomena characterise the crater of the peak 
 of Tenerife ; its bottom is not in the state which ensues at 
 the close of an eruption. From the lapse of time, and the 
 action of the vapours, the inside walls are detached, and have 
 covered the basin with great blocks of lithoid lavas. 
 
 The bottom of the Caldera is reached without danger. 
 In a volcano, the activity of which is principally directed 
 towards the summit, such as Vesuvius, the depth of the 
 crater varies before and after each eruption ; but at the peak 
 of Tenerifie the depth appears to have remained unchanged 
 for a long time. Eden, in 1715, estimated it at 115 feet ; 
 Cordier, in 1803, at 110 feet. Judging by mere inspection, 
 I should have thought the funnel of still less depth. Its 
 present state is that of a solfatara ; and it is rather an object 
 of curious investigation, than of imposing aspect. The 
 majesty of the site consists in its elevation above the level 
 of the sea, in the profound solitude of these lofty regions, 
 and in the immense space over which the eye ranges from 
 the summit of the mountain. 
 
 The wall of compact lava, forming the enclosure of the 
 Caldera, is snow-white at its surface. The same colour 
 prevails in the inside of the Solfatara of Puzzuoli. When 
 we break these lavas, which might be taken at some distance 
 for calcareous stone, we find in them a blackish brown 
 nucleus. Porphyry, with basis of pitch-stone, is whitened 
 
78 
 
 SULPHUROUS VAPOURS. 
 
 externally by tbe slow action of tbe vapours of sulphurous 
 acid gas. These vapours rise in abundance; and what is 
 rather remarkable, through crevices which seem to have no 
 communication with the apertures that emit aqueous vapours. 
 We may be convinced of the presence of the sulphurous 
 acid, by examining the fine crystals of sulphur, which are 
 everywhere found in the crevices of the lava. This acid, 
 combined with the water with which the soil is impregnated, 
 is transformed into sulphuric acid by contact with the oxygen 
 of the atmosphere. In general, the humidity in the crater 
 of the peak is more to be feared than the heat ; and they 
 who seat themselves for a while on the ground find their 
 clothes corroded. The porphyritic lavas are affected by the 
 action of the sulphuric acid : the alumine, magnesia, soda, 
 and metallic oxides gradually disappear ; and often nothing 
 remains but the silex, which unites in mammillary plates, 
 like opal. These siliceous concretions,* which M. Cordier 
 first made known, are similar to those found in the isle of 
 Ischia, in the extinguished volcanoes of Santa Fiora, and in 
 the Solfatara of Puzzuoli. It is not easy to form an idea of 
 the origin of these incrustations. The aqueous vapours, 
 discharged through great spiracles, do not contain alkali in 
 solution, like the waters of the G-eyser, in Iceland. Perhaps 
 the soda contained in the lavas of the peak acts an impor- 
 tant part in the formation of these deposits of silex. There 
 may exist in the crater small crevices, the vapours of which 
 are not of the same nature as those on which travellers, 
 whose attention has been directed simultaneously to a great 
 number of objects, have made experiments. 
 
 Seated on the northern- brink of the crater, I dug a hole 
 of some inches in depth ; and the thermometer placed in this 
 hole rose rapidly to 42°. Hence we may conclude what must 
 be the heat in this solfatara at the depth of thirty or forty 
 fathoms. The sulphur reduced into vapour is condensed 
 into fine crystals, which however are not equal in size to 
 those M. Dolomieu brought from Sicily. They are semi- 
 diaphanous octohedrons, very brilliant on the surface, and of 
 
 * Opalartiger Jcieselsinter. The siliceous gurh of the volcanoes of the 
 Isle of France contains, according to Klaproth, 0*72 silex, and 0*21 
 water; and thus comes near to opal, which Karsten considers as a hydrated 
 silex. 
 
HEAT 0 E THE GROUND. 
 
 79 
 
 a conchoidal fracture. These masses, which will one day 
 perhaps be objects of commerce, are constantly bedewed 
 with sulphurous acid. I had the imprudence to wrap up a 
 few, in order to preserve them, but I soon discovered that 
 the acid had consumed not only the paper which contained 
 them, but a part also of my mineralogical journal. The 
 heat of the vapours, which issue from the crevices of the 
 caldera, is not sufficiently great to combine the sulphur 
 while in a state of minute division, with the oxygen of the 
 atmospheric air ; and after the experiment I have just cited 
 on the temperature of the soil, we may presume that the 
 sulphurous acid is formed at a certain depth,* in cavities to 
 which the external air has free access. 
 
 The vapours of heated water, which act on the fragments 
 of lava scattered about on the caldera, reduce certain parts 
 of it to a state of paste. On examining, after I had reached 
 America, those earthy and friable masses, I found crystals of 
 sulphate of alumine. MM. Davy and G-ay-Lussac have 
 already made the ingenious remark, that two bodies highly 
 inflammable, the metals of soda and potash, have probably 
 an important part in the action of a volcano ; now the potash 
 necessary to the formation of alum is found not only in 
 feldspar, mica, pumice-stone, and augite, but also in obsidian. 
 This last substance is very common at Teneriffe, where it 
 forms the basis of the tephrinic lava. These analogies 
 between the peak of Teneriffe and the Solfatara of Puzzuoli, 
 might no doubt be shown to be more numerous, if the 
 former were more accessible, and had been frequently visited 
 by naturalists. 
 
 An expedition to the summit of the volcano of Teneriffe 
 is interesting, not solely on account of the great number of 
 phenomena which are the objects of scientific research; it 
 has still greater attractions from the picturesque beauties 
 which it lays open to those who are feelingly alive to the 
 majesty of nature. It is a difficult task to describe the 
 
 * An observer, in general very accurate, M. Breislack, asserts that the 
 muriatic acid always predominates in the vapours of Vesuvius. This 
 assertion is contrary to what M. Gay-Lussac and myself observed, before 
 the great eruption of 1805, and while the lava was issuing from the 
 crater. The smell of the sulphurous acid, so easy to distinguish, was 
 perceptible at a great distance ; and when the volcano threw out scoriæ, 
 the smell was mingled with that of petroleum. 
 
80 
 
 EXTENDED PBOSPECT. 
 
 sensations, which are the more forcible, inasmuch as they 
 have something undefined, produced by the immensity of the 
 space as well as by the vastness, the novelty, and the mul- 
 titude of the objects, amidst which we find ourselves tran- 
 sported. When a traveller attempts to describe the loftiest 
 summits of the globe, the cataracts of the great rivers, the 
 tortuous vallies of the Andes, he incurs the danger of 
 fatiguing his readers by the monotonous expression of his 
 admiration. It appears to me more conformable to the plan 
 I have proposed to myself in this narrative, to indicate the 
 peculiar character that distinguishes each zone : we exhibit 
 with more clearness the physiognomy of the landscape, in 
 proportion as we endeavour to sketch its individual features, 
 to compare them with each other, and to discover by this 
 kind of analysis the sources of the enjoyments, furnished by 
 the great picture of nature. 
 
 Travellers have learned by experience, that views from the 
 summits of very lofty mountains are neither so beautiful, 
 picturesque, nor so varied, as those from heights which do 
 not exceed that of Vesuvius, Righi, and the Puy-de-Dôme. 
 Colossal mountains, such as Chimborazo, Antisana, or Mount 
 Rosa, compose so large a mass, that the plains covered with 
 rich vegetation are seen only in the immensity of distance, 
 and a blue and vapoury tint is uniformly spread over the 
 landscape. The peak of Teneriffe, from its slender form and 
 local position, unites the advantages of less lofty summits 
 with those peculiar to very great heights. We not only 
 discern from its top a vast expanse of sea, but we perceive 
 also the forests of Teneriffe, and the inhabited parts of the 
 coasts, in a proximity calculated to produce the most beau- 
 tiful contrasts of form and colour. We might say, that the 
 volcano overwhelms with its mass the little island w]^ch 
 serves as its base, and it shoots up from the bosom of the 
 waters to a height three times loftier than the region where 
 the clouds float in summer. If its crater, half extinguished 
 for ages past, shot forth flakes of fire like that of Stromboli 
 in the JEolian Islands, the peak of Teneriffe, like a light- 
 house, would serve to guide the mariner in a circuit of more 
 than 260 leagues. 
 
 When we were seated on the external edge of the crater, 
 we turned our eyes towards the north-west, where the coasts 
 
ZONES OF VARIOUS VEGETATION. 
 
 81 
 
 are studded with villages and hamlets. At our feet, masses 
 of vapour, constantly drifted by the winds, afforded us the 
 most variable spectacle. A uniform stratum of clouds, si- 
 milar to that already described, and which separated us from 
 the lower regions of the island, had been pierced in several 
 places by the effect of the small currents of air, which the 
 earth, heated by the sun, began to send towards us. The 
 port of Orotava, its vessels at anchor, the gardens and 
 the vineyards encircling the town, shewed themselves 
 through an opening which seemed to enlarge every instant. 
 Prom the summit of these solitary regions our eyes wan- 
 dered over an inhabited world ; we enjoyed the striking con- 
 trast between the bare sides of the peak, its steep declivities 
 covered with scoriae, its elevated plains destitute of vege- 
 tation, and the smiling aspect of the cultured country 
 beneath. ~We beheld the plants divided by zones, as the 
 temperature of the atmosphere diminished with the eleva- 
 tion of the site. Below the Piton, lichens begin to cover 
 the scorious and lustrous lava: a violet,* akin to the 
 Yiola decumbens, rises on the. slope of the volcano at 1740 
 toises of height; it takes the lead not only of the other 
 herbaceous plants, but even of the gramina, which, in the 
 Alps and on the ridge of the Cordilleras, form close neigh- 
 bourhood with the plants of the family of the cryptogamia. 
 Tufts of rétama, loaded with flowers, adorn the vallies 
 hollowed out by the torrents, and encumbered with the 
 effects of the lateral eruptions. Below the rétama, lies 
 the region of ferns, bordered by the tract of the arbor- 
 escent heaths. Forests of laurel, rhamnus, and arbutus, 
 divide the ericas from the rising grounds planted with vines 
 and fruit trees. A rich carpet of verdure extends from 
 the plain of spartium, and the zone of the alpine plants 
 even to the groups of the date tree and the musa, at the 
 feet of which the ocean appears to roll. I here pass slightly 
 over the principal features of this botanical chart, as I shall 
 enter hereafter into some farther details respecting the geo- 
 graphy of the plants of the island of Teneriffe.f 
 
 The seeming proximity, in which, from the summit of the 
 peak, we behold the hamlets, the vineyards, and the gardens 
 on the coast, is increased by the prodigious transparency of 
 * Yiola cheiranthifolia. + See p. 114. 
 
82 
 
 CLEARNESS OE THE ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 the atmosphere. Notwithstanding the great distance, we 
 could distinguish not only the houses, the sails of the ves- 
 sels, and the trunks of the trees, but we could discern the 
 vivid colouring of the vegetation of the plains. These phe- 
 nomena are owing not only to the height of the site, but 
 to the peculiar modifications of the air in warm climates. 
 In every zone, an object placed on a level with the sea, 
 and viewed in a horizontal direction, appears less luminous, 
 than when seen from the top of a mountain, where vapours 
 arrive after passing through strata of air of decreasing 
 density. Differences equally striking are produced by the 
 influence of climate. The surface of a lake or large river is 
 less resplendent, when we see it at an equal distance, from 
 the top of the higher Alps of Switzerland, than when we 
 view it from the summit of the Cordilleras of Peru or of 
 Mexico. In proportion as the air is pure and serene, the 
 solution of the vapours becomes more complete, and the light 
 loses less in its passage. When from the shores of the Pacific 
 we ascend the elevated plain of Quito, or that of Antisana, 
 we are struck for some days by the nearness at which we 
 imagine we see objects which are actually seven or eight 
 leagues distant. The peak of Teyde has not the advantage 
 of being situated in the equinoctial region ; but the dryness 
 of the columns of air which rise perpetually above the neigh- 
 bouring plains of Africa, and which the eastern winds convey 
 with rapidity, gives to the atmosphere of the Canary Islands 
 a transparency which not only surpasses that of the air of 
 Naples and Sicily, but perhaps exceeds the purity of the 
 sky of Quito and Peru. This transparency may be re- 
 garded as one of the chief causes of the beauty of landscape 
 scenery in the torrid zone; it heightens the splendour of 
 the vegetable .colouring, and contributes to the magical 
 effect of its harmonies and contrasts. If the mass of 
 light, which circulates about objects, fatigues the external 
 senses during a part of the day, the inhabitant of the 
 southern climates has his compensation in moral enjoy- 
 ment. A lucid clearness in the conceptions, and a serenity 
 of mind, correspond with the transparency of the surround- 
 ing atmosphere. We feel these impressions without going 
 beyond the boundaries of Europe. I appeal to travellers 
 who have visited countries rendered famous by the great 
 
 
VIEW FBOM TUE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 83 
 
 creations of the imagination and of art, — the favoured climes 
 of Italy and Greece. 
 
 We prolonged in vain our stay on the summit of the Peak, 
 awaiting the moment when we might enjoy the view of the 
 whole of the archipelago of the Fortunate Islands we, how- 
 ever, descried Palma, Gomera, and the Great Canary, at our 
 feet. The mountains of Lancerota, free from vapours at sun- 
 rise, were soon enveloped in thick clouds. Supposing only 
 an ordinary refraction, the eye takes in, in calm weather, from 
 the summit of the volcano, a surface of the globe of 5700 
 square leagues, equal to a fourth of the superficies of Spain. 
 The question has often been agitated, whether it be possible 
 to perceive the coast of Africa from the top of this colossal 
 pyramid ; but the nearest parts of that coast are still farther 
 from Teneriffe than 2° 49', or 56 leagues. The visual ray of 
 the horizon from the Peak being 1° 57', cape Bojador can be 
 seen only on the supposition of its height being 200 toises 
 above the level of the ocean. We are ignorant of the height 
 of the Black Mountains near cape Bojador, as well as of that 
 peak, called by navigators the Penon Grande, farther to the 
 south of this promontory. If the summit of the volcano 
 of Teneriffe were more accessible, we should observe with- 
 out doubt, in certain states of the wind, the effects of an 
 extraordinary refraction. On perusing what Spanish and 
 Portuguese authors relate respecting the existence of the 
 fabulous isle of San Borondon, or Antilia, we find that it is 
 particularly the humid wind from west-south-west, which 
 produces in these latitudes the phenomena of the mirage. 
 We shall not however admit with M. Vieyra, “ that the play 
 of the terrestrial refractions may render visible to the in- 
 habitants of the Canaries the islands of Cape Yerd, and even 
 the Apalachian mountains of Am erica. ”f * 
 
 * Of all the small islands of the Canaries, the Rock of the East is the 
 only one which cannot be seen, even in fine weather, from the top of the 
 Peak. Its distance is 3° 5', while that of the Salvage is only 2° 1'. The 
 island of Madeira, distant 4° 29', would be visible, if its mountains were 
 more than 3,000 toises high. 
 
 f The American fruits, frequently thrown by the sea on the coasts of 
 the islands of Ferro and Gomera, were formerly supposed to emanate 
 from the plants of the island of San Borondon. This island, said to 
 be governed by an archbishop and six bishops, and which Father Feijoo 
 believed to be the image of the island of Ferro, reflected on a fog-bank, 
 
 a 2 
 
84 
 
 TALL OF THE TEMPEBATUBE. 
 
 The cold we felt on the top of the Peak, was very consi- 
 derable for the season. The centigrade thermometer, at a 
 distance from the ground, and from the apertures that emitted 
 the hot vapours, fell in the shade to 2'7°. The wind was 
 west, and consequently opposite to that which brings to 
 Teneriffe, during a great part of the year, the warm air that 
 floats above the burning desert of Africa. As the temperature 
 of the atmosphere, observed at the port of Orotava by M. 
 Savagi, was 22 • 8°, the decrement of caloric was one degree 
 every 94 toises. This result perfectly corresponds with those 
 obtained by Lamanon and Saussure on the summits of the 
 Peak and Etna, though in very different seasons. The tall 
 slender form of these mountains facilitates the means of com- 
 paring the temperature of two strata of the atmosphere, which 
 are nearly in the same perpendicular plane ; and in this 
 point of view the observations made in an excursion to the 
 volcano of Teneriffe resemble those of an ascent in a balloon. 
 We must nevertheless remark, that the ocean, on account of 
 its transparency and evaporation, reflects less caloric than 
 the plains, into the upper regions of the air ; and also that 
 summits which are surrounded by the sea are colder in sum- 
 mer, than mountains which rise from a continent ; but this 
 circumstance has very little influence on the decrement of 
 atmospherical heat ; the temperature of the low regions being 
 equally diminished by the proximity of the ocean. 
 
 It is not the same with respect to the influence exercised 
 by the direction of the wind, and the rapidity of the ascending 
 current ; the latter sometimes increases in an astonishing 
 manner the temperature of the loftiest mountains. I have 
 seen the thermometer rise, on the slope of the volcano of 
 Antisana, in the kingdom of Quito, to 19°, when we were 
 2837 toises high. M. Labillardière has seen it, on the edge 
 of the crater of the peak of Teneriffe, at 18*7°, though he 
 had used every possible precaution to avoid the effect of 
 accidental causes. 
 
 On the summit of the Peak, we beheld with admiration 
 the azure colour of the sky. Its intensity at the zenith ap- 
 peared to correspond to 41° of the cvanometer. "We know, 
 
 was ceded in the 16 th century, by the King of Portugal, to Lewis Per- 
 digon, at the time the latter was preparing to take possession of it by 
 conquest. 
 
ABSENCE OF YEGETATION. 
 
 85 
 
 by Saussure’s experiment, that this intensity increases with 
 the rarity of the air, and that the same instrument marked 
 at the same period 39° at the priory of Chamouni, and 40° 
 at the top of Mont Blanc. This last mountain is 540 toises 
 higher than the volcano of Teneriffe ; and if, notwithstand- 
 ing this difference, the sky is observed there to be of a less 
 deep blue, we must attribute this phenomenon to the dryness 
 of the African air, and the proximity of the torrid zone. 
 
 We collected on the brink of the crater, some air which we 
 meant to analyse on our voyage to America. The phial re- 
 mained so well corked, that on opening it ten days after, the 
 water rushed in with impetuosity. Several experiments, 
 made by means of nitrous gas in the narrow tube of Fontana’s 
 eudiometer, seemed to prove that the air of the crater con- 
 tained 0‘09° less oxygen than the air of the sea ; but I have 
 little confidence in this result obtained by means which we 
 now consider as very inexact. The crater of the Peak has so 
 little depth, and the air is renewed with so much facility, 
 that it is scarcely probable the quantity of azote is greater 
 there than on the coasts. We know also, from the experi- 
 ments of MM. Gay-Lussac and Theodore de Saussure, that 
 in the highest as well as in the lowest regions of the atmo- 
 sphere, the air equally contains 0*21 of oxygen.* 
 
 We saw on the summit of the Peak no trace of psora, 
 lecidea, or other cryptogam ous plants ; no insect fluttered 
 in the air. We found however a few hymenoptera adhering 
 to masses of sulphur moistened with sulphurous acid, and 
 lining the mouths of the funnels. These are bees, which 
 appear to have been attracted by the flowers of the Spartium 
 nubigenum, and which oblique currents of air had carried 
 up to these high regions, like the butterflies found by M. 
 Bamond at the top of Mont Perdu. The butterflies perished 
 from cold, while the bees on the Peak were scorched on im- 
 prudently approaching the crevices where they came in 
 search of warmth. 
 
 * During the stay of M. Gay-Lussac and myself at the hospice 
 of Mont Cenis, in March 1805, we collected air in the midst of a 
 cloud loaded with electricity. This air, analysed in Volta’s eudiometer, 
 contained no hydrogen, and its purity did not differ 0*002 of oxygen from 
 the air of Paris, which we had carried with us in phials hermetically 
 sealed. 
 
86 
 
 DESCENT EEOM THE PEAK. 
 
 N otwithstanding tlie heat we felt in our feet on the edge 
 of the crater, the cone of ashes remains covered with snow 
 during several months in winter. It is probable, that under 
 the cap of snow considerable hollows are found, like those 
 existing under the glaciers of Switzerland, the temperature 
 of which is constantly less elevated than that of the soil on 
 which they repose. The cold and violent wind, which blew 
 from the time of sunrise, induced us to seek shelter at the 
 foot of the Piton. Our hands and faces were nearly frozen, 
 while our boots were burnt by the soil on which we walked. 
 "We descended in the space of a few minutes the Sugar-loaf 
 which we had scaled with so much toil ; and this rapidity 
 was in part involuntary, for we often rolled down on the 
 ashes. It was with regret that we quitted this solitude, 
 this domain where Nature reigns in all her majesty. We 
 consoled ourselves with the hope of once again visiting 
 the Canary Islands, but this, like many other plans we then 
 formed, has never been executed. 
 
 We traversed the Malpays but slowly ; for the foot finds 
 no sure foundation on the loose blocks of lava. Nearer the 
 station of the rocks, the descent becomes extremely difficult ; 
 the compact short-swarded turf is so slippery, that we were 
 obliged to incline our bodies continually backward, in order 
 to avoid falling. In the sandy plain of Eetama, the thermo- 
 meter rose to 22 5 ° ; and this heat seemed to us suffocating 
 in comparison with the cold, which we had suffered from the 
 air on the summit of the volcano. We were absolutely 
 without water ; our guides, not satisfied with drinking clan- 
 destinely the little supply of malmsey wine, for which we 
 were indebted to Don Cologan’s kindness, had broken our 
 water jars. Happily the bottle which contained the air of 
 the crater escaped unhurt. 
 
 We at length enjoyed the refreshing breeze in the beauti- 
 ful region of the arborescent erica and fern ; and we were 
 enveloped in a thick bed of clouds stationary at six hundred 
 toises above the plain. The clouds having dispersed, we re- 
 marked a phenomenon which afterwards became familiar to 
 us on the declivities of the Cordilleras. Small currents of 
 air chased trains of cloud with unequal velocity, and in oppo- 
 site directions : they bore the appearance of streamlets of 
 water in rapid motion and flowing in all directions, amidst a 
 
RETURN TO OROTAYA. 
 
 87 
 
 great mass of stagnant water. The causes of this partial 
 motion of the clouds are probably very various ; we may 
 suppose them to arise from some impulsion at a great dis- 
 tance ; from the slight inequalities of the soil, which reflects 
 in a greater or less degree the radiant heat ; from a difference 
 of temperature kept up by some chemical action ; or perhaps 
 from a strong electric charge of the vesicular vapours. 
 
 As we approached the town of Orotava, we met great 
 flocks of canaries.* These birds, well known in Europe, 
 were in general uniformly green. Some, however, had a 
 yellow tinge on their hacks ; their note was the same as that 
 of the tame canary. It is nevertheless remarked, that those 
 which have been taken in the island of the Great Canary, and 
 in the islet of Monte Clara, near Lancerota, have a louder 
 and at the same time a more harmonious song. In every zone, 
 among birds of the same species, each flock has its peculiar 
 note. The yellow canaries are a variety, which has taken 
 birth in Europe ; and those we saw in cages at Orotava and 
 Santa Cruz had been bought at Cadiz, and in other ports of 
 Spain . But of all the birds of the Canary Islands, that which 
 has the most heart-soothing song is unknown in Europe. 
 It is the capirote, which no effort has succeeded in taming, 
 so sacred to his soul is liberty. I have stood listening in ad- 
 miration of his soft and melodious warbling, in a garden at 
 Orotava ; but I have never seen him sufficiently near to as- 
 certain to what family he belongs. As to the parrots, which 
 were supposed to have been seen at the period of captain 
 Cook’s abode at Teneriffe, they never existed but in the 
 narratives of a few travellers, who have copied from each 
 other. Neither parrots nor monkeys inhabit the Canary 
 Islands ; and though in the New Continent the former 
 migrate as far as North Carolina, I doubt whether in the 
 Old they have ever been met with beyond the 28th degree 
 of north latitude. 
 
 Toward the close of day we reached the port of Orotava, 
 where we received the unexpected intelligence that the Pizarro 
 would not set sail till the 24th or 25th. If we could have 
 calculated on this delay, we should either have lengthened 
 
 • Fringilla Canaria. La Caille relates, in the narrative of his voyage 
 to the Cape, that on Salvage Island these canaries are so abundant, that 
 you cannot walk there in a certain season without breaking their eggs. 
 
88 
 
 fiées on st. John’s eye. 
 
 our stay on the Peak,* or have made an excursion to the 
 volcano of Chahorra. We passed the following day in visit- 
 ing the environs of Orotava, and enjoying the agreeable corn- 
 company we found at Don Cologan’s. We perceived that 
 Teneriffe had attractions not only to those who devote them- 
 selves to the study of nature : we found at Orotava several 
 persons possessing a taste for literature and music, and who 
 have transplanted into these distant climes the amenity of 
 European society. In these respects the Canary Islands 
 have no great resemblance to the other Spanish colonies, 
 excepting the Havannab. 
 
 We were present on the eve of St. John at a pastoral 
 fête in the garden of Mr. Little. This gentleman, who 
 rendered great service to the Canarians during the last 
 famine, has cultivated a hill covered with volcanic substances. 
 He has formed in this delicious site an English garden, 
 whence there is a magnificent view of the Peak, of the 
 villages along the coast, and the isle of Palma, which is 
 bounded by the vast expanse of the Atlantic. I cannot com- 
 pare this prospect with any, except the views of the bays of 
 Genoa and Naples ; but Orotava is greatly superior to both 
 in the magnitude of the masses and in the richness of vege- 
 tation. In the beginning of the evening the slope of the 
 volcano exhibited on a sudden a most extraordinary spectacle. 
 The shepherds, in conformity to a custom, no doubt introduced 
 by the Spaniards, though it dates from the highest antiquity, 
 had lighted the fires of St. John. The scattered masses of 
 fire and the columns of smoke driven by the wind, formed a 
 fine contrast with the deep verdure of the forests which 
 covered the sides of the Peak. Shouts of joy resounding 
 
 * As a great number of travellers who land at Santa Cruz, do not 
 undertake the excursion to the Peak, because they are ignorant of the 
 time it occupies, it may be useful to lay down the following data : In 
 making use of mules as far as the Estancia de los Ingleses, it takes twenty- 
 one hours from Orotava to arrive at the summit of the Peak, and return 
 to the port ; namely, from Orotava to the Pino del Dornajito three hours ; 
 from the Pino to the Station of the Rocks six hours ; and from this 
 station to the Caldera three hours and a half. I reckon nine hours for the 
 descent. In this calculation I count only the time employed in walking, 
 without reckoning that which is necessary for examining the productions 
 of the Peak, or for taking rest. Half a day is sufficient for going from 
 Santa Cruz to Orotava. 
 
BOUDA’ S MEASUBEMENTS. 
 
 89 
 
 from afar were the only sounds that broke the silence of 
 nature in these solitary regions. 
 
 Don Cologan’s family has a country-house nearer the 
 coast than that I have just mentioned. This house, called 
 La Paz, is connected with a circumstance that rendered it 
 peculiarly interesting to us. M. de Borda, whose death we 
 deplored, was its inmate during his last visit to the Canary 
 Islands. It was in a neighbouring plain that he measured 
 the base, by which he determined the height of the Peak. 
 In this geometrical operation the great dracæna of Orotava 
 served as a mark. Should any well-informed traveller at 
 some future day undertake a new measurement of the vol- 
 cano with more exactness, and by the help of astronomical 
 repeating circles, he ought to measure the base, not near Oro- 
 taval, but near Los Silos, at a place called Bante. According 
 to M. Broussonnet there is no plain near the Peak of greater 
 extent. In herborizing near La Paz we found a great quan- 
 tity of Lichen roccella on the basaltic rocks bathed by the 
 waters of the sea. The archil of the Canaries is a very 
 ancient branch of commerce ; this lichen is however found 
 in less abundance in the island of Teneriffe than in the 
 desert islands of Salvage, La Graciosa, and Alegranza, or 
 even in Canary and Hierro. We left the port of Orotava 
 on the 24th of June. 
 
 To avoid disconnecting the narrative of the excursion to 
 the top of the Peak, I have said nothing of the geological 
 observations I made on the structure of this colossal moun- 
 tain, and on the nature of the volcanic rocks of which it is 
 composed. Before we quit the archipelago of the Canaries, 
 I shall linger for a moment, and bring into one point of view 
 some facts relating to the physical aspect of those countries. 
 
 Mineralogists who think that the end of the geology of 
 volcanoes is the classification of lavas, the examination of 
 the crystals they contain, and their description according to 
 their external characters, are generally very well satisfied 
 when they come back from the mouth of a burning volcano. 
 They return loaded with those numerous collections, which are 
 the principal objects of their research. This is not the feel- 
 ing of those who, without confounding descriptive minera- 
 logy (oryctognosy) with geognosy, endeavour to raise them- 
 
90 
 
 GEOLOGICAL QUERIES. 
 
 selves to ideas generally interesting, and seek, in the study 
 of nature, for answers to the following questions : — 
 
 Is the conical mountain of a volcano entirely formed of 
 liquified matter heaped together by successive eruptions, 
 or does it contain in its centre a nucleus of primitive rocks 
 covered with lava, which are these same rocks altered by 
 fire ? What are the affinities which unite the productions 
 of modern volcanoes with the basalts, the phonolites, and 
 those porphyries with bases of feldspar, which are without 
 quartz, and which cover the Cordilleras of Peru and Mexico, 
 as well as the small groups of the Monts Dorés, of Cantal, 
 and of Mezen in France ? Has the central nucleus of vol- 
 canoes been heated in its primitive position, and raised up, 
 in a softened state, by the force of the elastic vapours, 
 before these fluids communicated, by means of a crater, with 
 the external air ? What is the substance, which, for thou- 
 sands of years, keeps up this combustion, sometimes so 
 slow, and at other times so active? Does this unknown 
 cause act at an immense depth ; or does this chemical action 
 take place in secondary rocks lying on granite ? 
 
 The farther we are from finding a solution of these prob- 
 lems in the numerous works hitherto published on Etna and 
 Vesuvius, the greater is the desire of the traveller to see 
 with his own eyes. He hopes to be more fortunate than 
 those who have preceded him ; he wishes to form a precise 
 idea of the geological relations which the volcano and the 
 neighbouring mountains bear to each other : but how often 
 is he disappointed, when, on the limits of the primitive soil, 
 enormous banks of tufa and puzzolana render every observa- 
 tion on the position and stratification impossible ! We reach 
 the inside of the crater with less difficulty than we at first 
 expect ; we examine the cone from its summit to its base ; 
 we are struck with the difference in the produce of each 
 eruption, and with the analogy which still exists between 
 the lavas of the same volcano ; but, notwithstanding the 
 care with which we interrogate nature, and the number of 
 partial observations which present themselves at every step, 
 we return from the summit of a burning volcano less satis- 
 fied than when we were preparing to visit it. It is after we 
 have studied them on the spot, that the volcanic phenomena 
 
ISOLATED POSITION OE VOLCANOES. 
 
 91 
 
 appear still more isolated, more variable, more obscure, than 
 we imagine them when consulting the narratives of travellers. 
 
 These reflections occurred to me on descending from the 
 summit of the peak of Teneriffe, the first unextinct volcano 
 I had yet visited. They returned anew whenever, in South 
 America, or in Mexico, I had occasion to examine volcanic 
 mountains. When we reflect how little the labours of 
 mineralogists, and the discoveries in chemistry, have pro- 
 moted the knowledge of the physical geology of mountains, 
 we cannot help being affected with a painful sentiment ; and 
 this is felt still more strongly by those, who, studying 
 nature in different climates, are more occupied by the pro- 
 blems they have not been able to solve, than with the few 
 results they have obtained. 
 
 The peak of Ayadyrma, or of Echeyde,* is a conic and 
 isolated mountain, which rises in an islet of very small cir- 
 cumference. Those who do not take into consideration 
 the whole surface of the globe, believe, that these three 
 circumstances are common to the greater part of volcanoes. 
 They cite, in support of their opinion, Etna, the peak of the 
 Azores, the Solfatara of Guadaloupe, the Trois-Saiazes of 
 the isle of Bourbon, and the clusters of volcanoes in the In- 
 dian Sea and in the Atlantic. In Europe and in Asia, as far 
 as the interior of the latter continent is known, no burning 
 volcano is situated in the chains of mountains ; all being at 
 a greater or less distance from those chains. In the New 
 World, on the contrary, (and this fact deserves the greatest 
 attention,) the volcanoes the most stupendous for their 
 masses form a part of the Cordilleras themselves. The 
 mountains of mica-slate and gneiss in Peru and New Gre- 
 nada immediately touch the volcanic porphyries of the pro- 
 vinces of Quito and Pasto. To the south and north of these 
 countries, in Chile and in the kingdom of Guatimala, the 
 active volcanoes are grouped in rows. They are the conti- 
 nuation, as we may say, of the chains of primitive rocks ; 
 and if the volcanic fire has broken forth in some plain 'remote 
 from the Cordilleras, as in mount Sangay and Jorullo,t we 
 
 * The word Echeyde, which signifies Hell in the language of the 
 Guanches, has been corrupted by the Europeans into Teyde. 
 
 + Two volcanoes of the Provinces of Quixos and Mechoacan, the one 
 in the southern, and the other in the northern hemisphere. 
 
92 
 
 SHAPE OF YOLCANIC MOUNTAINS. 
 
 must consider this phenomenon as an exception to the law, 
 which nature seems to have imposed on these regions. I may 
 here repeat these geological facts, because this presumed 
 isolated situation of every volcano has been cited in oppo- 
 sition to the idea that the peak of Teneriffe, and the other 
 volcanic summits of the Canary Islands, are the remains oi 
 a submerged chain of mountains. The observations which 
 have been made on the grouping of volcanoes in Ame- 
 rica, prove that the ancient state of things represented in 
 the conjectural map of the Atlantic by M. Bory de St. 
 Vincent* is by no means contradictory to the acknowledged 
 laws of nature; and that nothing opposes the supposition 
 that the summits of Porto Santo, Madeira, and the Fortu- 
 nate Islands, may heretofore have formed, either a distinct 
 range of primitive mountains, or the western extremity of 
 the chain of the Atlas. 
 
 The peak of Teyde forms a pyramidal mass like Etna, 
 Tungurahua, and Popocatepetl. This physiognomic cha- 
 racter is very far from being common to all volcanoes. We 
 have seen some in the southern hemisphere, which, instead 
 of having the form of a cone or a bell, are lengthened in one 
 direction, having the ridge sometimes smooth, and at others 
 bristled with small pointed rocks. This structure is peculiar 
 to Antisana and Pichincha, two burning mountains of the 
 province of Quito ; and the absence of the conic form ought 
 never to be considered as a reason excluding the idea of 
 a volcanic origin. I shall develope, in the progress of this 
 work, some of the analogies, which I think I have perceived 
 between the physiognomy of volcanoes and the antiquity 
 of their rocks. It is sufficient to state, generally speaking, 
 that the summits, which are still subject to eruptions of 
 the greatest violence, and at the nearest periods to each 
 other, are slender peaks of a conic form ; that the mountains 
 with lengthened summits , and rugged with small stony 
 
 * Whether the traditions of the ancients respecting the Atlantis are 
 founded' on historical facts, is a matter totally distinct from the question 
 whether the archipelago of the Canaries and the adjacent islands are the 
 vestiges of a chain of mountains, rent and sunk in the sea during one of 
 the great convulsions of our globe. I do not pretend to form any opinion 
 in favour of the existence of the Atlantis ; but I endeavour to prove, that 
 the Canaries have no more been created by volcanoes, than the whole 
 body of the smaller Antilles has been formed by madrepores. 
 
THEIE EXTERNAL STRUCTURE. 
 
 93 
 
 masses, are very old volcanoes, and near being extinguished; 
 and that rounded tops, in the form of domes, or bells, indi- 
 cate those problematic porphyries, which are supposed to 
 have been heated in their primitive position, penetrated by 
 vapours, and forced up in a mollified state, without having 
 ever flowed as real lithoidal lavas. To the first class be- 
 long Cotopaxi, the peak of Tenerifle, and the peak of Ori- 
 zava in Mexico. In the second may be placed Cargueirazo 
 and Pichincha, in the province of Quito ; the volcano of 
 Puracey, near Popayan; and perhaps also Hecla, in Ice- 
 land. In the third and last we may rank the majestic figure 
 of Chimborazo, and, (if it be allowable to place by the side 
 of that colossus a hill of Europe,) the Great Sarcouy in 
 Auvergne. 
 
 In order to form a more exact idea of the external struc- 
 ture of volcanoes, it is important to compare their perpen- 
 dicular height with their circumference. This, however, 
 cannot be done with any exactness, unless the mountains 
 are isolated, and rising on a plain nearly on a level with the 
 sea. In calculating the circumference of the peak of Tene- 
 rifie in a curve passing through the port of Orotava, Gara- 
 j chico, Adexe, and Guimar, and setting aside the prolonga- 
 I tions of its base towards the forest of Laguna, and the 
 
 I north-east cape of the island, we find that this extent is 
 more than 54,000 toises. The height of the Peak is con- 
 sequently one twenty-eighth of the circumference of its 
 basis. M. von Buch found a thirty-third for Vesuvius; 
 and, which perhaps is less certain, a thirty-fourth for Etna.* 
 If the slope of these three volcanoes were uniform from the 
 summit to the base, the peak of Teyde would have an incli- 
 nation of 12° 29', Vesuvius 12° 4P, and Etna 10° 13': a 
 result which must astonish those who do not reflect on what 
 ! constitutes an average slope. In a very long ascent, slopes 
 
 * Gilbert, Annalen der Pbysik, B. 5, p. 455. Vesuvius is 133,000 
 palmas, or eighteen nautical miles in circumference. The horizontal dis- 
 tance from Resina to the crater is 3,700 toises. Italian mineralogists 
 have estimated the circumference of Etna at 840,000 palmas, or 119 
 miles. With these data, the ratio of the height to the circumference 
 would be only a seventy-second; but I find on tracing a curve through 
 Catania, Palermo, Bronte, and Piemonte, only 62 miles in circumference, 
 according to the best maps. This increases the ratio to a fifty-fourth. 
 
 ! Does the basis fall on the outside of the curve that I assume ? 
 
94 
 
 ANALOGOUS CONFIGURATION. 
 
 of three or four degrees alternate with others which are 
 inclined from 25 to 30 degrees ; and the latter only strike 
 our imagination, because we think all the slopes of moun- 
 tains more steep than they really are. I may cite in sup- 
 port of this consideration the example of the ascent from 
 the port of Vera Cruz to the elevated plain of Mexico. On 
 the eastern slope of the Cordillera a road has been traced, 
 which for ages has not been frequented except on foot, or 
 on the backs of mules. From Encero to the small Indian 
 village of Las Vigas, there are 7500 toises of horizontal 
 distance; and Encero being, according to my barometric 
 measurement, 746 toises lower than Las Vigas, the result, 
 for the mean slope, is only an angle of 5° 40'. 
 
 In the note at the foot of this page will be seen the 
 results of some experiments I have made on the difficulties 
 arising from the declivities in mountainous countries.* 
 
 Isolated volcanoes, in the most distant regions, are very 
 analogous in their structure. At great elevations all have 
 considerable plains, in the middle of which arises a cone 
 perfectly circular. Thus at Cotopaxi the plains of Suni- 
 guaicu extend beyond the farm of Pansache. The stony 
 summit of Antisana, covered with eternal snow, forms an 
 islet in the midst of an immense plain, the surface of which 
 is twelve leagues square, while its height exceeds that of 
 the peak of Teneriffe by two hundred toises. At Vesuvius, 
 
 * In places where there were at the same time slopes covered with 
 tufted grass and loose sands, I took the following measures : — 
 
 5°, slope of a very marked inclination. In France the high roads 
 must not exceed 4° 46' by law; 
 
 15°, slope extremely steep, and which we cannot descend in a 
 carriage ; 
 
 37°, slope almost inaccessible on foot, if the ground be naked 
 rock, or turf too thick to form steps. The body falls backwards 
 when the tibia makes a smaller angle than 53° with the sole 
 of the foot ; 
 
 42°, the steepest slope that can be climbed on foot in a ground that 
 is sandy, or covered with volcanic ashes. 
 
 When the slope is 44°, it is almost impossible to scale it, though the 
 ground permits the forming of steps by thrusting in the foot. The cones 
 of volcanoes have a medium slope from 33° to 40°. The steepest parts 
 of these cones, either of Vesuvius, the Peak of Teneriffe, the volcano of 
 Pichincha, or Jorullo, are from 40° to 42°. A slope of 55° is quite inac- 
 cessible. If seen from above it would be estimated at 75°. 
 
GE2TEEAL PROPORTIONS. 
 
 95 
 
 at three hundred and seventy toises high, the cone detaches 
 itself from the plain of Atrio dei Cavalli. The peak of 
 Teneriffe presents two of these elevated plains, the upper- 
 most of which, at the foot of the Piton, is as high as Etna, 
 and of very little extent ; while the lowermost, covered with 
 tufts of rétama, reaches as far as the Estancia de los In- 
 gleses. This rises above the level of the sea almost as high 
 as the city of Quito, and the summit of Mount Lebanon. 
 
 The greater the quantity of matter that has issued from 
 the crater of a mountain, the more elevated is its cone of 
 ashes in proportion to the perpendicular height of the vol- 
 cano itself. Nothing is more striking, under this point of 
 view, than the difference of structure between Vesuvius, the 
 peak of Teneriffe, and Pichincha. I have chosen this last 
 volcano in preference, because its summit* enters scarcely 
 within the limit of the perpetual snows. The cone of Coto- 
 paxi, the form of which is the most elegant and most regular 
 known, is 540 toises in height ; hut it is impossible to decide 
 whether the whole of this mass is covered with ashes. 
 
 Names of the volcanoes. 
 
 Total height 
 in toises. 
 
 Height of the 
 cone covered 
 with ashes. 
 
 Proportion of 
 the cone to the 
 total height. 
 
 Vesuvius 
 
 606 
 
 200 
 
 
 Peak of Teneriffe . 
 
 1904 
 
 84 
 
 à 
 
 Pichincha 
 
 2490 
 
 240 
 
 To 
 
 This table seems to indicate, what we shall have an op- 
 portunity of proving more amply hereafter, that the peak of 
 Teneriffe belongs to that group of great volcanoes, which, 
 like Etna and Antisana, have had more copious eruptions 
 from their sides than from their summits. Thus the crater 
 at the extremity of the Piton, which is called the Caldera, 
 
 * I have measured the summit of Pichincha, that is the small moun- 
 tain covered with ashes above the Llano del Vulcan, to the north of Alto 
 de Chuquira. This mountain has not, however, the regular form of a cone. 
 As to Vesuvius, I have indicated the mean height of the Sugar-loaf, on 
 account of the great difference between the two edges of the crater. 
 
9G 
 
 GEOGNOSY OF TENERIFFE. 
 
 is extremely small. Its diminutive size struck M. de Borda, 
 and other travellers, who took little interest in geological 
 investigations. 
 
 As to the nature of the rocks which compose the soil of 
 Teneriffe, we must first distinguish between productions of 
 the present volcano, and the range of basaltic mountains 
 which surround the Peak, and which do not rise more than 
 five or six hundred toises above the level of the ocean. 
 Here, as well as in Italy, Mexico, and the Cordilleras of 
 Quito, the rocks of trap-formation * are at a distance from 
 the recent currents of lava; everything shows that these 
 two classes of substances, though they owe their origin to 
 similar phenomena, date from very different periods. It is 
 important to geology not to confound the modern currents of 
 lava, the heaps of basalt, green-stone, and phonolite, dis- 
 persed over the primitive and secondary formations, with 
 those porphyroid masses having bases of compact feldspar, f 
 which perhaps have never been perfectly liquified, but which 
 do not less belong to the domain of volcanoes. 
 
 In the island of Teneriffe, strata of tufa, puzzolana, and 
 ciay, separate the range of basaltic hills from the currents of 
 recent lithoid lava, and from the eruptions of the present 
 volcano. In the same manner as the eruptions of Epomeo 
 in the island of Ischia, and those of Jorullo in Mexico, have 
 taken place in countries covered with trappean porphyry, 
 ancient basalt, and volcanic ashes, so the peak of Teyde has 
 raised itself amidst the wrecks of submarine volcanoes. 
 Notwithstanding the difference of composition in the recent 
 lavas of the Peak, there is a certain regularity of position, 
 which must strike the naturalist least skilled in geognosy. 
 The great elevated plain of B-etama separates the black, 
 basaltic, and earthlike lava, from the vitreous and feldsparry 
 
 * The trap-formation includes the basalts, green-stone ( grunstein ), 
 the trappean porphyries, the phonolites or porphyrschiefer, &c. 
 
 f These petrosiliceous masses contain vitreous and often calcined 
 crystals of feldspar, of amphibole, of pyroxene, a little of olivine, but 
 scarcely any quartz. To this very ambiguous formation belong the 
 trappean porphyries of Chimborazo and of Riobamba in America, of the 
 DugaDean mountains in Italy, and of the Siebengebirge in Germany ; as 
 well as the domites of the Great -Sarcouy, of Puy-de-Dôme, of the Little 
 Cleirsou, and of one part of the Puy-Chopine in Auvergne. 
 
GEOLOGY OE THE PEAK. 
 
 97 
 
 lava, the basis of which is obsidian, pitch-stone, and phono- 
 lite. This phenomenon is the more remarkable, inasmuch as 
 in Bohemia and in other parts of Europe, the porphyrschiefer 
 with base of phonolite* covers also the convex summits of 
 basaltic mountains. 
 
 It has already been observed, that from the level of the sea to 
 Portillo, and as far as the entrance on the elevated plain of 
 the Rétama, that is, two-thirds of the total height of the 
 volcano, the ground is so covered with plants, that it is diffi- 
 cult to make geological observations. The currents of lava, 
 which we discover on the slope of Monte Verde, between 
 the beautiful spring of Dornajito and Caravela, are black 
 masses, altered by decomposition, sometimes porous, and 
 with very oblong pores. The basis of these lower lavas is 
 rather wacke than basalt ; when it is spongy, it resembles 
 the amygdaloidsf of Erankfort-on-the-Maine. Its fracture 
 is generally irregular; wherever it is conchoidal, we may 
 presume that the cooling has been more rapid, and the mass 
 has been exposed to a less powerful pressure. These cur- 
 rents of lava are not divided into regular prisms, but into 
 very thin layers, not very regular in their inclination ; they 
 contain much olivine, small grains of magnetic iron, and 
 augite, the colour of which often varies from deep leek- 
 green to olive green, and which might be mistaken for 
 crystallized olivine, though no transition from one to the 
 other of these substances exists.^; Amphibole is in general 
 very rare at Teneriffe, not only in the modern lithoid lavas, 
 but also in the ancient basalts, as has been observed by 
 M. Cordier, who resided longer at the Canaries than any 
 other mineralogist. Nepheline, leucite, idocrase, and rneio- 
 nite have not yet been seen at the peak of Teneriffe ; for a 
 reddish-gray lava, which we found on the slope of Monte 
 Verde, and which contains small microscopic crystals, 
 appears to me to be a close mixture of basalt and anal- 
 
 * Klingstein. Werner, 
 f Wakkenartiger mandelstein. Steinkaute. 
 
 $ Steffens, Handbuch der Oryktognosie, tom. i, s. 364. The crystals 
 which Mr. Friesleben and myself have made known under the denomina- 
 tion of foliated olivine ( blattriyer olivin) belong, according to Mr. 
 Karsten, to the pyroxene augite. Journal des Mines de Freiberg, 1791, 
 p. 215. 
 
 YOL. I, 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 GEOLOGY OF THE PEAK. 
 
 cime. # In like manner the lava of Scala, with which the 
 city of Naples is paved, contains a close mixture of basalt, 
 nepheline, and leucite. With respect to this last substance, 
 which has hitherto been observed only at Vesuvius and in 
 the environs of Rome, it exists perhaps at the peak of Tene- 
 riffe, in the old currents of lava now covered by more 
 recent ejections. Vesuvius, during a long series of years, 
 has also thrown out lavas without leucites : and if it he true, 
 as M. von Buch has rendered very probable, that these 
 crystals are formed only in the currents which flow either 
 from the crater itself, or very near its brink, we must not be 
 surprised at not finding them in the lavas of the peak. 
 The latter almost all proceed from lateral eruptions, and con- 
 sequently have been exposed to an enormous pressure in the 
 interior of the volcano. 
 
 In the plain of Rétama, the basaltic lavas disappear under 
 heaps of ashes, and pumice-stone reduced to powder. Thence 
 to the summit, from 1,500 to 1,900 toises in height, the vol- 
 cano exhibits only vitreous lava with bases of pitch-stonef 
 and obsidian. These lavas, destitute of amphibole and 
 mica, are of a blackish brown, often varying to the deepest 
 olive green. They contain large crystals of feldspar, which 
 are not fissured, and seldom vitreous. The analogy of those 
 decidedly volcanic masses with the resinite porphyries^ of 
 the valley of Tribisch in Saxony is very remarkable; but 
 the latter, which belong to an extended and metalliferous 
 formation of porphyry, often contain quartz, which is want- 
 ing in the modem lavas. When the basis of the lavas of 
 the Malpays changes from pitchstone to obsidian, its colour 
 is paler, and is mixed with gray ; in this case, the feldspar 
 passes by imperceptible gradations from the common to the 
 vitreous. Sometimes both varieties meet in the same frag- 
 ment, as we observed also in the trappean porphyries of the 
 valley of Mexico. The feldsparry lavas of the Peak, of a 
 much less black tinge than those of Arso in the island of 
 
 * This substance, which M. Dolomieu discovered in the amygdaloids 
 of Catania in Sicily, and which accompanies the stilbites of Fassa in 
 Tyrol, forms, with the chabasie of Haiiy, the genus Cubicit of Werner. 
 M. Cordier found at Teneriffe xeolite in an amygdaloid which covers the 
 basalts of La Punta di Naga. 
 
 f Petrosilex resinite, Haiiy. 
 t Pechstein-porphyr. Werner. 
 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE PEAK. 
 
 99 
 
 Ischia, whiten at the edge of the crater from the effect of 
 the acid vapours ; hut internally they are not found to he 
 colourless like that of the feldsparry lavas of the Solfatara 
 at Naples, which perfectly resemble the trappean porphyries 
 at the foot of Chimborazo. In the middle of the Malpays, 
 at the height of the cavern of ice, we found among the 
 vitreous lavas with pitch-stone and obsidian bases, blocks 
 of real greenish-gray, or mountain-green phonolite, with a 
 smooth fracture, and divided into thin laminae, sonorous and 
 keen edged. These masses were the same as the porphyr- 
 schiefer of the mountain of Bilin in Bohemia; we recognised 
 in them small long crystals of vitreous feldspar. 
 
 This regular disposition of lithoid basaltic lava and feld- 
 sparry vitreous lava is analogous to the phenomena of all 
 trappean mountains ; it reminds us of those phonolites lying 
 in very ancient basalts, those close mixtures of augite and 
 feldspar which cover the hills of wacke or porous amyg- 
 daloids : but why are the porphyritic or feldsparry lavas 
 of the Peak found only on the summit of the volcano ? 
 Should we conclude from this position that they are of 
 more recent formation than the lithoid basaltic lava, which 
 contains olivine and augite ? I cannot admit this last hypo- 
 thesis ; for lateral eruptions may have covered the feldsparry 
 nucleus, at a period when the crater had ceased its activity. 
 At Vesuvius also, we perceive small crystals of vitreous feld- 
 spar only in the very ancient lavas of the Somma. These 
 lavas, setting aside the leucite, very nearly resemble the 
 phonolitic ejections of the Peak of Teneriffe. In general, 
 the farther we go back from the period of modem eruptions, 
 the more the currents increase both in size and extent, 
 acquiring the character of rocks, by the regularity of their 
 position, by their division into parallel strata, or by their 
 independence of the present form of the ground. 
 
 The Peak of Teneriffe is, next to Lipari, the volcano that 
 has produced most obsidian. This abundance is the more 
 striking, as in other regions of the earth, in Iceland, in Hun- 
 gary, in Mexico, and in the kingdom of Quito, we meet with 
 obsidians only at great distances from burning volcanoes. 
 Sometimes they are scattered over the fields in angular 
 pieces; for instance, near Popayan, in South America; at 
 other times they form isolated rocks, as at Quinche, near 
 
 H 2 
 
100 
 
 ANCIENT AMERICAN WEAPONS. 
 
 Quito. In other places (and this circumstance is very re- 
 markable), they are disseminated in pearl-stone, as at Cina- 
 pecuaro, in the province of Mechoacan,* and at the Cabo de 
 Gates, in Spain. At the peak of Teneriffe the obsidian is not 
 found towards the base of the volcano, which is covered with 
 modern lava : it is frequent only towards the summit, espe- 
 cially from the plain of Eetama, where very fine specimens 
 may be collected. This peculiar position, and the circum- 
 stance that the obsidian of the Peak has been ejected by a 
 crater which for ages past has thrown out no flames, favour 
 the opinion, that volcanic vitrifications, wherever they are 
 found, are to be considered as of very ancient formation. 
 
 Obsidian, jade, and Lydian-stone, t are three minerals, 
 which nations ignorant of the use of copper or iron, have 
 in all ages employed for making keen-edged weapons. We 
 see that wandering hordes have dragged with them, in their 
 distant journeys, stones, the natural position of which the 
 mineralogist has not yet been able to determine. Hatchets 
 of jade, covered with Aztec hieroglyphics, which I brought 
 from Mexico, resemble both in their form and nature those 
 made use of by the Gauls, and those we find among the 
 South Sea islanders. The Mexicans dug obsidian from 
 mines, which were of vast extent ; and they employed it for 
 making knives, sword-blades, and razors. In like manner 
 the Guanches, (in whose language obsidian was called tahona,') 
 fixed splinters of that mineral to the ends of their lances 
 They carried on a considerable trade in it with the neigh- 
 bouring islands ; and from the consumption thus occasioned, 
 and the quantity of obsidian which must have been broken 
 m the course of manufacture, we may presume that this 
 mineral has become scarce from the lapse of ages. We are 
 surprised to see an Atlantic nation substituting, like the 
 natives of America, vitrified lava for iron. In both coun- 
 tries this variety of lava was employed as an object of orna- 
 ment : and the inhabitants of Quito made beautiful looking- 
 glasses with an obsidian divided into parallel laminae. 
 
 There are three varieties of obsidian at the Peak. Some 
 form enormous blocks, several toises long, and often of a 
 spheroidal shape. We might suppose that they had been 
 
 * To the west of the city of Mexico, 
 f Lydischerstein. 
 
VARIETIES OE OBSIDIAK. 
 
 101 
 
 thrown ont in a softened state, and had afterwards been sub- 
 ject to a rotary motion. They contain a quantity of vitreous 
 feldspar, of a snow-white colour, and the most brilliant 
 pearly lustre. These obsidians are, nevertheless, but little 
 transparent on the edges ; they are almost opaque, of a 
 brownish black, and of an imperfect conchoidal fracture. 
 They pass into pitch-stone ; and we may consider them as 
 porphyries with a basis of obsidian. The second variety is 
 found in fragments much less considerable. It is in general 
 of a greenish black, sometimes of murky gray, very seldom of 
 a perfect black, like the obsidian of Hecla and Mexico. Its 
 fracture is perfectly conchoidal, and it is extremely transpa- 
 rent on the edges. I have found in it neither amphibole nor 
 pyroxene, but some small white points, which seem to be 
 feldspar. None of the obsidians of the Peak appear in those 
 gray masses of pearl or lavender-blue, striped, and in sepa- 
 rate wedge-formed pieces, like the obsidian of Quito, Mexico, 
 and Lipari, and which resemble the fibrous plates of the 
 crystalites of our glass-houses, on which Sir James Hall, 
 Hr. Thompson, and M. de Bellevue, have published some 
 curious observations.* 
 
 The third variety of obsidian of the Peak is the most 
 remarkable of the whole, from its connexion with pumice- 
 stone. It is, like that above described, of a greenish black, 
 sometimes of a murky gray, but its very thin plates alternate 
 with layers of pumice-stone. Hr. Thomson’s fine collection 
 at Naples contained similar examples of lithoid lava of Ve- 
 suvius, divided into very distinct plates, only a line thick. 
 The fibres of the pumice-stone of the Peak are very seldom 
 parallel to each other, and perpendicular to the strata of 
 obsidian; they are most commonly irregular, asbestoidal, like 
 fibrous glass-gall ; and instead of being disseminated in the 
 obsidian, like crystalites, they are found simply adhering to 
 one of the external surfaces of this substance. Huring my 
 stay at Madrid, M. Hergen showed me several specimens 
 in the mineralogical collection of Hon Jose Clavijo ; and for 
 
 * The name crystalites has been given to the crystalized thin plates 
 observed in glass cooling slowly. The term glastenized glass is employed 
 by Dr. Thompson and others to indicate glass which by slow cooling is 
 wholly unvitrified, and has assumed the appearance of a fossil sub- 
 stance, or real glass-stone. 
 
102 
 
 EAKE MINEEAL SPECIMEN'S. 
 
 a long time the Spanish mineralogists considered them as 
 furnishing undoubted proofs, that pumice-stone owes its 
 origin to obsidian, in some degree deprived of colour, and 
 swelled by volcanic fire. I was formerly of this opinion, 
 which, however, must he understood to refer to one variety 
 only of pumice. I even thought, with many other geologists, 
 that obsidian, so far from being vitrified lava, belonged to 
 rocks that were not volcanic ; and that the fire, forcing its 
 way through the basalts, the green-stone rocks, the phono- 
 lites, and the porphyries with bases of pitchstone and obsi- 
 dian, the lavas and pumice-stone were no other than these 
 same rocks altered by the action of the volcanoes. The 
 deprivation of colour and extraordinary swelling which the 
 greater part of the obsidians undergo in a forge-fire, their 
 transition into pitch-stone, and their position in regions very 
 distant from burning volcanoes, appear to be phenomena 
 very difficult to reconcile, when we consider the obsidians 
 as volcanic glass. A more profound study of nature, new 
 journeys, and observations made on the productions of 
 burning volcanoes, have led me to renounce those ideas. 
 
 It appears to me at present extremely probable, that obsi- 
 dians, and porphyries with bases of obsidian, are vitrified 
 masses, the cooling of which has been too rapid to change 
 them into lithoid lava. I consider even the pearlstone as 
 an unvitrified obsidian : for among the minerals in the 
 King’s cabinet at Berlin there are volcanic glasses -from 
 Lipari, in which we see striated crystalites, of a pearl-gray 
 colour, and of an earthy appearance, forming gradual ap- 
 proaches to a granular lithoid lava, like the pearlstone of 
 Cinapecuaro, in Mexico. The oblong bubbles observed in 
 the obsidians of every continent are incontestible proofs of 
 their ancient state of igneous fluidity; and Dr. Thompson 
 possesses specimens from Lipari, which are very instructive 
 in this point of view, because fragments of red porphyry, or 
 porphyry lavas, which do not entirely fill up the cavities of 
 the obsidian, are found enveloped in them. We might say, 
 that these fragments had not time to enter into complete 
 solution in the liquified mass. They contain vitreous feld- 
 spar, and augite, and are the same as the celebrated co- 
 lumnar porphyries of the island of Panaria, which, without 
 having been part of a current of lava, seem raised up in the 
 
INTERESTING- EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 103 
 
 form of hillocks, like many of the porphyries in Auvergne, in 
 the Euganean mountains, andin the Cordilleras of the Andes. 
 
 The objections against the volcanic origin of obsidians, 
 founded on their speedy loss of colour, and their swelling 
 by a slow fire, have been shaken by the ingenious experi- 
 ments of Sir James Hall. These experiments prove, that a 
 stone which is fusible only at thirty-eight degrees of Wedg- 
 wood’s pyrometer, yields a glass that softens at fourteen 
 degrees; and that this glass, melted again and unvitrified 
 (glastenized),is fusible again only at thirty-five degree of the 
 same pyrometer. I applied the blowpipe to some black 
 pumice-stone from the volcano of the isle of Bourbon, which, 
 on the slightest contact with the flame, whitened and melted 
 into an enamel. 
 
 But whether obsidians be primitive rocks which have un- 
 dergone the action of volcanic fire, or lavas repeatedly melted 
 within the crater, the origin of the pumice-stones contained 
 in the obsidian of the Peak of Teneriffe is not less pro- 
 blematic. This subject is the more worthy of being inves- 
 tigated, since it is generally interesting to the geology of 
 volcanoes ; and since that excellent mineralogist, M. Eleuriau 
 de Bellevue, after having examined Italy and the adjacent 
 islands with great attention, affirms, that it is highly im- 
 probable that pumice-stone owes its origin to the swelling 
 of obsidian. 
 
 The experiments of M. da Camara, and those I made in 
 1802, tend to support the opinion, that the pumice stones 
 adherent to the obsidians of the Peak of Teneriffe do not 
 unite to them accidentally, but are produced by the expan- 
 sion of an elastic fluid, which is disengaged from the compact 
 vitreous matter. This idea had for a long time occupied the 
 min d of a person highly distinguished for his talents and re- 
 putation at Quito, who, unacquainted with the labours of the 
 mineralogists of Europe, had devoted himself to researches 
 on the volcanoes of his country. Don Juan de Larea, 
 one of those men lately sacrificed to the fury of faction, 
 had been struck with the phenomena exhibited by obsidians 
 exposed to a white heat. He had thought, that, wherever 
 volcanoes act in the centre of a country covered with por- 
 phyry with base of obsidian, the elastic fluids must cause a 
 swelling of the liquified mass, and perform an important part in 
 
104 
 
 PUMICE-STONES OE THE PEAK. 
 
 the earthquakes preceding eruptions. Without adopting an 
 opinion, which seems somewhat hold, I made, in concert with 
 M. Larea, a series of experiments on the tumefaction of the 
 volcanic vitreous substances at Teneriffe, and on those which 
 are found at Quinche, in the kingdom of Quito. To judge 
 of the augmentation of their bulk, we measured pieces ex- 
 posed to a forge-fire of moderate heat, by the water they 
 displaced from a cylindric glass, enveloping the spongy mas3 
 with a thin coating of wax. According to our experiments, i* 
 the obsidians swelled very unequally : those of the Peak and 
 the black varities of Cotopaxi and of Quinche increased nearly 
 five times their bulk. 
 
 The colour of the pumice-stones of the Peak leads to 
 another important observation. The sea of white ashes 
 which encircles the Piton, and covers the vast plain of 
 Petama, is a certain proof of the former activity of the 
 crater : for in all volcanoes, even when there are lateral 
 eruptions, the ashes and the rapilli issue conjointly with the 
 vapours only from the opening at the summit of the moun- 
 tain. Now, at Teneriffe, the black rapilli extend from the 
 foot of the Peak to the sea-shore ; while the white ashes, 
 which are only pumice ground to powder, and among which 
 I have discovered, with a lens, fragments of vitreous feldspar 
 and pyroxene, exclusively occupy the region next to the 
 Peak. This peculiar distribution seems to confirm the 
 observations made long ago at Vesuvius, that the white 
 ashes are thrown out last, and indicate the end of the erup- 
 tion. In proportion as the elasticity of the vapours dimi- 
 nishes, the matter is thrown to a less distance; and the 
 black rapilli, which issue first, when the lava has ceased 
 running, must necessarily reach farther than the white ra- 
 pilli. The latter appear to have been exposed to the action 
 of a more intense lire. 
 
 I have now examined the exterior structure of the Peak, 
 and the composition of its volcanic productions, from the 
 region of the coast to the top of the Piton : — I have en- 
 deavoured to render these researches interesting, by com- 
 paring the phenomena of the volcano of Teneriffe with those 
 that are observed in other regions, the soil of which is equally 
 undermined by subterranean fires. This mode of viewing 
 Nature in the universality of her relations is no doubt ad- 
 
GEOLOGICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 105 
 
 verse to the rapidity desirable in an itinerary; but it ap- 
 pears to me that, in a narrative, the principal end of which is 
 the progress of physical knowledge, every other consideration 
 ought to be subservient to those of instruction and utility. 
 By isolating facts, travellers, whose labours are in every other 
 respect valuable, have given currency to many false ideas of 
 the pretended contrasts which Nature offers in Africa, in 
 New Holland, and on the ridge of the Cordilleras. The great 
 geological phenomena are subject to regular laws, as well 
 as the forms of plants and animals. The ties which unite 
 these phenomena, the relations which exist between the 
 varied forms of organized beings, are discovered only when 
 we have acquired the habit of viewing the globe as a great 
 whole ; and when we consider in the same point of view the 
 composition of rocks, the causes which alter them, and the 
 productions of the soil, in the most distant regions. 
 
 Having treated of the volcanic substances of the isle of 
 Teneriffe, there now remains to be solved a question inti- 
 mately connected with the preceding investigation. Does 
 the archipelago of the Canary Islands contain any rocks of 
 primitive or secondary formation ; or is there any production 
 observed, that has not been modified by fire ? This interest- 
 ing problem has been considered by the naturalists of Lord 
 Macartney’s expedition, and by those who accompanied cap- 
 tain Baudin in his voyage to the Austral regions. Their 
 opinions are in direct opposition to each other; and the 
 contradiction is the more striking, as the question does not 
 refer to one of those geological reveries which we are ac- 
 customed to call systems, but to a positive fact. 
 
 Doctor Grillan imagined that he observed, between Laguna 
 and the port of Orotava, in very deep ravines, beds of primi- 
 tive rocks. This, however, is a mistake. What Dr. Grillan 
 calls somewhat vaguely, mountains of hard ferruginous clay, 
 are nothing but an alluvium which we find at the foot of 
 every volcano. Strata of clay accompany basalts, as tufas 
 accompany modern lavas. Neither M. Cordier nor myself 
 observed in any part of Teneriffe a primitive rock, either 
 in its natural place, or thrown out by the mouth of the 
 Peak ; and the absence of these rocks characterizes almost 
 every island of small extent that has an unextinguished 
 volcano. We know nothing positive of the mountains of 
 
106 
 
 PKIMITIYE BOCK IK LAVAS. 
 
 the Azores ; but it is certain, that the island of Bourbon 
 as well as Teneriffe, exhibits only a heap of lavas and 
 basalts. No volcanic rock rears its head, either on the 
 Gros Morne, or on the volcano of Bourbon, or on the colos- 
 sal pyramid of Cimandef, which is perhaps more elevated 
 than the Peak of the Canary Islands. 
 
 Bory St. Vincent nevertheless asserted, that lavas includ- 
 ing fragments of granite have been found on the elevated 
 plain of Rétama ; and M. Broussonnet informed me, that on a 
 hill above Guimar, fragments of mica-slate, containing beau- 
 tiful plates of specular iron, had been found. I can affirm 
 nothing respecting the accuracy of this latter statement, 
 which it would be so much the more important to verify, as 
 M. Poli, of Naples, is in possession of a fragment of rock 
 thrown out by Vesuvius,* which I found to be a real mica- 
 slate. Every thing that tends to enlighten us with respect 
 to the site of the volcanic fire, and the position of rocks 
 subject to its action, is highly interesting to geology. 
 
 It is possible, that at the Peak of Teneriffe, the fragments 
 of primitive rocks thrown out by the mouth of the volcano 
 may be less rare than they at present appear to be, and 
 may be heaped together in some ravine, not yet visited 
 by travellers. In fact, at Vesuvius, these same fragments 
 are met with only in one single place, at the Fossa Grande, 
 where they are hidden under a thick layer of ashes. If this 
 ravine had not long ago attracted the attention of naturalists, 
 when masses of granular limestone, and other primitive rocks, 
 were laid bare by the rains, we might have thought them as 
 rare at Vesuvius, as they are, at least in appearance, at the 
 Peak of Teneriffe. 
 
 * In the valuable collection of Dr. Thomson, who resided at Naples 
 till 1805, is a fragment of lava enclrsing a real granite, which is composed 
 of reddish feldspar with a pearly lustre like adularia, quartz, mica, horn- 
 blende, and, what is very remarkable, lazulite. But in general the 
 masses of known primitive rocks, (I mean those which perfectly resemble 
 our granites, our gneiss, and our mica-slates) are very rare in lavas; the 
 substances we commonly denote by the name of granite, thrown out by 
 Vesuvius, are mixtures of nepheline, mica, and pyroxene. We are igno- 
 rant whether these mixtures constitute rocks sui generis placed under 
 granite, and consequently of more ancient date ; or simply form either 
 intermediate strata or veins, in the interior of the primitive mountains, the 
 tops of which appear at the surface of the globe. 
 
GEOLOGICAL TRANSFERS. 
 
 107 
 
 "With respect to the fragments of granite, gneiss, and 
 mica-slate, found on the shores of Santa Cruz and Orotava, 
 they were probably brought in ships as ballast. They no 
 more belong to the soil where they lie, than the feldsparry 
 lavas of Etna, seen in the pavements of Hamburgh and other 
 towns of the north. The naturalist is exposed to a thousand 
 errors, if he lose sight of the changes, produced on the sur- 
 face of the globe by the intercourse between nations. We 
 might he led to say, that man, when expatriating himself, is 
 desirous that everything should change country with him. 
 Hot only plants, insects, and different species of small qua- 
 drupeds, follow him across the ocean ; his active industry 
 covers the shores with rocks, which lie has torn from the 
 soil in distant climes. 
 
 Though it be certain, that no scientific observer has 
 hitherto found at Teneriffe primitive strata, or even those 
 trappean and ambiguous porphyries, which constitute the 
 bases of Etna, and of several volcanoes of the Andes, we 
 must not conclude from this isolated fact, that the whole 
 archipelago of the Canaries is the production of submarine 
 fires. The island of Gomera contains mountains of granite 
 and mica-slate ; and it is, undoubtedly, in these very ancient 
 rocks, that we must seek there, as well as on all other parts 
 of the globe, the centre of the volcanic action. Amphibole, 
 sometimes pure and forming intermediate strata, at other 
 times mixed with granite, as in the basanites or basalts of the 
 ancients, may, of itself, furnish all the iron contained in the 
 black and stony lavas. This quantity amounts in the basalt 
 of the modern mineralogists only to 0‘20, while in amphi- 
 bole it exceeds 030. 
 
 Erom several well-informed persons, to whom I addressed 
 myself, I learned that there are calcareous formations in the 
 Great Canary, Eorteventura, and Lance rota.* I was not 
 able to determine the nature of this secondary rock ; but it 
 appears certain, that the island of Teneriffe is altogether 
 destitute of it ; and that in its alluvial lands it exhibits 
 only clayey calcareous tufa, alternating with volcanic brec- 
 cia, said to contain, (near the village of La Bambla, at 
 Calderas, and near Candelaria,) plants, imprints of fishes, 
 
 * At Lancerota calcareous stone is burned to lime with a fire made of 
 the alhulaga, a new species of thorny and arborescent Sonchus. 
 
108 
 
 A DISPUTED CONJECTURE. 
 
 buccinites, and other fossil marine productions. M. Cordier 
 brought away some of this tufa, which resembles that in 
 the environs of Naples and Rome, and contains fragments 
 of reeds. At the Salvages, which islands La Perouse took 
 at a distance for masses of scoriae, even fibrous gypsum is 
 found. 
 
 I had seen, while herborizing between the port of Orotava 
 and the garden of La Paz, heaps of grayish calcareous stones, 
 of an imperfect conchoidal fracture, and analogous to that of 
 Mount Jura and the Apennines. I was informed that these 
 stones were extracted from a quarry near Rambla ; and that 
 there were similar quarries near Realejo, and the mountain of 
 Roxas, above Adexa. This information led me into an error. 
 As the coasts of Portugal consist of basalts covering calca- 
 reous rocks containing shells, I imagined that a trappean 
 formation, like that of the Vicentin in Lombardy, and of 
 Harutsh in Africa, might have extended from the banks of 
 the Tagus and Cape St. Vincent as far as the Canary Islands ; 
 and that the basalts of the Peak might perhaps conceal a 
 secondary calcareous stone. These conjectures exposed me 
 to severe animadversions from M. Gr. A. de Luc, who is 
 of opinion that every volcanic island is only an accumula- 
 tion of lavas and scoriæ. M. de Luc declares it is impossible 
 that real lava should contain fragments of vegetable sub- 
 stances. Our collections, however, contain pieces of trunks 
 of palm-trees, enclosed and penetrated by the very liquid 
 lava of the isle of Bourbon. 
 
 Though Teneriffe belongs to a group of islands of consi- 
 derable extent, the Peak exhibits nevertheless all the charac- 
 teristics of a mountain rising on a solitary islet. The lead 
 finds no bottom at a little distance from the ports of Santa 
 Cruz, Orotava, and Grarachico : in this respect it is like St. 
 Helena. The ocean, as well as the continents, has its moun- 
 tains and its plains ; and, if we except the Andes, volcanic 
 cones are formed everywhere in the lower regions of the globe. 
 
 As the Peak rises amid a system of basalts and old lava, 
 and as the whole part which is visible above the surface of 
 the waters exhibits burnt substances, it has been supposed 
 that this immense pyramid is the effect of a progressive 
 accumulation of lavas; or that it contains in its centre 
 a nucleus of primitive rocks. Both of these suppositions 
 
ISLAÎTD OE SABKISA. 
 
 109 
 
 appear to me ill-founded. I think there is as little pro- 
 bability that mountains of granite, gneiss, or primitive 
 calcareous stone have existed where we now see the tops 
 of the Peak, of Vesuvius, and of Etna, as in the plains 
 where almost in our own time has been formed the volcano 
 of Jorullo, which is more than a third of the height of 
 Vesuvius. On examining the circumstances which accom- 
 panied the formation of the new island, called Sabrina, 
 in the archipelago of the Azores;* on carefully reading 
 the minute and simple narrative, given by the Jesuit 
 Bourguignon of the slow appearance of the islet of the 
 little Kameni, near Santorino ; we find that these extra- 
 ordinary eruptions are generally preceded by a swelling 
 of the softened crust of the globe. Bocks appear above 
 ! the waters before the flames force their way, or lava 
 j issue from the crater : we must distinguish between the 
 nucleus raised up, and the mass of lavas and scoriæ, which 
 I successively increases its dimensions. 
 
 It is true that from all existing records of revolutions 
 of this kind, the perpendicular height of the stony nucleus 
 | appears never to have exceeded one hundred and fifty or 
 two hundred toises ; even taking into the account the depth 
 of the sea, the bottom of which had been lifted up : but 
 when considering the great effects of nature, and the in- 
 tensity of its forces, the bulk of the masses must not deter 
 the geologist in his speculations. Every thing indicates 
 that the physical changes of which tradition has preserved 
 the remembrance, exhibit but a feeble image of those 
 gigantic catastrophes which have given mountains their 
 present form, changed the positions of the rocky strata, 
 
 * At Sabrina island, near St. Michael’s, the crater opened at the foot 
 of a solid rock, of almost a cubical form. This rock, surmounted by 
 a small elevated plain perfectly level, is more than two hundred toises in 
 breadth. Its formation was anterior to that of the crater, into which, a 
 few days after its opening, the sea made an irruption. At Kameni, the 
 smoke was not even visible till twenty-six days after the appearance of 
 the upheaved rocks. Phil. Trans, vol. xxvi, p. 69 and 200, vol. xxvii., p. 
 353. All these phenomena, on which Mr. Hawkins collected very 
 valuable observations during his abode at Santorino, are unfavourable to 
 the idea commonly entertained of the origin of volcanic mountains. They 
 are usually ascribed to a progressive accumulation of liquified matter, and 
 the diffusion of lavas issuing from a central mouth. 
 
110 
 
 HANNO AND SCYLAX. 
 
 and buried sea-shells on the summits of the higher Alps. 
 Doubtless, in those remote times which preceded the exist- 
 ence of the human race, the raised crust of the globe pro- 
 duced those domes of trappean porphyry, those hills of 
 isolated basalt on vast elevated plains, those solid nuclei 
 which are clothed in the modern lavas of the Peak, of Etna, 
 and of Cotopaxi. The volcanic revolutions have succeeded 
 each other after long intervals, and at very different periods: 
 of this we see the vestiges in the transition mountains, in 
 the secondary strata, and in those of alluvium. Volcanoes 
 of earlier date than the sandstone and calcareous rocks 
 have been for ages extinguished; those which are yet in 
 activity are in general surrounded only with breccias and 
 modem tufas ; but nothing hinders us from admitting, that 
 the archipelago of the Canaries may exhibit some real rocks 
 of secondary formation, if we recollect that subterranean 
 fires have been there rekindled in the midst of a system of 
 basalts and very ancient lavas. 
 
 We seek in vain in the Periplus of Hanno or of Scylax 
 for the first written notions on the eruptions of the Peak of 
 Teneriffe. Those navigators sailed timidly along the coast, 
 anchoring every evening in some bay, and had no know- 
 ledge of a volcano distant fifty-six leagues from the coast 
 of Africa. Hanno nevertheless relates, that he saw torrents 
 of light, which seemed to fall on the sea ; that every night 
 the coast was covered with fire ; and that the great moun- 
 tain, called the Car of the Cods , appeared to throw up 
 sheets of flame, which rose even to the clouds. But this 
 mountain, situated northward of the island of the Grorilli, 
 formed the western extremity of the Atlas chain; and it 
 is also very uncertain whether the flames seen by Hanno 
 were the effect of some volcanic eruption, or whether they 
 must be attributed to the custom, common to many 
 nations, of setting fire to the forests and dry grass of the 
 savannahs. In our own days similar doubts were enter- 
 tained by the naturalists, who, in the voyage of d’Entre- 
 casteaux, saw the island of Amsterdam covered with a thick 
 smoke. On the coast of the Caracas, trains of reddish 
 fire, fed by the burning grass, appeared to me, for several 
 nights, under the delusive semblance of a current of lava, 
 descending from the mountains, and dividing itself into 
 several branches. 
 
ANCIENT HISTORICAL NOTICES. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Though the narratives of Hanno and Scylax, in the state 
 I m which they have reached us, contain no passage which we 
 can reasonably apply to the Canary Islands, it is very pro- 
 bable that the Carthaginians, and even the Phoenicians, had 
 some knowledge of the Peak of Teneriffe. In the time of 
 Plato and Aristotle, vague notions of it had reached the 
 Greeks, who considered the whole of the coast of Africa, 
 beyond the Pillars of Hercules, as thrown into disorder by 
 the fire of volcanoes. The Abode of the Blessed, which was 
 I sought first in the north, beyond the Biphæan mountains, 
 among the Hyperboreans, and next to the south of Cyre- 
 naica, was supposed to be situated in regions that were con- 
 I sidered to be westward, being the direction in which the 
 ! world known to the ancients terminated. The name of For- 
 tunate Islands was long in as vague signification, as that of 
 El Dorado among the conquerors of America. Happiness 
 was thought to reside at the end of the earth, as we seek 
 for the most exquisite enjoyments of the mind in an ideal 
 world beyond the limits of reality. 
 
 We must not be surprised that, previous to the time of 
 Aristotle, we find no accurate notion respecting the Canary 
 Islands and the volcanoes they contain, among the Greek 
 ; geographers. The only nation whose navigations extended 
 ! toward the west and the north, the Carthaginians, were 
 | interested in throwing a veil of mystery over those distant 
 : regions. While the senate of Carthage was averse to any 
 1 partial emigration, it pointed out those islands as a place 
 of refuge in times of trouble and public misfortune ; they 
 were to the Carthaginians what the free soil of America has 
 become to Europeans amidst their religious and civil dis- 
 sensions. 
 
 The Canaries were not better known to the Romans till 
 , eighty-four years before the reign of Augustus. A private 
 | individual was desirous of executing the project, which wise 
 : foresight had dictated to the senate of Carthage. Sertorius, 
 | conquered by Sylla, and weary of the din of war, looked 
 || out for a safe and peaceable retreat. He chose the For- 
 ! tunate Islands, of which a delightful picture had been 
 
 * The idea of the happiness, the great civilization, and the riches 
 ' of the inhabitants of the north, was common to the Greeks, to the 
 i people of India, and to the Mexicans. 
 
 I 
 
112 
 
 ERUPTIONS OE THE PEAK. 
 
 drawn for him on the shores of Bætica. He carefully com- 
 bined the notions he acquired from travellers; hut in the 
 little that has been transmitted to us of those notions, and 
 in the more minute descriptions of Sebosus and Juba, there 
 is no mention of volcanoes* or volcanic eruptions. Scarcely 
 can we recognise the isle of Teneriffe, and the snows with 
 which the summit of the Peak is covered in winter, in the 
 name of Nivaria , given to one of the Fortunate Islands. 
 Hence we might conclude, that the volcano at that time 
 threw out no flames, if it were allowable so to interpret the 
 silence of a few authors, whom we know only by short 
 fragments or dry nomenclatures. The naturalist vainly 
 seeks in history for documents of the first eruptions of the 
 Peak; he nowhere finds any but in the language of the 
 Gruanches, in which the word Echeyde denotes, at the same 
 time, hell and the volcano of Teneriffe. 
 
 Of all the written testimonies, the oldest I have found 
 in relation to the activity of this volcano dates from the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century. It is contained in the 
 narrative of the voyage of Aloysio Cadamusto, who landed 
 at the Canaries in 1505. This traveller was witness of no 
 eruptions, but he positively affirms that, like Etna, this 
 mountain burns without interruption, and that the fire has 
 been seen by Christians held in slavery by the Gruanches of 
 Teneriffe. The Peak, therefore, was not at that time in 
 the state of repose in which we find it at present ; for it is 
 certain that no navigator or inhabitant of Teneriffe has 
 seen issue from the mouth of the Peak, I will not say 
 flames, but even any smoke visible at a distance. It would 
 be well, perhaps, were the funnel of the Caldera to open 
 anew ; the lateral eruptions would thereby be rendered less 
 violent, and the whole group of islands would be less en- 
 dangered by earthquakes. 
 
 The eruptions of the Peak have been very rare for two 
 centuries past, and these long intervals appear to charac- 
 terize volcanoes highly elevated. The smallest one of all, 
 Stromboli, is almost always burning. At Vesuvius, the erup- 
 tions are rarer than formerly, though still more frequent 
 than those of Etna and the Peak of Teneriffe. The colossal 
 summits of the Andes, Cotopaxi and Tungurahua, scarcely 
 have an eruption once in a century. "We may say, that 
 
LATEEAL ERUPTIONS. 
 
 113 
 
 in active volcanoes the frequency of the eruptions is in the 
 inverse ratio of the height and the mass. The Peak also 
 had seemed extinguished during ninety-two years, when, in 
 1798, it made its last eruption by a lateral opening formed 
 in the mountain of Chahorra. In this interval Yesuvius 
 had sixteen eruptions. 
 
 The whole of the mountainous part of the kingdom of 
 Quito may be considered as an immense volcano, occupying 
 more than seven hundred square leagues of surface, and 
 throwing out flames by different cones, known under the 
 particular denominations of Cotopaxi, Tungurahua, and 
 Pichincha. The group of the Canary Islands is situated 
 on the same sort of submarine volcano. The fire makes 
 its way sometimes by one and sometimes by another of 
 these islands. Teneriffe alone contains in its centre an 
 immense pyramid terminating in a crater, and throwing out, 
 from one century to another, lava by its flanks. In the 
 other islands, the different eruptions have taken place in 
 various parts; and we nowhere find those isolated moun- 
 tains to which the volcanic effects are confined. The 
 basaltic crust, formed by ancient volcanoes, seems every- 
 where undermined ; and the currents of lava, seen at Lan- 
 cerota and Palma, remind us, by every geological affinity, 
 of the eruption which took place in 1301 at the island of 
 Ischia, amid the tufas of Epomeo. 
 
 The exclusively lateral action of the peak of Teneriffe is a 
 geological phenomenon, the more remarkable as it contri- 
 butes to make the mountains which are backed by the prin- 
 cipal volcano appear isolated. It is true, that in Etna and 
 Yesuvius the great flowings of lava do not proceed from the 
 crater itself, and that the abundance of melted matter is 
 generally in the inverse ratio of the height of the opening 
 whence the lava is ejected. But at Yesuvius and Etna a 
 lateral eruption constantly terminates by flashes of flame 
 and by ashes issuing from the crater, that is, from the 
 , summit of the mountain. At the Peak this phenomenon 
 i has not been witnessed for ages : and yet recently, in the 
 eruption of 1798, the crater remained quite inactive. Its 
 bottom did not sink in ; while at Yesuvius, as M. von 
 Buch has observed, the greater or less depth of the 
 
 TOL. I. I 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 VOLCANIC COMBUSTION. 
 
 crater is an infallible indication of tbe proximity of a new 
 eruption. 
 
 I might terminate these geological sketches by enquiring 
 into the nature of the combustible which has fed for so many 
 thousands of years the fire of the peak of Teneriffe ; — I might 
 examine whether it be sodium or potassium, the metallic 
 basis of some earth, carburet of hydrogen, or pure sulphur 
 combined with iron, that burns in the volcano ; — but wishing 
 to limit myself to what may be the object of direct obser- 
 vation, I shall not take upon me to solve a problem for which 
 we have not yet sufficient data. "We know not whether we 
 may conclude, from the enormous quantity of sulphur con- 
 tained in the crater of the Peak, that it is this substance 
 which keeps up the heat of the volcano; or whether the 
 fire, fed by some combustible of an unknown nature, effects 
 merely the sublimation of the sulphur. What we learn 
 from observation is, that in craters which are still burning, 
 sulphur is very rare ; while all the ancient volcanoes end in 
 becoming sulphur-pits. We might presume that, in the 
 former, the sulphur is combined with oxygen, while, in 
 the latter, it is merely sublimated; for nothing hitherto 
 authorises us to admit that it is formed in the interior of 
 volcanoes, like ammonia and the neutral salts. WTien we 
 were yet unacquainted with sulphur, except as disseminated 
 in the muriatiferous gypsum and in the Alpine limestone, 
 we were almost forced to the belief, that in every part of 
 the globe the volcanic fire acted on rocks of secondary for- 
 mation; but recent observations have proved that sulphur 
 exists in great abundance in those primitive rocks which so 
 many phenomena indicate as the centre of the volcanic 
 action. Near Alausi, at the back of the Andes of Quito, I 
 found an immense quantity in a bed of quartz, which formed 
 a layer of mica-slate. This fact is the more important, as it 
 is in strict conformity with the conclusions deduced from the 
 observation of those fragments of ancient rocks which are 
 tlirown out intact by volcanoes. 
 
 We have just considered the island of Teneriffe merely in 
 a geological point of view ; we have seen the Peak towering 
 amid fractured strata of basalt and mandelstein; let us 
 examine how these fused masses have been gradually 
 
ZONES OE VEGETATION. 
 
 115 
 
 adorned with vegetable clothing, what is the distribution 
 of plants on the steep declivity of the volcano, and what 
 is the aspect or physiognomy of vegetation in the Canary 
 Islands. 
 
 In the northern part of the temperate zone, the crypto- 
 gamous plants are the first that cover the stony crust of 
 the globe. The lichens and mosses, that deve'lope their 
 foliage beneath the snows, are succeeded by gramina and 
 other phanerogamous plants. This order of vegetation 
 differs on the borders of the torrid zone, and in the 
 countries between the tropics. We there find, it is true, 
 whatever some travellers may have asserted, not only on 
 the mountains, but also in humid and shady places, almost 
 . on a level with the sea, Funaria, Dicranum, and Bryum ; and 
 these genera, among their numerous species, exhibit several 
 which are common to Lapland, to the Peak of Teneriffe, 
 and to the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.* Nevertheless, in 
 general, it is not by mosses and lichens that vegetation, 
 in the countries near the tropics begins. In the Canary 
 Islands, as well as in Gruinea, and on the rocky coasts of 
 Peru, the first vegetation which prepares the soil are the suc- 
 culent plants ; the leaves of which, provided with an infinite 
 number of orifices t and cutaneous vessels, deprive the am- 
 bient air of the water it holds in solution. Fixed in the 
 . crevices of volcanic rocks, they form, as it were, that first 
 layer of vegetable earth with which the currents of lithoid 
 lava are clothed. Wherever these lavas are scorified, and 
 . where they have a shining surface, as in the basaltic mounds 
 to dhe north of Lancerota, the development of vegetation is 
 extremely slow, and many ages may pass away before shrubs 
 . can take root. It is only when lavas are covered with tufa 
 . and ashes, that the volcanic islands, losing that appearance of 
 nudity which marks their origin, bedeck themselves in rich 
 and brilliant vegetation. 
 
 * This extraordinary fact was first observed by M. Swarz. It was 
 confirmed by M. Willdenouw when he careful examined our herbals, 
 especially the collection of cryptogamous plants, which we gathered on 
 the tops of the Andes, in a region of the world where organic life is 
 totally different from that of the old world. 
 
 f The pores corticaux of M. Decandolle, discovered by Gleichen, and 
 figured by Hedwig. 
 
 I 2 
 
116 
 
 ZOXE or ViîTES. 
 
 In its present state, the island of Teneriffe, the Chinerfe * 
 of the Guanches, exhibits five zones of plants, which we 
 may distinguish by the names — region of vines, region of 
 laurels, region of pines, region of the rétama, and region 
 of grasses. These zones are ranged in stages, one above 
 another, and occupy, on the steep declivity of the Peak, a 
 perpendicular height of 1750 toises; while fifteen degrees 
 farther north, on the Pyrenees, snow descends to thirteen or 
 fourteen hundred toises of absolute elevation. If the plants 
 of Teneriffe do not reach the summit of the volcano, it is 
 not because the perpetual snow and the cold of the sur- 
 rounding atmosphere mark limits which they cannot pass ; 
 it is the scorified lava of the Malpays, the powdered and 
 barren pumice-stone of the Piton, which impede the migra- 
 tion of plants towards the brink of the crater. 
 
 The first zone, that of the vines, extends from the sea-shore 
 to two or three hundred toises of height ; it is that which is 
 most inhabited, and the only part carefully cultivated. In 
 the low regions, at the port of Orotava, and wherever the 
 winds have free access, the centigrade thermometer stands 
 in winter, in the months of January and February , at noon, 
 between fifteen and seventeen degrees; and the greatest 
 heats of summer do not exceed twenty-five or twenty-six 
 degrees. The mean temperature of the coasts of Teneriffe 
 appears at least to rise to twenty-one degrees (16‘8° Reau- 
 mur) ; and the climate in those parts keeps at the medium ; 
 between the climate of Naples and that of the torrid zone. 
 
 The region of the vines exhibits, among its vegetable pro- 
 ductions, eight kinds of arborescent Euphorbia; Mesem- 
 brianthema, which are multiplied from the Cape of Good 
 Hope to the Peloponnesus ; the Cacalia Kleinia, the Dra- 
 caena, and other plants, which in their naked and tortuous 
 trunks, in their succulent leaves, and their tint of blueish 
 green, exhibit distinctive marks of the vegetation of Africa. 
 It is in this zone that the date-tree, the plantain, the 
 sugar-cane, the Indian fig, the Arum Colocasia, the root 
 of which furnishes a nutritive fecula, the olive-tree, the 
 fruit trees of Europe, the vine, and com are cultivated. 
 Corn is reaped from the end of March to the beginning of 
 
 * Of Chinerfe the Europeans have formed, by corruption, Tchineriffe 
 and Teneriffe. 
 
ZONE OE LATJEELS. 
 
 117 
 
 May ; and the culture of the hread-fruit tree of Otaheite, 
 that of the cinnamon tree of the Moluccas, the coffee-tree 
 of Arabia, and the cacao-tree of America, have been tried 
 with success. On several points of the coast the country 
 assumes the character of a tropical landscape; and we 
 perceive that the region of the palms extends beyond the 
 limits of the torrid zone. The chamærops and the date-tree 
 flourish in the fertile plains of Murviedro, on the coasts of 
 Genoa, and in Provence, near Antibes, between the thirty- 
 ninth and forty-fourth degrees of latitude ; a few trees of 
 the latter species, planted within the walls of the city of 
 Pome, resist even the cold of 25° below freezing point. 
 But if the south of Europe as yet only partially shares the 
 gifts lavished by nature on the zone of palms, the island of 
 Teneriffe, situated on the parallel of Egypt, southern Persia, 
 and Elorida, is adorned with the greater part of the vegetable 
 forms which add to the majesty of the landscape in the 
 regions near the equator. 
 
 On reviewing the different tribes of indigenous plants, 
 we regret not finding trees with small pinnated leaves, and 
 arborescent gramina. No species of the numerous family 
 of the sensitive-plants has migrated as far as the archi- 
 pelago of the Canary Islands, while on both continents 
 they have been seen in the thirty-eighth and fortieth 
 degrees of latitude. On a more careful examination of 
 the plants of the islands of Lancerota and Eorteventura, 
 which are nearest the coast of Morocco, we may perhaps 
 find a few mimosas among many other plants of the African 
 flora. 
 
 The second zone, that of the laurels, comprises the woody 
 part of Teneriffe : this is the region of the springs, which 
 gush forth amidst turf always verdant, and never parched 
 with drought. Lofty forests crown the hills leading to the 
 volcano, and in them are found four species of laurel,* an oak 
 nearly resembling the Quercus Turnerif of the mountains of 
 Thibet, the Yisnea mocanera, the Myrica Faya of the Azores, 
 a native olive (Olea excelsa), which is the largest tree of this 
 zone, two species of Sideroxylon, the leaves of which are 
 
 * Laurus indica, L. fœtens, L. nobilis, and L. Til. With these trees 
 are mingled the Ardisia excelsa, Rhamnus glandulosus, Erica arborea, 
 and E. texo. 
 
 t Quercus canariensis, Broussonnet. 
 
118 
 
 ZONE OF HEATHS, ETC. 
 
 extremely beautiful, the Arbutus callicarpa, and other ever- 
 green trees of the family of myrtles. Bindweeds, and an 
 ivy very different from that of Europe (Hedera canariensis) 
 entwine the trunks of the laurels ; at their feet vegetate a 
 numberless quantity of ferns,* * * § of which three species t alone 
 descend as low as the region of the vines. The soil, covered 
 with mosses and tender grass, is enriched with the flowers 
 of the Campanula aurea, the Chrysanthemum pinnatifidum, 
 the Mentha canariensis, and several bushy species of Hype- 
 ricum.;}; Plantations of wild and grafted chesnut-trees form 
 a broad border round the region of the springs, which is the 
 greenest and most agreeable of the whole. 
 
 In the third zone (beginning at nine hundred toises of 
 absolute height), the last groups of Arbutus, of Myrica Paya, 
 and of that beautiful heath known to the natives by the 
 name of Texo, appear. This zone, four hundred toises in 
 breadth, is entirely filled by a vast forest of pines, among 
 which mingles the Juniperus cedro of Broussonnet. The 
 leaves of these pines are very long and stiff, and they sprout 
 sometimes by pairs, but oftener by threes in one sheath* 
 Having had no opportunity of examining the fructification, 
 we cannot say whether this species, which has the appear- 
 ance of the Scotch fir, is really different from the eighteen 
 species of pines with which we are already acquainted in 
 Europe. M. Decandolle is of opinion that the pine of 
 Teneriffe is equally distinct from the Pinus atlantica of 
 the neighbouring mountains of Mogador, and from the pine 
 of Aleppo, § which belongs to the basin of the Mediter- 
 ranean, and does not appear to have passed the Pillars of 
 Hercules. We met with these last pines on the slope of the 
 Peak, near twelve hundred toises above the level of the 
 
 * Woodwardia radicans, Asplénium palmatum, A. canariensis, A. lati- 
 folium, Nothalæna subcordata, Trichomanes canariensis, T. speciosum, 
 and Davallia canariensis. 
 
 f Two Acrostichums and the Ophyoglossum lusitanicum. 
 
 + Hypericum canariense, H. floribundum, and H. glandulosum. 
 
 § Pinus halepensis. M. Decandolle observes, that this species, which* 
 is not found in Portugal, but grows on the Mediterranean shores of France,. 
 Spain, and Italy, in Asia Minor, and in Barbary, would be better named 
 Pinus mediterranea. It composes the principal part of the pine-forests 
 of the south-east of France, where Gouan and Gerard have confounded 
 it with the Pinus sylvestris. It comprehends the Pinus halepensis, Mill., 
 Lamb., and Desfont., and the Pinus maritima, Lamb. 
 
ZONE OF GRASSES AND LICHENS. 
 
 119 
 
 sea. In the Cordilleras of New Spain, under the torrid zone, 
 the Mexican pines extend to the height of two thousand 
 toises. Notwithstanding the similarity of structure existing 
 between the different species of the same genus of plants, 
 each of them requires a certain degree of temperature and 
 rarity in the ambient air to attain its due growth. If in 
 temperate climates, and wherever snow falls, the uniform 
 heat of the soil be somewhat above the mean heat of the 
 atmosphere, it is probable that at the height of Portillo the 
 roots of the pines draw their nourishment from a soil, in 
 which, at a certain depth, the thermometer rises at most to 
 nine or ten degrees. 
 
 The fourth and fifth zones, the regions of the rétama and 
 the gramina, occupy heights equal to the most inaccessible 
 summits of the Pyrenees. It is the sterile part of the island 
 where heaps of pumice-stone, obsidian, and broken lava, form 
 impediments to vegetation. We have already spoken of 
 those flowery tufts of alpine broom (Spartium nubigenum), 
 which form oases amidst a vast desert of ashes. Two her- 
 baceous plants, the Scrophularia glabrata and the Viola chei- 
 ranthifolia, advance even to the Malpays. Above a turf 
 scorched by the heat of an African sun, an arid soil is over- 
 spread by the Cladonia paschalis. Towards the summit of 
 the Peak the Urceolarea and other plants of the family of 
 the lichens, help to work the decomposition of the scorified 
 matter. By this unceasing action of organic force the empire 
 of Plora is extended over islands ravaged by volcanoes. 
 
 On surveying the different zones of the vegetation of 
 Teneriffe, we perceive that the whole island may be consi- 
 dered as a forest of laurels, arbutus, and pines, containing 
 in its centre a naked and rocky soil, unfit either for pastur- 
 age or cultivation. M. Broussonnet observes, that the archi- 
 pelago of the Canaries may be divided into two groups of 
 islands; the first comprising Lancerota and Porteventura, 
 the second Teneriffe, Canary, G-omera, Perro, and Palma. 
 The appearance of the vegetation essentially differs in these 
 two groups. The eastern islands, Lancerota and Porteven- 
 tura, consist of extensive plains and mountains of little 
 elevation ; they have very few springs, and bear the appear- 
 ance, still more than the other islands, of having been sepa- 
 rated from the continent. The winds blow in the same 
 direction, and at the same periods: the Euphorbia mauri- 
 
120 
 
 CETTCLFOEM PLANTS. 
 
 tanica, tlie Atropa frutescens, and tlie arborescent Soncbus, 
 vegetate there in the loose sands, and afford, as in Africa, 
 food for camels. The western group of the Canaries pre- 
 sents a more elevated soil, is more woody, and is watered 
 by a greater number of springs. 
 
 Though the whole archipelago contains several plants 
 found also in Portugal,* in Spain, at the Azores, and in the 
 north-west of Africa, yet a great number of species, and 
 even some genera, are peculiar to Teneriffe, to Porto Santo, 
 and to Madeira. Such are the Mocanera, the Plocama, the 
 Bosea, the Canarina, the Drusa, and the Pittosporum. A 
 form which may be called northern, that of the cruciform 
 plant, t is much rarer in the Canaries than in Spain and in 
 Greece. Still farther to the south, in the equinoctial regions 
 of both continents, where the mean temperature of the air 
 rises above twenty-two degrees, the cruciform plants are 
 scarcely ever to be seen. 
 
 A question highly interesting to the history of the pro- 
 gressive marks of organization on the globe has been very 
 warmly discussed in our own times, that of ascertaining 
 whether the polymorphous plants are more common in the 
 volcanic islands. The vegetation of Teneriffe is unfavourable 
 to the hypothesis that nature in new countries is but little 
 subject to permanent forms. M. Broussonnet, who resided 
 so long at the Canaries, asserts that the variable plants are 
 not more common there than in the south of Europe. May 
 
 * M. Willdenow and myself found, among the plants of the peak of 
 Teneriffe, the beautiful Satyrium diphyllum (Orchis cordata, Willd.), 
 which Mr. Link discovered in Portugal. The Canaries have, in common 
 with the Flora of the Azores, not the Dicksonia culcita, the only 
 arborescent heath found at the thirty-ninth degree of latitude, but the 
 Asplénium palmatum, and the Myrica Faya. This last tree is met within 
 Portugal, in a wild state. Count Hoffmansegg has seen very old trunks 
 of it ; but it was doubtful whether it was indigenous, or imported into 
 that part of our continent. In reflecting on the migrations of plants, and 
 on the geological possibility, that lands sunk in the ocean may have 
 heretofore united Portugal, the Azores, the Canaries, and the chain of 
 Atlas, we conceive, that the existence of the Myrica Faya in western 
 Europe is a phenomenon at least as striking as that of the pine of Aleppo 
 would be at the Azores. 
 
 f Among the small number of cruciform species contained in the 
 Flora of Teneriffe, we shall here mention Cheiranthus longifolius, l’Herit. ; 
 C’n. fructescens, Vent.; Ch. scoparius, Brouss. ; Erysimum bicorne, Aiton j 
 Crambe strigosa, and C. lævigata, Brouss. 
 
ABORIGINES OF TENERIFEE. 
 
 121 
 
 it not to be presumed, that the polymorphous species, which 
 are so abundant in the isle of Bourbon, are assignable to the 
 nature of the soil and climate rather than to the newness of 
 the vegetation ? 
 
 Before we take leave of the old world to pass into the 
 new, I must advert to a subject which is of general interest, 
 because it belongs to the history of man, and to those 
 fatal revolutions which have swept off whole tribes from the 
 face of the earth. We inquire at the isle of Cuba, at St. 
 Domingo, and in Jamaica, where is the abode of the primi- 
 tive inhabitants of those countries? We ask at Teneriffe 
 what is become of the Guanches, whose mummies alone, 
 buried in caverns, have escaped destruction? In the fif- 
 teenth century almost all mercantile nations, especially the 
 Spaniards and the Portuguese, sought for slaves at the 
 Canary Islands, as in later times they have been sought on 
 the coast of Guinea.* The Christian religion, which in its 
 origin was so highly favourable to the liberty of mankind, 
 
 ; served afterwards as a pretext to the cupidity of Europeans. 
 Every individual, made prisoner before he received the rite 
 of baptism, became a slave. At that period no attempt had 
 yet been made to prove that the blacks were an interme- 
 diate race between man and animals. The swarthy Guanche 
 and the African negro were simultaneously sold in the market 
 of Seville, without a question whether slavery should be the 
 doom only of men with black skins and woolly hair. 
 
 The archipelago of the Canaries was divided into several 
 small states hostile to each other, and in many instances the 
 same island was subject to two independent princes. The 
 trading nations, influenced by the hideous policy still exer- 
 cised on the coast of Africa, kept up intestine warfare. One 
 Guanche then became the property of another, who sold 
 him to the Europeans; several, who preferred death to 
 slavery, killed themselves and their children. The popu- 
 lation of the Canaries had considerably suffered by the slave 
 trade, by the depredations of pirates, and especially by a 
 long period of carnage, when Alonzo de Lugo completed the 
 conquest of the Guanches. The surviving remnants of the 
 
 * The Spanish historians speak of expeditions made by the Huguenots 
 of Rochelle to carry off Guanche slaves. I have some doubt respect- 
 ing these expeditions, -which are said to have taken place subsequently to 
 the year 1530. 
 
122 
 
 EXTINCTION OF THE GFANCHES. 
 
 race perished mostly in 1494, in the terrible pestilence called 
 the modorra , which was attributed to the quantity of dead 
 bodies left exposed in the open air by the Spaniards after the 
 battle of La Laguna. The nation of the G-uanches was 
 extinct at the beginning of the seventeenth century ; a few 
 old men only were found at Candelaria and Gruimar. 
 
 It is, however, consoling to find that the whites have not 
 always disdained to intermarry with the natives; but the 
 Canarians of the present day, whom the Spaniards familiarly 
 call Islenos (Islanders), have very powerful motives for 
 denying this mixture. In a long series of generations time 
 effaces the characteristic marks of a race; and as the de- 
 scendants of the Andalusians settled at Teneriffe are them- 
 selves of dark complexion, we may conceive that intermar- 
 riages cannot have produced a perceptible change in the 
 colour of the whites. It is very certain that no native of 
 pure race exists in the whole island. It is true that a few 
 Canarian families boast of their relationship to the last shep- 
 herd-king of G-uimar, but these pretensions do not rest on 
 very solid foundations, and are only renewed from time to 
 time when some Canarian of more dusky hue than his coun- 
 trymen is prompted to solicit a commission in the service of 
 the king of Spain. 
 
 A short time after the discovery of America, when Spain 
 was at the highest pinnacle of her glory, the gentle character 
 of the G-uanches was the fashionable topic, as we in our 
 times laud the Arcadian innocence of the inhabitants of 
 Otaheite. In both these pictures the colouring is more 
 vivid than true. When nations, wearied with mental enjoy- 
 ments, behold nothing in the refinement of manners but the 
 germ of depravity, they are pleased with the idea, that in 
 some distant region, in the first dawn of civilization, infant 
 society enjoys pure and perpetual felicity. To this senti- 
 ment Tacitus owed a part of his success, when he sketched 
 for the Romans, subjects of the Cæsars, a picture of the 
 manners of the inhabitants of Germany. The same senti- 
 ment gives an ineffable charm to the narrative of those tra- 
 vellers who, at the close of the last century, visited the 
 South Sea Islands. 
 
 The inhabitants of those islands, too much vaunted (and 
 previously anthropophagi), resemble, under more than one 
 point of view, the Gruanches of Teneriffe. Both nations 
 
THEIR MUMMY-CAVES. 
 
 123 
 
 were under tlie yoke of feudal government. Among the 
 Guanches, this institution, which facilitates and renders a 
 state of warfare perpetual, was sanctioned by religion. The 
 priests declared to the people : “ The great Spirit, Achaman, 
 created first the nobles, the açhimenceys , to whom he dis- 
 tributed all the goats that exist on the face of the earth. 
 After the nobles, Achaman created the plebeians, achicaxnas. 
 This younger race had the boldness to petition also for goats ; 
 but the supreme Spirit answered, that this race was destined 
 to serve the nobles, and that they had need of no property.’ > 
 This tradition was made, no doubt, to please the rich vassals 
 of the shepherd-kings. The fay can, or high priest, also exer- 
 cised the right of conferring nobility; and the law of the 
 Guanches expressed that every achimencey who degraded 
 him self by milking a goat with his own hands, lost his claim 
 to nobility. This law does not remind us of the simplicity 
 of the Homeric age. ¥e are astonished to see the useful 
 labours of agriculture, and of pastoral life, exposed to con- 
 tempt at the very dawn of civilization. 
 
 The Guanches, famed for their tall stature, were the Pata- 
 gonians of the old world. Historians exaggerated the mus- 
 cular strength of the Gruanches, as, previous to the voyage 
 of Bougainville and Cordoba, colossal proportions were at- 
 tributed to the tribe that inhabited the southern extremity 
 of America. I never saw Guanche mummies but in the 
 cabinets of Europe. At the time I visited the Canaries they 
 were very scarce ; a considerable number, however, might be 
 found if miners were employed to open the sepulchral caverns 
 which are cut in the rock on the eastern slope of the Peak, 
 between Arico and Guimar. These mummies are in a state 
 of desiccation so singular, that whole bodies, with their inte- 
 guments, frequently do not weigh above six or seven pounds ; 
 or a third less than the skeleton of an individual of the 
 same size, recently stripped of the muscular flesh. The 
 conformation of the skull has some slight resemblance to 
 that of the white race of the ancient Egyptians ; and the 
 incisive teeth of the Guanches are blunted, like those of the 
 mummies found on the banks of the Nile. But this form of 
 the teeth is the result of art ; and on examining more care- 
 fully the physiognomy of the ancient Canarians, Blumenbach 
 and other able anatomists have recognized in the cheek bones 
 and the lower jaw perceptible differences from the Egyptian 
 
124 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE RACE. 
 
 mummies. On opening those of the Guanches, remains of 
 aromatic plants are discovered, among which the Chenopo- 
 dium amhrosio’ides is constantly perceived: the bodies are 
 often decorated with small laces, to which are hung little 
 discs of baked earth, which appear to have served as nume- 
 rical signs, and resemble the quippoes of the Peruvians, the 
 Mexicans, and the Chinese. 
 
 The population of islands being in general less exposed 
 than that of continents to the effect of migrations, we may 
 presume that, in the time of the Carthaginians and the 
 Greeks, the archipelago of the Canaries was inhabited by 
 the same race of men as were found by the Norman and 
 Spanish conquerors. The only monument that can throw 
 any light on the origin of the Guanches is their language ; 
 but unhappily there are not above a hundred and fifty words 
 extant, and several express the same object, according to the 
 dialect of the different islanders. Independently of these 
 words, which have been carefully noted, there are still some 
 valuable fragments existing in the names of a great number 
 of hamlets, hills, and valleys. The Guanches, like the Bis- 
 cayans, the Hindoos, the Peruvians, and all primitive nations, 
 named places after the quality of the soil, the shape of the 
 rocks, the caverns that gave them shelter, and the nature of 
 the tree that overshadowed the springs.* 
 
 * It has been long imagined, that the language of the Guanches had no 
 analogy with the living tongues; but since the travels of Hornemann, and 
 the ingenious researches of Marsden and Venturi, have drawn the atten- 
 tion of the learned to the Berbers, who, like the Sarmatic tribes, occupy 
 an immense extent of country in the north of Africa, we find that several 
 Guanche words have common roots with words of the Chilha and Gebali 
 dialects. We shall cite, for instance, the words : 
 
 Heaven, in Guanche — Tigo ; in Berberic, — Tigot. 
 
 Milk . . . Aho; . . . Acho. 
 
 Barley . . . Temasen ; . . . Tomzeen. 
 
 Basket . . . Carianas ; . . . Carian. 
 
 Water » . . Aenum; . . . Anan. 
 
 I doubt whether this analogy is a proof of a common origin ; but it is 
 an indication of the ancient connexion between the Guanches and Berbers, 
 a tribe of mountaineers, in which the ancient Numidians, Getuli, and 
 Garamanti are confounded, and who extend themselves from the eastern 
 extremity of Atlas by Harutsh and Fezzan, as far as the oasis of Siwah 
 and Augela. The natives of the Canary Islands called themselves 
 Guanches, from guan, man ; as the Tonguese call themselves bye, and 
 tongui, which have the same signification as yuan. Besides, the nations 
 
MIXED DESCENDANTS. 
 
 125 
 
 The greater attention we direct to the study of languages 
 in a philosophical point of view, the more we must observe 
 that no one of them is entirely distinct. The language of the 
 Gruanches would appear still less so, had we any data re- 
 specting its mechanism and grammatical construction ; two 
 elements more important than the form of words, and the 
 identity of sounds. It is the same with certain idioms, as 
 with those organized beings that seem to shrink from all 
 classification in the series of natural families. Their isolated 
 state is merely apparent ; for it ceases when, on embracing a 
 greater number of objects, we come to discover the interme- 
 diate links. Those learned enquirers who trace Egyptians 
 wherever there are mummies, hieroglyphics, or pyramids, 
 will imagine perhaps that the race of Typhon was united to 
 the Gruanches by the Berbers, real Atlantes, to whom belong 
 the Tibboes and the Tuarycks of the desert : but this hypo- 
 thesis is supported by no analogy between the Berberic and 
 Coptic languages, which are justly considered as remnants of 
 the ancient Egyptian. 
 
 The people who have succeeded the Gruanches are de- 
 scended from the Spaniards, and in a more remote degree 
 from the Normans. Though these two races have been 
 exposed during three centuries past to the same climate, the 
 latter is distinguished by the fairer complexion. The de- 
 scendants of the Normans inhabit the valley of Teganana, 
 between Punta de Naga and Punta de Hidalgo. The names 
 of Grandville and Dampierre are still pretty common in this 
 district. The Canarians are a moral, sober, and religious 
 people, of a less industrious character at home than in foreign 
 countries. A roving and enterprising disposition leads these 
 islanders, like the Biscayans and Catalonians, to the Philip- 
 pines, to the Ladrone Islands, to America, and wherever 
 there are Spanish settlements, from Chile and La Plata to 
 New Mexico. To them we are in a great measure indebted 
 for the progress of agriculture in those colonies. The whole 
 I archipelago does not contain 160,030 inhabitants, and the 
 Islenos are perhaps more numerous in the new continent 
 than in their own country. 
 
 who speak the Berberic language are not all of the same race ; and the 
 description which Scylax gives, in his Periplus, of the inhabitants of 
 Cerne, a shepherd people of tall stature and long hair, reminds us of the 
 features which characterize the Canarian Guanches. 
 
126 
 
 DEPABTUBE EBOM TEKEBIEFE. 
 
 Chapteb III. 
 
 Passage from Teneriffe to South America. — The Island of Tobago. — 
 Arrival at Cumana. 
 
 ¥e left the road of Santa Cruz on the 25th of June, and 
 directed our course towards South America. We soon lost 
 sight of the Canary Islands, the lofty mountains of which 
 were covered with a reddish vapour. The Peak alone ap- 
 peared from time to time, as at intervals the wind dispersed 
 the clouds that enveloped the Piton. We felt, for the first 
 time, how strong are the impressions left on the mind from 
 the aspect of those countries situated on the limits of the 
 torrid zone, where nature appears at once so rich, so 
 various, and so majestic. Our stay at Teneriffe harl been 
 very short, and yet we withdrew from the island as if it had 
 long been our home. 
 
 Our passage from Santa Cruz to Cumana, the most 
 eastern part of the New Continent, was very fine. We 
 cut the tropic of Cancer on the 27th; and though the 
 Pizarro was not a very fast sailer, we made, in twenty days, 
 the nine hundred leagues, which separate the coast of Africa 
 from that of the New Continent. We passed fifty leagues 
 west of Cape Bojador, Cape Blanco, and the Cape Yerd 
 islands. A few land birds which had been driven to sea by 
 the impetuosity of the wind followed us for several days. 
 
 The latitude diminished rapidly, from the parallel of 
 Madeira to the tropic. When we reached the zone where 
 the trade-winds are constant, we crossed the ocean from 
 east to west, on a calm sea, which the Spanish sailors call 
 the Ladies’ Grulf, el Golfo de las Damas. In proportion as 
 we advanced towards the west, we found the trade-winds fix 
 to eastward. 
 
 These winds, the most generally adopted theory of which 
 is explained in a celebrated treatise of Halley,* are a phe- 
 
 * The existence of an upper current of air, which blows constantly 
 from the equator to the poles, and of a lower current, which blows from 
 the poles to the equator, had already been admitted, as M. Arago has 
 shown, by Hooke. The ideas of the celebrated English naturalist are 
 developed in a Discourse on Earthquakes, published in 1686. “ I think 
 
TBADE-WINDS. 
 
 127 
 
 nomenon much more complicated than most persons admit. 
 In the Atlantic Ocean, the longitude, as well as the decli- 
 nation of the sun, influences the direction and limits of the 
 trade-winds. In the direction of the New Continent, in 
 both hemispheres, these limits extend beyond the tropics 
 eight or nine degrees ; while in the vicinity of Africa, the 
 ! variable winds prevail far beyond the parallel of 28 or 27 
 degrees. It is to be regretted, on account of the progress 
 of meteorology and navigation, that the changes of the 
 currents of the equinoctial atmosphere in the Pacific 
 are much less known than the variation of these same 
 currents in a sea that is narrower, and influenced by. the 
 proximity of the coasts of Gruinea and Brazil. The dif- 
 ference with which the strata of air flow back from the two 
 poles towards the equator cannot be the same in every 
 degree of longitude, that is to say, on points of the globe 
 where the continents are of very different breadths, and 
 where they stretch away more or less towards the poles. 
 
 It is known, that in the passage from Santa Cruz to 
 Cumana, as in that from Acapulco to the Philippine Islands, 
 seamen are scarcely ever under the necessity of working 
 their sails. We pass those latitudes as if we were descending 
 a river, and we might deem it no hazardous undertaking 
 if we made the voyage in an open boat. Parther west, on 
 the coast of St. Martha and in the Grulf of Mexico, the 
 trade-wind blows impetuously, and renders the sea very 
 stormy.* 
 
 The wind fell gradually the farther we receded from the 
 African coast: it was sometimes smooth water for several 
 hours, and these short calms were regularly interrupted by 
 electrical phenomena. Black thick clouds, marked by strong 
 outlines, rose on the east, and it seemed as if a squall would 
 have forced us to hand our topsails ; but the breeze fresh- 
 
 (adds he) that several phenomena, which are presented by the atmo- 
 sphere and the ocean, especially the winds, may be explained by the 
 polar currents.” — Hooke’s Posthumous Works, p. 364. 
 
 * The Spanish sailors call the rough trade-winds at Carthagena in the 
 West Indias los brisotes de Santa Martha; and in the Gulf of Mexico, 
 las brizas pardas. These latter winds are accompanied with a gray and 
 cloudy sky. 
 
128 
 
 OLD AND NEW ROUTES. 
 
 ened anew, there fell a few large drops ol rain, and the 
 storm dispersed without our hearing any thunder. Mean- 
 while it was curious to observe the effect of several black, 
 isolated, and very low clouds, which passed the zenith. We 
 felt the force of the wind augment or diminish progressively, 
 according as small bodies of vesicular vapour approached 
 or receded, while the electrometers, furnished with a long 
 metallic rod and lighted match, showed no change of electric 
 tension in the lower strata of the air. It is by help of 
 these squalls, which alternate with dead calms, that the 
 passage from the Canary Islands to the Antilles, or southern 
 coast of America, is made in the months of June and July. 
 
 Some Spanish navigators have lately proposed going to 
 the "West Indies and the coasts of Terra-Firma by a course 
 different from that which was taken by Columbus. They 
 advise, instead of steering directly to the south in search 
 of the trade-winds, to change both latitude and longitude, 
 in a diagonal line from Cape St. Vincent to America. This 
 .method, which shortens the way, cutting the tropic nearly 
 twenty degrees west of the point where it is commonly cut 
 by pilots, was several times successfully adopted by Admiral 
 Gravina. That able commander, who fell at the battle of 
 Trafalgar, arrived in 1802 at St. Domingo, by the oblique 
 passage, several days before the French fleet, though orders 
 of the court of Madrid would have forced him to enter 
 Ferrol with his squadron, and stop there some time. 
 
 This new system of navigation shortens the passage from 
 Cadiz to Cumana one-twentieth; but as the tropic is 
 attained only at the longitude of forty degrees, the chance 
 of meeting with contrary winds, which blow sometimes from 
 the south, and at other times from the south-west, is more 
 unfavourable. In the old system, the disadvantage of 
 making a longer passage is compensated by the certainty 
 of catching the trade-winds in a shorter space of time, and 
 keeping them the greater part of the passage. At the time 
 of my abode in the Spanish colonies, I witnessed the arrival 
 of several merchant-ships, which from the fear of privateers 
 had chosen the oblique course, and had had a very short 
 passage. 
 
 Nothing can equal the beauty and mildness of the climate 
 
BANKS or SEAWEED. 
 
 129 
 
 of the equinoctial region on the ocean. "While the trade 
 wind blew strongly, the thermometer kept at 23 or 24 
 degrees in the day, and at 22 or 225 degrees during the 
 night. The charm of the lovely climates bordering on the 
 equator, can be fully enjoyed only by those who have under- 
 taken the voyage from Acapulco or the coasts of Chile to 
 ; Europe in a very rough season. What a contrast between 
 ! the tempestuous seas of the northern latitudes and the regions 
 where the tranquillity of nature is never disturbed ! If the 
 return from Mexico or South America to the coasts of Spain 
 i were as expeditious and as agreeable as the passage from the 
 old to the new continent, the number of Europeans settled 
 in the colonies would be much less considerable than it is at 
 present. To the sea which surrounds the Azores and the 
 Bermuda Islands, and which is traversed in returning to 
 Europe by the high latitudes, the Spaniards have given 
 ; the singular name of Golfo de las Yeguas (the Mares’ Gulf). 
 
 Colonists who are not accustomed to the sea, and who have 
 j led solitary lives in the forests of Guiana, the savannahs of 
 ! the Caracas, or the Cordilleras of Peru, dread the vicinity 
 of the Bermudas more than the inhabitants of Lima fear at 
 present the passage round Cape Horn. 
 
 To the north of the Cape Yerd Islands we met with great 
 i masses of floating seaweeds. They were the tropic grape, 
 (Fucus natans), which grows on submarine rocks, only from 
 the equator to the fortieth degree of north and south lati- 
 tude. These weeds seem to indicate the existence of cur- 
 | rents in this place, as well as to south-west of the banks 
 of Newfoundland. We must not confound the latitudes 
 | abounding in scattered weeds with those banks of marine 
 j plants, which Columbus compares to extensive meadows, 
 the sight of which dismayed the crew of the Santa Maria 
 in the forty-second degree of longitude. I am convinced, 
 from the comparison of a great number of journals, that 
 i in the basin of the Northern Atlantic there exist two banks 
 of weeds very different from each other. The most exten- 
 sive is a little west of the meridian of Fayal, one of the 
 Azores, between the twenty-fifth and thirty-sixth degrees 
 of latitude.* The temperature of the Atlantic in those 
 
 * It would appear that Phoenician vessels came “ in thirty days’ sail, 
 with an easterly wind,” to the weedy sea, which the Portuguese and 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
130 
 
 BAKKS OF SEAWEED. 
 
 latitudes is from sixteen to twenty degrees, and the north 
 winds, which sometimes rage there very tempestuously, drive 
 floating isles of seaweed into the low latitudes as far as 
 the parallels of twenty-four and even twenty degrees. 
 Vessels returning to Europe, either from Monte Video or 
 the Cape of Good Hope, cross these banks of Fucus, which 
 the Spanish pilots consider as at an equal distance from 
 the Antilles and Canaries; and they serve the less in- 
 structed mariner to rectify his longitude. The second bank 
 of Fucus is but little known; it occupies a much smaller 
 space, in the twenty-second and twenty-sixth degrees of lati- 
 tude, eighty leagues west of the meridian of the Bahama 
 Islands. It is found on the passage from the Caiques to the 
 Bermudas. 
 
 Though a species of seaweed* has been seen with stems 
 eight hundred feet long, the growth of these marine crypto- 
 gamia being extremely rapid, it is nevertheless certain, that 
 in the latitudes we have just described, the Fuci, far from 
 being fixed to the bottom, float in separate masses on the 
 surface of the water. In this state, the vegetation can 
 scarcely last longer than it would in the branch of a tree 
 torn from its trunk; and in order to explain how moving 
 masses are found for ages in the same position, we must 
 admit that they owe their origin to submarine rocks, which, 
 lying at forty or sixty fathoms’ depth, continually supply 
 what has been carried away by the equinoctial currents. 
 This current bears the tropic grape into the high latitudes, 
 toward the coasts of Norway and France ; and it is not the 
 Gulf-stream, as some mariners think, which accumulates the 
 Fucus to the south of the Azores. 
 
 The causes that unroot these weeds at depths where it 
 is generally thought the sea is but slightly agitated, are not 
 sufficiently known. We learn only, from the observations 
 
 Spaniards call mar de zargasso. I have shown, in another place (“Views 
 of Nature,” Bohn’s edition, p. 46), that the passage of Aristotle, De 
 Mirabil. (ed. Duval, p. 1157), can scarcely be applied to the coasts of 
 Africa, like an analogous passage of the Periplus of Scylax. Supposing 
 that this sea, full of weeds, which impeded the course of the Phoenician 
 vessels, was the mar de zargasso, we need not admit that the ancients 
 navigated the Atlantic beyond thirty degrees of west longitude from the 
 meridian of Paris. 
 
 * The baudreux of the Falkland Islands ; Fucus giganteus, Forster ; 
 Laminaria pyrifera Lamour. 
 
TLYING-FISH. 
 
 131 
 
 of M. Lamouroux, that if the fucus adhere to the rocks 
 with the greatest firmness before its fructification, it sepa- 
 rates with great facility after that period, or during the sea- 
 son which suspends its vegetation like that of the terrestrial 
 plants. The fish and mollusca which gnaw the stems of the 
 seaweeds no doubt contribute also to detach them from their 
 roots. 
 
 From the twenty-second degree of latitude, we found the 
 surface of the sea covered with flying-fish,* which threw 
 themselves up into the air, twelve, fifteen, or eighteen feet, 
 and fell down on the deck. I do not hesitate to speak on 
 a subject of which voyagers discourse as frequently as of 
 dolphins, sharks, sea-sickness, and the phosphorescence of 
 the ocean. None of these topics can fail to afford in- 
 teresting observations to naturalists, provided they make 
 them their particular study. Nature is an inexhaustible 
 source of investigation, and in proportion as the domain of 
 science is extended, she presents herself to those who know 
 how to interrogate her, under forms which they have never 
 yet examined. 
 
 I have named the flying-fish, in order to direct the atten- 
 tion of naturalists to the enormous size of their natatory 
 bladder, which, in an animal of 64 inches, is 36 inches long, 
 09 of an inch broad, and contains three cubic inches and a 
 half of air. As this bladder occupies more than half the size 
 of the fish, it is probable that it contributes to its lightness; 
 We may assert that this reservoir of air is more fitted for 
 flying than swimming; for the experiments made by M. 
 Provenzal and myself have proved, that, even in the species 
 which are provided with this organ, it is not indispensably 
 necessary for the ascending movement to the surface of the 
 water. In a young flying-fish, 5*8 inches long, each of 
 the pectoral fins, which serve as wings, presented a sur- 
 face to the air of 3-^ square inches. We observed, that 
 the nine branches of nerves, which go to the twelve rays 
 of these fins, are almost three times the size of the nerves 
 that belong to the ventral fins. When the former of 
 these nerves are excited by galvanic electricity, the rays 
 which support the membrane of the pectoral fin extend with 
 five times the force with which the other fins move when 
 * Exocoetus volitans. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 FLYING-FISH. 
 
 galvanised by the same metals. Thus, the fish is capable 
 of throwing itself horizontally the distance of twenty feet 
 before retouching the water with the extremity of its fins. 
 This motion has been aptly compared to that of a flat stone, 
 which, thrown horizontally, bounds one or two feet above 
 the water. Notwithstanding the extreme rapidity of this 
 motion, it is certain, that the animal beats the air during 
 the leap ; that is, it alternately extends and closes its pec- 
 toral fins. The same motion has been observed in the flying 
 scorpion of the rivers of Japan: they also contain a large 
 air-bladder, with which the great part of the scorpions that 
 have not the faculty of flying are unprovided. The flying- 
 fish, like almost all animals which have gills, enjoy the 
 power of equal respiration for a long time, both in water 
 and in air, by the same organs ; that is, by extracting the 
 oxygen from the atmosphere as well as from the water 
 in which it is dissolved. They pass a great part of their 
 life in the air; but if they escape from the sea to avoid 
 the voracity of the Dorado, they meet in the air the Frigate- 
 bird, the Albatross, and others, which seize them in their 
 flight. Thus, on the banks of the Orinoco, herds of the 
 Cabiai, which rush from the water to escape the cro- 
 codile, become the prey of the jaguar, which awaits their 
 arrival. 
 
 I doubt, however, whether the flying-fish spring out of the 
 water merely to escape the pursuit of their enemies. Like 
 swallows, they move by thousands in a right line, and in a 
 direction constantly opposite to that of the waves. In our 
 own climates, on the brink of a river, illumined by the rays of 
 the sun, we often see solitary fish fearlessly bound above the 
 surface as if they felt pleasure in breathing the air. Why 
 should not these gambols be more frequent with the flying- 
 fish, which from the strength of their pectoral fins, and the 
 smallness of their specific gravity, can so easily support 
 themselves in the air? I invite naturalists to examine 
 whether other flying-fish, for instance the Exocætus exiliens, 
 the Trigla volitans, and the T. hirundo, have as capacious an 
 air-bladder as the flying-fish of the tropics. This last follows 
 the heated waters of the Gulf-stream when they flow north- 
 ward. The cabin-boys amuse themselves with cutting off 
 a part of the pectoral fins, and assert, that these wings grow 
 
THE MA.VL-STB003J. 
 
 133 
 
 again ; which seems to me not unlikely, from facts observed 
 in other families of fishes. 
 
 At the time I left Paris, experiments made at Jamaica by 
 Dr. Brodbelt, on the air contained in the natatory bladder of 
 the sword-fish, had led some naturalists to think, that within 
 the tropics, in sea-fish, that organ must be filled with pure 
 oxygen gas. Pull of this idea, I was surprised at finding in 
 the air-bladder of the flying-fish only O'OJ of oxygen to 0 91 
 of azote and 0 02 of carbonic acid. The proportion of this last 
 gas, measured by the absorption of lime-water in graduated 
 tubes, appeared more uniform than that of the oxygen, of 
 which some individuals yielded almost double the quantity. 
 Prom the curious phenomena observed by MM. Biot, Confi- 
 gliachi, and Delaroche, we might suppose, that the sword- 
 fish dissected by Dr. Brodbelt had inhabited the lower strata 
 of the ocean, where some fish* have as much as 0 92 of 
 oxygen in the air-bladder. 
 
 On the 3rd and 4th of July, we crossed that part of the 
 Atlantic where the charts indicate the bank of the Maal- 
 stroom ; and towards night we altered our course to avoid the 
 danger, the existence of which is, however, as doubtful as that 
 of the isles Ponseco and St. Anne. It would have been 
 perhaps as prudent to have continued our course. The old 
 charts are filled with rocks, some of which really exist, though 
 most of them are merely the offspring of those optical illu- 
 sions which are more frequent at sea than in inland places. 
 As we approached the supposed Maal-stroom, we observed no 
 other motion in the waters than the effect of a current which 
 bore to the north-west, and which hindered us from diminish- 
 ing our latitude as much as we wished. The force of this 
 current augments as we approach the new continent ; it is 
 modified by the configuration of the coasts of Brazil and 
 Guiana, and not by the waters of the Orinoco and the 
 Amazon, as some have supposed. 
 
 Prom the time we entered the torrid zone, we were never 
 weary of admiring, at night, the beauty of the southern sky, 
 which, as we advanced to the south, opened new constella- 
 tions to our view. We feel an indescribable sensation when, 
 on approaching the equator, and particularly on passing from 
 * Trigla cucullus. 
 
134 
 
 A NEW HEMISPHEEE. 
 
 one hemisphere to the other, we see those stars, which we have 
 contemplated from our infancy, progressively sink, and finally 
 disappear. Nothing awakens in the traveller a livelier re- 
 membrance of the immense distance by which he is separated 
 from his country, than the aspect of an unknown firmament. 
 The grouping of the stars of the first magnitude, some scat- 
 tered nebulae, rivalling in splendour the milky way, and tracts 
 of space remarkable for their extreme blackness, give a pecu- 
 liar physiognomy to the southern sky. This sight fills with 
 admiration even those who, uninstructed in the several 
 branches of physical science, feel the same emotion of delight 
 in the contemplation of the heavenly vault, as in the view of 
 a beautiful landscape, or a majestic site. A traveller needs 
 not to be a botanist, to recognize the torrid zone by the 
 mere aspect of its vegetation. Without having acquired any 
 notions of astronomy, without any acquaintance with the 
 celestial charts of Fiam stead and De la Caille, he feels he is 
 not in Europe, when he sees the immense constellation of 
 the Ship, or the phosphorescent Clouds of Magellan, arise on 
 the horizon. The heavens and the earth, — everything in the 
 equinoctial regions, presents an exotic character. 
 
 The lower regions of the air were loaded with vapours for 
 some days. We saw distinctly for the first time the Southern 
 Cross only on the night of the 4th of July, in the sixteenth 
 degree of latitude. It was strongly inclined, and appeared 
 from time to time between the clouds, the centre of which, 
 furrowed by uncondensed lightnings, reflected a silvery light. 
 If a traveller may be permitted to speak of his personal 
 emotions, I shall add, that on that night I experienced the 
 realization of one of the dreams of my early youth. 
 
 When we begin to fix our eyes on geographical maps, and 
 to read the narratives of navigators, we feel for certain 
 countries and climates a sort of predilection, which we know 
 not how to account for at a more advanced period of life. 
 These impressions, however, exercise a considerable influence 
 over our determinations; and from a sort of instinct we 
 endeavour to connect ourselves with objects on which the 
 mind has long been fixed as by a secret charm. At a period 
 when 1 studied the heavens, not with the intention of devot- 
 ing myself to astronomy, but only to acquire a knowledge of 
 
THE SOUTHEEN CEOSS. 
 
 135 
 
 the stars, I was disturbed by a feeling unknown to those who 
 are devoted to sedentary life. It was painful to me to re- 
 nounce the hope of beholding the beautiful constellations 
 near the south pole. Impatient to rove in the equinoctial 
 regions, I could not raise my eyes to the starry firmament 
 without thinking of the Southern Cross, and recalling the 
 sublime passage of Dante, which the most celebrated com- 
 mentators have applied to that constellation : — 
 
 Io mi volsi a man’ destra e posi mente 
 All’ altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle 
 Non viste mai fuorch’ alla prima gente. 
 
 Goder parea lo ciel di lor fiammelle ; 
 
 O settentrional vedovo sito 
 Poichè privato sei di mirar quelle ! 
 
 The pleasure we felt on discovering the Southern Cross was 
 warmly shared by those of the crew who had visited the colo- 
 nies. In the solitude of the seas we hail a star as a friend, 
 from whom we have long been separated. The Portuguese 
 and the Spaniards are peculiarly susceptible of this feeling ; 
 a religious sentiment attaches them to a constellation, the 
 form of which recalls the sign of the faith planted by their 
 ancestors in the deserts of the New World. 
 
 The two great stars which mark the summit and the foot 
 of the Cross having nearly the same right ascension, it 
 follows that the constellation is almost perpendicular at 
 the moment when it passes the meridian. This circum- 
 stance is known to the people of every nation situated 
 beyond the tropics, or in the southern hemisphere. It has 
 been observed at what hour of the night, in different seasons, 
 the Cross is erect or inclined. It is a timepiece which 
 advances very regularly nearly four minutes a-day, and no 
 other group of stars affords to the naked eye an observa- 
 tion of time so easily made. How often have we heard our 
 guides exclaim in the savannahs of Venezuela, or in the desert 
 extending from Lima to Truxillo, “ Midnight is past, the 
 Cross begins to bend!” How often those words reminded 
 us of that affecting scene, where Paul and Virginia, seated 
 near the source of the river of Lataniers, conversed together 
 for the last time, and where the old man, at the sight of 
 the Southern Cross, warns them that it is time to separate. 
 
136 
 
 TROPICAL PETER. 
 
 The last days of our passage were not so felicitous as the 
 mildness of the climate and the calmness of the ocean had 
 led us to hope. The dangers of the sea did not disturb us, 
 but the germs of a malignant fever became manifest on board 
 Our vessel as we drew near the Antilles. Between decks the 
 ship was excessively hot, and very much crowded. From the 
 time we passed the tropic, the thermometer was at thirty- 
 four or thirty-six degrees. Two sailors, several passengers, 
 and, what is remarkable enough, two negroes from the coast 
 of Guinea, and a mulatto child, were attacked with a disorder 
 which appeared to be epidemic. The symptoms were not 
 equally alarming in all the cases ; nevertheless, several per- 
 sons, and especially the most robust, fell into delirium after 
 the second day. No fumigation was made. A Gallician 
 surgeon, ignorant and phlegmatic, ordered bleedings, because 
 he attributed the fever to what he called heat and corruption 
 of the blood. There was not an ounce of bark on board ; 
 for we had omitted to take any with us, under the impression 
 that this salutary production of Peru could not fail to be 
 found on board a Spanish vessel. 
 
 On the 8th of July, a sailor, who was near expiring, re- 
 covered his health from a circumstance worthy of being men- 
 tioned. His hammock was so hung, that there was not ten 
 inches between his face and the deck. It was impossible to 
 administer the sacrament in this situation ; for, agreeably to 
 the custom on board Spanish vessels, the viaticum must be 
 carried by the light of tapers, and followed by the whole crew. 
 The patient was removed into an airy place near the hatch- 
 way, where a small square berth had been formed with sail- 
 cloth. Here he was to remain till he died, which was an 
 event expected every moment ; but passing from an atmos- 
 phere heated, stagnant, and filled with miasma, into fresher 
 and purer air, which was renewed every instant, he gradually 
 revived from his lethargic state. His recovery dated from 
 the day when he quitted the middle deck ; and as it often 
 happens in medicine that the same facts are cited in support 
 of systems diametrically opposite, this recovery confirmed 
 our doctor in his idea of the inflammation of the blood, and 
 the necessity of bleeding, evacuating, and all the asthenic 
 remedies. We soon felt the fatal effects of this treatment. 
 
 For several days the pilot’s reckoning differed 1° 12' in 
 
APPROACH TO TOBAGO. 
 
 137 
 
 longitude from that of my time. This difference was owing 
 less to the general current, which I have called the current 
 of rotation, than to that particular movement, which, draw- 
 ing the waters toward the north-west, from the coast of 
 Brazil to the Antilles, shortens the passage from Cayenne to 
 Guadaloupe.* On the 12th of July, I thought I might fore- 
 tell our seeing land next day before sunrise. We were then, 
 according to my observations, in latitude 10° 46', and west 
 longitude 60° 54'. A few series of lunar distances confirmed 
 the chronometrical result ; but we were surer of the position 
 of the vessel, than of that of the land to which v*e were 
 directing our course, and which was so differently marked in 
 the Trench, Spanish, and English charts. The longitudes 
 deduced from the accurate observations of Messrs. Churruca, 
 Eidalgo, and Noguera, were not then published. 
 
 The pilots trusted more to the log than the timekeeper ; 
 they smiled at the prediction of so speedily making land, 
 and thought themselves two or three days’ sail from the 
 coast. It was therefore with great pleasure, that on the 
 13th, about six in the morning, I learned that very high 
 land was seen from the mast-head, though not clearly, as 
 it was surrounded with a thick fog. The wind blew hard, 
 and the sea was very rough. Large drops of rain fell at 
 intervals, and every indication menaced tempestuous wea- 
 ther. The captain of the Pizarro intended to pass through 
 the channel which separates the islands of Tobago and 
 Trinidad ; and knowing that our sloop was very slow in 
 tacking, he was afraid of falling to leeward towards the 
 south, and approaching the Boca del Drago. We were 
 in fact surer of our longitude than of our latitude, having 
 had no observation at noon since the 11th. Double alti- 
 tudes which I took in the morning, after Douwes’s method, 
 placed us in 11° 6' 501 ', consequently 15' north of our 
 reckoning. Though the result clearly proved that the high 
 land on the horizon was not Trinidad, but Tobago, yet 
 
 * In the Atlantic Ocean there is a space where the water is constantly 
 milky, though the sea is very deep. This curious phenomenon exists in 
 the parallel of the island of Dominica, very near the 57th degree of longi- 
 tude. May there not be in this place some sunken volcanic islet, more 
 easterly still than Barbadoes ? 
 
138 
 
 BOCA BEL BBAGO. 
 
 the captain continued to steer NNW, in search of this 
 latter island. 
 
 An observation of the meridian altitude of the sun fully- 
 confirmed the latitude obtained by Douwes’s method. No 
 more doubt remained as to the position of the vessel, with 
 respect to the island, and we resolved to double Cape North 
 (Tobago) to pass between that island and Grenada, and steer 
 towards a port in Margareta. 
 
 The island of Tobago presents a very picturesque aspect. 
 It is merely a heap of rocks carefully cultivated. The 
 dazzling whiteness of the stone forms an agreeable con- 
 trast to the verdure of some scattered tufts of trees. Cylin- 
 dric and very lofty cactuses crown the top of the mountains, 
 and give a peculiar physiognomy to this tropical landscape. 
 The sight of the trees alone is sufficient to remind the 
 navigator that he has reached an American coast ; for these 
 cactuses are as exclusively peculiar to the New World, as the 
 heaths are to the Old. 
 
 We crossed the shoal which joins Tobago to the island of 
 Grenada. The colour of the sea presented no visible change ; 
 but the centigrade thermometer, plunged into the water 
 to the depth of some inches, rose only to 23° ; while farther 
 at sea eastward on the same parallel, and equally near the 
 surface, it kept at 25*6°. Notwithstanding the currents, 
 the cooling of the water indicated the existence of the 
 shoal, which is noted in only a very few charts. The 
 wind slackened after sunset, and the clouds disappeared 
 as the moon reàched the zenith. The number of falling 
 stars was very considerable on this and the following 
 nights ; they appeared less frequent towards the north 
 than the south over Terra Firma, which we began to coast. 
 This position seems to prove the influence of local causes 
 on meteors, the nature of which is not yet sufficiently 
 kn own to us. 
 
 On the 14th at sunrise, we were in sight of the Boca 
 del Drago. We distinguished Chacachacarreo, the most 
 westerly of the islands situated between Cape Paria and the 
 north-west cape of Trinidad. When we were five leagues 
 distant from the coast, we felt, near Punta de la Boca, the 
 effect of a particular current which carried the ship south- 
 
CAPE THREE POINTS. 
 
 139 
 
 ward. The motion of the waters which flow through the 
 Boca del Drago, and the action of the tides, occasion an 
 eddy. We cast the lead, and found from thirty-six to forty- 
 three fathoms on a bottom of very fine green clay. Accord- 
 ing to the rules established by Dampier, we ought not to 
 have expected so little depth near a coast formed by very 
 high and perpendicular mountains. We continued to heave 
 the lead till we reached Cabo de très Puntas* and we every 
 where found shallow water, apparently indicating the pro- 
 longation of the ancient coast. In these latitudes the 
 temperature of the sea was from twenty-three to twenty-four 
 degrees, consequently from 1*5 to two degrees lower than 
 in the open ocean, beyond the edge of the bank. 
 
 The Cabo de très Puntas is, according to my observa- 
 tions, in 65° 4' 5 ' longitude. It seemed to us the more ele- 
 vated, as the clouds concealed the view of its indented top. 
 The aspect of the mountains of Paria, their colour, and 
 especially their generally rounded forms, made us suspect 
 that the coast was granitic ; but we afterwards recognized 
 how delusive, even to those who have passed their lives in 
 scaling mountains, are impressions respecting the nature of 
 rocks seen at a distance. 
 
 A dead calm, which lasted several hours, permitted us 
 to determine with exactness the intensity of the magnetic 
 forces opposite the Cabo de très Puntas. This intensity 
 was greater than in the open sea, to the east of the island of 
 Tobago, in the ratio of from 237 to 229. During the calm 
 the current drew us on rapidly to the west. Its velocity 
 was three miles an hour, and it increased as we approached 
 the meridian of Testigos, a heap of rocks which rises up 
 amidst the waters. At the setting of the moon, the sky 
 was covered with clouds, the wind freshened anew r , and 
 -the rain descended in one of those torrents peculiar to 
 the torrid zone. 
 
 The malady which had broken out on board the Pizarro 
 had made rapid progress, from the time when we approached 
 the coasts of Terra Pirma ; but having then almost reached 
 the end of our voyage we flattered ourselves that all who 
 were sick would be restored to health, as soon as w r e 'could 
 * Jape Three Points, the name given to it by Columbus. 
 
140 
 
 FUNERAL AT SEA. 
 
 land them at the island of St. Margareta, or the port of 
 Cumana, places remarkable for their great salubrity. 
 
 This hope was unfortunately not realised. The youngest 
 of the passengers attacked with the malignant fever fell 
 a victim to the disease. He was an Asturian, nineteen 
 years of age, the only son of a poor widow. Several cir- 
 cumstances rendered the death of this young man affecting. 
 His countenance bore the expression of sensibility and great 
 mildness of disposition. He had embarked against his own 
 inclination ; and his mother, whom he had hoped to assist 
 by the produce of his efforts, had made a sacrifice of her 
 affection in the hope of securing the fortune of her son, 
 by sending him to the colonies to a rich relation, who 
 resided at the island of Cuba. The unfortunate young man 
 expired on the third day of his illness, having fallen from 
 the beginning into a lethargic state interrupted only by 
 fits of delirium. The yellow fever, or black vomit, at Yera 
 Cruz, scarcely carries off the sick with so alarming a ra- 
 pidity. Another Asturian, still younger, did not leave for 
 one moment the bed of his dying friend; and, what is 
 very remarkable, did not contract the disorder. 
 
 "We were assembled on the deck, absorbed in melancholy 
 reflections. It was no longer doubtful, that the fever which 
 raged on board had assumed within the last few days a fatal 
 aspect. Our eyes were fixed on a hilly and desert coast 
 on which the moon, from time to time, shed her light 
 athwart the clouds. The sea, gently agitated, emitted a 
 feeble phosphoric light. Nothing was heard but the mo- 
 notonous cry of a few large sea-birds, flying towards the 
 shore. A profound calm reigned over these solitary re- 
 gions, but this calm of nature was in discordance with 
 the painful feelings by which we were oppressed. About 
 eight o’clock the dead man’s knell was slowly tolled. At 
 this lugubrious sound, the sailors suspended their labours, 
 and threw themselves on their knees to offer a momentary 
 prayer: an affecting ceremony, which brought to our re- 
 membrance those times when the primitive Christians all 
 considered themselves as members of the same family. 
 All were united in one common sorrow for a misfortune 
 which was felt to be common to all. The corpse of the 
 
CHANGE OF PLANS. 
 
 141 
 
 young Asturian was brought upon deck during the night, 
 but the priest entreated that it might not be committed 
 to the waves till after sunrise, that the last rites might 
 be performed, according to the usage of the Bomish 
 church. There was not an individual on board, who 
 did not deplore the death of this young man, whom we 
 had beheld, but a few days before, full of cheerfulness 
 and health. 
 
 Those among the passengers who had not yet felt symp- 
 toms of the disease, resolved to leave the vessel at the 
 first place where she might touch, and await the arrival 
 of another packet, to pursue their course to the island 
 of Cuba and to Mexico. They considered the between- 
 decks of the ship as infected; and though it was by 
 no means clear to me that the fever was contagious, Ï 
 thought it most prudent to land at Cumana. I wished 
 not to visit New Spain, till I had made some sojourn on 
 the coasts of Venezuela and Paria; a few of the pro- 
 ductions of which had been examined by the unfortunate 
 Loefling. Me were anxious to behold in their native site, 
 the beautiful plants which Bose and Bredemeyer had col- 
 lected during their journey to the' continent, and which 
 adorn the conservatories of Schoenbrunn and Vienna. It 
 would have been painful to have touched at Cumaua, or 
 at G-uayra, without visiting the interior of a country so 
 little frequented by naturalists. 
 
 The resolution we formed during the night of the 14th 
 of July, had a happy influence on the direction of our 
 travels ; for instead of a few weeks, we remained a whole 
 year in this part of the continent. Had not the fever broken 
 out on board the Pizarro, we should never have reached the 
 Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, or even the limits of the Portu- 
 guese possessions on the Bio Negro. To this direction given 
 to our travels we were perhaps also indebted for the good 
 health we enjoyed during so long an abode in the equinoctial 
 regions. 
 
 It is well known, that Europeans, during the first months 
 after their arrival under the scorching sky of the tropics, are 
 exposed to the greatest dangers. They consider themselves 
 to be safe, when they have passed the rainy season in the 
 West India islands, at Vera Cruz, or at Carthagena. This 
 
142 
 
 CURIOUS SEAWEED. 
 
 opinion is very general, although there are examples of per- 
 sons, who, having escaped a first attack of the yellow fever, 
 have fallen victims to the same disease in one of the follow- 
 ing years. The facility of becoming acclimated, seems to be 
 in the inverse ratio of the difference that exists between the 
 mean temperature of the torrid zone, and that of the native 
 country of the traveller, or colonist, who changes his cli- 
 mate ; because the irritability of the organs, and their vital 
 action, are powerfully modified by the influence of the atmo- 
 spheric heat. A Prussian, a Pole, or a Swede, is more exposed 
 on his arrival at the islands or on the continent, than a 
 Spaniard, an Italian, or even an inhabitant of the South of 
 Prance. With respect to the people of the north, the dif- 
 ference of the mean temperature is from nineteen to twenty- 
 one degrees, while to the people of southern countries it is 
 only from nine to ten. We were fortunate enough to pass 
 safely through the interval during which a European re- 
 cently landed runs the greatest danger, in the extremely 
 hot, but very dry climate of Cumana, a city celebrated for its 
 salubrity. 
 
 On the morning of the 15th, when nearly on a line with the 
 hill of St. Joseph, we were surrounded by a great quantity 
 of floating seaweed. Its stems had those extraordinary 
 appendages in the form of little cups and feathers, which 
 Don Hippolyto Ruiz remarked on his return from the expe- 
 dition to Chile, and which he described in a separate memoir 
 as the generative organs of the Pucus natans. A fortunate 
 accident allowed us the means of verifying a fact which had 
 been but once observed by naturalists. The bundles of fucus 
 collected by ,M. Bonpland were completely identical with the 
 specimens given us by the learned authors of the Plora of 
 Peru. On examining both with the microscope, we found that 
 the supposed parts of fructification, the stamina and pistils, 
 belong to a new genus, of the family of the Ceratophytæ. 
 
 The coast of Paria stretches to the west, forming a wall of 
 rocks of no great height, with rounded tops and a waving 
 outline. We were long without perceiving the bold coasts 
 of the island of Margareta, where we were to stop for the 
 purpose of ascertaining whether we could touch at G-uayra. 
 We had learned, by altitudes of the sun, taken under very 
 favourable circumstances, how incorrect at that period were 
 
INCOEEECT CHAETS. 
 
 143 
 
 the most highly-esteemed marine charts. On the morning 
 of the 15th, when the time-keeper placed us in 66° 1' 15" longi- 
 tude, we were not yet in the meridian of Margareta island ; 
 though according to the reduced chart of the Atlantic ocean, 
 we ought to have passed the very lofty western cape of this 
 island, which is laid down in longitude 66° O'. The inaccu- 
 racy with which the coasts were delineated previously to the 
 labours of hidalgo, Noguera, and Tiscar, and I may venture 
 to add, before the astronomical observations I made at 
 Cumana, might have become dangerous to navigators, were 
 not the sea uniformly calm in those regions. The errors in 
 latitude were still greater than those in longitude, for the 
 coasts of New Andalusia stretch to the westward of Cape 
 Three Points (or très Puntas) fifteen or twenty miles more 
 to the north, than appears in the charts published before the 
 year 1800. 
 
 About eleven in the morning we perceived a very low islet, 
 covered with a few sandy downs, and on which we discovered 
 with our glasses no trace of habitation or culture. Cylin- 
 drical cactuses rose here and there in the form of candelabra. 
 The soil, almost destitute of vegetation, seemed to have a 
 waving motion, in consequence of the extraordinary refrac- 
 tion which the rays of the sun undergo in traversing the 
 strata of air in contact with plains strongly heated. Under 
 every zone, deserts and sandy shores appear like an agitated 
 sea, from the effect of mirage. 
 
 The coasts, seen at a distance, are like clouds, in which 
 each observer meets the form of the objects that occupy his 
 imagination. Our bearings and our chronometer being at 
 variance' with the charts which we had to consult, we were 
 lost in vain conjectures. Some took mounds of sand for 
 Indian huts, and pointed out the place where they alleged 
 the fort of Pampatar was situated ; others saw herds of goats, 
 which are so common in the dry valley of St. John; or 
 descried the lofty mountains of Macanao, which seemed to 
 them partly hidden by the clouds. The captain resolved to 
 send a pilot on shore, and the men were preparing to get 
 out the long-boat when we perceived two canoes sailing 
 along the coast. We fired a gun as a signal for them, and 
 though we had hoisted Spanish colours, they drew near with 
 distrust. These canoes, like all those in use among the 
 natives, were constructed of the single trunk of a tree. In 
 
144 
 
 NATIVE INDIANS. 
 
 each canoe there were eighteen Guayqueria Indians, naked 
 to the waist, and of very tall stature. They had the appear- 
 ance of great muscular strength, and the colour of their skin 
 was something between brown and copper-colour. Seen at 
 a distance, standing motionless, and projected on the horizon, 
 they might have been taken for statues of bronze. We were 
 the more struck with their appearance, as it did not corre- 
 spond with the accounts given by some travellers respecting 
 the characteristic features and extreme feebleness of the 
 natives. We afterwards learned, without passing the limits 
 of the province of Cumana, the great contrast existing be- 
 tween the physiognomy of the Guayquerias and that of the 
 Chaymas and the Caribs. 
 
 When we were near enough to hail them in Spanish, the 
 Indians threw aside their mistrust, and came straight on 
 board. They informed us that the low islet near which we 
 were at anchor was Coche, which had never been inhabited ; 
 and that Spanish vessels coming from Europe were accus- 
 tomed to sail farther north, between this island and that of 
 Margareta, to take a coasting pilot at the port of Pampatar. 
 Our inexperience had led us into the channel to the south of 
 Coche ; and as at that period the English cruisers frequented 
 this passage, the Indians had at first taken us for an enemy’s 
 ship. The southern passage is, in fact, highly advantageous 
 for vessels going to Cumana and Barcelona. The water is 
 less deep than in the northern passage, which is much nar- 
 rower ; but there is no risk of touching the ground, if vessels 
 keep very close to the island of Lobos and the Moros del 
 Tnnal. The channel between Coche and Margareta is 
 narrowed by the shoals off the north-west cape of Coche, 
 and by the bank that surrounds La Punta de los Mangles. 
 
 The Gruayquerias belong to that tribe of civilized Indians 
 who inhabit the coasts of Margareta and the suburbs of 
 the city of Cumana. Next to the Caribs of Spanish Guiana 
 they are the finest race of men in Terra Eirma. They enjoy 
 several privileges, because from the earliest times of the 
 conquest they remained faithful friends to the Castilians. 
 The king of Spain styles them in his public acts, “ his dear, 
 noble, and loyal Guayquerias.” The Indians of the two 
 canoes we had met had left the port of Cumana during the 
 night. They were going in search of timber to the forests 
 of cedar (Cedrela odorata, Linn .), which extend from Cape 
 
PEARLS OF CUBAGUA. 
 
 145 
 
 San Jose to beyond the mouth of Bio Carupano. They gave 
 us some fresh cocoa-nuts, and very beautifully coloured fish 
 of the Chætodon genus. What riches to our eyes were con- 
 tained in the canoes of these poor Indians ! Broad spread- 
 ing leaves of Vijao* covered bunches of plaintains. The 
 scaly cuirass of an armadillo (Dasypus), the fruit of the 
 calabash tree (Crescentia cujete), used as a cup by the 
 natives, productions common in the cabinets of Europe, 
 had a peculiar charm for us, because they reminded us that, 
 having reached the torrid zone, we had attained the end to 
 which our wishes had been so long directed. 
 
 The master of one of the canoes offered to remain on board 
 the Pizarro as coasting pilot (practico). He was a Guayqueria 
 of an excellent disposition, sagacious in his observations, and 
 he had been led by intelligent curiosity to notice the pro- 
 ductions of the sea as well as the plants of the country. By 
 a fortunate chance, the first Indian we met on our arrival 
 was the man whose acquaintance became the most useful to 
 us in the course of our researches. I feel a pleasure in 
 recording in this itinerary the name of Carlos del Pino, who, 
 during the space of sixteen months, attended us in our course 
 along the coasts, and into the inland country. 
 
 The captain of the corvette weighed anchor towards 
 evening. Before we left the shoal or placer of Coche, I 
 ascertained the longitude of the east cape of the island, 
 which I found to be 66° 11' 53". As we steered westward, 
 we soon came in sight of the little island of Cubagua, now 
 entirely deserted, but formerly celebrated for its fishery 
 of pearls. There the Spaniards, immediately after the voy- 
 ages of Columbus and Ojeda, founded, under the name of 
 New Cadiz, a town, of which there now remains no vestige. 
 At the beginning of the sixteenth century the pearls of 
 Cubagua were known at Seville, at Toledo, and at the great 
 fairs of Augsburg and Bruges. New Cadiz having no water, 
 that of the Bio Manzanares was conveyed thither from the 
 neighbouring coast, though for some reason, I know not 
 what, it was thought to be the cause of diseases of the eyes. 
 The writers of that period all speak of the riches of the first 
 planters, and the luxury they displayed. At present, downs 
 
 * Heliconia bihai. 
 
 YOL. I. 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 APPROACH TO THE COAST. 
 
 of shifting sand cover this uninhabited land, and the name of 
 Cubagua is scarcely found in our charts. 
 
 Having reached these latitudes, we saw the high moun- 
 tains of Cape Macanao, on the western side of the island of 
 Margareta, which rose majestically on the horizon. If we 
 might judge from the angles of altitude of the tops, taken 
 at eighteen miles’ distance, they appeared to be about 500 or 
 600 toises high. According to Berthoud’s time-keeper, the 
 longitude of Cape Macanao is 66° 47' 5". I speak of the 
 rocks at the extremity of the cape, and not that strip of 
 very low land which stretches to the west, and loses itself 
 in a shoal. The position of Macanao and that which I have 
 assigned to the east point of the island of Coche, differ 
 only four seconds in time, from the results obtained by 
 M. Fidalgo. 
 
 There being little wind, the captain preferred standing off 
 and on till daybreak. We passed a part of the night on 
 deck. The Gruayqueria pilot conversed with us respecting 
 the animals and plants of his country. We learned with 
 great satisfaction that there was a few leagues from the 
 coast a mountainous region inhabited by the Spaniards, in 
 which the cold was sensibly felt; and that in the plains 
 there were two species of crocodiles, very different from 
 each other, besides, boas, electric eels, and several kinds of 
 tigers. Though the words lava, cacJiicamo, and temblador , 
 were entirely unknown to us, we easily guessed, from the 
 pilot’s simple description of their manners and forms, the 
 species which the creoles distinguished by these denomina- 
 tions. 
 
CITY or CUMANA. 
 
 147 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 First abode at Cumana. — Banks of the Manzanares. 
 
 On the 16th of July, 1799, at break of day, we beheld 
 a verdant coast, of picturesque aspect. The mountains of 
 New Andalusia, half-veiled by mists, bounded the horizon 
 to the south. The city of Cumana and its castle appeared 
 between groups of cocoa-trees. We anchored in the port 
 about nine in the morning, forty-one days after our departure 
 from Corunna; the sick dragged themselves on deck to 
 enjoy the sight of a land which was to put an end to their 
 sufferings. Our eyes were fixed on tbe groups of cocoa-trees 
 which border the river: their trunks, more than sixty feet high, 
 towered over every object in the landscape. The plain was 
 covered with the tufts of Cassia, Caper, and those arborescent 
 mimosas, which, like the pine of Italy, spread their branches 
 in the form of an umbrella. The pinnated leaves of the 
 palms were conspicuous on the azure sky, the clearness of 
 which was unsullied by any trace of vapour. The sun was 
 ascending rapidly toward the zenith. A dazzling light was 
 spread through the air, along the whitish hills strewed with 
 cylindric cactuses, and over a sea ever calm, the shores of 
 which were peopled with alcatras,* egrets, and flamingoes. 
 The splendour of the day, the vivid colouring of the vege- 
 table world, the forms of the plants, the varied plumage of 
 the birds, everything was stamped with the grand character 
 of nature in the equinoctial regions. 
 
 The city of Cumana, the capital of New Andalusia, is a 
 mile distant from the embarcadero , or the battery of the 
 Boca, where we landed, after having passed the bar of the 
 Manzanares. We had to cross a vast plain, called el Salado, 
 which divides the suburb of the Guayquerias from the sea- 
 coast. The excessive heat of the atmosphere was augmented 
 by the reverberation of the soil, partly destitute of vege- 
 tation. The centigrade thermometer, plunged into the 
 white sand, rose to 37 7°. In the small pools of salt water 
 it kept at 305°, while the heat of the ocean, at its surface, 
 
 * A brown pelican, of the size of a swan. (Pelicanus fuscus, Lin.) 
 
 L 2 
 
148 
 
 NEW PLANTS. 
 
 is generally, in the port of Cumana, from 25*2° to 26*3°. 
 The first plant we gathered on the continent of America 
 was the Avicennia tomentosa,* which in this place scarcely 
 reaches two feet in height. This shrub, together with the 
 sesuvium, the yellow gomphrena, and the cactus, cover soil 
 impregnated with muriate of soda ; they belong to that small 
 number of plants which live in society like the heath of 
 Europe, and which in the torrid zone are found only on the 
 seashore, and on the elevated plains of the Andes.f The 
 Avicennia of Cumana is distinguished by another peculiarity 
 not less remarkable: it furnishes an instance of a plant 
 common to the shores of South America and the coasts of 
 Malabar. 
 
 The Indian pilot led us across his garden, which rather 
 resembled a copse than a piece of cultivated ground. He 
 showed us, as a proof of the fertility of this climate, a silk- 
 cotton tree (Bombax heptaphyllum), the trunk of which, in 
 its fourth year, had reached nearly two feet and a half in 
 diameter. We have observed, on the banks of the Orinoco 
 and the river Magdalena, that the bombax, the carolinea, the 
 ochroma, and other trees of the family of the malvaceæ, are 
 of extremely rapid growth. I nevertheless think that there 
 was some exaggeration in the report of the Indian respect- 
 ing the age of his bombax ; for under the temperate zone, in 
 the hot and damp lands of North America, between the 
 Mississippi and the Alleghany mountains, the trees do not 
 exceed a foot in diameter, in ten years. Vegetation in those 
 parts is in general but a fifth more speedy than in Europe, 
 even taking as an example the Platanus occidentalis, the 
 tulip tree, and the Cupressus disticha, which reach from nine 
 to fifteen feet in diameter. On the strand of Cumana, in the 
 garden of the G-uayqueria pilot, we saw for the first time a 
 quama% loaded with flowers, and remarkable for the extreme 
 
 * Mangle prieto. 
 
 •f* On the extreme rarity of the social plants in the tropics, see my 
 “Essay on the Geog. of Plants,” p. 19; and a paper by Mr. Brown 
 on tile Proteacea, “Trans, of the Lin. Soc.,” vol. x., p. 1, p. 23, in 
 which that great botanist has extended and confirmed by numerous facts 
 my ideas on the association of plants of the same species. 
 
 X Inya spuria, which we must not confound with the common inga, Inga 
 vera, Willd. (Mimosa Inga, Linn.). The white stamina, which, to the num- 
 ber of sixty or seventy, are attached to a greenish corolla, have a silky lustre. 
 
rTNTOBTtTNATE EIS’GAGE^IE^T. 
 
 149 
 
 length and silvery splendour of its numerous stamina. "We 
 crossed the suburb of the Gruayqueria Indians, the streets 
 of which are very regular, and formed of small houses, quite 
 new, and of a pleasing appearance. This part of the town 
 had just been rebuilt, for the earthquake had laid Cumana 
 in ruins eighteen months before our arrival. By a wooden 
 bridge, we crossed the river Manzanares, which contains a 
 few bavas , or crocodiles of the smaller species. 
 
 We were conducted by the captain of the Pizarro to the 
 governor of the province, Don Yincente Emparan, to present 
 to him the passports furnished to us by the first Secretary 
 of State at Madrid. He received us with that frankness 
 and unaffected dignity which have at all times characterized 
 the natives of Biscay. Before he was appointed governor of 
 Portobello and Cumana, Don Yincente Emparan had dis- 
 tinguished himself as captain of a vessel in the navy. His 
 name recalls to mind one of the most extraordinary and dis- 
 tressing events recorded in the history of maritime warfare. 
 At the time of the last rupture between Spain and England, 
 two brothers of Senor Emperan, both of whom commanded 
 ships in the Spanish navy, engaged with each other before 
 the port of Cadiz, each supposing that he was attacking an 
 enemy. A fierce battle was kept up during a whole night, 
 and both the vessels were sunk almost simultaneously. A 
 very small part of the crew was saved, and the two brothers 
 had the misfortune to recognize each other a little before 
 they expired. 
 
 The governor of Cumana expressed his great satisfaction 
 at the resolution we had taken to remain for some time in 
 New Andalusia, a province which at that period was but 
 little known even by name in Europe, and which in its 
 mountains, and on the banks of its numerous rivers, con- 
 tains a great number of objects worthy of fixing the atten- 
 tion of naturalists. Senor Emperan showed us cottons 
 dyed with native plants, and fine furniture made exclusively 
 of the wood of the country. He was much interested in 
 everything that related to natural philosophy ; and asked, to 
 our great astonishment, whether we thought, that, under the 
 
 and are terminated by a yellow anther. The flower of the guama is 
 eighteen lines long. The common height of this fine tree, which prefers 
 a moist soil, is from eight to ten toises. 
 
150 
 
 OUR NEW HABITATION. 
 
 beautiful sky of tbe tropics, tbe atmosphere contained less 
 azote (azotico) than in Spain ; or whether the rapidity with 
 which iron oxydâtes in those climates, were only the effect of 
 greater humidity as indicated by the air hygrometer. The 
 name of his native country pronounced on a distant shore 
 would not have been more agreeable to the ear of a traveller, 
 than those words azote, oxide of iron, and hygrometer, were 
 to ours. Senor Emparan was a lover of science, and the 
 public marks of consideration which he gave us during a 
 long abode in his government, contributed greatly to procure 
 us a favourable welcome in every part of South America. 
 
 We hired a spacious house, the situation of which was 
 favourable for astronomical observations. We enjoyed an 
 agreeable coolness when the breeze arose; the windows 
 were without glass, and even without those paper panes 
 which are often substituted for glass at Cumana. The 
 whole of the passengers of the Pizarro left the vessel, but 
 the recovery of those who had been attacked by the fever 
 was very slow. We saw some who, a month after, notwith- 
 standing the care bestowed on them by their countrymen, 
 were stül extremely weak and reduced. Hospitality, in the 
 Spanish colonies, is such, that a European who arrives, with- 
 out recommendation or pecuniary means, is almost sure of 
 finding assistance, if he land in any port on account of 
 sickness. The Catalonians, the Galicians, and the Biscayans, 
 have the most frequent intercourse with America. They 
 there form as it were three distinct corporations, which 
 exercise a remarkable influence over the morals, the indus- 
 try, and commerce of the colonies. The poorest inhabitant 
 of Siges or Vigo is sure of being received into the house of 
 a Catalonian or Galician pulpero, # whether he land in Chile 
 or the Philippine Islands. 
 
 Among the sick who landed at Cumana was a negro, who 
 fell into a state of insanity a few days after our arrival ; he 
 died in that deplorable condition, though his master, almost 
 seventy years old, who had left Europe to settle at San Bias, 
 at the entrance of the gulf of California, had attended him 
 with the greatest care. I relate this fact as affording evi- 
 dence that men bom under the torrid zone, after having 
 dwelt in temperate climates, sometimes feel the pernicious 
 
 * A retail dealer. 
 
SITE OP CTTMAXA. 
 
 151 
 
 effects of the heat of the tropics. The negro was a young 
 man, eighteen years of age, very robust, and bom on the 
 coast of Guinea ; an abode of some years on the high plain 
 of Castile, had imparted to his organization that kind of 
 irritability which renders the miasma of the torrid zone so 
 dangerous to the inhabitants of the countries of the north. 
 
 The site on which Cumana is built is part of a tract of 
 ground, very remarkable in a geological point of view. The 
 chain of the calcareous Alps of the Brigantine and the Tata- 
 raqual stretches east and west from the summit of the Im- 
 possible to the port of Mochima and to Campanario. The 
 sea, in times far remote, appears to have divided this chain 
 from the rocky coasts of Araya and Maniquarez. The vast 
 gulf of Cariaco has been caused by an irruption of the sea ; 
 and no doubt can be entertained but that the waters once 
 covered, on the southern bank, the whole tract of land 
 impregnated with muriate of soda, through which flows the 
 Manzanares. The slow retreat of the waters has turned 
 into dry ground this extensive plain, in which rises a group 
 of small hills, composed of gypsum and calcareous breccias 
 of very recent formation. The city of Cumana is backed by 
 this group, which was formerly an island of the gulf of 
 Cariaco. That part of the plain which is north of the city, 
 is called Plaga Chica, or the Little Plain, and extends east- 
 wards as far as Punta Lelgada, where a narrow valley, 
 covered with yellow gomphrena, still marks the point of the 
 ancient outlet of the waters. • 
 
 The hill of calcareous breccias, which w r e have just men- 
 tioned as having once been an island in the ancient gulf, is 
 covered with a thick forest of cylindric cactus and opuntia. 
 Some of these trees, thirty or forty feet high, are covered 
 with lichens, and are divided into several branches in the 
 form of candelabra. Near Maniquarez, at Punta Araya, we 
 measured a cactus,* the trunk of which was four feet nine 
 inches in circumference. A European acquainted only with 
 the opuntia in our hot-houses is surprised to see the wood of 
 this plant become so hard from age, that it resists for cen- 
 turies both air and moisture : the Indians of Cumana therefore 
 employ it in preference to any other for oars and door-posts. 
 
 * Tuna macho. We distinguish in the wood of the cactus the medul- 
 lary prolongations, as M. Desfontaines has already observed. 
 
152 
 
 CASTLE OE SAN ANTONIO. 
 
 Cumana, Coro, the island of Margareta, and Curassoa, are 
 the parts of South America that abound most in plants of 
 the nopal family. There only, a botanist, after a long resi- 
 dence, could compose a monography of the genus cactus, the 
 species of which vary not only in their flowers and fruits, 
 but also in the form of their articulated stems, the number 
 of costæ, and the disposition of the thorns. We shall see 
 hereafter how these plants, which characterize a warm and 
 singularly dry climate, like that of Egypt and California, 
 gradually disappear in proportion as we remove from the 
 coasts, and penetrate into the inland country. 
 
 The groups of columnar cactus and opuntia produce the 
 same effect in the arid lands of equinoctial America as the 
 junceæ and the hydrocharides in the marshes of our northern 
 climes. Places in which the larger species of the strong 
 cactus are collected in groups are considered as almost im- 
 penetrable. These places are called Tunales ; and they are 
 impervious not only to the native, who goes naked to the 
 waist, but are formidable even to those who are fully clothed. 
 In our solitary rambles we sometimes endeavoured to pene- 
 trate into the Tunal that crowns the summit of the castle 
 hill, a part of which is crossed by a pathway, where w*e could 
 have studied, amidst thousands of specimens, the organization 
 of this singular plant. Sometimes night suddenly overtook 
 us, for there is scarcely any twilight in this climate ; and we 
 then found ourselves dangerously situated, as the Cascabel, 
 or rattle-snake, the Coral, and other vipers armed with 
 poisonous fangs, frequent these scorched and arid haunts, to 
 deposit their eggs in the sand. 
 
 The castle of San Antonio is built at the’ western extremity 
 of the hill, but not on the most elevated point, being com- 
 manded on the east by an unfortified summit. The Tunal is 
 considered both here and everywhere in the Spanish colonies 
 as a very important means of military defence; and when 
 earthen works are raised, the engineers are eager to propa- 
 gate the thorny opuntia, and promote its growth, as they 
 are careful to keep crocodiles in the ditches of fortified 
 places. In regions where organized nature is so powerful 
 and active, man summons as auxiliaries in his defence the 
 carnivorous reptile, and the plant with its formidable ar- 
 mour of thorns. 
 
EFFECTS OF MIRAGE. 
 
 153 
 
 The castle is only thirty toises above the level of the water 
 in the gulf of Cariaco. Standing on a naked and calcareous 
 hill, it commands the town, and has a very picturesque effect 
 when viewed from a vessel entering the port. It forms a 
 bright object against the dark curtains of those mountains 
 which raise their summits to the clouds, and of which the 
 vaporous and bluish tint blends with the azure sky. On 
 descending from Fort San Antonio to the south-west, we find 
 on the slope of the same rock the ruins of the old castle of 
 Santa Maria. This site is delightful to those who wish to 
 enjoy at the approach of sunset the freshness of the breeze 
 and the view of the gulf. The lofty summits of the island 
 of Margareta are seen above the rocky coast of the isthmus 
 of Araya, and towards the west the small islands of Caracas, 
 Picuita, and Boracha, recall to mind the catastrophes that 
 have overwhelmed the coasts of Terra Firma. These islets 
 resemble fortifications, and from the effect of the mirage 
 (while the inferior strata of the air, the ocean, and the soil, 
 are unequally heated by the sun), their points appear raised 
 like the extremity of the great promontories of the coast. 
 It is pleasing, during the day, to observe these inconstant 
 phenomena ; we see, as night approaches, these stony masses 
 which had been suspended in the air, settle down on their 
 bases ; and the luminary, whose presence vivifies organic 
 nature, seems by the variable inflection of its rays to impress 
 motion on the stable rock, and give an undulating move- 
 ment to plains covered with arid sands.* 
 
 The town of Cumana, properly so called, occupies the 
 ground lying between the castle of San Antonio and the 
 small rivers of Manzanares and Santa Catalina. The Delta, 
 formed by the bifurcation of the first of these rivers, is a 
 fertile plain covered with Mammees, Sapotas (achras), plan- 
 tains, and other plants cultivated in the gardens or charas of 
 the Indians. The town has no remarkable edifice, and the 
 frequency of earthquakes forbids such embellishments. It 
 is true, that strong shocks occur less frequently in a given 
 time at Cumana than at Quito, where we nevertheless find 
 
 * The real cause of the mirage, or the extraordinary refraction which 
 the rays undergo when strata of air of different densities lie over each 
 other, was guessed at by Hooke. — See his Posthumous Works, p. 472. 
 
154 
 
 SUBURBS OE CUM ANA. 
 
 sumptuous and very lofty churches. But tlie earthquakes 
 of Quito are violent only in appearance, and, from the pe- 
 culiar nature of the motion and of the ground, no edifice 
 there is overthrown. At Cumana, as well as at Lima, and 
 in several cities situated far from the mouths of burning 
 volcanoes, it happens that the series of slight shocks is 
 interrupted after a long course of years by great catastro- 
 phes, resembling the effects of the explosion of a mine. We 
 shall have occasion to return to this phenomenon, for the 
 explanation of which so many vain theories have been ima- 
 gined, and which have been classified according to perpen- 
 dicular and horizontal movements, shock, and oscillation.* 
 
 The suburbs of Cumana are almost as populous as the 
 ancient town. They are three in number : — Serritos, on the 
 road to the Plaga Chicha, where we meet with some fine 
 tamarind trees ; St. Francis, towards the south-east ; and the 
 great suburb of the Guayquerias, or Guayguerias. The 
 name of this tribe of Indians was quite unknown before the 
 conquest. The natives who bear that name formerly be- 
 longed to the nation of the Guaraounos, of which we find 
 remains only in the swampy lands of the branches of the 
 Orinoco. Old men have assured me that the language of 
 their ancestors was a dialect of the Guaraoimo ; but that for 
 a century past no native of that tribe at Cumana, or in the 
 island of Margareta, has spoken any other language than 
 Castilian. 
 
 The denomination Güayqueria, like the words Peru and 
 Peruvian, owes its origin to a mere mistake. The compa- 
 nions of Christopher Columbus, coasting along the island of 
 Margareta, the northern coast of which is still inhabited by 
 the noblest portion of the Guayqueria nation, f encountered 
 
 * This classification dates from the time of Posidonius. It is the 
 successio and inclinatio of Seneca; but the ancients had already judi- 
 ciously remarked, that the nature of these shocks is too variable to permit 
 any subjection to these imaginary laws. 
 
 + The Guayquerias of La Banda del Norte consider themselves as the 
 most noble race, because they think they are less mixed with the Chayma 
 Indian, and other copper-coloured races. They are distinguished from the 
 Guayquerias of the continent by their manner of pronouncing the Spanish 
 language, which they speak almost without separating their teeth. They 
 show with pride to Europeans the Punta de la Galera, or Galley’s Point, 
 
THE IHDIAH SUBURB. 
 
 155 
 
 a few natives who were harpooning fish by throwing a pole 
 tied to a cord, and terminating in an extremely sharp point. 
 They asked them in the Hayti language their name ; and 
 the Indians, thinking that the question of the strangers re- 
 lated to their harpoons, which were formed of the hard and 
 heavy wood of the Macana palm, answered guaike , guaike, 
 which signifies pointed pole. A striking difference at pre- 
 sent exists between the Gruayquerias, a civilized tribe of skil- 
 ful fishermen, and those savage Gruaraounos of the Orinoco, 
 who suspend their habitations on the trunks of the Moriche 
 palm. The population of Cumana has been singularly 
 exaggerated, but according to the most authentic registers 
 it does not exceed 16,000 souls. 
 
 Probably the Indian suburb will by degrees extend as far 
 as the Embarcadero ; the plain, which is not yet covered 
 with houses or huts, being more than 340 toises in length. 
 
 : The heat is somewhat less oppressive on the side near 
 the sea-shore, than in the old town, where the reverberation 
 of the calcareous soil, and the proximity of the mountain of 
 San Antonio, raise the temperature to an excessive degree. 
 
 ; In the suburb of the Gruayquerias, the sea breezes have free 
 access ; the soil is clayey, and, for that reason, it is thought 
 ! to be less exposed to violent shocks of earthquake, than the 
 : houses at the foot of the rocks and hills on the right bank of 
 i the Manzanares. 
 
 The shore near the mouth of the small river Santa Catalina 
 is bordered with mangrove trees,* but these mangroves are 
 not sufficiently spread to diminish the salubrity of the air of 
 j Cumana. The soil of the plain is in part destitute of vegeta- 
 j tion, in part covered with tufts of Sesuvium portulacastrum, 
 i Gromphrena flava, Gr. myrtifolia, Talinum cuspidatum, T. cuma- 
 nense, and Portulaca lanuginosa. Among these herbaceous 
 plants we find at intervals the Avicennia tomentosa, the 
 i Scoparia dulcis, a frutescent mimosa with very irritable 
 
 I (so called on account of the vessel of Columbus having anchored there,) 
 and the port of Manzanillo, where they first swore to the whites in 1498, 
 that friendship which they have never betrayed, and which has obtained 
 for them, in court phraseology, the title of fiele.s , loyal. — See p. 144. 
 
 * Rhizophora mangle. M. Bonpland found on the Plaga Chica the 
 | Allionia incarnata, in the same place where the unfortunate Loefling had 
 j discovered this new genus of Nyctagineae. 
 
156 
 
 COWS IN THE TOEEID ZONE. 
 
 leaves,* and particularly cassias, the number of which is so 
 great in South America, that we collected, in our travels, 
 more than thirty new species. 
 
 On leaving the Indian suburb, and ascending the river 
 southward, we found a grove of cactus, a delightful 
 spot, shaded by tamarinds, brazilettos, bombax, and other 
 plants, remarkable for their leaves and flowers. The soil 
 here is rich in pasturage, and dairy-houses built with reeds, 
 are separated from each other by clumps of trees. The milk 
 remains fresh, when kept, not in the calabashesf of very 
 thick ligneous fibres, but in porous earthen vessels from Ma- 
 niquarez. A prejudice prevalent in northern coimtries had 
 long led me to believe, that cows, under the torrid zone, did 
 not yield rich milk ; but my abode at Cumana, and especially 
 an excursion through the vast plains of Calabozo, covered 
 with grasses, and herbaceous sensitive plants, convinced me 
 that the ruminating animals of Europe become perfectly 
 habituated to the hottest climates, provided they find water 
 and good nourishment. Milk is excellent in the provinces of 
 New Andalusia, Barcelona, and Venezuela; and butter is 
 better in the plains of the equinoctial zone, than on the ridge 
 of the Andes, where the Alpine plants, enjoying in no season 
 a sufficiently high temperature, are less aromatic than on the 
 Pyrenees, on the mountains of Estremadura, or of Greece. 
 As the inhabitants of Cumana prefer the coolness of the sea 
 breeze to the sight of vegetation, their favourite walk is the 
 open shore. The Spaniards, who in general have no great 
 predilection for trees, or for the warbling of birds, have 
 transported their tastes and their habits into the colonies. 
 In Terra Eirma, Mexico, and Peru, it is rare to see a native 
 plant a tree, merely with the view of procuring shade ; and 
 if we except the environs of the great capitals, walks bordered 
 with trees are almost unknown in those countries. The arid 
 plain of Cumana exhibits after violent showers an extraordi- 
 nary phenomenon. The earth, when drenched with rain, and 
 
 * The Spaniards designate by the name of dormideras (sleeping plants), 
 the small number of mimosas with irritable leaves. We have increased 
 this number by three species previously unknown to botanists, namely, 
 the Mimosa humilis of Cumana, the M. pellita of the savannahs of Cala- 
 bozo, and the M. dormiens of the banks of the Apure. 
 
 + These calabashes are made from the fruit of the Crescentia cujete. 
 
THE BBIGAHTESE. 
 
 157 
 
 heated again by the rays of the sun, emits that musky odour 
 which in the torrid zone, is common to animals of very dif- 
 ferent classes, viz.: to the jaguar, the small species of tiger cat, 
 the cabiai or thick-nosed tapir,* the galinazo vulture, t the cro- 
 codile, the viper, and the rattlesnake. The gaseous emanations, 
 which are the vehicles of this aroma, seem to be evolved in 
 proportion only as the mould, containing the spoils of an in- 
 numerable quantity of reptiles, worms, and insects, begins to 
 be impregnated with water. I have seen Indian children, of 
 the tribe of the Chaymas, draw out from the earth and eat 
 millepedes or scolopendrasj eighteen inches long, and seven 
 lines broad. Whenever the soil is turned up, we are struck 
 with the mass of organic substances, which by turns are de- 
 veloped, transformed, and decomposed. Nature in these 
 climates appears more active, more fruitful, we may even 
 say more prodigal, of life. 
 
 On this shore, and near the dairies just mentioned, we enjoy, 
 especially at sunrise, a very beautiful prospect over an 
 elevated group of calcareous mountains. As this group 
 subtends an angle of three degrees only at the house where 
 we dwelt, it long served me to compare the variations of the 
 terrestrial refraction with the meteorological phenomena. 
 Storms are formed in the centre of this Cordillera ; and we 
 see from afar thick clouds resolve into abundant rains, 
 while during seven or eight months not a drop of water 
 falls at Cumana. The Brigantine, which is the highest part 
 of this chain, raises itself in a very picturesque manner be- 
 hind Brito and Tataraqual. It takes its name from the form 
 of a very deep valley on the northern declivity, which re- 
 sembles the interior of a ship. The summit of this moun- 
 tain is almost bare of vegetation, and is flat like that of 
 Mowna-Boa, in the Sandwich Islands. It is a perpendicular 
 wall, or, to use a more expressive term of the Spanish navi- 
 gators, a table (mesa). This peculiar form, and the sym- 
 
 • Cavia capybara, Lin.; chiguire. 
 
 + Vultur aura, Lin., Zamuro, or Galinazo : the Brazilian vulture of 
 Buffon. I cannot reconcile myself to the adoption of names, which 
 designate, as belonging to a single country, animals common to a whole 
 continent. 
 
 + Scolopendras are very common behind the castle of San Antonio, on 
 the summit of the hill. 
 
158 
 
 THE CAPUCHES" HOSPITAL. 
 
 metrical arrangement of a few cones which surround the 
 Brigantine, made me at first think that this group, which is 
 wholly calcareous, contained rocks of basaltic or trappean 
 formation. 
 
 The governor of Cumana sent, in 1797, a hand of de- 
 termined men to explore this entirely desert country, and 
 to open a direct road to New Barcelona, by the summit of 
 the Mesa. It was reasonably expected that this way would 
 be shorter, and less dangerous to the health of travellers, than 
 the route taken by the couriers along the coasts ; but every 
 attempt to cross the chain of the mountains of the Brigan- 
 tine was fruitless. In this part of America, as in Australia* 
 to the west of Sydney, it is not so much the height of the 
 mountain chains, as the form of the rocks, that presents 
 obstacles difficult to surmount. 
 
 The longitudinal valley formed by the lofty mountains of 
 the interior and the southern declivity of the Cerro de San 
 Antonio, is intersected by the Bio Manzanares. This plain, 
 the only thoroughly wooded part in the environs of Cumana, 
 is called the Plain of the Charas,f on accoimt of the numerous 
 plantations which the inhabitants have begun, for some years 
 past, along the river. A narrow path leads from the hill of 
 San Francisco across the forest to the hospital of the Capu- 
 chins, a very agreeable country-house, which the Aragonese 
 monks have built as a retreat for old infirm missionaries, 
 who can no longer fulfil the duties of their ministry. As 
 we advance to the west, the trees of the forest become more 
 vigorous, and we meet with a few monkeys, J which, however, 
 are very rare in the environs of Cumana. At the foot of the 
 capparis, the bauhinia, and the zygophyllum with flowers of a 
 golden yellow, there extends a carpet of Bromelia,§ akin to the 
 B. karatas, which from the odour and coolness of its foliage 
 attracts the rattlesnake. 
 
 * The Blue Mountains of Australia, and those of Carmarthen and 
 Lansdowne, are not visible, in clear weather, beyond fifty miles. — Péron, 
 Voyage aux Terres Australes, page 389. Supposing the angle of alti- 
 tude half a degree, the absolute height of these mountains would be about 
 620 toises. 
 
 f Chacra, by corruption char a, signifies a hut or cottage surrounded by 
 a garden. The word ipure has the same signification. 
 
 X The common machi, or weeping monkey. 
 
 § Chihuchihue, of the family of the ananas. 
 
BANKS OP THE MANZANARES. 
 
 159 
 
 The waters of the Manzanares are very limpid, in quality 
 and this river has no resemblance to the Manzanares of 
 Madrid, which appears the more magnificent in contrast with 
 the fine bridge by which it is crossed. It takes its source, like 
 all the rivers of New Andalusia, in the savannahs (llanos) 
 known by the names of the plateaux of Jonoro, Amana, and 
 Gruanipa,* and it receives, near the Indian village of San 
 Fernando, the waters of the Bio Juanillo. It has been# 
 several times proposed to the government, but without success, 
 to construct a dyke at the first ipure, in order to form arti- 
 ficial irrigations in the plain of Charas ; for, notwithstanding 
 its apparent sterility, the soil is extremely productive, 
 wherever humidity is combined with the heat of the climate. 
 The cultivators were gradually to refund the money advanced 
 for the construction of the sluices. Meanwhile, pumps 
 worked by mules, and other hydraulic but imperfect ma- 
 chines, have been erected, to serve till this project is carried 
 into execution. 
 
 The banks of the Manzanares are very pleasant, and 
 are shaded by mimosas, erythrinas, ceibas, and other trees of 
 gigantic growth. A river, the temperature of which, in the 
 season of the floods, descends as low as twenty-two degrees, 
 when the air is at thirty and thirty-three degrees, is an in- 
 estimable benefit in a country where the heat is excessive 
 during the whole year, and where it is so agreeable to bathe 
 several times in the day. The children pass a considerable 
 part of their lives in the water ; all the inhabitants, even the 
 women of the most opulent families, know how to swim ; and 
 in a country where man is so near the state of nature, one of 
 the first questions asked on meeting in the morning is, 
 whether the water is cooler than it was on the preceeding 
 evening. One of the modes of bathing is curious. We 
 every evening visited a family, in the suburb of the Gruay- 
 querias. In a fine moonlight night, chairs were placed in 
 the water ; the men and women were lightly clothed, as in 
 some baths of the north of Europe ; and the family and 
 strangers, assembled in the river, passed some hours in 
 smoking cigars, and in talking, according to the custom of 
 
 * These three eminences bear the names of mesas, tables. An immense 
 plain has an almost imperceptible rise from both sides to the middle, 
 without any appearance of mountains or hills. 
 
160 
 
 POET OF CUMANA. 
 
 the country, of the extreme dryness of the season, of the 
 abundant rains in the neighbouring districts, and particularly 
 of the extravagancies of which the ladies of Cumana accuse 
 those of the Caracas and the Havannah.’ The company were 
 under no apprehensions from the bavas, or small crocodiles, 
 which are now extremely scarce, and which approach men 
 without attacking them. These animals are three or four 
 feet fong. We never met with them in the Manzanares, but 
 with a great number of dolphins (toninas), which sometimes 
 ascend the river in the night, and frighten the bathers by 
 spouting water. 
 
 The port of Cumana is a roadstead capable of receiving 
 the fleets of Europe. The whole of the Gulf of Cariaco, 
 which is about 35 miles long and 48 broad, affords excellent 
 anchorage. The Pacific is not more calm on the shores of 
 Peru, than the Caribbean Sea from Porto-cabello, and espe- 
 cially from Cape Codera to the point of Paria. The hurri- 
 canes of the West Indies are never felt in these regions. 
 The only danger in the port of Cumana is a shoal, called 
 Morro Eoxo. There are from one to three fathoms water 
 on this shoal, while just beyond its edges there are eighteen, 
 thirty, and even thirty-eight. The remains of an old bat- 
 tery, situated north-north-east of the castle of San Antonio, 
 and very near it, serve as a mark to avoid the bank of Morro 
 Eoxo. 
 
 The city lies at the foot of a hill destitute of verdure, and 
 is commanded by a castle. No steeple or dome attracts 
 from afar the eye of the traveller, but only a few trunks of 
 tamarind, cocoa, and date trees, which rise above the houses, 
 the roofs of which are flat. The surrounding plains, espe- 
 cially those on the coasts, wear a melancholy, dusty, and 
 arid appearance, while a fresh and luxuriant vegetation 
 marks from afar the windings of the river, which separates 
 the city from the suburbs; the population of European and 
 mixed race from the copper-coloured natives. The hill of 
 fort San Antonio, solitary, white, and bare, reflects a great 
 mass of light, and of radiant heat : it is composed of brec- 
 cia, the strata of which contain numerous fossils. In the 
 distance, towards the south, stretches a vast and gloomy cur- 
 tain of mountains. These are the high calcareous Alps of 
 New Andalusia, surmounted by sandstone, and other more 
 
TAETIXG CLIMATES. 
 
 161 
 
 recent formations. Majestic forests cover tliis Cordillera of 
 the interior, and they are joined hy a woody vale to the 
 open clayey lands and salt marshes of the environs of 
 Cumana. À few birds of considerable size contribute to 
 give a peculiar character to these countries. On the sea- 
 shore, and in the gulf, we find flocks of fishing herons, and 
 alcatras of a very unwieldy form, which swim, like the swan, 
 raising their wings. Nearer the habitation of man, thou- 
 sands of galinazo vultures, the jackals of the winged tribe, 
 are ever busy in disinterring the carcases of animals.* A 
 gulf, containing hot and submarine springs, divides the 
 secondary from the primary and schistose rocks of the penin- 
 sula of Araya. Each of these çoasts is washed by a tranquil 
 sea, of azure tint, and always gently agitated hy a breeze from 
 one quarter. A bright clear sky, with a few light clouds at 
 sunset, reposes on the ocean, on the treeless peninsula, and 
 on the plains of Cumana, while we see the storms accumu- 
 late and descend in fertile showers among the inland moun- 
 tains. Thus on these coasts, as well as at the foot of the 
 Andes, the earth and the sky present the extremes of clear 
 weather and fogs, of drought and torrents of rain, of abso- 
 lute nudity and never-ceasing verdure. 
 
 The analogies which we have just indicated, between the 
 sea-coasts of New Andalusia and those of Peru, extend also 
 to the recurrence of earthquakes, and the limits which nature 
 seems to have prescribed to these phenomena. We have 
 ourselves felt very violent shocks at Cumana ; and we learned 
 on the spot, the most minute circumstances that accompanied 
 the great catastrophe of the 14th December, 1797. 
 
 It is a very generally received opinion on the coasts of 
 Cumana, and in the island of Margareta, that the gulf of 
 Cariaco owes its existence to a rent of the continent attended 
 by an irruption of the sea. The remembrance of that great 
 event was preserved among the Indians to the end of the 
 fifteenth century ; and it is related that, at the time of the 
 third voyage of Christopher Columbus, the natives mentioned 
 it as of very recent date. In 1530, the inhabitants were alarmed 
 by new shocks on the coasts of Paria and Cumana. The 
 land was inundated by the sea, and the small fort, built by 
 James Castellon at New Toledo, t was entirely destroyed. At 
 
 • Buffon, Hist. Nat. des Oiseaux, tom. i., p. 114. 
 
 f This was the first name given to the city of Cumana. — Girolamo 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
162 
 
 EARTHQUAKES. 
 
 the same time an enormous opening was formed in the j 
 mountains of Cariaco, on the shores of the gulf bearing that 
 name, when a great body of salt-water, mixed with asphaltum, ■ 
 issued from the micaceous schist. Earthquakes were very 
 frequent about the end of the sixteenth century ; and, accord- 
 ing to the traditions preserved at Cumana, the sea often 
 inundated the shores, rising from fifteen to twenty fathoms. 
 
 As no record exists at Cumana, and its archives, owing to 
 the continual devastations of the termites, or white ants, 
 contain no document that goes back farther than a hundred 
 and fifty years, we are unacquainted with the precise dates of 
 the ancient earthquakes. We only know, that, in times 
 nearer our own, the year 1776 was at once the most fatal to 
 the colonists, and the most remarkable for the physical 
 history of the country. The city of Cumana was entirely 1 
 destroyed, the houses were overturned in the space of a few j 
 minutes, and the shocks were hourly repeated during fourteen 1 
 months. In several parts of the province the earth opened, 3 
 and threw out sulphureous waters. These irruptions were I 
 very frequent in a plain extending towards Casanay, two 
 leagues east of the town of Cariaco, and known by the name 
 of the hollow ground (tierra hueca), because it appears j 
 entirely undermined by thermal springs. During the years ] j 
 1766 and 1767, the inhabitants of Cumana encamped in their 
 streets ; and they began to rebuild their houses only when j 
 the earthquakes recurred once a-month. What was felt ' 
 at Quito, immediately after the great catastrophe of Fe- 
 bruary 1797, took place on these coasts. While the ground 
 was in a state of continual oscillation, the atmosphere 
 seemed to dissolve itself into water. 
 
 Tradition states that in the earthquake of 1766, as well 
 as in another remarkable one in 1794, the shocks were mere 
 horizontal oscillations ; it was only on the disastrous 14th of I 
 December, 1797, that for the first time at Cumana the 
 motion was felt by an upheaving of the ground. More than 
 
 Benzoni, Hist, del Mondo Nuovo, pp. 3, 31, and 33. James Castellon 
 arrived at St. Domingo in 1521, after the appearance of the celebrated 
 Bartholomew de las Casas in these countries. On attentively reading the 
 narratives of Benzoni and Caulin, we find that the fort of Castellon was 
 built near the mouth of the Manzanares (alla ripa del flume de Cumana) ; 
 and not, as some modern travellers have asserted, on the mountain where 
 now stands’ the castle of San Antonio. 
 
THEIR PHEHOHEHA. 
 
 163 
 
 four-fifths of the city were then entirely destroyed ; and the 
 shock, attended by a very loud subterraneous noise, resembled, 
 as at Riobamba, the explosion of a mine at a great depth. 
 Happily the most violent shock was preceded by a slight 
 undulating motion, so that most of the inhabitants were 
 enabled to escape into the streets, and a small number only 
 perished of those who had assembled in the churches. It is a 
 generally received opinion at Cumana, that the most de- 
 structive earthquakes are announced by very feeble oscilla- 
 tions, and by a hollow sound, which does not escape the 
 observation of persons habituated to this kind of pheno- 
 menon. In those fatal moments the cries of * misericordia ! 
 tembla! tembla!’* are everywhere heard; and it rarely happens 
 that a false alarm is given by a native. Those who are most 
 apprehensive attentively observe the motions of dogs, goats, 
 and swine. The last-mentioned animals, endowed with delicate 
 olfactory nerves, and accustomed to turn up the earth, give 
 warning of approaching danger by their restlessness and 
 their cries. We shall not attempt to decide, whether, being 
 nearer the surface of the ground, they are the first to hear 
 the subterraneous noise ; or whether their organs receive the 
 impression of some gaseous emanation which issues from 
 the earth. We cannot deny the possibility of this latter 
 cause. During my abode at Peru, a fact was observed in 
 the inland country, which has an analogy with this kind of 
 phenomenon, and which is not unfrequent. At the end of 
 violent earthquakes, the herbs that cover the savannahs of 
 Tucuman acquired noxious properties ; an epidemic disorder 
 broke out among the cattle, and a great number of them 
 appeared stupified or suffocated by the deleterious vapours 
 exhaled from the ground. 
 
 At Cumana, half an hour before the catastrophe of the 
 14th of December, 1797, a strong smell of sulphur was per- 
 ceived near the hill of the convent of San Prancisco ; and on 
 the same spot the subterraneous noise, which seemed to 
 proceed from south-east to north-west, was loudest. At 
 the same time flames appeared on the banks of the Manza- 
 nares, near the hospital of the Capuchins, and in the gulf of 
 Cariaco, near Mariguitar. This last phenomenon, so extra- 
 
 * “Mercy ! the earthquake! the earthquake!” — See Tschudi’s Travels 
 in Peru, p. 170. 
 
164 
 
 EARTHQUAKES. 
 
 ordinary in a country not volcanic, is pretty frequent in tlie 
 Alpine calcareous mountains near Cumanacoa, in the valley 
 of Bordones, in the island of Margareta, and amidst the 
 Llanos or savannahs of New Andalusia. In these savan- 
 nahs, flakes of fire rising to a considerable height, are seen 
 for hours together in the dryest places ; and it is asserted, 
 that, on examining the ground no crevice is perceptible. This 
 fire, which resembles the springs of hydrogen, or Salse, of 
 Modena, or what is called the will-o’-the-wisp of our 
 marshes, does not bum the grass ; because, no doubt, the 
 column of gas, which developes itself, is mixed with azote 
 and carbonic acid, and does not burn at its basis. The 
 people, although less superstitious here than in Spain, call 
 these reddish flames by the singular name of ‘ the soul of 
 the tyrant Aguirre;’ imagining that the spectre of Lopez 
 Aguirre, harassed by remorse, wanders over these countries 
 sullied by his crimes.* 
 
 The great earthquake of 1797 produced some changes 
 in the configuration of the shoal of Morro Roxo, towards 
 the mouth of the Bio Bordones. Similar swellings were 
 observed at the time of the total destruction of Cumana, in 
 1766. At that period, the Punta Delgado, on the southern 
 coast of the gulf of Cariaco, became perceptibly enlarged; and 
 in the Rio Gnarapiche, near the village of Maturin, a shoal 
 was formed, no doubt by the action of the elastic fluids, 
 which displaced and raised up the bed of the river. 
 
 In order to follow a plan conformable to the end we pro- 
 posed in this work, we shall endeavour to generalize our 
 ideas, and to comprehend in one point of view everything 
 that relates to these phenomena, so terrific, and so difficult 
 to explain. If it be the duty of the men of science who 
 visit the Alps of Switzerland, or the coasts of Lapland, 
 to extend our knowledge respecting the glaciers and the 
 aurora borealis, it may be expected that a traveller who 
 
 * When at Cumana, or in the island of Margareta, the people pro- 
 nounce the words el tirano (the tyrant), it is always to denote the hated 
 Lopez d’ Aguirre, who, after having taken part, in 1560, in the revolt of 
 Fernando de Guzman against Pedro de Ursua, governor of the Omeguas 
 and Dorado, voluntarily took the title of traidor, or traitor. He descended 
 the river Amazon with his band, and reached by a communication of the 
 rivers of Guyana the island of Margareta. The port of Paraguache still 
 bears, in this island, the name of the Tyrant’s Port. 
 
THEIB PHENOMENA. 
 
 165 
 
 has journeyed through Spanish America, should have chiefly 
 fixed his attention on volcanoes and earthquakes. Each part 
 of the globe is an object of particular study ; and when we 
 cannot hope to penetrate the causes of natural phenomena, 
 we ought at least to endeavour to discover their laws, and 
 distinguish, by the comparison of numerous facts, that which 
 is permanent and uniform from that which is variable and 
 accidental. 
 
 The great earthquakes, which interrupt the long series of 
 slight shocks, appear to have no regular periods at Cumana. 
 They have taken place at intervals of eighty, a hundred, 
 and sometimes less than thirty years ; while on the coasts 
 of Peru, for instance at Lima, a certain regularity has 
 marked the periods of the total destruction of the city. 
 The belief of the inhabitants in the existence of this uni- 
 formity has a happy influence on public tranquillity, and the 
 encouragement of industry. It is generally admitted, that 
 it requires a sufficiently long space of time for the same 
 causes to act with the same energy ; but this reasoning is 
 just only inasmuch as the shocks are considered as a local 
 phenomenon; and a particular focus, under each point of 
 the globe exposed to those great catastrophes, is admitted. 
 "Whenever new edifices are raised on the ruins of the old, 
 we hear from those who refuse to build, that the destruction 
 of Lisbon on the first day of November, 1755, was soon 
 followed by a second, and not less fatal convulsion, on the 
 31st of March, 1761. 
 
 It is a very ancient opinion, # and one that is commonly 
 received at Cumana, Acapulco, and Lima, that a perceptible 
 connection exists between earthquakes and the state of the 
 atmosphere that precedes those phenomena. But from the 
 great number of earthquakes which I have witnessed to the 
 north and south of the equator ; on the continent, and on the 
 seas ; on the coasts, and at 2500 toises height ; it appears to 
 me that the oscillations are generally very independent of 
 the previous state of the atmosphere. This opinion is enter- 
 tained by a number of intelligent residents of the Spanish 
 colonies, whose experience extends, if not over a greater 
 space of the globe, at least over a greater number of years, 
 
 * Arist. de Meteor, lib. ii, (ed. Duval, tom. i. p. 798). Seneca, Nat. 
 Quaest., lib. vi., c. 12. 
 
166 
 
 EARTHQUAKE S. 
 
 than mine. On the contrary, in parts of Europe where 
 earthquakes are rare compared to America, scientific obser- 
 vers are inclined to admit an intimate connection between 
 the undulations of the ground, and certain meteors, which 
 appear simultaneously with them. In Italy for instance, the 
 sirocco and earthquakes are suspected to have some con- 
 nection ; and in London, the frequency of falling-stars, and 
 those southern lights which have since been often observed 
 by Mr. Dalton, were considered as the forerunners of those 
 shocks which were felt from 1748 to 1756. 
 
 On days when the earth is shaken by violent shocks, the 
 regularity of the horary variations of the barometer is not 
 disturbed within the tropics. I had opportunities of verify- 
 ing this observation at Cumana, at Lima, and at Riobamba ; 
 and it is the more worthy of attention, as at St. Domingo, 
 (in the town of Cape Erançois,) it is asserted, that a water- 
 barometer sank two inches and a half immediately before the 
 earthquake of 1770. It is also related, that, at the time of 
 the destruction of Oran, a druggist fled with his family, 
 because, observing accidentally, a few minutes before the 
 earthquake, the height of the mercury in his barometer, he 
 perceived that the column sank in an extraordinary manner. 
 I know not whether we can give credit to this story ; but as 
 it is nearly impossible to examine the variations of the weight 
 of the atmosphere during the shocks, we must be satisfied 
 with observing the barometer before or after these pheno- 
 mena have taken place. 
 
 "We can scarcely doubt, that the earth, when opened and 
 agitated by shocks, spreads occasionally gaseous emanations 
 through the atmosphere, in places remote from the mouths 
 of volcanoes not extinct. At Cumana, it has already been 
 observed that flames and vapours mixed with sulphurous acid 
 spring up from the most arid soil. In other parts of the 
 same province, the earth ejects water and petroleum. At 
 Riobamba, a muddy and inflammable mass, called moya, 
 issues from crevices that close again, and accumulates into 
 elevated hills. At about seven leagues from Lisbon, near 
 Colares, during the terrible earthquake of the 1st of No- 
 vember, 1755, flames and a column of thick smoke were seen 
 to issue from the flanks of the rocks of Alvidras, and, accord- 
 ing to some witnesses, from the bosom of the sea. 
 
THEIR PHENOMENA. 
 
 167 
 
 Elastic fluids thrown into the atmosphere may act locally 
 on the barometer, not by their mass, which is very small, 
 compared to the mass of the atmosphere, but because, at 
 the moment of great explosions, an ascending current is 
 probably formed, which diminishes the pressure of the air. 
 I am inclined to think that in the majority of earthquakes 
 nothing escapes from the agitated earth; and that, when 
 gaseous emanations and vapours are observed, they oftener 
 accompany or follow, than precede the shocks. This cir- 
 cumstance would seem to explain the mysterious influ- 
 ence of earthquakes in equinoctial America, on the climate, 
 and on the order of the dry and rainy seasons. If the earth 
 generally act on the air only at the moment of the shocks, 
 we can conceive why a sensible meteorological change so 
 rarely precedes those great revolutions of nature. 
 
 The hypothesis according to which, in the earthquakes of 
 Cumana, elastic fluids tend to escape from the surface of the 
 soil, seems confirmed by the great noise which is heard 
 during the shocks at the borders of the wells in the plain of 
 Charas. Water and sand are sometimes thrown out twenty 
 feet high. Similar phenomena were observed in ancient 
 times by the inhabitants of those parts of Greece and Asia 
 Minor abounding with caverns, crevices, and subterraneous 
 rivers. Nature, in her uniform progress, everywhere suggests 
 the same ideas of the causes of earthquakes, and the means 
 by which man, forgetting the measure of his strength, pre- 
 tends to diminish the effect of the subterraneous explosions. 
 "What a great Homan naturalist has said of the utility of 
 wells and caverns* is repeated in the New World by the 
 most ignorant Indians of Quito, when they show travellers 
 the guaicos, or crevices of Pichincha. 
 
 The subterranean noise, so frequent during earthquakes, 
 
 * “ In puteis est remedium, quale et crebri specus prsebent : conceptual 
 enim spiritum exhalant : quod in certis notatur oppidis, quae minus qua- 
 tiuntur, crebris ad eluviem cuniculis cavata.” — Plinv, lib. ii, c. 82 (ed. 
 Par. 1723, t.i., p. 112.) Even at present, in the capital of St. Domingo, 
 wells are considered as diminishing the violence of the shocks. I may 
 observe on this occasion, that the theory of earthquakes, given by Seneca, 
 (J*îat. Quæst., lib. vi., c. 4 — 31), contains the germ of everything that 
 has been said in our times on the action of the elastic vapours confined 
 in the interior of the globe. 
 
16S 
 
 EARTHQUAKES. 
 
 is generally not in the ratio of the force of the shocks. 
 At Cumana it constantly precedes them, while at Quito, and 
 recently at Caracas, and in the West India Islands, a noise 
 like the discharge of a battery was heard a long time 
 after the shocks had ceased. A third kind of phenomenon, 
 the most remarkable of the whole, is the rolling of those 
 subterranean thunders, which last several months, without 
 being accompanied by the least oscillatory motion of the 
 ground.* 
 
 In every country subject to earthquakes, the point at which, 
 probably owing to a particular disposition of the stony strata, 
 the effects are most sensibly felt, is considered as the cause 
 and the focus of the shocks. Thus, at Cumana, the hill of the 
 castle of San Antonio, and particularly the eminence on which 
 stands the convent of St. Francis, are believed to contain an 
 enormous quantity of sulphur and other inflammable mat- 
 ter. We forget that the rapidity with which the undula- 
 tions are propagated to great distances, even across the 
 basin of the ocean, proves that the centre of action is very 
 remote from the surface of the globe. From this same 
 cause no doubt earthquakes are not confined to certain 
 species of rocks, as some naturalists suppose, but all are 
 fitted to propagate the movement. Keeping within the 
 limits of my own experience I may here cite the granites 
 of Lima and Acapulco ; the gneiss of Caracas ; the mica- 
 slate of the peninsula of Araya ; the primitive thonschiefer 
 of Tepecuacuilco, in Mexico ; the secondary limestones of 
 the Apennines, Spain, and New Andalusia ; and finally, the 
 trappean porphyries of the provinces of Quito and Popayan.f 
 In these different places the ground is frequently agitated 
 by the most violent shocks ; but sometimes, in the same 
 rock, the superior strata form invincible obstacles to the 
 
 * The subterranean thunders (bramidos y truenos subterraneos) of 
 Guanaxuato. The phenomenon of a noise without shocks was observed 
 by the ancients. — Aristot. Meteor., lib. ii., (ed. Duval, p. 802). Pliny, 
 lib. ii., c. 80. 
 
 f I might add to the list of secondary rocks, the gypsum of the newest 
 formation, for instance, that of Montmartre, situated on a marine cal- 
 careous rock, which is posterior to the chalk. — See the Mémoires de 
 l’Académie, tom. i., p. 341, on the earthquake felt at Paris and its environs 
 in 1681. 
 
THEIR PHENOMENA. 
 
 169 
 
 propagation of the motion. Thus, in the mines of Saxony, 
 we have seen workmen hasten up alarmed by oscillations 
 which were not felt at the surface of the ground. 
 
 If, in regions the most remote from each other, primitive, 
 secondary, and volcanic rocks, share equally in the convul- 
 sive movements of the globe ; we cannot but admit also that 
 within a space of little extent, certain classes of rocks 
 oppose themselves to the propagation of the shocks. At 
 Cumana, for instance, before the great catastrophe of 1797, 
 the earthquakes were felt only along the southern and cal- 
 careous coast of the gulf of Cariaco, as far as the town of 
 that name ; while in the peninsula of Araya, and at the village 
 of Maniquarez, the ground did not share the same agitation. 
 But since December 1797, new communications appear to 
 have been opened in the interior of the globe. The penin- 
 sula of Araya is now not merely subject to the same agita- 
 tions as the soil of Cumana, but the promontory of mica- 
 slate, previously free from earthquakes, has become in its 
 turn a central point of commotion. The earth is sometimes 
 strongly shaken at the village of Maniquarez, when on the 
 coast of Cumana the inhabitants enjoy the most perfect 
 tranquillity. The gulf of Cariaco, nevertheless, is only sixty 
 or eighty fathoms deep. 
 
 It has been thought from observations made both on the 
 continent and in the islands, that the western and southern 
 coasts are most exposed to shocks. This observation is con- 
 nected with opinions which geologists have long formed re- 
 specting the position of the high chains of mountains, and 
 the direction of their steepest declivities ; but the existence 
 of the Cordillera of Caracas, and the frequency of the oscil- 
 lations on the eastern and northern coast of Terra Firma, 
 in the gulf of Paria, at Carupano, at Cariaco, and at Cumana, 
 render the accuracy of that opinion doubtful. 
 
 In New Andalusia, as well as in Chile and Peru, the 
 shocks follow the course of the shore, and extend but little 
 inland. This circumstance, as we shall soon find, indicates 
 an intimate connection between the causes which produce 
 earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. If the earth was most 
 agitated on the coasts, because they are the lowest part of 
 the land, why should not the oscillations be equally strong 
 
170 
 
 EARTHQUAKES. 
 
 and frequent on those vast savannahs or prairies,* which 
 are scarcely eight or ten toises above the level of the ocean ? 
 
 The earthquakes of Cumana are connected with those of 
 the West India Islands ; and it has even been suspected 
 that they have some connection with the volcanic phenomena 
 of the Cordilleras of the Andes. On the 4th of February, 
 1797, the soil of the province of Quito suffered such a 
 destructive commotion, that near 40,000 natives perished. 
 At the same period the inhabitants of the eastern Antilles 
 were alarmed by shocks, which continued during eight 
 months, when the volcano of Gruadaloupe threw out pumice- 
 stones, ashes, and gusts of sulphureous vapours. The erup- 
 tion of the 27th of September, during which very long-con- 
 tinued subterranean noises were heard, was followed on the 
 14th of December by the great earthquake of Cumana. 
 Another volcano of the West India Islands, that of St. 
 Vincent, affords an example of these extraordinary connec- 
 tions. This volcano had not emitted flames since 1718, 
 when they burst forth anew in 1812. The total ruin of the 
 city of Caracas preceded this explosion thirty-five days, and 
 violent oscillations of the ground were felt both in the islands 
 and on the coasts of Terra Firma. 
 
 It has long been remarked that the effects of great earth- 
 quakes extend much farther than the phenomena arising 
 from burning volcanoes. In studying the physical revolu- 
 tions of Italy, in carefully examining the series of the erup- 
 tions of Vesuvius and Etna, we can scarcely recognise, not- 
 withstanding the proximity of these mountains, any traces of 
 a simultaneous action. It is on the contrary beyond a doubt, 
 that at the period of the last and preceding destruction of 
 Lisbon, f the sea was violently agitated even as far as the 
 
 * The Llanos of Cumana, of New Barcelona, of Calabozo, of Apure, 
 and of Meta. 
 
 f The 1st of November, 1755, and 31st of March, 1761. During the 
 first of these earthquakes, the sea inundated, in Europe, the coasts of 
 Sweden, England, and Spain ; in America, the islands of Antigua, Bar- 
 hadoes, and Martinique. At Barbadoes, where the ordinary tides rise 
 only from twenty-four to twenty-eight inches, the water rose twenty feet 
 in Carlisle Bay. It became at the same time as black as ink ; being, 
 without doubt, mixed with the petroleum, or asphaltum, which abounds 
 at the bottom of the sea, as well on the coasts of the gulf of Cariaco, as 
 
THEIR PHENOMENA. 
 
 171 
 
 New World, for instance, at the island of Barbadoes, more 
 than twelve hundred leagues distant from the coasts of 
 Portugal. 
 
 Several facts tend to prove that the causes which produce 
 earthquakes have a near connection with those which act in 
 volcanic eruptions. The connection of these causes was 
 known to the ancients, and it excited fresh attention at the 
 period of the discovery of America. The discovery of the 
 New World not only offered new productions to the curiosity 
 of man, it also extended the then existing stock of know- 
 ledge respecting physical geography, the varieties of the 
 human species, and the migrations of nations. It is im- 
 possible to read the narratives of early Spanish travellers, 
 especially that of the Jesuit Acosta, without perceiving 
 the influence which the aspect of a great continent, the 
 study of extraordinary appearances of nature, and inter- 
 course with men of different races, must have exercised 
 
 near the island of Trinidad. In the West Indies, and in several lakes of 
 Switzerland, this extraordinary motion of the waters was observed six 
 hours after the first shock that was felt at Lisbon. — Phil. Trans., vol. 
 xlix, pp. 403, 410, 544, 668 ; ibid. vol. liii, p. 424. At Cadiz a moun- 
 tain of water sixty feet high was seen eight miles distant at sea. This 
 mass threw itself impetuously on the coasts, and beat down a great num- 
 ber of houses ; like the wave eighty-four feet high, which on the 9th of 
 June, 1586, at the time of the great earthquake of Lima, covered the port 
 of Callao. — Acosta, Hist. Natural de las Indias, ed. de 1591, p. 123. 
 In North America, on Lake Ontario, violent agitations of the water were 
 observed from the month of October 1 755. These phenomena are proofs 
 of subterraneous communications at enormous distances. On comparing 
 the periods of the great catastrophes of Lima and Guatimala, which gene- 
 rally succeed each other at long intervals, it has sometimes been thought, 
 that the effect of an action slowly propagating along the Cordilleras, some- 
 times from north to south, at other times from south to north, may be 
 perceived. — Cosmo Bueno, Descripcion del Peru, ed. de Lima, p. 67. 
 Four of these remarkable catastrophes, with their dates, may be here 
 enumerated. 
 
 Mexico. Peru. 
 
 (Lat. 13° 32' north.) (Lat. 12° 2' south.) 
 
 30th of November, 1577. 17th of June, 1578. 
 
 4th of March, 1679. 17th of June, 1678. 
 
 12th of February, 1689. 10th of October, 1688. 
 
 27th of September, 1717. 8th of February, 1716. 
 
 When the shocks are not simultaneous, or do not follow each other afr 
 short intervals, great doubts may be entertained with respect to the sup- 
 posed communication of the movement. 
 
172 
 
 EARTHQUAKES. 
 
 on the progress of knowledge in Europe. The germ of a 
 great number of physical truths is found in the works of the 
 sixteenth century; and that germ would have fructified, 
 had it not been crushed by fanaticism and superstition. We 
 learned, at Pasto, that the column of black and thick smoke, 
 which, in 1797, issued for several months from the volcano 
 near that shore, disappeared at the very hour, when, sixty 
 leagues to the south, the towns of Riobamba, Hambato, and 
 Tacunga were destroyod by an enormous shock. In the * : 
 interior of a burning crater, near those hillocks formed by 
 ejections of scoriæ and ashes, the motion of the ground 
 is felt several seconds before each partial eruption takes 
 place. We observed this phenomenon at Vesuvius in 1805, 
 while the mountain threw out incandescent scoriæ ; we 
 were witnesses of it in 1802, on the brink of the immense 
 crater of Pichincha, from which, nevertheless, at that time, 
 clouds of sulphureous acid vapours only issued. 
 
 Everything in earthquakes seems to indicate the action of 
 elastic fluids seeking an outlet to diffuse themselves in 
 the atmosphere. Often, on the coasts of the Pacific, the 
 action is almost instantaneously communicated from Chile to 
 the gulf of Guayaquil, a distance of six hundred leagues ; 
 and, what is very remarkable, the shocks appear to be the 
 stronger in proportion as the country is distant from burn- 
 ing volcanoes. The granitic mountains of Calabria, covered 
 with very recent breccias, the calcareous chain of the Apen- 
 nines, the country of Pignerol, the coasts of Portugal and 
 Greece, those of Peru and Terra Eirma, afford striking 
 proofs of this fact. The globe, it may be said, is agitated 
 with the greater force, in proportion as the surface has a 
 smaller number of funnels communicating with the caverns 
 of the interior. At Naples and at Messina, at the foot of 
 Cotopaxi and of Tunguragua, earthquakes are dreaded only I 
 when vapours and flames do not issue from the craters. In 
 the kingdom of Quito, the great catastrophe of Riobamba ] 
 led several well-informed persons to think that that country 
 would be less frequently disturbed, if the subterranean fire 
 should break the porphyritic dome of Chimborazo ; and if 
 that colossal mountain should become a burning volcano. 
 
 * At all times analogous facts have led to the same hypotheses. 
 The Greeks, who, like ourselves, attributed the oscillations 
 
PLAN OP STUDY. 
 
 173 
 
 of the ground to the tension of elastic fluids, cited in favour 
 of their opinion, the total cessation of the shocks at the 
 island of Euboea, by the opening of a crevice in the Lelan- 
 tine plain.* 
 
 The phenomena of volcanoes, and those of earthquakes, 
 have been considered of late as the effects of voltaic electri- 
 city, developed by a particular disposition of heterogeneous 
 strata. It cannot be denied, that often, when violent shocks 
 succeed each other within the space of a few hours, the 
 electricity of the air sensibly increases at the instant the 
 ground is most agitated ; but to explain this phenomenon, 
 it is unnecessary to recur to an hypothesis, which is in 
 direct contradiction to everything hitherto observed respect- 
 ing the structure of our planet, and the disposition of its 
 strata. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 Peninsula of Araya. — Salt-marshes. — Ruins of the Castle of 
 Santiago. 
 
 The first weeks of our abode at Cumana were employed 
 in testing our instruments, in herborizing in the neighbour- 
 ing plains, and in examining the traces of the earthquake of 
 the 14th of December, 1797. Overpowered at once by a 
 great number of objects, we were somewhat embarrassed how 
 to lay down a regular plan of study and observation. Whilst 
 every surrounding object was fitted to inspire in us the most 
 lively interest, our physical and astronomical instruments in 
 their turns excited strongly the curiosity of the inhabitants. 
 We had numerous visitors ; and in our desire to satisfy per- 
 sons who appeared so happy to see the spots of the moon 
 through Dollond’s telescope, the absorption of two gases in a 
 eudiometrical tube, or the effects of galvanism on the motions 
 of a frog, we were obliged to answer questions often obscure, 
 and to repeat for whole hours the same experiments. These 
 scenes were renewed for the space of five years, whenever 
 we took up our abode in a place where it was understood 
 
 * “ The shocks ceased only when a crevice, which ejected a river of 
 fiery mud, opened in the plain of Lelantum, near Chalcis.” — Strabo. 
 
174 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. 
 
 that we were in possession of microscopes, telescopes, and 
 electrical apparatus. 
 
 I could not begin a regular course of astronomical obser- 
 vations before the 28th of July, though it was highly im- 
 portant for me to know the longitude given by Berthoud’s 
 time-keeper ; but it happened, that in a country where the 
 sky is constantly clear and serene, no stars appeared for 
 several nights. The whole series of the observations I made 
 in 1799 and 1800 give for their results, that the latitude of 
 the great square at Cumana is 10° 27' 52", and its longitude 
 66° 30' 2". This longitude is founded on the difference of 
 time, on lunar distances, on the eclipse of the sun (on the 
 28th of October, 1799), and on ten immersions of Jupiter’s 
 satellites, compared with observations made in Europe. The 
 oldest chart we have of the continent, that of Don Diego 
 Bibeiro, geographer to the emperor Charles the Eifth, 
 places Cumana in latitude 9° 30' ; which differs fifty-eight 
 minutes from the real latitude, and half a degree from that 
 marked by Jefferies in his American Pilot, published in 
 1794. During three centuries the whole of the coast of 
 Terra Eirma lias been laid down too far to the south : this 
 has been owing to the current near the island of Trinidad, 
 which sets toward the north, and mariners are led by their 
 dead-reckoning to think themselves farther south than they 
 really are. 
 
 On the 17th of August a halo round the moon fixed the 
 attention of the inhabitants of Cumana, who considered it 
 as the presage of some violent earthquake ; for, according 
 to popular notions, all extraordinary phenomena are im- 
 mediately connected with each other. Coloured circles 
 around the moon are much more rare in northern coun- 
 tries, than in Provence, Italy, and Spain. They are seen 
 particularly (and this fact is singular enough) when the 
 sky is clear, and the weather seems to be most fair and 
 settled. Under the torrid zone beautiful prismatic colours 
 appear almost every night, and even at the time of the 
 greatest droughts ; often in the space of a few minutes they 
 disappear several times, because, doubtless, the superior 
 currents change the state of the floating vapours, by which 
 the light is refracted. I sometimes even observed, between 
 the fifteenth degree of latitude and the equator, small halos 
 
THE SLATE MARKET. 
 
 175 
 
 around the planet Venus; the purple, orange, and violet, 
 were distinctly perceived: hut I never saw any colours 
 around Sirius, Canopus, or Achemer. 
 
 While the halo was visible at Cumana, the hygrometer 
 denoted great humidity ; nevertheless the vapours appeared 
 so perfectly in solution, or rather so elastic and uniformly 
 disseminated, that they did not alter the transparency of the 
 atmosphere. The moon arose after a storm of rain, behind 
 the castle of San Antonio. As soon as she appeared on the 
 horizon, we distinguished two circles : one large and whitish, 
 forty-four degrees in diameter; the other a small circle of 
 1° 43', displaying all the colours of the rainbow. The space 
 between the two circles was of the deepest azure. At four 
 degrees height, they disappeared, while the meteorological 
 instruments indicated not the slightest change in the lower 
 regions of the air. This phenomenon had nothing extra- 
 ordinary, except the great brilliancy of the colours, added to 
 the circumstance, that, according to the measures taken 
 with Earns den’s sextant, the lunar disk was not exactly in 
 the centre of the haloes. Without this actual measurement 
 we might have thought that the excentricity was the effect 
 of the projection of the circles on the apparent concavity of 
 the sky. 
 
 If the situation of our house at Cumana was highly fa- 
 vourably for the observation of the stars and meteorological 
 phenomena, it obliged us to be sometimes the witnesses ot 
 painful scenes during the day. A part of the great square is 
 surrounded with arcades, above which is one of those long 
 wooden galleries, common in warm countries. This was the 
 the place where slaves, brought from the coast of Africa, 
 were sold. Of all the European governments Denmark was 
 the first, and for a long time the only power, which abolished 
 the traffic ; yet notwithstanding that fact, the first negroes 
 we saw exposed for sale had been landed from a Danish 
 slave-ship. What are the duties of humanity, national 
 honour, or the laws of their country, to men stimulated by 
 the speculations of sordid interest ? 
 
 The slaves exposed to sale were young men from fifteen 
 to twenty years of age. Every morning cocoa-nut oil was 
 distributed among them, with which they rubbed their 
 
176 
 
 SLATES AT CUMANA. 
 
 bodies, to give tbeir skin a black polish. The persons who 
 came to purchase examined the teeth of these slaves, to 
 judge of their age and health ; forcing open their mouths as 
 we do those of horses in a market. This odious custom dates 
 from Africa, as is proved by the faithful pictures drawn by 
 the inimitable Cervantes,* who after his long captivity 
 among the Moors, described the sale of Christian slaves at 
 Algiers. It is distressing to think that even at this day 
 there exist European colonists in the West Indies who mark 
 their slaves with a hot iron, to know them again if they 
 escape. This is the treatment bestowed on those “who 
 save other men the labour of sowing, tilling, and reaping.” f 
 
 In 1800 the number of slaves did not exceed six thousand 
 in the two provinces of Cumana and Barcelona, when at the 
 same period the whole population was estimated at one 
 hundred and ten thousand inhabitants. The trade in Africap 
 slaves, which the laws of the Spaniards have never favoured, 
 is almost as nothing on these coasts where the trade in Ameri- 
 can slaves was carried on in the sixteenth century with desola- 
 ting activity. Macarapan, anciently called Amaracapana, Cu- 
 mana, Araya, and particularly New Cadiz, built on the islet of 
 Cubagua, might then be considered as commercial establish- 
 ments for facilitating the slave trade. Girolamo Benzoni of 
 Milan, who at the age of twenty-two visited Terra Firma, took 
 part in some expeditions in 1542 to the coasts of Bordones, 
 Cariaco, and Paria, to carry off the unfortunate natives. He 
 relates with simplicity, and often with a sensibility not com- 
 mon in the historians of that time, the examples of cruelty 
 of which he was a witness. He saw the slaves dragged ta 
 New Cadiz, to be marked on the forehead and on the arms, 
 and for the payment of the quint to the officers of the crown. 
 From this port the Indians were sent to the island of Hayti 
 or St. Domingo, after having often changed masters, not by 
 
 * El Trato de Argel. Jorn. II. Viage al Parnasso (1784), p. 316. 
 
 f La Bruyère, Caractères, chap. xi. (ed. 1765), p. 300. I will here 
 cite a passage strongly characteristic of La Bruyère’ s benevolent feeling 
 for his fellow-creatures. “We find (under the torrid zone) certain 
 wild animals, male and female, scattered through the country, black, 
 livid, and all over scorched by the sun, bent to the earth which they dig 
 and turn up with invincible perseverance. They have something like 
 articulate utterance ; and when they stand up on their feet, they exhibit a 
 human face, and in fact these creatures are men.” 
 
NE GEO FESTIVALS. 
 
 177 
 
 way of sale, but because tbe soldiers played for them at 
 dice. 
 
 The first excursion we made was to the peninsula of 
 Araya, and those countries formerly celebrated for the 
 slave-trade and the pearl-fishery. We embarked on the Bio 
 Manzanares, near the Indian suburb, on the 19th of August, 
 about two in the morning. The principal objects of this 
 excursion were, to see the ruins of the castle of Araya, to 
 examine the salt-works, and to make a few geological obser- 
 vations on the mountains forming the narrow peninsula of 
 JVlaniquarez. The night was delightfully cool; swarms of 
 phosphorescent insects # glistened in the air, and over a soil 
 covered with sesuvium, and groves of mimosa which bordered 
 the river. We know how common the glow-worm f is in 
 Italy and in all the south of Europe, but the picturesque 
 effect it produces cannot be compared to those innumerable, 
 scattered, and moving lights, which embellish the nights of 
 the torrid zone, and seem to repeat on the earth, along the 
 vast extent of the savannahs, the brilliancy of the starry 
 vault of heaven. 
 
 When, on descending the river, we drew near plantations, 
 or cJiaras , we saw bonfires kindled by the negroes. A light 
 and undulating smoke rose to the tops of the palm-trees, 
 and imparted a reddish hue to the disk of the moon. It 
 was on a Sunday night, and the slaves were dancing to the 
 music of the guitar. The people of Africa, of negro race, 
 are endowed with an inexhaustible store of activity and 
 gaiety. After having ended the labours of the week, the 
 slaves, on festival days, prefer to listless sleep the recreations 
 of music and dancing. 
 
 The bark in which we passed the gulf of Cariaco was 
 very spacious. Large skins of the jaguar, or American 
 tiger, were spread for our repose during the night. Though 
 we had yet scarcely been two months in the torrid zone, 
 we had already become so sensible to the smallest variation 
 of temperature that the cold prevented us from sleeping; 
 while, to our surprise, we saw that the centigrade ther- 
 mometer was as high as 21'8°. This fact is familiar to 
 those who have lived long in the Indies, and^is worthy the 
 
 * Elater noctilucus. *j* Lampyris italica, L. noctiluca. 
 
 N 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
178 
 
 EFFECTS OF COLD. 
 
 attention of physiologists. Bouguer relates, that when he 
 reached the summit of Montagne Pelée, in the island of 
 Martinique, he and his companions shivered with cold, though 
 the heat was above 215°. In reading the interesting nar- 
 rative of captain Bligh, who, in consequence of a mutiny 
 on board the Bounty, was forced to make a voyage of twelve 
 hundred leagues in an open boat, we find that that navigator, 
 in the tenth and twelfth degrees of south latitude, suffered 
 much more from cold than from hunger. During our abode 
 at Guayaquil, in the month of January 1803, we observed 
 that the natives covered themselves, and complained of the 
 cold, when the thermometer sunk to 23’8°, whilst they felt 
 the heat suffocating at 305°. Six or seven degrees were 
 sufficient to cause the opposite sensations of cold and heat ; 
 because, on these coasts of South America, the ordinary 
 temperature of the atmosphere is twenty-eight degrees. 
 The humidity, which modifies the conducting power of the 
 air for heat, contributes greatly to these impressions. In 
 the port of Guayaquil, as everywhere else in the low regions 
 of the torrid zone, the weather grows cool only after storms 
 of rain: and I have observed that when the thermometer 
 sinks to 23 , 8°, De Luc’s hygrometer keeps up to fifty and 
 fifty-two degrees; it is, on the contrary, at thirty-seven 
 degrees in a temperature of 30‘5°. At Cumana, during 
 very heavy showers, people in the streets are heard exclaim- 
 ing, que hielo! estoy emparamado ;* though the thermometer 
 
 * “ What an icy cold ! I shiver as if I was on the top of the moun- 
 tains.’ ’ The provincial word emparamarse can be translated only by a 
 very long periphrasis. Paramo, in Peruvian puna, is a denomination 
 found on all the maps of Spanish America. In the colonies it signifies 
 neither a desert nor a heath, but a mountainous place covered with 
 stunted trees, exposed to the winds, and in which a damp cold perpetu- 
 ally reigns. In the torrid zone, the paramos are generally from one 
 thousand six hundred to two thousand toises high. Snow often falls on 
 them, but it remains only a few hours ; for we must not confound, as 
 geographers often do, the words paramo and puna with that of nevado, 
 in Peruvian ritticapa, a mountain which enters into the limits of 
 perpetual snow. These notions are highly interesting to geology and 
 the geography of plants ; because, in countries where no height has been 
 measured, we may form an exact idea of the lowest height to. which the « 
 Cordilleras risd", on looking into the map for the words paramo and 
 nevado. As the paramos are almost continually enveloped in a cold and 
 thick fog, the people say at Santa Fé and at Mexico, cae un paramito, 
 
SALT-WOEKS OF AEATA. 
 
 179 
 
 exposed to the rain sinks only to 21 , 5°. From these obser- 
 vations it follows, that between the tropics, in plains where 
 the temperature of the air is in the day-time almost inva- 
 riably above twenty-seven degrees, warmer clothing during 
 the night is requisite, whenever in a damp air the thermo- 
 meter sinks four or five degrees. 
 
 We landed about eight in the morning at the point of 
 Araya, near the new salt-works. A solitary house, near a 
 battery of three guns, the only defence of this coast, since 
 the destruction of the fort of Santiago, is the abode of 
 the inspector. It is surprising that these salt-works, which 
 formerly excited the jealousy of the English, Dutch, and 
 other maritime powers, have not created a village, or even a 
 farm ; a few huts only of poor Indian fishermen are found 
 at the extremity of the point of Araya. 
 
 This spot commands a view of the islet of Cubagua, the 
 lofty hills of Margareta, the ruins of the castle of Santiago, 
 the Cerro de la Vela, and the calcareous chain of the Bri- 
 gantine, which bounds the horizon towards the south. I 
 availed myself of this view to take the angles between these 
 different points, from a basis' of four hundred toises, which 
 I measured between the battery and the hill called the 
 JPena. As the Cerro de la Yela, the Brigantine, and the cas- 
 tle of San Antonio at Cumana, are equally visible from the 
 Punta Arenas, situated to the west of the village of Mani- 
 quarez, the same objects were available for an approximate 
 determination of the respective positions of several points, 
 which are laid down in the mineralogical chart of the penin- 
 sula of Araya. 
 
 The abundance of salt contained in the peninsula of 
 Araya was known to Alonzo Nino, when, following the 
 tracks of Columbus, Ojeda, and Amerigo Vespucci, he visited 
 these countries in 1499. Though of all the people on the 
 globe the natives of South America consume the least salt, 
 because they scarcely eat anything but vegetables, it never- 
 theless appears, that at an early period the Guayquerias 
 dug into the clayey and muriatiferous soil of Punta Arenas 
 Even the brine-pits, now called new, (la salina nueva,) 
 
 when a thick small rain falls, and the temperature of the air sinks con- 
 siderably. From paramo has been made emparamarse, which signifies 
 to be as cold as if we were on the ridge of the Andes. 
 
180 
 
 SALT-WOEKS OE AEAYA. 
 
 situated at the extremity of Cape Arava, were worked in 
 very remote times. The Spaniards, who settled at first at 
 Cubagua, and soon after on the coasts of Cumana, worked, 
 from the beginning of the sixteenth century, the salt 
 marshes which stretch away like a lagoon to the north 
 of Cerro de la Vela. As at that period the peninsula 
 of Araya had no settled population, the Dutch availed 
 themselves of the natural riches of a soil which appeared 
 to he property common to all nations. In our days, each 
 colony has its own salt-works, and navigation is so much 
 improved, that the merchants of Cadiz can send, at a small 
 expense, salt from Spain and Portugal to the southern 
 hemisphere, a distance of 1900 leagues, to cure meat at 
 Monte Video and Buenos Ayres. These advantages were 
 unknown at the time of the conquest ; colonial industry 
 had then made so little progress, that the salt of Araya 
 was carried, at great expense, to the West India Islands, 
 Carthagena, and Portobello. In 1605, the court of Madrid 
 sent armed ships to Punta Araya, with orders to expel the 
 Dutch by force of arms. The Dutch, however, continued 
 to carry on a contraband trade in salt till, in 1622, there 
 was built near the salt-works a fort, which afterwards 
 became celebrated under the name of the Castillo de 
 Santiago, or the Beal Puerza de Araya. The great salt- 
 marshes are laid down on the oldest Spanish maps, some- 
 times as a hay, and at other times as a lagoon. Laet, 
 who wrote his Orbis Novus in 1633, and who had some 
 excellent notions respecting these coasts, expressly states, 
 that the lagoon was separated from the sea by an isthmus 
 above the level of high water. In 1726, an impetuous 
 hurricane destroyed the salt-works of Araya, and rendered 
 the fort, the construction of which had cost more than a 
 million of piastres, useless. This hurricane was a very rare 
 phenomenon in these regions, where the sea is in general 
 as calm as the water in our large rivers. The waves over- 
 flowed the land to a great extent ; and by the effect of this 
 eruption of the ocean the salt lake was converted into a 
 gulf several miles in length. Since that period, artificial 
 reservoirs, or pits, ( vasets ,) have been formed, to the north 
 of the range of hills which separates the castle from the 
 north coast of the peninsula. 
 
CONSUMPTION OF SALT. 
 
 181 
 
 The consumption of salt amounted, in 1799 and 1800, 
 in the two provinces of Cumana* and Barcelona, to nine or 
 ten thousand fanegas, each sixteen arrobas , or four hundred- 
 weight. This consumption is very considerable, and gives, 
 if we deduct from the total population fifty thousand 
 Indians, who eat very little salt, sixty pounds for each 
 person. Salt beef, called tasajo , is the most important 
 article of export from Barcelona. Of nine or ten thousand 
 fanegas furnished by the two provinces conjointly, three thou- 
 sand only are produced by the salt-works of Araya; the 
 rest is extracted from the sea-water at the Morro of Bar- 
 celona, at Pozuelos, at Piritu, and in the Glolfo Triste. In 
 Mexico, the salt lake of Penon Blanco alone furnishes 
 yearly more than two hundred and fifty thousand fanegas 
 of unpurified salt. 
 
 The province of Caracas possesses fine salt-works at Los 
 Boques ; those which formerly existed at the small island of 
 Tortuga, where the soil is strongly impregnated with muriate 
 of soda, were destroyed by order of the Spanish government. 
 A canal was made by which the sea has free access to the 
 salt-marshes. Foreign nations who have colonies in the 
 "West Indies frequented this uninhabited island; and the 
 court of Madrid, from views of suspicious policy, was appre- 
 hensive that the salt-works of Tortuga would give rise to 
 settlements, by means of which an illicit trade would be 
 carried on with Terra-Firma. 
 
 The royal administration of the salt-works of Araya dates 
 only from the year 1792. Before that period they were in 
 the hands of Indian fishermen, who manufactured salt at 
 
 * At the period of my visit to that country the government of Cumana 
 comprehended the two provinces of New Andalusia and New Barcelona. 
 The words province and govierno, or government of Cumana, are conse • 
 quently not synonymous. A Catalonian, Juan de Urpin, who had been by 
 turns a canon, a doctor of laws, a counsellor in St. Domingo, and a private 
 soldier in the castle of Araya, founded in 1636, the city of New Barce- 
 lona, and attempted to give the name of New Catalonia (Nueva Catha- 
 luna) to the province of which this newly constructed city became the 
 capital. This attempt was fruitless ; and it is from the capital that the 
 whole province took its name. Since my departure from America, it has 
 been raised to the rank of a Govierno. In New Andalusia, the Indian 
 name of Cumana has superseded the names Nueva Toledo and Nueva 
 Cordoba, which we find on the maps of the seventeenth century. 
 
182 
 
 MOUNTAIN B ANGES. 
 
 their pleasure, and sold it, paying the government the 
 moderate sum of three hundred piastres. The price of the 
 fanega was then four reals •* but the salt was extremely 
 impure, grey, mixed with earthy particles, and surcharged 
 with muriate and sulphate of magnesia. Since the province 
 of Cumana has become dependent on the intendancia of 
 Caracas, the sale of salt is under the control of the excise ; 
 and the fanega, which the Guayquerias sold at half a piastre, 
 costs a piastre and a half.t This augmentation of price is 
 slightly compensated by greater purity of the salt, and by 
 the facility with which the fishermen and farmers can pro- 
 cure it in abundance during the whole year. The salt-works 
 of Araya yielded to the treasury, in 1799, a clear income of 
 eight thousand piastres. 
 
 Considered as a branch of industry the salt produced here 
 is not of any great importance, but the nature of the soil 
 which contains the salt-marshes is well worthy of attention. 
 In order to obtain a clear idea of the geological connection 
 existing between this muriatiferous soil and the rocks of 
 more ancient formation, we shall take a general view of the 
 neighbouring mountains of Cumana, and those of the penin- 
 sula of Araya, and the island of Margaretta. 
 
 Three great parallel chains extend from east to west. The 
 two most northerly chains are primitive, and contain the 
 mica-slates of Macanao, and the San Juan Valley, of Mani- 
 quarez, and of Chuparipari. These we shall distinguish by 
 the names of Cordillera of the island of Margareta, and Cor- 
 dillera of Araya. The third chain, the most southerly of the 
 whole, the Cordillera of the Brigantine and of the Cocollar, 
 contains rocks only of secondary formation ; and, what is re- 
 markable enough, though analogous to the geological consti- 
 tution of the Alps westward of St. Gothard, the primitive 
 chain is much less elevated than that which was composed of 
 
 * In this narrative, as well as in the Political Essay on New Spain, all 
 the prices are reckoned in piastres, and silver reals (reales de plata). 
 Eight of these reals are equivalent to a piastre, or one hundred and five 
 sous, French money (4s. 4 %d. English). Nouv. Esp., vol. ii., p. 519, 
 616, and 866. 
 
 t The fanega of salt is sold to those Indians and fishermen who do 
 not pay the duties (derechos reales), at Punta Araya for six, at Cumana 
 for eight reals. The prices to the other tribes are, at Araya ten, at Cu- 
 mana twelve reals. 
 
BOCK FOEMATIONS. 
 
 183 
 
 secondary rocks. # The sea has separated the two northern 
 Cordilleras, those of the island of Margareta and the penin- 
 sula of Araya; and the small islands of Coche and of 
 Cubagua are remnants of the land that was submerged. 
 Farther to the south, the vast gulf Cariaco stretches away, 
 like a longitudinal valley formed by the irruption of the 
 sea, between the two small chains of Araya and the Cocollar, 
 between the mica-slate and the Alpine limestone. We shall 
 soon see that the direction of the strata, very regular in the 
 first of these rocks, is not quite parallel with the general direc- 
 tion of the gulf. In the high Alps of Europe, the great 
 longitudinal valley of the Rhone also sometimes cuts at an 
 oblique angle the calcareous banks in which it has been 
 excavated. 
 
 The two parallel chains of Araya and the Cocollar were 
 connected, to the east of the town of Cariaco, between the 
 lakes of Campoma and Putaquao, by a kind of transverse 
 dyke, which bears the name of Cerro de Meapire, and which 
 in distant times, by resisting the impulse of the waves, has 
 hindered the waters of the gulf of Cariaco from uniting 
 with those of the gulf of Paria. Thus, in Switzerland, the 
 central chain, that which passes by the Col de Eerrex, the 
 Simplon, St. Grothard, and the Spliigen, is connected on the 
 north and the south with two lateral chains, by the moun- 
 tains of Eurca and Maloya. It is interesting to recall to 
 mind those striking analogies exhibited in both continents 
 by the external structure of the globe. 
 
 The primitive chain of Araya ends abruptly in the meridian 
 of the village of Maniquarez ; and the western slope of the 
 peninsula, as well as the plains in the midst of which stands 
 the castle of San Antonio, is covered with very recent forma- 
 tions of sandstone and clay mixed with gypsum. Near 
 Maniquarez, breccia or sandstone with calcareous cement, 
 
 * In New Andalusia, the Cordillera of the Cocollar nowhere contains 
 primitive rocks. If these rocks form the nucleus of this chain, and rise 
 above the level of the neighbouring plains, which is scarcely probable, we 
 must suppose that they are all covered with limestone and sandstone. In 
 the Swiss Alps, on the contrary, the chain which is designated under 
 the too vague denomination of lateral and calcareous, contains primitive 
 rocks, which, according to the observations of Escher and Leopold 
 von Buch, are often visible to the height of eight hundred or a thousand 
 toises. 
 
184 
 
 PENINSULA OF AKAYA. 
 
 which might easily he confounded with real limestone, lies 
 immediately over the mica-slate ; while on the opposite side, 
 near Punta Delgada, this sandstone covers a compact bluish 
 gray limestone, almost destitute of petrifactions, and tra- 
 versed by small veins of calcareous spar. This last rock is 
 analogous to the limestone of the high Alps.* 
 
 The very recent sandstone formation of the peninsula of 
 Araya contains : — first, near Punta Arenas, a stratified sand- 
 stone, composed of very fine grains, united by a calcareous 
 cement in small quantity ; — secondly, at the Cerro de la Vela, 
 a schistose sandstone, f without mica, and passing into slate- 
 clay,^; which accompanies coal ; — thirdly, on the western side, 
 between Punta Grorda and the ruins of the castle of Santiago, 
 breccia composed of petrified sea-shells united by a calcare- 
 ous cement, in which are mingled grains of quartz ; — fourthly, 
 near the point of Barigon, whence the stone employed for 
 building at Cumana is obtained, banks of yellowish white 
 shelly limestone, in which are found some scattered grains of 
 quartz ; — fifthly, at Penas Negras, at the top of the Cerro de 
 la Vela, a bluish gray compact limestone, very tender, almost 
 without petrifactions, and covering the schistose sandstone. 
 However extraordinary this mixture of sandstone and com- 
 pact limestone § may appear, we cannot doubt that these 
 strata belong to one and the same formation. The very 
 recent secondary rocks everywhere present analogous phe- 
 nomena ; the molasse of the Pays de Vaud contains a fetid 
 shelly limestone, and the cerite limestone of the banks of the 
 Seine is sometimes mixed with sandstone. 
 
 The strata of calcareous breccia are composed of an infi- 
 nite number of sea-shells, from four to six inches in diameter, 
 and in part well preserved. We find they contain not am- 
 monites, but ampullaires, solens, and terebratulæ. The 
 greater part of these shells are mixed: the oysters and 
 pectinites being sometimes arranged in families. The whole 
 are easily detached, and their interior is filled with fossil 
 madrepores and cellepores. We have now to speak of a 
 fourth formation, which probably rests || on the calcareous 
 
 * Alpenkalkstein. 
 
 t Sandsteinschiefer. + Thonschiefer. § Dichter kalkstein. 
 
 || It were to be wished that mineralogical travellers would examine more 
 particularly the Cerro de la Vela. The limestone of the Penas Negras 
 
LAGOONS OF AEATA. 
 
 185 
 
 sandstone of Araya, I mean the nmriatiferous clay. This 
 clay, hardened, impregnated with petroleum, and mixed with 
 lamellar and lenticular gypsum, is analogous to the salzthon, 
 which in Europe accompanies the sal-gem of Berchtesgaden, 
 and in South America that of Zipaquira. It is generally of* 
 a smoke-grey colour, earthy, and friable ; hut it encloses 
 more solid masses of a blackish brown, of a schistose, and 
 sometimes conchoidal fracture. These fragments, from six 
 to eight inches long, have an angular form. When they are 
 very small, they give the clay a porphyroidal appearance. 
 We find disseminated in it, as we have already observed, 
 either in nests or in small veins, selenite, and sometimes, 
 though seldom, fibrous gypsum. It is remarkable enough, 
 that this stratum of clay, as well as the banks of pure sal- 
 gem and the salzthon in Europe, scarcely ever contains shells, 
 while the rocks adjacent exhibit them in great abundance. 
 
 Although the muriate of soda is not found visible to the 
 eye in the clay of Araya, we cannot doubt of its existence. 
 It shows itself in large crystals, if we sprinkle the mass 
 with rain-water and expose it to the sun. The lagoon to the 
 east of the castle of Santiago exhibits all the phenomena 
 which have been observed in the salt lakes of Siberia, 
 described by Lepechin, Gmelin, and Pallas. This lagoon 
 receives, however, only the rain-waters, which filter through 
 the banks of clay, and unite at the lowest point of the pen- 
 insula. While the lagoon served as a salt-work to the 
 Spaniards and the Dutch, it did not communicate with the 
 sea; at present this communication has been interrupted 
 anew, by faggots placed at the place where the waters of 
 the ocean made an irruption in 1726. After great droughts, 
 crystallized and very pure muriate of soda, in masses of three 
 or four cubic feet, is still drawn from time to time from the 
 bottom of the lagoon. The salt waters of the lake, exposed 
 
 rests on a slate-clay, mixed with quartzose sand ; but there is no proof of 
 the muriatiferous clay of the salt-works being of more ancient formation 
 than this slate-clay, or of its alternating with banks of sandstone. No well 
 having been dug in these countries, we can have no information respect- 
 ing the superposition of the strata. The banks of calcareous sandstone, 
 which are found at the mouth of the salt lake, and near the fishermen’s 
 huts on the coast opposite Cape Macano, appeared to me to lie beneath 
 the muriatiferous clay. 
 
186 
 
 SALT-WORKS OP ARATA. 
 
 to the heat of the sun, evaporate at their surface ; crusts 
 of salt, formed in a saturated solution, fall to the bottom ; 
 and by the attraction between chrystals of a similar nature 
 and form, the crystallized masses daily augment. It is 
 generally observed that the water is brackish wherever 
 lagoons are formed in clayey ground. It is true, that for 
 the new salt-work near the battery of Araya, the sea- 
 water is received into pits, as in the salt marshes of the 
 south of France; but in the island of Margareta, near 
 Pampatar, salt is manufactured by employing only fresh 
 water, with which the muriatiferous clay has first been 
 lixivated. 
 
 We must not confound the salt disseminated in these 
 clayey soils with that contained in the sands of the sea- 
 shore, on the coasts of Normandy. These phenomena, 
 considered in a geognostical point of view, have scarcely 
 any properties in common. I have seen muriatiferous 
 clay at the level of the ocean at Punta Araya, and at 
 two thousand toises’ height in the Cordilleras of New 
 Grenada. If in the former of these places it lies on very 
 recent shelly breccia, it forms, on the contrary, in Austria 
 near Ischel, a considerable stratum in the Alpine lime- 
 stone, which, though equally posterior to the existence of 
 organic life on the globe, is nevertheless of high antiquity, 
 as is proved by the great number of rocks with which it 
 is covered. We shall not question, that sal-gem, either 
 pure or mixed with muriatiferous clay, may have been 
 deposited by an ancient sea; but everything evinces that 
 it was formed during an order of things bearing no 
 resemblance to that in which the sea at present, by a 
 slower operation, deposits a few particles of muriate of 
 soda on the sands of our shores. In the same manner 
 as sulphur and coal belong to periods of formation very 
 remote from each other, the sal-gem is also found some- 
 times in transition gypsum, # sometimes in the Alpine lime- 
 stonef, sometimes in a muriatiferous clay lying on a very 
 
 * Uebergangsgyps, in the transition slate of White Alley (l’Allée 
 Blanche), and between the grauwacke and black transition limestone near 
 Bex, below the Dent de Chamossaire, according to M. von Buch. 
 
 f At Halle in the Tyrol. 
 
SALT-WOBKS OF ABAYA. 
 
 187 
 
 recent sandstone*, and lastly, sometimes in a gypsumf pos- 
 terior to the chalk. 
 
 The new salt-works of Araya have five reservoirs, or 
 pits, the largest of which have two thousand three hun- 
 dred square toises surface. Their mean depth is eight 
 inches. Use is made both of the rain-water, which by 
 filtration collects at the lowest part of the plain, and of 
 the water of the sea, which enters by canals, or martellières, 
 when the flood-tide is favoured by the winds. The situa- 
 tion of these new salt-works is less advantageous than that 
 of the lagoon. The; waters which fall into the latter pass 
 over steeper slopes, washing a greater extent of ground. 
 
 The earth already lixiviated is never carried away here, as 
 it is from time to time in the island of Margareta ; nor have 
 
 * At Punta Araya. 
 
 + Gypsum of the third formation among the secondary gypsums. The 
 first formation contains the gypsum in which are found the brine-springs 
 of Thuringia, and which is placed either in the Alpine limestone or 
 zechstein, to which it essentially belongs (Freiesleben, Geognost. Arbeiten, 
 tom. ii. p. 131), or between the zechstein and the limestone of the Jura, or 
 between the zechstein and the new sandstone. It is the ancient gypsum 
 of secondary formation of Werner’s school (alterer flozgyps), which we 
 almost preferably call muriatiferous gypsum. The second formation is 
 composed of fibrous gypsum, placed either in the molasse or new sand- 
 stone, or between this and the upper limestone. It abounds in common 
 clay, which differs essentially from the salzthon or muriatiferous clay. 
 The third formation of gypsum is more recent than chalk. To this 
 belongs the bony gypsum of Paris; and, as appears from the researches of 
 Mr. Steffens (Geogn. Aufsatsze, 1810, p. 142), the gypsum of Segeberg, 
 in Holstein, in which sal-gem is sometimes disseminated in very small 
 nests (Jenaische Litteratur-Zeitung, 1813, p. 100). The gypsum of 
 Paris, lying between a cerite limestone, which covers chalk and a sand- 
 stone without shells, is distinguished by fossil bones of quadrupeds, 
 while the Segeberg and Lunebourg gypsums, the position of which is 
 more uncertain, are characterized by the boracits which they contain. 
 Two other formations, far anterior to the three we have just mentioned, 
 are the transition gypsum (iibergangsgyps) of Aigle, and the primitive 
 gypsum (urgyps) of the valley of Canaria, near Airolo. I flatter myself 
 that I may render some service to those geologists who prefer the know- 
 ledge of positive facts to speculation on the origin of things, by fur- 
 nishing them with materials from which they may generalize their ideas 
 on the formation of rocks in both hemispheres. The relative antiquity 
 of the formations is the principal object of a science which is to render 
 us acquainted with the structure of the globe ; that is to say, the nature 
 of the strata which constitute the crust of our planet. 
 
188 
 
 EUINS OP THE CASTLE. 
 
 wells been dug in the muriatiferous clay, with the view of 
 finding strata richer in muriate of soda. The salineros , or 
 salt- workers generally complain of want of rain ; and in the 
 new salt-works, it appears to me difficult to determine what 
 quantity of salt is derived solely from the waters of the sea. 
 The natives estimate it at a sixth of the total produce. The 
 evaporation is extremely strong, and favoured by the constant 
 motion of the air ; so that the salt is collected in eighteen or 
 twenty days after the pits are filled. 
 
 Though the muriate of soda is manufactured with less 
 care in the peninsula of Araya than ai the salt-works of 
 Europe, it is nevertheless purer, and contains less of earthy 
 muriates and sulphates. We know not whether this purity 
 may be attributed to that portion of the salt which is fur- 
 nished by the sea ; for though it is extremely probable, that 
 the quantity of salt dissolved in the waters of the ocean 
 is nearly the same under every zone, it is not less un- 
 certain whether the proportion between the muriate of soda, 
 the muriate and sulphate of magnesia, and the sulphate and 
 carbonate of lime, be equally invariable. 
 
 Having examined the salt-works, and terminated our 
 geodesical operations, wé departed at the decline of day 
 to sleep at an Indian hut, some miles distant, near 
 the ruins of the castle of Araya. Directing our course 
 southward, we traversed first the plain covered with 
 muriatiferous clay, and stripped of vegetation; then two 
 chains of hills of sandstone, between which the lagoon 
 is situated. Night overtook us while we were in a nar- 
 row path, bordered on one side by the sea, and on the 
 other by a range of perpendicular rocks. The tide was 
 rising rapidly, and narrowed the road at every step. We 
 at length arrived at the foot of the old castle of Araya, 
 where we enjoyed a prospect that had in it something 
 lugubrious and romantic. The ruins stand on a bare and 
 arid mountain, crowned with agave, columnar cactus, and 
 thorny mimosas : they bear less resemblance to the works 
 of man, than to those masses of rock which were ruptured 
 at the early revolutions of the globe. 
 
 We were desirous of stopping to admire this majestic 
 spectacle, and to observe the setting of Venus, whose disk 
 appeared at intervals between the yawning crannies of the 
 
INDIAN FAMILIES. 
 
 189 
 
 castle; but the muleteer, who served as our guide, was 
 parched with thirst, and pressed us earnestly to return. 
 He had long perceived that we had lost oui* way ; and as he 
 hoped to work on our fears he continually warned us of the 
 danger of tigers and rattlesnakes. Venomous reptiles are, 
 indeed, very common near the castle of Araya; and two 
 jaguars had been lately killed at the entrance of the village 
 of Maniquarez. If we might judge from their skins, which 
 were preserved, their size was not less than that of the In- 
 dian tiger. We vainly represented to our guide that those 
 animals did not attack men where the goats furnished them 
 with abundant prey ; we were obliged to yield, and return. 
 After having proceeded three quarters of an hour along a 
 shore covered by the tide we were joined by the negro, who 
 carried our provision. Uneasy at not seeing us arrive, he 
 had come to meet us, and he led us through a wood of 
 nopals to a hut inhabited by an Indian family. We were 
 received with the cordial hospitality observed in this country 
 among people of every tribe. The hut in which we slung 
 our hammocks was very clean; and there we found fish, 
 plantains, and what in the torrid zone is preferable to the 
 most sumptuous food, excellent water. 
 
 The next day at sunrise we found that the hut in which 
 we had passed the night formed part of a group of small 
 dwellings on the borders of the salt lake, the remains of a 
 considerable village which had formerly stood near the castle. 
 The ruins of a church were seen partly buried in the sand, 
 and covered with brushwood. When, in 1762, to save the 
 expense of the garrison, the castle of Araya was totally dis- 
 mantled, the Indians and Mulattoes who were settled in 
 the neighbourhood emigrated by degrees to Maniquarez, to 
 Cariaco, and in the suburb of the Gmayquerias at Cumana. 
 A small number, bound from affection to their native soil, 
 remained in this wild and barren spot. These poor people 
 live by catching fish, which are extremely abundant on the 
 coast and the neighbouring shoals. They appear satisfied 
 with their condition, and think it strange when they are 
 asked why they have no gardens or culinary vegetables. 
 Our gardens, they reply, are beyond the gulf; when we 
 carry our fish to Cumana, we bring back plantains, cocoa 
 nuts, and cassava. This system of economy, which favours 
 
ISO 
 
 A SINGULAR CHARACTER. 
 
 idleness, is followed at Maniquarez, and throughout the 
 whole peninsula of Araya. The chief wealth of the inha- 
 bitants consists in goats, which are of a very large and very 
 fine breed, and rove in the fields like those at the Peak of 
 Teneriffe. They have become entirely wild, and are marked 
 like the mules, because it would be difficult to recognize 
 them from their colour or the arrangement of their spots. 
 These wild goats are of a brownish yellow, and are not varied 
 in colour like domestic animals. If in hunting, a colonist 
 kills a goat which he does not consider as his own pro- 
 perty, he carries it immediately to the neighbour to 
 whom it belongs. During two days we heard it every- 
 where spoken of as a very extraordinary circumstance, that 
 an inhabitant of Maniquarez had lost a goat, on which 
 it was probable that a neighbouring family had regaled 
 themselves. 
 
 Among the Mulattoes, whose huts surround the salt lake, 
 we found a shoemaker of Castilian descent. He received 
 us with the air of gravity and self-sufficiency which in those 
 countries characterize almost all persons who are conscious 
 of possessing some peculiar talent. He was employed in 
 stretching the string of his bow, and sharpening his arrows 
 to shoot birds. His trade of a shoemaker could not be very 
 lucrative in a country where the greater part of the inha- 
 bitants go barefooted; and he only complained that, on 
 account of the dearness of European gunpowder, a man of 
 his quality was reduced to employ the same weapons as the 
 Indians. He was the sage of the plain ; he understood the 
 formation of the salt by the influence of the sun and full 
 moon, the symptoms of earthquakes, the marks by which 
 mines of gold and silver are discovered, and the medicinal 
 plants, which, like all the other colonists from Chile to Cali- 
 fornia, he classified into hot and cold* Having collected the 
 traditions of the country, he gave us some curious accounts 
 of the pearls of Cubagua, objects of luxury, which he treated 
 with the utmost contempt. To show us how familiar to him 
 were the sacred writings he took a pride in reminding us 
 that Job preferred wisdom to all the pearls of the Indies. 
 His philosophy was circumscribed to the narrow circle of 
 the wants of fife. The possession of a very strong ass, able 
 * Exciting or debilitating, the sthenic and asthenic, of Brown’s system. 
 
THE PEAEL EISHEET. 191 
 
 to carry a heavy load of plantains to the evibarcadero , was 
 the consummation of all his wishes. 
 
 After a long discourse on the emptiness of human great- 
 ness, he drew from a leathern pouch a few very small opaque 
 pearls, which he forced us to accept, enjoining us at the 
 same time to note on our tablets that a poor shoemaker 
 of Araya, but a white man, and of noble Castilian race, had 
 been enabled to give us something which, on the other side 
 of the sea, # was sought for as very precious. I here acquit 
 myself of the promise I made to this worthy man, who dis- 
 interestedly refused to accept of the slightest retribution. 
 The Pearl Coast presents the same aspect of misery as the 
 countries of gold and diamonds, Choco and Brazil; but 
 misery is not there attended with that immoderate desire of 
 gain which is excited by mineral wealth. 
 
 The pearl-breeding oyster (Avicula margaritifera, Cuvier) 
 abounds on the shoals which extend from Cape Paria to Cape 
 la Vela. The islands of Margareta, Cubagua, Coche, Punta 
 Araya, and the mouth of the Bio la Hacha, were, in the 
 sixteenth century, as celebrated as were the Persian Grulf 
 and the island of Taprobana among the ancients. It is incor- 
 rectly alleged by some historians that the natives of America 
 were unacquainted with the luxury of pearls. The first 
 Spaniards who landed in Terra Pirma found the savages 
 decked with pearl necklaces and bracelets ; and among the 
 civilized people of Mexico and Peru, pearls of a beautiful 
 form were extremely sought after. I have published a dis- 
 sertation on the statue of a Mexican priestess in basalt, 
 whose head-dress, resembling the calantica of the heads of 
 Isis, is ornamented with pearls. Las Casas and Benzoni 
 have described, but not without some exaggeration, the cruel- 
 ties which were exercised on the unhappy Indian slaves and 
 negroes employed in the pearl fishery. At the beginning 
 of the conquest the island of Coche alone furnished pearls 
 amounting in value to fifteen hundred marks per month. 
 
 The quint which the king’s officers drew from the produce 
 of pearls, amounted to fifteen thousand ducats ; which, ac- 
 cording to the value of the precious metals in those times, 
 
 * ‘ Por alia/ or, ‘ del otro lado del charco,’ (properly ‘beyond,’ or 
 ‘on the other side of the great lake’), a figurative expression, by which the 
 people in the Spanish colonies denote Europe. 
 
192 
 
 THE PEABL EISHEET. 
 
 and the extensiveness of contraband trade, may be regarded 
 as a very considerable sum. It appears that till 1530 the 
 value of the pearls sent to Europe amounted yearly on an 
 average to more than eight hundred thousand piastres. In 
 order to judge of the importance of this branch of commerce 
 to Seville, Toledo, Antwerp, and Genoa, we should recollect 
 that at the same period the whole of the mines of America 
 did not furnish two millions of piastres ; and that the fleet 
 of Ovando was thought to contain immense wealth, because 
 it had on board nearly two thousand six hundred marks of 
 silver. Pearls were the more sought after, as the luxury 
 of Asia had been introduced into Europe by two ways 
 diametrically opposite : that of Constantinople, where the 
 Palæologi wore garments covered with strings of pearls ; 
 and that of Grenada, the residence of the Moorish kings, 
 who displayed at their court all the luxury of the East. The 
 pearls of the East were preferred to those of the West ; but 
 the number of the latter which circulated in commerce was 
 nevertheless considerable at the period immediately fol- 
 lowed the discovery of America. In Italy as well as in 
 Spain, the islet of Cubagua became the object of numerous 
 mercantile speculations. 
 
 Benzoni* relates the adventure of one Luigi Lampagnano, 
 to whom Charles the Fifth granted the privilege of proceed- 
 ing with five carvels to the coasts of Cumana to fish for 
 pearls. The colonists sent him back with this bold mes- 
 sage : “ That the emperor was too liberal of what was not 
 his own, and that he had no right to dispose of the oysters 
 which live at the bottom of the sea.” 
 
 The pearl fishery diminished rapidly about the end of the 
 sixteenth century; and, according to Laet, it had long ceased 
 in 1633.f The industry of the Venetians, who imitated fine 
 pearls with great exactness, and the frequent use of cut 
 
 * La Hist, del Mondo Nuovo, p. 34. Luigi Lampagnano, a relation 
 of the assassin of the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, could not 
 pay the merchants of Seville who had advanced the money for his 
 voyage ; he remained five years at Cubagua, and died in a fit of insanity. 
 
 4* “ Insularum Cubaguæ et Coches quondam magna fuit dignitas, quum 
 Unionum captura floreret: mine, ilia déficiente, obscura admodum fama.” 
 Laet, Nova Orbis, p. 669. This accurate compiler, speaking of Punta 
 Araya, adds, this country is so forgotten, “ ut vix ulla Americæ meridi- 
 onals pars hodie obscurior sit.” 
 
DESTRUCTION OE OYSTERS. 
 
 193 
 
 diamonds,* rendered the fisheries of Cubagua less lucrative. 
 At the same time, the oysters which yielded the pearls 
 became scarcer, not, because, according to a popular tradi- 
 tion, they were frightened by the sound of the oars, and 
 removed elsewhere ; but because their propagation had been 
 impeded by the imprudent destruction of the shells by thou- 
 sands. The pearl-bearing oyster is of a more delicate nature 
 than most of the other acephalous mollusca. At the island of 
 Ceylon, where, in the bay of Condeatchy, the fishery employs 
 six hundred (livers, and where the annual produce is more 
 than half a million of piastres, it has vainly been attempted 
 to transplant the oysters to other parts of the coast. The 
 government permits fishing there only during a single month ; 
 while at Cubagua the bank of shells was fished at all seasons. 
 To form an idea of the destruction of the species caused by 
 the divers, we must remember that a boat sometimes collects, 
 in two or three weeks, more than thirty-five thousand oysters. 
 The animal lives but nine or ten years ; and it is only in its 
 fourth year that the pearls begin to show themselves. In 
 ten thousand shells there is often not a single pearl of value. 
 Tradition records that on the bank of Margareta the fisher- 
 men opened the shells one by one : in the island of Ceylon, 
 the animals are thrown into heaps to rot in the air ; and to 
 separate the pearls which are not attached to the shell, the 
 animal pulp is washed, as miners wash the sand which con- 
 tains grains of gold, tin, or diamonds. 
 
 At present Spanish America furnishes no other pearls for 
 trade than those of the gulf of Panama, and the mouth of 
 the Bio de la Hacha. On the shoals which surround Cubagua, 
 Coche, and the island of Margareta, the fishery is as much 
 neglected as on the coasts of California.f It is believed at 
 Cumana, that the pearl-oyster has greatly multiplied after 
 two centuries of repose ; and in 1812, some new attempts 
 were made at Margareta for the fishing of pearls. It has 
 been asked, why the pearls found at present in shells which 
 become entangled in the fishermen’s nets are so small, and 
 
 * The cutting of diamonds was invented by Lewis de Berquen, in 
 145G, but the art became common only in the following century. 
 
 + I am astonished at never having heard, in the course of my travels, 
 of pearls found in the frêsh-water shells of South America, though several 
 species of the Unio genus abound in the rivers of Peru. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 O 
 
194 
 
 INDIAN APATHY. 
 
 have so little brilliancy,* whilst, on the Spaniards’ arrival, 
 they were extremely beautiful, though the Indians doubtless 
 had not . taken the trouble of diving to collect them. The 
 problem is so much the more difficult to solve, as we know 
 not whether earthquakes may have altered the nature of the 
 bottom of the sea, or whether the changes of the submarine 
 currents may have had an influence either on the tempera- 
 ture of the water, or on the abundance of certain mollusca on 
 which the Aronde feeds. 
 
 On the morning of the 20th our host’s son, a young and 
 very robust Indian, conducted us by the way of Barigon and 
 Caney to the village of Maniquarez, which was four hours’ 
 walk. Prom the effect of the reverberation of the sands, the 
 thermometer kept up to 31° 3'. The cylindric cactus, which 
 bordered the road, gave the landscape an appearance of ver- 
 dure, without affording either coolness or shade. Before 
 our guide had walked a league, he began to sit down every 
 moment, and at length he wished to repose under the shade 
 of a fine tamarind tree near Casas de la Vela, to await 
 the approach of night. This characteristic trait, which 
 we observed every time we travelled with Indians, has 
 given rise to very erroneous ideas of the physical consti- 
 tutions of the different races of men. The copper-coloured 
 native, more accustomed to the burnmg heat of the climate, 
 than the European traveller, complains more, because he is 
 stimulated by no interest. Money is without attraction for 
 him ; and if he permits himself to be tempted by gain for a 
 moment, he repents of bis resolution as soon as he is on the 
 road. The same Indian, who would complain, when in her- 
 borizing we loaded him with a box filled with plants, would 
 row his canoe fourteen or fifteen hours together, against the 
 strongest current, because he wished to return to his family. 
 In order to form a true judgment of the muscular strengh of 
 the people, we should observe them in circumstances where 
 their actions are determined by a necessity and a will equally 
 energetic. 
 
 We examined the ruins of Santiago,! the structure of 
 
 * The inhabitants of Araya sometimes sell these small pearls to the 
 retail dealers of Cumana. The ordinary price is one piastre per dozen. 
 
 f On the map accompanying Robertson’s History of America, we 
 find the name of this castle confounded with that of Nueva Cordoba. 
 
RUINS OF SANTIAGO. 
 
 195 
 
 ■which is remarkable for its extreme solidity. The walls 
 of freestone, five feet thick, have been blown np by 
 mines ; but we still found masses of seven or eight hundred 
 feet square, which have scarcely a crack in them. Our guide 
 showed us a cistern (aljibe) thirty feet deep, which, though 
 much damaged, furnishes water to the inhabitants of the 
 peninsula of Araya, This cistern was finished in 1681, by 
 the governor Don Juan de Padilla Gruardiola, the same who 
 built at Cumana the small fort of Santa Maria. As the 
 basin is covered with an arched vault, the water, which is of 
 excellent quality, keeps very coofr the confervæ, while they 
 decompose the carburetted hydrogen, also shelter worms 
 which hinder the propagation of small insects. It had been 
 believed for ages, that the peninsula of Araya was entirely 
 destitute of springs of fresh water ; but in 1797, after many 
 useless researches, the inhabitants of Maniquarez succeeded 
 in discovering some. 
 
 In crossing the arid hills of Cape Cirial, we perceived a 
 strong smell of petroleum. The vind blew from the direc- 
 tion in which the springs of this substance are found, and 
 which were mentioned by the first historians of these coun- 
 tries.* Near the village of Maniquarez, the mica-slatef 
 comes out from below the secondary rock, forming a chain 
 of mountains from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and 
 eighty toises in height. The direction of the primitive rock 
 near Cape Sotto is from north-east to south-west ; its strata 
 incline fifty degrees to the north-west. The mica-slate is 
 silvery white, of lamellar and undulated texture, and con- 
 tains garnets. Strata of quartz, the thickness of which 
 varies from three to four toises, traverse the mica-slate, as 
 we may observe in several ravines hollowed out by the 
 waters. We detached with difficulty a fragment of cyanite 
 from a block of splintered and milky quartz, which was 
 isolated on the shore. This was the only time we found 
 this substance in South America.^; 
 
 This latter denomination was formerly synonymous with Cumana. — 
 Herrera, p. 14. 
 
 * Oviedo, terms it “A resinous, aromatic, and medicinal liquor.” 
 
 t The Piedra pelada of the Creoles. 
 
 X In New Spain, the cyanite has been discovered only in the province 
 of Guatimala, at Estancia Grande, — Del Rio, Tablas Min., 1804, p. 27. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 
 
 INDIAN POTTERY. 
 
 The potteries of Maniquarez, celebrated from time imme- 
 morial, form a branch of industry which is exclusively in the 
 hands of the Indian women. The manufacture is still carried 
 on according to the method used before the conquest. It 
 indicates both the infancy of the art, and that unchangeability 
 of manners which is characteristic of all the natives of 
 America. Three centuries have been insufficient to intro- 
 duce the potter’ s-wheel, on a coast which is not above thirty 
 or forty days’ sail from Spain. The natives have some con- 
 fused notions with respect to the existence of this machine, 
 and they would no doubt make use of it if it were introduced 
 among them. The quarries whence they obtain the clay are 
 half a league to the east of Maniquarez. This clay is pro- 
 duced by natural decomposition of a mica-slate reddened by 
 oxide of iron. The Indian women prefer the part most 
 abounding in mica ; and with great skill fashion vessels two 
 or three feet in diameter, giving them a very regular curve. 
 As they are not acquainted with the use of ovens, they 
 place twigs of desmanthus, cassia, and the arborescent 
 capparis, around the pots, and bake them in the open air. 
 To the east of the quarry which furnishes the clay is the 
 ravine of La Mina. It is asserted, that, a short time after 
 the conquest, some Venetians extracted gold from the 
 mica-slate. It appears, that this metal was not collected 
 in veins of quartz, but was found disseminated in the rock, 
 as it is sometimes in granite and gneiss. 
 
 At Maniquarez we met with some creoles, who had been 
 hunting at Cubagua. Deer of a small breed, are so common 
 in this uninhabited islet, that a single individual may kill 
 three or four in a day. I know not by what accident these 
 animals have got thither, for Laet and other chroniclers of 
 these countries, speaking of the foundation of New Cadiz, 
 mention only the great abundance of rabbits. The venado 
 of Cubagua belongs to one of those numerous species of 
 small. American deer, which zoologists have long confounded 
 under the vague name of Cervus mexicanus. It does not 
 appear to be the same as the hind of the savannahs of Ca- 
 yenne, or the guazuti of Paraguay, which live also in herds. 
 Its colour is a brownish red on the back, and white under 
 the belly ; and it is spotted like the axis. In the plains of 
 Cari we were shown, as a thing very rare in these hot 
 
NATIVE WONDERS. 
 
 197 
 
 climates, a variety quite white. It was a female of the size 
 of the roebuck of Europe, and of a very elegant shape. 
 White varieties are found in the New Continent even among 
 the tigers. Azara saw a jaguar, the skin of which was wholly 
 white, with merely the shadow, as it might be termed, of a 
 few circular spots. 
 
 Of all the productions on the coasts of Araya, that which 
 the people consider as the most extraordinary, or we may 
 say the most marvellous, is £ the stone of the eyes,’ ( piedra 
 de los ojôs .) This calcareous substance is a frequent subject of 
 conversation : being, according to the natural philosophy of 
 the natives, both a stone and an animal. It is found in the 
 sand, where it is motionless ; but if placed on a polished 
 surface, for instance on a pewter or earthem plate, it moves 
 when excited by lemon juice. If placed in the eye, the sup- 
 posed animal turns on itself, and expels every other foreign 
 substance that has been accidentally introduced. At the 
 new salt-works, and at the village of Maniquarez, these stones 
 of the eyes * were offered to us by hundreds, and the natives 
 were anxious to show us thé experiment of the lemon j uice. 
 They even wished to put sand into our eyes, in order that we 
 might ourselves try the efficacy of the remedy. It was easy 
 to see that the stcnes are thin and porous opercula, which 
 have formed part of small univalve shells. Their diameter 
 varies from one to four lines. One of their two surfaces is 
 plane, and the other convex. These calcareous opercula 
 effervesce with lemon juice, and put themselves in motion in 
 proportion as the carbonic acid is disengaged. By the effect 
 of a similar reaction, loaves placed in an oven move some- 
 times on a horizontal plane ; a phenomenon that has given 
 occasion, in Europe, to the popular prejudice of enchanted 
 ovens. The piedras de los ojos, introduced into the eye, act 
 like the small pearls, and different round grains employed by 
 the American savages to increase the flowing of tears. These 
 explanations were little to the taste of the inhabitants of 
 Araya. Nature has the appearance of greatness to man in 
 proportion as she is veiled in mystery ; and the ignorant are 
 prone to put faith in everything that borders on the 
 marvellous. 
 
 * They are found in the greatest abundance near the battery at the 
 point of Cape Araya. 
 
198 
 
 FOUNTAIN OF NAPHTHA. 
 
 Proceding along the southern coast, to the east of Mani- 
 quarez, we find running out into the sea very near each other, 
 three strips of land, bearing the names of Punta de Soto, 
 Punta de la Brea, and Punta G-uaratarito. In these parts 
 the bottom of the sea is evidently formed of mica-slate, and 
 from it near Cape de la Brea, but at eighty feet distant 
 from the shore, there issues a spring of naphtha, the 
 smell of which penetrates into the interior of the penin- 
 sula. It is necessary to wade into the sea up to the waist, 
 to examine this interesting phenomenon. The waters are 
 covered with zostera ; and in the midst of a very extensive 
 bank of weeds, we distinguish a free and circular spot 
 of three feet in diameter, on which float a few scattered 
 masses of Ulva lactuca. Here the springs are found. The 
 bottom of the gulf is covered with sand ; and the petroleum, 
 which, from its transparency and its yellow colour, resembles 
 naphtha, rises in jets, accompanied by air bubbles. On tread- 
 ing down the bottom with the foot, we perceive that these 
 little springs change their place. The naphtha covers the 
 surface of the sea to more than a thousand feet distant. If 
 we suppose the dip of the strata to be regular, the mica-slate 
 must be but a few toises below the sand. 
 
 We have already observed, that the muriatiferous clay of 
 Araya contains solid and friable petroleum. This geological 
 connection between the muriate of soda,and the bitumens is 
 evident wherever there are mines of sal-gem or salt springs : 
 but a very remarkable fact is the existence of a fountain of 
 naphtha in a primitive formation. All those hitherto known 
 belong to secondary mountains a circumstance which has 
 been supposed to favour the idea that all mineral bitumens are 
 owing to the destruction of vegetables and animals, or to the 
 burning of coal. In the peninsula of Araya, the naphtha flows 
 from the primitive rock itself ; and this phenomenon acquires 
 new importance, when we recollect that the same primitive 
 rocks contain the subterranean fires, that on the brink of 
 burning craters the smell of petroleum is perceived from time 
 to time, and that the greater part of the hot springs of 
 America rise from gneiss and micaceous schist. 
 
 * As at Pietra Mala ; Fanano ; Mont Zibio ; and Amiano (in these 
 places are found the springs that furnish the naphtha burned in lamps in 
 Genoa) ; and also at Baikal. 
 
KETTTEN TO CTTMAKA. 
 
 199 
 
 After haying examined the environs of Maniquarez, we em- 
 barked at night in a fishing-boat for Cumana. The small 
 crazy boats employed by the natives here, bear testimony to 
 the extreme calmness of the sea in these regions. Our boat, 
 though the best we could procure, was so leaky, that the 
 pilot’s son was constantly employed in baling out the water 
 with a tutwma , or shell of the Crescentia cujete (calabash). 
 It often happens in the gulf of Cariaco, and especially to the 
 north of the peninsula of Araya, that canoes laden with 
 cocoa-nuts are upset in sailing too near the wind, and 
 against the tide. 
 
 The inhabitants of Araya, whom we visited a second time 
 on returning from the Orinoco, have not forgotten that their 
 peninsula was one of the points first peopled by the Spaniards. 
 They love to talk of the pearl fishery; of the ruins of the 
 castle of Santiago, which they hope to see some day rebuilt ; 
 and of everything that recalls to mind the ancient splendour 
 of those countries. In China and Japan those inventions 
 are considered as recent, which have not been known above 
 two thousand years ; in the European colonies an event 
 appears extremely old, if it dates back three centuries, or 
 about the period of the discovery of America. 
 
200 
 
 THE INDIAN MISSION'S, 
 
 Chaptee YI. 
 
 Mountains of New Andalusia. — Valley of Cumanacoa. — Summit of the 
 Cocollar. — Missions of the Chayma Indians. 
 
 Our first visit to tlie peninsula of Araya was soon suc- 
 ceeded by an excursion to the mountains of the missions 
 of the Chayma Indians, where a variety of interesting 
 objects claimed our attention. We entered on a country 
 studded with forests, and visited a convent surrounded by 
 palm-trees and arborescent ferns. It was situated in a nar- 
 row valley, where we felt the enjoyment of a cool and deli- 
 cious climate, in the centre of the torrid zone. The 
 surrounding mountains contain caverns haunted by thou- 
 sands of nocturnal birds; and, what affects the imagination 
 more than all the wonders of the physical world, we find 
 beyond these mountains a people lately nomade, and still 
 nearly in a state of nature, wild without being barbarous. 
 It was in the promontory of Paria that Columbus first 
 descried the continent ; there terminate these valleys, laid 
 waste alternately by the warlike anthropophagie Carib and 
 by the commercial and polished nations of Europe. At the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century the ill-fated Indians of 
 the coasts of Carupano, of Macarapan, and of Caracas, 
 were treated in the same manner as the inhabitants of the 
 coast of Guinea in our days. The soil of the islands was 
 cultivated, the vegetable produce of the Old World was 
 transplanted thither, but a regular system of colonization 
 remained long unknown on the New Continent. If the 
 Spaniards visited its shores, it was only to procure, either 
 by violence or exchange, slaves, pearls, grains of gold, and 
 dye-woods; and endeavours were made to ennoble the motives 
 of this insatiable avarice by the pretence of enthusiastic zeal 
 in the cause of religion. 
 
 The trade in the copper-coloured Indians was accompanied 
 by the same acts of inhumanity as that which characterizes the 
 traffic in African negroes ; it was attended also by the same 
 result, that of rendering both the conquerors and the con- 
 quered more ferocious. Thence wars became more frequent 
 
AXT> THE MISSIONARIES. 
 
 201 
 
 among the natives ; prisoners were dragged from the inland 
 countries to the coast, to he sold to the whites, who loaded 
 them with chains in their ships. Yet the Spaniards were 
 at that period, and long after, one of the most polished 
 nations of Europe. The light which art and literature 
 then shed over Italy, was reflected on every nation whose 
 language emanated from the same source as that of Dante 
 and Petrarch. It might have been expected that a general 
 improvement of manners would he the natural consequence 
 of this noble awakening of the mind, this sublime soaring of 
 the imagination. But in distant regions, wherever the 
 thirst of wealth has introduced the abuse of power, the 
 nations of Europe, at every period of their history, have 
 displayed the same character. The illustrious era of Leo X 
 was signalized in the Xew World by acts of cruelty that 
 seemed to belong to the most barbarous ages. We are less 
 surprised, however, at the horrible picture presented by the 
 conquest America when we think of the acts that are 
 still perpetrated on the western coast of Africa, notwith- 
 standing the benefits of a more humane legislation. 
 
 The principles adopted by Charles Y. had abolished the 
 slave trade on the Xew Continent. But the Conquistadores, 
 by the continuation of their incursions, prolonged the system 
 of petty warfare which diminished the American population, 
 perpetuated national animosities, and during a long period 
 crushed the seeds of rising civilization. At length the mis- 
 sionaries, under the protection of the secular arm, spoke 
 words of peace. It was the privilege of religion to console 
 humanity for a part of the evils committed in its name ; to 
 plead the cause of the natives before kings, to resist the 
 violence of the commendataries, and to assemble wandering 
 tribes into small communities called Missions. 
 
 But these institutions, useful at first in stopping the 
 effusion of blood, and in laying the first basis of society, 
 have become in their result hostile to its progress. Tlie 
 effects of this insulated system have been such that the 
 Indians have remained in a state little different from that in 
 which they existed whilst yet their scattered dwellings were 
 not collected round the habitation of a missionary. Their 
 number has considerably augmented, but the sphere of their 
 ideas is not enlarged. They have progressively lost that 
 
202 
 
 . ROAD TO CTJMANACOA. 
 
 vigour of character and that natural vivacity which in every 
 state of society are the noble fruits of independence. By 
 subjecting to invariable rules even the slightest actions of 
 their domestic life, they have been rendered stupid by the 
 effort to render them obedient. Their subsistence is in 
 general more certain, and their habits more pacific, but sub- 
 ject to the constraint and the dull monotony of the govern- 
 ment of the Missions, they show by their gloomy and reserved 
 looks that they have not sacrificed their liberty to their repose 
 without regret. 
 
 On the 4th of September, at five in the morning, we 
 began our journey to the Missions of the Chayma Indians 
 and the group of lofty mountains which traverse New 
 Andalusia. On account of the extreme difficulties of the 
 road, we had been advised to reduce our baggage to a very 
 small bulk. Two beasts of burden were sufficient to carry 
 our provision, our instruments, and the paper necessary to 
 dry our plants. One chest contained a sextant, *a dipping- 
 needle, an apparatus to determine the magnetic variation, a 
 few thermometers, and Saussure’ s hygrometer. The greatest 
 changes in the pressure of the air in these climates, on the 
 coasts, amount only to 1 — 1*3 of a line ; and if at any given 
 hour or place the height of the mercury be once marked, the 
 variations which that height experiences throughout the 
 whole year, at every hour of the day or night, may with 
 some accuracy be determined. 
 
 The morning was deliciously cool. The road, or rather 
 path, which leads to Cumanacoa, runs along the right bank 
 of the Manzanares, passing by the hospital of the Capuchins, 
 situated in a small wood of lignum-vitæ and arborescent 
 capparis.* On leaving Cumana we enjoyed during the short 
 duration of the twilight, from the top of the hill of San Fran- 
 cisco, an extensive view over the sea, the plain covered with 
 béraf and its. golden flowers, and the mountains of the 
 Brigantine. ¥e were struck by the great proximity in 
 
 * These caper-trees are called in the country, by the names pachaca, 
 olivo, and ajito : they are the Capparis tenuisiliqua, Jacq., C. ferruginea, 
 C. emarginata, C- elliptica, C. reticulata, C. racemosa. 
 
 + Palo sano, Zygophyllum arboreum, Jacq. The flowers have the 
 smell of vanilla. It is cultivated in the gardens of the Havannah under 
 the strange name of the dictanno real (royal dittany). 
 
MOUNTAIN VEGETATION. 
 
 203 
 
 which the Cordillera appeared before the disk of the rising 
 sun had reached the horizon. The tint of the summits is of 
 a deeper blue, their outline is more strongly marked, and 
 their masses are more detached, as long as the transparency 
 of the air is undisturbed by the vapours, which, after accu- 
 mulating during the night in the valleys, rise in proportion 
 as the atmosphere acquires warmth. 
 
 At the hospital of the Divina Pastora the path turns to 
 north-east, and stretches for two leagues over a soil without 
 trees, and formerly levelled by the waters. We there found 
 not only cactuses, tufts of cistus-leaved tribulus, and the beau- 
 tiful purple euphorbia,* but also the avicennia, the aliionia, 
 the sesuvium, the thalinum, and most of the portulaceous 
 plants which grow on the banks of the gulf of Cariaco. This 
 geographical distribution of plants appears to designate the 
 limits of the ancient coast, and to prove that the hills along 
 the southern side of which we were passing, formed hereto- 
 fore a small island, separated from the continent by an arm 
 of the sea. 
 
 After walking two hours, we arrived at the foot of the 
 high chain of the interior mountains, which stretches from 
 east to west ; from the Brigantine to the Cerro de San 
 Lorenzo. There, new rocks appear, and with them another 
 aspect of vegetation. Every object assumes a more majestic 
 and picturesque character; the soil, watered by springs, 
 is furrowed in every direction; trees of gigantic height, 
 covered with lianas, rise from the ravines ; their bark, black 
 and burnt by the double action of the light and the oxygen 
 of the atmosphere, contrasts with the fresh verdure of the 
 pothos and dracontium, the tough and shining leaves of 
 which are sometimes several feet long. The parasite mono- 
 cotyledons take between the tropics the place of the moss 
 and lichens of our northern zone. As we advanced, the 
 forms and grouping of the rocks reminded us of Switzerland 
 and the Tyrol. The heliconia, costus, maranta, and other 
 plants of the family of the balisiers (Canna indica), which 
 near the coasts vegetate only in damp and low places, 
 flourish in the American Alps at considerable height. Thus, 
 by a singular similitude, in the torrid zone, under the in- 
 fluence of an atmosphere continually loaded with vapours 
 # * Euphorbia tithymaloides. 
 
204 
 
 GEOLOGIC FORMATIONS. 
 
 the mountain vegetation presents the same features as the 
 vegetation of the marshes in the north of Europe on soil 
 moistened by melting snow.* 
 
 Before we leave the plains of Cumana, and the breccia, or 
 calcareous sandstone, which constitutes the soil of the sea- 
 side, we will describe the different strata of which this very- 
 recent formation is composed, as we observed it on the back 
 of the hills that surround the castle of San Antonio. 
 
 The breccia, or calcareous sandstone, is a local and partial 
 formation, peculiar to the peninsula of Araya, the coasts of 
 Cumana, and Caracas. We again found it at Cabo Blanco, 
 to the west of the port of Gruayra, where it contains, besides 
 broken shells and madrepores, fragments, often angular, of 
 quartz and gneiss. This circumstance assimilates the breccia 
 to that recent sandstone called by the German mineralogists 
 nagelflulie , which covers so great a part of Switzerland to 
 the height of a thousand toises, without presenting any trace 
 of marine productions. Near Cumana the formation of the 
 calcareous breccia contains -.—1st, a compact whitish grey 
 limestone, the strata of which, sometimes horizontal, some- 
 times irregularly inclined, are from five to six inches thick ; 
 some beds are almost unmixed with petrifactions, but in the 
 greatest part the cardites, the turbinites, the ostracites, and 
 shells of small dimension, are found so closely connected, 
 that the calcareous matter forms only a cement, by which 
 the grains of quartz and the organized bodies are united : 
 2dly, a calcareous sandstone, in which the grains of sand are 
 much more frequent than the petrified shells ; other strata 
 form a sandstone entirely free from organic fragments, 
 yielding but a small effervescence with acids, and enclosing 
 not lamellae of mica, but nodules of compact brown iron-ore: 
 3d, beds of indurated clay containing selenite and lamellar 
 gypsum. 
 
 The breccia, or agglomerate of the sea-coast, just described, 
 has a white tint, and it lies immediately on the calcareous 
 formation of Cumanacoa, which is of a bluish grey. These 
 two rocks form a contrast no less striking than the molasse 
 (bur-stone) of the Pays de Yaud, with the calcareous lime- 
 stone of the Jura. It must be observed, that, by contact of 
 
 * Wahlenberg, de Yegetatione Helvetia^ et summi Septentrionis, 
 pp. 47, 59. 
 
MESTIZO PLANTATIONS. 
 
 205 
 
 the two formations lying upon each other, the beds of the 
 limestone of Cumanacoa, which I consider as an Alpine 
 limestone, are always largely mixed with clay and marl. 
 Lying, like the mica-slate of Araya, north-east and south- 
 west, they are inclined, near Punta Delgada, under an angle 
 of 60 degrees to south-east. 
 
 "We traversed the forest by a narrow path, along a rivulet, 
 which rolls foaming over a bed of rocks. We observed, that 
 the vegetation was more brilliant, wherever the Alpine lime- 
 stone was covered by a quartzose sandstone without petrifac- 
 tions, and very different from the breccia of the sea-coast. 
 The cause of this phenomenon depends probably not so much 
 on the nature of the ground, as on the greater humidity of 
 the soil. The quartzose sandstone contains thin strata of a 
 blackish clay-slate, # which might easily be confounded with 
 the secondary tlionschiefer ; and these strata hinder the 
 water from filtering into the crevices, of which the Alpine 
 limestone is full. This last offers to view here, as in Saltz- 
 burg, and on the chain of the Apennines, broken and steep 
 beds. The sandstone, on the contrary, wherever it is seated 
 on the calcareous rock, renders the aspect of the scene less 
 wild. The hills which it forms appear more rounded, and 
 the gentler slopes are covered with a thicker mould. 
 
 In humid places, where the sandstone envelopes the Alpine 
 limestone, some trace of cultivation is constantly found. 
 We met with huts inhabited by mestizoes in the ravine of 
 Los Prailes, as well as between the Cuesta de Caneyes, and 
 the Rio G-uriental. Eacli of these huts stands in the centre 
 of an enclosure, containing plantains, papaw-trees, sugar- 
 canes, and maize. We might be surprised at the small 
 extent of these cultivated spots, if we did not recollect that 
 an acre planted with plantains t produces nearly twenty times 
 as much food as the some space sown with corn. In Europe, 
 our wheat, barley, and rye cover vast spaces of ground ; and 
 in general the arable lands touch each other, wherever the 
 inhabitants live upon corn. It is different under the torrid 
 zone, where man obtains food from plants which yield more 
 abundant and earlier harvests. In those favoured climes, 
 the fertility of the soil is proportioned to the heat and 
 humidity of the atmosphere. An immense population finds 
 * Schieferthon. f Musa paradisiaca. 
 
206 
 
 AGRICULTURE AKD CIVILIZATION. 
 
 abundant nourishment within a narrow space, covered with 
 plantains, cassava, yams, and maize. The isolated situation 
 of the huts dispersed through the forest indicates to the 
 traveller the fecundity of nature, where a small spot of cul- 
 vated land suffices for the wants of several families. 
 
 These considerations on the agriculture of the torrid zone 
 involuntarily remind us of the intimate connexion existing 
 between the extent of land cleared, and the progress of 
 society. The richness of the soil, and the vigour of organic 
 life, by multiplying the means of subsistence, retard the pro- 
 gress of nations in the paths of civilization. Under so mild 
 and uniform a climate, the only urgent want of man is that of 
 food. This want only, excites him to labour ; and we may easily 
 conceive why, in the midst of abundance, beneath the shade 
 of the plantain and bread-fruit tree, the intellectual faculties 
 unfold themselves less rapidly than under a rigourous sky, 
 in the region of corn, where our race is engaged in a perpe- 
 tual struggle with the elements. In Europe we estimate 
 the number of the inhabitants of a country by the extent 
 of cultivation : within the tropics, on the contrary, in the 
 warmest and most humid part^ of South America, very 
 populous provinces appear almost deserted ; because man, to 
 find nourishment, cultivates but a small number of acres. 
 These circumstances modify the physical appearance of the 
 country and the character of its inhabitants, giving to both 
 a peculiar physiognomy; the wild and uncultivated stamp 
 which belongs to nature, ere its primitive type has been 
 altered by art. Without neighbours, almost unconnected 
 with the rest of mankind, each family of settlers forms a 
 separate tribe. This insulated state arrests or retards 
 the progress of civilization, which advances only in pro- 
 portion as society becomes numerous, and its connexions 
 more intimate and multiplied. But, on the other hand, it is 
 solitude that developes and strengthens in man the senti- 
 ment of liberty and independence ; and gives birth to that 
 noble pride of character which has at all times distinguished 
 the Castilian race. 
 
 Erom these causes, the land in the most populous regions 
 of equinoctial America still retains a wild aspect, which is 
 destroyed in temperate climates by the cultivation of corn. 
 Within the tropics the agricultural nations occupy less 
 
PEOGEESSIYE VEGETATION. 
 
 207 
 
 ground : man has there less extended his empire ; he 
 may be said to appear, not as an absolute master, who 
 changes at will the surface of the soil, but as a transient 
 guest, who quietly enjoys the gifts of nature. There, in the 
 neighbourhood of the most populous cities, the land remains 
 studded with forests, or covered' with a thick mould, unfur- 
 rowed by the plough. Spontaneous vegetation still predo- 
 minates over cultivated plants, and determines the aspect 
 of the landscape. It is probable that this state of things 
 will change very slowly. If in our temperate regions the 
 cultivation of com contributes to throw a dull uniformity 
 upon the land we have cleared, we cannot doubt, that, even 
 with increasing population, the torrid zone will preserve that 
 majesty of vegetable forms, those marks of an unsubdued, 
 virgin nature, which render it so attractive and so pictu- 
 resque. Thus it is that, by a remarkable concatenation of 
 physical and moral causes, the choice and production of ali- 
 mentary plants have an influence on three important objects 
 at once ; the association or the isolated state of families, the 
 more or less rapid progress of civilization, and the individual 
 character of the landscape. 
 
 In proportion as we penetrated into the forest, the baro- 
 meter indicated the progressive elevation of the land. The 
 trunks of the trees presented here an extraordinary pheno- 
 menon ; a gramineous plant, with verticillate branches, * 
 climbs, like a liana, eight or ten feet high, and forms festoons, 
 which cross the path, and swing about with the wind. We 
 halted, about three o’clock in the afternoon, on a small flat, 
 known by the name of Quetepe, and situated about one 
 hundred and ninety toises above the level of the sea. A few 
 small houses have been erected near a spring, well known by 
 the natives for its coolness and great salubrity. We found 
 the water delicious. Its temperature was only 225° of the 
 centigrade thermometer, while that of the air was 28*7°. 
 The springs which descend from the neighbouring mountains 
 of a greater height often indicate a too rapid decrement of 
 heat. If indeed we suppose the mean temperature of the 
 water on the coast of Cumana equal to 26°, we must conclude, 
 unless other local causes modify the temperature of the 
 
 * Cance, analogous to the chusque of Santa Fé, of the group of the 
 Nastuses. This gramineous plant is excellent pasture for mules. 
 
208 
 
 SPRING OP QUETEPE. 
 
 springs, that the spring of Quetepe acquires its great coolness 
 at more than 850 toises of absolute elevation. With respect 
 to the springs which gush out in the plains of the torrid 
 zone, or at a small elevation, it may be observed, in general, 
 that it is only in regions where the mean temperature of 
 summer essentially differs from that of the whole year, that 
 the inhabitants have extremely cold spring water during 
 the season of great heat. The Laplanders, near Umea and 
 Scersele, in the 65th degree of latitude, drink spring-water, 
 the temperature of which, in the month of August, is scarcely 
 two or three degrees above freezing point ; while during the 
 day the heat of the air rises in the shade, in the same 
 northern regions, to 26 or 27 degrees. In the temperate 
 climates of Trance and Germany, the difference between the 
 air and the springs never exceeds 16 or 17 degrees ; between 
 the tropics it seldom rises to 5 or 6 degrees. It is easy to ac- 
 count for these phenomena, when we recollect that the interior 
 of the globe, and the subterraneous waters, have a tempera- 
 ture almost identical with the annual mean temperature of 
 the air; and that the latter differs from the mean heat of 
 summer, in proportion to the distance from the equator. 
 
 Prom the top of a hill of sandstone, which overlooks the 
 spring of Quetepe, we had a magnificent view of the sea, of 
 cape Macanao, and the peninsula of Maniquarez. At our 
 feet an immense forest extended to the edge of the ocean. 
 The tops of the trees, intertwined with lianas, and crowned 
 with long wreaths of flowers, formed a vast carpet of verdure, 
 the dark tint of which augmented the splendour of the aerial 
 light. This picture struck us the more forcibly, as we then 
 first beheld those great masses of tropical vegitation. On 
 the hill of Quetepe, at the foot of the Malpighia cocollobæ- 
 folia, the leaves of which are extremely coriaceous, we 
 gathered, among tufts of the Polygala montana, the first 
 melastomas, especially that beautiful species described under 
 the name of the Melastoma rufescens. 
 
 As we advanced toward the south-west, the soil became 
 dry and sandy. We climed a group of mountains, which 
 separate the coast from the vast plains, or savannahs, bor- 
 dered by the Orinoco. That part of the group, over which 
 passes the road to Cumanacoa, is destitute of vegetation, 
 and has steep declivities both on the north and the south. 
 
THE LAGTTHA GRAHDE. 
 
 209 
 
 It has received the name of the Imposible, because it is 
 j believed that, in the case of hostile invasion, this ridge of 
 mountains would be inaccessible to the enemy, and would 
 offer an asylum to the inhabitants of Cumana. We reached 
 , the top a little before sunset, and I had scarcely time to 
 j take a few horary angles, to determine the longitude of the 
 j place by means of the chronometer. 
 
 The view from the Imposible is finer and more extensive 
 than that from the table-land of Quetepe. We distinguished 
 I clearly by the naked eye the flattened top of the Brigantine 
 I (the position of which it would be important to fix accurately) , 
 the ernbarcadero or landing-place, and the roadstead of Cumana. 
 The rocky coast of the peninsula of Araya was discernible 
 in its whole length. We were particularly struck with the 
 extraordinary configuration of a port, known by the name of 
 Laguna Grande, or Laguna del Obispo. A vast basin, sur- 
 i rounded by high mountains, communicates with the gulf of 
 Cariaco by a narrow channel which admits only of the passage 
 , of one ship at a time. This port is capable of containing 
 i several squadrons at once. It is an uninhabited place, but 
 annually frequented by vessels, which carry mules to the 
 I West India Islands. There are some pasture grounds at 
 the farther end of the bay. We traced the sinuosities of 
 I this arm of the sea, which, like a river, has dug a bed between 
 perpendicular rocks destitute of vegetation. This singular 
 prospect reminded us of the fanciful landscape which Leon- 
 i ardo da Yinci has made the back-ground of his famous 
 portrait of Mona Lisa, the wife of Francisco del Giacondo. 
 We could observe by the chronometer the moment when 
 I the disk of the sun touched the horizon of the sea. The 
 first contact was at 6 h 8' 13" ; the second, at 6 h 10' 26", mean 
 time. This observation, which is not unimportant for the 
 theory of terrestrial refractions, was made on the summit 
 of the mountain, at the absolute height of 296 toises. The 
 ! setting of the sun was attended by a very rapid cooling of 
 the air. Three minutes after the last apparent contact of 
 I the disk with the horizon of the sea, the thermometer sud- 
 I denly fell from 25 2° to 21*3°. Was this extraordinary 
 ! refrigeration owing to some descending current ? The air 
 was however calm, and no horizontal wind was felt. 
 
 We passed the night in a house where there was a military 
 YOL. I. P 
 
 I 
 
210 
 
 ETOCTTJKN'AL TIEES. 
 
 post consisting of eight men, under the command of a Spanish 
 serjeant. It was an hospital, built by the side of a powder- 
 magazine. "When Cumana, after the capture of Trinidad by 
 the English, in 1797, was threatened with an attack, many 
 of the inhabitants fled to Cumanacoa, and deposited what- 
 ever articles of value they possessed in sheds hastily con- 
 structed on the top of the Imposible. It was then resolved, 
 in case of any unforeseen invasion, to abandon the castle of 
 San Antonio, after a short resistance, and to concentrate the 
 whole force of the province round the mountains, which may 
 be considered as the key of the Llanos. 
 
 The top of the Imposible, as nearly as I could perceive, is 
 covered with a quartzose sandstone, free from petrifactions. 
 Here, as on the ridge of the neighbouring mountains, the 
 strata pretty regularly take the direction from 1ST. 1ST. E. 
 to S. S. W. This direction is also most common in the 
 primitive formations in the peninsula of Araya, and along the 
 coasts of Venezuela. On the northern declivity of the Im- 
 posible, near the Penas Negras, an abundant spring issues 
 from sandstone, which alternates with a schistose clay. We 
 remarked on this point fractured strata, which lie from N. W. 
 to S. E., and the dip of which is almost perpendicular. 
 
 The Llaneros , or inhabitants of the plains, send their pro- 
 duce, especially maize, leather, and cattle, to the port of 
 Cumana by the road over the Imposible. We continually 
 saw mules arrive, driven by Indians or mulattoes. Several 
 parts of the vast forests which surround the mountain, had 
 taken fire . Reddish flames, half enveloped in clouds of smoke, 
 presented a very grand spectacle. The inhabitants set fire 
 to the forests, to improve the pasturage, and to destroy the 
 shrubs that choke the grass. Enormous conflagrations, too, 
 are often caused by the carelessness of the Indians, who neg- 
 lect, when they travel, to extinguish the fires by which they 
 have dressed their food. These accidents contribute to di- 
 minish the number of old trees in the road from Cumana to 
 Cumanacoa; and the inhabitants observe justly, that, in 
 several parts of their province, the dryness has increased, not 
 only because every year the frequency of earthquakes causes 
 more crevices in the soil ; but also because it is now less 
 thickly wooded than it was at the time of the conquest. 
 
 I arose during the night to determine the latitude of the 
 
THE CINCHONA TEEE. 
 
 211 
 
 place by the passage of Eomalhaut over tbe meridian ; but 
 the observation was lost, owing to the time I employed 
 in taking the level of the artificial horizon. It was midnight, 
 and I was benumbed with cold, as were also our guides : yet 
 the thermometer kept at 197°. At Cumana I have never 
 seen it sink below 21° ; but then the house in which we 
 dwelt on the Imposible was 258 toises above the level of 
 the sea. At the Casa de la Polvora I determined the dip of 
 the magnetic needle, which was 42*5°. * The number of 
 oscillations correspondent to 10' of time was 233. The in- 
 tensity of the magnetic forces had consequently augmented 
 from the coast to the mountain, perhaps from the influence 
 of some ferruginous matter, hidden in the strata of sand- 
 stone which cover the Alpine limestone. 
 
 We left the Imposible on the 5th of September before 
 sunrise. The descent is very dangerous for beasts of burden; 
 the path being in general but fifteen inches broad, and 
 bordered by precipices. In descending the mountain, we 
 observed the rock of Alpine limestone reappearing under the 
 sandstone. The strata being -generally inclined to the south 
 and south-east, a great number of springs gush out on the 
 southern side of the mountain. In the rainy season of the 
 year, these springs form torrents, which descend in cascades, 
 shaded by the hura, the cuspa, and the silver-leaved cecropia 
 or trumpet-tree. 
 
 The cuspa, a very common tree in the environs of Cumana 
 and of Bordones, is yet unknown to the botanists of Europe. 
 It was long used only for the building of houses, and has 
 become celebrated since 1797, under the name of the casca- 
 rilla or bark-tree (cinchona) of New Andalusia. Its trunk 
 rises scarcely above fifteen or twenty feet. Its alternate 
 leaves are smooth, entire, and oval.f Its bark very thin, and 
 of a pale yellow, is a powerful febrifuge. It is even more 
 bitter than the bark of the real cinchona, but is less disa- 
 greeable. The cuspa is administered with the greatest suc- 
 cess, in a spirituous tincture, and in aqueous infusion, both 
 in intermittent and in malignant fevers. 
 
 * The magnetic dip is always measured in this work, according to the 
 centesimal division, if the contrary be not expressly mentioned. 
 
 + At the summit of the boughs, the leaves are sometimes opposite to 
 each other, but invariably without stipules. 
 
 P 2 
 
212 
 
 THE CINCHOHA TEIBE. 
 
 On the coasts of New Andalusia, the cuspa is considered 
 as a kind of cinchona; and we were assured, that some 
 Aragonese monks, who had long resided in the kingdom of 
 New Grenada, recognised this tree from the resemblance 
 of its leaves to those of the real Peruvian-bark tree. This, 
 however, is unfounded; since it is precisely by the dis- 
 position of the leaves, and the absence of stipules, that 
 the cuspa differs totally from the trees of the rubiaceous 
 family. It may be said to resemble the family of the honey- 
 suckle, or caprifoliaceous plants, one section of which has 
 alternate leaves, and among which we find several cornel- 
 trees, remarkable for their febrifuge properties.* 
 
 The taste, at once bitter and astringent, and the yellow 
 colour of the bark led to the discovery of the febrifugal ‘ 
 virtue of the cuspa. As it blossoms at the end of November, 
 we did not see it in flower, and we know not to what genus 
 it belongs ; and I have in vain for several years past applied 
 to our friends at Cumana for specimens of the flower and 
 fruit. I hope that the botanical determination of the bark- 
 tree of New Andalusia will one day fix the attention of 
 travellers, who visit this region after us ; and that they will 
 not confound, notwithstanding the analogy of the names, 
 the cuspa with the cuspare. The latter not only vegetates 
 in the missions of the Bio Carony, but also to the west of 
 Cumana, in the gulf of Santa Fé. It furnishes the druggists 
 of Europe with the famous Cortex Angosturæ, and forms 
 the genus Bonplandia, described by M. Willdenouw in the 
 Memoirs of the Academy of Berlin, from notes communi- 
 cated to h im by us. 
 
 It is singular that, during our long abode on the coast of 
 Cumana and the Caracas, on the banks of the Apure, the 
 Orinoco, and the Bio Negro, in an extent of country com- 
 prising forty thousand square leagues, we never met with one 
 of those numerous species of cinchona, or exostema, which are 
 peculiar to the low and warm regions of the tropics, especi- 
 ally to the archipelago of the West India Islands. Yet we 
 are far from aflirming, that, throughout the whole of the 
 eastern part of South America, from Porto Bello to Cayenne, 
 
 * Comus florida, and C. sericea of the United States. — Walker on 
 the Virtues , of the Cornus and the Cinchona compared. Philadelphia, 
 1803. 
 
MEDICINAL PLANTS 
 
 213 
 
 or from the equator to the 10th degree of north latitude 
 between the meridians of 51 and 71 degrees, the cinchona 
 absolutely does not exist. How can we be expected to know 
 completely the flora of so vast an extent of country ? But, 
 when we recollect, that even in Mexico no species of the 
 genera cinchona and exostema has been discovered, either 
 in the central table-land or in the plains, we are led to be- 
 lieve, that the mountainous islands of the West Indies and 
 the Cordillera of the Andes have peculiar floras ; and that 
 they possess particular species of vegetation, which have 
 neither passed from the islands to the continent, nor from 
 South America to the coasts of ISTew Spain. 
 
 It may be observed farther, that, when we reflect on the 
 numerous analogies which exist between the properties of 
 plants and their external forms, we are surprised to find 
 qualities eminently febrifuge in the bark of trees belonging 
 to different genera, and even different families.* Some of 
 
 * It may be somewhat interesting to chemistry, physiology, and 
 descriptive botany, to consider under the same point of view the plants 
 which have been employed in intermittent fevers with different degrees of 
 success. We find among rubiaceous plants, besides the cinchonas and 
 exostemas, the Coutarea speciosa or Cayenne bark, the Portlandia grandi- 
 flora of the West Indies, another portlandia discovered by M. Sesse at 
 Mexico, the Pinkneia pubescens of the United States, the berry of the 
 coffee-tree, and perhaps the Macrocnemum corymbosum, and the Guet- 
 tarda coccinea ; among magnoliaceous plants, the tulip-tree and the Mag- 
 nolia glauca ; among zanthoxylaceous plants, the Cuspare of Angostura, 
 known in America under the name of Orinoco bark, and the Zanthoxylon 
 caribæum ; among leguminous plants, the geoffræas, the Swietenia febri- 
 fuga, the Æschynomene grandiflora, the Cæsalpinea bonducella ; among 
 caprifoliaceous plants, the Cornus florida and the Cuspa of Cumana; among 
 rosaceous plants, the Cerasus virginiana and the Geum urbanum ; among 
 amentaceous plants, the willows, oaks, and birch-trees, of which the alco- 
 holic tincture is used in Russia by the common people ; the Populus tremu- 
 loides, &c. ; among anonaceous plants, the Uvaria febrifuga, the fruit of 
 which we saw administered with success in the Missions of Spanish 
 Guiana ; among simarubaceous plants, the Quassia amara, celebrated in 
 the feverish plains of Surinam ; among terebinthaceous plants, the Rhus 
 glabrum ; among euphorbiaceous plants, the Croton cascarilla ; among 
 composite plants, the Eupatorium perfoliatum, the febrifuge qualities of 
 which are known to the savages of North America. Of the tulip -tree and 
 the quassia, it is the bark of the roots that is used. Eminent febrifuge 
 virtue have also been found in the cortical part of the roots of the Cinchona 
 condaminea at Loxa; but it is fortunate, for the preservation of the species, 
 
214 
 
 MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
 
 these barks so much resemble each other, that it is not easy 
 to distinguish them at first sight. But before we examine the 
 question, whether we shall one day discover, in the real 
 cinchona, in the cuspa of Cumana, the Cortex Angosturæ, 
 the Indian swietenia, the willows of Europe, the berries of 
 the coffee-tree and uvaria, a matter uniformly diffused, and 
 exhibiting (like starch, caoutchouc, and camphor) the same 
 chemical properties in different plants, we may ask whether, 
 in the present state of physiology and medicine, a febrifuge 
 principle ought to be admitted. Is it not probable, that 
 the particular derangement in the organization, known under 
 the vague name of the febrile state, and in which both the 
 vascular and the nervous systems are at the same time 
 attacked, yields to remedies which do not operate by the 
 same principle, by the same mode of action on the same 
 organs, by the same play of chemical and electrical attrac- 
 tions ? We shall here confine ourselves to this observation, 
 that, in the species of the genus cinchona, the antifebrile 
 virtues do not appear to belong to the tannin (which is only 
 accidentally mingled in them), or to the cinchonate of lime ; 
 but in a resiniform matter, soluble both by alcohol and by 
 water, and which, it is believed, is composed of two prin- 
 ciples, the cinchonic bitter and the cinchonic red. # May it 
 then be admitted, that this resiniform matter, which pos- 
 sesses different degrees of energy according to the combina- 
 tions by which it is modified, is found in all febrifuge sub- 
 stances? Those by which the sulphate of iron is precipitated 
 of a green colour, like the real cinchona, the bark of the white 
 willow, and the horned perisperm of the coffee-tree, do not 
 on this account denote identity of chemical composition ;t 
 and that identity might even exist, without our concluding 
 that the medical virtues were analogous. We see that 
 
 that the roots of the real cinchona are not employed in pharmacy. Che- 
 mical researches are yet wanting upon the very powerful bitters contained 
 in the roots of the Zanthoriza apiifolia, and the Actæa racemosa : the 
 latter have sometimes been employed with success as a remedy against the 
 epidemic yellow fever in New York. 
 
 * In French, “ l’amer et le rouge cinchoniques. M 
 
 *t The cuspare bark (Cort. Angosturæ) yields with iron a yellow preci- 
 pitate ; yet it is employed on the banks of the Orinoco, and particularly 
 at the town of St. Thomas of Angostura, as an excellent cinchona ; and 
 on the other hand, the bark of the common cherry tree, which has 
 
MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
 
 215 
 
 specimens of sugar and tannin extracted from plants, not 
 of tlie same family, present numerous differences : while the 
 comparative analysis of sugar, gum, and starch; the dis- 
 covery of the radical of the prussic acid (the effects of which 
 are so powerful on the organization), and many other 
 phenomena of vegetable chemistry, clearly prove that sub- 
 stances composed of identical elements, few in number and 
 proportional in quantity, exhibit the most heterogeneous 
 properties, on account of that particular mode of combi- 
 nation which corpuscular chemistry calls the arrangement of 
 the particles. 
 
 Leaving the ravine which descends from the Imposable, 
 we entered a thick forest traversed by many small rivers, 
 which are easily forded. We observed that the cecropia, 
 which in the disposition of its branches and its slender trunk, 
 resembles the palm-tree, is covered with leaves more or less 
 silvery, in proportion as the soil is dry or moist. We saw 
 some small plants of the cecropia, the leaves of which were 
 on both sides entirely green.* The roots of these trees are hid 
 under tufts of dorstenia, which flourishes only in humid and 
 shady places. In the midst of the forest, on the banks of 
 the Bio Cedeno, as well as on the southern declivity of the 
 Cocollar, we find, in their wild state, papaw and orange- 
 trees, bearing large and sw'eet fruit. These are probably the 
 remains of some conucos, or Indian plantations ; for in those 
 countries the orange-tree cannot be counted among the in- 
 digenous plants, any more than the banana-tree, the papaw- 
 tree, maize, cassava, and many other useful plants, with the 
 true country of which we are unacquainted, though they 
 have accompanied man in his migrations from the remotest 
 times. 
 
 When a traveller newly arrived from Europe penetrates 
 for the first time into the forests of South America, he be- 
 
 scarcely any febrifuge quality, yields a green precipitate like the real 
 cinchonas. Notwithstanding the extreme imperfection of vegetable che- 
 mistry, the experiments already made on cinchonas sufficiently show, that 
 to judge of the febrifuge virtues of a bark, we must not attach too much 
 importance either to the principle which turns to green the oxides of iron, 
 or to the tannin, or to the matter which precipitates infusions of tan. 
 
 * Is not the Cecropia concolor of Willdenouw a variety of the Cecropia 
 peltata ? 
 
216 
 
 PARASITE PLANTS. 
 
 holds nature under an unexpected aspect. He feels at every 
 step, that he is not on the coniines but in the centre of the 
 torrid zone ; not in one of the West India Islands, but on 
 a vast continent where everything is gigantic, — mountains, 
 rivers, and the mass of vegetation. If he feel strongly 
 the beauty of picturesque scenery he can scarcely define 
 the various emotions which crowd upon his mind ; he can 
 scarcely distinguish what most excites his admiration, the 
 deep silence of those solitudes, the individual beauty and 
 contrast of forms, or that vigour and freshness of vegetable 
 life which characterize the climate of the tropics. It might 
 he said that the earth, overloaded with plants, does not allow 
 them space enough to unfold themselves. The trunks of 
 the trees are everywhere concealed under a thick carpet of 
 verdure ; and if we carefully transplanted the orchideæ, the 
 pipers, and the pothoses, nourished by a single courbanl, or 
 American fig-tree, # we should cover a vast extent of ground. 
 By this singular assemblage, the forests, as well as the flanks 
 of the rocks and mountains, enlarge the domains of organic 
 nature. The same lianas which creep on the ground, reach 
 the tops of the trees, and pass from one to another at the 
 height of more than a hundred feet. Thus, by the continual 
 interlacing of parasite plants, the botanist is often led to 
 confound one with another, the flowers, the fruits, and leaves, 
 which belong to different species. 
 
 We walked for some hours under the shade of these 
 arcades, which scarcely admit a glimpse of the sky; the 
 latter appeared to me of an indigo blue, the deeper in shade 
 because the green of the equinoctial plants is generally of a 
 stronger hue, with somewhat of a brownish tint. A great 
 fern tree,+ very different from the Polypodium arboreum of 
 the West Indies, rose above masses of scattered rocks. In 
 this place we were struck for the first time with the sight of 
 those nests in the shape of bottles, or small bags, which are 
 suspended from the branches of the lowest trees, and which 
 attest the wonderful industry of the orioles, which mingle 
 their warbling with the hoarse cries of the parrots and the 
 macaws. These last, so well known for their vivid colours, 
 fly only in pairs, while the real parrots wander about in 
 flocks of several hundreds. A man must have lived in those 
 * Ficus nymphæifolia. + Possibly our Aspidium caducum. 
 
SUCCULENT CEEEPEES. 
 
 217 
 
 regions, particularly in the hot valleys of the Andes, to 
 conceive how these birds sometimes drown with their voices 
 the noise of the torrents, which dash down from rock to 
 rock. 
 
 We left the forests, at the distance of somewhat more 
 than a league from the village of San Fernando. A narrow 
 path led, after many windings, into an open but extremely 
 humid country. In such a site in the temperate zone, the 
 cyperaceous and gramineous plants would have formed vast 
 meadows ; here the soil abounded in aquatic plants, with 
 sagittate leaves, and especially in basil plants, among which 
 we noticed the fine flowers of the costus, the thalia, and the 
 heliconia. These succulent plants are from eight to ten feet 
 high, and in Europe one of their groups would be considered 
 as a little wood. 
 
 Near San Fernando the evaporation caused by the action 
 of the sun was so great that, being very lightly clothed, we 
 felt ourselves as wet as in a vapour bath. The road was 
 bordered with a kind of bamboo,* which the Indians call 
 iagua, or guadua, and which is more than forty feet in height. 
 Nothing can exceed the elegance of this arborescent gramen. 
 The form and disposition of its leaves give it a character 
 of lightness which contrasts agreeably with its height. The 
 smooth and glossy trunk of the iagua generally bends to- 
 wards the banks of rivulets, and it waves with the slightest 
 breath of air. The highest reedsf in the south of Europe, 
 can give no idea of the aspect of the arborescent gramina. 
 The bamboo and fern-tree are, of all the vegetable forms 
 between the tropics, those which make the most powerful 
 impression on the imagination of the traveller. Bamboos are 
 less common in South America than is usually believed. 
 They are almost wanting in the marshes and in the vast 
 inundated plains of the Lower Orinoco, the Apure, and the 
 Atabapo, while they form thick woods, several leagues in 
 length, in the north-west, in New Grenada, and in the king- 
 dom of Quito. It might be said that the western declivity 
 of the Andes is their true country ; and, what is remarkable 
 enough, we found them not only in the low regions at the 
 level of the ocean, but also in the lofty valleys of the Cordil- 
 leras, at the height of 860 toises. 
 
 * Bambusa guadua. 
 
 + Arundo donax. 
 
218 SOUTH AMEBICAN MISSIONS. 
 
 The road skirted with the bamboos above mentioned led 
 us to the small village of San Fernando, situated in a narrow 
 plain, surrounded by very steep calcareous rocks. This was ] 
 the first Mission* we saw in America. The houses, or j 
 rather the huts of the Chayrna Indians, though separate j 
 from each other, are not surrounded by gardens. The 
 streets, which are wide and very strait, cross each other at j 
 right angles. The walls of the huts are made of clay, | 
 strengthened by lianas. The uniformity of these huts, the 
 grave and taciturn air of their inhabitants, and the extreme 
 neatness of the dwellings, reminded us of the establishments 1 
 of the Moravian Brethren. Besides their own gardens, every 
 Indian family helps to cultivate the garden of the community, i 
 or, as it is called, the conuco de la comunidad , which is situated 
 at some distance from the village. In this conuco the adults 
 of each sex work one hour in the morning and one in the ] 
 evening. In the missions nearest the coast the garden of ] 
 the community is generally a sugar or indigo plantation, J 
 under the direction of the missionary; and its produce, if 
 the law were strictly observed, could he employed only for j 
 the support of the church and the purchase of sacerdotal ] 
 ornaments. The great square of San Fernando, in the ] 
 centre of the village, contains the church, the dwelling of I 
 the missionary, and a very humble-looking edifice pompously j 
 called the king’s house (Casa del Bey). This is a cara- 1 
 vanserai, destined for lodging travellers; and, as we often I 
 experienced, infinitely valuable in a country where the name 
 of an inn is still unknown. The Casas del Bey are to I 
 be found in all the Spanish colonies, and may be deemed 
 an imitation of the tarnbos of Peru, which were established 
 in conformity with the laws of Manco Capac. 
 
 We had been recommended to the friars who govern the 
 Missions of the Cliayma Indians, by their syndic, who resides 
 at Cumana. This recommendation was the more useful to 
 us, as the missionaries, either from zeal for the purity of the 
 
 * A certain number of habitations collected round a church, with a mis- 
 sionary monk performing the ministerial duties, is called in the Spanish 
 colonies Mision, or Pueblo de mision. Indian villages, governed by a 
 priest, are called Pueblos de doctrina. A distinction is made between the 
 Cura doctrinero, who is the priest of an Indian parish, and the Cura 
 rector , priest of a village inhabited by whites and men of mixed race. 
 
A MISSIONABY’S LIEE. 
 
 219 
 
 morals of their parishioners, or to conceal the monastic sys- 
 tem from the indiscreet curiosity of strangers, often adhere 
 with rigour to an old regulation, by which a white man of 
 the secular state is not permitted to sojourn more than one 
 j night in an Indian village. The Missions form (I will not 
 ! say according to their primitive and canonical institutions, 
 hut in reality) a distinct and nearly independent hierarchy, 
 
 ! the views of which seldom accord with those of the secular 
 clergy. 
 
 | The missionary of San Fernando was a Capuchin, a native 
 of Aragon, far advanced in years, but strong and healthy. 
 His extreme corpulency, his hilarity, the interest he took 
 j in battles and sieges, ill accorded with the ideas we form 
 in northern countries of the melancholy reveries and the 
 j contemplative life of missionaries. Though extremely busy 
 about a cow which was to be killed next day, the old 
 monk received us with kindness, and permitted us to hang 
 up our hammocks in a gallery of his house. Seated, without 
 ! doing anything, the greater part of the day, in an arm- 
 1 chair of red wood, he bitterly complained of what he called 
 the indolence and ignorance of his countrymen. Our mis- 
 | sionary, however, seemed well satisfied with his situation. 
 He treated the Indians with mildness; he beheld his Mission 
 1 prosper, and he praised with enthusiasm the waters, the 
 ! bananas, and the dairy-produce of the district. The sight of 
 ,i our instruments, our books, and our dried plants, drew 
 ! from him a sarcastic smile ; and he acknowledged, with the 
 naïveté peculiar to the inhabitants of those countries, that of 
 all the enjoyments of life, without excepting sleep, none was 
 comparable to the pleasure of eating good beef (carne de 
 vaca): thus does sensuality obtain an ascendancy, where 
 there is no occupation for the mind. 
 
 The mission of San Fernando was founded about the end 
 of the 17th century, near the junction of the small rivers of 
 the Manzanares and Luca^perez. A fire, which consumed 
 , the church and the huts of the Indians, induced the Capu- 
 j chins to build the village in its present fine situation. The 
 j number of families is increased to one hundred, and the 
 j missionary observed to us, that the custom of marrying at 
 I thirteen or fourteen years of age contributes greatly to this 
 ; rapid increase of population. He denied that old age was 
 
 I 
 
220 
 
 MISSIONS OF ABEKAS. 
 
 so premature among the Chaymas, as is commonly believed ; 
 in Europe. The government of these Indian parishes is 
 very complicated; they have their governor, their major- ! 
 alguazils, and their militia-commanders, all copper-coloured! 
 natives. The company of archers have their colours, and 
 perform their exercise with the bow and arrow, in shooting 
 at a mark ; this is the national guard (militia) of the country. 
 This military establishment, under a purely monastic system,] 
 seemed to us very singular. 
 
 On the night of the 5th of September, and the following?] 
 morning, there was a thick fog ; yet we were not more than 
 a hundred toises above the level of the sea. I determined I 
 geometrically, at the moment of our departure, the height 
 of the great calcareous mountain which rises at 800 toises 
 distance to the south of San Eernando, and forms a per- 
 pendicular cliff on the north side. It is only 215 toises 
 higher than the great square; but naked masses of rock, 
 which here exhibit themselves in the midst of a thick vege- 
 tation, give it a very majestic aspect. 
 
 The road from San Eernando to Cumana passes amidst 
 small plantations, through an open and humid valley. We 
 forded a number of rivulets. In the shade the thermometer r. 
 did not rise above 30° : but we were exposed to the direct rays 
 of the sun, because the bamboos, which skirted the road, , 
 afforded but small shelter, and we suffered greatly from the 
 heat. We passed through the village of Arenas, inhabited 
 by Indians, of the same race as those at San Eernando. 
 But Arenas is no longer a mission; and the natives, governed 
 by a regular priest,* are better clothed, and more civilized. . 
 Their church is also distinguished in the country by some 
 rude paintings which adorn its walls. A narrow border en- 
 closes figures of armadilloes, caymans, jaguars, and other 
 animals peculiar to the new world. 
 
 In this village lives a labourer, Erancisco Lozano, who 
 presented a highly curious physiological phenomenon. This 
 man has suckled a child with his own milk. The mother 
 having fallen sick, the father, to quiet the infant, took it into 
 his bed, and pressed it to his bosom. Lozano, then thirty- 
 two years of age, had never before remarked that he 
 
 * The four villages of Arenas, Macarapana, Mariguitar, and Aricagua, 
 founded by Aragonese Capuchins, are called Doctrinas de Encomienda. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL PHEHOMEA T OH. 
 
 221 
 
 iad milk : but tbe irritation of the nipple, sucked by the 
 phild, caused the accumulation of that liquid. The milk was 
 hick and very sweet. The father, astonished at the in- 
 reased size of his breast, suckled his child two or three 
 :imes a day during five months. He drew on himself the 
 attention of his neighbours, but he never thought, as he 
 probably would have done in Europe, of deriving any advan- 
 tage from the curiosity he excited. We saw the certificate, 
 which had been drawn up on the spot, to attest this remark- 
 able fact, eye-witnesses of which are still living. They 
 assured us that, during this suckling, the child had no other 
 nourishment than the milk of his father. Lozano, who was 
 not at Arenas during our journey in the missions, came to 
 jus at Cumana. He was accompanied by his son, then 
 (thirteen or fourteen years of age. M. Bonpland examined 
 ( with attention the father’s breasts, and found them wrinkled 
 jlike those of a woman who has given suck. He observed 
 that the left breast in particular was much enlarged ; which 
 Lozano explained to us from the circumstance, that the 
 jtwo breasts did not furnish milk in the same abundance. 
 Hon Vicente Emparan, governor of the province, sent a cir- 
 jcumstantial account of this phenomenon to Cadiz. 
 
 It is not a very uncommon circumstance, to find, among 
 (animals, males whose breasts contain milk ; and climate does 
 mot appear to exercise any marked influence on the greater 
 |jor less abundance of this secretion. The ancients cite the 
 jmilk of the he-goats of Lemnos and Corsica. In our own 
 time, we have seen in Hanover, a he-goat, which for a great 
 number of years was milked every other day, and yielded 
 jmore milk than a female goat. Among the signs of the 
 alleged weakness of the Americans, travellers have men- 
 tioned the milk contained in the breasts of men. It is, 
 however, improbable, that it has ever been observed in a 
 whole tribe, in some part of America unknown to modem 
 travellers; and I can affirm that at present it is not more 
 i common in the new continent, than in the. old. The labourer 
 I of Arenas, whose case has just been mentioned, was not of 
 (the copper-coloured race of Chayma Indians, but was a 
 white man, descended from Europeans. Moreover, the ana- 
 I tomists of St. Petersburgh have observed that, among the 
 i lower orders of the people in Kussia, milk in the breasts of 
 
222 
 
 TOWN Or CUMANACOA. 
 
 men is much more frequent than among the more southern 
 nations : yet the Russians have never been deemed weak and 
 effeminate. There is among the varieties of the human 
 species a race of men whose breasts at the age of puberty 
 acquire a considerable bulk. Lozano did not belong to that 
 race ; and he often repeated to us his conviction, that it was 
 only the irritation of the nipple, in consequence of the suc- 
 tion, which caused the flow of milk. 
 
 When we reflect on the whole of the vital phenomena, we 
 find that no one of them is entirely isolated. In every age 
 examples are cited of very young girls and women in ex- 
 treme old age, who have suckled children. Among men 
 these examples are more rare ; and after numerous re- 
 searches, I have not found above two or three. One is 
 cited by the anatomist of Yerona, Alexander Benedictus, 
 who lived about the end of the fifteenth century. He 
 relates the history of an inhabitant of Syria, who, to calm 
 the fretfulness of his child, after the death of the mother, 
 pressed it to his bosom. The milk soon became so abun- 
 dant, that the father could take on himself the nourish- 
 ment of his child without assistance. Other examples are 
 related by Santorellus, Baria, and Robert, bishop of Cork. 
 The greater part of these phenomena having been noticed 
 in times very remote, it is not uninteresting to physiology, 
 that we can confirm them in our own days. 
 
 On approaching the town of Cumanacoa we found a more 
 level soil, and a valley enlarging itself progressively. This 
 small town is situated in a naked plain, almost circular, and 
 surrounded by lofty mountains. It was founded in 1717 by 
 Domingo Arias, on the return of an expedition to the mouth 
 of the G-uarapiche, undertaken with the view of destroying 
 an establishment which some Drench freebooters had at- 
 tempted to found. The new town was first called San Bal- 
 tazar de las Arias ; but the Indian name Cumanacoa pre- 
 vailed ; in like manner the name of Santiago de Leon, still 
 to be found in our maps, is forgotten in that of Caracas. 
 
 On opening the barometer we were struck at seeing the 
 column of mercury scarcely 73 lines shorter than 'on the 
 coasts. The plain, or rathér the table-land, on which the 
 town of Cumanacoa is situated, is not more than 104 toises 
 above the level of the sea, which is three or four times less 
 
DEY AND EAINY SEASONS. 
 
 223 
 
 than is supposed by the inhabitants of Cumana, on account 
 of their exaggerated ideas of the cold of Cumanacoa. But 
 the difference of climate observable between places so near 
 each other is perhaps less owing to comparative height than 
 to local circumstances. Among these causes we may cite the 
 proximity of the forests ; the frequency of descending cur- 
 rents, so common in these valleys, closed on every side ; the 
 abundance of rain; and those thick fogs which diminish 
 during a great part of the year the direct action of the solar 
 rays. The decrement of the heat being nearly the same 
 within the tropics, and during the summer under the tem- 
 perate zone, the small difference of level of one hundred 
 toises should produce only a change in the mean temperature 
 of 1° or T5°. But we shall soon find that at Cumanacoa the 
 difference rises to more than four degrees. This coolness of 
 the climate is sometimes the more surprising, as very great 
 heat is felt at Carthago (in the province of Popayan) ; at 
 Tomependa, on the bank of the river Amazon, and in the 
 valleys of Aragua, to the west of Caracas ; though the abso- 
 lute height of these different .places is between 200 and 480 
 toises. In plains as well as on mountains the isothermal lines 
 (lines of similar heat) are not constantly parallel to the 
 equator, or the surface of the globe. It is the grand problem 
 of meteorology to determine the inflections of these lines, 
 and to discover, amid modifications produced by local causes, 
 the constant laws of the distribution of heat. 
 
 The port of Cumana is only seven nautical leagues from 
 Cumanacoa. It scarcely ever rains in the first-mentioned 
 place, while in the latter there are seven months of wintry 
 weather. At Cumanacoa, the dry season begins at the 
 winter solstice, and lasts till the vernal equinox. Light 
 showers are frequent in the months of April, May, and June. 
 The dry weather then returns again, and lasts from the sum- 
 mer solstice to the end of August. Then come the real 
 'winter rains, which cease only in the month of November, 
 and during which torrents of water pour down from the 
 skies. 
 
 It was during the winter season that we took up our first 
 abode in the Missions. Every night a thick fog covered the 
 sky, and it was only at intervals that I succeeded in taking 
 some observations of the stars. The thermometer kept from 
 
224 
 
 ATMOSPHERIC CHANGES. 
 
 18'5° to 20°, which under this zone, and to the sensations of 
 a traveller coming from the coasts, appears a great degree 
 of coolness. I never perceived the temperature in the night 
 at Cnmana below 21°. The greatest heat is felt from 
 noon to 3 o’clock, the thermometer keeping between 26° and 
 27°. The maximum of the heat, about two hours after the 
 passage of the sun over the meridian, was very regularly 
 marked by a storm which murmured near. Large black and 
 low clouds dissolved in rain, which came down in torrents : 
 these rains lasted two or three hours, and lowered the 
 thermometer five or six degrees. About five o’clock the 
 rain entirely ceased, the sun reappeared a little before it set, 
 and the hygrometer moved towards the point of dryness ; but 
 at eight or nine we were again enveloped in a thick stratum 
 of vapour. These different changes follow successively, we 
 were assured, during whole months, and yet not a breath of 
 wind is felt. Comparative experiments led us to believe 
 that in general the nights at Cumanacoa are from two to 
 three, and the days from four to five centesimal degrees 
 cooler than at the port of Cumana. These differences are 
 great ; and if, instead of meteorological instruments, we con- 
 sulted only our own feelings, we should suppose they were 
 still more considerable. 
 
 The vegetation of the plain which surrounds the town is 
 monotonous, but, owing to the extreme humidity of the air, 
 remarkable for its freshness. It is chiefly characterized by 
 an arborescent solanum, forty feet in height, the Urtica 
 baccifera, and a new species of the genus Guettarda.* The 
 ground is very fertile, and might be easily watered if 
 trenches were cut from a great number of rivulets, the 
 springs of which never dry up during the whole year. The 
 most valuable production of the district is tobacco. Since 
 the introduction of the faring in 1779, the cultivation of 
 tobacco in the province of Cumana is nearly confined to the 
 valley of Cumanacoa ; as in Mexico it is permitted only in 
 
 * These trees are surrounded by Galega pilosa, Stellaria rotundifolia, 
 Aegiphila elata of Swartz, Sauvagesia erecta, Martinia perennis, and a 
 great number of Rivinas. We find among the gramineous plants, in the 
 savanna of Cumanacoa, the Paspalus lenticularis, Panicum ascendens, 
 Pennisetum uniflorum, Gynérium saccharoïdes, Eleusine indica, &c. 
 
 f “ Estanco real de tabaco,” royal monopoly of tobacco. 
 
CITMANA TOBACCO. 
 
 225 
 
 the two districts of Orizaba and Cordova. The farm system 
 is a monopoly odious to the people. All the tobacco that 
 is gathered must be sold to government ; and to prevent, or 
 rather to diminish fraud, it has been found most easy to 
 concentrate the cultivation in one point. Gruards scour the 
 country, to destroy any plantations without the boundaries 
 of the privileged districts ; and to inform against those in- 
 habitants who smoke cigars prepared by their own hands. 
 
 Next to the tobacco of the island of Cuba and of the Rio 
 Negro, that of Cumana is the most aromatic. It excels all 
 the tobacco of New Spain and of the province of Varinas. 
 We shall give some particulars of its culture, •which essen- 
 tially differs from the method practised in Virginia. The 
 prodigious expansion which is remarked in the solaneous 
 plants of the valley of Cumanacoa, especially in the abundant 
 species of the Solanum arborescens, of aquartia, and of ces- 
 trum, seems to indicate the favourable nature of this spot 
 for plantations of tobacco. The seed is sown in the open 
 ground, at the beginning of September ; though sometimes 
 not till the month of December, which period is however 
 less favourable for the harvest. The cotyledons appear on 
 the eighth day, and the young plants are covered with large 
 leaves of heliconia and plantain, and shelter them from the 
 direct action of the sun. Great care also is taken to 
 destroy weeds, which, between the tropics, spring up with 
 astonishing rapidity. The tobacco is transplanted into a 
 rich and well-prepared soil, a month or two after it has risen 
 from the seed. The plants are disposed in regular rows, 
 three or four feet distant from each other. Care is taken 
 to weed them often, and the principal stalk is several times 
 topped, till greenish blue spots indicate to the cultivator the 
 maturity of the leaves. They begin to gather them in the 
 fourth month, and this first gathering generally terminates 
 in the space of a few days. It would be better if the leaves 
 were plucked only as they dry. In good years the culti- 
 vators cut the plant when it is only four feet high ; and the 
 shoot which springs from the root, throws out new leaves 
 with such rapidity that they may be gathered on the thir- 
 teenth or fourteenth day. These last have the cellular 
 tissue very much extended, and they contain more water, 
 more albumen, and less of that acrid, volatile principle 
 
 VOL. i. q 
 
226 
 
 CUALANA. TOBACCO. 
 
 which is but little soluble in water, and in which the stimu- 
 lant property of tobacco seems to reside. 
 
 At Cumanacoa the tobacco, after being gathered, under- 
 goes a preparation which the Spaniards call cura seca. The 
 leaves are suspended by threads of cocuiza ;* their ribs are 
 taken out, and they are twisted into cords. The prepared 
 tobacco should be carried to the king’s warehouses in the 
 month of June ; but the indolence of the inhabitants, and 
 the preference they give to the cultivation of maize and cas- 
 sava, usually prevent them from finishing the preparation 
 before the month of August. It is easy to conceive that the 
 leaves, so long exposed to very moist air, must lose some of 
 their flavour. The administrator of the farm keeps the 
 tobacco deposited in the king’s warehouses sixty days without 
 touching it. When this time is expired, the manoques are 
 opened to examine the quality. If the administrator find 
 the tobacco well prepared, he pays the cultivator three piastres 
 for the aroba of twenty-five pounds weight. The same 
 quantity is resold for the king’s profit at twelve piastres and 
 a half. The tobacco that is rotten (podrido), that is, again 
 gone into a state of fermentation, is publicly burnt ; and the 
 cultivator, who has received money in advance from the royal 
 farm, loses irrevocably the fruits of his long labour. We 
 saw heaps, amounting to five hundred arobas, burnt in the 
 great square, which in Europe might have served for making 
 snuff. 
 
 The soil of Cumanacoa is so favourable to this branch of 
 culture, that tobacco grows wild, wherever the seed finds any 
 moisture. It grows thus spontaneously at Cerro del Cuchi- 
 vano, and around the cavern of Caripe. The only kind of 
 tobacco cultivated at Cumanacoa, as well as in the neighbour- 
 ing districts of Aricagua and San Lorenzo, is that with large 
 sessile leaves,! called Virginia tobacco. The tobacco with 
 petiolate leaves, J which is the yeti of the ancient Mexicans, 
 is unknown. 
 
 In studying the history of our cultivated plants, we are 
 surprised to find that, before the conquest, the use of tobacco 
 was spread through the greater part of America, while the 
 potato was unknown both in Mexico and the West India 
 Islands, where it grows well in the mountainous regions. 
 
 * Agave Americana. + Nicotiana Tabacum. t Nicotiana rustica. 
 
INDIGO MANUFACTURE. 
 
 227 
 
 Tobacco has also been cultivated in Portugal since the year 
 1559, though the potato did not become an object of Euro- 
 pean agriculture till the end of the seventeenth and begin- 
 ning of the eighteenth century. This latter plant, which has 
 had so powerful an influence on the well-being of society, has 
 spread in both continents more slowly than tobacco, which 
 can be considered only as an article of luxury. 
 
 Next to tobacco, the most important culture of the valley 
 of Cumanacoa is that of indigo. The manufacturers of 
 Cumanacoa, of San Eernando, and of Arenas, produce indigo 
 of greater commercial value than that of Caracas; and 
 often nearly equalling in splendour and richness of colour 
 the indigo of G-uatimala. It was from that province that 
 the coasts of Cumana received the first seeds of the Indigo- 
 fera Anil ,* which is cultivated jointly with the Indigofera 
 tinctoria. The rains being very frequent in the valley of 
 Cumanacoa, a plant of four feet high yields no more colour- 
 ing matter than one of a third part that size in the arid 
 valleys of Aragua, to the west of the town of Caracas. 
 
 The manufactories we examined are all built on uniform 
 principles. Two steeping vessels, or vats, which receive the 
 plants intended to be brought into a state of fermentation, 
 are joined together. Each vat is fifteen feet square, and two 
 and a half deep. Prom these upper vats the liquor runs 
 into beaters, between which is placed the water-mill. The 
 axletree of the great wheel crosses the two beaters. It is 
 furnished with ladles, fixed to long handles, adapted for the 
 beating. Erom a spacious settling-vat, the colouring fecula 
 is carried to the drying place, and spread on planks of 
 brasiletto, which, having small wheels, can be sheltered 
 under a roof in case of sudden rains. Sloping and very low 
 roofs give the drying place the appearance of hot-houses at 
 some distance. In the valley of Cumanacoa, the fermenta- 
 tion of the plant is produced with astonishing rapidity. It 
 lasts in general but four or five hours. This short duration 
 can be attributed only to the humidity of the climate, and 
 the absence of the sun during the development of the plant. 
 
 * The indigo known in commerce is produced by four species of plants ; 
 the Indigofera tinctoria, I. anil, I. argentea, and I. dispertna. At the Rio 
 Negro, near the frontiers of Brazil, we found the I. argentea growing 
 | wild, but only in places anciently inhabited by Indians. 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 
 
 FOSSIL REMAINS. 
 
 I think I have observed, in the course of my travels, that the 
 drier the climate, the slower the vat works, and the greater 
 the quantity of indigo, at the minimum of oxidation, con- 
 tained in the stalks. In the province of Caracas, where 
 562 cubic feet of the plant slightly piled up yield thirty-five 
 or forty pounds of dry indigo, the liquid does not pass into 
 the beater till after twenty, thirty, or thirty-five hours. It 
 is probable that the inhabitants of Cumanacoa would extract 
 more colouring matter if they left the plants longer steeping 
 in the first vat.* During my abode at Cumana I made solu- 
 tions of the indigo of Cumanacoa, which is somewhat heavy 
 and coppery, and that of Caracas, in sulphuric acid, in 
 order to compare them, and the solution of the former 
 appeared to me to be of a much more intense blue. 
 
 The plain of Cumanacoa, spotted with farms and small 
 plantations of indigo and tobacco, is surrounded with moun- 
 tains, which towards the south rise to considerable height. 
 Everything indicates that the valley is the bottom of an ancient 
 lake. The mountains, which in ancient times formed its 
 shores, all rise perpendicularly in the direction of the plain. 
 The only outlet for the waters of the lake was on the side 
 of Arenas. In digging foundations, beds of round pebbles, 
 mixed with small bivalve shells, are found; and according 
 to the report of persons worthy of credit, there were dis- 
 covered, thirty years ago, at the bottom of the ravine of 
 San Juanillo, two enormous femoral bones, four feet long, 
 and weighing more than thirty pounds. The Indians ima- 
 gined that these were giants’ bones; whilst the half- 
 learned sages of the country, who assume the right of ex- 
 plaining everything, gravely asserted that they were mere 
 sports of nature, and little worthy of attention ; an opinion 
 founded on the circumstance that human bones decay 
 rapidly in the soil of Cumanacoa. In order to decorate 
 their churches on the festival of the dead, they take skulls 
 from the cemeteries on the coast, where the earth is impreg- 
 nated with saline substances. These pretended thigh-bones 
 of giants were carried to the port of Cumana, where I 
 sought for them in vain; but from the analogy of some 
 
 * The planters are pretty generally of opinion, that the fermentation 
 should never continue less than ten hours. — Beauvais -Raseau, “Art de 
 l’Indigo tier,” p. 81 . 
 
FOSSIL REMAINS. 
 
 229 
 
 fossil bones which I brought from other parts of South Ame- 
 rica, and which have been carefully examined by M. Cuvier, 
 it is probable that the gigantic femoral bones of Cumana- 
 coa belonged to elephants of a species now extinct. It may 
 appear surprising that they were found in a place so little 
 elevated above the present level of the waters ; since it is a 
 remarkable fact, that the fragments of the mastodons and 
 fossil elephants which I brought from the equinoctial regions 
 of Mexico, New Grenada, Quito, and Peru, were not found 
 in low regions (as were the megatherium of Eio Luxan* and 
 Virginia, f the great mastodons of the Ohio, and the fossil 
 elephants of the the Susquehanna, in the temperate zone), 
 but on table-lands having from six to fourteen hundred toises 
 of elevation. 
 
 As we approached the southern bank of the basin of 
 Cumanacoa, we enjoyed the view of the Turimiquiri.j; An 
 enormous wall of rocks, the remains of an ancient cliff, rises 
 in the midst of the forests. Farther to the west, at Cerro del 
 Cuchivano, the chain of mountains seems as if broken by 
 the effects of an earthquake. The crevice is more than a 
 hundred and fifty toises wide, is surrounded by perpendi- 
 cular rocks, and is filled with trees, the interwoven branches 
 of which find no room to spread. This cleft appears like 
 a mine opened by the falling in of the earth. It is inter- 
 sected by a torrent, the Eio Juagua, and its appearance 
 
 * One league south-east from the town of Buenos Ayres. 
 
 + The megatherium of Virginia is the megalonyx of Mr. Jefferson. 
 All the enormous remains found in the plains of the new continent, either 
 north or south of the equator, belong, not to the torrid, but to the tempe- 
 rate zone. On the other hand, Pallas observes that in Siberia, conse- 
 quently also northward of the tropics, fossil bones are never found in 
 mountainous parts. These facts, intimately connected together, seem cal- 
 culated to lead to the discovery of a great geological law. 
 
 X Some of the inhabitants pronounce this name Tumuriquiri, others 
 Turumiquiri, or Tumiriquiri. During the whole time of our stay at 
 Cumanacoa, the summit of this mountain was covered with clouds. It 
 appeared uncovered on the evening of the 11th of September, but only 
 for a few minutes. The angle of elevation, taken from the great square 
 of Cumanacoa, was 8° 2'. This determination, and the barometrical 
 measurement which I made on the 13th, may enable us to fix, within 
 a certain approximation, the distance of the mountain at six miles and a 
 third, or 6,050 toises; admitting that the part uncovered by clouds was 
 850 toises above the plain of Cumanacoa. 
 
230 
 
 HAUNT OF JAGUABS. 
 
 is highly picturesque. It is called Bisco del Cuchivano. 
 The river rises at the distance of seven leagues south- 
 west, at the foot of the mountain of the Brigantine, and it 
 forms some beautiful cascades before it spreads through 
 the plain of Cumanacoa. 
 
 We visited several times a small farm, the Conuco of 
 Bermudez, opposite the Bisco del Cuchivano, where tobacco, 
 plantains, and several species of cotton-trees,* * * § are culti- 
 vated in the moist soil ; especially that tree, the cotton of 
 which is of a nankeen colour, and which is so common in the 
 island of Margareta.f The proprietor of the farm told us 
 that the Bisco or crevice was inhabited by jaguar tigers. 
 These animals pass the day in caverns, and roam around 
 human habitations at night. Being well fed, they grow to 
 the length of six feet. One of them had devoured, in the 
 preceding year, a horse belonging to the farm. He dragged 
 his prey on a fine moonlight night, across the savannah, to 
 the foot of a ceiba J of an enormous size. The groans of the 
 dying horse awoke the slaves of the farm, who went out 
 armed with lances and machetes. || The tiger, crouching 
 over his prey, awaited their approach with tranquillity, and 
 fell only after a long and obstinate resistance. This fact, 
 and many others verified on the spot, prove that the great 
 jaguar § of Terra Pirma, like the jaguarete of Paraguay, and 
 the real tiger of Asia, does not flee from man when it is 
 dared to close combat, and when not intimidated by the 
 number of its assailants. Naturalists at present admit that 
 Buffon was entirely mistaken with respect to the greatest 
 of the feline race of America. What Buffon says of the 
 cowardice of tigers of the new continent, relates to the 
 small ocelots.^ At the Orinoco, the real jaguar of America 
 
 * Gossypiura uniglandulosum, improperly called herbaceum, and 
 G. barbadense. 
 
 »f* G. religiosum. J Bombax Ceiba: five-leaved silk-cotton tree. 
 
 [j Great knives, with very long blades, like a couteau de chasse. No 
 one enters the woods in the torrid zone without being armed with a 
 machete, not only to cut his way through the woods, but as a defence 
 against wild beasts. 
 
 § Felis onca, Lin., which Buffon called panthère oillêe, and which he 
 believed came from Africa. 
 
 Felis pardalis, Lin., or the chibiguazu of Azara, different from the 
 Tlateo-Ocelotl, or tiger-cat of the Aztecs. 
 
SUPPOSED GOLD MENT. 
 
 231 
 
 sometimes leaps into the water, to attack the Indians in 
 their canoes. 
 
 Opposite the farm of Bermudez, two spacious caverns 
 open into the crevice of Cuchivano, whence at times there 
 issue flames, which may be seen at a great distance in the 
 night ; and, judging by the elevation of the rocks, above 
 which these fiery exhalations ascend, we should be led to 
 think that they rise several hundred feet. This phenomenon 
 was accompanied by a subterranean, dull, and long conti- 
 nued noise, at the time of the last great earthquake of Cu- 
 mana. It is observed chiefly during the rainy season ; and 
 the owners of the farms opposite the mountain of Cuchivano 
 allege that the flames have become more frequent since 
 December 1797. 
 
 In a herborizing excursion we made at Binconada we at- 
 tempted to penetrate into the crevice, wishing to examine 
 the rocks which seemed to contain in their bosom the cause 
 of these extraordinary conflagrations ; but the strength of the 
 vegetation, the interweaving of the lianas, and thorny plants, 
 hindered our progress. Happily the inhabitants of the 
 valley themselves felt a warm interest in our researches, 
 less from the fear of a volcanic explosion, than because their 
 minds were impressed with the idea that the Bisco del 
 Cuchivano contained a gold mine ; and although we ex- 
 pressed our doubts of the existence of gold in a secondary 
 limestone, they insisted on knowing “what the German 
 miner thought of the richness of the vein.” Ever since 
 the time of Charles Y. and the government of the Welsers, 
 the Alfingers, and the Sailers, at Coro and Caracas, the 
 people of Terra Eirma have entertained a great confidence 
 in the Germans with respect to all that relates to the work- 
 ing of mines. Wherever I went in South America, when 
 the place of my birth was known, I was shown samples of 
 ore. In these colonies every Frenchman is supposed to be 
 ‘a physician, and every German a miner. 
 
 The farmers, with the aid of their slaves, opened a path 
 across the woods to the first fall of the Bio Juagua ; and on 
 the 10th of September we made our excursion to the Cuchi- 
 vano. On entering the crevice we recognised the proximity 
 of tigers by a porcupine recently embowelled. For greater 
 security the Indians returned to the farm, and brought back 
 
232 
 
 PARASITIC PLANTS. 
 
 some dogs of a very small breed. We were assured that in 
 the event of our meeting a jaguar in a narrow path he would 
 spring on the dog rather than on a man. We did not 
 proceed along the brink of the torrent, but on the slope of 
 the rocks which overhung the water. We walked on the 
 side of a precipice from two to three hundred feet deep, 
 on a kind of very narrow cornice, like the road which leads 
 from the Grindelwald along the Mettenberg to the great 
 glacier. When the cornice was so narrow that we could 
 find no place for our feet, we descended into the torrent, 
 crossed it by fording, and then climbed the opposite wall. 
 These descents are very fatiguing, and it is not safe to trust 
 to the lianas, which hang like great cords from the tops of 
 the trees. The creeping and parasite plants cling but feebly 
 to the branches which they embrace ; the united weight of 
 their stalks is considerable, and you run the risk of pulling 
 down a whole mass of verdure, if, in walking on a sloping 
 ground, you support your weight by the lianas. The farther 
 we advanced the thicker the vegetation became. In several 
 places the roots of the trees had burst the calcareous rock, by 
 inserting themselves into the clefts that separate the beds. 
 We had some trouble to carry the plants which we gathered 
 at every step. The cannas, the heliconias with fine purple 
 flowers, the costuses, and other plants of the amomum 
 family, here attain eight or ten feet in height, and their 
 fresh tender verdure, their silky gloss, and the extraordinary 
 development of the parenchyma, form a striking contrast 
 with the brown colour of the arborescent ferns, the foliage 
 of which is delicately shaped. The Indians made incisions 
 with their large knives in the trunks of the trees, and fixed 
 our attention on those beautiful red and gold-coloured 
 woods, which will one day be sought for by our turners and 
 cabinet-makers. They showed us a plant of the compositæ 
 order, twenty feet high (the Eupatorium lævigatum of La- 
 marck), the rose of Belveria, # celebrated for the brilliancy 
 of its purple flowers, and the dragon’s-blood of this country, 
 which is a kind of croton not yet described.! The red and 
 
 * Brownea racemosa. 
 
 *t Plants of families entirely different are called in the Spanish colonies 
 of both continents, sangre de draco ; they are dracænas, pterocarpi, and 
 crotons. Father Caulin, (Descrip. Corografica, p. 25,) in speaking of 
 
GEOLOGIC EOEMATIOKS. 
 
 233 
 
 astringent juice of tliis plant is employed to strengthen the 
 gums. The Indians recognize the species by the smell, 
 and more particularly by chewing the woody fibres. Two 
 natives, to whom the same wood was given to chew, pro- 
 nounced without hesitation the same name. We could avail 
 ourselves but little of the sagacity of our guides, for how 
 could we procure leaves, flowers, and fruits growing on 
 trunks, the branches of which commence at fifty or sixty feet 
 high ? We were struck at finding in this hollow the bark 
 of trees, and even the soil, covered with moss* and lichens. 
 The cryptogamous plants are here as common as in northern 
 countries. Their growth is favoured by the moisture of the 
 air, and the absence of the direct rays of the sun. Never- 
 theless the temperature is generally at 25° in the day, and 
 19° at night. 
 
 The rocks which bound the crevice of Cuchivano are per- 
 pendicular like walls, and are of the same calcareous forma- 
 tion which we observed the whole way from Punta Delgada. 
 It is here a blackish grey, of compact fracture, tending some- 
 times towards the sandy fracture, and crossed by small veins 
 of white carbonated lime. In these characteristic marks we 
 thought we discovered the alpine limestone of Switzerland 
 and the Tyrol, of which the colour is always deep, though 
 in a less degree than that of the transition limestone.+ The 
 first of these formations constitutes the Cuchivano, the 
 nucleus of the Imposible, and in general the whole group of 
 the mountains of New Andalusia. I saw no petrifactions in 
 it ; but the inhabitants assert that considerable masses of 
 shells are found at great heights. The same phenomenon 
 occurs in the country about Salzburg. £ At the Cuchivano 
 the alpine limestone contains beds of marly clay,§ three or 
 resins found in the forests of Cumana, makes a just distinction between 
 the Draco de la Sierra de Unare, which has pinnate leaves (Pterocarpus 
 Draco), and the Draco de la Sierra de Paria, with entire and hairy leaves. 
 The latter is the Croton sanguifluum of Cumanacoa, Caripe, and Cariaco. 
 
 * Real musci frondosi. We also found, besides a small Boletus stipi- 
 tatus, of a snow-white colour, the Boletus igniarius, and the Lycoperdon 
 stellatum of Europe. I had found this last only in very dry places in 
 Germany and Poland. 
 
 t Escher, in the “ Alpina,” vol. iv., p. 340. 
 
 + In Switzerland, the solitary beds of shells, at the height of from 
 1,300 to 2,000 toises, (in the Jungfrauhorn, the Dent de Morde, and the 
 Dent du Midi,) belong to transition limestone. § Mergelschiefer. 
 
GEOLOGIC FORMATIONS. 
 
 234 
 
 four toises thick ; and this geological fact proves on the one 
 hand the identity of the alpenkalkstein with the zechstein of 
 Thuringia, and on the other the affinity of formation existing 
 between the alpine limestone and that of the Jura. # The 
 strata of marl effervesce with acids, though silex and alumina 
 predominate in them : they are strongly impregnated with 
 carbon, and sometimes blacken the hands, like a real vitriolic 
 schistus. The supposed gold mine of Cuchivano, which was 
 the object of oui’ examination, is nothing but an excavation 
 cut into one of those black strata of marl, which contain 
 pyrites in abundance. The excavation is on the right bank 
 of the river Juagua, and must be approached with caution, 
 because the torrent there is more than eight feet deep. The 
 sulphurous pyrites are found, some massive, and others crys- 
 tallized and disseminated in the rock ; their colour, of a very 
 clear golden yellow, does not indicate that they contain 
 copper. They are mixed with fibrous sulphuret of iron,+ 
 and nodules of swinestone, or fetid carbonate of lime. The 
 marly stratum crosses the torrent ; and, as the water washes 
 
 * The Jura and the Alpine limestone are kindred formations, and they 
 are sometimes difficult to be distinguished, where they lie immediately 
 one upon another, as in the Apennines. The alpine limestone and the 
 zechstein, famous among the geologists of Freyberg, are identical formations. 
 This identity, which I noticed in the year 1793 (Uber die Grubenwetter), 
 is a geological fact the more interesting» as it seems to unite the 
 northern European formations to those of the central chain. It is known 
 that the zechstein is situated between the muriatiferous gypsum and the 
 conglomerate (ancient sandstone) ; or where there is no muriatiferous 
 gypsum, between the slaty sandstone with roestones (bunte sandstein, 
 Wern.), and the conglomerate or ancient sandstone. It contains strata 
 of schistous and coppery marl ( bituminoce mergel and kupferschiefer) 
 which form an important object in the working of mines at Mansfeld in 
 Saxony, near Riegelsdorf in Hesse, and at Hasel and Prausnitz, in Silesia. 
 In the southern part of Bavaria (Oberbaiern), I saw the alpine limestone, 
 containing these same strata of schistous clay and marl, which, though 
 thinner, whiter, and especially more frequent, characterize the limestone 
 of Jura. Respecting the slates of Blattenberg, in the canton of Glaris, 
 which some mineralogists, because of their numerous impressions of fish, 
 have long mistaken for the cupreous slates of Mansfeld, they belong, 
 according to M. von Buch, to a real transition formation. All these 
 geological data tend to prove that strata of marl, more or less mixed 
 with carbon, are to be found in the limestone of Jura, in the alpine lime- 
 stone, and in the transition schists. The mixture of carbon, sulphuretted 
 iron, and copper, appears to me to augment with the relative antiquity of 
 the formations. + Haarkies. 
 
SUPPOSED GOLD-OBE. 
 
 235 
 
 out metallic grains, the people imagine, on account of the 
 brilliancy of the pyrites, that the torrent bears down gold. 
 It is reported, that, after the great earthquake which took 
 place in 1766, the waters of the Juagua were so charged 
 with gold, that “ men who came from a great distance, and 
 whose country was unknown,” established washing-places on 
 the spot. They disappeared during the night, after having 
 collected a great quantity of gold. It would be needless to 
 show that this is a fable. Pyrites dispersed in quartzose 
 veins, crossing the mica-slate, are often auriferous, no 
 doubt ; but no analogous fact leads to the supposition that 
 the sulphuretted iron which is found in the schistose marls 
 of the alpine limestone, contains gold. Some direct experi- 
 ments, made with acids, during my abode at Caracas, 
 showed that the pyrites ‘of Cuchivano are not auriferous. 
 Our guides were amazed at my incredulity. In vain I 
 repeated that alum and sulphate of iron only could be 
 obtained from this supposed gold mine; they continued 
 picking up secretly every bit of pyrites they saw sparkling 
 in the water. In countries possessing few mines, the in- 
 habitants entertain exaggerated ideas respecting the faci- 
 lity with which riches are drawn from the bowels of the 
 earth. How much time did we not lose during five years’ 
 travels, in visiting, on the pressing invitations of our hosts, 
 ravines, of which the pyritous strata have borne for ages the 
 imposing names of ‘Minas de oro!’ How often have we 
 been grieved to see men of all classes, magistrates, pastors 
 of villages, grave missionaries, grinding, with inexhaustible 
 patience, amphibole, or yellow mica, in the hope of ex- 
 tracting gold from it by means of mercury ! This rage for 
 the search of mines strikes us the more in a climate where 
 the ground needs only to be slightly raked to produce abun- 
 dant harvests. 
 
 After visiting the pyritous marls of the Rio Juagua, we 
 continued following the course of the crevice, which stretches 
 along like a narrow canal overshadowed by very lofty trees. 
 We observed strata on the left bank, opposite Cerro del 
 Cuchivano, singularly crooked and twisted. This phenome- 
 non I had often admired at the Ochsenberg,* in passing the 
 
 * This mountain of Switzerland is composed of transition limestone. 
 We find these same inflexions in the strata near Bonneville, at Nante 
 
236 
 
 C AYE KNOTT S EOCKS. 
 
 lake of Lucerne. The calcareous beds of the Cuchivano 
 and the neighbouring mountains keep pretty regularly the 
 direction of N.N.E. and S.S.W. Their inclination is some- 
 times north and sometimes south ; most commonly they 
 seem to take a direction towards the valley of Cumanacoa ; 
 and it cannot be doubted that the valley has an influence* 
 on the inclination of the strata. 
 
 We had suffered great fatigue, and were quite drenched 
 by frequently crossing the torrent, when we reached the 
 caverns of the Cuchivano. A wall of rock there rises per- 
 pendicularly to the height of eight hundred toises. It is 
 seldom that in a zone where the force of vegetation every- 
 where conceals the soil and the rocks, we behold a great 
 mountain presenting naked strata in a perpendicular section. 
 In the middle of this section, and in a position unfortu- 
 nately inaccessible to man, two caverns open in the form 
 of crevices. We were assured that they are inhabited by 
 nocturnal birds, the same as those we were soon to become 
 acquainted with in the Cueva del Guacliaro of Caripe. Near 
 these caverns we saw strata of schistose marl, and found, 
 with great astonishment, rock-crystals encased in beds of 
 alpine limestone. They were hexahedral prisms, terminated 
 with pyramids, fourteen lines long and eight thick. The 
 crystals, perfectly transparent, were solitary, and often three 
 or four toises distant from each other. They were enclosed 
 in the calcareous mass, as the quartz crystals of Burgtonna,f 
 and the boracite of Lunebourg, are contained in gypsum. 
 There was no crevice near, or any vestige of calcareous 
 spar 4 
 
 d’ Arpenas in Savoy, and in the valley of Estaubée in the Pyrenees. 
 Another transition rock,, the grauwakke of the Germans (very near the 
 English killas ), exhibits the same phenomenon in Scotland. 
 
 * The same observation may apply to the lake of Gemunden in 
 Styria, which I visited with M. von Buch, and which is one of the most 
 picturesque situations in Europe. 
 
 t In the duchy of Gotha. 
 
 + This phenomenon reminds us of another equally rare, the quartz 
 crystals found by M. Freiesleben in Saxony, near Burgorner, in the 
 county of Mansfeld, in the middle of a rock of porous limestone (rauch- 
 wakke), lying immediately on the alpine limestone. The rock crystals, 
 which are pretty common in the primitive limestone of Carrara, line the 
 insides of cavities in the rocks, without being enveloped by the rock 
 itself. 
 
VOLCANIC LIGHT. 
 
 237 
 
 We reposed at the foot of the cavern whence those 
 flames were seen to issue, which of late years have 
 become more frequent. Our guides and the farmer, an 
 intelligent man, equally acquainted with the localities of 
 the province, discussed, in the manner of the Creoles, the 
 dangers to which the town of Cumanacoa would be exposed 
 if the Cuchivano became an active volcano, or, as they 
 expressed it, “se veniesse a reventar.” It appeared to 
 them evident, that since the great earthquakes of Quito 
 and Cumana in 1797, New Andalusia was every day more 
 and more undermined by subterranean fires. They cited 
 the flames which had been seen to issue from the earth at 
 Cumana; and the shocks felt in places where heretofore 
 the ground had never been shaken. They recollected that 
 at Macarapan, sulphurous emanations had been frequently 
 perceived for some months past. We were struck with 
 these facts, upon which were founded predictions that have 
 since been almost all realized. Enormous convulsions of 
 the earth took place at Caracas in 1812, and proved how 
 tumultuously nature is agitated in the north-east part of 
 Terra-Eirma. 
 
 But what is the cause of the luminous phenomena which 
 are observed in the Cuchivano ? The column of air which 
 rises from the mouth of a burning volcano* is sometimes 
 observed to shine with a splendid light. This light, which 
 is believed to be owing to the hydrogen gas, was observed 
 from Chillo, on the summit of the Cotopaxi, at a time when 
 the mountain seemed in the greatest repose. According to 
 the statements of the ancients, the Mons Albanus, near 
 Borne, known at present under the name of Monte Cavo, 
 appeared at times on fire during the night ; but the Mons 
 Albanus is a volcano recently extinguished, which, in the 
 time of Cato, threw out rapilli ;t while the Cuchivano is a 
 calcareous mountain, remote from any trap formation. 
 
 * We must not confound this very rare phenomenon with the glimmer- 
 ing commonly observed a few toises above the brink of a crater, and 
 which (as I remarked at Mount Yesuvius in 1805) is only the reflection 
 of great masses of inflamed scoria, thrown up without sufficient force to 
 pass the mouth of the volcano. 
 
 t “ Albano monte biduum continenter lapidibus pluit.” — Livy, lib. 
 sxv. cap. 7. (Heyne, Opuscula Acad., tom. iii. p. 261.) 
 
238 
 
 VOLCANIC LIGHT. 
 
 Can these flames be attributed to the decomposition of 
 water, entering into contact with the pyrites dispersed 
 through the schistose marl ? or is it inflamed hydrogen that 
 issues from the cavern of Cuchivano ? The marls, as the 
 smell indicates, are pyritous and bituminous at the same 
 time ; and the petroleum springs at the Buen Pastor, and in 
 the island of Trinidad, proceed probably from these same 
 beds of alpine limestone. It would be easy to suppose some 
 connexion between the waters filtering through this calca- 
 reous stone, and decomposed by pyrites and the earthquakes 
 of Cumana, the springs of sulphuretted hydrogen in New 
 Barcelona, the beds of native sulphur at Carupano, and the 
 emanations of sulphurous acid which are perceived at times 
 in the savannahs. It cannot be doubted also, that the 
 decomposition of water by the pyrites at an elevated tempe- 
 rature, favoured by the affinity of oxidated iron for earthy 
 substances, may have caused that disengagement of hydrogen 
 gas, to the action of which several modern geologists have 
 attributed so much importance. But in general, sulphurous 
 acid is perceived more commonly than hydrogen in the 
 eruption of volcanoes, and the odour of that acid principally 
 prevails while the earth is agitated by violent shocks. When 
 we take SL general view of the phenomena of volcanoes and 
 earthquakes, when we recollect the enormous distance at 
 which the commotion is propagated below the basin of 
 the sea, we readily discard explanations founded on small 
 strata of pyrites and bituminous marls. I am of opinion 
 that the shocks so frequently felt in the province of Cu- 
 mana are as little to be attributed to the rocks above the 
 surface of the earth, as those which agitate the Apennines 
 are assignable to asphaltic veins or springs of burning petro- 
 leum. The whole of these phenomena depend on more 
 general, I would almost say on deeper, causes ; and it is not 
 in the secondary strata which form the exterior crust of our 
 globe, but in the primitive rocks, at an enormous distance 
 from the soil, that we should seek the focus of volcanic 
 action. The greater progress we make in geology, the more 
 we feel the insufficiency of theories founded on observations 
 merely local. 
 
 On the 12th of September we continued our journey to 
 the convent of Caripe, the principal settlement of the 
 
HATO DEL COCOLLAR. 
 
 239 
 
 Chayma missions. We chose, instead of the direct road, 
 that by the mountains of the Cocollar* and the Turimiquiri, 
 the height of which little exceeds that of Jura. The road 
 first runs eastward, crossing over the length of three leagues 
 the table-land of Cumanacoa, in a soil formerly levelled by 
 the waters: it then turns to the south. We passed the 
 little Indian village of Aricagua surrounded by woody hills. 
 Thence we began to ascend, and the ascent lasted more than 
 four hours. We crossed two-and- twenty times the river of 
 Pututucuar, a rapid torrent, full of blocks of calcareous 
 rock. When, on the Cuesta del Oocollar, we reached an 
 elevation two thousand feet above the level of the sea, we 
 were surprised to find scarcely any forests or great trees. 
 We passed over an immense plain covered with gramineous 
 plants. Mimosas with hemispheric tops, and stems only 
 four or five feet high, alone vary the dull uniformity of the 
 savannahs. Their branches are bent towards the ground or 
 spread out like umbrellas. Wherever there are deep decli- 
 vities, or masses of rocks half covered with mould, the clusia 
 or cupey, with great nymphæa flowers, displays its beauti- 
 ful verdure. The roots of this tree are eight inches in dia- 
 meter, and they sometimes shoot out from the trunk at the 
 height of fifteen feet above the soil. 
 
 After having climbed the mountain for a considerable time, 
 we reached a small plain at the Hato del Cocollar. This is a 
 solitary farm, situated on a table-land 408 toises high. We 
 rested three days in this retreat, where we were treated 
 with great kindness by the proprietor, Don Mathias Ytur- 
 buri, a native of Biscay, who had accompanied us from the 
 port of Cumana. We there found milk, excellent meat 
 from the richness of the pasture, and above all, a delightful 
 climate. During the day the centigrade thermometer did 
 not rise above 22° or 23° ; a little before sunset it fell to 19°, 
 and at night it scarcely kept up to 14°. t The nightly tem- 
 perature was consequently seven degrees colder than that of 
 the coasts, which is a fresh proof of an extremely rapid 
 
 * Is this name of Indian origin ? At Cumana I heard it derived in a 
 manner somewhat far-fetched from the Spanish word coy olio, signifying 
 the heart of oleraceous plants. The Cocollar forms the centre of the 
 whole group of the mountains of New Andalusia. 
 
 f 11.2° Reaum. 
 
240 
 
 DELICIOUS ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 decrement of heat, the table-land of Cocollar being less 
 elevated than the site of the town of Caracas. 
 
 As far as the eye could reach, we perceived, from this 
 elevated point, only naked savannahs. Small tufts of scat- 
 tered trees rise in the ravines; and notwithstanding the 
 apparent uniformity of vegetation, great numbers of curious 
 plants* are found here. We shall only speak of a superb 
 lobelia f with purple flowers ; the Brownea coccinea, which is 
 upwards of a hundred feet high ; and above all, the pejoa, 
 celebrated in the country on account of the delightful and 
 aromatic perfume emitted by its leaves when rubbed be- 
 tween the fingers.^ But the great charms of this solitary 
 place were the beauty and serenity of the nights. The pro- 
 prietor of the farm, who spent his evenings with us, seemed 
 to enjoy the astonishment produced on Europeans newly 
 transplanted to the tropics, by that vernal freshness of the 
 air which is felt on the mountains after sunset. In those 
 distant regions, where men yet feel the full value of the 
 gifts of nature, a land-holder boasts of the water of his 
 spring, the absence of noxious insects, the salutary breeze 
 that blows round his hill, as we in Europe descant on the 
 conveniences of our dwellings, and the picturesque effect of 
 our plantations. 
 
 Our host had visited the new world with an expedition 
 which was to form establishments for felling wood for the 
 Spanish navy on the shores of the gulf of Paria. In the 
 vast forests of mahogany, cedar, and brazil-wood, which 
 border the Caribbean Sea, it was proposed to select the 
 
 * Cassia acuta, Andromeda rigida, Casearia hvpericifolia, Myrtus longi- 
 folia, Buettneria salicifolia, Glycine picta, G. pratensis, G. gibba, Oxalis 
 umbrosa, Malpighia caripensis, Cephælis salicifolia, Stylosanthes angusti- 
 folia, Salvia pseudococcinea, Eryngium fœtidum. We found a second 
 time this last plant, but at a considerable height, in the great forests of 
 bark trees surrounding the town of Loxa, in the centre of the Cordilleras. 
 
 f Lobelia spectabilis. 
 
 X It is the Gualtheria odorata. The pejoa is found round the lake of 
 Cocollar, which gives birth to the great river Guarapiche. We met with 
 the same shrub at the Cuchilla de Guanaguana. It is a subalpine plant, 
 which forms at the Silla de Caracas a zone much higher than in the 
 province of Cumana. The leaves of the pejoa have even a more agreeable 
 smell than those of the Myrtus pimenta, but they yield no perfume when 
 rubbed a few hours after their separation from the tree. 
 
TRANQUILLITY OF NATURE. 
 
 241 
 
 trunks of the largest trees, giving them in a rough way 
 the shape adapted to the building of ships, and sending 
 them every year to the dockyard near Cadiz. White men, 
 unaccustomed to the climate, could not support the fatigue 
 of labour, the heat, and the effect of the noxious air exhaled 
 by the forests. The same winds which are loaded with 
 the perfume of flowers, leaves, and wnods, infuse also, as 
 we may say, the germs Qf dissolution into the vital organs. 
 Destructive fevers carried off not only the ship-carpenters, 
 but the persons who had the management of the establish- 
 ment ; and this bay, which the early Spaniards named Grolfe 
 Triste (Melancholy Bay), on account of the gloomy and 
 wild aspect of its coasts, became the grave of European 
 seamen. Our host had the rare good fortune to escape these 
 dangers. After having witnessed the death of a great num- 
 ber of his friends, he withdrew from the coast to the moun- 
 tains of Cocollar. 
 
 iSTo thing can be compared to the majestic tranquillity 
 which the aspect of the firmament presents in this solitary 
 region. When tracing with the eye, at night-fall, the mea- 
 dows which bounded the horizon, — the plain covered with ver- 
 dure and gently undulated, we thought we beheld from afar, 
 as in the deserts of the Orinoco, the surface of the ocean 
 supporting the starry vault of Heaven. The tree under 
 which we were seated, the luminous insects flying in the 
 air, the constellations which shone in the south ; every 
 object seemed to tell us how far we were from our native 
 land. If amidst this exotic nature we heard from the 
 depth of the valley the tinkling of a bell, or the lowing of 
 herds, the remembrance of our country was awakened sud- 
 denly. The sounds were like distant voices resounding from 
 beyond the ocean, and with magical power transporting us 
 from one hemisphere to the other. Strange mobility of 
 the imagination of man, eternal source of our enjoyments 
 and our pains ! 
 
 We began in the cool of the morning to climb the Turimi- 
 quiri. This is the name given to the summit of the Cocol- 
 lar, which, with the Brigantine, forms one single mass of 
 mountain, formerly called by the natives the Sierra de los 
 Tageres. We travelled along a part of the road on horses, 
 which roam about these savannahs ; but some of them are 
 
 YOL. I. R 
 
242 
 
 ORIGIN or SAVANNAHS. 
 
 used to tlie saddle. Though their appearance is very heavy, 
 they pass lightly over the most slippery turf. We first 
 stopped at a spring issuing, not from the calcareous rock, 
 but from a layer of quart zose sandstone. The temperature 
 was 21°, consequently T5° less than the spring of Quetepe ; 
 and the difference of the level is nearly 220 toises. Where- 
 ever the sandstone appears above ground the soil is level, and 
 constitutes as it were small platforms, succeeding each other I 
 like steps. To the height of 700 toises, and even beyond, 
 this mountain, like those in its vicinity, is covered only with 
 gramineous plants.* The absence of trees is attributed at ] 
 Cumana to the great elevation of the ground ; but a slight 
 reflection on the distribution of plants in the Cordilleras of j 
 the torrid zone will lead us to conceive that the summits of \ 
 New Andalusia are very far from reaching the superior limit 
 of the trees, which in this latitude is at least 1800 toises of 
 absolute height. The smooth turf of the Cocollar begins to 
 appear at 350 toises above the level of the sea, and the 
 traveller may contrive to walk upon this turf till he reaches 
 a thousand toises in height. Farther on, beyond this band 
 covered with gramineous plants, we found, amidst peaks 
 almost inaccessible to man, a small forest of cedrela, javillo,t 
 and mahogany. These local circumstances induce me to 
 think that the mountainous savannahs of the Cocollar and 
 Turimiquiri owe their existence only to the .destructive cus- 
 tom practised by the natives of setting fire to the woods 
 when they want to convert the soil into pasturage. Where, 
 during the lapse of three centuries, grasses and alpine plants 
 have covered the soil with a thick carpet, the seeds of trees 
 can no longer germinate and fix themselves in the earth, 
 though birds and winds convey them continually from the 
 distant forests into the savannahs. 
 
 * The most abundant species are the paspalus ; the Andropogon fasti- 
 giatum, which forms the genus Diectomis of M. Palissot de Beauvais ; 
 and the Panicum olyroïdes. 
 
 + Huras crepitans, of the family of the euphorbias. The growth of 
 its trunk is so enormous, that M. Bonpland measured vats of javillo 
 wood, 14 feet long and 8 wide. These vats, made from one log of wood, 
 are employed to keep the guarapo, or juice of the sugar-cane, and the mo- 
 lasses. The seeds of javillo are a very active poison, and the milk that 
 issues from the petioles, when broken, frequently produced inflammation 
 in our eyes, if by chance the least quantity penetrated under the eyelids. 
 
MIXED YEGETATIOX. 
 
 243. 
 
 The climate of these mountains is so mild that at the farm 
 of the Cocollar the cotton and coffee tree, and even the sugar 
 cane, are cultivated with success. Whatever the inhabitants 
 of the coasts may allege, hoar-frost has never been found in 
 the latitude of 10°, on heights scarcely exceeding those of 
 the Mont d’Or, or the Puy-de-Dôme. The pastures of 
 Turimiquiri become less rich in proportion to the elevation. 
 Wherever scattered rocks afford shade, lichens and some 
 European mosses are found. The Melastoma guacito,* and 
 a shrub, the large and tough leaves of which rustle like 
 parchment f when shaken by the winds, rise here and there 
 in the savannah. But the principal ornament of the turf of 
 these mountains is a liliaceous plant with golden flowers, the 
 Marica martinicensis. It is generally observed in the pro- 
 vince of Cumana and Caracas only at 400 or 500 toises of 
 elevation. £ The whole rocky mass of the Turimiquiri is 
 composed of an alpine limestone, like that of Cumanacoa, 
 and a pretty thin strata of marl and quartzose sandstone. 
 The limestone contains masses of brown oxidated iron and 
 carbonate of iron. I have observed in several places, and 
 very distinctly, that the sandstone not only reposes on the 
 limestone, but that this last rock frequently includes and 
 alternates with the sandstone. 
 
 We distinguished clearly the round summit of the Turimi- 
 quiri and the lofty peaks or, as they are called, the Cucu- 
 ruchos, covered with thick vegetation, and infested by tigers 
 which are hunted for the beauty of their skin. This round 
 summit, which is covered with turf, is 707 toises above the 
 level of the ocean. A ridge of steep rocks stretches out 
 westward, and is broken at the distance of a mile by an 
 enormous crevice that descends toward the gulf .of Cariaco. 
 At the point which might be supposed to be the continua- 
 tion of the ridge, two calcareous paps or peaks arise, the 
 most northern of which is the loftiest. It is this last which 
 is more particularly called the Cucurucho de Turimiquiri, 
 
 * Melastoma xanthostachys, called guaciio at Caracas. 
 
 + Palicourea rigida, chaparro bovo. In the savannahs, or llanos, the 
 same Castilian name is given to a tree of the family of the proteaceæ. 
 
 + For example, in the Montana de Avila, on the road from Caracas 
 to La Guayra, and in the Silla de Caracas. The seeds of the marica are 
 ripe at the end of December. 
 
 R 2 
 
244 
 
 VIEW FROM THE TURIMIQUIRI. 
 
 and which is considered to be higher than the mountain of 
 the Brigantine, so well known by the sailors who frequent 
 the coasts of Cumana. We measured, by angles of elevation, 
 and a basis, rather short, traced on the round summit, the 
 peak of Cucurucho, which was about 350 toises higher than 
 our station, so that its absolute height exceeded 1050 toises. 
 
 The view we enjoyed on the Turimiquiri is of vast extent, 
 and highly picturesque. From the summit to the ocean we 
 perceived chains of mountains extended in parallel lines from 
 east to west, and bounding longitudinal valleys. These val- 
 leys are intersected at right angles by an infinite number of 
 small ravines, scooped out by the torrents : the consequence 
 is, that the lateral ranges are transformed into so many rows 
 of paps, some round and others pyramidal. The ground in 
 general is a gentle slope as far as the Imposible; farther on 
 the precipices become bold, and continue so to the shore of 
 the gulf of Cariaco. The form of this mass of mountains 
 reminded us of the chain of the Jura ; and the only plain 
 that presents itself is the valley of Cumanacoa. We seemed 
 to look down into the bottom of a funnel, in which we could 
 distinguish, amidst tufts of scattered trees, the Indian vil- 
 lage of Aricagua. Towards the north, a narrow slip of land, 
 the peninsula of Araya, formed a dark stripe on the sea, 
 which, being illumined by the rays of the sun, reflected 
 a strong light. Beyond the peninsula the horizon was 
 bounded by Cape Macanao, the black rocks of which rise 
 amid the waters like an immense bastion. 
 
 The farm of the Cocollar, situated at the foot of the 
 Turimiquiri, is in latitude 19° 9' 32". I found the dip of 
 the needle 42T°. The needle oscillates 229 times in ten 
 minutes. Possibly masses of brown iron-ore, included in 
 the calcareous rock, caused a slight augmentation in the 
 intensity of the magnetic forces. 
 
 On the 14th of September we descended the Cocollar, 
 toward the [Mission of San Antonio. After crossing several 
 savannahs strewed with large blocks of calcareous stone, we 
 entered a thick lorest. Having passed two ridges of extremely 
 steep mountains,* we discovered a fine valley five or six 
 
 * These ridges, which are rather difficult to climb towards the end of 
 the rainy season, are distinguished by the names of Los Yepes and Fan- 
 tasma. 
 
MISSION OF SAN ANTONIO. 
 
 245 
 
 leagues in length, pretty uniformly following the direction 
 of east and west. In this valley are situated the Missions 
 of San Antonio and Guanaguana; the first is famous on 
 account of a small church with two towers, built of brick, in 
 pretty good style, and ornamented with columns of the Doric 
 order. It is the wonder of the country. The prefect of the 
 Capuchins completed the building of this church in less than 
 two summers, though he employed only the Indians of his 
 village. The mouldings of the capitals, the cornices, and a 
 frieze decorated with suns and arabesques, are executed in 
 clay mixed with pounded brick. If we are surprised to find 
 churches in the purest Grecian style on the confines of 
 Lapland,* we are still more struck with these first essays of 
 art, in a region where everything indicates the wild state 
 of man, and where the basis of civilization has not been 
 laid by Europeans more than forty years. 
 
 I stopped at the Mission of San Antonio only to open the 
 barometer, and to take a few altitudes of the sun. The 
 elevation of the great square above Cumana is 216 toises. 
 After having crossed the village, we forded the rivers Colo- 
 rado and Guarapiche, both of which rise in the mountains 
 of the Cocollar, and blend their waters lower down towards 
 the east. The Colorado has a very rapid current, and be- 
 comes at its mouth broader than the Rhine. The Guara- 
 piche, at its junction with the Rio Areo, is more than 
 twenty-five fathoms deep. Its banks are ornamented by a 
 superb gramen, of which I made a drawing two years after- 
 ward on ascending the river Magdalena. The distich-leaved 
 stalk of this gramen often reaches the height of fifteen or 
 twenty feet.f 
 
 Towards evening we reached the Mission of Guanaguana, 
 the site of which is almost on a level with the village of San 
 Antonio. The missionary received us cordially ; he was an 
 old man, and he seemed to govern his Indians with great 
 
 * At Skelefter, near Torneo. — Buch, Voyage en Norwège. 
 
 t Lata, or cana brava. It is a new genus, between aira and arundo. 
 This colossal gramen looks like the donax of Italy. This, the arun- 
 dinaria of the Mississippi, (ludolfia, Willd., miegia of Persoon,) and the 
 bamboos, are the highest gramens of the New Continent. Its seed has 
 been carried to St. Domingo, where its stalk is employed to thatch the 
 negroes’ huts. 
 
246 
 
 THE NATIVE TILLAGES. 
 
 intelligence. The village has existed only thirty years on the 
 spot it now occupies. Before that time it was more to the 
 south, and was backed by a hill. It is astonishing with what 
 facility the Indians are induced to remove their dwellings. 
 There are villages in South America which in less than half 
 a century have thrice changed their situation. The native 
 finds himself attached by ties so feeble to the soil he inhabits, 
 that he receives with indifference the order to take down 
 his house and to rebuild it elsewhere. A village changes its 
 situation like a camp. Wherever clay, reeds, and the leaves 
 of the palm or heliconia are found, a house is built in a few 
 days. These compulsory changes have often no other motive 
 than the caprice of a missionary, who, having recently 
 arrived from Spain, fancies that the situation of the Mis- 
 sion is feverish, or that it is not sufficiently exposed to 
 the winds. Whole villages have been transported several 
 leagues, merely because the monk did not find the prospect 
 from his house sufficiently beautiful or extensive. 
 
 Guanaguana has as yet no church. The old monk, who 
 during thirty years had lived in the forests of America, 
 observed to us that the money of the community, or the pro- 
 duce of the labour of the Indians, was employed first in 
 the construction of the missionary’s house, next in that of 
 the church, and lastly in the clothing of the Indians. He 
 gravely assured us that this order of things could not be 
 changed on any pretence, and that the Indians, who prefer 
 a state of nudity to the slightest clothing, are in no hurry 
 for their turn in the destination of the funds. The spacious 
 abode of the 'pa&re had just been finished, and we had 
 remarked with surprise, that the house, the roof of which 
 formed a terrace, was furnished with a great number of 
 chimnies that looked like turrets. This, our host told us, 
 was done to remind him of a country dear to his recollection, 
 and to picture to his mind the winters of Aragon amid the 
 heat of the torrid zone. The Indians of Guanaguana culti- 
 vate cotton for their own benefit as well as for that of the 
 church and the missionary. The natives have machines of 
 a very simple construction to separate the cotton from the 
 seeds. These are wooden cylinders of extremely small dia- 
 meter, within which the cotton passes, and which are made 
 to turn by a treadle. These machines, however imperfect, 
 
TALLET OE GUANAGUANA. 
 
 247 
 
 are very useful, and they begin to be imitated in other Mis- 
 sions. The soil of Guanaguana is not less fertile than that 
 of Aricagua, a small neighbouring village, which has also 
 preserved its ancient Indian name. An ahnuda of land, 1850 
 square toises, produces in abundant years from 25 to 30 
 fanegas of maize, each fanega weighing 100 pounds. But 
 here, as in other places, where the bounty of nature retards 
 industry, a very small number of acres are cleared, and the 
 culture of alimentary plants is neglected. Scarcity of sub- 
 sistence is felt, whenever the harvest is lost by a protracted 
 drought. The Indians of Gruanaguana related to us as a fact 
 not uncommon, that in the preceding year they, their wives, 
 and their children, had been for three months al monte; by 
 which they meant, wandering in the neighbouring forests, 
 to live on succulent plants, palm-cabbages, fern roots, and 
 fruits of void trees. They did not speak of this nomade life 
 as of a state of privation. 
 
 The beautiful valley of Guanaguana stretches towards 
 the east, opening into the plains of Punzera and Tere- 
 cen. We wished to visit those plains, and examine the 
 springs of petroleum, lying between the river Guarapiche 
 and the Bio Areo ; but the rainy season had already arrived, 
 and we were in daily perplexity how to dry and preserve 
 the plants we had collected. The road from Guanaguana 
 to the village of Punzera runs either by San Pelix or by 
 Caycara and Guayuta, which is a farm for cattle (hato) 
 of the missionaries. In this last place, according to the 
 report of the Indians, great masses of sulphur are found, 
 not in a gypseous or calcareous rock, but at a small depth 
 below the soil, in a bed of clay. This singular phenome- 
 non appears to me peculiar to America; we found it 
 also in the kingdom of Quito, and in New Spain. On 
 approaching Punzera, we saw in the savannahs small bags, 
 formed of a silky tissue suspended from the branches 
 of the lowest trees. It is the seda silvestre, or wild silk 
 of the country, which has a beautiful lustre, but is very 
 rough to the touch. The phalæna which produces it is 
 probably analagous with that of the provinces of Guanax- 
 uato and Antioquia, which also furnish wild silk. We 
 found in the beautiful forest of Punzera two trees known 
 by the names of curucay and canela ; the former, of which 
 
248 
 
 LAKE OF ASPHALTUM. 
 
 we shall speak hereafter, yields a resin very much sought 
 after by the PiacJies, or Indian sorcerers; the leaves of 
 the latter have the smell of the real cinnamon of Cey- 
 lon.* From Punzera the road leads by Terecin and Nueva 
 Palencia, (a new colony of Canarians,) to the port of San 
 Juan, situated on the right bank of the river Areo; and 
 it is only by crossing this river in a canoe, that the tra- 
 veller can arrive at the famous petroleum springs (or mine- 
 ral tar) of the Buen Pastor. They were described to us 
 as small wells or funnels, hollowed out by nature in a 
 marshy soil. This phenomenon reminded us of the lake 
 of asphaltum, or of chapapote, in the island of Trinidad, t 
 which is distant from the Buen Pastor, in a straight line, 
 only thirty-five sea leagues. 
 
 Having long struggled to overcome the desire we felt to 
 descend the Guarapiche to the G-olfo Triste, we took the 
 direct road to the mountains. The valleys of Guanaguana 
 and Caripe are separated by a kind of dyke, or calcareous 
 ridge, well known by the name of the Cuchilla .J de Guana- 
 guana. We found this passage difficult, because at that 
 time we had not climbed the Cordilleras ; hut it is by no 
 means so dangerous as the people at Cumana love to re- 
 present it. The path is indeed in several parts only four- 
 teen or fifteen inches broad ; and the ridge of the mountain, 
 along which the road runs, is covered with a short slip- 
 pery turf. The slopes on each side are steep, and the 
 traveller, should he stumble, might slide down to the depth 
 of seven or eight hundred feet. Nevertheless, the flanks 
 of the mountain are steep declivities rather than preci- 
 pices ; and the mules of this coimtry are so sure-footed 
 
 * Is this the Lauras cinnamomoides of Mutis ? What is that other cin- 
 namon tree which the Indians call tuorco, common in the mountains of 
 Tocayo, and at the sources of the Rio Uchere, the bark of which is mixed 
 with chocolate ? Father Caulin gives the name of cui ucay to the Copai- 
 fera officinalis, which yields the Balsam of Capivi. — Hist. Corograf., pp. 
 24 and 34, 
 
 + Laguna de la Brea, south-east of the port of Naparima. There is 
 another spring of asphaltum on the eastern coast of the island, in the bay 
 of Mayaro. 
 
 J Literally “ blade of a knife.” Throughout all Spanish America the 
 name of “cuchilla” is given to the ridge of a mountain terminated on 
 each side by very steep declivities. 
 
SAGACITY OF THE MULE. 
 
 249 
 
 that they inspire the greatest confidence. Their habits 
 are identical with those of the beasts of burden in Swit- 
 zerland and the Pyrenees. In proportion as a country 
 is wild, the instinct of domestic animals improves in ad- 
 dress and sagacity. When the mules feel themselves in 
 danger, they stop, turning their heads to the right and 
 to the left ; and the motion of their ears seems to indicate 
 that they reflect on the decision they ought to take. Their 
 resolution is slow, but always just, if it be spontaneous ; 
 that is to say, if it be not thwarted or hastened by the im- 
 prudence of the traveller. On the frightful roads of the 
 Andes, during journeys of six or seven months across 
 mountains furrowed by torrents, the intelligence of horses 
 and beasts of burden is manifested in an astonishing man- 
 ner. Thus the mountaineers are heard to say, “I will 
 not give you the mule whose step is the easiest, but the 
 one which is most intelligent (la mas racional).” This popu- 
 lar expression, dictated by long experience, bears stronger 
 evidence against the theory of animated machines, than 
 all the arguments of speculative philosophy. 
 
 When we had reached the highest point of the ridge 
 or cuchilla of Gruanaguan?, an interesting spectacle un- 
 folded itself before us. We saw comprehended in one view 
 the vast savannahs or meadows of Maturin and of the Eio 
 Tigre ;* the peak of the Turimiquiri ;t and an infinite num- 
 ber of parallel ridges, which, seen at a distance, looked like 
 the waves of the sea. On the north-east opens the valley 
 in which is situated the convent of Caripe. The aspect of 
 this valley is peculiarly attractive, for being shaded by forests, 
 it forms a strong contrast with the nudity of the neigh- 
 bouring mountains, which are bare of trees, and covered 
 with gramineous plants. We found the absolute height 
 of the Cuchilla to be 548 toises. 
 
 Descending from the ridge by a winding path, we en- 
 tered into a completely woody country. The soil is covered 
 with moss, and a new species of drosera,§ which by its 
 form reminded us of the drosera of the Alps. The thick- 
 ness of the forests, and the force of vegetation, augmented 
 
 * These natural meadows are part of the llanos or immense steppes 
 bordered by the Orinoco. 
 
 t El Cucurucho. § Drosera tenella. 
 
250 
 
 DESCENT EEOil THE CUCHILLA. 
 
 as we approached the convent of Caripe. Everything 
 here changes its aspect, even to the rock that accompa- 
 nied ns from Punta Delgada. The calcareous strata be- 
 comes thinner, forming graduated steps, which stretch out 
 like walls, cornices, and turrets, as in the mountains of 
 Jura, those of Pappenheim in Germany, and near Oizow 
 in Galicia. The colour of the stone is no longer of a 
 smoky or bluish grey; it becomes white; its fracture is 
 smooth, and sometimes even imperfectly conchoidal. It 
 is no longer the calcareous formation of the Higher Alps, 
 but a formation to which this serves as a basis, and which 
 is analagous to the Jura limestone. In the chain of the 
 Apennines, between Pome and Hocera, I observed this 
 same immediate superposition.* It indicates, not the tran- 
 sition from one rock to another, but the geological affinity 
 existing between two formations. According to the general 
 type of the secondary strata, recognised in a great part 
 of Europe, the Alpine limestone is separated from the 
 Jura limestone by the muriatiferous gypsum ; but often 
 this latter is entirely wanting, or is contained as a subordi- 
 nate layer in the Alpine limestone. In this case the two 
 great calcareous formations succeed eaeh other immediately, 
 or are confounded in one mass. 
 
 The descent from the Cuchilla is far shorter than the 
 ascent. We found the level of the valley of Caripe 200 
 toises higher than that of the valley of Guanaguana.f A 
 group of mountains of little breadth separates two valleys, 
 one of which is of delicious coolness, while the other is 
 famed for the heat of its climate. These contrasts, so 
 common in Mexico, Hew Grenada, and Peru, are very rare 
 in the north-east part of South America. Thus Caripe is 
 the only one of the high valleys of Hew Andalusia which 
 is much inhabited. 
 
 * In like manner, near Geneva, the rock of the Mole, belonging to the 
 Alpine limestone, lies under the Jura limestone which forms Mount 
 Salève. 
 
 + Absolute height of the convent above the level of the sea, 412 toises. 
 
COXYEXT OF CARIPE. 
 
 251 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 Convent of Caripe. — Cavern of the Guacharo. — Nocturnal Birds. 
 
 Ax alley of perseas led ns to the Hospital of the Arago- 
 nese Capuchins. We stopped near a cross of Brazil-wood, 
 erected in the midst of a square, and surrounded with 
 benches, on which the infirm monks seat themselves to tell 
 their rosaries. The convent is backed by an enormous wall 
 of perpendicular rock, covered with thick vegetation. The 
 stone, which is of resplendent whiteness, appears only here 
 and there between the foliage. It is difficult to imagine a 
 more picturesque spot. It recalled forcibly to my remem- 
 brance the valleys of Derbyshire, and the cavernous moun- 
 tains of Muggendorf, in Franconia. Instead of the beeches 
 and maple trees of Europe we here find the statelier forms 
 of the ceiba and the palm-tree, the praga and irasse. Num- 
 berless springs gush from the sides of the rocks which 
 encircle the basin of Caripe, and of which the abrupt slopes 
 present, towards the south, profiles of a thousand feet in 
 height. These springs issue, for the most part, from a few 
 narrow crevices. The humidity which they spread around 
 favours the growth of the great trees ; and the natives, who 
 love solitary places, form their conucos along the sides of 
 these crevices. Plantains and papaw trees are grouped 
 together with groves of arborescent fern ; and this mixture 
 of wild and cultivated plants gives the place a peculiar 
 charm. Springs are distinguished from afar, on the naked 
 flanks of the mountains, by tufted masses of vegetation* 
 which at first sight seem suspended from the rocks, and 
 
 * Among the interesting plants of the valley of Caripe, we found for 
 the first time a calidium, the trunk of which was twenty feet high (C. arbo- 
 reum) ; the Mikania micrantha, which may probably possess some of the 
 alexipharmic properties of the famous guaco of the Choco ; the Bauhinia 
 obtusifolia, a very large tree, called guarapa by the Indians; the Wein- 
 mannia glabra ; a tree psychotria, the capsules of which, when rubbed 
 between the fingers, emit a very agreeable orange smell ; the Dorstenia 
 Houstoni (raiz de resfriado) ; the Martynia Craniolaria, the white flowers of 
 •which are six or seven inches long ; a scrophularia, having the aspect of 
 the Verbascum miconi, and the leaves of which, all radical and hairy, are 
 marked with silvery glands. 
 
252 
 
 INMATES OF THE CONTENT. 
 
 descending into tlie valley, they follow the sinuosities of the 
 torrents. 
 
 We were received with great hospitality by the monks 
 of Caripe. The building has an inner court, surrounded 
 by an arcade, like the convents in Spain. This enclosed 
 place was highly convenient for setting up our instruments 
 and making observations. We found a numerous society 
 in the convent. Young monks, recently arrived from Spain, 
 were just about to settle in the Missions, while old infirm 
 missionaries sought for health in the fresh and salubrious 
 air of the mountains of Caripe. I was lodged in the cell 
 of the superior, which contained a pretty good collection of 
 books. I found there, to my surprise, the Teatro Critico 
 of Feijoo, the Lettres Edifiantes , and the Traité d' Elec- 
 tricité by abbé Nollet. It seemed as if the progress of 
 knowledge advanced even in the forests of America. The 
 youngest of the capuchin monks of the last Mission had 
 Drought with him a Spanish translation of Chaptal’s Treatise 
 on Chemistry, and he intended to study this work in the 
 solitude where he was destined to pass the remainder of his 
 days. During our long abode in the Missions of South 
 America we never perceived any sign of intolerance. The 
 monks of Caripe were not ignorant that I was born in the 
 protestant part of Germany. Furnished as I was with orders 
 from the court of Spain, I had no motives to conceal from 
 them this fact ; nevertheless, no mark of distrust, no indis- 
 creet question, no attempt at controversy, ever diminished 
 the value of the hospitality they exercised with so much 
 liberality and frankness. 
 
 The convent is founded on a spot which was anciently 
 called Areocuar. Its height above the level of the sea is 
 nearly the same as that of the town of Caracas, or of the 
 inhabited part of the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. Thus 
 the mean temperatures of these three points, all situated 
 within the tropics, are nearly the same. The necessity of 
 being well clothed at night, and especially at sunrise, is 
 felt at Caripe. We saw the centigrade thermometer at 
 midnight, between 16° and 17*5° ; in the morning, between 
 19° and 20°. About one o’clock it had risen only to 21°, 
 or 22*5°. This temperature is sufficient for the develop- 
 ment of the productions of the torrid zone; though, com- 
 
INDIAN ALCALDES. 
 
 253 
 
 pared with the excessive heat of the plains of Cumana, we 
 might call it the temperature of spring. Water exposed 
 to currents of air in vessels of porous clay, cools at Caripe, 
 during the night, as low as 13°. 
 
 Experience has proved that the temperate climate and 
 rarefied air of this spot are singularly favourable to the cul- 
 tivation of the coffee-tree, which is well known to flourish 
 on heights. The prefect of the capuchins, an active and 
 enlightened man, has introduced into the province this new 
 branch of agricultural industry. Indigo was formerly planted 
 at Caripe, but the small quantity of fecula yielded by this 
 plant, which requires great heat, caused the culture to be 
 abandoned. We found in the conuco of the community many 
 culinary plants, maize, sugar cane, and five thousand coffee- 
 trees, which promised a fine harvest. The friars were in hopes 
 of tripling the number in a few years. We cannot help re- 
 marking the uniform efforts for the cultivation of the soil 
 which are manifested in the policy of the monastic hierarchy. 
 Wherever convents have not yet acquired wealth in the New 
 Continent, as formerly in Gaul, in Syria, and in the north of 
 Europe, they exercise a happy influence on the clearing of the 
 ground and the introduction of exotic vegetation. At Caripe, 
 the conuco of the community presents the appearance of an 
 extensive and beautiful garden. The natives are obliged to 
 work in it every morning from six to ten, and the alcaldes 
 and alguazils of Indian race overlook their labours. These 
 men are looked upon as great state functionaries, and they 
 alone have the right of carrying a cane. The selection of 
 them depends on the superior of the convent. The pedantic 
 and silent gravity of the Indian alcaldes, their cold and mys- 
 terious air, their love of appearing in form at church and in 
 the assemblies of the people, force a smile from Europeans. 
 We were not yet accustomed to these shades of the Indian 
 character, which we found the same at the Orinoco, in 
 Mexico, and in Peru, among people totally different in their 
 manners and their language. The alcaldes came daily to the 
 convent, less to treat with the monks on the affairs of the 
 Mission, than under the pretence of inquiring after the 
 health of the newly-arrived travellers. As we gave them 
 brandy, their visits became more frequent than the monks 
 desired. 
 
254 
 
 CAVERS’ OE THE GUACHARO. 
 
 That which confers most celebrity on the valley of Caripe, 
 besides the extraordinary coolness of its climate, is the great 
 Cueva , or Cavern of the Guacharo.* In a country where 
 the people love the marvellous, a cavern which gives birth to 
 a river, and is inhabited by thousands of nocturnal birds, 
 the fat of which is employed in the Missions to dress food, 
 is an everlasting object of conversation and discussion. The 
 cavern, which the natives call “ a mine of fat,” is not in the 
 valley of Caripe itself, but three short leagues distant from 
 the convent, in the direction of west-south-west. It opens 
 into a lateral valley, which terminates at the Sierra del 
 Guacharo. 
 
 We set out for the Sierra on the 18th of September, 
 accompanied by the alcaldes, or Indian magistrates, and the 
 greater part of the monks of the convent. A narrow path 
 led us at first towards the south, across a fine plain, covered 
 with beautiful turf. We then turned westward, along the 
 margin of a small river which issues from the mouth of the 
 cavern. We ascended during three quarters of an hour, 
 sometimes in the water, which was shallow, sometimes be- 
 tween the torrent and a wall of rocks, on a soil extremely 
 slippery and miry. The falling down of the earth, the scat- 
 tered trunks of trees, over which the mules could scarcely 
 pass, and the creeping plants that covered the ground, ren- 
 dered this part of the road fatiguing. We were surprised 
 to find here, at scarcely 500 toises above the level of the 
 sea, a cruciferous plant, Raphanus pinnatus. Plants of this 
 family are very rare in the tropics ; they have in some sort 
 a northern character, and therefore we never expected to 
 see one on the plain of Caripe at so inconsiderable an eleva- 
 tion. The northern character also appears in the Galium 
 caripense, the Yaleriana scandens, and a sanicle not unlike 
 the S. marilandica. 
 
 At the foot of the lofty mountain of the Guacharo, we were 
 
 * The province of Guacharucu, which Delgado visited in 1534, in the 
 expedition of Hieronimo de Ortal, appears to have been situated south or 
 south-east of Macarapana. Has its name any connexion with those of 
 the cavern and the bird ? or is this last of Spanish origin ? (Laet, Nova 
 Orbis, p. 676). Guacharo means in Castilian “one who cries and laments;" 
 now the bird of the cavern of Caripe, and the guacharaca (Phasianus 
 parraka), are very noisy birds. 
 
SITUATION OF THE CAYEKN. 
 
 255 
 
 only four hundred paces from the cavern, without yet per- 
 ceiving the entrance. The torrent runs in a crevice hol- 
 lowed out by the waters, and we went on under a cornice, 
 the projection of which prevented us from seeing the sky. 
 The path winds in the direction of the river ; and at the 
 last turning we came suddenly before the immense opening 
 of the grotto. The aspect of this spot is majestic, even to 
 the eye of a traveller accustomed to the picturesque scenery 
 of the higher Alps. I had before this seen the caverns of the 
 peak of Derbyshire, where, lying down flat in a boat, we 
 proceeded aloug a subterranean river, under an arch two feet 
 high. I had visited the beautiful grotto of Treshemienshiz, 
 in the Carpathian mountains, the caverns of the Hartz, and 
 those of Franconia, which are vast cemeteries,* containing 
 bones of tigers, hyænas, and bears, as large as our horses. 
 Nature in every zone follows immutable laws in the distri- 
 bution of rocks, in the form of mountains, and even in those 
 changes which the exterior crust of our planet has under- 
 gone. So great a uniformity led me to believe that the aspect 
 of the cavern of Caripe would differ little from what I had 
 observed in my preceding travels. The reality far exceeded 
 my expectations. If the configuration of the grottoes, the 
 splendour of the stalactites, and all the phenomena of in- 
 organic nature, present striking analogies, the majesty of 
 equinoctial vegetation gives at the same time an individual 
 character to the aperture of the cavern. 
 
 The Cueva del Gruacharo is pierced in the vertical profile 
 of a rock. The entrance is towards the south, and forms 
 an arch eighty feet broad and seventy-two high. The rock 
 which surmounts the grotto is covered with trees of gigantic 
 height. The mammee-tree and the genipa,t with large and 
 
 * The mould, which has covered for thousands of years the soil of the 
 caverns of Gaylenreuth and Muggendorf in Franconia, emits even now- 
 choke-damps, or gaseous mixtures of hydrogen and nitrogen, which rise to 
 the roof of the caves. This fact is known to the persons who show 
 these caverns to travellers ; and when I was director of the mines of the 
 Fichtelberg, I observed it frequently in the summer-time. M. Laugier 
 found in the mould of Muggendorf, besides phosphate of lime, 0 - 10 of 
 animal matter. I was struck, during my stay at Steeben, with the ammo- 
 niacal and foetid smell produced by it, when thrown on a red-hot iron. 
 
 + Caruto, Genipa americana. The flower, at Caripe, has sometimes five* 
 sometimes six stamens. 
 
256 
 
 INTERIOR OF THE CAVERN. 
 
 shining leaves, raise their branches vertically towards the 
 sky ; whilst those of the courbaril and the erythrina form, 
 as they extend, a thick canopy of verdure. Plants of the 
 family of pothos, with succulent stems, oxalises, and orchideæ 
 of a singular structure,* rise in the driest clefts of the rocks; 
 while creeping plants waving in the winds are interwoven 
 in festoons before the opening of the cavern. We distin- 
 guished in these festoons a bignonia of a violet blue, the 
 purple dolichos, and for the first time, that magnificent 
 solandra,t which has an orange-coloured flower and a fleshy 
 tube more than four inches long. 
 
 But this luxury of vegetation embellishes not only the 
 external arch, it appears even in the vestibule of the 
 grotto. We saw with astonishment plantain-leaved heli- 
 conias eighteen feet high, the praga palm-tree, and arbor- 
 escent arums, following the course of the river, even to 
 those subterranean places. The vegetation continues in 
 the cave of Caripe as in those deep crevices of the Andes, 
 half-excluded from the light of day, and does not disappear 
 till, penetrating into the interior, we advance thirty or forty 
 paces from the entrance. We measured the way by means 
 of a cord ; and we went on about four hundred and thirty 
 feet without being obliged to light our torches. Daylight 
 penetrates far into this region, because the grotto forms 
 but one single channel, keeping the same direction, from 
 south-east to north-west. Where the light began to fail, 
 we heard from afar the hoarse sounds of the nocturnal birds; 
 sounds which the natives think belong exclusively to those 
 subterraneous places. 
 
 The guacharo is of the size of our fowls. It has the 
 mouth of the goat-suckers and procnias, and the port of 
 those vultures whose crooked beaks are surrounded with 
 stiff silky hairs. Suppressing, with M. Cuvier, the order 
 of picæ, we must refer this extraordinary bird to the pas- 
 seres, the genera of which are connected with each other 
 by almost imperceptible transitions. It forms a new genus, 
 very different from the goatsucker, in the loudness of its 
 voice, in the vast strength of its beak (containing a double 
 
 * A dendrobium, with a gold-coloured flower, spotted with black, three 
 inches long. 
 
 t Solandra scandens. It is the yousaticha of the Chayma Indians. 
 
GUACHABO BIBDS. 
 
 257 
 
 tooth) , and in its feet without the membranes which unite 
 the anterior phalanges of the claws. It is the first ex- 
 ample of a nocturnal bird among the Passeres dentirostrati. 
 Its habits present analogies both with those of the goat- 
 suckers and of the alpine crow.* The plumage of the gua- 
 charo is of a dark bluish grey, mixed with small streaks and 
 specks of black. Large white spots of the form of a heart, 
 and bordered with black, mark the head, wings, and tail. 
 The eyes of the bird, which are dazzled by the light of day, are 
 blue, and smaller than those of the goatsucker. The spread 
 of the wings, which are composed of seventeen or eighteen 
 quill feathers', is three feet and a half. The guacharo quits 
 the cavern at nightfall, especially when the moon shines. It 
 is almost the only frugiferous nocturnal bird yet known ; the 
 conformation of its feet sufficiently shows that it does not 
 hunt like our owls. It feeds on very hard fruits, like the 
 nutcracker! and the pyrrhocorax. The latter nestles also in 
 clefts of rocks, and is known by the name of the night-crow. 
 The Indians assured us that the guacharo does not pursue 
 cither the lamellicornous insects or those phalænæ which 
 serve as food to the goatsuckers. A comparison of the 
 beaks of the guacharo and the goatsucker serves to denote 
 how much their habits must differ. It would be difficult to 
 form an idea of the horrible noise occasioned by thousands 
 of these birds in the dark part of the cavern. Their shrill 
 and piercing cries strike upon the vaults of the rocks, and 
 are repeated by the subterranean echoes. The Indians 
 showed us the nests of the guacharos by fixing a torch to 
 the end of a long pole. These nests were fifty or sixty 
 feet high above our heads, in holes in the shape of funnels, 
 with which the roof of the grotto is pierced like a sieve. 
 The noise increased as we advanced, and the birds were 
 scared by the light of the torches of copal. When this 
 noise ceased a few minutes around us, we heard at a dis- 
 tance the plaintive cries of the birds roosting in other rami- 
 fications of the cavern. It seemed as if different groups 
 answered each other alternately. 
 
 * Corvus Pyrrhocorax. 
 
 ! Corvus caryocatactes, C. glandarius. Our Alpine crow builds its 
 nest near the top of Mount Libanus, in subterranean caverns, nearly 
 like the guacharo. It also has the horribly shrill cry of the latter. 
 
 VOL. I. S 
 
258 
 
 GFACHAIJO birds. 
 
 
 The Indians enter the Cueva del Gnacharo once a-year, i 
 near midsmnmer. They go armed with poles, with which | 
 they destroy the greater part of the nests. At that season 1 
 several thousand birds are killed; and the old ones, as if to H 
 defend their brood, hover over the heads of the Indians, ut- I 
 tering terrible cries. The young,* which fall to the ground, 
 are opened on the spot. Their peritoneum is found ex- i| 
 
 tremely loaded with fat, and a layer of fat reaches from the i 
 
 abdomen to the anus, forming a kind of cushion between the 
 legs of the bird. This quantity of fat in frugivorop.s animals, 
 not exposed to the light, and exerting very little muscular * 
 motion, reminds us of what has been observed in the fatten- | 
 ing of geese and oxen. It is well known how greatly dark- 
 ness and repose favour this process. The nocturnal birds of 
 Europe are lean, because, instead of feeding on fruits, like 
 the guacharo, they live on the scanty produce of their prey. ■ 
 At the period commonly called, at Caripe, the oil harvest, f 
 the Indians build huts with palm-leaves, near the entrance, 
 and even in the porch of the cavern. There, with a fire of 
 brushwood, they melt in pots of clay the fat of the young 
 birds just killed. This fat is known by the name of butter 
 or oil (manteca, or aceite) of the guacharo. It is half liquid, 
 transparent, without smell, and so pure that it may be kept 
 above a year without becoming rancid. At the convent of 
 Caripe no other oil is used in the kitchen of the monks but 
 that of the cavern; and we never observed that it gave the 
 aliments a disagreeable taste or smell. 
 
 The race of the guacharos would have been long ago 
 extinct, had not several circumstances contributed to its j 
 preservation. The natives, restrained by their superstitious 
 ideas, seldom have courage to penetrate far into the grot- 1 
 to. It appears also, that birds of the same species dwell ! 
 in neighbouring caverns, which are too narrow to be acces- 
 sible to man. Perhaps the great cavern is repeopled by 
 colonies which forsake the small grottoes; for the mission- 
 aries assured us, that hitherto no sensible diminution of the 
 birds have been observed. Young guacharos have been sent 
 to the port of Cumana, and have lived there several days 
 without taking any nourishment, the seeds offered to them 
 
 * Called Los polios del Guacharo. 
 t La cosecha de la manteca. 
 
 
IHTEEIOE OF THE CAVEEN. 
 
 259 
 
 not suiting their taste. "When the crops and gizzards of the 
 young birds are opened in the cavern, they are found to 
 contain all sorts of hard and dry fruits, which furnish, under 
 the singular name of guacharo seed (semilla del guacharo), a 
 very celebrated remedy against intermittent fevers. The 
 old" birds carry these seeds to their young. They are care- 
 fully collected, and sent to the sick at Cariaco, and other 
 places of the low regions, where fevers are generally pre- 
 valent. 
 
 As we continued to advance into the cavern, we fol- 
 lowed the banks of the small river which issues from it, and 
 is from twenty-eight to thirty feet wide. We walked on the 
 banks, as far as the hills formed of calcareous incrustations 
 permitted us. Where the torrent winds among very high 
 masses of stalactites, we were often obliged to descend into 
 its bed, which is only two feet deep. We learned with sur- 
 prise, that this subterranean rivulet is the origin of the 
 river Caripe, which, at the distance of a few leagues, where 
 it joins the small river of Santa Maria, is navigable for 
 canoes. It flows into the river Areo under the name of 
 Cano de Terezen. We found on the banks of the subterra- 
 nean rivulet a great quantity of palm-tree wood, the remains 
 of trunks, on which the Indians climb to reach the nests 
 hanging from the roofs of the cavern. The rings, formed 
 by the vestiges of the old footstalks of the leaves, furnish as 
 it were the steps of a ladder perpendicularly placed. 
 
 The G-rotto of Caripe preserves the same direction, the 
 same breadth, and its primitive height of sixty or seventy 
 feet, to the distance of 472 metres, or 1458 feet, accurately 
 measured. We had great difficulty in persuading the Indians 
 to pass beyond the anterior portion of the grotto, the only 
 part which they annually visit to collect the fat. The whole 
 authority of ‘los padres’ was necessary to induce them to 
 advance as far as the spot where the soil rises abruptly at an 
 inclination of sixty degrees, and where the torrent forms a 
 small subterranean cascade.* The natives connect mystic 
 ideas with this cave, inhabited by nocturnal birds ; they 
 believe that the souls of their ancestors sojourn in the deep 
 
 * We find the phenomenen of a subterranean cascade, but on a much 
 larger scale, in England, at Yordas Cave, near Kingsdale in Yorkshire. 
 
 s 2 
 
260 
 
 NA.TIYE SUPEBSTITION’S. 
 
 
 recesses of the cavern. “Man,” say they, “should avoid 
 . places which are enlightened neither by the sun (zis), nor 
 by the moon (nuna).” ‘To go and join the guacharos,’ is 
 with them a phrase signifying to rejoin their fathers, to die. ! 
 The magicians (piaches) and the poisoners (imorons) per- I 
 form their nocturnal tricks at the entrance of the cavern, to 
 conjure the chief of the evil spirits (ivorokiamo). Thus in I i 
 every region of the earth a resemblance may he traced 1 | 
 in the early fictions of nations, those especially which re- J 
 late to two principles governing the world, the abode of ■ 
 souls after death, the happiness of the virtuous and the I 
 punishment of the guilty. The most different and most I 
 barbarous languages present a certain number of images, I 
 which are the same, because they have their source in the I 
 nature of our intelligence and our sensations. Darkness is I 
 everywhere connected with the idea of death. The Grotto 1 
 of Caripe is the Tartarus of the Greeks ; and the guacharos, 1 
 which hover over the rivulet, uttering plaintive cries, remind I 
 us of the Stygian birds. 
 
 At the point where the river forms the subterranean I 
 cascade, a hill covered with vegetation, which is opposite I 
 to the opening of the grotto, presents a very picturesque il 
 aspect. It is seen at the extremity of a straight passage, j. ! | 
 240 toises in length. The stalactites descending from the j | 
 roof, and resembling columns suspended in the air, are 
 relieved on a back-ground of verdure. The opening of the [ 
 cavern appeared singularly contracted, when we saw it about ; 
 the middle of the day, illumined by the vivid light reflected I 
 at once from the sky, the plants, -and the rocks. The j 
 distant light of day formed a strange contrast with the j 
 darkness which surrounded us in the vast cavern. We I 
 discharged our guns at a venture, wherever the cries of the I 
 nocturnal birds and the flapping of their wings, led us to 
 suspect that a great number of nests were crowded together. 
 After several fruitless attempts M. Bonpland succeeded in 
 killing a couple of guacharos, which, dazzled by the light of ' 
 the torches, seemed to pursue us. This circumstance afforded 
 me the means of making a drawing of this bird, which had 
 previously been unknown to naturalists. We climbed, not 
 without difficulty, the small hill whence the subterranean 
 rivulet descends. We saw that the grotto was perceptibly 
 
VEGETATION IN THE CAVEBN. 
 
 261 
 
 contracted, retaining only forty feet in height, and that it 
 continued stretching to north-east, without deviating from 
 its primitive direction, which is parallel to that of the great 
 valley of Caripe. 
 
 In this part of the cavern, the rivulet deposits a blackish 
 mould, very like the matter which, in the grotto of Muggen- 
 dorf, in Franconia, is called “the earth of sacrifice.”* We 
 could not discover whether this fine and spongy mould falls 
 through the cracks which communicate with the surface 
 of the ground above, or is washed down by the rain-water 
 penetrating into the cavern. It was a mixture of silex, 
 alumina, and vegetable detritus. We walked in thick mud 
 to a spot where we beheld with astonishment the progress of 
 subterranean vegetation. The seeds which the birds carry 
 into the grotto to feed their young, spring up wherever they 
 fix in the mould which covers the calcareous incrustations. 
 Blanched stalks, with some half-formed leaves, had risen to 
 the height of two feet. It was impossible to ascertain the 
 species of these plants, their form, colour, and aspect having 
 been changed by the absence of fight. These traces of 
 organization amidst darkness forcibly excited the curiosity of 
 the natives, who examined them with silent meditation in- 
 spired by a place they seemed to dread. They evidently 
 regarded these subterranean plants, pale and deformed, as 
 phantoms banished from the face of the earth. To me the 
 scene recalled one of the happiest periods of my early youth, 
 a long abode in the mines of Frey berg, where I made experi- 
 ments on the effects of blanching (étiolement), which are 
 very different, according as the air is pure or overcharged 
 with hydrogen or azote. 
 
 The missionaries, with all their authority, could not pre- 
 vail on the Indians to penetrate farther into the cavern. As 
 the roof became lower the cries of the guacharos were more 
 and more shrill. We were obliged to yield to the pusilla- 
 nimity of our guides, and trace back our steps. The appear- 
 ance of the cavern was however very uniform. We found that 
 a bishop of St. Thomas of G-uiana had gone farther than our- 
 selves. He had measured nearly 2500 feet from the mouth 
 
 * Opfer-erde of the cavern of Hohle Berg (or Hole Mountain,— a 
 mountain pierced entirely through). 
 
262 
 
 EGEESS EBOM THE CAVEBK. 
 
 to the spot where he stopped, hut the cavern extended still 
 farther. The remembrance of this fact was preserved in the ^ 
 convent of Caripe, without the exact period being noted. I 
 The bishop had provided himself with great torches of white X 
 Castile wax. We had torches composed only of the bark of i 
 trees and native resin. The thick smoke which issued from I 
 these torches, in a narrow subterranean passage, hurts the I 
 eyes and obstructs the respiration. 
 
 On turning back to go out of the cavern, we followed the I 
 course of the torrent. Before our eyes became dazzled with I 
 the light of day we saw on the outside of the grotto the water I 
 of the river sparkling amid the foliage of the trees which I 
 shaded it. It was like a picture placed in the distance, the I 
 mouth of the cavern serving as a frame. Having at length I 
 reached the entrance, we seated ourselves on the bank of the * 
 rivulet, to rest after our fatigues. We were glad to be I 
 beyond the hoarse cries of the birds, and to leave a place 
 where darkness does not offer even the charm of silence and 
 tranquillity. We could scarcely persuade ourselves that the 
 name of the Grotto of Caripe had hitherto been unknown 
 in Europe for the guacharos alone might have sufficed to 
 render it celebrated. These nocturnal birds have been no * 
 where yet discovered, except in the mountains of Caripe and i 
 Cumanacoa. The missionaries had prepared a repast at the I 
 entry of the cavern. Leaves of the banana and the vijao,t ] 
 which have a silky lustre, served us as a table-cloth, accord- 
 ing to the custom of the country. Nothing was wanting to 
 our enjoyment, not even remembrances, which are so rare 
 in those countries, where generations disappear without 
 leaving a trace of their existence. 
 
 Before we quit the subterranean rivulet and the noc- 
 turnal birds, let us cast a last glance at the cavern of the 
 Guacharo, and the whole of the physical phenomena it pre- 
 
 * It is surprising that Father Gili, author of the Saggio di Storia Ame- 
 ricana, does not mention it, though he had in his possession a manuscript 
 written in 1780 at the convent of Caripe. 1 gave the first information 
 respecting the Cueva del Guacharo in 1800, in my letters to Messrs. 
 Delambre and Delamétherie, published in the Journal de Physique. 
 
 + Heliconia bihai, Linn. The Creoles have changed the b of the Hay- 
 tian word bihao into v, and the k into j, agreeably to the Castilian pro- 
 nunciation. 
 
PHYSICAL PHENOMENA. 
 
 263 
 
 sents. "When we have step by step pursued a long series of 
 observations modified by the locabties of a place, we love to 
 stop and raise our views to general considerations. Do the 
 great cavities, which are exclusively called caverns, owe their 
 origin to the same causes as those which have produced the 
 lodes of veins and of metalliferous strata, or the extraor- 
 dinary phenomenon of the porosity of rocks P Do grottoes 
 belong to every formation, or to that period only when 
 organized beings began to people the surface of the globe ? 
 These geological questions can he solved only so far as they 
 are directed by the actual state of things, that is, of facts 
 susceptible of being verified by observation. 
 
 Considering rocks according to the succession of eras, 
 we find that primitive formations exhibit very few caverns. 
 The great cavities which are observed in the oldest granite, 
 and which are called fours (ovens) in Switzerland and in 
 the south of Trance, when they are lined with rock crystals, 
 arise most frequently from the union of several contempo- 
 raneous veins of quartz,* of feldspar, or of fine-grained 
 granite. The gneiss presents, though more seldom, the 
 same phenomenon; and near Wunsiedel,t at the Tichtelge- 
 birge, I had an opportunity of examining crystal fours of 
 two or three feet diameter, in a part of the rock not 
 traversed by veins. We are ignorant of the extent of 
 the cavities which subterranean fires and volcanic agita- 
 tions may have produced in the bowels of the earth in 
 those primitive rocks, which, containing considerable quan- 
 tities of amphibole, mica, garnet, magnetic iron-stone, and 
 red schorl (titanite), appear to be anterior to granite. We 
 find some fragments of these rocks among the matters 
 ejected by volcanoes. The cavities can be considered only as 
 partial and local phenomena ; and their existence is scarcely 
 any contradiction to the notions we have acquired from the 
 experiments of Maskelyne and Cavendish on the mean 
 density of the earth. 
 
 * Gleichzeitige Triimmer. To these stone veins which appear to be 
 of the same age as the rock, belong the veins of talc and asbestos 
 in serpentine, and those of quartz traversing schist (Thonschiefer). 
 Jameson on Contemporaneous Veins, in the Mem. of the Wernerian Soc. 
 
 *f In Franconia, south-east of Luchsburg. 
 
264 
 
 FORMATION OF GROTTOES. 
 
 In the primitive mountains open to our researches, real 
 grottoes, those which have some extent, belong only to cal- 
 careous formations, such as the carbonate or sulphate of lime. 
 The solubility of these substances appears to have favoured 
 the action of the subterranean waters for ages. The primi- 
 tive limestone presents spacious caverns as well as transition 
 limestone, # and that which is exclusively called secondary. 
 If these caverns be less frequent in the first, it is because 
 this stone forms in general only layers subordinate to the 
 mica-slate, f and not a particular system of mountains, into 
 which the waters may filter, and circulate to great distances. 
 The erosions occasioned by this element depend not only on 
 its quantity, but also on the length of time during which it 
 remains, the velocity it acquires by its fall, and the degree of 
 solubility of the rock. I have observed in general, that the 
 waters act more easily on the carbonates and the sulphates of 
 lime of secondary mountains than on the transition lime- 
 stones, which have a considerable mixture of silex and carbon. 
 On examining the internal structure of the stalactites which 
 line the walls of caverns, we find in them all the characters 
 of a chemical precipitate. 
 
 As we approach those periods in which organic life deve- 
 lopes itself in a greater number of forms, the phenomenon of 
 grottoes becomes more frequent. There exist several under 
 the name of haimen,% not in the ancient sandstone to which 
 the great coal formation belongs, but in the Alpine limestone, 
 and in the Jura limestone, which is often only the superior part 
 of the Alpine formation. The Jura limestone§ so abounds with 
 
 * In the primitive limestone are found the Kuetzel-loch, near Kaufun- 
 gen in Silesia, and probably several caverns in the islands of the Archipe- 
 lago. In the transition limestone we remark the caverns of Elbingerode, 
 of Rubeland, and of Scharzfeld, in the Hartz; those of the Salzfluhe in 
 the Grisons ; and, according to Sir. Greenough, that of Torbay in Devon- 
 shire. 
 
 + Sometimes to gneiss, as at the Simplon, between Dovredo and 
 Crevola. 
 
 X In the dialect of the German Swiss, Balmen. The Baumen of the 
 Sentis, of the Mole, and of the Beatenberg, on the borders of the lake of 
 .Thun, belong to the Alpine limestone. 
 
 § I may mention only the grottoes of Boudry, Motiers-Travers, and 
 Valorbe, in the Jura; the grotto of Balme near Geneva; the caverns 
 between Muggendorf and Gaylenreuth in Franconia ; SowiaJama, Ogrod- 
 zimiec, and Wlodowice, in Poland. 
 
THEIR GENERAL SHAPE. 
 
 265 
 
 caverns in both continents, that several geologists of the 
 school of Freyberg have given it the name of cavern-limestone 
 (hôhlenkalkstein) . It is this rock which so often interrupts 
 the course of rivers, by engulfing them into its bosom. In 
 this also is formed the famous Cueva del G-uacharo, and 
 the. other grottoes of the valley of Caripe. The muriati- 
 ferous gypsum, # whether it be found in layers in the Jura 
 or Alpine limestone, or whether it separate these two forma- 
 tions, or lie between the Alpine limestone and argillaceous 
 sandstone, also presents, on account of its great solubility, 
 enormous cavities, sometimes communicatiug with each 
 other at several leagues distance. After the limestone and 
 gypseous formations, there would remain to be examined, 
 among the secondary rocks, a third formation, that of the ar- 
 gillaceous sandstone, newer than the brine-spring formations ; 
 but this rock, composed of small grains of quartz cemented 
 by clay, seldom contains caverns ; and when it does, they are 
 not extensive. Progressively narrowing towards their ex- 
 tremity, their walls are covered with a brown ochre. 
 
 We have just seen, that the form of grottoes depends 
 partly on the nature of the rocks in which they are found ; 
 but this form, modified by exterior agents, often varies 
 even in the same formation. The configuration of caverns, 
 like the outline of mountains, the sinuosity of valleys, and 
 so many other phenomena, present at first sight only irregu- 
 larity and confusion. The appearance of order is resumed, 
 when we can extend our observations over a vast space 
 of ground, which has undergone violent, but periodical and 
 uniform revolutions. Prom what I have seen in the moun- 
 tains of Europe, and in the Cordilleras of America, caverns 
 may be divided, according to their interior structure, into 
 three classes. Some have the form of large clefts or cre- 
 vices, like veins not filled with ore ; such as the cavern 
 of Eosenmfiller, in Franconia, Elden-hole, in the peak of 
 Derbyshire, and the Sumideros of Chamacasapa in Mexico, 
 Other caverns are open to the light at both ends. These 
 are rocks really pierced ; natural galleries, which run 
 through a solitary mountain : such are the Hôhleberg of 
 Muggendorf, and the famous cavern called Dantoe by the 
 
 * Gypsum of Bottendorf, schlottengyps. 
 
266 
 
 VARIETY OF STRUCTURE. 
 
 Ottomite Indians, and the Bridge of the Mother of God, 
 by the Mexican Spaniards. It is difficult to decide respect- 
 ing the origin of these channels, which sometimes serve 
 as beds for subterranean rivers. Are these pierced rocks 
 hollowed out by the impulse of a current ? or should we 
 rather admit that one of the openings of the cavern is 
 owing to a falling down of the earth subsequent to its 
 original formation; to a change in the external form of 
 the mountain, for instance, to a new valley opened on its 
 flank ? A third form of caverns, and the most common 
 of the whole, exhibits a succession of cavities, placed nearly 
 on the same level, running in the same direction, and com- 
 municating with each other by passages of greater or less 
 breadth. 
 
 To these differences of general form are added other 
 circumstances not less remarkable. It often happens, that 
 grottoes of little space have extremely wide openings; 
 whilst we have to creep under very low vaults, in order to 
 penetrate into the deepest and most spacious caverns. The 
 passages which unite partial grottoes, are generally hori- 
 zontal. I have seen some, however, which resemble funnels 
 or wells, and which may be attributed to the escape of some 
 elastic fluid through a mass before being hardened. When 
 rivers issue from grottoes, they form only a single, horizontal, 
 continuous channel, the dilatations of which are almost 
 imperceptible ; as in the Cue va del G-uacharo we have just 
 described, and the cavern of San Felipe, near Tehuilotepec 
 in the western Cordilleras of Mexico. The sudden disappear- 
 ance # of the river, which took its rise from this last cavern, 
 has impoverished a district in which farmers and miners 
 equally require water for refreshing the soil and for working 
 hydraulic machinery. 
 
 Considering the variety of structure exhibited by grot- 
 toes in both hemispheres, we cannot but refer their for- 
 mation to causes totally different. When we speak of the 
 origin of caverns we must choose between two systems of 
 natural philosophy: one of these systems attributes every 
 thing to instantaneous and violent commotions (for example, 
 to the elastic force of vapours, and to the heavings occasioned 
 
 * la the night of the 16th April, 1802. 
 
CAUSES OF FORMATION. 
 
 267 
 
 by volcanoes) ; while the other rests on the operation of 
 small powers, which produce effects almost insensibly by 
 progressive action. Those who love to indulge in geological 
 hypotheses must not, however, forget the horizontality so 
 often remarked amidst gypseous and calcareous moun- 
 tains, in the position of grottoes communicating with each 
 other by passages. This almost perfect horizontality, this 
 gentle and uniform slope, appears to be the result of a 
 long abode of the waters, which enlarge by erosion clefts 
 already existing, and carry off the softer parts the more 
 easily, as clay or muriate of soda is found mixed with the 
 gypsum and fetid limestone. These effects are the same, 
 whether the caverns form one long and continued range, or 
 several of these ranges lie one over another, as happens 
 almost exclusively in gypseous mountains. 
 
 That which in shelly or JSeptunean rocks is caused by 
 the action of the waters, appears sometimes to be in the 
 volcanic rocks the effect of gaseous emanations* acting in 
 the direction where they find the least resistance. When 
 melted matter moves on a very gentle slope, the great axis 
 of the cavity formed by the elastic fluids is nearly horizontal, 
 or parallel to the plane on which the movement of transition 
 takes place. A similar disengagement of vapours, joined 
 to the elastic force of the gases, which penetrate strata soft- 
 ened and raised up, appears sometimes to have given great 
 extent to the caverns found in trachytes or trappean por- 
 phyries. These porphyritic caverns, in the Cordilleras of 
 Quito and Peru, bear the Indian name of Machays . f They 
 are in general of little depth. They are lined with sulphur, 
 and differ by the enormous size of their openings from those 
 observed in volcanic tufas j in Italy, at Teneriffe, and in 
 
 * At Vesuvius, the Duke de la Torre showed me, in 1805, in currents 
 of recent lava, cavities extending in the direction of the current, six or 
 seven feet loDg and three feet high. These little volcanic caverns were 
 lined with specular iron, which ‘cannot be called oligiste iron, since M. 
 Gay-Lussac’s last experiments on the oxides of iron. 
 
 + Machay is a word of the Quichua language, commonly called by 
 the Spaniards ‘ the Incas’ language.’ Callancamachay means “a cavern 
 as large as a house,” a cavern that serves as a tambo or caravansarai. 
 
 X Sometimes fire acts like water in carrying off masses, and thus the 
 cavities may be caused by an igneous, though more freouently by an 
 aqueous erosion or solution. 
 
268 
 
 STALACTITES AXD INCRUSTATIONS. 
 
 the Andes. It is by connecting in the mind the primitive, 
 secondary, and volcanic rocks, and distinguishing between 
 the oxidated crust of the globe, and the interior nucleus, 
 composed perhaps of metallic and inflammable substances, 
 that we may account for the existence of grottoes every- 
 where. They act in the economy of nature as vast reser- 
 voirs of water and of elastic fluids. 
 
 The gypseous caverns glitter with crystallized selenites. 
 Vitreous crystallized plates of brown and yellow stand out 
 on a striated ground composed of layers of alabaster and fetid 
 limestone. The calcareous grottoes have a more uniform 
 tint. They are more beautiful, and richer in stalactites, in 
 proportion .as they are narrower, and the circulation of air 
 is less free. By being spacious, and accessible to air, the 
 cavern of Caripe is almost destitute of those incrustations, 
 the imitative forms of "which are in other countries objects 
 of popular curiosity. I also sought in vain for subterranean 
 plants, those cryptogamia of the family of the Usneaceæ, 
 which we sometimes find fixed on the stalactites, like ivy on 
 walls, when we penetrate for the first time into a lateral 
 grotto.* 
 
 The caverns in mountains of gypsum often contain me- 
 phitic emanations and deleterious gases. It is not the sul- 
 phate of lime that acts on the atmospheric air, but the 
 clay slightly mixed with carbon, and the fetid limestone, 
 so often mingled with the gypsum. AYe cannot yet de- 
 cide, whether the swinestone acts as a hvdrosulphuret, or 
 by means of a bituminous principle.! Its property of ab- 
 sorbing oxygen gas is known to all the miners of Thuringia. 
 It is the same as the action of the carburetted clay of the 
 
 * Lichen tophicola was discovered when the beautiful cavern of Rosen- 
 miiller in Franconia was first opened. The cavity containing the lichen 
 was found closed on all sides by enormous masses of stalactite. 
 
 + That description of fetid limestone called by the German minera- 
 logists stinkstein is always of a blackish brown colour. It is only by 
 decomposition that it becomes white, after having acted on the surround- 
 ing air. The stinkstein which is of secondary formation, must not be 
 confounded with a very white primitive granular limestone of the island 
 of Thasos, which emits, when scraped, a smell of sulphuretted hydrogen. 
 This marble is coarser grained than Carrara (Marmor lunense). It was 
 frequently employed by the Grecian sculptors, and I often picked up 
 fragments of it at the Villa Adriani, near Rome. 
 
FOSSIL EEMAIHS. 
 
 269 
 
 gypseous grottoes, and of tlie great chambers (sinkwerke) 
 dug in mines of fossil salt which are worked by the intro- 
 duction of fresh water. The caverns of calcareous moun- 
 tains arç not exposed to those decompositions of the atmo- 
 spheric air, unless they contain bones of quadrupeds, or the 
 mould mixed with animal gluten and phosphate of lime, from 
 which arise inflammable ahd fetid gases. 
 
 Though we made many enquiries among the inhabitants 
 of Caripe, Cumanacoa, and Cariaco, we did not learn that 
 they had ever discovered in the cavern of Guacharo either 
 the remains of carniverous animals, or those bony breccias 
 of herbivorous animals, which are found in the caverns of 
 Germany and Hungary, and in the clefts of the calcareous 
 rocks of Gibraltar. The fossil bones of the megatherium, 
 of the elephant, and of the mastodon, which travellers have 
 brought from South America, have all been found in the 
 light soil of the valleys and table-lands. Excepting the 
 megalonyx,* a kind of sloth of the size of an ox, described 
 by Mr. Jefferson, I know not a single instance of the ske- 
 leton of an animal buried in a cavern of the New World. 
 The extreme scarcity of this geological phenomenon will 
 appear the less surprising to us, if we recollect, that in 
 Erance, England, and Italy, there are also a great number 
 of grottoes in which we have never met with any vestige 
 of fossil bones. 
 
 Although, in primitive nature, whatever relates to ideas 
 of extent and mass is of no great importance, yet I may 
 observe, that the cavern of Caripe is one of the most 
 spacious known to exist in limestone formations. It is 
 at least 900 metres or 2800 feet in length.f Owing to 
 the different degrees of solubility in rocks, it is generally 
 not in calcareous mountains, but in gypseous formations, 
 that we find the most extensive succession of grottoes. In 
 Saxony there are some in gypsum several leagues in length ; 
 
 * The megalonyx was found in the caverns of Green Briar, in Virginia, 
 at the distance of 1500 leagues from the megatherium, which resembles it 
 very much, and is of the size of the rhinoceros. 
 
 The famous Baumannshohle in the Hartz, according to Messrs. 
 Gilbert and Ilsen, is only 578 feet in length ; the cavern of Scharzfeld 
 350 ; that of Gaylenreuth 304 ; that of Antiparos 300. But according to 
 Saussure, the Grotto of Balme is 1300 feet long. 
 
270 
 
 GENERAL TEMPERATURE. 
 
 for instance, that of Wimelburg, which communicates with 
 the cavern of Cresfield. 
 
 The determination of the temperature of grottoes pre- 
 sents a field for interesting observation. The çavern of 
 Caripe, situated nearly in the latitude of 10° 10', consequent- 
 ly in the centre of the torrid zone, is elevated 506 toises 
 above the level of the sea in the gulf of Cariaco. We 
 found that, in every part of it, in the month of September, 
 the temperature of the internal air was between 18 '4° and 
 18 ’9° of the centesimal thermometer ; the external atmos- 
 phere being at 16*2°. At the entrance of the cavern, the 
 thermometer in the open air was at 17*6° ; but when im- 
 mersed in the water of the little subterranean river, it 
 marked, even to the end of the cavern, 16'8°. These ex- 
 periments are very interesting, if we reflect on the tend- 
 ency to equilibrium of heat, in the waters, the air, and the 
 earth. When I left Europe, men of science were regretting 
 that they had not sufficient data on what is called, ‘the 
 temperature of the interior of the globe and it is but very 
 recently that efforts have been made, and with some suc- 
 cess, to solve the grand problem of subterranean meteor- 
 ology. The stony strata that form the crust of our planet, 
 are alone accessible to our examination ; and we now know 
 that the mean temperature of these strata varies not only 
 with latitudes and heights, but that, according to the po- 
 sition of the several places, it performs also, in the space 
 of a year, regular oscillations round the mean heat of 
 the neigbouring atmosphere. The time is gone by when 
 men were surprised to find, in other zones, the heat 
 of grottoes and wells differing from that observed in the 
 caves of the observatory at Paris. The same instrument 
 which in those caves marks 12°, rises in the subterra- 
 neous caverns of the island of Madeira, near Funchal, to 
 16’2° ; in Joseph’s Well, at Cairo* to 2T2° ; in the grot- 
 toes of the island of Cuba to 22° or 23°. t This increase 
 is nearly in proportion to that of the mean temperature 
 of the atmosphere, from latitude 48° to the tropics. 
 
 * At Funchal (lat. 32° 37') the mean temperature of the air is 20‘4°, 
 and at Cairo (lat. 30° 2'), according to Nouet, it is 22‘4°. 
 
 *f* The mean temperature of the air at the Havannah, according to 
 Mr. Ferrer, is 25*6°. 
 
GENERAL TEMPERATURE. 
 
 271 
 
 We have just seen that, in the Cueva del Gnacharo, 
 the water of the river is nearly 2° colder than the am- 
 bient air of the cavern. The water, whether in filtering 
 through the rocks, or in running over stony beds, doubt- 
 less imbibes the temperature of these beds. The air 
 contained in the grotto, on the contrary, is not in repose ; 
 it communicates with the external atmosphere. Though 
 under the torrid zone, the changes of the external tem- 
 perature are exceedingly trifling, currents are formed, which 
 modify periodically the internal air. It is consequently 
 the temperature of the waters, that of 16* 8°, which we 
 might look upon as the temperature of the earth in those 
 mountains, if we were sure that the waters do not descend 
 rapidly from more elevated neighbouring mountains. 
 
 It follows from these observations, that when we can- 
 not obtain results perfectly exact, we find at least under 
 each zone certain numbers which indicate the maximum 
 and minimum. At Caripe, in the equinoctial zone, at an 
 elevation of 500 toises, the mean temperature of the globe 
 is not below 16'8°, which was the degree indicated by the 
 water of the subterranean river. We can even prove that 
 this temperature of the globe is not above 19°, since the air 
 of the cavern, in the month of September, was found to he at 
 18*7°. As the mean temperature of the atmosphere, in the 
 hottest month, does not exceed 19 5 0 ,* it is probable that a 
 thermometer in the grotto would not rise higher than 19° at 
 any season of the year. 
 
 * The mean temperature of the month of September at Caripe is 
 18'5° ; and on the coast of Cumana, where we had opportunities of 
 making numerous observations, the mean heat of the warmest months 
 differs only r8° from that of the coldest. 
 
272 
 
 LIEE AT THE MISSION. 
 
 Chapteb VIII. 
 
 Departure from Caripe. -^Mountain and Forest of Santa Maria. — Mission 
 of Catuaro. — Port of Cariaco. 
 
 The days we passed at the Capuchin convent in the 
 mountains of Caripe, glided swiftly away, though our manner 
 of living was simple and uniform. From sunrise to nightfall 
 we traversed the forests and neighbouring mountains, to 
 collect plants. When the winter rains prevented us from 
 undertaking distant excursions, we visited the huts of the 
 Indians, the conuco of the community, or those assemblies in 
 which the alcaldes every evening arrange the labours of the 
 succeeding day. We returned to the monastery only when 
 the sound of the hell called us to the refectory to share the 
 repasts of the missionaries. Sometimes, very early in the 
 morning, we followed them to the church, to attend the 
 doctrina , that is to say, the religious instruction of the 
 Indians. It was rather a difficult task to explain dogmas to 
 the neophytes, especially those who had hut a very imperfect 
 knowledge of the Spanish language. On the other hand, the 
 monks are as yet almost totally ignorant of the language of 
 the Chaymas ; and the resemblance of sounds confuses the 
 poor Indians and suggests to them the most whimsical ideas. 
 Of this I may cite an example. I saw a missionary labouring 
 earnestly to prove that injierno , hell, and invierno, winter, 
 were not one and the same thing ; but as different as heat 
 and cold. The Chaymas are acquainted with no other winter 
 than the season of rains ; and consequently they imagined 
 the ‘Hell of the whites’ to be a place where the wicked 
 are exposed to frequent showers. The missionary harangued 
 to no purpose: it was impossible to efface the first impres- 
 sion produced by the analogy between the two consonants. 
 He could not separate in the minds of the neophytes the 
 ideas of rain and hell; invierno and injierno. 
 
 After passing almost the whole day in the open air, we 
 employed our evenings, at the convent, in making notes, 
 
CLOUDY ATMOSPHEKE. 
 
 273 
 
 drying our plants, and sketching those that appeared to form 
 new genera. Unfortunately the misty atmosphere of a valley, 
 where the surrounding forests fill the air with an enormous 
 quantity of vapour, was unfavourable to astronomical obser- 
 vations. I spent a part of the nights waiting to take 
 advantage of the moment when some star should be visible 
 between the clouds, near its passage over the meridian. I 
 often shivered with cold, though the thermometer only sunk 
 to 16°, which is the temperature of the day in our climates 
 towards the end of September. The instruments remained 
 set up in the court of the convent for several hours, yet I 
 was almost always disappointed in my expectations. Some 
 good observations of Eomalhaut and of Deneb have given 
 10° 10' 14" as the latitude of Caripe ; which proves that the 
 position indicated in the maps of Caulin is 18' wrong, and in 
 that of Arrowsmith 14'. 
 
 Observations of corresponding altitudes of the sun having 
 given me the true time, within about 2", I was enabled to 
 determine the magnetic variation with precision, at noon. 
 It was, on the 20th of September, 1799, 3° 15' 30" north-east; 
 consequently 0° 58' 15" less than at Cumana. If we attend 
 to the influence of the horary variations, which in these 
 countries do not in general exceed 8', we shall find, that at 
 considerable distances the variation changes less rapidly than 
 is usually supposed. The dip of the needle was 42*75°, cen- 
 tesimal division, and the number of oscillations, expressing the 
 intensity of the magnetic forces, rose to 229 in ten minutes. 
 
 The vexation of seeing the stars disappear in a misty sky 
 was the only disappointment we felt in the valley of Caripe. 
 The aspect of this spot presents a character at once wild and 
 tranquil, gloomy and attractive. In the solitude of these 
 mountains we are perhaps less struck by the new impressions 
 we receive at every step, than with the marks of resemblance 
 we trace in climates the most remote from each other. The 
 hills by which the convent is backed, are crowned with palm- 
 trees and arborescent ferns. In the evenings, when the sky 
 denotes rain, the air resounds with the monotonous howling 
 of the alouate apes, which resembles the distant sound of 
 wind when it shakes the forest. Yet amid these strange 
 sounds, these wild forms of plants, and these prodigies of a 
 new world, nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice 
 
 YOL. i. t 
 
274 
 
 DEPAETUBE FEOM THE COHVEHT. 
 
 familiar to him. The turf that overspreads the soil ; the old 
 moss and fern that cover the roots of the trees ; the torrents 
 that gush down the sloping banks of the calcareous rocks ; in 
 fine, the harmonious accordance of tints reflected by the 
 waters, the verdure, and the sky ; everything recalls to the 
 traveller, sensations which he has already felt. 
 
 The beauties of this mountain scenery so much engaged 
 us, that we were very tardy in observing the embarrassment 
 felt by our kind entertainers the monks. They had but a 
 slender provision of wine and wheaten bread ; and although 
 in those high regions both are considered as belonging merely 
 to the luxuries of the table, yet we saw with regret, that our 
 hosts abstained from them on our account. Our portion of 
 bread had already been diminished three-fourths, yet violent 
 rains still obliged us to delay our departure for two days. 
 How long did this delay appear! It made us dread the 
 sound of the bell that summoned us to the refectory. 
 
 We departed at length on the 22nd of September, followed 
 by four mules, laden with our instruments and plants. We 
 had to descend the north-east slope of the calcareous Alps of 
 New Andalusia, which we have called the great chain of the 
 Brigantine and the Cocollar. The mean elevation of this 
 chain scarcely exceeds six or seven hundred toises : in respect 
 to height and geological constitution, we may compare it to 
 the chain of the Jura. Notwithstanding the inconsiderable 
 elevation of the mountains of Cumana, the descent is ex- 
 tremely difficult and dangerous in the direction of Cariaco. 
 The Cerro of Santa Maria, which the missionaries ascend in 
 their journey from Cumana to their convent at Caripe, is 
 famous for the difficulties it presents to travellers. On com- 
 paring these mountains with the Andes of Peru, the Pyrenees, 
 and the Alps, which we successively visited, it has more than 
 once occurred to us, that the less lofty sum m its are some- 
 times the most inaccessible. 
 
 On leaving the valley of Caripe, we first crossed a ridge of 
 hills north-east of the convent. The road led us along a con- 
 tinual ascent through a vast savannah, as far as the table-land 
 of Gruardia de San Augustin. We there halted to wait for 
 the Indian who carried the barometer. We found ourselves 
 to be at 533 toises of absolute elevation, or a little higher 
 than the bottom of the cavern of Gruacharo. The savannahs 
 
DESCENT FBOM THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 275 
 
 or natural meadows, which yield excellent pasture for the 
 cows of the convent, are totally devoid of trees or shrubs. It 
 is the domain of the monocotyledonous plants ; for amidst 
 the gramina only a few Maguey * plants rise here and there; 
 their flowery stalks being more than twenty-six feet high. 
 Having reached the table-land of Gruardia, we appeared to be 
 transported to the bed of an old lake, levelled by the long- 
 continued abode of the waters. We seemed to trace the 
 sinuosities of the ancient shore in the tongues of land which 
 jut out from the craggy rock, and even in the distribution ot 
 the vegetation. The bottom of the basin is a savannah, while 
 its banks are covered with trees of full growth. This is pro- 
 bably the most elevated valley in the provinces of Venezuela 
 and Cumana. One cannot but regret, that a spot favoured 
 by so temperate a climate, and which without doubt would be 
 fit for the culture of com, is totally uninhabited. 
 
 From the table-land of Gruardia we continued to descend, 
 till we reached the Indian village of Santa Cruz. We 
 passed at first along a slope extremely slippery and steep, 
 to which the missionaries had given the name of Baxada del 
 Purgatorio, or Descent of Purgatory. It is a rock of schis- 
 tose sandstone, decomposed, covered with clay, the talus of 
 which appears frightfully steep, from the effect of a very 
 common optical illusion. When we look down from the top 
 to the bottom of the hill the road seems inclined more than 
 60°. The mules in going down draw their hind legs near to 
 their fore legs, and lowering their cruppers, let themselves 
 slide at a venture. The rider runs no risk, provided he 
 slacken the bridle, thereby leaving the animal quite free in his 
 movements. Prom this point we perceived towards the left 
 the great pyramid of Gnacharo. The appearance of this 
 calcareous peak is very picturesque, but we soon lost sight of 
 it, on entering the thick forest, known by the name of the 
 Montana de Santa Maria. We descended without intermis- 
 sion for seven hours. It is difficult to conceive a more tre- 
 mendous descent ; it is absolutely a road of steps, a kind of 
 ravine, in which, during the rainy season, impetuous torrents 
 dash from rock to rock. The steps are from two to three 
 feet high, and the beasts of burden, after measuring with 
 their eyes the space necessary to let their load pass between 
 * Agave Americana. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 
 
 INSTINCT OF THE MULES. 
 
 the trunks of the trees, leap from one rock to another. 
 Afraid of missing their mark, we saw them stop a few minutes 
 to scan the ground, and bring together their four feet like 
 wild goats. If the animal does not reach the nearest block 
 of stone, he sinks half his depth into the soft ochreous clay, 
 that fills up the interstices of the rock. When the blocks 
 are wanting, enormous roots serve as supports for the feet of 
 men and beasts. Some of these roots are twenty inches 
 thick, and they often branch out from the trunks of the trees 
 much above the level of the soil. The Creoles have sufficient 
 confidence in the address and instinct of the mules, to remain 
 in their saddles during this long and dangerous descent. 
 Tearing fatigue less than they did, and being accustomed to 
 travel slowly for the purpose of gathering plants and exa- 
 mining the nature of the rocks, we preferred going down 
 on foot ; and, indeed, the care which our chronometers de- 
 manded, left us no liberty of choice. 
 
 The forest that covers the steep flank of the mountain of 
 Santa Maria, is one of the thickest I ever saw. The trees 
 are of stupendous height and size. Under their bushy, 
 deep green foliage, there reigns continually a kind of dim 
 daylight, a peculiar sort of obscurity, of which our forests of 
 pines, oaks, and beech-trees, convey no idea. Notwithstand- 
 ing its elevated temperature, it is difficult to believe that the 
 air can dissolve the quantity of water exhaled from the sur- 
 face of the soil, the foliage of the trees, and their trunks : 
 the latter are covered with a drapery of orchideæ, peperomia, 
 and other succulent plants. With the aromatic odour of 
 the flowers, the fruit, and even the wood, is mingled that 
 which we perceive in autumn in misty weather. Here, as in 
 the forests of the Orinoco, fixing our eyes on the top of the 
 trees, we discerned streams of vapour, whenever a solar ray 
 penetrated, and traversed the dense atmosphere. Our guides 
 pointed out to us among those majestic trees, the height 
 of which exceeded 120 or 130 feet, the curucay of Terecen. 
 It yields a whitish liquid, and very odoriferous resin, which 
 was formerly employed by the Cumanagoto and Tagiri In- 
 dians, to perfume their idols. The young branches have 
 an agreeable taste, though somewhat astringent. Next to 
 the curucay and enormous trunks of hymenæa, (the diameter 
 of which was more than nine or ten feet), the trees which 
 
ARBORESCENT EERN3. 
 
 277 
 
 most excited our attention were the dragon’s blood (Croton 
 sanguifluum), the purple-brown juice of which flows down a 
 whitish bark ; the calahuala fern, different from that of Peru, 
 hut almost equally medicinal;* and the palm-trees, irasse, 
 macanilla, corozo, and praga.f The last yields a very 
 savoury palm-cabbage, which we had sometimes eaten at the 
 convent of Caripe. These palms with pinnated and thorny 
 leaves formed a pleasing contrast to the fern-trees. One of 
 the latter, the Cyathea speciosa,î grows to the height of 
 more than thirty-five feet, a prodigious size for plants of this 
 family. We discovered here, and in the valley of Caripe, 
 five new kinds of arborescent ferns. § In the time of Lin- 
 naeus, botanists knew no more than four on both continents. 
 
 We observed that the fern-trees are in general much 
 more rare than the palm-trees. Nature has confined them 
 to temperate, moist, and shady places. They shun the direct 
 rays of the sun, and while the pumos, the corypha of the 
 steppes and other palms of America, flourish on the barren 
 and burning plains, these ferns with arborescent trunks, 
 which at a distance look like palm-trees, preserve the cha- 
 racter and habits of cryptogamous plants. They love soli- 
 tary places, little light, moist, temperate and stagnant air. 
 If they sometimes descend towards the sea-coast, it is only 
 under cover of a thick shade. The old trunks of the cyathea 
 and the meniscium are covered with a carbonaceous powder, 
 which, probably being deprived of hydrogen, has a metallic 
 lustre like plumbago. No other plant presents this pheno- 
 
 * The calahuala of Caripe is the Polypodium crassifolium ; that of 
 Peru, the use of which has been so much extended by Messrs. Ruiz and 
 Pavon, comes from the Aspidium coriaceum, Willd. (Tectaria calahuala, 
 Cav.) In commerce the diaphoretic roots of the Polypodium crassi- 
 folium, and of the Acrostichum huascaro, are mixed with those of the 
 calahuala or Aspidium coriaceum. 
 
 t Aiphanes praga. 
 
 X Possibly a hemitelia of Robert Brown. The trunk alone is from 22 to 
 24 feet long. This and the Cyathea excelsa of the Mauritius, are 
 the most majestic of all the fern- trees described by botanists. The total 
 number of these gigantic cryptogamous plants amounts at present to 25 
 species, that of the palm-trees to 80. With the cyathea grow, on the 
 mountain of Santa Maria, Rhexia juniperina, Chiococca racemosa, and 
 Commelina spicata. 
 
 § Meniscium arborescens, Aspidium caducum, A. rostratum, Cyathea 
 villosa, and C. speciosa. 
 
278 
 
 CETE S OE MONKEYS. 
 
 menon ; for the trunks of the dicotyledons, in spite of the heat 
 of the climate, and the intensity of the light, are less burnt 
 within the tropics than in the temperate zone. It may be said 
 that the trunks of the ferns, which, like the monocotyledons, 
 are enlarged by the remains of the petioles, decay from the 
 circumference to the centre ; and that, deprived of the cor- 
 tical organs through which the elaborated juices descend to 
 the roots, they are burnt more easily by the action of the 
 oxygen of the atmosphere. I brought to Europe some 
 powders with metallic lustre, taken from very old trunks of 
 Meniscium and Aspidium. 
 
 In proportion as we descended the mountain of Santa 
 Maria, we saw the arborescent ferns diminish, and the 
 number of palm-trees increase. The beautiful large-winged 
 butterflies (nymphales), which fly at a prodigious height, 
 became more common. Everything denoted our approach to 
 the coast, and to a zone in which the mean temperature of the 
 day is from 28 to 30 degrees. 
 
 The weather was cloudy, and led us to fear one of those 
 heavy rains, during which from 1 to T3 inch of water some- 
 times falls in a day. The sun at times illumined the tops of 
 the trees ; and, though sheltered from its rays, we felt an 
 oppressive heat. Thunder rolled at a distance; the clouds 
 seemed suspended on the top of the lofty mountains of the 
 Gruacharo ; and the plaintive howling of the araguatoes, 
 which we had so often heard at Caripe, denoted the prox- 
 imity of the storm. We now for the first time had a near 
 view of these howling apes. They are of the family of the 
 alouates,* the different species of which have long been 
 confounded one with another. The small sapajous of Ame- 
 rica, which imitate in whistling the tones of the passeres, have 
 the bone of the tongue thin and simple, but the apes of 
 large size, as the alouates and marimondes,f have the tongue 
 placed on a large bony drum. Their superior larynx has six 
 pouches, in which the voice loses itself; and two of which, 
 shaped like pigeons’ nests, resemble the inferior larynx of 
 birds. The air driven with force into the bony drum pro- 
 duces that mournful sound which characterises the aragua- 
 toes. I sketched on the spot these organs, which are imper- 
 
 * Stentor, Geoffroy. 
 
 + Ateles, Geoffroy. 
 
SPECIES or APES. 
 
 279 
 
 fectly known to anatomists, and published the description of 
 them on my return to Europe. 
 
 The araguato, which the Tamanac Indians call aravata ,* 
 and the Maypures marave, resembles a young bear.f It is 
 three feet long, reckoning from the top of the head (which 
 is small and very pyramidal) to the beginning of the prehen- 
 sile tail. Its fur is bushy, and of a reddish brown; the 
 breast and belly are covered with fine hair, and not bare as 
 in the mono Colorado , or alouate roux of Buffon, which we 
 carefully examined in going from Carthagena to Santa Eé 
 de Bogota. The face of the araguato is of a blackish blue, 
 and is covered with a fine and wrinkled skin : its beard is 
 pretty long ; and, notwithstanding the direction of the facial 
 line, the angle of which is only thirty degrees, the ara- 
 guato has, in the expression of the countenance, as much 
 resemblance to man as the marimonde (S. belzebuth, Bres- 
 son) and the capuchin of the Orinoco (S. chiropotes). 
 Among thousands of araguatoes which we observed in the 
 provinces of Cumana, Caracas, and Ghiiana, we never saw 
 any change in the reddish brown fur of the back and shoul- 
 ders, whether we examined individuals or whole troops. It 
 appeared to me in general, that variety of colour is less 
 frequent among monkeys than naturalists suppose. 
 
 The araguato of Caripe is a new species of the genus 
 Stentor, which I have above described. It differs equally 
 from the ouarine (S. guariba) and the alouate roux (S. seni- 
 culus, old man of the woods). Its eye, voice, and gait, 
 denote melancholy. I have seen young araguatoes brought 
 up in Indian huts. They never play like the little sagoins, 
 and their gravity was described with much simplicity by 
 Lopez de G-omara, in the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
 “The Aranata de los Oumaneses ,” says this author, “has 
 
 * In the writings of the early Spanish missionaries, this monkey is 
 described by the names of aranata and arayuato. In both names we 
 easily discover the same root. The v has been transformed into y and n. 
 The name of arabata, which Gumilla gives to the howling apes of the 
 Lower Orinoco, and which Geoffroy thinks belongs to the S. straminea of 
 Great Pariâ, is the same Tamanac word aravata. This identity of names 
 need not surprise us. The language of the Chayma Indians of Cumana 
 is one of the numerous branches of the Tamanac language, and the latter 
 is connected with the Caribbee language of the Lower Orinoco. 
 
 f Alouate ourse (Simia ursina). 
 
280 
 
 TBOOP OF IKDIAtfS. 
 
 the face of a man, the beard of a goat, and a grave demeanor 
 (honrado gesto.)” Monkeys are more melancholy in pro- 
 portion as they have more resemblance to man. Their 
 sprightliness diminishes, as their intellectual faculties appear 
 to increase. 
 
 We stopped to observe some howling monkeys, which, to 
 the number of thirty or forty, crossed the road, passing in a 
 file from one tree to another over the horizontal and inter- 
 secting branches. While we were observing their move- 
 ments, we saw a troop of Indians going towards the moun- 
 tains of Caripe. They were without clothing, as the natives 
 of this country generally are. The women, laden with 
 rather heavy burdens, closed the march. The men were all 
 armed ; and even the youngest boys had bows and arrows. 
 They moved on in süence, with their eyes fixed on the 
 ground. We endeavoured to learn from them whether we 
 were yet far from the Mission of Santa Cruz, where we in- 
 tended passing the night. We were overcome with fatigue, 
 and suffered from thirst. The heat increased as the storm 
 drew near, and we had not met with a single spring on the 
 way. The words si, patre; no, patre; which the Indians 
 continually repeated, led us to think they understood a little 
 Spanish. In the eyes of a native every white man is a 
 monk, a padre; for in the Missions the colour of the skin 
 characterizes the monk, more than the colour of the gar- 
 ment. In vain we questioned them respecting the length of 
 the way : they answered, as if by chance, si and no, without 
 our being able to attach any precise sense to their replies. 
 This made us the more impatient, as their smiles and ges- 
 tures indicated their wish to direct us ; and the forest seemed 
 at every step to become thicker and thicker. At length we 
 Separated from the Indians ; our guides were able to follow 
 us only at a distance, because the beasts of burden fell at 
 every step in the ravines. 
 
 After journeying for several hours, continually descend- 
 ing on blocks of scattered rock, we found ourselves unex- 
 pectedly at the outlet of the forest of Santa Maria. A 
 savannah, the verdure of which had been renewed by the 
 winter rains, stretched before us farther than the eye could 
 reach. On the left we discovered a narrow valley, extending 
 as far as the mountains of the Gruacharo, and covered with a 
 
MATITE VILLAGE, 
 
 281 
 
 thick forest. Looking downward, the eye rested on the tops 
 of the trees, which, at eight hundred feet below the road, 
 formed a carpet of verdure of a dark and uniform tint. The 
 openings in the forest appeared like vast funnels, in which 
 we could distinguish by their elegant forms and pinnated 
 leaves, the Praga and Irasse palms. But what renders this 
 spot eminently picturesque, is the aspect of the Sierra del 
 Guacharo. Its northern slope, in the direction of the gulf 
 of Cariaco, is abrupt. It presents a wall of rock, an almost 
 vertical profile, exceeding 3000 feet in height. The vegeta- 
 tion which covers this wall is so scanty, that the eye can 
 follow the lines of the calcareous strata. The summit of 
 the Sierra is flat, and it is only at its eastern extremity, 
 that the majestic peak of the Guacharo rises like an inclined 
 pyramid. Its form resembles that of the needles and horns * 
 of the xllps. 
 
 The savannah we crossed to the Indian village of Santa 
 Cruz is composed of several smooth plateaux, lying above 
 each other like terraces. This geological phenomenon, which 
 is repeated in every climate, seems to indicate a long abode 
 of the waters in basins that have poured them from one to 
 the other. The calcareous rock is no longer visible, but is 
 covered with a thick layer of mould. The last time we saw 
 it in the forest of Santa Maria it was slightly porous, and 
 looked more like the limestone of Cumanacoa than that of 
 Caripe. We there found brown iron-ore disseminated in 
 patches, and if we were not deceived in our observation, a 
 Cornu-ammonis, which we could not succeed in our attempt 
 to detach. It was seven inches indiameter. This fact is the 
 more important, as in this part of America we have never 
 seen ammonites. The Mission of Santa Cruz is situated in 
 the midst of the plain. We reached it towards the evening, 
 suffering much from thirst, having travelled nearly eight 
 hours without finding water. The thermometer kept at 26°; 
 accordingly we were not more than 190 toises above the 
 level of the sea. 
 
 We passed the night in one of those ajupas called King’s 
 houses, which, as I have already said, serve as tcmbos or 
 caravanserais to travellers. The rains prevented any obser- 
 vations of the stars; and the next day, the 23rd of Sep- 
 * The Shreckhomer, the Finsteraarhorn, &c. 
 
282 
 
 MISSION or CATUAEO. 
 
 tember, we continued our descent towards the gulf of 
 Cariaco. Beyond Santa Cruz a thick forest again appears ; 
 and in it we found, under tufts of melastoïnas, a beautiful 
 fern, with osmundia leaves, which forms a new genus of the 
 order of polvpodiaceous plants.* 
 
 Having reached the mission of Catuaro, we were desirous 
 of continuing our journey eastward by Santa Rosalia, Casa- 
 nay, San Josef, Carupano, Rio Carives, and the Montana of 
 Paria; but we learnt with great regret, that torrents of 
 rain had rendered the roads impassable, and that we should 
 run the risk of losing the plants we had already gathered. 
 A rich planter of cacao-trees was to accompany us from 
 Santa Rosalia to the port of Carupano ; but when the time 
 of departure approached, we were informed that his affairs 
 had called him to Cumana. We resolved in consequence to 
 embark at Cariaco, and to return directly by the gulf, in- 
 stead of passing between the island of Margareta and the 
 isthmus of Araya. The Mission of Catuaro is situated on 
 a very wild spot. Trees of full growth still surround the 
 church, and the tigers come by night to devour the poultry 
 and swine belonging to the Indians. We lodged at the 
 dwelling of the priest, a monk of the congregation of the 
 Observance, to whom the Capuchins had confided the Mis- 
 sion, because priests of their own community were wanting. 
 
 At this Mission we met Don Alexandra Mexia, the cor- 
 regidor of the district, an amiable and well-educated man. 
 He gave us three Indians, who, armed with their machetes, 
 were to precede us, and cut our way through the forest. In 
 this country, so little frequented, the power of vegetation is 
 such at the period of the great rains, that a man on horse- 
 back can with difficulty make his way through narrow paths, 
 covered with lianas and intertwining branches. To our 
 great annoyance, the missionary of Catuaro insisted on con- 
 ducting us to Cariaco ; and we could not decline the proposal. 
 The movement for independence, which had nearly broken 
 out at Caracas in 1798, had been preceded and followed by 
 great agitation among the slaves at Coro, Maracaibo, and 
 Caraico. At the last of these places an unfortunate negro 
 had been condemned to die, and our host, the vicar of Catu- 
 aro, was going thither to offer him spiritual comfort. During 
 * Polybotya. 
 
DANGEEOUS DESCENT. 
 
 283 
 
 our journey we could not escape conversations, in which the 
 missionary pertinaciously insisted on the necessity of the 
 slave-trade, on the innate wickedness of the blacks, and the 
 benefit they derived from their state of slavery among the 
 Christians ! The mildness of Spanish legislation, compared 
 with the Black Code of most other nations that have pos- 
 sessions in either of the Indies, cannot be denied. But such 
 is the state of the negroes, that justice, far from efficaciously 
 protecting them during their lives, cannot even punish acts 
 of barbarity which cause their death. 
 
 The road we took across the forest of Catuaro resembled 
 the descent of the mountain Santa Maria; here also, the 
 most difficult and dangerous places have fanciful names. 
 We walked as in a narrow furrow, scooped out by torrents, 
 and filled with fine tenacious clay. The mules lowered 
 their cruppers and slid down the steepest slopes. This 
 descent is called Saca Manteca.* There is no danger in 
 the descent, owing to the great address of the mules of this 
 country. The clay, which renders the soil so slippery, is 
 produced by the numerous layers of sandstone and schistose 
 clay crossing the bluish grey alpine limestone. This last 
 disappears as we draw nearer to Cariaco. When we reached 
 the mountain of Meapira, we found it formed in great part 
 of a white limestone, filled with fossil remains, and from the 
 grains of quartz agglutinated in the mass, it appeared to 
 belong to the great formation of the sea-coast breccias. We 
 descended this mountain on the strata of the rock, the 
 section of which forms steps of unequal height. Farther on, 
 going out of the forest, we reached the hill of Buenavista,f 
 well deserving the name it bears ; since it commands a view 
 of the town of Cariaco, situated in the midst of a vast 
 plain filled with plantations, huts, and scattered groups of 
 cocoa-palms. To the west of Cariaco extends the wide gulf, 
 which a wall of rock separates from the ocean : and towards 
 the east are seen, like bluish clouds, the high mountains 
 of Paria and Areo. This is one of the most extensive and 
 magnificent prospects that can be enjoyed on the coast of 
 New Andalusia. In the town of Cariaco we found a great 
 
 * Or the Butter. Slope. Manteca in Spanish signifies butter. 
 
 t Mountain of the Fine Prospect. 
 

 284 GEOLOGIC PHENOMENA. 
 
 part of the inhabitants suffering from intermittent fever ; a 
 disease which in autumn assumes a formidable character. 
 When we consider the extreme fertility of the surrounding 
 plains, their moisture, and the mass of vegetation with which 
 they are covered, we may easily conceive why, amidst so 
 much decomposition of organic matter, the inhabitants do 
 not enjoy that salubrity of air which characterizes the cli- 
 mate of Cumana. 
 
 The chain of calcareous mountains of the Brigantine and 
 the Cocollar sends off a considerable branch to the north, 
 which joins the primitive mountains of the coast. This 
 branch bears the name of Sierra de Meapire ; but towards 
 the town of Cariaco it is called Cerro Grande de Curiaco. 
 Its mean height did not appear to be more than 150 or 200 
 toises. It was composed, where I could examine it, of the 
 calcareous breccias of the sea-coast. Marly and calcareous 
 beds alternate with other beds containing grains of quartz. 
 It is a very striking phenomenon for those who study the 
 physical aspect of a country, to see a transverse ridge con- 
 nect at right angles two parallel ridges, of which one, the 
 more southern, is composed of secondary rocks, and the 
 other, the more northern, of primitive rocks. The latter 
 presents, nearly as far as the meridian of Carupano, only 
 mica-slate ; but to the east of this point, where it communi- 
 cates by a transverse ridge (the Sierra de Meapire) with the 
 limestone range, it contains lamellar gypsum, compact lime- 
 stone, and other rocks of secondary formation. It might 
 be supposed that the southern ridge has transferred these 
 rocks to the northern chain. 
 
 When standing on the summit of the Cerro del Meapire, 
 we see the mountain currents flow on one side to the gulf 
 of Paria, and on the other to the gulf of Cariaco. East 
 and west of the ridge there are low and marshy grounds, 
 spreading out without interruption; and if it be admitted 
 that both gulfs owe their origin to the sinking of the earth, 
 and to rents caused by earthquakes, we must suppose that 
 the Cerro de Meapire has resisted the convulsive movements 
 of the globe, and hindered tj^e waters of the gulf of Paria 
 from uniting with those of the gulf of Cariaco. But for 
 this rocky dyke, the isthmus itself in all probability would 
 nave had no existence; and from the castle of Araya as far as 
 
CHANGES OF THE COAST. 
 
 285 
 
 Cape Paria, tlie whole mass of the mountains of the coast 
 would have formed a narrow island, parallel to the island of 
 Santa Margareta, and four times as long. Not only do the 
 inspection of the ground, and considerations deduced from 
 its relievo , confirm these opinions ; but a mere glance of the 
 configuration of the coasts, and a geological map of the 
 country, would suggest the same ideas. It would appear 
 that the island of Margareta has been heretofore- attached 
 to the coast-chain of Araya by the peninsula of Chacopata 
 and the Caribbee islands, Lobo and Coche, in the same 
 manner as this chain is still connected with that of the 
 Cocollar and Caripe by the ridge of Meapire. 
 
 At present we perceive that the humid plains which 
 stretch east and west of the ridge, and which are improperly 
 called the valleys San Bonifacio and Cariaco, are enlarging 
 by gaining on the sea. The waters are receding, and these 
 changes of the shore are very remarkable, more particularly 
 on the coast of Cumana. If the level of the soil seem to 
 indicate that the two gulfs of Cariaco and Paria formerly 
 occupied a much more considerable space, we cannot doubt 
 that at present the land is progressively extending. Near 
 Cumana, a battery, called La Boca, was built in 1791 on 
 the very margin of the sea; in 1799 we saw it very far in- 
 land. At the mouth of the Bio Neveri, near the Morro of 
 Nueva Barcelona, the retreat of the waters is still more 
 rapid. This local phenomenon is probably assignable to 
 accumulations of sand, the progress of which has not yet 
 been sufficiently examined. Descending the Sierra de Mea- 
 pire, which forms the isthmus between the plains of San 
 Bonifacio and Cariaco, we find towards the east the great 
 lake of Pntacuao, which communicates with the river Areo, 
 and is four or five leagues in diameter. The mountainous 
 lands that surround this basin are known only to the natives. 
 There are found those great boa serpents known to the 
 Chayma Indians by the name of guainas , and to which they 
 fabulously attribute a sting under the tail. Descending the 
 Sierra de Meapire to the west, we find at first a hollow 
 ground (tierra hueca) which, during the great earthquakes 
 of 1766, threw out asphaltum enveloped in viscous petro- 
 leum. Farther on, a numberless quantity of sulphureous 
 
286 
 
 SULPHUREOUS SPRINGS. 
 
 thermal springs* are seen issuing from the soil; and at 
 length we reach the borders of the lake of Campoma, the 
 exhalations from which contribute to the insalubrity of the 
 climate of Cariaco. The natives believe that the hoilow 
 is formed by the engulfing of the hot springs ; and, judging 
 from the sound heard under the hoofs of the horses, we must 
 conclude that the subterranean cavities are continued from 
 west to east nearly as far as Casanay, a length of three or 
 four thousand toises. A little river, the Bio Azul, runs 
 through these plains, which are rent into crevices by earth- 
 quakes. These earthquakes have a particular centre of action, 
 and seldom extend as far as Cumana. The waters of the 
 Bio Azul are cold and limpid ; they rise on the western decli- 
 vity of the mountain of Meapire, and it is believed that they 
 are augmented by infiltrations from the lake Putacuao, situ- 
 ated on the other side of the chain. The little river, toge- 
 ther with the sulphureous hot springs, fall into the Laguna 
 de Campoma. This is a name given to a great lagoon, 
 which is divided in dry weather into three basins situated 
 north-west of the town of Cariaco, near the extremity of the 
 gulf. Betid exhalations arise continually from the stagnant 
 water of this lagoon. The smell of sulphuretted hydrogen 
 is mingled with that of putrid fishes and rotting plants. 
 
 Miasms are formed in the valley of Cariaco, as in the 
 Campagna of Borne; but the hot climate of the tropics 
 increases their deleterious energy. These miasms are pro- 
 bably ternary or quaternary combinations of azote, phos- 
 phorus, hydrogen, carbon, and sulphur. 
 
 The situation of the lagoon of Campoma renders the 
 north-west wind, which blows frequently after sunset, very 
 pernicious to the inhabitants of the little town of Cariaco. 
 Its influence can be the less doubted, as intermitting fevers 
 are observed to degenerate into typhoid fevers, in proportion 
 as we approach the lagoon, which is the principal focus of 
 putrid miasms. Whole families of free negroes, who have 
 small plantations on the northern coast of the gulf of 
 Cariaco, languish in their hammocks from the beginning of 
 the rainy season. These intermittent fevers assume a dan- 
 
 * El Llano de Aguas calientes, E. N. E. of Cariaco, at the distance 
 of two leagues. 
 
EPIDEMIC EEVEBS. 
 
 287 
 
 gerous character, when persons, debilitated by long labour 
 and copious perspiration, expose themselves to the fine rains, 
 which frequently fall as evening advances. Nevertheless, 
 the men of colour, and particularly the Creole negroes, 
 resist much better than any other race, the influence of the 
 climate. Lemonade and infusions of Scoparia dulcis are 
 given to the sick ; hut the cuspare, which is the cinchona of 
 Angostura, is seldom used. 
 
 It is generally observed, that in these epidemics of the 
 town of Cariaco the mortality is less considerable than 
 might be supposed. Intermitting fevers, when they attack 
 the same individual during several successive years, enfeeble 
 the constitution ; but this state of debility, so common on 
 the unhealthy coasts, does not cause death. What is re- 
 markable enough, is the belief which prevails here as in the 
 Campagna of Borne, that the air has become progressively 
 more vitiated in proportion as a greater number of acres 
 have been cultivated. The miasms exhaled from these 
 plains have, however, nothing in common with those which 
 arise from a forest when the trees are cut down, and the 
 sun heats a thick layer of dead leaves. Near Cariaco the 
 country is but thinly wooded. Can it be supposed that the 
 mould, fresh stirred and moistened by rains, alters and vitiates 
 the atmosphere more than the thick wood of plants which 
 covers an uncultivated soil? To local causes are joined 
 other causes less problematic. The neighbouring shores of 
 the sea are covered with mangroves, avicennias, and other 
 shrubs with astringent bark. All the inhabitants of the 
 tropics are aware of the noxious exhalations of these plants ; 
 and they dread them the more, as their roots and stocks are 
 not always under water, but alternately wetted and exposed 
 to the heat of the sun. # The mangroves produce miasms, 
 because they contain vegeto-animal matter combined with 
 tannin. 
 
 * The following is a list of the social plants that cover those sandy 
 plains on the sea-side, and characterize the vegetation of Cumana and the 
 gulf of Cariaco. Rhizophora mangle, Avicennia nitida, Gomphrena flava, 
 G. brachiata, Sesuvium portulacastrum ( [vidrio ), Talinum cuspidatum 
 ( [vicho ), T. cumanense, Portulacca pilosa ( zargasso ), P. lanuginosa, Illece- 
 brum maritimum, Atriplex cristata, Heliotropium viride, H. latifolium. 
 Verbena cuneata, Mollugo verticillata, Euphorbia maritima, Convolvulus 
 cumanensis. 
 
288 
 
 CACAO PLANTATION S . 
 
 The town of Cariaco has been repeatedly sacked in former 
 times by the Caribs. Its population has augmented rapidly 
 since the provincial authorities, in spite of prohibitory 
 orders from the court of Madrid, have often favoured the 
 trade with foreign colonies. The population amounted, in 
 1800, to more than 6000 souls. The inhabitants are active 
 in the cultivation of cotton, which is of a very fine quality. 
 The capsules of the cotton-tree, when separated from the 
 woolly substance, are carefully burnt; as those husks if thrown 
 into the river, and exposed to putrefaction, yield noxious 
 exhalations. The culture of the cacao-tree has of late con- 
 siderably diminished. This valuable tree bears only after 
 eight or ten years. Its fruit keeps very badly in the ware- 
 houses, and becomes mouldy at the expiration of a year, 
 notwithstanding all the precautions employed for drying it. 
 
 It is only in the interior of the province, to the east of 
 the Sierra de Meapire, that new plantations of the cacao- 
 tree are seen. They become there the more productive, as 
 the lands, newly cleared and surrounded by forests, are in 
 contact with an atmosphere damp, stagnant, and loaded 
 with mephitic exhalations. We there see fathers of families, 
 attached to the old habits of the colonists, slowly amass a 
 little fortune for themselves and their children. Thirty 
 thousand cacao-trees will secure competence to a family 
 for a generation and a half. If the culture of cotton and 
 coffee have led to the diminution of cacao in the province of 
 Caracas and in the small valley of Cariaco, it must be 
 admitted that this last branch of colonial industry has in 
 general increased in the interior of the provinces of New 
 Barcelona and Cumana. The causes of the progressive 
 movement of the cacao-tree from west to east may be easily 
 conceived. The province of Caracas has been from a 
 remote period cultivated: and, in the torrid zone, in pro- 
 portion as a country has been cleared, it becomes drier 
 and more exposed to the winds. These physical changes 
 have been adverse to the propagation of cacao-trees, the 
 plantations of which, diminishing in the province of Ca- 
 racas, have accumulated eastward on a newly-cleared and 
 virgin soil. The cacao of Cumana is infinitely superior to 
 that of Guayaquil. The best is produced in the valljey of 
 San Bonifacio ; as the best cacao of New Barcelona, Cara- 
 
THE SOAP-BEBEY, 
 
 289 
 
 cas, and Guatimala, is that of Capiriqual, Uritucu, and 
 Soconusco. Since the island of Trinidad has become an 
 English colony, the whole of the eastern extremity of the 
 province of Cumana, especially the coast of Paria, and the 
 gulf of the same name, have changed their appearance. 
 Eoreigners have settled there, and have introduced the cul- 
 tivation of the coffee-tree, the cotton-tree, and the sugar- 
 cane of Otaheite. The population has greatly increased at 
 Carupano, in the beautiful valley of Bio Caribe, at Guira, 
 and at the new town of Punta di Piedra, built opposite 
 Spanish Harbour, in the island of Trinidad. The soil is so 
 fertile in the Golfo Triste, that maize yields two harvests in 
 the year, and produces three hundred and eighty fold the 
 quantity sown. 
 
 Early in the morning we embarked in a sort of narrow 
 canoe, called a lancha , in hopes of crossing the gulf of 
 Cariaco during the day. The motion of the waters resem- 
 bles that of our great lakes, when they are agitated by the 
 winds. Erom the embarcadero to Cumana the distance is 
 only twelve nautical leagues. On quitting the little town of 
 Cariaco, we proceeded westward along the river of Carenicuar, 
 which, in a straight line like an artificial canal, runs through 
 gardens and plantations of cotton-trees. On the banks of the 
 river of Cariaco we saw the Indian women washing their 
 linen with the fruit of the parapara (Sapindus saponaria, or 
 soap-berry), an operation said to be very injurious to the 
 linen. The bark of the fruit produces a strong lather ; and 
 the fruit is so elastic that if thrown on a stone it rebounds 
 three or four times to the height of seven or eight feet. Being 
 of a spherical form, it is employed in making rosaries. 
 
 After we embarked we had to contend against contrary 
 winds. The rain fell in torrents, and the thunder rolled very 
 near. Swarms of flamingoes, egrets, and cormorants filled the 
 air, seeking the shore, whilst the alcatras, a large species of 
 pelican, alone continued peaceably to fish in the middle of the 
 gulf. The gulf of Cariaco is almost everywhere forty-five or 
 fifty fathoms deep ; but at its eastern extremity, near Cura- 
 guaca, along an extent of five leagues, the lead does not indicate 
 more than three or four fathoms. Here is found the Baxo 
 de la Cotua, a sand-bank, which at low-water appears like a 
 small island. The canoes which carry provisions to Cumana 
 
 VOL. i. u 
 
290 
 
 THE COCOA-PALM. 
 
 sometimes ground on this bank ; but always without danger, 
 because the sea is never rough or heavy. We crossed that 
 part of the gulf where hot springs gush from the bottom of 
 the sea. It was flood-tide, so that the change of temperature 
 was not very perceptible : besides, our canoe drove too much 
 towards the southern shore. It may be supposed that strata 
 of water must be found of different temperatures, according 
 to the greater or less depth, and according as the mingling of 
 the hot waters with those of the gulf is accelerated by the 
 winds and currents. The existence of these hot springs, 
 which we were assured raise the temperature of the sea 
 through an extent of ten or twelve thousand square toises, 
 is a very remarkable phenomenon.* Proceeding from the 
 promontory of Paria westward, by Irapa, Aguas Calientes, the 
 gulf of Cariaco, the Brigantine, and the valley of Aragua, as 
 far as the snowy mountains of Merida, a continued band of 
 thermal waters is found in an extent of 150 leagues. 
 
 Adverse winds and rainy weather forced us to go on shore 
 at Pericantral, a small farm on the south side of the gulf. 
 The whole of this coast, though covered with beautiful vege- 
 tation, is almost wholly uncultivated. There are scarcely 
 seven hundred inhabitants : and, excepting in the village of 
 Mariguitar, we saw only plantations of cocoa-trees, which 
 are the olives of the country. This palm occupies on both 
 continents a zone, of which the mean temperature of the 
 year is not below 20°.f It is, like the chamærops of the 
 basin of the Mediterranean, a true palm-tree of the coast. 
 It prefers salt to fresh water ; and flourishes less inland, 
 where the air is not loaded with saline particles, than on the 
 shore. When cocoa-trees are planted in Terra-Pirma, or in 
 the Missions of the Orinoco, at a distance from the sea, a 
 considerable quantity of salt, sometimes as much as half a 
 bushel, is thrown into the hole which receives the nut. 
 Among the plants cultivated by man, the sugar-cane, the 
 plantain, the mammee-apple, and alligator-pear (Laurus per- 
 
 * In the island of Guadaloupe, there is a fountain of boiling water, 
 which rushes out on the beach. Hot-water springs rise from the bottom 
 of the sea in the gulf of Naples, and near the island of Palma, in the 
 archipelago of the Canary Islands. 
 
 f The cocoa-tree grows in the northern hemisphere from the equator 
 to latitude 28°. Near the equator we find it from the plains to the 
 height of 700 toises above the level of the sea. 
 
COCOA-PLANTATIONS. 
 
 291 
 
 sea), alone have the property of the cocoa-tree ; that of 
 being watered equally well with fresh and salt water. This cir- 
 cumstance is favourable to their migrations ; and if the sugar- 
 cane of the sea-shore yield a syrup that is a little brackish, 
 it is believed at the same time to be better fitted for the 
 distillation of spirit than the juice produced from the canes 
 in inland situations. 
 
 The cocoa-tree, in the other parts of America, is in 
 general cnltivated around farm-houses, and the fruit is 
 eaten; in the gulf of Cariaco, it forms extensive planta- 
 tions. In a fertile and moist ground, the tree begins to 
 bear fruit abundantly in the fourth year ; but in dry soils it 
 bears only at the expiration of ten years. The duration of 
 the tree does not in general exceed eighty or a hundred 
 years ; and its mean height at that age is from seventy to 
 eighty feet. This rapid growth is so much the more remark- 
 able, as other palm-trees, for instance, the moriche * and the 
 palm of Sombrero, t the longevity of which is very great, fre- 
 quently do not attain a greater height than fourteen or eighteen 
 teet in the space of sixty years. In the first thirty or forty 
 years, a cocoa-tree of the gulf of Cariaco bears every luna- 
 tion a cluster of ten or fourteen nuts, all of which, however, 
 do not ripen. It may be reckoned that, on an average, a 
 tree produces annually a hundred nuts, which yield eight 
 fiascos J of oil. In Provence, an olive-tree thirty years old 
 yields twenty pounds, or seven fiascos of oil, so that it pro- 
 duces something less than a cocoa-tree. There are in the 
 gulf of Cariaco plantations (haciendas) of eight or nine 
 thousand cocoa-trees. They resemble, in their picturesque 
 appearance, those fine plantations of date-trees near Elche, 
 in Murcia, where, over the superficies of one square league, 
 there may be found upwards of 70,000 palms. The cocoa- 
 tree bears fruit in abundance till it is thirty or forty years old; 
 after that age the produce diminishes, and a trunk a hundred 
 years old, without being altogether barren, yields very little. 
 In the town of Cumana there is prepared a great quantity of 
 cocoa-nut oil, which is limpid, without smell, and very fit for 
 burning. The trade in this oil is not less active than that 
 on the coast of Africa for palm-oil, which is obtained from the 
 
 * Mauritia flexuosa. + Corypha tectorum. 
 
 $ One fiasco contains 70 or 80 cubic inches, Paris measure. 
 
 TJ 2 
 
292 
 
 TLOCKS OP VULTURES. 
 
 Elais guineensis, and is used as food. I have often seen 
 canoes arrive at Cumana laden with 3000 cocoa-nuts. 
 
 We did not quit the farm of Pericantral till after sunset. 
 The south coast of the gulf presents a most fertile aspect, 
 while the northern coast is naked, dry, and rocky. In spite 
 of this aridity, and the scarcity of rain, of which sometimes 
 none falls for the space of fifteen months,* the peninsula 
 of Araya, like the desert of Canound in India, produces 
 patillas, or water-melons, weighing from fifty to seventy 
 pounds. In the torrid zone, the vapours contained by the 
 air form about nine-tenths of the quantity necessary to its 
 saturation: and vegetation is maintained by the property 
 which the leaves possess of attracting the water dissolved in 
 the atmosphere. 
 
 At sunrise, we saw the Zamuro vultures, t in flocks of forty 
 or fifty, perched on the cocoa-trees. These birds range 
 themselves in files to roost together like fowls. They go to 
 roost long before sunset, and do not awake till after the sun 
 is above the horizon. This sluggishness seems as if it were 
 shared in those climates by the trees with pinnate leaves. 
 The mimosas and the tamarinds close their leaves, in a clear 
 and serene sky, twenty-five or thirty-five minutes before 
 sunset, and unfold them in the morning when the solar disk 
 has been visible for an equal space of time. As I noticed 
 pretty regularly the rising and setting of the sun, for the pirn- 
 pose of observing the effect of the mirage, or of the terrestrial 
 refractions, I was enabled to give continued attention to the 
 phenomena of the sleep of plants. I found them the same 
 in the steppes, where no irregularity of the ground inter- 
 rupted the view of the horizon. It appears, that, accustomed 
 during the day to an extreme brilliancy of fight, the sensitive 
 and other leguminous plants with thin and delicate leaves are 
 
 * The rains appear to have been more frequent at the beginning of 
 the 16th century. At any rate, the canon of Granada (Peter Martyr 
 d’Anghiera), speaking in the year 1574, of the salt-works of Araya, or of 
 Haraia, described in the fifth chapter of this work, mentions showers 
 (cadentes imbres) as a very common phenomenon. The same author, 
 who died in 1526, affirms that the Indians wrought the salt-works before 
 the arrival of the Spaniards. They dried the salt in the form of bricks ; and 
 our writer even then discussed the geological question, whether the 
 clayey soil of Haraia contained salt-springs, or whether it had been im- 
 pregnated with salt by the periodical inundations of the ocean for ages, 
 f Yultur aura. 
 
MANNERS OF THE HATIYES. 
 
 293 
 
 affected in tlie evening by the smallest decline in the inten- 
 sity of the sun’s rays ; so that for vegetation, night begins 
 there, as with us, before the total disappearance of the solar 
 disk. But why, in a zone where there is scarcely any twilight, 
 do not the first rays of the sun stimulate the leaves with the 
 more strength, as the absence of light must have rendered 
 them more susceptible ? Does the humidity deposited on 
 the parenchyma by the cooling of the leaves, which is the 
 effect of the nocturnal radiation, prevent the action of the 
 first rays of the sun? In our climates, the leguminous 
 plants with irritable leaves awake during the twilight of the 
 morning, before the sun appears. 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 Physical Constitution and Manners of the Chaymas. — Their Language. 
 
 — Filiation of the Nations which inhabit New Andalusia. — Pariagotos 
 
 seen by Columbus. 
 
 I did not wish to mingle with the narrative of our 
 journey to the Missions of Caripe any general considerations 
 on the different tribes of the indigenous inhabitants of New 
 Andalusia ; their manners, their languages, and their com- 
 mon origin. Having returned to the spot whence we set 
 out, I shall now bring into one point of view these consider- 
 ations which are so nearly connected with the history of the 
 human race. As we advance into the interior of the country, 
 these subjects will become even more interesting than the 
 phenomena of the physical world. The north-east part of 
 equinoctial America, Terra-Eirma, and the banks of the 
 Orinoco, resemble in respect to the numerous races of people 
 who inhabit them, the defiles of the Caucasus, the mountains 
 of Hindookho, at the northern extremity of Asia, beyond the 
 Tungouses, and the Tartars settled at the mouth of the Lena. 
 The barbarism which prevails throughout these different 
 regions is perhaps less owing to a primitive absence of all kind 
 of civilization, than to the effects of long degradation; for most 
 of the hordes which we designate under the name of savages, 
 are probably the descendants of nations highly advanced in 
 cultivation. How can we distinguish the prolonged infancy 
 of the human race (if, indeed, it anywhere exists), from 
 that state of moral degradation in which solitude, want, com- 
 
294 
 
 AMOUNT OF NATIYE POPULATION. 
 
 pulsory misery, forced migration, or rigour of climate, obli- 
 terate even the traces of civilization? If everything con- 
 nected with the primitive state of man, and the first popu- 
 lation of a continent, could from its nature belong to the 
 domain of history, we might appeal to the traditions of 
 India. According to the opinion frequently expressed in 
 the laws of Menou and in the Ramajan, savages were re- 
 garded as tribes banished from civilized society, and driven 
 into the forests. The word barbarian , which we have bor- 
 rowed from the Greeks and Romans, was possibly merely 
 the proper name of one of those rude hordes. 
 
 In the New World, at the begining of the conquest, the 
 natives were collected into large societies only on the ridge 
 of the Cordilleras and the coasts opposite to Asia. The 
 plains, covered with forests, and intersected by rivers; 
 the immense savannahs, extending eastward, and bound- 
 ing the horizon ; were inhabited by wandering hordes, sepa- 
 lated by differences of language and manners, and scattered 
 like the remnants of a vast wreck. In the absence of all 
 other monuments, we may endeavour, from the analogy of 
 languages, and the study of the physical constitution of man, 
 to group the different tribes, to follow the traces of their 
 distant emigrations, and to discover some of those family 
 features by which the ancient unity of our species is mani- 
 fested. 
 
 In the mountainous regions which we have just tra- 
 versed, — in the two provinces of Cumana and New Bar- 
 celona, the natives, or primitive inhabitants, still consti- 
 tute about one-half of the scanty population. Their number 
 may be reckoned at sixty thousand ; of which twenty-four 
 thousand inhabit New Andalusia. This number is very 
 considerable, when compared with that of the hunting 
 nations of North America ; but it appears small, when we 
 consider those parts of New Spain in which agriculture has 
 existed more than eight centuries : for instance, the Intend- 
 encia of Oaxaca, which includes the Mixteca and the Tzapo- 
 teca of the old Mexican empire. This Intendencia is one- 
 third smaller than the two provinces of Cumana and Barce- 
 lona; yet it contains more than four hundred thousand 
 natives of pure copper-coloured race. The Indians of Cu- 
 mana do not all live within the Missions. Some are dis- 
 persed in the neighbourhood of the towns, along the coasts, 
 
.CLASSES OF INDIANS. 
 
 295 
 
 to which they are attracted hy the fisheries, and some dwell 
 in little farms on the plains or savannahs. The Missions of 
 the Aragonese Capuchins which we visited, alone contain 
 fifteen thousand Indians, almost all of the Chayma race. 
 The villages, however, are less populous there than in the 
 province of Barcelona. Their average population is only 
 between five or six hundred Indians ; while more to the 
 west, in the Missions of the Franciscans of Piritu, we find 
 Indian villages containing two or three thousand inhabitants. 
 In computing at sixty thousand the number of natives in the 
 provinces of Cumana and Barcelona, I include only those who 
 inhabit the mainland, and not the Ouayquerias of the island 
 of Margareta, and the great mass of the Ghiaraunos, who have 
 preserved their independence in the islands formed by the 
 Delta of the Orinoco. The number of these is generally 
 reckoned at six or eight thousand; but this estimate ap- 
 pears to me to be exaggerated. Except a few families of 
 Gruaraunos who roam occasionally in the marshy grounds, 
 called Los Morichales , and between the Cano de Manamo 
 and the Bio Gruarapiche, consequently, on the continent 
 itself, there have not been for these thirty years, any Indian 
 savages in New Andalusia. 
 
 I use with regret the word savage , because it implies a 
 difference of cultivation between the reduced Indian, living 
 in the Missions, and the free or independent Indian ; a 
 difference which is often belied by fact. In the forests of 
 South America there are tribes of natives, peacefully united 
 in villages, and who render obedience to chiefs.* They cul- 
 tivate the plantain-tree, cassava, and cotton, on a tolerably 
 extensive tract of ground, and they employ the cotton for 
 weaving hammocks. These people are scarcely more bar- 
 barous than the naked Indians of the Missions, who have 
 been taught to make the sign of the cross. It is a common 
 error in Europe, to look on all natives not reduced to a state 
 of subjection, as wanderers and hunters. Agriculture was 
 practised on the American continent long before the arrival 
 of Europeans. It is still practised between the Orinoco and 
 the river Amazon, in lands cleared amidst the forests, places 
 to which the missionaries have never penetrated. It would 
 be to imbibe false ideas respecting the actual condition of the 
 nations of South America, to consider as synonymous the 
 * These chiefs bear the designations of Pccannaii, Apoto , or Sibieme. 
 
296 
 
 INDEPENDENT TBIBES. 
 
 denominations of ‘Christian/ ‘reduced,’ and ‘civilized;’ and 
 those of ‘ pagan,’ ‘ savage,’ and ‘ independent.’ The reduced 
 Indian is often as little of a Christian as the independent 
 Indian is of an idolater. Both, alike occupied by the wants 
 of the moment, betray a marked indifference for religious 
 sentiments, and a secret tendency to the worship of nature 
 and her powers. This worship belongs to the earliest in- 
 fancy of nations ; it excludes idols, and recognises no other 
 sacred places than grottoes, valleys, and woods. 
 
 If the independent Indians have nearly disappeared for a 
 century past northward of the Orinoco and the Apure, that 
 is, from the Snowy 'Mountains of Merida to the promontory 
 of Paria, it must not thence be concluded, that there are 
 fewer natives at present in those regions, than in the time 
 of the bishop of Chiapa, Bartolomeo de las Casas. In my 
 work on Mexico, I have shown that it is erroneous to regard 
 as a general fact the destruction and diminution of the 
 Indians in the Spanish colonies. There still exist more than 
 six millions of the copper-coloured race, in both Americas ; 
 and, though numberless tribes and languages are either ex- 
 tinct, or confounded together, it is beyond a doubt that, 
 within the tropics, in that part of the JNew World where 
 civilization has penetrated only since the time of Columbus, 
 the number of natives has considerably increased. Two of 
 the Carib villages in the Missions of Piritu or of Carony, 
 contain more families than four or five of the settlements on 
 the Orinoco. The state of society among the Carihbees who 
 have preserved their independence, at the sources of the Es- 
 sequibo and to the south of the mountains of Pacaraimo, suf- 
 ficiently proves how much, even among that fine race of men, 
 the population of the Missions exceeds in number that of the 
 free and confederate Caribbees. Besides, the state of the 
 savages of the torrid zone is not like that of the savages of 
 the Missouri. The latter require a vast extent of country, 
 because they live only by hunting ; whilst the Indians of 
 Spanish Guiana employ themselves in cultivating cassava and 
 plantains. A very little ground suffices to supply them with 
 food. They do not dread the approach of the whites, like the 
 savages of the United States; who, being progressively driven 
 back behind the Alleghany mountains, the Ohio, and the Mis- 
 sissippi, lose their means of subsistence, in proportion as they 
 find themselves reduced within narrow limits. Under the 
 
EEDUCED UVDIA2ÏS. 
 
 297 
 
 temperate zone, whether in the provincias internas of Mexico, 
 or in Kentucky, the contact of European colonists has been 
 fatal to the natives, because that contact is immediate. 
 
 These causes have no existence in the greater part of 
 South America. Agriculture, within the tropics, does not 
 require great extent of ground. The whites advance slowly. 
 The religious orders have founded their establishments be- 
 tween the domain of the colonists and the territory of the 
 free Indians. The Missions may be considered as interme- 
 diary states. They have doubtless encroached on the liberty 
 of the natives ; but they have almost everywhere tended to 
 the increase of population, which is incompatible with the 
 restless life of the independent Indians. As the mission- 
 aries advance towards the forests, and gain on the natives, 
 the white colonists in their turn seek to invade in the oppo- 
 site direction the territory of the Missions. In this pro- 
 tracted struggle, the secular arm continually tends to with- 
 draw the reduced Indian from the monastic hierarchy, and 
 the missionaries are gradually superseded by vicars. The 
 whites, and the castes of mixed blood, favoured by the cor- 
 regidors, establish themselves among the Indians. The Mis- 
 sions become Spanish villages, and the natives lose even the 
 rememmbrance of their natural language. Such is the pro- 
 gress of civilization from the coasts toward the interior ; a 
 slow progress, retarded by the passions of man, but neverthe- 
 less sure and steady. 
 
 The provinces of New Andalusia and Barcelona, com- 
 prehended under the name of Govierno de Cumana, at pre- 
 sent include in their population more than fourteen tribes. 
 Those in New Andalusia are the Chaymas, Guayqueries, 
 Pariagotos, Quaquas, Aruacas, Caribbees, and Guaraunos; 
 in the province of Barcelona, Cumanagotos, Palenkas, Ca- 
 ribbees, Piritus, Tomuzas, Topocuares, Chacopatas, and 
 Guarivas. Nine or ten of these fifteen tribes consider 
 themselves to be of races entirely distinct. The exact 
 number of the Guaraunos, who make their huts on the 
 trees at the mouth of the Orinoco, is unknown ; the Guay- 
 queries, in the suburbs of Cumana and in the peninsula 
 of Araya, amount to two thousand. Among the other 
 Indian tribes, the Chaymas of the mountains of Caripe, 
 the Caribs of the southern savannahs of New Barcelona, 
 and the Cumanagotos in the Missions of Piritu, are most 
 
298 
 
 affinity of native baces. 
 
 numerous. Some families of Guaraunos have been reduced 
 and dwell in Missions on the left bank of the Orinoco, 
 where the Delta begins. The languages of the Gruaraunos 
 and that of the Caribs, of the Cumanagotos and of the 
 Chaymas, are the most general. They seem to belong to 
 the same stock ; and they exhibit in their grammatical forms 
 those affinities, which, to use a comparison taken from lan- 
 guages more known, connect the Greek, the German, the 
 Persian, and the Sanscrit. 
 
 Notwithstanding these affinities, we must consider the 
 Chaymas, the Guaraunos, the Caribbees, the Quaquas, the 
 Aruacas or Arrawaks, and the Cumanagotos, as different 
 nations. I would not venture to affirm the same of the 
 Guayqueries, the Pariagotos, the Piritus, the Tomuzas, 
 and the Chacopatas. The Guayquerias themselves admit 
 the analogy between their language and that of the Gua- 
 raunos. Both are a littoral race, like the Malays of the 
 ancient continent. With respect to the tribes who at 
 present speak the Cumanagota, Caribbean, and Chayma 
 tongues, it is difficult to decide on their first origin, and 
 their relations with other nations formerly more powerful. 
 The historians of the conquest, as well as the ecclesiastics 
 who have described the progress of the Missions, contin- 
 ually confound, like the ancients, geographical denomina- 
 tions with the names of races. They speak of Indians of 
 Cumana and of the coast of Paria, as if the proximity of 
 abode proved the identity of origin. They most commonly 
 even give to tribes the names of their chiefs, or of the 
 mountains or valleys they inhabit. This circumstance, by 
 infinitely multiplying the number of tribes, gives an air of 
 uncertainty to all that the monks relate respecting the 
 heterogeneous elements of which the population of their 
 Missions are composed. How can we now decide, whether 
 the Tomuza and Piritu be of different races, when both 
 speak the Cumanagoto language, which is the prevailing 
 tongue in the western part of the Govierno of Cumana; 
 as the Caribbean and the Chayma are in the southern and 
 eastern parts. A great analogy of physical constitution 
 increases the difficulty of these inquiries. In the new 
 continent a surprising variety of languages is observed 
 among nations of the same origin, and which European 
 travellers scarcely distinguish by their features; while in 
 
SHADES OF CHAEACTEE. 
 
 299 
 
 the old continent very different races of men, the Lapland- 
 ers, the Finlanders, and the Esthonians, the Germanic 
 nations and the Hindoos, the Persians and the Kurds, the 
 Tartar and Mongol tribes, speak languages, the mechanism 
 and roots of which present the greatest analogy. 
 
 The Indians of the American Missions are all agricultur- 
 ists. Excepting those who inhabit the high mountains, they 
 all cultivate the same plants ; their huts are arranged in the 
 same manner ; their days of labour, their work in the conuco 
 of the community; their connexions with the missionaries 
 and the magistrates chosen from among themselves, are all 
 subject to uniform regulations. Nevertheless (and this fact 
 is very remarkable in the history of nations), these analogous 
 circumstances have not effaced the individual features, or 
 the shades of character which distinguish the American tribes. 
 We observe in the men of copper hue, a moral inflexibility, 
 a stedfast perseverance in habits and manners, which, 
 though modified in each tribe, characterise essentially the 
 whole race. These peculiarities are found in every region ; 
 from the equator to Hudson’s Bay on the one hand, and 
 to the Straits of Magellan on the other. They are con- 
 nected with the physical organization of the natives, but 
 they are powerfully favoured by the monastic system. 
 
 There exist in the missions few villages in which the dif- 
 ferent families do not belong to different tribes and speak 
 different languages. Societies composed of elements thus 
 heterogeneous are difficult to govern. In general, the 
 monks have united whole nations, or great portions of 
 the same nations, in villages situated near to each other. 
 The natives see only those of their own tribe ; for the 
 want of communication, and the isolated state of the people, 
 are essential points in the policy of the missionaries. The 
 reduced Chaymas, Caribs, and Tamanacs, retain their natural 
 physiognomy, whilst they have preserved their languages. 
 If the individuality of man be in some sort reflected in his 
 idioms, these in their turn re-act on his ideas and senti- 
 ments. It is this intimate connection between language, 
 character, and physical constitution, which maintains and 
 perpetuates the diversity of nations ; that unfailing source 
 of life and motion in the intellectual world. 
 
 The missionaries may have prohibited the Indians from 
 following certain practices and observing certain ceremo- 
 
300 
 
 INDIAN APATHY. 
 
 nies; they may have prevented them from painting their 
 skin, from making incisions on their chins, noses and cheeks ; 
 they may have destroyed among the great mass of the people 
 superstitious ideas, mysteriously transmitted from father to 
 son in certain families ; hut it has been easier for them to 
 proscribe customs and efface remembrances, than to substi- 
 tute new ideas in the place of the old ones. 
 
 The Indian of the Mission is secure of subsistence ; and 
 being released from continual struggles against hostile powers, 
 from conflicts with the elements and man, he leads a more 
 monotonous life, less active, and less fitted to inspire energy 
 of mind, than the habits of the wild or independent Indian. 
 He possesses that mildness of character which belongs to 
 the love of repose; not that which arises from sensibility 
 and the emotions of the soul. The sphere of his ideas is 
 not enlarged, where, having no intercourse with the whites, 
 he remains a stranger to those objects with which European 
 civilization has enriched the Hew World. All his actions 
 seem prompted by the wants of the moment. Taciturn, 
 serious, and absorbed in himself, he assumes a sedate and 
 mysterious air. When a person has resided but a short 
 time in the Missions, and is but little familiarized with the 
 aspect of the natives, he is led to mistake their indolence, 
 and the torpid state of their faculties, for the expression of 
 melancholy, and a meditative turn of mind. 
 
 I have dwelt on these features of the Indian character, 
 and on the different modifications which that character 
 exhibits under the government of the missionaries, with the 
 view of rendering more intelligible the observations which 
 form the subject of the present chapter. I shall begin 
 by the nation of the Chaymas, of whom more than fifteen 
 thousand inhabit the Missions above noticed. The Chayma 
 nation, which Eather Erancisco of Pampeluna # began to 
 reduce to subjection in the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, has the Cumanagotos on the west, the Guaraunos on 
 the east, and the Caribbees on the south. Their territory 
 occupies a space along the elevated mountains of the Co- 
 collar and the Guacharo, the banks of the Guarapiche, of 
 
 * The name of this monk, celebrated for his intrepidity, is still 
 revered in the province. He sowed the first seeds of civilization among 
 these mountains. He had long been captain of a ship ; and before he 
 became a monk, was known by the name of Tiburtio Redin. 
 
THE CHAYMAS. 
 
 301 
 
 the Eio Colorado, of the Areo, and of the Cano de Caripe. 
 According to a statistical survey made with great care by 
 the father prefect, there were, in the Missions of the Ara- 
 gonese Capuchins of Cumana, nineteen Mission villages, of 
 which the oldest was established in 1728, containing one 
 thousand four hundred and sixty-five families, and six thou- 
 sand four hundred and thirty-three persons : sixteen doctrina 
 villages, of which the oldest dates from 1660, containing 
 one thousand seven hundred and sixty-six families, and eight 
 thousand one hundred and seventy persons. These Missions 
 suffered greatly in 1681, 1697, and 1720, from the invasions 
 of the Caribbees (then independent), who burnt whole vil- 
 lages. From 1730 to 1736, the population was diminished 
 by the ravages of the small-pox, a disease always more fatal 
 to the copper-coloured Indians than to the whites. Many 
 of the Guaraunos, who had been assembled together, fled 
 back again to their native marshes. Fourteen old Missions 
 were deserted, and have not been rebuilt. 
 
 The Chaymas are in general short of stature and thick- 
 set. Their shoulders are extremely broad, and their chests 
 fiat. Their limbs are well rounded, and fleshy. Their colour 
 is the same as that of the whole American race, from the 
 cold table-lands of Quito and ISTew Grenada to the burning 
 plains of the Amazon. It is not changed by the varied 
 influence of climate; it is connected with organic pecu- 
 liarities which for ages past have been unalterably trans- 
 mitted from generation to generation. If the uniform tint 
 of the skin be redder and more coppery towards the north, 
 it is, on the contrary, among the Chaymas, of a dull brown 
 inclining to tawny. The denomination of copper-coloured 
 men could never have originated in equinoctial America to 
 designate the natives. 
 
 The expression of the countenance of the Chaymas, 'with- 
 out being hard or stern, has something sedate and gloomy. 
 The forehead is small, and but little prominent, and in 
 several languages of these countries, to express the beauty 
 of a woman, they say that ‘ she is fat, and has a narrow 
 forehead.’ The eyes of the Chaymas are black, deep-set, 
 and very elongated: but they are neither so obliquely 
 placed, nor so small, as in the people of the Mongol race. 
 The corner of the eye is, however, raised up towards the 
 
302 
 
 FACIAL CONFORMATION. 
 
 temple; the eyebrows are black, or dark brown, thin, and 
 but little arched ; the eyelids are edged with very long eye- 
 lashes, and the habit of casting them down, as if from lassi- 
 tude, gives a soft expression to the women, and makes the 
 eye thus veiled appear less than it really is. Though the 
 Chaymas, and in general all the natives of South America 
 and New Spain, resemble the Mongol race in the form of 
 the eye, in their high cheek-bones, their straight and smooth 
 hair, and the almost total absence of beard ; yet they essen- 
 tially differ from them in the form of the nose. In the 
 South Americans this feature is rather long, prominent 
 through its whole length, and broad at the nostrils, the 
 openings of which are directed downward, as with all the 
 nations of the Caucasian race. Their wide mouths, with 
 lips but little protuberant though broad, have generally an 
 expression of good nature. The passage from the nose to 
 the mouth is marked in both sexes by two furrows, which 
 run diverging from the nostrils towards the corners of the 
 mouth. The chin is extremely short and round ; and the 
 jaws are remarkable for strength and width. 
 
 Though the Chaymas have fine white teeth, like all people 
 who lead a very simple life, they are, however, not so strong 
 as those of the Negroes. The habit of blackening the teeth, 
 from the age of fifteen, by the juices of certain herbs* and 
 caustic lime, attracted the attention of the earliest travellers ; 
 but the practice has now fallen quite into disuse. Such have 
 been the migrations of the different tribes in these countries, 
 particularly since the incursions of the Spaniards, who car- 
 ried on the slave-trade, that it may be inferred the inhabit- 
 ants of Paria visited by Christopher Columbus and by 
 Ojeda, were not of the same race as the Chaymas. I doubt 
 much whether the custom of blackening the teeth was ori- 
 ginally suggested, as Oomara supposed, by absurd notions 
 of beauty, or was practised with the view of preventing the 
 
 * The early historians of the conquest state that the blackening of the 
 teeth was effected by the leaves of a tree which the natives called hay, 
 and which resembled the myrtle. Among nations very distant from each 
 other, the pimento bears a similar name; among the Haytians aji or ahi; 
 among the Maypures of the Orinoco, ai. Some stimulant and aromatic 
 plants, which mostly belonging to the genus capsicum, were designated 
 by the same name. 
 
FAMILY RESEMBLANCES. 
 
 303 
 
 toothache,* This disorder is, however, almost unknown to the 
 Indians ; and the whites suffer seldom from it in the Spanish 
 colonies, at least in the warm regions, where the tempera- 
 ture is so uniform. They are more exposed to it on the 
 back of the Cordilleras, at Santa-Te, and at Popayan. 
 
 The Chaymas, like almost all the native nations I have 
 seen, have small, slender hands. Their feet are large, and 
 their toes retain an extraordinary mobility. All the Chay- 
 mas have a sort of family look; and this resemblance, 
 so often observed by travellers, is the more striking, as 
 between the ages of twenty and fifty, difference of years is 
 no way denoted by wrinkles of the skin, colour of the hair, 
 or decrepitude of the body. On entering a hut, it is often 
 difficult among adult persons to distinguish the father from 
 the son, and not to confound one generation with another. 
 I attribute this air of family resemblance to two different 
 causes, the local situation of the Indian tribes, and their 
 inferior degree of intellectual culture. Savage nations are 
 subdivided into an infinity of tribes, which, bearing violent 
 hatred one to another, form no intermarriages, even when 
 their languages spring from the same root, and when only a 
 small arm of a river, or a group of hills, separates their habi- 
 tations. The less numerous the tribes, the more the inter- 
 marriages repeated for ages between the same families tend 
 to fix a certain similarity of conformation, an organic type, 
 which may be called national. This type is preserved under 
 the system of the Missions, each Mission being formed by a 
 single horde, and marriages being contracted only between 
 the inhabitants of the same hamlet. Those ties of blood 
 which unite almost a whole nation, are indicated in a simple 
 
 * The tribes seen by the Spaniards on the coast of Paria, probably 
 observed the practice of stimulating the organs of taste by caustic lime, 
 as other races employed tobacco, the chimo, the leaves of the coca, 
 or the betel. This practice exists even in our days, but more 
 towards the west, among the Guajiros, at the mouth of the Rio de la 
 Hacha. These Indians, still savage, carry small shells, calcined and 
 powdered, in the husk of a fruit, which serves them as a vessel for various 
 purposes, suspended to their girdle. The powder of the Guajiros is an 
 article of commerce, as was anciently, according to Gomara, that of the 
 Indians of Paria. The immoderate habit of smoking also makes the teeth 
 yellow and blackens them ; but would it be just to conclude from this 
 fact, that Europeans smoke because we think yellow teeth handsomer 
 than white ? 
 
304 
 
 IMMOBILITY OF FEATTJKES. 
 
 
 manner in the language of the Indians horn in the Missions, 
 or by those who, after having been taken from the woods, 
 have learned Spanish. To designate the individuals who 
 belong to the same tribe, they employ the expression mis 
 parientes , my relations. 
 
 With these causes, common to all isolated classes, and 
 the effects of which are observable among the Jews of 
 Europe, among the different castes of India, and among 
 mountain nations in general, are combined some other causes 
 hitherto unnoticed. I have observed elsewhere, that it is 
 intellectual culture which most contributes to diversify the 
 features. Barbarous nations have a physiognomy of tribe 
 or of horde, rather than individuality of look or features. 
 The savage and civilized man are like those animals of an 
 individual species, some of which roam in the forest, while 
 others, associated with mankind, share the benefits and evils 
 which accompany civilization. Varieties of form and colour 
 are frequent only in domestic animals. How great is the 
 difference, with respect to mobility of features and variety 
 of physiognomy, between dogs which have again returned to 
 the savage state in the New World, and those whose 
 slightest caprices are indulged in the houses of the opulent ! 
 Both in men and animals the emotions of the soul are 
 reflected in the features ; and the countenance acquires the 
 habit of mobility, in proportion as the emotions of the mind 
 are frequent, varied, and durable. But the Indian of the 
 Missions, being remote from all cultivation, influenced only 
 by his physical wants, satisfying almost without difficulty 
 his desires, in a favoured climate, drags on a dull, monoto- 
 nous life. The greatest equality prevails among the members 
 of the same community ; and this uniformity, this sameness 
 of situation, is pictured on the features of the Indians. 
 
 Under the system of the monks, violent passions, such as 
 resentment and anger, agitate the native more rarely than 
 when he lives in the forest. When man in a savage state 
 yields to sudden and impetuous emotions, his physiognomy, 
 till then calm and unruffled, changes instantly to convul- 
 sive contortions. His passion is transient in proportion 
 to its violence. With the Indians of the Missions, as I 
 have often observed on the Orinoco, anger is less violent, 
 less earnest, but of longer duration. Besides, in every con- 
 
DISLIKE OP CLOTHISTG. 
 
 305 
 
 dition of man, it is not the energetic or the transient out- 
 breaks of the passions, which give expression to the features, 
 it is rather that sensibility of the soul, which brings us 
 continually into contact with the external world, multiplies 
 our sufferings and our pleasures, and re-acts at once on the 
 physiognomy, the manners, and the language. If the variety 
 and mobility of the features embellish the domain of ani- 
 mated nature, we must admit also, that both increase by 
 civilization, without being solely produced by it. In the 
 great family of nations, no other race unites these advan- 
 tages in so high a degree as the Caucasian or European. 
 It is only in white men that the instantaneous penetra- 
 tion of the dermoidal system by the blood can produce 
 that slight change of the colour of the skin which adds so 
 powerful an expression to the emotions of the soul. “ How 
 can those be trusted who know not howto blush?” says 
 the European, in his dislike of the Negro and the Indian. 
 "We must also admit, that immobility of features is not pecu- 
 liar to every race of men of dark complexion : it is much 
 less marked in the African than in the natives of America. 
 
 The Chaymas, like all savage people who dwell in exces- 
 sively hot regions, have an insuperable aversion to clothing. 
 The writers of the middle ages inform us, that in the north 
 of Europe, articles of clothing distributed by missionaries, 
 greatly contributed to the conversion of the pagan. In the 
 torrid zone, on the contrary, the natives are ashamed (as 
 they say) to be clothed ; and flee to the woods, when they 
 are compelled to cover themselves. Among the Chaymas, 
 in spite of the remonstrances of the monks, men and women 
 remain unclothed within their houses. When they go into 
 the villages they put on a kind of tunic of cotton, which 
 scarcely reaches to the knees. The men’s tunics have 
 sleeves ; but women, and young boys to the age of ten or 
 twelve, have the arms, shoulders, and upper part of the 
 breast uncovered. The tunic is so shaped, that the fore- 
 part is joined to the back by two narrow bands, which cross 
 the shoulders. When we met the natives, out of the boun- 
 daries of the Mission, we saw them, especially in rainy 
 weather, stripped of their clothes, and holding their shirts 
 rolled up under their arms. They preferred letting the 
 rain fall on their bodies to wetting their clothes. The elder 
 
 VOL. I. £ 
 
306 
 
 INDIAN DEESSES. 
 
 women hid themselves behind trees, and burst into loud fits 
 of laughter when they saw us pass. The missionaries com- 
 plain that in general the young girls are not more alive to 
 feelings of decency than the men. Ferdinand Columbus* 
 relates that, in 1498, his father found the women in the island 
 of Trinidad without any clothing ; while the men wore the 
 guayuco, which is rather a narrow bandage than an apron. 
 At the same period, on the coast of Paria, young girls were 
 distinguished from married women, either, as Cardinal Bembo 
 states, by being quite unclothed, or, according to Gomara, by 
 the colour of the guayuco. This bandage, which is still in 
 use among the Chaymas, and all the naked nations of the 
 Orinoco, is only two or three inches broad, and is tied on 
 both sides to a string which encircles the waist. Girls are 
 often married at the age of twelve ; and until they are nine 
 years old, the missionaries allow them to go to church un- 
 clothed, that is to say) without a tunic. Among the Chaymas, 
 as well as in all the Spanish Missions and the Indian 
 villages, a pair of drawers a pair of shoes, or a hat, are 
 objects of luxury unknown to the natives. An Indian 
 servant, who had been with us during our journey to Caripe 
 and the Orinoco, and whom I brought to Prance, was so 
 much struck, on landing, when he saw the ground tilled by 
 a peasant with his hat on, that he thought himself in a 
 miserable country, where even the nobles (los mismos Cabal- 
 leros) followed the plough. The Chayma women are not 
 handsome, according to the ideas we annex to beauty; yet 
 the young girls have a look of softness and melancholy, 
 contrasting agreeably with the expression of the mouth, 
 which is somewhat harsh and wild. They wear their 
 hair plaited in two long tresses ; they do not paint their 
 skin; and wear no other ornaments than necklaces and 
 bracelets made of shells, birds’ bones, and seeds. Both 
 men and women açe very muscular, but at the same time 
 fleshy and plump. I saw no person who had any natural 
 
 * Life of the Adelantado: Churchill’s Collection, 1723. This Life, 
 written after the year 1537, from original notes in the handwriting of 
 Christopher Columbus himself, is the most valuable record of the history 
 of his discoveries. It exists only in the Italian and Spanish translations 
 of Alphcnso de Ulloa and Gonzales Barcia; for the original, carried to 
 Venice in 1571 by the learned Fornari, has not been published, and is 
 supposed to be lost. ‘ Napione della Patria di Colombo,’ — 1804. ‘ Can- 
 cellieri sopra Christ. Colombo,’ — 1809. 
 
BODILY DEFORMITIES. 
 
 307 
 
 deformity; and I may say the same of thousands of Caribs, 
 Muyscas, and Mexican and Peruvian Indians, whom we 
 observed during the course of five years. Bodily deformities, 
 and deviations from nature, are exceedingly rare among cer- 
 tain races of men, especially those who have the epidermis 
 highly coloured; but I cannot believe that they depend 
 solely on the progress of civilization, a luxurious life, or the 
 corruption of morals. In Europe a deformed or very ugly 
 girl marries, if she happen to have a fortune, and the children 
 often inherit the deformity of the mother. In the savage 
 state, which is a state of equality, no consideration can 
 induce a man to unite himself to a deformed woman, or one 
 who is very unhealthy. Such a woman, if she resist the acci- 
 dents of a restless and troubled life, dies without children. 
 We might be tempted to think, that savages all appear well- 
 made and vigorous, because feeble children die young for 
 want of care, and only the strongest survive ; but these 
 causes cannot operate among the Indians of the Missions, 
 whose manners are like those of our peasants, or among the 
 Mexicans of Cholula and Tlascala, who enjoy wealth, trans- 
 mitted to them by ancestors more civilized than themselves. 
 If, in every state of cultivation, the copper-coloured race 
 manifests the same inflexibility, the same resistance to devia- 
 tion from a primitive type, are we not forced to admit that 
 this peculiarity belongs in great measure to hereditary orga- 
 nization, to that which constitutes the race ? With copper- 
 coloured men, as with whites, luxury and effeminacy weaken 
 the physical constitution, and heretofore deformities were 
 more common at Cuzco and Tenochtitlan. Among the 
 Mexicans of the present day, who are all labourers, leading 
 the most simple lives, Montezuma would not have found 
 those dwarfs and humpbacks whom Bernal Diaz saw waiting 
 at his table when he dined.* The custom of marrying very 
 young, according to the testimony of the monks, is no way 
 detrimental to population. This precocious nubility depends 
 on the race, and not on the influence of a climate excessively 
 warm. It is found on the north-west coast of America, 
 among the Esquimaux, and in Asia, among the Kamtschat- 
 dales, and the Koriaks, where girls of ten years old are often 
 mothers. It may appear astonishing, that the time of gesta- 
 * Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verd. de la Nueva Espafia, 1630. 
 
 x 2 
 
308 
 
 PHYSICAL CONFORMATION. 
 
 tion — the duration of pregnancy, never alters in a state of 
 health, in any race, or in any climate. 
 
 The Chaymas are almost without beard on the chin, like 
 the Tungouses, and other nations of the Mongol race. They 
 pluck out the few hairs which appear ; but independently of 
 that practice, most of the natives w'ould be nearly beardless.* 
 I say most of them, because there are tribes which, as they 
 appear distinct from the others, are more worthy of fixing 
 our attention. Such are, in North America, the Chippewas 
 visited by Mackenzie, and the Yabipaees, near the Toltee 
 ruins at Moqui, with bushy beards ; in South America, the 
 Patagonians and the Guaraunos. Among these last are 
 some who have hairs on the breast. When the Chaymas, 
 instead of extracting the little hair they have on the chin, 
 attempt to shave themselves frequently, their beards grow. 
 I have seen this experiment tried with success by young 
 Indians, who officiated at mass, and who anxiously wished to 
 resemble the Capuchin fathers, their missionaries and mas- 
 ters. The great mass of the people, however, dislike the 
 beard, no less than the Eastern nations hold it in reverence. 
 This antipathy is derived from the same source as the predi- 
 lection for flat foreheads, which is evinced in so singular a 
 manner in the statues of the Aztec heroes and divinities. 
 Nations attach the idea of beauty to everything which par- 
 ticularly characterizes their own physical conformation, their 
 national physiognomy.! Hence it ensues that among a peo- 
 ple to whom Nature has given very little beard, a narrow 
 forehead, and a brownish red skin, every individual thinks 
 himself handsome in proportion as his body is destitute of 
 hair, his head flattened, and his skin besmeared with annatto , 
 chica , or some other copper-red colour. 
 
 The Chaymas lead a life of singular uniformity. They go 
 to rest very regularly at seven in the evening, and rise long 
 before daylight, at half-past four in the morning. Every 
 
 * Physiologists would never have entertained any difference of opinion 
 respecting the existence of the beard among the Americans, if they had 
 considered what the first historians of the Conquest have said on this sub- 
 ject ; for example, Pigafetta, in 1519, in his journal, preserved in the 
 Ambrosian Library at Milan, and published (in 1800) by Amoretti ; Ben- 
 zoni. Hist, del Mundo Nuovo, 1572 ; Bembo, Hist. Venet., 1557. 
 
 *j* Thus, in their finest statues, the Greeks exaggerated the form of the 
 forehead, by elevating beyond proportion the facial line. 
 
INDIAN FEMALES. 
 
 309 
 
 Indian has a fire near his hammock. The women are so 
 chilly, that I have seen them shiver at church when the cen- 
 tigrade thermometer was not below 18°. The huts of the 
 Indians are extremely clean. Their hammocks, their reed 
 mats, their pots for holding cassava and fermented maize, 
 their bows and arrows, everything is arranged in the greatest 
 order. Men and women bathe every day ; and being almost 
 constantly unclothed, they are exempted from that unclean- 
 liness, of which the garments are the principal cause among 
 the lower class of people in cold countries. Besides a house 
 in the village, they have generally, in their conucos , near some 
 spring, or at the entrance of some solitary valley, a small 
 hut, covered with the leaves of the palm or plantain-tree. 
 Though they live less commodiously in the conuco, they love 
 to retire thither as often as they can. The irresistible desire 
 the Indians have to flee from society, and enter again on a 
 nomade life, causes even young children sometimes to leave 
 their parents, and wander four or five days in the forests, 
 living on fruits, palm-cabbage, and roots. When travelling 
 in the Missions, it is not uncommon to find whole villages 
 almost deserted, because the inhabitants are in their gar- 
 dens, or in the forests (al monte). Among civilized nations, 
 the passion for hunting arises perhaps in part from the same 
 causes : the charm of solitude, the innate desire of indepen- 
 dence, the deep impression made by Nature, whenever man 
 finds himself in contact with her in solitude. 
 
 The condition of the women among the Chaymas, like that 
 in all semi-barbarous nations, is a state of privation and suf- 
 fering. The hardest labour devolves on them. When we 
 saw the Chaymas return in the evening from their gardens, 
 the man carried nothing but the knife or hatchet (machete), 
 with which he clears his way among the underwood ; whilst 
 the woman, bending under a great load of plantains, carried 
 one child in her arms, and sometimes two other children 
 placed upon the load. Notwithstanding this inequality of 
 condition, the wives of the Indians of South America appear 
 to be in general happier than those of the savages of the 
 North. Between the Alleghany mountains and the Missis- 
 sippi, wherever the natives do not live chiefly on the produce 
 of the chase, the women cultivate maize, beans, and gourds ; 
 and the men take no share in the labours of the field. In 
 
310 
 
 MENTAL INAPTITUDE. 
 
 the torrid zone, hunting tribes are not numerous, and 
 in the Missions, the men work in the fields as well as the 
 women. 
 
 Nothing can exceed the difficulty experienced by the 
 Indians in learning Spanish, to which language they have an 
 absolute aversion. Whilst living separate from the whites, 
 they have no ambition to be called educated Indians, or, to 
 borrow the phrase employed in the Missions, ‘ latinized 
 Indians’ (Indies muy latinos). Not only among the Chay- 
 mas, but in all the very remote Missions which I afterwards 
 visited, I observed that the Indians experience vast difficulty 
 in arranging and expressing the most simple ideas in Spanish, 
 even when they perfectly understand the meaning of the 
 words and the turn of the phrases. When a European ques- 
 tions them concerning objects which have surrounded them 
 from their cradles, they seem to manifest an imbecility ex- 
 ceeding that of infancy. The missionaries assert that this 
 embarrassment is neither the effect of timidity nor of natural 
 stupidity, but that it arises from the impediments they meet 
 with in the structure of a language so different from their 
 native tongue. In proportion as man is remote from culti- 
 vation, the greater is his mental inaptitude. It is not, there- 
 fore, surprising that the isolated Indians in the Missions 
 should experience in the acquisition of the Spanish language, 
 less facility than Indians who live among mestizoes, mulat- 
 toes, and whites, in the neighbourhood of towns. Never- 
 theless, I have often wondered at the volubility with which, 
 at Caripe, the native alcalde, the governador, and the ser- 
 gento mayor, will harangue for whole hours the Indians 
 assembled before the church ; regulating the labours of the 
 week, reprimanding the idle, or threatening the disobedient. 
 Those chiefs who are also of the Chayma race, and who 
 transmit the orders of the missionary, speak all together in a 
 loud voice, with marked emphasis, but almost without action. 
 Their features remain motionless; but their look is impe- 
 rious and severe. 
 
 These same men, who manifest quickness of intellect, and 
 who were tolerably well acquainted with the Spanish, were 
 unable to connect their ideas, when, in our excursions in the 
 country around the convent, we put questions to them 
 through the intervention of the monks. They were made to 
 
DIFFICULTY IN COUNTING. 
 
 311 
 
 affirm or deny whatever the monks pleased : and that wily 
 civility, to which the least cultivated Indian is no stranger, 
 induced them sometimes to give to their answers the turn 
 that seemed to he suggested by our questions. Travellers 
 cannot he enough on their guard against this officious assent, 
 when they seek to confirm their own opinions by the testi- 
 mony of the natives. To put an Indian alcalde to the proof, 
 I asked him one day, whether he did not think the little 
 river of Caripe, which issues from the cavern of the Guacharo, 
 returned into it on the opposite side by some unknown 
 entrance, after having ascended the slope of the mountain. 
 The Indian seemed gravely to reflect on the subject, and then 
 answered, by way of supporting my hypothesis : “ How else, 
 if it were not so, would there always be water in the bed of 
 the river at the mouth of the cavern?” 
 
 The Chaymas are very dull in comprehending anything 
 relating to numerical facts. I never knew one of these 
 people who might not have been made to say that he was 
 either eighteen or sixty years of age. Mr. Marsden ob- 
 served the same peculiarity in the Malays of Sumatra, 
 though they have been civilized more than five centuries. 
 The Chayma language contains words which express pretty 
 large numbers, yet few Indians know how to apply them ; 
 and having felt, from their intercourse with the mission- 
 aries, the necessity of so doing, the more intelligent among 
 them count in Spanish, but apparently with great effort 
 of mind, as far as thirty, or perhaps fifty. The same per- 
 sons, however, cannot count in the Chayma language be- 
 yond five or six. It is natural that they should employ 
 in preference the words of a language in which they have 
 been taught the series of units and tens. Since learned 
 Europeans have not disdained to study the structure of the 
 idioms of America with the same care as they study those 
 of the Semitic languages, and of the Greek and Latin, they 
 no longer attribute to the imperfection of a language, what 
 belongs to the rudeness of the nation. It is acknowledged, 
 that almost everywhere the Indian idioms display greater 
 richness, and more delicate gradations, than might be sup- 
 posed from the uncultivated state of the people by whom they 
 are spoken. I am far from placing the languages of the New 
 World in the same rank with the finest languages of Asia 
 
312 
 
 NATIVE LANGUAGES. 
 
 and Europe ; but no one of these latter has a more neat, 
 regular, and simple system of numeration, than the Quichua 
 and the Aztec, which were spoken in the great empires of 
 Cuzco and Anahuac. It is a mistake to suppose that those 
 languages do not admit of counting beyond four, because in 
 villages where they are spoken by the poor labourers of 
 Peruvian and Mexican race, individuals are found, who can- 
 not count beyond that number. The singular opinion, that 
 so many American nations reckon only as far as five, ten, 
 or twenty, has been propagated by travellers, who have not 
 reflected, that, according to the genius of different idioms, 
 men of all nations stop at groups of five, ten, or twenty 
 units (that is, the number of the fingers of one hand, or of 
 both hands, or of the fingers and toes together) ; and that 
 six, thirteen, or twenty are differently expressed, by five-one, 
 ten- three, and feet-ten. # Can it be said that the numbers 
 of the Europeans do not extend beyond ten, because we 
 stop after having formed a group of ten units ? 
 
 The construction of the languages of America is so oppo- 
 site to that of the languages derived from the Latin, that 
 the Jesuits, who had thoroughly examined everything that 
 could contribute to extend their establishments, introduced 
 among their neophytes, instead of the Spanish, some Indian 
 tongues, remarkable for their regularity and copiousness, 
 such as the Quichua and the Guarani. They endeavoured 
 to substitute these languages for others which were poorer 
 and more irregular in their syntax. This substitution was 
 found easy : the Indians of the different tribes adopted it 
 with docility, and thenceforward those American languages 
 generalized became a ready medium of communication be- 
 tween the missionaries and the neophytes. It would be 
 a mistake to suppose, that the preference given to the 
 language of the Incas over the Spanish tongue had no other 
 aim than that of isolating the Missions, and withdrawing 
 them from the influence of two rival powers, the bishops 
 and civil governors. The Jesuits had other motives, in- 
 dependently of their policy, for wishing to generalize certain 
 Indian tongues. They found in those languages a common 
 
 * Savages, to express great numbers with more facility, are in the habit 
 of forming groups of five, ten, or twenty grains of maize, according as 
 they reckon in their language by fives, tens, or twenties. 
 
ANALOGY OP DIALECTS. 
 
 313 
 
 tie, easy to be established between the numerous hordes 
 which had remained hostile to each other, and had been 
 kept asunder by diversity of idioms ; for, in uncultivated 
 countries, after the lapse of several ages, dialects often 
 assume the form, or at least the appearance, of mother- 
 tongues. 
 
 When it is said that a Dane learns the German, and a 
 Spaniard the Italian or the Latin, more easily than they learn 
 any other language, it is at first thought that this facility 
 results from the identity of a great number of roots, common 
 to all the Germanic tongues, or to those of Latin Europe ; it is 
 not considered, that, with this resemblance of sounds, there is 
 another resemblance, which acts more powerfully on nations 
 of a common origin. Language is not the result of an arbi- 
 trary convention. The mechanism of inflections, the gram- 
 matical constructions, the possibility of inversions, all are 
 the offspring of our own minds, of our individual organiza- 
 tion. There is in man an instinctive and regulating princi- 
 ple, differently modified among nations not of the same 
 race. A climate more or less severe, a residence in the 
 defiles of mountains, or on the sea-coasts, or different habits 
 of life, may alter the pronunciation, render the identity of 
 the roots obscure, and multiply the number ; but all these 
 causes do not affect that which constitutes the structure and 
 mechanism of languages. The influence of climate, and of 
 external circumstances, vanishes before the influence which 
 depends on the race, on the hereditary and individual dispo- 
 sitions of men. 
 
 In America (and this result of recent researches^ 
 is extremely important with respect to the history of 
 our species) from the country of the Esquimaux to the 
 banks of the Orinoco, and again from these torrid re- 
 gions to the frozen climate of the Straits of Magellan, 
 mother-tongues, entirely cliffereut in their roots, have, if we 
 may use the expression, the same physiognomy. Striking 
 analogies of grammatical construction are acknowledged, 
 not only in the more perfect languages, as in that of 
 the Incas, the Aymara, the Guarauno, the Mexican, and the 
 Cora, but also in languages extremely rude. Idioms, the 
 roots of which do not resemble each other more than the 
 * See Vater’s Mithridates. 
 
314 
 
 THE GREENLAND LANGUAGE. 
 
 roots of the Sclavonic and the Biscayan, have those resem- 
 blances of internal mechanism winch are found in the 
 Sanscrit, the Persian, the Greek, and the German languages. 
 Almost everywhere in the New World we recognize a mul- 
 tiplicity of forms and tenses in the verb,* an ingenious 
 method of indicating beforehand, either by inflexion of the 
 personal pronouns, which form the terminations of the verb, 
 or by an intercalated suffix, the nature and the relation of 
 its object and its subject, and of distinguishing whether the 
 object be animate or inanimate, of the masculine or the 
 feminine gender, simple or in complex number. It is on 
 account of this general analogy of structure, — it is because 
 American languages which have no words in common (for 
 instance, the Mexican and the Quichua), resemble eaeh 
 other by their organization, and form complete contrasts to 
 the languages of Latin Europe, that the Indians of the 
 Missions familiarize themselves more easily with an Ameri- 
 can idiom than with the Spanish. In the forests of the 
 Orinoco I have seen the rudest Indians speak two or three 
 tongues. Savages of different nations often communicate 
 their ideas to each other by an idiom not their own. 
 
 If the system of the Jesuits had been followed, languages, 
 which already occupy a vast extent of country, would have 
 become almost general. In Terra Firma and on the Orinoco, 
 the Caribbean and the Tamanac alone would now be spoken ; 
 
 * In the Greenland language, for example, the multiplicity of the pro- 
 nouns governed by the verb produces twenty-seven forms for every tense 
 of the Indicative mood. It is surprising to find, among nations now 
 ranking in the lowest degree of civilization, this desire of graduating the 
 relations of time, this superabundance of modifications introduced into 
 the verb, to characterise the object. Matarpa, he takes it away : mat - 
 tarpet, thou takest it away : mattarpatit, he takes it away from thee : 
 mattarpagit , I take away from thee. And in the preterite of the same 
 verb, mattara , he has taken it away : mattaratit, he has taken it away 
 from thee. This example from the Greenland language shows how the 
 governed and the personal pronouns form one compound, in the American 
 languages, with the root of the verb. These slight differences in the 
 form of the verb, according to the nature of the pronouns governed by it, 
 is found in the Old World only in the Biscayan and Congo languages 
 (Vater, Mithridates. William von Humboldt, On the Basque Language). 
 Strange conformity in the structure of languages on spots so distant, and 
 among three races of men so different, — the white Catalonians, the black 
 Congos, and the copper-coloured Americans ! 
 
CONFUSION OF IDIOMS. 
 
 315 
 
 and in the south and south-west, the Quichua, the Guarano, 
 the Omagua, and the Araucan. By appropriating to them- 
 selves these languages, the grammatical forms of which are 
 very regular, and almost as fixed as those of the Greek and 
 Sanscrit, the missionaries would place themselves in more 
 intimate connection with the natives whom they govern. 
 The numberless difficulties which occur in the system of a 
 Mission consisting of Indians of ten or a dozen different 
 nations would disappear with the confusion of idioms. Those 
 which are little diffused would become dead languages ; hut 
 the Indian, in preserving an American idiom, would retain 
 his individuality — his national character. Thus by peaceful 
 means might he effected what the Incas began to establish 
 by force of arms. 
 
 How indeed can we be surprised at the little progress 
 made by the Chaymas, the Caribbees, the Salives, or the 
 Otomacs, in the knowledge of the Spanish language, when 
 we recollect that one white man, one single missionary, finds 
 himself alone amidst five or six hundred Indians ? and that 
 it is difficult for him to establish among them a governador, 
 an alcalde, or a fiscal, who may serve him as an interpreter ? 
 If, instead of the missionary system, some other means of 
 civilization were substituted, if, instead of keeping the 
 whites at a distance, they could be mingled with the natives 
 recently united in villages, the American idioms would soon 
 be superseded by the languages of Europe, and the natives 
 would receive in those languages the great mass of new 
 ideas which are the fruit of civilization. Then the intro- 
 duction of general tongues, such as that of the Incas, or the 
 Guaranos, without doubt would become useless. But after 
 having lived so long in the Missions of South America, after 
 having so closely observed the advantages and the abuses of 
 the system of the missionaries, I may be permitted to doubt 
 whether that system could be easily abandoned, though it 
 is doubtless very capable of being improved, and rendered 
 more conformable with our ideas of civil liberty. To this it 
 may be answered, that the Bomans* succeeded in rapidly 
 
 * For the reason of this rapid introduction of Latin among the Gauls, 
 I believe we must look into the character of the natives and the state 
 of their civilization, and not into the structure of their language. The 
 brown -haired Celtic nations were certainly different from the race of 
 
316 
 
 ANALOGY OF SOUNDS. 
 
 introducing their language with their sovereignty into the 
 country of the Gauls, into Bcetica, and into the province of 
 Africa. But the natives of these countries were not savages ; 
 ■ — they inhabited towns ; they were acquainted with the use of 
 money ; and they possessed institutions denoting a tolerably 
 advanced state of cultivation. The allurement of commerce, 
 and a long abode of the Boman legions, had promoted 
 intercourse between them and their conquerors. We see, 
 on the contrary, that the introduction of the languages of 
 the mother-countries was met by obstacles almost innume- 
 rable, wherever Carthaginian, Greek, or Boman colonies 
 were established on coasts entirely barbarous. In every 
 age, and in every climate, the first impulse of the savage is 
 to shun the civilized man. 
 
 The language of the Chayma Indians was less agreeable 
 to my ear than the Caribbee, the Salive, and other languages 
 of the Orinoco. It has fewer sonorous terminations in ac- 
 cented vowels. We are struck with the frequent repetition 
 of the syllables guaz, ez, puec, and pur. These terminations 
 are derived in part from the inflexion of the verb to be, and 
 from certain prepositions, which are added at the ends of 
 words, and which, according to the genius of the American 
 idioms, are incorporated with them. It would be wrong to 
 attribute this harshness of sound to the abode of the Chay- 
 mas in the mountains. They are strangers to that temprate 
 climate. They have been led thither by the missionaries ; 
 and it is well known that, like all the inhabitants of warm 
 regions, they at first dreaded what they called the cold of 
 Caripe. I employed myself, with M. Bonpland, during our 
 abode at the hospital of the Capuchins, in forming a small 
 catalogue of Chayma words. I am aware that languages 
 are much more strongly characterised by their structure and 
 grammatical forms than by the analogy of their sounds and 
 of their roots ; and that the analogy of sounds is sometimes 
 
 the light-haired Germanic nations ; and though the Druid caste recalls 
 to our minds one of the institutions of the Ganges, this does not demon- 
 strate that the idiom of the Celts belongs, like that of the nations of 
 Odin, to a branch of the Indo-Pelasgic languages. From analogy of 
 structure and of roots, the Latin ou^ht to have penetrated more easily 
 on the other side of the Danube, than into Gaul ; but an uncultivated 
 state, joined to great moral inflexibility, probably opposed its introduc- 
 tion among the Germanic nations. 
 
PRINCIPAL DIALECTS. 
 
 317 
 
 so disguised in different dialects of the same tongue, as 
 not to be recognizable ; for the tribes into which a nation 
 is divided, often designate the same objects by words alto- 
 gether heterogeneous. Hence it follows that we readily fall 
 into mistakes, if, neglecting the study of the inflexions, and 
 consulting only the roots (for instance, in the words which 
 designate the moon, sky, water, and earth), we decide on the 
 absolute difference of two idioms from the mere want of 
 resemblance in sounds. But, while aware of this source of 
 error, travellers would do well to continue to collect such 
 materials as may be within their reach. If they do not 
 make known the internal structure, and general arrange- 
 ment of the edifice, they may point out some important 
 parts. 
 
 The three languages now most used in the provinces of 
 Cumana and Barcelona, are the Chayma, the Cumanagota, 
 and the Caribbee. They have always been regarded in these 
 countries as different idioms, and a dictionary of each has 
 been written for the use of the Missions, by Bathers Tauste, 
 Buiz-blanco, and Breton. The Vocabulario y Aj'te de la 
 Lengua de los Indios Chaymas has become extremely scarce. 
 The few American grammars, printed for the most part in 
 the seventeenth century, passed into the Missions, and have 
 been lost in the forests. The dampness of the air and the 
 voracity of insects* render the preservation of books almost 
 impossible in those regions : they are destroyed in a short 
 space of time, notwithstanding every precaution that may 
 be employed. I had much difficulty to collect in the Mis- 
 sions, and in the convents, those grammars of American 
 languages, which, on my return to Europe, I placed in the 
 hands of Severin Yater, professor and librarian at the 
 university of Kônigsberg. They furnished him with useful 
 materials for his great work on the idioms of the New 
 World. I omitted, at the time, to transcribe from my 
 journal, and communicate to that learned gentleman, what 
 I had collected in the Chayma tongue. Since neither Bather 
 Gili, nor the Abbé Hervas, has mentioned this language, 
 I shall here explain succinctly the result of my researches. 
 
 On the right bank of the Orinoco, south-east of the Mis- 
 
 * The termites, so well known in Spanish America under the name of 
 comeg en, or ‘ devourer/ is one of these destructive insects. 
 
318 
 
 THE CHAYMA LANGUAGE. 
 
 sion of Encaramada, and at the distance of more than a 
 hundred leagues from the Chaymas, live the Tamanacs 
 (Tamanacu), whose language is divided into several dialects. 
 This nation, formerly very powerful, is separated from the 
 mountains of Caripe by the Orinoco, by the vast steppes of 
 Caracas and of Cumana ; and by a barrier far more difficult 
 to surmount, the nations of Caribbean origin. But not- 
 withstanding distance, and the numerous obstacles in the 
 way of intercourse, the language of the Chayma Indians is a 
 branch of the Tamanac tongue. The oldest missionaries of 
 Caripe are ignorant of this curious fact, because the Ca- 
 puchins of Aragon seldom visit the southern banks of the 
 Orinoco, and scarcely know of the existence of the Tama- 
 nacs. I recognized the analogy between the idiom of this 
 nation, and that of the Chayma Indians long after my 
 return to Europe, in comparing the materials which I had 
 collected with the sketch of a grammar published in Italy 
 by an old missionary of the Orinoco. Without knowing the 
 Chaymas, the Abbé Grili conjectured that the language of 
 the inhabitants of Paria must have some relation to the 
 Tamanac.* 
 
 I will prove this connection by two means which serve to 
 show the analogy of idioms; viz., the grammatical con- 
 struction, and the identity of words and roots. The follow- 
 ing are the personal pronouns of the Chaymas, which are 
 
 * Vater has also advanced some well-founded conjectures on the con- 
 nexion between the Tamanac and Caribbean tongues and those spoken on 
 the north-east coast of South America. I may acquaint the reader, that 
 I have written the words of the American languages according to the 
 Spanish orthography, so that the u should be pronounced oo, the ch 
 like ch in English, &c. Having during a great number of years spoken 
 no other language than the Castilian, I marked down the sounds accord- 
 ing to the orthography of that language, and now I am afraid of changing 
 the value of these signs, by substituting others no less imperfect. It 
 is a barbaious practice, to express, like the greater part of the nations of 
 Europe, the most simple and distinct sounds by many vowels, or many 
 united consonants, while they might be indicated by letters equally simple. 
 What a chaos is exhibited by the vocabularies written according to 
 English, German, French, or Spanish notations ! A new essay, which the 
 illustrious author of the travels in Egypt, M. Volney, is about to publish 
 on the analysis of sounds found in different nations, and on the notation 
 of those sounds according to a uniform system, will lead to great progress 
 in the study of languages. 
 
IDENTITY OF WORDS. 
 
 319 
 
 at the same time possessive pronouns ; u-re, I, me ; eu-re, 
 thou, thee ; t eu-re, he, him. In the Tamanac, u-re, I ; amare 
 or anja, thou ; iteu-ja, he. The radical of the first and of 
 third person is in the Chayma u and ten.* The same roots 
 are found in the Tamanac. 
 
 The verb to be, is expressed in Chayma by az. On adding 
 to the verb the personal pronoun I ( u from u-rè), a y is 
 placed, for the sake of euphony, before the u, as in guaz, £ I 
 am,’ properly g-u-az. As the first person is known by an u, 
 
 * We must not wonder at those roots which reduce themselves to a 
 single vowel. In a language of the Old Continent, the structure of 
 which is so artificially complicated, (the Biscayan,) the family name 
 Ugarte (between the waters) contains the u of ura (water) and arte 
 between. The g is added for the sake of euphony. 
 
 + The same word, conopo, signifies rain and year. The years are 
 counted by the number of winters, or rainy seasons. They say in Chayma, 
 as in Sanscrit, * so many rains,’ meaning so many years. In the Basque 
 language, the word urtea, year, is derived from urten, to bring forth leaves 
 in spring. 
 
 Î In the Tamanac and Caribbean languages, Nono signifies the earth, 
 Nuna the moon ; as in the Chayma. This affinity appears to me very 
 curious ; and the Indians of the Rio Caura say, that the moon is ‘ another 
 earth.’ Among savage nations, amidst so many confused ideas, we find 
 certain reminiscences well worthy of attention. Among the Greenlanders 
 Nuna signifies the earth, and Anonrngat the moon. 
 
 CHAYMA. 
 
 TAMANAC. 
 
 Ure, I. 
 
 Tuna, water. 
 
 Conopo , rain.+ 
 
 Poturu, to know. 
 
 Apoto, fire. 
 
 Nuna, the moon, a month. 
 
 Je, a tree. 
 
 Ata , a house. 
 
 Euya, to you. 
 
 Toya, to you. 
 
 Guane, honey. 
 
 Nacaramayre, he has said it. 
 Piache, a physician, a sorcerer. 
 Tibin, one. 
 
 .4 co, two. 
 
 Oroa, two. 
 
 Pun, flesh. 
 
 Pra, no (negation). 
 
 Ure. 
 
 Tuna. 
 
 Canepo. 
 
 Puturo. 
 
 Uapto (in Caribbean uato ). 
 Nuna.% 
 
 Jeje. 
 
 Aute. 
 
 Auya. 
 
 Iteuya. 
 
 Uane. 
 
 Nacaramai. 
 
 Psiache. 
 
 Obin (in Jaoi, Tewin). 
 
 Oco (in Caribbean, Occo ). 
 Orua (in Caribbean, Oroa). 
 Punu. 
 
 Pra. 
 
320 
 
 GRAMMATICAL CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 the second is designated by an m, the third by an i ; maz , 
 ‘ thou art muerepuec araquapemaz ? ‘ why art thou sad ? ’ 
 properly ‘ what for sad thou art punpuec topuchemaz , ‘ thou 
 art fat in body,’ properly ‘flesh ( pun ) for ( puec ) fat (to- 
 puche) thou art ( maz ).’ The possessive pronouns precede 
 the substantive ; upatay , ‘ in my house,’ properly ‘ my house 
 in.’ All the prepositions and the negation pra are incor- 
 porated at the end, as in the Tamanac. They say in 
 Chayma, ipuec, ‘ with him,’ properly ‘ him with ;’ euya , ‘ to 
 thee,’ or ‘ thee to ;’ epuec charpe guaz , ‘ I am gay with thee,’ 
 properly 1 thee with gay I am ;’ ucarepra , ‘ not as I,’ pro- 
 perly ‘ I as not ;’ quenpotupra quoguaz , ‘ I do not know him,’ 
 properly ‘him knowing not I am;’ quenepra quoguaz , ‘I 
 have not seen him,’ properly ‘him seeing not I am.’ In the 
 Tamanac tongue, acurivane means ‘ beautiful,’ and acuri- 
 vanepra , ‘ ugly — not beautiful ;’ outapra , ‘ there is no fish,’ 
 properly ‘ fish none ;’ uteripipra , ‘ I will not go,’ properly 
 ‘I to go will not,’ composed of uteri* ‘ to go,’ ipiri, ‘ to 
 choose,’ and pra, ‘ not.’ Among the Caribbees, whose lan- 
 guage also bears some relation to the Tamanac, though 
 infinitely less than the Chayma, the negation is expressed 
 by an m placed before the verb : amoyenlengati , ‘ it is very 
 cold;’ and mamoyenlengati , ‘it is not very cold.’ In an 
 analogous manner, the particle mna added to the Tamanac 
 verb, not at the end, but by intercalation, gives it a nega- 
 tive sense, as taro, ‘ to say,’ taromnar , ‘ not to say.’ 
 
 The verb to be, very irregular in all languages, is az or 
 ats in Chayma; and uochiri (in composition uac, uatscha ) 
 in Tamanac. It serves not only to form the Passive, but 
 it is added also, as by agglutination, to the radical of 
 attributive verbs, in a number of tenses. t These agglu- 
 
 * In Chayma : utechire, 1 I will go also,* properly I ( u ) to go (the 
 radical ute, or, because of the preceding vowel, te ) also ( chere , or ere, or 
 ire). In utechire we find the Tamanac verb ‘ to go/ uteri , of which ute 
 is also the radical, and ri the termination of the Infinitive. In order to 
 show that in Chayma chere or ere indicates the adverb ‘ also,’ I shall 
 cite from the fragment of a vocabulary in my possession, u-chere, ‘ I 
 also nacaramayre, 1 he said so also / guarzazere, ‘ I carried also / 
 charechere, ‘ to carry also/ In the Tamanac, as in the Chayma, chareri 
 signifies ‘ to carry/ 
 
 t The present in the Tamanac, jarer-bac-ure, appears to me nothing 
 else than the verb bac , or uac (from uacschiri, ‘ to be added to the 
 
 J 
 
GRAMMATICAL CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 321 
 
 tinations remind ns of the employment in the Sanscrit 
 of the auxiliary verbs as and bhu (asti and bhavati # ); the 
 Latin, of es and fu, ovfus;\ the Biscayan, of izan, ucan , and 
 eguin. There are certain points in which idioms the most 
 dissimilar concur one with another. That which is common 
 in the intellectual organization of man is reflected in the 
 general structure of language; and every idiom, however 
 barbarous it may appear, discloses a regulating principle 
 which has presided at its formation. 
 
 The plural, in Tamanac, is indicated in seven different 
 ways, according to the termination of the substantive, or 
 according as it designates an animate or inanimate object.^; 
 In Chayma the plural is formed as in Caribbee, in on; 
 teure, ‘ himself/ teurecon , ‘themselves;’ tanorocon , ‘those 
 here ;* montaonocon , ‘ those below,’ supposing that the inter- 
 locutor is speaking of a place where he was himself present ; 
 miyonocon , ‘those below,’ supposing he speaks of a place 
 where he was not present. The Chaymas have also the 
 Castilian adverbs aqui and alia , shades of difference which 
 can be expressed only by periphrasis, in the idioms of 
 Germanic and Latin origin. 
 
 Some Indians, who were acquainted with Spanish, assured 
 us, that zis signified not only the sun, but also the Deity. 
 This appeared to me the more extraordinary, as among all 
 other American nations we find distinct words for God and 
 the sun. The Carib does not confound Tamoussicabo , 
 
 ‘ the Ancient of Heaven,’ with veyou , ‘ the sun.’ Even 
 the Peruvian, though a worshipper of the sun, raises his 
 mind to the idea of a Being who regulates the movements 
 of the stars. The sun, in the language of the Incas, bears 
 
 radical ‘to carry,’ jare (in the infinitive jareri), the result of which is 
 ‘ carrying to be I.’ 
 
 * In the branch of the Germanic languages we find bhu under the 
 forms him , list ; as, in the forms vas, vast, vesum (Bopp, p. 138). 
 
 + Hence fu-ero ; amav-issem; amav-eram ; pos-sum (pot-sum). 
 
 t Tamanacu, ‘a Tamanac’ (plur. Tamanakemi) : Pongheme, a Spa- 
 niard (properly * a man clothed ’) ; Pongamo, Spaniards, or 4 men 
 clothed.' The plural in cne characterizes inanimate objects : for 
 example, cene, ‘a thing;’ cenecne , ‘things:’ jeje, ‘a tree;’ jejecne, 
 
 4 trees.' 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 Y 
 
322 
 
 THE ALPHABET. 
 
 the name of inti* nearly the same as in Sanscrit; while 
 God is called Vinay Huayna , ‘ the eternally young.’ f 
 
 The arrangement of words in the Chayma is similar to 
 that found in all the languages of both continents, which 
 have preserved a certain primitive character. The object 
 is placed before the verb, the verb before the personal pro- 
 noun. The object, on which the attention should be prin- 
 cipally fixed, precedes all the modifications of that object. 
 The American would say, ‘ liberty complete love we,’ instead 
 of ‘ we love complete liberty ;’ 1 Thee with happy am I,’ 
 instead of 1 1 am happy with thee.’ There is something 
 direct, firm, demonstrative, in these turns, the simplicity 
 of which is augmented by the absence of the article. May 
 it be presumed that, with advancing civilization, these 
 nations, left to themselves, would have gradually changed 
 the arrangement of their phrases ? We are led to adopt 
 this idea, when we reflect on the changes which the syntax 
 of the Romans has undergone in the precise, clear, but 
 somewhat timid languages of Latin Europe. 
 
 The Chayma, like the Tamanac and most of the American 
 languages, is entirely destitute of certain letters, as f b, 
 and d. No word begins with an Z. The same observation 
 has been made on the Mexican tongue, though it is over- 
 charged with the syllables tli , tla, and itl, at the end or in 
 the middle of words. The Chaymas substitute r for l; a 
 substitution that arises from a defect of pronunciation com- 
 mon in every zone.J Thus, the Caribbees of the Orinoco 
 have been transformed into Galibi in French Guiana by 
 confounding r with Z, and softening the c. The Tamanac 
 has made choraro and solalo of the Spanish word soldado 
 (soldier). The disappearance of the f and b in so many 
 American idioms arises out of that intimate connection 
 between certain sounds, which is manifested in all lan- 
 
 * In the Quichua, or language of the Incas, the sun is inti ; love, 
 munay ; great, veypul ; in Sanscrit, the sun, indre ; love, many a ; great, 
 vipulo. (Vater, Mithridates, tom iii. p. 333.) These are the only exam- 
 ples of analogy of sound, that have yet been noticed. The grammatical 
 character of the two languages is totally different. 
 
 ■f Vinay , * always,’ or ‘ eternal j’ huayna, * in the flower of age.’ 
 
 Î For example, the substitution of r for /, characterizes the Bashmuric 
 dialect of the Coptic language. 
 
AFFINITY OF LANGUAGES. 
 
 323 
 
 guages of the same origin. The letters f v, b, and p, are 
 substituted one for the other; for instance, in the Per- 
 sian, peder, father (pater); burader* brother (frater); behar , 
 spring (ver); in Greek, ÿôprov (forton), a burthen; novs 
 (pous) a foot, (fuss, Germ.). In the same manner, with the 
 Americans, f and b become p; and d becomes t. The 
 Chayma pronounces patre, Tios , Atcmi, aracapucha , for padre, 
 Dios , Adan, and arcabuz (harquebuss) . 
 
 In spite of the relations just pointed out, I do not think 
 that the Chayma language can be regarded as a dialect of 
 the Tamanac, as the MaitanO, Cuchivero, and Crataima 
 undoubtedly are. There are many essential differences ; 
 and between the two languages there appears to me to 
 exist merely the same connection as is found in the German, 
 the Swedish, and the English. They belong to the same 
 subdivision of the great family of the Tamanac, Caribbean, 
 and Arowak tongues. As there exists no absolute measure 
 of resemblance between idioms, the degrees of parentage 
 can be indicated only by examples taken from known 
 tongues. We consider those as being of the same family, 
 which bear affinity one to the other, as the Greek, the 
 German, the Persian, and the Sanscrit. 
 
 Some philologists have imagined, on comparing languages, 
 that they may all be divided into two classes, of which some, 
 comparatively perfect in their organization, easy and rapid 
 in their movements, indicate an interior development by 
 inflexion ; while others, more rude and less susceptible of 
 improvement, present only a crude assemblage of small 
 forms or agglutinated particles, each preserving the phy- 
 siognomy peculiar to itself, when it is separately employed. 
 This very ingenious dew would be deficient in accuracy 
 were it supposed that there exist polysyllabic idioms with- 
 out any inflexion, or that those which are organically deve- 
 loped as by interior germs, admit no external increase by 
 means of suffixes and affixes ;t an increase which we have 
 
 * Whence the German bruder, with the same consonants. 
 
 ■f Even in the Sanscrit several tenses are formed by aggregation ; for 
 example, in the first future, the substantive verb ‘to be’ is added to the 
 radical. Tn a similar manner we find in the Greek mach-eso, if the s be 
 not the effect of inflexion, and in Latin pot-ero (Bopp, p. 26 and 66). 
 These are examples of incorporation and agglutination in the gram- 
 
 T 2 
 
324 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES. 
 
 already mentioned several times under tlie name of agglu- 
 tination or incorporation. Many things, which appear to 
 us at present inflexions of a radical, have perhaps been in 
 their origin affixes, of which there have barely remained one 
 or two consonants. In languages, as in everything in 
 nature that is organized, nothing* is entirely isolated or 
 unlike. The farther we penetrate into their internal struc- 
 ture, the more do contrasts and decided characters vanish. 
 It may be said that they are like clouds, the outlines of 
 which do not appear well defined, except when viewed at 
 a distance. 
 
 But though we may not admit one simple and absolute 
 principle in the classification of languages, yet it cannot be 
 decided, that in their present state some manifest a greater 
 tendency to inflexion, others to external aggregation. It is 
 well known, that the languages of the Indian, Pelasgic, and 
 German branch, belong to the first division ; the American 
 idioms, the Coptic or ancient Egyptian, and to a certain 
 degree, the Semitic languages and the Biscayan, to the 
 second. The little we have made known of the idiom of the 
 Chaymas of Caripe, sufficiently proves that constant ten- 
 dency towards the incorporation or aggregation of certain 
 forms, which it is easy to separate ; though from a somewhat 
 refined sentiment of euphony some letters have been dropped 
 and others have been added. Those affixes, by lengthening 
 words, indicate the most varied relations of number, time, 
 and motion. 
 
 "When we reflect on the peculiar structure of the American 
 languages, we imagine we discover the source of the opinion 
 generally entertained from the most remote time in the 
 Missions, that these languages have an analogy with the 
 Hebrew and the Biscayan. At the convent of Caripe as 
 well as at the Orinoco, in Peru as well as in Mexico, I heard 
 this opinion expressed, particularly by monks who had some 
 
 matical system of languages which are justly cited as models of an 
 interior developement by inflexion. In the grammatical system of the 
 American tongues, for example in the Tamanac, tarecschi, ‘ I will carry,’ 
 is equally composed of the radical ar (infin. jareri , * to carry’) and of the 
 verb ecschi (Infin. nocschiri, ‘ to be’). There hardly exists in the Ame- 
 rican languages a triple mode of aggregation, of which we cannot find a 
 similar and analogous example in some other language that is supposed 
 to deveiope itself only by inflexion. 
 
GRAMMATICAL CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 325 
 
 vague notions of the Semitic languages. Did motives sup- 
 posed to be favourable to religion, give rise to this extraor- 
 dinary theory ? In the north of America, among the Choc- 
 taws and the Chickasaws, travellers somewhat credulous have 
 heard the strains of the Hallelujah* of the Hebrews; as, 
 according to the Pundits, the three sacred words of the 
 mysteries of the Eleusis t (Jconx om pax) resound still in the 
 Indies. I do not mean to suggest, that the nations of Latin 
 Europe may have called whatever has a foreign physiognomy 
 Hebrew or Biscayan, as for a long time all those monuments 
 were called Egyptian, which were not in the Grecian or 
 Homan style. I am rather disposed to think that the gram- 
 matical system of the American idioms has confirmed the 
 missionaries of the sixteenth century in their ideas respect- 
 ing the Asiatic origin of the nations of the New "World. 
 The tedious compilation of Eather Garcia, Tratado del Origen 
 de los Indios,X is a proof of this. The position of the pos- 
 sessive and personal pronouns at the end of the noun and 
 the verb, as well as the numerous tenses of the latter, cha- 
 racterize the Hebrew and the other Semitic languages. Some 
 of the missionaries were struck at finding the same peculiari- 
 ties in the American tongues : they did not reflect, that the 
 analogy of a few scattered features does not prove languages 
 to belong to the same stock. 
 
 It appears less astonishing, that men, who are well 
 acquainted with only two languages extremely heteroge- 
 neous, the Castilian and the Biscayan, should have found in 
 the latter a family resemblance to the American languages. 
 The composition of words, the facility with which the partial 
 elements are detected, the forms of the verbs, and their dif- 
 ferent modifications, may have caused and kept up this illu- 
 sion. But we repeat, an equal tendency towards aggregation 
 or incorporation does not constitute an identity of origin. 
 The following are examples of the relations between the 
 American and Biscayan languages ; idioms totally different 
 in their roots. 
 
 In Chayma, quenpotupra quoguaz , ‘ I do not know,’ pro- 
 perly, i knowing not I am.’ In Tamanac, jarer-uac-ure , 
 
 * L’Escarbot, Charlevoix, and even Adair (Hist, of the American 
 Indians, 1775). 
 
 + Asiat. Res., vol. v. Ouvaroff on the Eleusinian Mysteries, 1816. 
 
 £ Treatise on the Origin of the Indians. 
 
326 
 
 COMPOUND WOEDS. 
 
 ‘bearing am I, — I bear’ ; anarepra aichi, ‘be will not bear/ 
 properly, ‘bearing not will be’ ; patcurbe , ‘good’ ; patcutari, 
 ‘to make bimself good’ ; Tamanacu , ‘a Tamanac’ ; Tamana- 
 cutari, ‘to make bimself a Tamanac;’ Jdongheme, ‘a Spaniard’; 
 ponghemtari , ‘to Spaniardize bimself* ; tenecchi , ‘I will see’: 
 teneicre , ‘I will see again’; teccha, ‘I go’; tecsJiare , ‘Ire- 
 turn’; maypv/r butke, ‘ a little Maypure Indian’; aicdbutke , 
 ‘a little woman;’ maypuritaje, ‘ an ugly Maypure Indian’; 
 aicataje , ‘an ugly woman .’ * 
 
 In Biscayan: maitetutendot, ‘I love him,’ properly, ‘I 
 loving bave bim ;’ beguia, ‘the eye,’ and beguitsa, ‘to see;’ 
 aitagana , ‘ towards the father : ’ by adding tu, we form the 
 verb aitaganatu , ‘ to go towards the father ; ’ ume-tasuna, ‘ soft 
 and infantile ingenuity ;’ umequeria, ‘ disagreeable childish- 
 ness.’ 
 
 I may add to these examples some descriptive compounds, 
 which call to mind the infancy of nations, and strike us 
 equally in the American and Biscayan languages, by a cer- 
 tain ingenuousness of expression. In Tamanac, the wasp 
 ( uane-imu ), ‘father (im-de) of honey (pane);’ t the toes, ptari- 
 mucuru , properly, ‘ the sons of the foot ;’ the fingers, amgna- 
 mucuru. ‘the sons of the hand;’ mushrooms, jeje-panari , 
 properly, ‘the ears (panari) of a tree (jeje);* the veins of 
 the hand, amgna-mitti, properly, ‘ the ramified roots ;’ leaves, 
 prutpe-jareri , properly, ‘ the hair at the top of the tree 
 puirene-veju , properly, the sun ( veju ), ‘straight’ or ‘perpen- 
 dicular;’ lightning, | kinemeru-uaptori , properly, ‘the fire 
 ( uapto ) of the thunder,’ or ‘ of the storm.’ In Biscayan, 
 becoquia, the forehead, ‘what belongs (co and quid) to the 
 eye ( beguia ) ; odotsa, ‘ the noise (otsa) of the cloud {pdeid)l 
 or thunder ; arribicia , an echo, properly, ‘ the animated 
 stone,’ from arria , stone, and bid a , life. 
 
 The Chayma and Tamanac verbs have an enormous com- 
 
 * The diminutive of ‘woman’ ( aica ) or of f Maypure Indian’ is 
 formed by adding butke, which is the termination of cvjuputke, 1 little’ : 
 taje answers to the accio of the Italians. 
 
 f It may not be unnecessary here to acquaint the reader that honey is 
 produced by an insect of South America, belonging to, or nearly allied, 
 to the wasp genus. This honey, however, possesses noxious qualities 
 which are by some naturalists attributed to the plant Paulinia Australis, 
 the juices of which are collected by the insect. 
 
 I recognise in kinerneru, ‘ thunder’ or * storm,’ the root kineme 
 ‘ black.’ 
 
rSTLEXIOIT OF VEEBS. 
 
 327 
 
 plication of tenses: two Presents, four Preterites, three 
 Putures. This multiplicity characterises the rudest Ameri- 
 can languages. Astarloa reckons, in like manner, in the 
 grammatical system of the Biscayan, two hundred and six 
 forms of the verb. Those languages, the principal tendency 
 of which is inflexion, are to the common observer less interest- 
 ing than those which seem formed by aggregation. In the 
 first, the elements of which words are composed, and which 
 are generally reduced to a few letters, are no longer recog- 
 nisable' : these elements, when isolated, exhibit no meaning ; 
 the whole is assimilated and mingled together. The Ameri- 
 can languages, on the contrary, are like complicated machines, 
 the wheels of which are exposed to view. The mechanism of 
 their construction is visible. We seem to he present at their 
 formation, and we should pronounce them to be of very 
 recent origin, did we not recollect that the human mind 
 steadily follows an impulse once given ; that nations enlarge, 
 improve, and repair the grammatical edifice of their lan- 
 guages, according to a plan already determined ; finally, that 
 there are countries, whose languages, institutions, and arts, 
 have remained unchanged,, we might almost say stereotyped, 
 during the lapse of ages. 
 
 The highest degree of intellectual development has been 
 hitherto found among the nations of the Indian and Pelasgic 
 branch. The languages formed principally by aggregation 
 seem themselves to oppose obstacles to the improvement of 
 the mind. They are devoid of that rapid movement, that 
 interior life, to which the inflexion of the root is favourable, 
 and which impart such charms to works of imagination. 
 Let us not, however, forget, that a people celebrated in 
 remote antiquity, a people from whom the Greeks them- 
 selves borrowed knowledge, had perhaps a language, the 
 construction of which recals involuntarily that of the lan- 
 guages of America. What a structure of little monosyllabic 
 and dissyllabic forms is added to the verb and to the sub- 
 stantive, in the Coptic language ! The semi-barbarous 
 Chayma and Tamanac have tolerably short abstract words 
 to express grandeur, envy, and lightness, cheictivate, uoite, 
 and uonde ; but in Coptic, the word malice,* metrepherpetou , 
 
 * See, on the incontestible identity of the ancient Egyptian and Coptic, 
 and on the particular system of synthesis of the latter language, the in- 
 
328 
 
 TRANSLATIONS FROM THEOCRITUS. 
 
 is composed of five elements, easy to be distinguished. This 
 compound signifies ‘the quality (met) of a subject (reph), 
 which makes (er) the thing which is (pet), evil (ou). 1 Never- 
 theless the Coptic language has had its literature, like the 
 Chinese, the roots of which, far from being aggregated, 
 scarcely approach each other without immediate contact. 
 We must admit that nations once roused from their le- 
 thargy, and tending towards civilization, find in the most 
 uncouth languages the secret of expressing with clearness 
 the conceptions of the mind, and of painting the emotions 
 of the soul. Don Juan de la Rea, a highly estimable man, 
 who perished in the sanguinary revolutions of Quito, imi- 
 tated with graceful simplicity some Idyls of Theocritus in 
 the language of the Incas ; and I have been assured, that, 
 excepting treatises on science and philosophy, there is 
 scarcely any work of modem literature that might not be 
 translated into the Peruvian. 
 
 The intimate connection established between the natives 
 of the New World and the Spaniards since the conquest, have 
 introduced a certain number of American words into the 
 Castilian language. Some of these words express things not 
 unknown before the discovery of the New World, and scarcely 
 recal to our minds at present their barbarous origin.* Almost 
 all belong to the language of the great Antilles, formerly 
 termed the language of Hayti, of Quizqueja, or of Itis.f I 
 shall confine myself to citing the words maiz, tabaco , canoa , 
 batata, cacique , balsa, conuco , &c. When the Spaniards, after 
 the year 1498, began to visit the mainland, they already had 
 words J to designate the vegetable productions most useful 
 
 genious reflexions of M. Silvestre de Sacy, in the Notice des Recherches 
 de M. Etienne Quatremère sur la Littérature de V Egypte. 
 
 * For example savannah, and cannibal. 
 
 + The word Itis, for Hayti or St. Domingo (Hispaniola), is found in 
 the Itinerarium of Bishop Geraldini (Rome, 1631.) — “ Quum Colonus 
 Itirn insulam cerneret.” 
 
 Î The following are Haytian words, in their real form, which have passed 
 into the Castilian language since the end of the 15th ceutury. Many of 
 them are not uninteresting to descriptive botany. Ahi (Capsicum bacca- 
 tum), batata (Convolvus batatas), bihao (Heliconia bihai), caimito 
 (Chrysophyllum caimito), cahoba (Swietenia mahagoni), jucca and casabi 
 (Jatropha manihot) ; the word casabi or cassava is employed only for the 
 bread made with the roots of the Jatropha (the name of the plant jucca, 
 
TTA YTTATT WO ED S. 
 
 329 
 
 to man, and common both to the islands and to the coasts of 
 Cumana and Paria. Not satisfied with retaining these words 
 borrowed from the Haytians, they helped also to spread them 
 all over America (at a period when the language of Hayti was 
 already a dead language), and to diffuse them among nations 
 who were ignorant even of the existence of the West India 
 Islands. Some words, which are in daily use in the Spanish 
 colonies, are attributed erroneously to the Haytians. Ba- 
 nana is from the Chaconese, the Mbaja language ; arepa 
 (bread of manioc, or of the Jatropha manihot) and guayuco 
 (an apron, perizoma ) are Caribbee: curiara (a very long 
 boat) is Tamanac: chinchorro (a hammock), and tutuina 
 (the fruit of the Crescentia cujete, or a vessel to contain a 
 liquid), are Chayma words. 
 
 I have dwelt thus long on considerations respecting the 
 American tongues, because I am desirous of directing at- 
 tention to the deep interest attached to this kind of re- 
 search. This interest is analogous to that inspired by the 
 monuments of semi-barbarous nations, which are examined 
 was also heard by Americo Vespucci on the coast of Paria) ; age or ajes 
 (Dioscorea alata), copei (Clusia alba), guayacan (Guaiacum officinale), 
 guajaba (Psidium pyriferum), guanavano (Anona muricata), mani (Arachis 
 hypogæa), guama (Inga), henequen (was supposed from the erroneous 
 accounts of the first travellers to be an herb with which the Haytians 
 used to cut metals ; it means now every kind of strong thread), hicaco 
 (Chrysobalanus icaco), maghei (Agave Americana), mahiz or malz (Zea, 
 maize), mamei (Mammea Americana), mangle (Rhizophora), pitahaja 
 (Cactus pitahaja), ceiba (Bombax), tuna (Cactus tuna), hicotea (a 
 tortoise), iguana (Lacerta iguana), manat i (Trichecus manati), nigua 
 (Pulex penetrans), hamaca (a hammock), balsa (a raft ; however balsa is 
 an old Castilian word signifying a pool of water), barbacoa (a small 
 bed of light wood, or reeds), canei or buhio (a hut), canoa (a canoe), 
 cocvjo (Elater noctilucus, the fire-fly), c/iicha (fermented liquor), macana 
 (a large stick or club, made with the petioles of a palm-tree), tabaco (not 
 the herb, but the pipe through which it is smoked), cacique (a chief). 
 Other American words, now as much in use among the Creoles, as the 
 Arabic words naturalized in the Spanish, do not belong to the Haytian 
 tongue ; for example, caiman , piragua , papaja (Carica), aguacate 
 (Persea), tarabita, paramo. Abbé Gili thinks with some probability, 
 that they are derived from the tongue of some people who inhabited the 
 temperate climate between Coro, the mountains of Merida, and the table- 
 land of Bogota. (Saggio, vol. iii., p. 228.) How many Celtic and Ger- 
 man words would not Julius Caesar and Tacitus have handed down to 
 us, had the productions of the northern countries visited by the Romans 
 differed as much from the Italian and Roman, as those of equinoctial 
 America ! 
 
330 
 
 THE PARIAGOTOS. 
 
 not because they deserve to be ranked among works of art, 
 but because tbe study of them throws light on the history 
 of our species, and the progressive development of our 
 •faculties. 
 
 It now remains for me to speak of the other Indian 
 nations inhabiting the provinces of Cumana and Barcelona. 
 These I shall only succinctly enumerate. 
 
 I. The Pariagotos or Parias. It is thought that the 
 terminations in goto , as Pariagoto, Purugoto, Avarigoto, 
 Acherigoto, Cumanagoto, Arinagoto, Kirikirisgoto,* imply a 
 Caribbean origin. t All these tribes, excepting the Purugo- 
 tos of the Bio Caura, formerly occupied the country which 
 has been so long under the dominion of the Caribbees ; 
 namely, the coasts of Berbice and of Essequibo, the peninsula 
 of Paria, the plains of Piritu and Parima. By this last 
 name the little-known country, between the sources of the 
 Cujuni, the Caroni, and the Mao, is designated in the 
 Missions. The Paria Indians are mingled in part with the 
 Ohaymas of Cumana ; others have been settled by the Ca- 
 puchins of Aragon in the Missions of Caroni ; for instance, 
 at Cupapuy and Alta- Gracia, where they still speak their 
 own language, apparently a dialect between the Tamanac 
 and the Caribbee. But it may be asked, is the name 
 Parias or Pariagotos, a name merely geographical ? Did the 
 Spaniards, who frequented these coasts from their first esta- 
 blishment in the island of Cubagua and in Macarapana, 
 give the name of the promontory of PariaJ to the tribe by 
 
 * The Kirikirisgotos (or Kirikiripas) are of Dutch Guiana. It is 
 very remarkable, that among the small Brazilian tribes who do not speak 
 the language of the Tupis, the Kiriris, notwithstanding the enormous 
 distance of 650 leagues, have several Tamanac words. 
 
 f In the Tamanac tongue, which is of the same branch as the Carib- 
 bean, we find also the termination goto, as in anekiamgoto ‘ an animal.’ 
 Often an analogy in the termination of names, far from showing an 
 identity of race, only indicates that the names of the nations are borrowed 
 from one language. 
 
 X Paria, Uraparia, even Huriaparia and Payra, are the ancient names 
 of the country, written as the first navigators thought they heard them 
 pronounced. It appears to me by no means probable, that the promon- 
 tory of Paria should derive its name from that of a cacique Uriapari, 
 celebrated for the manner in which he resisted Diego Ordaz in 1530, 
 thirty-two years after Columbus had heard the name of Paria from the 
 mouths of the natives themselves. The Orinoco at its mouth had also the 
 name of Uriapari, Yuyapari, or Iyupari. In all these denominations of a 
 
THE GTJAEAOHS. 
 
 331 
 
 which it was inhabited ? This we will not positively affirm ; 
 for the Caribbees themselves give the name of Caribana 
 to a country which they occupied, and which extended from 
 the Rio Sinu to the gulf of Darien. This is a striking 
 example of identity of name between an American nation 
 and the territory it possessed. We may conceive, that in a 
 state of society, where residence is not long fixed, such 
 instances must be very rare. 
 
 II. The Ghuaraons or Qu-ara-una , almost all free and in- 
 dependent, are dispersed in the Delta of the Orinoco, with 
 the variously ramified channels of which they alone are well 
 acquainted. The Caribbees call the Guaraons TJ-ara-u. 
 They owe their independence to the nature of their coun- 
 try ; for the missionaries, in spite of their zeal, have not 
 been tempted to follow them to the tree-tops. The Gua- 
 raons, in order to raise their abodes above the surface of 
 the waters at the period of the great inundations, support 
 them on the hewn trunks of the mangrove-tree and of the 
 Mauritia palm-tree.* They make bread of the medullary 
 fiour of this palm-tree, which is the sago of America. 
 The flour bears the name of yuruma : I have eaten it at 
 the town of St. Thomas, in Guiana, and it was very 
 agreeable to the taste, resembling rather the cassava-bread 
 
 great river, of a shore, and of a rainy country, I think I recognise the 
 radical par, signifying water, not only in the languages of these countries, 
 but also in those of nations very distant from one another on the eastern 
 and western coasts of America. The sea, or great water, is in the Carib- 
 bean, Maypure, and Brazilian languages, parana:. in the Tamanac, 
 parava. In Upper Guiana also the Orinoco is called Parava. In the 
 Peruvian, or Quichua, I find ‘rain,’ para; ‘to rain,’ parani. Besides, 
 there is a lake in Peru that has been very anciently called Paria. (Garcia, 
 Origen de los Indios, p. 292.) I have entered into these minute details 
 concerning the word Paria, because it has recently been supposed that 
 some connection might be traced between this word and the country of 
 the Hindoo caste called the Parias. 
 
 * Their manners have been the same from time immemorial. Car- 
 dinal Bembo described them at the beginning of the 16th century, 
 “ quibusdam in locis propter paludes incolæ domus in arboribus ædifi- 
 cant.” (Hist. Venet., 1551.) Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1595, speaks of 
 the Guaraons under the names of Araottes, Trivitivas, and Warawites. 
 These were perhaps the names of some tribes, into which the great 
 Guaraonese nation was divided. (Barrère, Essai sur P Hist. Naturelle 
 de la France Equinoctiale.) 
 
332 
 
 INDIAN NATIONS. 
 
 than the sago of India.* The Indians assured me that the 
 trunks of the Mauritia, the tree of life so much vaunted 
 by father Grumilla, do not yield meal in any abundance, 
 unless the palm-tree is cut down just before the flowers 
 appear. Thus too the maguey , t cultivated in New Spain, 
 furnishes a saccharine liquor, the wine (pulque) of the Mexi- 
 cans, only at the period when the plant shoots forth its long 
 stem. By interrupting the blossoming, nature is obliged 
 to carry elsewhere the saccharine or amylaceous matter, 
 which would accumulate in the flowers of the maguey and 
 in the fruit of the Mauritia. Some families of Gruaraons, 
 associated with the Chaymas, live far from their native 
 land, in the Missions of the plains or llanos of Cumana; 
 for instance, at Santa Rosa de Ocopi. Rive or six hun- 
 dred of them voluntarily quitted their marshes, a few years 
 ago, and formed, on the northern and southern banks of 
 the Orinoco, twenty-five leagues distant from Cape Ba- 
 rima, two considerable villages, under the names of Zacu- 
 pana and Imataca. When I made my journey in Caripe, 
 these Indians were still without missionaries, and lived in 
 complete independence. Their excellent qualities as boat- 
 men, their perfect knowledge of the mouths of the Orinoco, 
 and of the labyrinth of branches communicating with each 
 other, give the Gruaraons a certain political importance. 
 They favour that clandestine commerce of which the island 
 of Trinidad is the centre. The Gruaraons run with ex- 
 treme address on muddy lands, where the European, the 
 Negro, or other Indians except themselves, would not dare 
 to walk ; and it is, therefore, commonly believed, that they 
 are of lighter weight than the rest of the natives. This is 
 also the opinion that is held in Asia of the Burat Tartars. 
 The few Gruaraons whom I saw were' of middle size, squat, 
 and very muscular. The lightness with which they walk 
 in places newly dried, without sinking in, when even they 
 have no planks tied to their feet, seemed to me the effect 
 of long habit. Though I sailed a considerable time on the 
 Orinoco, I never went so low as its mouth. Euture tra- 
 
 * M. Kunth has combined together three genera of the palms. Cala- 
 mus, Sigus, and Mauritia, in a new section, the Calameæ. 
 
 f Agave Americana, the aloe of our gardens. 
 
THE GUAIQUERIES. 333 
 
 vellers, wlio may visit those marshy regions, will rectify what 
 I have advanced. 
 
 III. The Guaiqueries or Guaikeri , are the most able and 
 most intrepid fishermen of these countries. These people 
 alone are well acquainted with the bank abounding with fish, 
 which surrounds the islands of Coche, Margareta, Sola, and 
 Testigos ; a bank of more than four hundred square leagues, 
 extending east and west from Maniquarez to the Boca del 
 Draco. The Guaiqueries inhabit the island of Margareta, 
 the peninsula of Araya, and that suburb of Cumana which 
 bears their name. Their language is believed to be a dia- 
 lect of that of the Guaraons. This would connect them 
 with the great family of the Caribbee nations ; and the mis- 
 sionary Gili is of opinion that the language of the Guai- 
 queries is one of the numerous branches of the Caribbean 
 tongue.* These affinities are interesting, because they lead 
 us to perceive an ancient connection between nations dis- 
 persed over a vast extent of country, from the mouth of the 
 Bio Caura and the sources of the Erevato, in Parima, to 
 Erench Guiana, and the coasts of Paria, f 
 
 IV. The Quaquas, whom, the Tamanacs call Mapoje, are a 
 tribe formerly very warlike and allied to the Caribbees. It 
 is a curious phenomenon to find the Quaquas mingled with 
 the Chaymas in the Missions of Cumana, for their language, 
 as well as the Atura, of the cataracts of the Orinoco, is a 
 
 * If the name of the port Pam-patar, in the island of Margareta, he 
 Guaiquerean, as we have no reason to doubt, it exhibits a feature of 
 analogy with the Cumanagoto tongue, which approaches the Caribbean 
 and Tamanac. In Terra Firma, in the Piritu Missions, we find the 
 village of Cayguapatar, which signifies house of Caygua. 
 
 f Are the Guaiqueries, or O-aikeries, now settled on the borders of the 
 Erevato, and formerly between the Rio Caura and the Cuchivero, near 
 the little town of Alta Gracia, of a different origin from the Guaikeries of 
 Cumana ? I know also, in the interior of the country, in the Missions of 
 the Piritus, near the village of San Juan Evangelista del Guarive, a ravine 
 very anciently called Guayquiricuar. These resemblances seem to prove 
 migrations from the south-west towards the coast. The termination cuar, 
 found so often in Cumanagoto and Caribbean names, means a ravine, as 
 in Guaymacuar (ravine of lizards), Pirichucuar (a ravine overshaded by 
 pirichu or piritu palm-trees), Chiguatacuar (a ravine of land-shells). 
 Raleigh describes the Guaiqueries under the name of Ouikeries. He calls 
 the Chaymas, Saimas, changing (according to the Caribbean pronuncia- 
 tion) the ch into s. 
 
334 
 
 INDIAN NATIONS. 
 
 dialect of the Salive tongue ; and their original abode was 
 on the hanks of the Assiveru, which the Spaniards call 
 Cuchivero. They have extended their migrations one hun- 
 dred leagués to the north-east. I have often heard them 
 mentioned on the Orinoco, above the mouth of the Meta ; 
 and, what is very remarkable, it is asserted * that missionary 
 Jesuits have found Quaquas as far distant as the Cordilleras 
 of Popayan. Raleigh enumerates, among the natives of 
 the island of Trinidad, the Salives, a people remarkable for 
 their mild manners; they came from the Orinoco, and 
 settled south of the Quaquas. Perhaps these two nations, 
 which speak almost the same language, travelled together 
 towards the coasts. 
 
 V. The Cmianagotos , or, according to the pronunciation 
 of the Indians, Cumanacoto , are now settled westward of Cu- 
 mana, in the Missions of Piritu, where they live by cultiva- 
 ting the ground. They number more than twenty-six thou- 
 sand. Their language, like that of the Palencas, or Palenques, 
 and Guarivas, is between the Tamanac and the Caribbee, 
 but nearer to the former. These are indeed idioms of the 
 same family; but if we are to consider them as simple 
 dialects, the Latin must he also called a dialect of the 
 Greek, and the Swedish a dialect of the German. In 
 considering the affinity of languages one with another, it 
 must not be forgotten that these affinities may be very 
 differently graduated; and that it would he a source of 
 confusion not to distinguish between simple dialects and 
 languages of the same family. The Cumanagotos, the 
 Tamanacs, the Chaymas, the Guaraons, and the Caribbees, 
 do not understand each other, in spite of the frequent 
 analogy of words and of grammatical structure exhibited 
 in their respective idioms. The Cumanagotos inhabited, 
 at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the mountains 
 of the Brigantine and of Paraholata. I am unable to deter- 
 mine whether the Piritus, Cocheymas, Chacopatas, To- 
 muzas, and Topocuares, now confounded in the same 
 villages with the Cumanagotos, and speaking their language, 
 were originally tribes of the same nation. The Piritus 
 
 * Vater, tom. iii. pt. ii., p. 364. The name of Quaqua is found on the 
 coast of Guinea. The Europeans apply it to a horde of Negroes to the 
 east of Cape Lahou. 
 
THE CARIBBEES. 
 
 335 
 
 take their name from the ravine Pirichucuar , where the 
 small thorny palm-tree,* called piritu, grows in abundance; 
 the wood of this tree, which is excessively hard, and little 
 combustible, serves to make pipes. On this spot the village 
 of La Concepcion de Piritu was founded in 1556 ; it is the 
 chief settlement of the Cumanagoto Missions, known by the 
 name of the Misiones de Piritu. 
 
 YI. The Caribbees (Carives). This name, which was 
 given them by the first navigators, is retained through- 
 out all Spanish America. The Trench and the Ger- 
 mans have transformed it, I know not why, into Ca- 
 raïbes. The people call themselves Carina, Calina, and 
 Callinago. I visited some Caribbean Missions in the 
 Llanos ,t on returning from my journey to the Orinoco; 
 and I shall merely mention that the Galibes ( Caribi of 
 Cayenne), the Tuapocas, and the Cunaguaras, who originally 
 inhabited the plains between the mountains of Caripe 
 (Caribe) and the village of Maturin, the Jaoi of the island 
 of Trinidad and of the province of Cumana, and perhaps 
 also the Guarivas, allies of the Palencas, are all tribes of 
 the great Carihbee nation. 
 
 With respect to the other nations whose affinities of 
 language with the Tamanac and Caribbee have been men- 
 tioned, they are not necessarily to be considered as of the 
 same race. In Asia, the nations of Mongol origin differ 
 totally in their physical organisation from those of Tartar 
 origin. Such has been, however, the intermixture of 
 these nations, that, according to the able researches of 
 Klaproth, the Tartar languages (branches of the ancient 
 Oigour) are spoken at present by hordes incontestably of 
 Mongol race. Neither the analogy nor the diversity of 
 language suffice to solve the great problem of the filiation 
 of nations ; they merely serve to point out probabilities. 
 The Caribbees, properly speaking, those who inhabit the 
 Missions of the Cari, in the llanos of Cumana, the banks 
 
 * Caudice gracili aculeato, foliis pinnatis. Possibly of the genus 
 Aiphanes of Willdenouw. 
 
 t I shall in future use the word Llanos ( loca plana, suppressing the 
 p )> without adding the equivalent words pampas, savannahs, meadows, 
 steppes, or plains. The country between the mountains of the coast and 
 the left hank of the Orinoco, constitutes the llanos of Cumana, Barce- 
 lona, and Caracas. 
 
336 
 
 COLOUR OF THE INDIANS. 
 
 of the Caura, and the plains to the north-east of the sources 
 of the Orinoco, are distinguished by their almost gigantic 
 size from all the other nations I have seen in the new 
 continent. Must it on this account be admitted, that the 
 Caribbees are an entirely distinct race? and that the 
 Gruaraons and the Tamanacs, whose languages have an 
 affinity with the Caribbee, have no bond of relationship 
 with them ? I think not. Among the nations of the same 
 family, one branch may acquire an extraordinary develop- 
 ment of organization. The mountaineers of the Tyrol and 
 Salzburgh are taller than the other Grermanic races ; the 
 Samoiedes of the Altai are not so little and squat as 
 those of the sea-coast. In like manner it would be difficult 
 to deny that the Gralibis are really Caribbees ; and yet, not- 
 withstanding the identity of languages, how striking is the 
 difference in their stature and physical constitution ! 
 
 Before Cortez entered the capital of Montezuma in 1521, 
 the attention of Europe was fixed on the regions we have 
 just traversed. In depicting the manners of the inhabitants 
 of Paria and Cumana, it was thought that the manners of 
 all the inhabitants of the new continent were described. 
 This remark cannot escape those who read the historians 
 of the Conquest, especially the letters of Peter Martyr of 
 Anghiera, written at the court of Eerdinand the Catholic. 
 These letters are full of ingenious observations upon Chris- 
 topher Columbus, Leo X, and Luther, and are stamped by 
 noble enthusiasm for the great discoveries of an age so rich 
 in extraordinary events. Without entering into any detail 
 on the manners of the nations which have been so long 
 confounded one with another, under the vague denomination 
 of Cumanians ( Cumaneses ), it appears to me important to 
 clear up a fact which I have often heard discussed in Spanish 
 America. 
 
 The Pariagotos of the present time are of a brown red 
 colour, as are the Caribbees, the Chaymas, and almost all 
 the nations of the New World. Why do the historians of the 
 sixteenth century affirm that the first navigators saw white 
 men with fair hair at the promontory of Paria ? Were they 
 of the same race as those Indians of a less tawny hue, 
 whom M. Bonpland and myself saw at Esmeralda, near the 
 sources of the Orinoco? But these Indians had hair as 
 
HATIYE WHITE B ACE S. 
 
 337 
 
 black as the Otomacs and other tribes, whose complexion is 
 the darkest. Were they albinoes, such as have been found 
 heretofore in the isthmus of Panama ? But examples of that 
 degeneration are very rare in the copper-coloured race ; and 
 Anghiera, as welL as Gromara, speaks of the inhabitants of 
 Paria in general, and not of a few individuals. Both de- 
 scribe them as if they were people of Grermanic origin 
 they call them ‘ Whites with light hair they even add, 
 that they wore garments like those of the Turks.f Gromara 
 and Anghiera wrote from such oral information as they 
 had been able to collect. 
 
 These marvels disappear, if we examine the recital which 
 Ferdinand Columbus drew up from his father’s papers. 
 There we find simply, that “ the admiral was surprised to 
 
 * “ Æthiopes nigri, crispi lanati ; Pariæ incolæ albi, capillis oblongis 
 protensis flavis.” — Pet. Martyr, Ocean., dec. 1, lib. vi., (ed. 1574). 
 “ Utriusque sexus indigenæ albi veluti nostrates, præter eos qui sub sole 
 versantur.” (The natives of both sexes are as white as our people 
 [Spaniards], except those who are exposed to the sun.) — Ibid. Gomara, 
 speaking of the natives seen by Columbus at the mouth of the river of 
 .Cumana, says : “ Las donzellas eran amorosas, desnudas y blancas (las de 
 la casa); los Indios que van al campo estan negros del sol.” (The young 
 women are engaging in their manners : they wear no clothing, and those 
 who live in the houses are white. The Indians who are much in the 
 open country are black, from the effect of the sun.) — Hist, de los Indios, 
 cap. 74. “ Los Indios de Paria son blancos y rubios.” — (The Indians of 
 
 Paria are white and red.) Garcia, Origen de los Indios, 1729, lib. iv. 
 cap. 9. 
 
 + “ They wear round their head a striped cotton handkerchief.” — 
 Ferd. Columb., cap. 71. (Churchill, vol. ii.) Was this kind of head- 
 dress taken for a turban ? (Garcia, Origen de los Ind., p. 303). I am 
 surprised that people of these regions should have worn a head-dress; but, 
 what is more curious still, Pinzon, in a voyage which he made alone to 
 the coast of Paria, the particulars of which have been transmitted to us 
 by Peter Martyr of' Anghiera, professes to have seen natives who were 
 clothed : “ Incolas omnes genu tenus mares, fœminas surarum tenus, gos- 
 sampinis vestibus amictos simplicibus repererunt ; sed viros more Turco- 
 man insuto minutim gossypio ad belli usum duplicibus.” (The natives 
 were clothed in thin cotton garments ; the men’s reaching to the knee, 
 and the women’s to the calf of the leg. Their war-dress was thicker, and 
 closely stitched with cotton after the Turkish manner.) — Pet. Martyr, dec. 
 ii., lib. vii. Who were these people described as being comparatively 
 civilized, and clothed with tunics (like those who lived on the summit of 
 the Andes), and seen on a coast, where before and since the time of 
 Pinzon, only naked men have ever been seen ? 
 
 YOL. I. 
 
 Z 
 
338 
 
 NATIVE WHITE EACES. 
 
 see the inhabitants of Paria, and those of the island of 
 Trinidad, better made, more civilized (de buena conver- 
 sacion), and whiter than the natives whom he had previously 
 seen.”* This certainly did not mean that the Pariagotos 
 are white. The lighter colour of the skin of the natives, 
 and the great coolness of the mornings on the coast oV 
 Paria, seemed to confirm the fantastic hypothesis which that 
 great man had framed, respecting the irregularity of the 
 curvature of the earth, and the height of the plains in this 
 region, which he regarded as the effect of an extraordinary 
 swelling of the globe in the direction of the parallels of 
 latitude. Amerigo Yespucci (in his pretended first voyage, 
 apparently written from the narratives of other navigators) 
 compares the natives to the Tartar nations, t not in regard 
 to their colour, but on account of the breadth of their faces, 
 and the general expression of their physiognomy. 
 
 But if it be certain, that at the end of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury there were on the coast of Cumana a few men with 
 white skins, as there are in our days, it must not thence be 
 concluded, that the natives of the New World exhibit every- 
 where a similar organization of the dermoidal system. It* 
 is not less inaccurate to say, that they are all copper- 
 coloured, than to affirm that they would not have a tawny 
 hue, if they were not exposed to the heat of the sun, 
 or tanned by the action of the air. The natives may 
 be divided into two very unequal portions with respect 
 to numbers ; to the first belong the Esquimaux of Green- 
 land, of Labrador, and the northern coast of Hudson’s 
 Bay, the inhabitants of Behring’s Straits, of the peninsula 
 
 * Churchill’s Collection, vol. ii. Herrera, pp. 80, 83, 84. Munoz, 
 Hist, del Nuevo Mundo, vol. i., “ El color era baxo como es regular en 
 los Indios, pero mas claro que en las islas reconocidas.” (Their colour 
 was dark, as is usual among the Indians ; but lighter than that of the 
 people of the islands previously known.') The missionaries are accustomed 
 to call those Indians who are less black, less tawny, whitish, and even 
 almost white. — Gumilla, Hist, de l’Orenoque, vol. i., chap, v., § 2. 
 Such incorrect expressions may mislead those who are not accustomed to 
 the exaggerations in which travellers often indulge. 
 
 *t* Vultu non multum speciosi sunt, quoniam latas facies Tartariis adsi- 
 milatas habent. (Their countenances are not handsome, their cheek- 
 bones being broad like those of the Tartars.) — Americi Vesputii Navi- 
 gatio Prima, in Gryn’s Orbis Novus, 1555. 
 
HYPERBOREAN TRIBES. 
 
 339 
 
 of Alaska, and of Prince ’William’ s Sonnd. The eastern and 
 western branches * of this polar race, the Esquimaux and 
 the Tschongases, though at the vast distance of eight hun- 
 dred leagues apart, are united by the most intimate ana- 
 logy of languages. This analogy extends even to the in- 
 habitants of the north-east of Asia ; for the idiom of the 
 Tschouktschesf at the mouth of the Anadir, has the same 
 roots as the language of the Esquimaux who inhabit the 
 coast of America opposite to Europe. The Tschouktsches 
 are the Esquimaux of Asia. Like the Malays, that hyper- 
 borean race reside only on the sea-coasts. They are almost 
 all smaller in stature than the other Americans, and are 
 quick, lively, and talkative. Their hair is almost straight, 
 and black ; but their skin (and this is very characteristic of 
 the race, which I shall designate under the name of Tschou- 
 gaz-Esquimaux) is originally whitish. It is certain that 
 the children of the Greenlanders are born white ; some re- 
 tain that whiteness ; and often in the brownest (the most 
 tanned) the redness of the blood is seen to appear on their 
 cheeks. J 
 
 The second portion of the natives of America includes 
 all those nations which are not Tschougaz-Esquimaux, be- 
 ginning from Cook’s Liver to the Straits of Magellan, from 
 the Ggaljachmouzes and the Kinaese of Mount St. Elias, 
 to the Puelches and Tehuelhets of the southern hemisphere. 
 The men who belong to this second branch, are taller, 
 stronger, more warlike, and more taciturn than the others. 
 They present also very remarkable differences in the colour 
 of their skin. In Mexico, Peru, New Grenada, Quito, on 
 the banks of the Orinoco and of the river Amazon, in every 
 part of South America which I have explored, in the plains 
 as well as on the coldest table-lands, the Indian children 
 of two or three months old have the same bronze tint as 
 
 * Yater, in Mithridates, vol. iii. Egede, Krantz, Hearne, Mackenzie, 
 Portlock, Chwostoff, Davidoff, ResanofF, Merk, and Billing, have de- 
 scribed the great family of these Tschougaz-Esquimaux. 
 
 f I mean here only the Tschouktsches who have fixed dwelling-places, 
 for the wandering Tschouktsches approach very near the Koriaks. 
 
 t Krantz, Hist, of Greenland, 1667, tom. i. Greenland does not 
 seem to have been inhabited in the eleventh century ; at least the Esqui- 
 maux appeared only in the fourteqnth, coming from the west. 
 
 z 2 
 
340 
 
 DISTINCTION OP TEIEES. 
 
 is observed in adults. The idea that the natives may be 
 whites tanned by the air and the sun, could never have 
 occurred to a Spanish inhabitant of Quito, or of the banks 
 of the Orinoco. In the north-east of America, on the con- 
 trary, we meet with tribes among whom the children are 
 white, and at the age of virility they acquire the bronze 
 colour of the natives of Mexico and Peru. Michikinakoua, 
 chief of the Miamis, had his arms, and those parts of his 
 body not exposed to the sun, almost white. This difference 
 of hue between the parts covered and not covered is never 
 observed among the natives of Peru and Mexico, even in 
 families who live much at their ease, and remain almost con- 
 stantly within doors. To the west of the Miamis, on the 
 coast opposite to Asia, among the Kolouches and Tchin- 
 kitans* of Norfolk Sound, grown-up girls, when they have 
 washed their skin, display the white hue of Europeans. 
 This whiteness is found also, according to some accounts, 
 among the mountaineers of Chile. f 
 
 These facts are very remarkable, and contrary to the 
 opinion so generally spread, of the extreme conformity of 
 organization among the natives of America. If we divide 
 them into Esquimaux and non-Esquimaux, we readily 
 admit that this classification is not more philosophical 
 than that of the ancients, who saw in the whole of the ha- 
 bitable world only Celts and Scythians, Greeks, and Barba- 
 rians. When, however, our purpose is to group numerous 
 nations, we gain something by proceeding in the mode of 
 exclusion. All we have sought to establish here is, that, 
 in separating the whole race of Tschougaz-Esquimaux, there 
 remain still, among the coppery-brown Americans, other 
 races, the children of which are born white, without our 
 being able to prove, by going back as far as the history 
 of the Conquest, that they have been mingled with Eu- 
 ropean blood. This fact deserves to be cleared up by tra- 
 
 * Between 54° and 58° of latitude. These white nations have been 
 visited successively by Portlock, Marchand, Baranoif, and Davidoff. 
 The Tchinkitans, or Schinkit, are the inhabitants of the island of Sitka. 
 Vater, Mithridates, vol. iii., p. 2. Marchand, Voyages, vol. ii. 
 
 + Molina, Saggio sull 5 lstoria Nat. del Chile, edit. 2, p. 293. May 
 we believe the existence of those blue eyes of the Boroas of Chile and 
 Gnayanas of Uruguay, represented to us as nations of the race of Odin ? 
 Azara, Voyage, tom. ii. 
 
DIEEEEEKCES OE COLOUE. 
 
 341 
 
 vellers who may possess a knowledge of physiology, and 
 may have opportunities of examining the brown children 
 of the Mexicans at the age of two years, as well as the 
 white children of the Miamis, and those hordes* on the 
 Orinoco, who, living in the most sultry regions, retain 
 during their whole life, and in the fulness of their strength, 
 the whitish skin of the Mestizoes. 
 
 In man, the deviations from the common type of the 
 whole race are apparent in the stature, the physiognomy, 
 or the form of the body, rather than on the colour of the 
 skin.f It is not so with animals, where varieties are found 
 more in colour than in form. The hair of the mammi- 
 ferous class of animals, the feathers of birds, and even the 
 scales of fishes, change their hue, according to the length- 
 ened influence of fight and darkness, and the intensity of 
 heat and cold. In man, the colouring matter seems to 
 be deposited in the epidermis by the roots or the bulbs of 
 the hair :% and all sound observations prove, that the skin 
 varies in colour from the action of external stimuli on in- 
 dividuals, and not hereditarily in the whole race. The Esqui- 
 maux of Greenland and the Laplanders are tanned by the 
 influence of the air ; but their children are born white. 
 We will not decide on the changes which nature may have 
 produced in a space of time exceeding all historical tra- 
 dition. Reason stops short in these matters, when no 
 longer under the guidance of experience and analogy. 
 
 All white-skinned nations begin their cosmogony by white 
 men; they allege that the negroes and all tawny people 
 have been blackened or embrowned by the excessive heat of 
 the sun. This theory, adopted by the Greeks, § though it 
 did not pass without contradiction, || has been propagated 
 
 * These whitish tribes are the Guaycas, the Ojos, and the Maqui- 
 ritares. 
 
 f The circumpolar nations of the two continents are small and squat, 
 though of races entirely different. 
 
 Î Adverting to the interesting researches of M. Gaultier, on the 
 organisation of the human skin, John Hunter observes, that in several 
 animals the colorating of the hair is independent of that of the skin. 
 
 § Strabo, liv. xv. 
 
 II Onesicritus, apud Strabonem, lib. xv. Alexander’s expedition 
 appears to have contributed greatly to fix the attention of the Greeks on 
 the great question of the influence of climates. They had learned from 
 
342 
 
 erroneous theory. 
 
 even to our own times. Buffon has repeated in prose what 
 Theodectes had expressed in verse two thousand years be- 
 fore : “ that nations wear the livery of the climate in which 
 they live.” If history had been -written by black nations, 
 they would have maintained what even Europeans have 
 recently advanced,* that man was originally black, or of a 
 very tawny colour ; and that mankind have become white in 
 some races, from the effect of civilization and progressive 
 debilitation, as animals, in a state of domestication, pass from 
 dark to lighter colours. In plants and in animals, accidental 
 varieties, formed under our own eyes, have become fixed, 
 and have been propagated ;+ but nothing proves, that in the 
 present state of human organization, the different races of 
 black, yellow, copper-coloured, and white men, when they 
 remain unmixed, deviate considerably from their primitive 
 type, by the influence of climate, of food, and other external 
 agents. 
 
 These opinions are founded on the authority of Ulloa.^ 
 That learned writer saw the Indians of Chile, of the Andes 
 of Peru, of the burning coasts of Panama, and those of Loui- 
 siana, situated in the northern temperate zone. He had 
 
 the accounts of travellers, that in Hindostan the nations of the south were 
 of darker colour than those of the north, near the mountains : and they 
 supposed that they were both of the same race. 
 
 * See the work of Mr. Prichard, abounding with curious research. 
 “ Researches into the Physical History of Man, 1813,” p. 239. 
 
 f For example, the sheep with very short less, called ancon sheep in 
 Connecticut, and examined by Sir Everard Home. This variety dates 
 only from the year 1791. 
 
 + “ The Indians [Americans] are of a copper-colour, which by the 
 action of the sun and the air grows darker. I must remark, that neither 
 heat nor cold produces any sensible change in the colour, so that the 
 Indians of the Cordilleras of Peru are easily confounded with those of the 
 hottest plains; and those who live under the Line cannot be distinguished, 
 by their colour, from those who inhabit the fortieth degree of north and 
 south latitude.” — Noticias Americanas. No ancient author has so clearly 
 stated the two forms of reasoning, by which we still explain in our days 
 the differences of colour and features among neighbouring nations, as 
 Tacitus. He makes a just distinction between the influence of climate, 
 and hereditary dispositions ; and, like a philosopher persuaded of our pro- 
 found ignorance of the origin of things, he leaves the question undecided. 
 “ Habitus corporum varii ; atque ex eo argumenta, seu durante originis 
 vi, seu procurrentibus in diversa terris, positio cœli corporibus habitum 
 dedit.” — Agricola, cap. ii. 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR A JOURNEY. 
 
 343 
 
 the good fortune to live at a period when theories were less 
 numerous ; and, like me, he was struck by seeing the natives 
 equally bronzed under the Line, in the cold climate of the 
 Cordiileras, and in the plains. Where differences of colour 
 are observed, they depend on the race. We shall soon find 
 on the burning banks of the Orinoco Indians with a whitish 
 skin. Durans originis vis est. 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 Second abode at Cumana. — Earthquakes. — Extraordinary Meteors. 
 
 We remained a month longer at Cumana, employing our- 
 selves in the necessary preparations for our proposed visit 
 to the Orinoco and the Bio Xegro. We had to choose 
 such instruments as could be most easily transported in 
 narrow boats ; and to engage guides for an inland journey 
 of ten months, across a country without communication 
 with the coasts. The astronomical determination of places 
 being the most important object of this undertaking, I felt 
 desirous not to miss the observation of an eclipse of the sun, 
 which was to be visible at the end of October : and in con- 
 sequence I preferred remaining till that period at Cumana, 
 where the sky is generally clear and serene. It was now 
 too late to reach the banks of the Orinoco before October ; 
 and the high valleys of Caracas promised less favourable 
 opportunities, on account of the vapours which accumulate 
 round the neighbouring mountains. 
 
 I was, however, near being compelled by a deplorable 
 occurrence, to renounce, or at least to delay for a long time, 
 my journey to the Orinoco. On the 27th of October, the 
 day before the eclipse, we went as usual, to take the air on 
 the shore of the gulf, and to observe the instant of high 
 water, which in those parts is only twelve or thirteen inches. 
 It was eight in the evening, and the breeze was not yet 
 stirring. The sky was cloudy; and during a dead calm it was 
 excessively hot. We crossed the beach which separates the 
 suburb of the G-uayqueria Indians from the embarcadero. 
 I heard some one walking behind us, and on turning, I saw 
 a tall man of the colour of the Zambos, naked to the waist. 
 
DAN GE BOUS EENCONTKE. 
 
 344 
 
 He held almost over my head a macana , which is a great 
 stick of palm-tree wood, enlarged to the end like a club. I 
 avoided the stroke by leaping towards the left ; but M. Bon- 
 pland, who walked on my right, was less fortunate. He did 
 not see the Zambo so soon as I did, and received a stroke 
 above the temple, which levelled him with the ground. We 
 were alone, without arms, half a league from any habitation, 
 on a vast plain bounded by the sea. The Zambo, instead 
 of attacking me, moved off slowly to pick up M. Bonpland’s 
 hat, which, having somewhat deadened the violence of the 
 blow, had fallen off and lay at some distance. Alarmed at 
 seeing my companion on the ground, and for some moments 
 senseless, I thought of him only. I helped him to raise 
 himself, and pain and anger doubled his strength. We ran 
 toward the Zambo, who, either from cowardice, common 
 enough in people of this caste, or because he perceived at a 
 distance some men on the beach, did not wait for us, but 
 ran off in the direction of the Tunal, a little thicket of cactus 
 and arborescent avicennia. He chanced to fall in running ; 
 and M. Bonpland, who reached him first, seized him round 
 the body. The Zambo drew a long knife ; and in this un- 
 equal struggle we should infallibly have been wounded, if 
 some Biscayan merchants, who were taking the air on the 
 beach, had not come to our assistance. The Zambo seeing 
 himself surrounded, thought no longer of defence. He again 
 ran away, and we pursued him through the thorny cactuses. 
 At length, tired out, he took shelter in a cow-house, whence 
 he suffered himself to be quietly led to prison. 
 
 M. Bonpland was seized with fever during the night ; but 
 being endowed with great energy and fortitude, and pos- 
 sessing that cheerful disposition which is one of the most 
 precious gifts of nature, he continued his labours the next 
 day. . The stroke of the macana had extended to the top of 
 his head, and he felt its effect for the space of two or three 
 months during the stay we made at Caracas. WTien stooping 
 to collect plants, he was sometimes seized with giddiness, 
 which led us to fear that an internal abscess was forming. 
 Happily these apprehensions were unfounded, and the symp- 
 toms, at first alarming, gradually disappeared. The inha- 
 bitants of Cumana showed us the kindest interest. It was 
 ascertained that the Zambo was a native of one of the 
 
ATMOSPHEKICAL PHENOMENA. 
 
 345 
 
 Indian villages which surround the great lake of Maracaibo. 
 He had served on board a privateer belonging to the island 
 of St. Domingo, and in consequence of a quarrel with the 
 captain he had been left on the coast of Cum ana, when the 
 ship quitted the port. Having seen the signal which we 
 had fixed up for the purpose of observing the height of the 
 tides, he had watched the moment when he could attack us 
 on the beach. But why, after having knocked one of us 
 down, was he satisfied with simply stealing a hat? In an 
 examination he underwent, his answers were so confused and 
 stupid, that it was impossible to clear up our doubts. Some- 
 times he maintained that his intention was not to rob us ; 
 but that, irritated by the bad treatment he had suffered on 
 board the privateer of St. Domingo, he could not resist the 
 desire of attacking us, when he heard us speak Drench. 
 Justice is so tardy in this country, that prisoners, of whom 
 the jail is full, may remain seven or eight years without 
 being brought to trial ; we learnt, therefore, with some satis- 
 faction, that a few days after our departure from Cumana, 
 the Zambo had succeeded in breaking out of the castle of 
 San Antonio. 
 
 On the day after this occurrence, the 28th of October, 
 I was, at five in the morning, on the terrace of our house, 
 making preparations for the observation of the eclipse. The 
 weather was fine and serene. The crescent of Venus, and 
 the constellation of the Ship, so splendid from the disposi- 
 tion of its immense nebulae, were lost in the rays of the 
 rising sun. I had a complete observation of the progress and 
 the close of the eclipse. I determined the distance of the 
 horns, or the differences of altitude and azimuth, by the 
 passage over the threads of the quadrant. The eclipse ter- 
 minated at 2 h 14' 23 ‘4" mean time, at Cumana. 
 
 During a few days which preceded and followed the eclipse 
 of the sun, very remarkable atmospherical phenomena were 
 observable. It was what is called in those countries the 
 season of winter; that is, of clouds and small electrical 
 showers. Erom the 10th of October to the 3rd of Novem- 
 ber, at nightfall, a reddish vapour arose in the horizon, and 
 covered, in a few minutes, with a veil more or less thick, 
 the azure vault of the sky. Saussure’ s hygrometer, far 
 from indicating greater humidity, often went back from 
 
346 
 
 METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENA. 
 
 90° to 83°. The heat of the day was from 28° to 32°, which 
 for this part of the torrid zone is very considerable. Some- 
 times, in the midst of the night, the vapours disappeared in 
 an instant; and at the moment when I had arranged mj 
 instruments, clouds of brilliant whiteness collected at the 
 zenith, and extended towards the horizon. On the 18th 
 of October these clouds were so remarkably transparent, 
 that they did not hide stars even of the fourth magnitude. 
 I could distinguish so perfectly the, spots of the moon, that 
 it might have been supposed its disk was before the clouds. 
 The latter were at a prodigious height, disposed in bands, 
 and at equal distances, as from the effect of electric re- 
 pulsions: — these small masses of vapour, similar to those 
 I saw above my head on the ridge of the highest Andes, 
 are, in several languages, designated by the name of sheep . 
 When the reddish vapour spread lightly over the sky, the 
 great stars, which in general, at Cumana, scarcely scintillate 
 below 20° or 25°, did not retain even at the zenith, their 
 steady and planetary light. They scintillated at all alti- 
 tudes, as after a heavy storm of rain.* It was curious that 
 the vapour did not affect the hygrometer at the surface of 
 the earth. I remained a part of the night seated in a 
 balcony, from which I had a view of a great part of the 
 horizon. In every climate I feel a peculiar interest in fixing 
 my eyes, when the sky is serene, on some great constel- 
 lation, and seeing groups of vesicular vapours appear and 
 augment, as around a central nucleus, then, disappearing, 
 form themselves anew. 
 
 After the 28th of October, the reddish mist became 
 thicker than it had previously been. The heat of the nights 
 
 * I have not observed any direct relation between the scintillation of 
 the stars and the dryness of that part of the atmosphere open to our 
 researches. I have often seen at Cumana a great scintillation of the stars 
 of Orion and Sagittarius, when Saussure’s hygrometer was at 85°. At 
 other times, these same stars, considerably elevated above the horizon, 
 emitted a steady and planetary light, the hygrometer being at 90° or 93°. 
 Probably it is not the quantity of vapour, but the manner in which it fc* 
 diffused, and more or less dissolved in the air, which determines the scin- 
 tillation. The latter is invariably attended with a coloration of light. It 
 is remarkable enough, that, in northern countries, at a time when the 
 atmosphere appears perfectly dry, the scintillation is most decided in very 
 cold weather. 
 
SHOCK or AH EAETHQUAKE. 
 
 347 
 
 seemed stifling, though the thermometer rose only to 26°. 
 The breeze, which generally refreshed the air from eight or 
 nine o’clock in the evening, was no longer felt. The atmo- 
 sphere was burning hot, and the parched and dusty ground 
 was cracked on every side. On the 4th of November, about 
 two in the afternoon, large clouds of peculiar blackness 
 enveloped the high mountains of the Brigantine and the 
 Tataraqual. They extended by degrees as far as the zenith. 
 About four in the afternoon thunder was heard over our 
 heads, at an immense height, not regularly rolling, but 
 with a hollow and often interrupted sound. At the moment 
 of the strongest electric explosion, at 4 h 12', there were two 
 shocks of earthquake, which followed each other at the 
 interval of fifteen seconds. The people ran into the streets, 
 uttering loud cries. M. Bonpland, who was leaning over 
 a table examining plants, was almost thrown on the floor. 
 I felt the shock very strongly, though I was lying in a 
 hammock. Its direction was from north to south, which 
 is rare at Cumana. Slaves, who were drawing water from 
 a well more than eighteen or twenty feet deep, near the 
 river Manzanares, heard a noise like the explosion of a 
 strong charge of gunpowder. The noise seemed to come 
 from the bottom of the well ; a very curious phenomenon, 
 though -very common in most of the countries of America 
 which are exposed to earthquakes. 
 
 A few minutes before the first shock there was a very 
 violent blast of wind, followed by electrical rain falling 
 in great drops. I immediately tried the atmospherical 
 electricity by the electrometer of Volta. The small balls 
 separated four lines ; the electricity often changed from 
 positive to negative, as is the case during storms, and, in 
 the north of Europe, even sometimes in a fall of snow. The 
 sky remained cloudy, and the blast of wind was followed 
 by a dead calm, which lasted all night. The sunset pre- 
 sented a picture of extraordinary magnificence. The thick 
 veil of clouds was rent asunder, as in shreds, quite near 
 the horizon; the sun appeared at 12 degrees of altitude 
 on a sky of indigo-blue. Its disk was enormously en- 
 larged, distorted, and undulated toward the edges. The 
 clouds were gilded ; and fascicles of divergent rays, reflect 
 

 348 prognostics or earthquakes. 
 
 in g the most brilliant rainbow hues, extended over the 
 heavens. A great crowd of people assembled in the public 
 square. This celestial phenomenon, — the earthquake, — the 
 thunder which accompanied it, — the red vapour seen during 
 so many days, all were regarded as the effect of the 
 eclipse. 
 
 About nine in the evening there was another shock, much 
 slighter than the former, but attended with a subterraneous 
 noise. The barometer was a little lower than usual; but 
 the progress of the horary variations or small atmospheric 
 tides, was no way interrupted. The mercury was precisely 
 at the minimum of height at the moment of the earthquake ; 
 it continued rising till eleven in the evening, and sank again 
 till half after four in the morning, conformably to the law 
 which regulates barometrical variations. In the night be- 
 tween the 3rd and 4th of November the reddish vapour 
 was so thick that I could not distinguish the situation of 
 the moon, except by a beautiful halo of 20° diameter. 
 
 Scarcely twenty-two months had elapsed since the town 
 of Cumana had been almost totally destroyed by an earth- 
 quake. The people regard vapours which obscure the 
 horizon, and the subsidence of wind during the night, as 
 infallible prognostics of disaster. We had frequent visits 
 from persons who wished to know whether our instruments 
 indicated new shocks for the next day ; and alarm was great 
 and general when, on the 5th of November, exactly at the 
 same hour as on the preceding day, there was a violent 
 gust of wind, attended by thunder, and a few drops of rain. 
 No shock was felt. The wind and storm returned during 
 five or six days at the same hour, almost at the same minute. 
 The inhabitants of Cumana, and of many other places be- 
 tween the tropics, have long since observed that atmosphe- 
 rical changes, which are, to appearance, the most accidental, 
 succeed each other for whole weeks with astonishing regu- 
 larity. The same phenomenon occurs in summer, in the 
 temperate zone ; nor has it escaped the perception of astro- 
 nomers, who often observe, in a serene sky, during three or 
 four days successively, clouds which have collected at the 
 same part of the firmament, take the same direction, and 
 dissolve at the same height ; sometimes before, sometimes 
 
AGITATING SENSATIONS. 
 
 349 
 
 after tlie passage of a star over tlie meridian, consequently 
 within a few minutes of the same point of true time.* 
 
 The earthquake of the 4th of November, the first I had 
 felt, made the greater impression on me, as it was accom- 
 panied with remarkable meteorological variations. It was, 
 moreover, a positive movement upward and downward, and 
 not a shock by undulation. I did not then imagine, that 
 after a long abode on the table-lands of Quito and the coasts 
 of Peru, I should become almost as familiar with the abrupt 
 movements of the ground as we are in Europe with the 
 sound of thunder. In the city of Quito, we never thought 
 of rising from our beds when, during^ the night, subterra- 
 neous rumblings (bramidos), which seem always to come 
 from the volcano of Pichincha, announced a shock, the force 
 of which, however, is seldom in proportion to the intensity 
 of the noise. The indifference of the inhabitants, who bear 
 in mind that for three centuries past their city has not been 
 destroyed, readily communicates itself to the least intrepid 
 traveller. It is not so much the fear of the danger, as the 
 novelty of the sensation, which makes so forcible an impres- 
 sion when the effect of the slightest earthquake is felt for 
 the first time. 
 
 Prom our infancy, the idea of certain contrasts becomes 
 fixed in our minds : water appears to us an element that 
 moves; earth, a motionless and inert mass. These impressions 
 are the result of daily experience : they are connected with 
 everything that is transmitted to us by the senses. When 
 the shock of an earthquake is felt, when the earth which 
 we had deemed so stable is shaken on its old foundations, 
 one instant suffices to destroy long-fixed illusions. It is like 
 awakening from a dream; but a painful awakening. We 
 feel that we have been deceived by the apparent stability 
 of nature ; we become observant of the least noise ; we 
 mistrust for the first time the soil we have so long trod 
 with confidence. But if the shocks be repeated, if they 
 become frequent during several successive days, the un- 
 certainty quickly disappears. In 1784, the inhabitants of 
 Mexico were accustomed to hear the thunder roll beneath 
 
 * M. Arago and I paid a great deal of attention to this phenomenon 
 during a long series of observations made in the year 1809 and 1810, at 
 the Observatory of Paris, with the view of verifying the declination of the 
 stars. 
 
350 
 
 RADIANCE OF THE STARS. 
 
 their feet,* as it is heard by us in the region of the clouds. 
 Confidence easily springs up in the human breast : on the 
 coasts of Peru we become accustomed to the undulations 
 of the ground, as the sailor becomes accustomed to the 
 tossing of the ship, caused by the motion of the waves. 
 
 The reddish vapour which at Cumana had spread a mist 
 over the horizon a little before sunset, disappeared after 
 the 7th of November. The atmosphere resumed its former 
 purity, and the firmament appeared, at the zenith, of that 
 deep blue tint peculiar to climates where heat, light, and 
 a great equality of electric charge seem all to promote the 
 most perfect dissolution of water in the air. I observed, on 
 the night of the 7th, the immersion of the second satellite 
 of Jupiter. The belts of the planet were more distinct than 
 I had ever seen them before. 
 
 I passed a part of the night in comparing the intensity 
 of the light emitted by the beautiful stars which shine in the 
 southern sky. I pursued this task carefully in both hemi- 
 spheres, at sea, and during my abode at Lima, at Guayaquil, 
 and at Mexico. Nearly half a century has now elapsed 
 since La Caille examined that region of the sky which is 
 invisible in Europe. The stars near the south pole are 
 usually observed with so little perseverance and attention, 
 that the greatest changes may take place in the intensity 
 of t heir light and their own motion, without astronomers 
 having the slightest knowledge of them. I think I have 
 remarked changes of this kind in the constellation of the 
 Crane and in that of the Ship. I compared, at first with 
 the naked eye, the stars which are not very distant from 
 each other, for the purpose of classing them according to 
 the method pointed out by Herschel, in a paper read to 
 the Loyal Society of London in 1796. I afterwards em- 
 ployed diaphragms diminishing the aperture of the teles- 
 cope, and coloured and colourless glasses placed before the 
 eye-glass. I moreover made use of an instrument of re- 
 flexion calculated to bring simultaneously two stars into the 
 field of the telescope, after having equalized their light by 
 receiving . it with more or fewer rays at pleasure, reflected 
 by the silvered part of the mirror. I admit that these 
 photometric processes are not very precise ; but I believe 
 * Los bramidos de Guanazuato. 
 
INTENSITY OE LIGHT. 
 
 351 
 
 the last, which perhaps had never before been employed, 
 might be réndered nearly exact, by adding a scale of equal 
 parts to the moveable frame of the telescope of the sextant. 
 It was by taking the mean of a great number of valuations, 
 that I saw the relative intensity of the light of the great 
 stars decrease in the following manner: Sirius, Canopus, 
 a Centauri, Achemer, /3 Centauri, Fomalhaut, Eigel, Pro- 
 cyon, Beteigueuse, e of the Great Bog, 8 of the Great 
 Bog, a of the Crane, a of the Peacock. These experiments 
 will become more interesting when travellers shall have 
 determined anew, at intervals of forty or fifty years, some 
 of those changes which the celestial bodies seem to undergo, 
 either at their surface or with respect to their distances from 
 our planetary system. 
 
 After having made astronomical observations with the 
 same instruments, in our northern climates and in the 
 torrid zone, we are surprised at the effect produced in the 
 latter (by the transparency of the air, and the less extinc- 
 tion of light), on the clearness with which the double stars, 
 the satellites of Jupiter, or certain nebulae, present them- 
 selves. Beneath a sky equally serene in appearance, it 
 would seem as if more perfect instruments were employed ; 
 so much more distinct and well defined do the objects 
 appear between the tropics. It cannot be doubted, that 
 at the period when equinoctial America shall become the 
 centre of extensive civilization, physical astronomy will 
 make immense improvements, in proportion as the skies 
 will be explored with excellent glasses, in the dry and hot 
 climates of Cumana, Coro, and the island of Margareta. 
 I do not here mention the ridge of the Cordilleras, because, 
 with the exception of some high and nearly barren plains 
 in Mexico and Peru, the very elevated table-lands, in which 
 the barometric pressure is from ten to twelve inches less 
 than at the level of the sea, have a misty and extremely 
 variable climate. The extreme purity of the atmosphere 
 which constantly prevails in the low regions during the 
 dry season, counterbalances the elevation of site and the 
 rarity of the air on the table-lands. The elevated strata 
 of the atmosphere, when they envelope the ridges of moun- 
 tains, undergo rapid changes in their transparency. 
 
 The night of the 11th of November was cool and ex- 
 
352 
 
 SHOWERS OE EALLING STARS. 
 
 tremely fine. From half after two in the morning, the most 
 extraordinary luminous meteors were seen in the direction 
 of the east. M. Bonpland, who had risen to enjoy the 
 freshness of the air, perceived them first. Thousands of 
 bolides and falling stars succeeded each other during the 
 space of four hours. Their direction was very regular 
 from north to south. They filled a space in the sky ex- 
 tending from due east 30° to north and south. In an 
 amplitude of 60° the meteors were seen to rise above the 
 horizon at E.N.E. and at E., to describe arcs more or less 
 extended, and to fall towards the south, after having followed 
 the direction of the meridian. Some of them attained a 
 height of 40°, and all exceeded 25° or 30°. There was very 
 little wind in the low regions of the atmosphere, and that 
 little blew from the east. No trace of clouds was to be 
 seen. M. Bonpland states that, from the first appearance 
 of the phenomenon, there was not in the firmament a 
 space equal in extent to three diameters of the moon, which 
 was not filled every instant with bolides and falling stars. 
 The first were fewer in number, but as they were of different 
 sizes, it was impossible to fix the limit between these two 
 classes of phenomena. All these meteors left luminous 
 traces from five to ten degrees in length, as often happens 
 in the equinoctial regions. The phosphorescence of these 
 traces, or luminous bands, lasted seven or eight seconds. 
 Many of the falling stars had a very distinct nucleus, as 
 large as the disk of Jupiter, from which darted sparks of 
 vivid light. The bolides seem to burst as by explosion ; but 
 the largest, those from 1° to 1° 15' in diameter, disappeared 
 without scintillation, leaving behind them phosphorescent 
 bands (trabes) exceeding in breadth fifteen or twenty 
 minutes. The light of these meteors was white, and not 
 reddish, which must doubtless be attributed to the absence 
 of vapour and the extreme transparency of the air. For 
 the same reason, within the tropics, the stars of the first 
 magnitude have, at their rising, a light decidedly whiter than 
 in Europe. 
 
 Al most all the inhabitants of Cumana witnessed this phe- 
 nomenon, because they had left their houses before four 
 o’clock, to attend the early morning mass. They did not 
 behold these bolides with indifference ; the oldest among 
 
FALLING METEORS. 
 
 353 
 
 them remembered that the great earthquakes of 1766 were 
 preceded by similar phenomena. The Gruaiqueries in the 
 Indian suburb alleged “ that the bolides began to appear 
 at one o’clock ; and that as they returned from fishing in 
 the gulf, they had perceived very small falling stars to- 
 wards the east.” They assured us that igneous meteors 
 were extremely rare on those coasts after two o’clock in 
 the morning. 
 
 The phenomenon ceased by degrees after four o’clock, 
 and the bolides and falling stars became less frequent ; but 
 we still distinguished some to north-east by their whitish 
 light, and the rapidity of their movement, a quarter of an 
 hour after sunrise. This circumstance will appear less ex- 
 traordinary, when I mention that in broad daylight, in 
 1788, the interior of the houses in the town of Popayan 
 was brightly illumined by an aerolite of immense magni- 
 tude. It passed over the town, when the sun was shining 
 clearly, about one o’clock. M. Bonpland and myself, during 
 our second residence at Cumana, after having observed, on 
 the 26th of September, 1800, the immersion of the first 
 satellite of Jupiter, succeeded in seeing the planet distinctly 
 with the naked eye, eighteen minutes after the disk of 
 the sun had appeared in the horizon. There was a very 
 slight vapour in the east, but Jupiter appeared on an azure 
 sky. These facts bear evidence of the extreme purity and 
 transparency of the atmosphere in the torrid zone. The 
 mass of diffused light is the less, in proportion as the va- 
 pours are more perfectly dissolved. The same cause which 
 checks the diffusion of the solar light, diminishes the ex- 
 tinction of that which emanates either from bolides from 
 Jupiter, or from the moon, seen on the second day after its 
 conjunction. The 12th of November was an extremely hot 
 day, and the hygrometer indicated a very considerable de- 
 gree of dryness for those climates. The reddish vapour 
 clouded the horizon anew, and rose to the height of 14°. 
 This was the last time it appeared that year ; and I must 
 here observe, that it is no less rare under the fine sky of 
 Cumana, than it is common at Acapulco, on the western 
 coast of Mexico. 
 
 We did not neglect, during the course of our journey 
 from Caracas to the Rio Negro, to enquire everywhere, 
 
 yol. i. 2 A 
 
354 
 
 FALLING METEORS. 
 
 whether the meteors of the 12th of November had been 
 perceived. In a wild country, where the greater number 
 of the inhabitants sleep in the open air, so extraordinary 
 a phenomenon could not fail to be remarked, unless it 
 had been concealed from observation by clouds. The Ca- 
 puchin missionary at San Fernando de Apure,* a village 
 situated amid the savannahs of the province of Varinas ; 
 the Franciscan monks stationed near the cataracts of the 
 Orinoco and at Maroa, f on the banks of the Rio Negro ; 
 had seen numberless falling-stars and bolides illumine the 
 heavens. Maroa is south-west of Cumana, at one hun- 
 dred and seventy-four leagues distance. All these observers 
 compared the phenomenon to brilliant fireworks; and it 
 lasted from three till six in the morning. Some of the 
 monks had marked the day in their rituals ; others had 
 noted it by the proximate festivals of the Church. Un- 
 fortunately, none of them could recollect the direction of 
 the meteors, or their apparent height. From the position 
 of the mountains and thick forests which surround the 
 Missions of the Cataracts and the little village of Maroa, 
 I presume that the bolides were still visible at 20° above 
 the horizon. On my arrival at the southern extremity of 
 Spanish Guiana, at the little fort of San Carlos, I found 
 some Portuguese, who had gone up the Rio Negro from 
 the Mission of St. Joseph of the Maravitans. They assured 
 me that in that part of Brazil the phenomenon had been 
 perceived at least as far as San Gabriel das Cachoeiras, 
 consequently as far as the equator itself. J 
 
 I was forcibly struck by the immense height which these 
 bolides must have attained, to have rendered them visible 
 simultaneously at Cumana, and on the frontiers of Brazil, in 
 a line of two hundred and thirty leagues in length. But 
 what was my astonishment, when, on my return to Europe, 
 I learned that the same phenomenon had been perceived 
 
 * R. lat. 7° 53' 12 "; W. long. 70° 20'. 
 
 t N. lat. 2° 42' 0"; W. long. 70° 21'. 
 
 J A little to the north-west of San Antonio de Castauheiro. I did not 
 meet with any persons who had observed this meteor, at Santa Fé de 
 Bogotâ, at Popayan, or in the southern hemisphere, at Quito and Peru. 
 Perhaps the state of the atmosphere, so changeable in these western 
 regions, prevented observation. 
 
THEIE WIDE EXTENSION. 
 
 355 
 
 on an extent of the globe of 64° of latitude, and 91° of 
 longitude ; at the equator, in South America, at Labrador, 
 and in Germany ! I saw accidentally, during my passage 
 from Philadelphia to Bordeaux,* the corresponding obser- 
 vation of Mr. Ellicot (lat. 30° 42 ) ; and upon my return 
 from Naples to Berlin, I read the account of the Moravian 
 missionaries among the Esquimaux, in the BibliotheJc of 
 Gottingen. 
 
 The following is a succinct enumeration of the facts : 
 1st. The fiery meteors were seen in the east, and the east- 
 north-east, at 40° of elevation, from 2 h to 6 h at Cumana 
 (lat. 10° 27' 52", long. 66° 30') ; at Porto Cabello (lat. 
 10° 6' 52", long. 67° 5') ; and on the frontiers of Brazil, 
 near the equator, in long. 70° west of the meridian of 
 Paris. 2nd. In French Guiana (lat. 4° 56', long. 54° 35'), 
 “the northern part of the sky was suffused with fire. Num- 
 berless falling-stars traversed the heavens during the space 
 of an hour and a half, and shed so vivid a light, that those 
 meteors might be compared to the blazing sheaves which 
 shoot out from fireworks.” The knowledge of this fact rests 
 upon the highly trustworthy testimony of the Count de 
 Marbois, then living in exile at Cayenne, a victim to his 
 love of justice and of rational, constitutional liberty. 3rd. 
 Mr. Ellicot, astronomer to the United States, having com- 
 pleted his trigonometric operations for the rectification of 
 the limits on the Ohio, being on the 12th of November in 
 the gulf of Florida, in latitude 25°, and longitude 81° 50', 
 saw in all parts of the sky, “as many meteors as stars, 
 moving in all directions. Some appeared to fall perpendicu- 
 larly ; and it was expected every minute that they would 
 drop into the vessel.” The same phenomenon was perceived 
 upon the American continent as far as latitude 30° 42', 
 4th. In Labrador, at Nain (lat. 56° 55'), and Hoffenthal 
 (lat. 58° 4'); in Greenland, at Lichtenau (lat. 61° 5'), and 
 at New Hermhut (lat. 64° 14', long. 52° 20') ; the Esqui- 
 maux were terrified at the enormous quantity of bolides 
 which fell during twilight at all points of the firmament, 
 and some of which were said to be a foot broad. 5th. In 
 
 * In the Memoirs of the Pennsylvanian Society. 
 
 2 A 2 
 
356 
 
 FALLING METEORS. 
 
 
 Germany, Mr. Zeissing, vicar of Ittetsadt, near Weimar 
 (lat. 50° 59', long. 9° 1' east), perceived, on the 12th of 
 November, between the hours of six and seven in the mor- 
 ning (half-past two at Cumana), some falling-stars which 
 shed a very white light. Soon after, in the direction of 
 south and south-west, luminous rays appeared from four to 
 six feet long; they were reddish, and resembled the lu- 
 minous track of a sky-rocket. During the morning twi- 
 light, between the hours of seven and eight, the sky, in the 
 direction of south-west, was observed from time to time to 
 be brightly illumined by white lightning, running in ser- 
 pentine lines along the horizon. At night the cold in- 
 creased and the barometer rose. It is very probable, that 
 the meteors might have been observed more to the east, in 
 Poland and in Russia.* 
 
 The distance from Weimar to the Rio Negro is 1800 
 nautical leagues ; and from the Rio Negro to Herrnhut in 
 Greenland, 1300 leagues. Admitting that the same fiery 
 meteors were seen at points so distant from each other, we 
 must suppose that their height was at least 411 leagues. 
 Near Weimar, the appearance like sky-rockets was observed 
 in the south and south-east; at Cumana, in the east and 
 east-north-east. We may therefore conclude, that number- 
 less aerolites must have fallen into the sea, between Africa 
 and South America, westward of the Cape Verd Islands. 
 But since the direction of the bolides was not the same at 
 Labrador and at Cumana, why were they not perceived in 
 the latter place towards the north, as at Cayenne ? We can 
 scarcely be too cautious on a subject, on which good obser- 
 vations made in very distant places are still wanting. I am 
 rather inclined to think, that the Chayma Indians of Cumana 
 did not see the same bolides as the Portuguese in Brazil and 
 the missionaries in Labrador ; but at the same time it cannot 
 be doubted (and this fact appears to me very remarkable) 
 that in the New World, between the meridians of 46° and 
 82°, between the equator and 64° north, at the same hour, an 
 
 * In Paris and in London the sky was cloudy. At Carlsruhe, before 
 dawn, lightning was seen in the north-west and south-east. On the 13th 
 of November a remarkable glare of light was seen at the same place in the 
 south-east. 
 
EAPIDITY OF THE IE MOTION. 
 
 357 
 
 immense number of bolides and falling-stars were perceived ; 
 and that those meteors bad everywhere the same brilliancy, 
 throughout a space of 921,000 square leagues. 
 
 Astronomers who have lately been directing minute atten- 
 tion to falling-stars and their parallaxes, consider them as 
 meteors belonging to the farthest limits of our atmosphere, 
 between the region of the Aurora Borealis and that of the 
 lightest clouds.* Some have been seen, which had not more 
 than 14,000 toises, or about five leagues of elevation. The 
 highest do not appear to exceed thirty leagues. They are 
 often more than a hundred feet in diameter : and their swift- 
 ness is such, that they dart in a few seconds through a space 
 of two leagues. Of some which have been measured, the 
 direction was almost perpendicularly upward, or forming an 
 angle of 50° with the vertical line. This extremely remark- 
 able circumstance has led to the conclusion, that falling-stars 
 are not aerolites which, after having hovered a long time in 
 space, unite on accidentally entering into our atmosphere, 
 and fall towards the earth.f 
 
 Whatever may be the origin of these luminous meteors, it 
 is difficult to conceive an instantaneous inflammation taking 
 place in a region where there is less air than in the vacuum 
 of our air-pumps ; and where (at the height of 25,000 toises) 
 the mercury in the barometer would not rise to 0 012 of a 
 line. We have ascertained the uniform mixture of atmos- 
 pheric air to be about 0 003, only to an elevation of 3000 
 toises ; consequently not beyond the last stratum of fleecy 
 clouds. It may be admitted that, in the first revolutions 
 of the globe, gaseous substances, which yet remain unknown 
 to us, have risen towards that region through which the 
 falling-stars pass; but accurate experiments, made upon 
 mixtures of gases which have not the same specific gravity, 
 show that there is no reason for supposing a superior stratum 
 of the atmosphere entirely different from the inferior strata. 
 Gaseous substances mingle and penetrate each other on the 
 
 * According to the observations which I made on the ridge of the 
 Andes, at an elevation of 2700 toises, on the moutons, or little white 
 fleecy clouds, it appeared to me, that their elevation is sometimes not less 
 than 6000 toises above the level of the coast. 
 
 1* M. Chladni, who at first considered falling-stars to be aerolites, sub- 
 sequently abandoned that idea. 
 
358. 
 
 FALLING- METEORS. 
 
 least movement ; and a uniformity of their mixture may have 
 taken place in the lapse of ages, unless we believe them to 
 possess a repulsive action of which there is no example in 
 those substances we can subject to our observations. Far- 
 ther, if we admit the existence of particular aerial fluids in 
 the inaccessible regions of luminous meteors, of falling-stars, 
 bolides, and the Aurora Borealis ; how can we conceive why 
 the whole stratum of those fluids does not at once ignite, 
 but that the gaseous emanations, like the clouds, occupy only 
 limited spaces ? How can we suppose an electrical explosion 
 without some vapours collected together, capable of contain- 
 ing unequal charges of electricity, in air, the mean tempe- 
 rature of which is perhaps 25° below the freezing point of 
 the centigrade thermometer, and the rarefaction of which is 
 so considerable, that the compression of the electrical shock 
 could scarcely disengage any heat ? These difficulties would 
 in great part be removed, if the direction of the movement of 
 falling-stars allowed us to consider them as bodies with a 
 solid nucleus, as cosmic phenomena (belonging to space 
 beyond the limits of our atmosphere), and not as telluric 
 phenomena (belonging to our planet only) . 
 
 Supposing the meteors of Cumana to have been only at 
 the usual height at which falling-stars in general move, the 
 same meteors were seen above the horizon in places more 
 than 310 leagues distant from each other.* How great a 
 disposition to incandescence must have prevailed on the 12th 
 November, in the higher regions of the atmosphere, to have 
 rendered during four hours myriads of bolides and falling 
 stars visible at the equator, in Greenland, and in Germany ! 
 
 M. Benzenberg observes, that the same cause which ren- 
 ders the phenomenon more frequent, has also an influence on 
 the large size of the meteors, and the intensity of their light. 
 In Europe, the greatest number of falling stars are seen on 
 those nights on which very bright ones are mingled with very 
 small ones. The periodical nature of the phenomenon aug- 
 ments the interest it excites. There are months in which 
 M. Brandes has reckoned in our temperate zone only sixty 
 or eighty falling-stars in one night; and in other months 
 
 * It was this circumstance that induced Lambert to propose the 
 observation of falling-stars for the determination of terrestrial longitudes. 
 He considered them to be celestial signals seen at great distances. 
 
THEIR FREQUENCY. 
 
 359 
 
 their number has risen to two thousand. Whenever one is 
 observed, which has the diameter of Sirius or of Jupiter, we 
 are sure of seeing the brilliant meteor succeeded by a great 
 number of smaller ones. If the falling stars he very nume- 
 rous during one night, it is probable that they will continue 
 equally so during several weeks. It would seem, that in the 
 higher regions of the atmosphere, near that extreme limit 
 where the centrifugal force is balanced by gravity, there 
 exists at regular periods a particular disposition for the pro- 
 duction of bolides, falling-stars, and the Aurora Borealis.* Does 
 the periodical recurrence of this great phenomenon depend 
 upon the state of the atmosphere ? or upon something which 
 the atmosphere receives from without, while the earth advan- 
 ces in the ecliptic ? Of all this we are still as ignorant as 
 mankind were in the days of Anaxagoras. 
 
 With respect to the falling- stars themselves, it appears to 
 me, from my own experience, that they are more frequent in 
 the equinoctial regions than in the temperate zone; and more 
 frequent above continents, and near certain coasts, than in 
 the middle of the ocean. Do the radiation of the surface of 
 the globe, and the electric charge of the lower regions of the 
 atmosphere (which varies according to the nature of the soil 
 and the positions of the continents and seas), exert their in- 
 fluence as far as those heights where eternal winter reigns ? 
 The total absence of even the smallest clouds, at certain sea- 
 sons, or above some barren plains destitute of vegetation, 
 seems to prove that this influence can be felt as far as five or 
 six thousand toises high. 
 
 A phenomenon analogous to that which appeared on the 
 12th of November at Cumana, was observed thirty years 
 previously on the table-land of the Andes, in a country 
 studded with volcanoes. In the city of Quito there was 
 seen in one part of the sky, above the volcano of Cayamba, 
 such great numbers of falling-stars, that the mountain was 
 thought to be in flames. This singular sight lasted more 
 than an hour. The people assembled in the plain of Exido, 
 
 * Ritter, like several others, makes a distinction between bolides min- 
 gled with falling-stars and those luminous meteors which, enveloped in 
 vapour and smoke, explode with great noise, and let fall (chiefly in the 
 day-time) aerolites. The latter certainly do not belong to our atmo- 
 sphere. 
 
360 
 
 VOYAGE TO LA GUAYRA. 
 
 which, commands a magnificent view of the highest summits 
 of the Cordilleras. A procession was on the point of setting 
 out from the convent of San Francisco, when it was perceived 
 that the blaze on the horizon was caused by fiery meteors, 
 which ran along the skies in all directions, at the altitude of 
 twelve or thirteen degrees. 
 
 Chapter XI. 
 
 Passage from Cumana to La Guayra. — Morro of New Barcelona. — Cape 
 Codera. — Road from La Guayra to Caracas. 
 
 Oh the 16th of November, at eight in the evening, we 
 were under sail to proceed along the coast from Cumana to 
 the port of La Guayra, whence the inhabitants of the pro- 
 vince of Venezuela export the greater part of their produce. 
 The passage is only a distance of sixty leagues, and it usually 
 occupies from thirty-six to forty horn’s. The little coasting 
 vessels are favoured at once by the wind and by the currents, 
 which run with more or less force from east to west, along 
 the coasts of Terra Firma, particularly from cape Paria to 
 the cape of Chichibacoa. The road by land from Cumana 
 to New Barcelona, and thence to Caracas, is nearly in the 
 same state as that in which it was before the discovery of 
 America. The traveller has to contend with the obstacles 
 presented by a miry soil, large scattered rocks, and strong 
 vegetation. He must sleep in the open air, pass through 
 the valleys of the Unare, the Tuy, and the Capaya, and cross 
 torrents which swell rapidly on account of the proximity 
 of the mountains. To these obstacles must be added the 
 dangers arising from the extreme insalubrity of the country. 
 The very low lands, between the sea-shore and the chain of 
 hills nearest the coast, from the bay of Mochima as far as 
 Coro, are extremely unhealthy. But the last-mentioned 
 town, which is surrounded by an immense wood of thorny 
 cactuses, owes its great salubrity, like Cumana, to its barren 
 soil and the absence of rain. 
 
 In returning from Caracas to Cumana, the road by land is 
 
UNEXPLORED REGIONS. 
 
 361 
 
 sometimes preferred to the passage by sea, to avoid the 
 adverse current. The postman from Caracas is nine days in 
 performing this journey. ¥e often saw persons, who had 
 followed him, arrive at Cumana ill of nervous and miasmatic 
 fevers. The tree of which the hark* furnishes a salutary 
 remedy for those fevers, grows in the same valleys, and upon 
 the edge of the same forests which send forth the pernicious 
 exhalations. M. Bonpland recognised the cuspare in the 
 vegetation of the gulf of Santa Fé, situated between the ports 
 of Cumana and Barcelona. The sickly traveller may per- 
 chance repose in a cottage, the inhabitants of which are 
 ignorant of the febrifuge qualities of the trees that shade 
 the surrounding valleys. 
 
 Having proceeded by sea from Cumana to La Gruayra, we 
 intended to take up our abode in. the town of Caracas, till 
 the end of the rainy season. From Caracas we proposed to 
 direct our course across the great plains or llanos, to the 
 Missions of the Orinoco; to go up that vast river, to the south 
 of the cataracts, as far as the Bio Negro and the frontiers 
 of Brazil ; and thence to return to Cumana by the capital of 
 Spanish Gruiana, commonly called, on account of its situation, 
 Angostura, or the Strait. We could not determine the time 
 we might require to accomplish a tour of seven hundred 
 leagues, more than two-thirds of that distance having to be 
 traversed in boats. The only parts of the Orinoco known on 
 the coasts are those near its mouth. No commercial inter- 
 course is kept up with the Missions. The whole of the 
 country beyond the llanos is unknown to the inhabitants of 
 Cumana and Caracas. Some think that the plains of Cala- 
 bozo, covered with turf, stretch eight hundred leagues south- 
 ward, communicating with the Steppes or Pampas of Buenos 
 Ayres ; others, recalling to mind the great mortality which 
 prevailed among the troops of Iturriaga and Solano, during 
 their expedition to the Orinoco, consider the whole country, 
 south of the cataracts of Atures, as extremely pernicious 
 to health. In a region where travelling is so uncommon, 
 people seem to feel a pleasure in exaggerating to strangers 
 the difficulties arising from the climate, the wild animals, and 
 the Indians. Nevertheless we persisted in the project we 
 
 * Cortex Angosturee of our pharmacopæias, the bark of the Bonplandia 
 trifoliata. 
 
362 
 
 JTJAtf GONZALES. 
 
 had formed. "We could rely upon the interest and soli- 
 citude of the governor of Cumana, Don Yicente Emparan, as 
 well as on the recommendations of the Franciscan monks, 
 who are in reality masters of the shores of the Orinoco. 
 
 Fortunately for us, one of those monks, Juan Gonzales, 
 was at that time in Cumana. This young monk, who was only 
 a lay-brother, was highly intelligent, and full of spirit and 
 courage. He had the misfortune shortly after his arrival on 
 the coast to displease his superiors, upon the election of a 
 new director of the Missions of Piritu, which is a period of 
 great agitation in the convent of New Barcelona. The tri- 
 umphant party exercised a general retaliation, from which the 
 lay-brother could not escape. He was sent to Esmeralda, 
 the last Mission of the Upper Orinoco, famous for the vast 
 quantity of noxious insects with which the air i3 continually 
 filled. Fray Juan Gonzales was thoroughly acquainted with 
 the forests which extend from the cataracts towards the 
 sources of the Orinoco. Another revolution in the repub- 
 lican government of the monks had some years before 
 brought him to the coast, where he enjoyed (and most justly) 
 the esteem of his superiors. He confirmed us in our desire 
 of examining the much- disputed bifurcation of the Orinoco. 
 He gave us useful advice for the preservation of our health, 
 in climates where he had himself suffered long from inter- 
 mitting fevers. We had the satisfaction of finding Fray 
 Juan Gonzales at New Barcelona, on our return from the 
 Bio Negro. Intending to go from the Havannah to Cadiz, 
 he obligingly offered to take charge of part of our herbals, 
 and our insects of the Orinoco ; but these collections were 
 unfortunately lost with himself at sea. This excellent young 
 man, who was much attached to us, and whose zeal and 
 courage might have rendered him very serviceable to the 
 missions of his order, perished in a storm on the coast of 
 Africa, in 1801. 
 
 The boat which conveyed us from Cumana to La Guayra, 
 was one of those employed in trading between the coasts 
 and the West India Islands. They are thirty feet long, and 
 not more than three feet high at the gunwale ; they have no 
 decks, and their burthen is generally from two hundred to 
 two hundred and fifty quintals. Although the sea is ex- 
 tremely rough from Cape Codera to La Guayra, and although 
 
NATIVE BOATMEN. 
 
 363 
 
 the boats have an enormous triangular sail, somewhat dan- 
 gerous in those gusts which issue from the mountain-passes, 
 no instance has occurred during thirty years, of one of these 
 boats being lost in the passage from Cumana to the coast of 
 Caracas. The skill of the Gruaiqueria pilots is so great, that 
 accidents are very rare, even in the frequent trips they make 
 from Cumana to Gfuadaloupe, or the Danish islands, which 
 are surrounded with breakers. These voyages of 120 or 
 150 leagues, in an open sea, out of sight of land, are per- 
 formed in boats without decks, like those of the ancients, 
 without observations of the meridian altitude of the sun, 
 without charts, and generally without a compass. The 
 Indian pilot directs his course at night by the pole-star, and 
 in the daytime by the sun and the wind. I have seen Gruai- 
 queries and pilots of the Zarnbo caste, who could find the 
 pole-star by the direction of the pointers a and /3 of the 
 Grreat Bear, and they seemed to me to steer less from the 
 view of the pole-star itself, than from the line drawn through 
 these stars. It is surprising, that at the first sight of land, 
 they can find the island of G-uadaloupe, Santa Cruz, or Porto 
 Pico ; but the compensation of the errors of their course is 
 not always equally fortunate. The boats, if they fall to lee- 
 ward in making land, beat up with great difficulty to the 
 eastward, against the wind and the current. 
 
 We descended rapidly the little river Manzanares, the 
 windings of which are marked by cocoa-trees, as the rivers 
 of Europe are sometimes bordered by poplars and old wil- 
 lows. On the adjacent arid land, the thorny bushes, on 
 which by day nothing is visible but dust, glitter during the 
 night with thousands of luminous sparks. The number of 
 phosphorescent insects augments in the stormy season. The 
 traveller in the equinoctial regions is never weary of admiring 
 the effect of those reddish and moveable fires, which, being 
 reflected by limpid water, blend their radiance with that of 
 the starry vault of heaven. 
 
 We quitted the shore of Cumana as if it had long been our 
 home. This was the first land we had trodden in a zone, 
 towards which my thoughts had been directed from earliest 
 youth. There is a powerful charm in the impression pro- 
 duced by the scenery and climate of these regions; and after 
 an abode of a few months we seemed to have lived there 
 
364 
 
 TEOPICAL SCEKEEY. 
 
 during a long succession of years. In Europe, tlie inhabitant 
 of the north feels an almost similar emotion, when he quits 
 even after a short abode the shores of the Bay of Naples, the 
 delicious country between Tivoli and the lake of Nemi, or 
 the wild and majestic scenery of the Upper Alps and the 
 Pyrenees. Yet everywhere in the temperate zone, the 
 effects of vegetable physiognomy afford little contrast. 
 The firs and the oaks which crown the mountains of Sweden 
 have a certain family air in common with those which 
 adorn Greece and Italy. Between the tropics, on the con- 
 trary, in the lower regions of both Indies, everything in 
 nature appears new and marvellous. In the open plains and 
 amid the gloom of forests, almost all the remembrances of 
 Europe are effaced ; for it is vegetation that determines the 
 character of a landscape, and acts upon the imagination by 
 its mass, the contrast of its forms, and the glow of its 
 colours. In proportion as impressions are powerful and 
 new, they weaken antecedent impressions, and their force 
 imparts to them the character of duration. I appeal to 
 those who, more sensible to the beauties of nature than to 
 the charms of society, have long resided in the torrid zone. 
 How dear, how memorable during life, is the land on which 
 they first disembarked ! A vague desire to revisit that spot 
 remains rooted in their minds to the most advanced age. 
 Cumana and its dusty soil are still more frequently present 
 to my imigination, than all the wonders of the Cordilleras. 
 Beneath the bright sky of the south, the light, and the magic 
 of the aerial hues, embellish a land almost destitute of vege- 
 tation. The sun does not merely enlighten, it colours the 
 objects, and wraps them in a thin vapour, which, without 
 changing the transparency of the air, renders its tints more 
 harmonious, softens the effects of the light, and diffuses over 
 nature a placid calm, which is reflected in our souls. To 
 explain this vivid impression which the aspect of the scenery 
 in the two Indies produces, even on coasts but thinly 
 wooded, it is sufficient to recollect that the beauty of the 
 sky augments from Naples to the equator, almost as much as 
 from Provence to the south of Italy. 
 
 We passed at high water the bar formed at the mouth of 
 the little river Manzanares. The evening breeze gently 
 swelled the waves in the gulf of Cariaco. The moon had 
 
PHOSPHORESCENCE OE THE SEA. 
 
 365 
 
 not risen, but that part of the milky way which extends 
 from the feet of the Centaur towards the constellation of 
 Sagittarius, seemed to pour a silvery light over the surface 
 of the ocean. The white rock, crowned by the castle of 
 San Antonio, appeared from time to time between the high 
 tops of the cocoa-trees which border the shore ; and we soon 
 recognized the coasts only by the scattered lights of the 
 Guaiqueria fishermen. 
 
 We sailed at first to N. N". W., approaching the penin- 
 sula of Araya ; we then ran thirty miles to W. and W.S. W. 
 As we advanced towards the shoal that surrounds Cape 
 Arenas and stretches as far as the petroleum springs of 
 Maniquarez, we enjoyed one of those varied sights which 
 the great phosphorescence of the sea so often displays in 
 those climates. Bands of porpoises followed our bark. 
 Fifteen or sixteen of these animals swam at equal distances 
 from each other. When turning on their backs, they struck 
 the surface of the water with their broad tails ; they diffused 
 a brilliant light, which seemed like flames issuing from the 
 depth of the ocean.* Each band of porpoises, ploughing the 
 surface of the waters, left behind it a track of light, the 
 more striking as the rest of the sea was not phosphorescent. 
 As the motion of an oar, and the track of the bark, pro- 
 duced on that night but feeble sparks, it is natural to sup- 
 pose that the vivid phosphorescence caused by the porpoises 
 was owing not only to the stroke of their tails, but also to 
 the gelatinous matter that envelopes their bodies, and is 
 detached by the shock of the waves. 
 
 We found ourselves at midnight between some barren 
 and rocky islands, which uprise like bastions in the middle of 
 the sea, and form the group of the Caracas and Chimanas.f 
 The moon was above the horizon, and lighted up these cleft 
 rocks which are bare of vegetation and of fantastic aspect. 
 The sea here forms a sort of bay, a slight inward curve of 
 the land between Cumana and Cape Codera. The islets of 
 Picua, Picuita, Caracas, and Boracha, appear like fragments 
 of the ancient coast, which stretches from Bordones in the 
 same direction east and west. The gulfs of Mochima and 
 Santa Eé, which will no doubt one day become frequented 
 
 * See Views of Nature, (Bohn’s edition,) p. 246. 
 
 f There are three of the Caracas islands and eight of the Chimanas. 
 
366 
 
 THE CABACAS ISLANDS. 
 
 ports, lie behind those little islands. The rents in the land, 
 the fracture and dip of the strata, all here denote the effects 
 of a great revolution : possibly that which clove asunder the 
 chain of the primitive mountains, and separated the mica- 
 schist of Araya and the island of Margareta from the gneiss 
 of Cape Codera. Several of the islands are visible at 
 Cumana, from the terraces of the houses, and they produce, 
 according to the superposition of layers of air more or less 
 heated, the most singular effects of suspension and mirage. 
 The height of the rocks does not probably exceed one hun- 
 dred and fifty toises ; but at night, when lighted by the moon, 
 they seem to be of a very considerable elevation. 
 
 It may appear extraordinary, to find the Caracas Islands 
 so distant from the city of that name, opposite the coast of the 
 Ctimanagotos ; but the denomination of Caracas denoted at 
 the beginning of the Conquest, not a particular spot, but a 
 tribe of Indians, neighbours of the Tecs, the Taramaynas, 
 and the Chagaragates. As we came very near this group of 
 mountainous islands, we were becalmed; and at sunrise, 
 small currents drifted us toward Boracha, the largest of 
 them. As the rocks rise nearly perpendicular, the shore is 
 abrupt ; and in a subsequent voyage I saw frigates at anchor 
 almost touching the land. The temperature of the atmo- 
 sphere became sensibly higher whilst we were sailing among 
 the islands of this little archipelago- The rocks, heated 
 during the day, throw out at night, by radiation, a part of the 
 heat absorbed. As the sun arose on the horizon, the rugged 
 mountains projected their vast shadows on the surface of 
 the ocean. The flamingoes began to fish in places where they 
 found in a creek calcareous rocks bordered by a narrow 
 beach. All these islands are now entirely uninhabited ; but 
 upon one of the Caracas are found wild goats of large size, 
 brown, and extremely swift. Our Indian pilot assured us 
 that their flesh has an excellent flavour. Thirty years ago a 
 family of whites settled on this island, where they cultivated 
 maize and cassava. The father alone survived his children. 
 As his wealth increased, he purchased two black slaves ; and 
 by these slaves he was murdered. The goats became wild, 
 but the cultivated plants perished. Maize in America, like 
 wheat in Europe, connected with man since his first migra- 
 tions, appears to be preserved only by his care. We some- 
 
POET OP BAECELONA. 
 
 367 
 
 times see these nutritive gramina disseminate themselves; 
 hut when left to nature the birds prevent their reproduction 
 by destroying the seeds. 
 
 We anchored for some hours in the road of New Barce- 
 lona, at the mouth of the river Neveri, of which the Indian 
 (Cumanagoto) name is Enipiricuar. This river is full of 
 crocodiles, which sometimes extend their excursions into the 
 open sea, especially in calm weather. They are of the 
 species common in the Orinoco, and bear so much resem- 
 blance to the crocodile of Egypt, that they have long been 
 confounded together. It may easily be conceived that an 
 animal, the body of which is surrounded with a kind of ar- 
 mour, must be nearly indifferent to the saltness of the water. 
 Pigafetta relates in his journal recently published at Milan 
 that he saw, on the shores of the island of Borneo, crocodiles 
 which inhabit alike land and sea. These facts must be inte- 
 resting to geologists, since attention has been fixed on the 
 fresh-water formations, and the curious mixture of marine 
 and fluviatile petrifactions sometimes observed in certain 
 very recent rocks. 
 
 The port of Barcelona has maintained a very active com- 
 merce since 1795. Erom Barcelona is exported most of the 
 produce of those vast steppes which extend from the south 
 side of the chain of the coast as far as the Orinoco, and in 
 which cattle of every kind are almost as abundant as in the 
 Pampas of Buenos Ayres. The commercial industry of 
 these countries depends on the demand in the West India 
 Islands for salted provision, oxen, mules, and horses. The 
 coasts of Terra Firma being opposite to the island of Cuba, 
 at a distance of fifteen or eighteen days’ sail, the merchants 
 of the Havannah prefer, especially in time of peace, obtain- 
 ing their provision from the port of Barcelona, to the risk of 
 a long voyage in another hemisphere to the mouth of the 
 Bio de la Plata. The situation of Barcelona is singularly 
 advantageous for the trade in cattle. The a nim als have only 
 three days’ journey from the llanos to the port, while it re- 
 quires eight or nine days to reach Cumana, on account of the 
 chain of mountains of the Brigantine and the Imposible. 
 
 Having landed on the right bank of the Neveri, we as- 
 cended to a little fort called El Morro de Barcelona, situated 
 at the elevation of sixty or seventy toises above the level of 
 
368 
 
 EL MORRO DE BARCELONA. 
 
 the sea. The Morro is a calcareous rock which has been 
 lately fortified. 
 
 The view from the summit of the Morro is not without 
 beauty. The rocky island of Boracha lies on the east, the 
 lofty promontory of Unare is on the west, and below are seen 
 the mouth of the river Neveri, and the arid shores on 
 which the crocodiles come to sleep in the sun. Notwith- 
 standing the extreme heat of the air, for the thermometer, 
 exposed to the reflection of the white calcareous rock, rose 
 to 38°, we traversed the whole of the eminence. A fortu- 
 nate chance led us to observe some very curious geological 
 phenomena, which we again met with in the Cordilleras of 
 Mexico. The limestone of Barcelona has a dull, even, or 
 conchoidal fracture, with very flat cavities. It is divided 
 into very thin strata, and exhibits less analogy with the 
 limestone of Cumanacoa, than with that of Caripe, form- 
 ing the cavern of the G-uacharo. It is traversed by banks of 
 schistose jasper,* * * § black, with a conchoidal fracture, and break- 
 ing into fragments of a parallelopipedal figure. This fossil 
 does not exhibit those little streaks of quartz so common 
 in the Lydian stone. It is found decomposed at its sur- 
 face into a yellowish grey crust, and it does not act upon 
 the magnet. Its edges, a little translucid, give it some 
 resemblance to the liornstone, so common in secondary lime- 
 stones, t It is remarkable that we find the schistose jasper 
 which in Europe characterizes the transition rocks,!: in a 
 limestone having great analogy with that of Jura. In the 
 study of formations, which is the great end of geognosy, 
 the knowledge acquired in the old and new worlds should 
 be made to furnish reciprocal aid to each other. It appears 
 that these black strata are found also in the calcareous 
 mountains of the island of Boracha. § Another jasper, that 
 known by the name of the Egyptian pebble, was found by 
 M. Bonpland near the Indian village of Curacatiche or 
 
 * Kieselschiefer of Werner. ' 
 
 f In Switzerland, the hornstone passing into common jasper is found in 
 kidney-stones, and in layers both in the Alpine and Jura limestone, espe- 
 cially in the former. 
 
 Î The transition-limestone and schist. 
 
 § We saw some of it as ballast, in a fishing-boat at Punta Araya, Its 
 fragments might have been mistaken for basalt. 
 
THE PIEITTJ ISLANDS. 
 
 369 
 
 Curacaguitiche, fifteen leagues south of the Morro of Bar- 
 celona, when, on our return from the Orinoco, we crossed 
 the llanos, and approached the mountains on the coast. 
 This stone presented yellowish concentric lines and hands, 
 on a reddish brown ground. It appeared to me that the 
 round pieces of Egyptian jasper belonged also to the Bar- 
 celona limestone. Yet, according to M. Cordier, the fine 
 pebbles of Suez owe their origin to a breccia formation, or 
 siliceous agglomerate. 
 
 At the moment of our setting sail, on the 19th of No- 
 vember, at noon, I took some altitudes of the moon, to de- 
 termine the longitude of the Morro. The difference of 
 meridian between Cumana and the town of Barcelona, 
 where I made a great number of astronomical observa- 
 tions in 1800, is 31' 48". I found the dip of the needle 
 42-20°: the intensity of the forces was equal to 224 os- 
 cillations. 
 
 Erom the Morro of Barcelona to Cape Codera, the land 
 becomes low, as it recedes southward; and the soundings 
 extend to the distance of three miles. Beyond this we find 
 the bottom at forty-five or fifty fathoms. The temperature 
 of the sea at its surface was 25-9° ; but when we were pas- 
 sing through the narrow channel which separates the two 
 Piritu Islands, in three fathoms water, the thermometer 
 was only 24-5°. The difference would perhaps be greater, 
 if the current, which rims rapidly westward, stirred up 
 deeper water; and if, in a pass of such small width, the 
 land did not contribute to raise the temperature of the 
 sea. The Piritu Islands resemble those shoals which become 
 visible when the tide falls. They do not rise more than 
 eight or nine inches above the mean height of the sea. 
 Their surface is smooth, and covered with grass. We 
 might have thought we were gazing on some of our own 
 northern meadows. The disk of the setting sun appeared 
 like a globe of fire suspended over the savannah ; and its 
 last rays, as they swept the earth, illumined the grass, which 
 was at the same time agitated by the evening breeze. In 
 the low and humid parts of the equinoctial zone, even when 
 the gramineous plants and reeds present the aspect of 
 a meadow, a rich accessory of the picture is usually want- 
 ing ; I allude to that variety of wild flowers, which, 
 
 YOL. I. 2 b 
 
870 
 
 APPROACH TO CAPE CODERA. 
 
 scarcely rising above the grass, seem as it were, to lie upon 
 a smooth bed of verdure. Within the tropics, the strength 
 and luxury of vegetation give such a development to plants, 
 that the smallest of the dicotyledonous family become 
 shrubs. It would seem as if the liliaceous plants, mingling 
 with the gramina, assumed the place of the flowers of our 
 meadows. Their form is indeed striking; they dazzle by 
 the variety and splendour of their colours ; but being too 
 high above the soil, they disturb that harmonious propor- 
 tion which characterizes the plants of our European mea- 
 dows. Nature has in every zone stamped on the landscape 
 the peculiar type of beauty proper to the locality. 
 
 We must not be surprised that fertile islands, so near 
 Terra Eirma, are not now inhabited. It was only at the 
 early period of the discovery, and whilst the Caribbees, 
 Chaymas, and Cumanagotos were still masters of the coast, 
 that the Spaniards formed settlements at Cubagua and Mar- 
 gareta. When the natives were subdued, or driven south- 
 ward in the direction of the savannahs, the preference was 
 given to settlements on the continent, where there was a 
 choice of land, and where there were Indians, who might 
 be treated like beasts of burden. Had the little islands 
 of Tortuga, Blanquilla, and Orchilla been situated in the 
 group of the Antilles, they would not have remained with- 
 out traces of cultivation. 
 
 Vessels of heavy burthen pass between the main land 
 and the most southern of the Piritu Islands. Being very 
 low, their northern point is dreaded by pilots who near 
 the coast in those latitudes. When we found ourselves 
 to westward of the Morro of Barcelona, and the mouth 
 of the river Unare, the sea, till then calm, became agitated 
 and rough in proportion as we approached Cape Codera. 
 The influence of that vast promontory is felt from afar, 
 in that part of the Caribbean Sea. The length of the pas- 
 sage from Cumana to La Gruayra depends on the degree 
 of ease or difficulty with which Cape Codera can be dou- 
 bled. Beyond this cape the sea constantly runs so high, 
 that we can scarcely believe we are near a coast where 
 (from the point of Paria as far as Cape San Roman) a 
 gale of wind is never known. On the 20th of November 
 at sunrise we were so far advanced, that we might expect 
 
MAHGEOVE THICKETS. 
 
 371 
 
 to double tbe cape in a few hours. We hoped to reach 
 La Gruayra the same day ; but our Indian pilot being afraid 
 of the privateers who were near that port, thought it would 
 be prudent to make for land, and anchor in the little har- 
 bour of Higuerote, which we had already passed, and await 
 the shelter of night to proceed on our Voyage. 
 
 On the 20th of November at nine in the morning we 
 were at anchor in the bay just mentioned, situated westward 
 of the mouth of the Rio Capaya. We found there neither 
 village nor farm, but merely two or three huts, inhabited 
 by Mestizo fishermen. Their livid hue, and the meagre 
 condition of their children, sufficed to remind us that this 
 spot is one of the most unhealthy of the whole coast. The 
 sea has so little depth along these shores, that even with the 
 smallest barks it is impossible to reach the shore without 
 wading through the water. The forests come down nearly to 
 the beach, which is covered with thickets of mangroves, avi- 
 cennias, manchineel-trees, and that species of suriana which 
 the natives call romero de la mar* To these thickets, and 
 particularly to the exhalations of the mangroves, the ex- 
 treme insalubrity of the air is attributed here, as in other 
 places in both Indies. On quitting the boats, and whilst we 
 were yet fifteen or twenty toises distant from land, we per- 
 ceived a faint and sickly smell, which reminded me of that 
 diffused through the galleries of deserted mines, where the 
 lights begin to be extinguished, and the timber is covered 
 with flocculent byssus. The temperature of the air rose to 
 34°, heated by the reverberation from the white sands which 
 form a line between the mangroves and the great trees of the 
 forest. As the shore descends with a gentle slope, small 
 tides are sufficient alternately to cover and uncover the 
 roots and part of the trunks of the mangroves. It is 
 doubtless whilst the sun heats the humid wood, and causes 
 the fermentation, as it were, of the ground, of the remains 
 of dead leaves and of the molluscs enveloped in the drift of 
 floating seaweed, that those deleterious gases are formed, 
 which escape our researches. We observed that the sea- 
 water, along the whole coast, acquired a yellowish brown 
 tint, wherever it came into contact with the mangrove trees. 
 
 * Suriana maritima. 
 
 2 b 2 
 
372 
 
 EXPEEIMENTS ON MIASMA. 
 
 Struck with this phenomenon, I gathered at Higuerote a 
 considerable quantity of branches and roots, for the purpose 
 of making some experiments on the infusion of the man- 
 grove, on my arrival at Caracas. The infusion in warm 
 water had a brown colour and an astringent taste. It con- 
 tained a mixture of extractive matter and tannin. The 
 rhizophora, the misletoe, the cornel-tree, in short, all the 
 plants which belong to the natural families of the loran- 
 theous and the caprifoliaceous plants, have the same proper- 
 ties. The infusion of mangrove-wood, kept in contact with 
 atmospheric air under a glass jar for twelve days, was not 
 sensibly deteriorated in purity. A little blackish flocculent 
 sediment was formed, hut it was attended by no sensible 
 absorption of oxygen. The wood and roots of the mangrove 
 placed under water were exposed to the rays of the sun. I 
 tried to imitate the daily operations of nature on the coasts 
 at the rise of the tide. Bubbles of air were disengaged, and 
 at the expiration of ten days they formed. a volume of thirty- 
 three cubic inches. They were a mixture of azotic gas and 
 carbonic acid. Nitrous gas scarcely indicated the presence 
 of oxygen.* Lastly, I set the wood and the roots of the 
 mangrove thoroughly wetted, to act on a given volume of 
 atmospheric air in a phial with a ground-glass stopple. The 
 whole of the oxygen disappeared ; and, far from being super- 
 seded by carbonic acid, lime-water indicated only 002. There 
 was even a dimunition of tbe volume of air, more than cor- 
 respondent with tbe oxygen absorbed. These slight experi- 
 ments led me to conclude that it is the moistened bark and 
 wood which act upon the atmosphere in the forests of man- 
 grove-trees, and not the water strongly tinged with yellow, 
 forming a distinct band along the coasts. In pursuing the 
 different stages of the decomposition of the ligneous matter, 
 I observed no appearance of a disengagement of sulphuretted 
 hydrogen, to which many travellers attribute the smell per- 
 ceived amidst mangroves. The decomposition of the earthy 
 and alkaline sulphates, and their transition to the state of 
 sulphurets, may no doubt favour this disengagement in many 
 littoral and marine plants ; for instance, in the fuci : but I 
 am rather inclined to think that the rhizophora, the avicen- 
 
 * In a hundred parts there were eighty-four of nitrogen, fifteen of car- 
 bonic acid gas that the water had not absorbed, and one of oxvgen. 
 
GBOWTH OF THE MAX GEO YE. 
 
 373 
 
 nia, and the conocarpus, augment the insalubrity of the air 
 by the animal matter which they contain conjointly with 
 tannin. These shrubs belong to the three natural families 
 of the Lorantheæ, the Combretaceæ, and the Pyrenaceæ, 
 in which the astringent principle abounds; this principle 
 accompanies gelatin, even in the bark of beech, alder, and 
 nut-trees. 
 
 Moreover, a thick wood spreading over marshy grounds 
 would diffuse noxious exhalations in the atmosphere, even 
 though that wood were composed of trees possessing in 
 themselves no deleterious properties. Wherever mangroves 
 grow on the sea-shore, the beach is covered with infinite 
 numbers of molluscs and insects. These animals love shade 
 and faint light, and they find themselves sheltered from the 
 shock of the waves amid the scaffolding of thick and inter- 
 twining roots, which rises like lattice-work above the surface 
 of the waters. Shell-fish cling to this lattice ; crabs nestle 
 in the hollow trunks ; and the seaweeds, drifted to the coast 
 by the winds and tides, remain suspended on the branches 
 which incline towards the earth. Thus, maritime forests, by 
 the accumulation of a slimy mud between the roots of the 
 trees, increase the extent of land. But whilst these forests 
 gain on the sea, they do not enlarge their own dimensions ; 
 on the contrary, their progress is the cause of their destruc- 
 tion. Mangroves, and other plants with which they live con- 
 stantly in society, perish in proportion as the ground dries 
 and they are no longer bathed with salt water. Their old 
 trunks, covered with shells, and half-buried in the sand, 
 denote, after the lapse of ages, the path they have followed in 
 their migrations, and the limits of the land which they have 
 wrested from the ocean. 
 
 The bay of Higuerote is favourably situated for examining 
 Cape Codera, which is there seen in its full extent seven miles 
 distant. This promontory is more remarkable for its size 
 than for its elevation, being only about two hundred toises 
 high. It is perpendicular on the north-west and east. In 
 these grand profiles the dip of the strata appears to be dis- 
 tinguishable. Judging from the fragments of rock found 
 along the coast, and from the hills near Higuerote, Cape 
 Codera is not composed of granite with a granular texture, 
 but of a real gneiss with a foliated texture. Its laminae are 
 
374 
 
 DEPARTURE EROM HIGUEROTE. 
 
 very broad and sometimes sinuous.* They contain large 
 nodules of reddish feldspar and hut little quartz. The mica 
 is found in superposed lamellae, not isolated. The strata 
 nearest the bay were in the direction of 60° N.E., and dipped 
 80° to MÏW. These relations of direction and of dip are the 
 same at the great mountain of the Silla, near Caracas, and to 
 the east of Maniquarez, in the isthmus of Araya. They 
 seem to prove that the primitive chain of that isthmus, after 
 having been ruptured or swallowed up by the sea along a 
 space of thirty-five leagues, t appears anew in Cape Codera, 
 and continues westward as a chain of the coast. 
 
 I was assured that, in the interior of the earth, south of 
 Higuerote, limestone formations are found. The gneiss did 
 not act upon the magnetic needle ; yet along the coast, 
 which forms a cove near Cape Codera, and which is covered 
 with a fine forest, I saw magnetic sand mixed with spangles 
 of mica, deposited by the sea. This phenomenon occurs 
 again near the port of La Guayra. Possibly it may denote 
 the existence of some strata of hornblende-schist covered 
 by the waters, in which schist the sand is disseminated. 
 Cape Codera forms on the north an immense spherical 
 segment. A shallow which stretches along its foot is known 
 to navigators by the name of the points of Tutumo and of 
 San Francisco. . 
 
 The road by land from Higuerote to Caracas, runs through 
 a wild and humid tract of country, by the Montana of 
 Capaya, north of Caucagua, and the valley of Rio Guatira 
 and Guarenas. Some of our fellow-travellers determined on 
 taking this road, and M. Bonpland also preferred it, notwith- 
 standing the continual rains and the overflowing of the 
 rivers. It afforded him the opportunity of making a rich 
 collection of new plants.^ For my part, I continued alone 
 with the Guaiqueria pilot the voyage by sea ; for I thought 
 it hazardous to lose sight of the instruments which we were 
 to make use of on the banks of the Orinoco. 
 
 "We set sail at night-fall. The wind was unfavourable, and 
 we doubled Cape Codera with difficulty. The surges were 
 
 * Dickflasriger gneiss. 
 
 f Between the meridians of Maniquarez and Higuerote. 
 
 X Bauhinia ferruginea, Brownea racemosa, Bred. Inga hymenæifolia 
 I. curiepensis (which Willdenouw has called by mistake 1. caripensis), &c. 
 
SCE2ÏEBY OF THE COAST. 
 
 375 
 
 short, and often broke one upon another. The sea ran the 
 higher, owing to the wind being contrary to the current, till 
 after midnight. The general motion of the waters within 
 the tropics towards the west is felt strongly on the coast 
 during two-thirds of the year. In the months of September, 
 October, and November, the current often flows eastward for . 
 fifteen or twenty days in succession; and vessels on their 
 way from Gruayra to Porto Cabello have sometimes been 
 unable to stem the current which runs from west to east, 
 although they have had the wind astern. The cause of these 
 anomalies is not yet discovered. The pilots think they are 
 the effect of gales of wind from the north-west in the gulf of 
 Mexico. 
 
 On the 21st of November, at sunrise, we were to the 
 west of Cape Codera, opposite Curuao. The coast is rocky 
 and very elevated, the scenery at once wild and picturesque. 
 We were sufficiently near land to distinguish scattered huts 
 surrounded by cocoa-trees, and masses of vegetation, which 
 stood out from the dark ground of the rocks. The moun- 
 tains are everywhere perpendicular, and three or four thou- 
 sand feet high ; their sides cast broad and deep shadows 
 upon the humid land, which stretches out to the sea, glowing 
 with the freshest verdure. This shore produces most of 
 those fruits of the hot regions, which are seen in such great 
 abundance in the markets of the Caracas. The fields cul- 
 tivated with sugar-cane and maize, between Camburi and 
 Niguatar, stretch through narrow valleys, looking like cre- 
 vices or clefts in the rocks : and penetrated by the rays of 
 the sun, then above the horizon, they presented the most 
 singular contrasts of light and shade. 
 
 The mountain of Niguatar and the Silla of Caracas are 
 the loftiest summits of this littoral chain. The first almost 
 reaches the height of Canigou ; it seems as if the Pyrenees or 
 the Alps, stripped of their snows, had risen from the bosom 
 of the ocean ; so much more stupendous do mountains 
 appear when viewed for the first time from the sea. Near 
 Caravalleda, the cultivated lands enlarge ; we find hills 
 with gentle declivities, and the vegetation rises to a great 
 height. The sugar-cane is here cultivated, and the monks 
 of La Merced have a plantation with two hundred slaves. 
 This spot was formerly extremely subject to fever ; and it is 
 
376 
 
 ARRIVAL AT LA GUAYRA. 
 
 said that the air has acquired salubrity since trees have been 
 planted round a small lake, the emanations of which were 
 dreaded, and which is now less exposed to the ardour of the 
 sun. To the west of Caravalleda, a wall of bare rock again 
 projects forward in the direction of the sea, but it has little 
 extent. After having passed it, we immediately discovered 
 the pleasantly situated village of Macuto ; the black rocks of 
 La Gruayra, studded with batteries rising in tiers one over 
 another ; and in the misty distance, Cabo Blanco, a long 
 promontory with conical summits, and of dazzling whiteness. 
 Cocoa-trees border the shore, and give it, under that burning 
 sky, an appearance of fertility. 
 
 I landed in the port of La Gruayra, and the same evening 
 made preparations for transporting my instruments to Ca- 
 racas. Having been recommended not to sleep in the town, 
 where the yellow fever had been raging only a few weeks 
 previously, I fixed my lodging in a house on a little hill, 
 above the village of Maiquetia, a place more exposed to 
 fresh winds than La Gruayra. I reached Caracas on the 
 21st of November, four days sooner than M. Bonpland, who, 
 with the other travellers on the land journey, had suffered 
 greatly from the rain and the inundations of the torrents, 
 between Capaya and Curiepe. 
 
 Before proceeding further, I will here subjoin a descrip- 
 tion of La Gruayra, and the extraordinary road which leads 
 from thence to the town of Caracas, adding thereto all the 
 observations made by M. Bonpland and myself, in an excur- 
 sion to Cabo Blanco about the end of January 1800. 
 
 La Gruayra is rather a roadstead than a port. The sea is 
 constantly agitated, and ships suffer at once by the violence 
 of the wind, the tideways, and the bad anchorage. The 
 lading is taken in with difficulty, and the swell prevents the 
 embarkation of mules here, as at New Barcelona and Porto 
 Cabello. The free mulattoes and negroes, who carry the 
 cacao on board the ships, are a class of men remarkable for 
 muscular strength. They wade up to their waists through 
 the water ; and it is remarkable that they are never attacked 
 by the sharks, so common in this harbour. This fact seems 
 connected with what I have often observed within the 
 tropics, with respect to other classes of animals which live in 
 society, for instance monkeys and crocodiles. In the Mis- 
 
SITUATION OF THE TOW2T. 
 
 377 
 
 sions of the Orinoco, and on the hanks of the river Amazon, 
 the Indians, who catch monkeys to sell them, know very 
 well that they can easily succeed in taming those which 
 inhabit certain islands ; while monkeys of the same species, 
 caught on the neighbouring continent, die of terror or rage 
 when they find themselves in the power of man. The cro- 
 codiles of one lake in the llanos are cowardly, and flee even 
 when in the water ; whilst those of another lake will attack 
 with extreme intrepidity. It would be difficult to explain this 
 difference of disposition and habits, by the mere aspect of the 
 respective localities. The sharks of the port of La Guayra 
 seem to furnish an analogous example. They are dangerous 
 and blood-thirsty at the island opposite the coast of Caracas, 
 at the Boques, at Bonayre, and at Curassao ; while they 
 forbear to attack persons swimming in the ports of La 
 Guayra and Santa Martha. The natives, who like the ignorant 
 mass of people in every country, in seeking the explanation 
 of natural phenomena, always have recourse to the marvel- 
 lous, affirm that in the ports just mentioned, a bishop gave 
 his benediction to the sharks. 
 
 The situation of La Guayra is very singular, and can only 
 be compared to that of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe. The chain 
 of mountains which separates the port from the high valley 
 of Caracas, descends almost directly into the sea ; and the 
 houses of the town are backed by a wall of steep rocks. 
 There scarcely remains one hundred or one hundred and 
 forty toises breadth of flat ground between the wall and the 
 ocean. The town has six or eight thousand inhabitants, and 
 contains only two streets, running parallel with each other 
 east and west. It is commanded by the battery of Cerro 
 Colorado ; and its fortifications along the sea-shore are well 
 disposed, and kept in repair. The aspect of this place has in 
 it something solitary and gloomy ; we seemed not to be on 
 a continent, covered with vast forests, but on a rocky island, 
 destitute of vegetation. With the exception of Cabo Blanco 
 and the cocoa-trees of Maiquetia, no view meets the eye but 
 that of the horizon, the sea, and the azure vault of heaven. 
 The heat is excessive during the day, and most frequently 
 during the night. The climate of La Guayra is justly con- 
 sidered to be hotter than that of Curnana, Porto Cabello, 
 and Coro, because the sea-breeze is less felt, and the air is 
 
378 
 
 ATMOSPHERIC HEAT. 
 
 heated by the radiant caloric which the perpendicular rocks 
 emit from the time the sun sets. The examination of the 
 thermometric observations made during nine months at La 
 Guayra by an eminent physician, enabled me to compare the 
 climate of this port, with those of Cumana, of the Havannah, 
 and of Vera Cruz. This comparison is the more interesting, 
 as it furnishes an inexhaustible subject of conversation in 
 the Spanish colonies, and among the mariners who frequent 
 those latitudes. As nothing is more deceiving in such 
 matters than the testimony of the senses, we can judge of 
 the difference of climates only by numerical calculations. 
 
 The four places of which we have been speaking are con- 
 sidered as the hottest on the shores of the New World. A 
 comparison of them may serve to confirm what we have 
 several times observed, that it is generally the duration of a 
 high temperature, and not the excess of heat, or its absolute 
 quantity, which occasions the sufferings of the inhabitants of 
 the torrid zone. 
 
 A series of thermometric observations shows, that La 
 Guayra is one of the hottest places on the earth ; that the 
 quantity of heat which it receives in the course of a year is 
 a little greater than that felt at Cumana ; but that in the 
 months of November, December, and January (at equal 
 distance from the two passages of the sun through the 
 zenith of the town), the atmosphere cools more at La 
 Guayra. May not this cooling, much slighter than that 
 which is felt almost at the same time at Vera Cruz and at 
 the Havannah, be the effect of the more westerly position of 
 La Guayra? The aerial ocean, which appears to form only 
 one mass, is agitated by currents, the limits of which are 
 fixed by immutable laws ; and its temperature is variously 
 modified by the configuration of the lands and seas by which 
 it is sustained. It may be subdivided into several basins, 
 which overflow into each other, and of which the most 
 agitated (for instance, that over the gulf of Mexico, or 
 between the sierra of Santa Martha and the gulf of Darien) 
 have a powerful influence on the refrigeration and the motion 
 of the neighbouring columns of air. The north winds some- 
 times cause influxes and counter-currents in the south-west 
 part of the Caribbean Sea, which seem, during particular 
 months, to diminish the heat as far as Terra Fir ma. 
 
THE YELLOW EEYEE. 
 
 379 
 
 At the time of my abode at La Gruayra, the yellow fever, 
 or calentura amanllo , had been known only two years ; and 
 the mortality it occasioned had not been very great, because 
 the confluence of strangers on the coast of Caracas was less 
 considerable than at the Havannah or Yera Cruz. A few 
 individuals, even creoles and mulattoes, were sometimes 
 carried off suddenly by certain irregular remittent fevers ; 
 which, from being complicated with bilious appearances, 
 haemorrhages, and other symptoms equally alarming, ap- 
 peared to have some analogy with the yellow fever. The 
 victims of these maladies were generally men employed in the 
 hard labour of cutting wood in the forests, for instance, in 
 the neighbourhood of the little port of Carupano, or the gulf 
 of Santa Fé, west of Cumana. Their death often alarmed the 
 unacclimated Europeans, in towns usually regarded as pecu- 
 liarly healthy ; but the seeds of the sporadic malady were 
 propagated no farther. On the coast of Terra Firma, the 
 real typhus of America, which is known by the names vomito 
 <prieto (black vomit) and yellow fever, and which must be 
 considered as a morbid affection sui generis , was known only 
 at Porto Cabello, at Carthagena, and at Santa Martha, 
 where G-astelbondo observed and described it in 1729. The 
 Spaniards recently disembarked, and the inhabitants of the 
 valley of Caracas, were not then afraid to reside at La 
 Gruayra. They complained only of the oppressive heat 
 which prevailed during a great part of the year. If they 
 exposed themselves to the immediate action of the sun, they 
 dreaded at most only those attacks of inflammation of the 
 skin or eyes, which are felt everywhere in the torrid zone, 
 and are often accompanied by a febrile affection and con- 
 gestion in the head. Many individuals preferred the ar- 
 dent but uniform climate of La Gruayra to the cool but 
 extremely variable climate of Caracas ; and scarcely any 
 mention was made of the insalubrity of the former port. 
 
 Since the year 1797 everything has changed. Commerce 
 being thrown open to other vessels besides those of the 
 mother country, seamen bom in colder parts of Europe 
 than Spain, and consequently more susceptible to the climate 
 of the torrid zone, began to frequent La Gruayra. The 
 yellow fever broke out. North Americans, seized with the 
 typhus, were received in the Spanish hospitals ; and it was 
 
380 
 
 CAUSES or FEBRILE DISEASE. 
 
 affirmed that they had imported the contagion, and that 
 the disease had appeared on board a brig from Philadel- 
 phia, even before the vessel had entered the roads of La 
 Guayra. The captain of the brig denied the fact ; and as- 
 serted that, far from having introduced the malady, his crew 
 had caught it in the port. We know from what happened at 
 Cadiz in 1800, how difficult it is to elucidate facts, when 
 their uncertainty serves to favour theories diametrically 
 opposite one to another. The more enlightened inhabit- 
 ants of Caracas and La Guayra, divided in opinion, like 
 the physicians of Europe and the United States, on the 
 question of the contagion of yellow fever, cited the instance 
 of the American vessel ; some for the purpose of proving 
 that the typhus had come from abroad, and others, to show 
 that it had taken birth in the country itself. Those who 
 advocated the latter opinion, admitted that an extraordinary 
 alteration had been caused in the constitution of the at- 
 mosphere by the overflowings of the Eio de La Guayra. 
 This torrent, which in general is not ten inches deep, was 
 swelled after sixty hours’ rain in the mountains, in so ex- 
 traordinary a manner, that it bore down trunks of trees 
 and masses of rock of considerable size. During this flood 
 the waters were from thirty to forty feet in breadth, and 
 from eight to ten feet deep. It was supposed that, issu- 
 ing from some subterranean basin, formed by successive 
 infiltrations, they had flowed into the recently cleared 
 arable lands. Many houses were carried away by the tor- 
 rent ; and the inundation became the more dangerous for 
 the stores, in consequence of the gate of the town, which 
 could alone afford an outlet to the waters, being accidentally 
 closed. It was necessary to make a breach in the wall 
 on the sea-side. More than thirty persons perished, and 
 the damage was computed at half a million of piastres. 
 The stagnant water, which infected the stores, the cellars, 
 and the dungeons of the public prison, no doubt diffused 
 miasms in the air, which, as a predisposing cause, may 
 have accelerated the development of the yellow fever ; but 
 I believe that the inundation of the Eio de la Guayra was no 
 more the primary cause, than the overflowings of the Gua- 
 dalquivir, the Xenil, and the Gual-Medina, were at Seville, 
 at Ecija, and at Malaga, the primary causes of the fatal epi- 
 
LIMITS AND SPEEAD OE EEYEES. 381 
 
 demies of 1800 and 1804. I examined witli attention the 
 bed of the torrent of La G-uayra ; and found it to consist 
 i merely of a barren soi], blocks of mica-slate, and gneiss, 
 containing pyrites detached from the Sierra de Avila, but 
 nothing that could have had any effect in deteriorating the 
 purity of the air. 
 
 Since the years 1797 and 1798, at which periods there 
 prevailed dreadful mortality at Philadelphia, St. Lucia, and 
 St. Domingo, the yellow fever has continued its ravages at 
 La G-uayra. It has proved fatal not only to the troops 
 newly arfived from Spain, but also to those levied in parts 
 remote from the coasts, in the llanos between Calabozo 
 and Uritucu, regions almost as hot as La G-uayra, but 
 favourable to health. This latter fact would seem more 
 surprising, did we not know, that even the natives of Vera 
 Cruz, who are not attacked with typhus in their own town, 
 sometimes sink under it during the epidemics of the Ha- 
 vannah and the United States. As the black vomit finds 
 an insurmountable barrier at the Encero (four hundred 
 and seventy-six toises high), on the declivity of the moun- 
 tains of Mexico, in the direction of Xalapa, where oaks 
 begin to appear, and the climate begins to be cool and 
 pleasant, so the yellow fever scarcely ever passes beyond 
 the ridge of mountains which separates La Gruayra from the 
 valley of Caracas. This valley has been exempt from the 
 malady for a considerable time ; for we must not confound 
 the vomito and the yellow fever with the irregular and 
 bilious fevers. The Cumbre and the Cerro de Avila form a 
 very useful rampart to the town of Caracas, the elevation of 
 which a little exceeds that of the Encero, but of which the 
 mean temperature is above that of Xalapa. 
 
 I have published in another work* the observations made 
 by M. Bonpland and myself on the locality of the towns 
 periodically subject to the visitation of yellow fever ; and I 
 shall not hazard here any new conjectures on the changes 
 observed in the pathogenic constitution of particular locali- 
 ties. The more I reflect on this subject, the more mysterious 
 appears to me all that relates to those gaseous emanations 
 which we call so vaguely the seeds of contagion, and which 
 are supposed to be developed by a corrupted air, destroyed 
 * Nouvelle Espagne, tom. ii. 
 
382 
 
 PATHOLOGICAL PACTS. 
 
 by cold, conveyed from place to place in garments, and 
 attached to the walls of houses. How can we explain why, 
 for the space of eighteen years prior to 1794, there was not 
 a single instance of the vomito at Yera Cruz, though the 
 concourse of unacclimated Europeans and of Mexicans from 
 the interior, was very considerable ; though sailors indulged 
 in the same excesses with which they are still reproached ; 
 and though the town was not so clean as it has been since 
 the year 1800 ? 
 
 The following is the series of pathological facts, considered 
 in their simplest point of view. When a great number of 
 persons, born in a cold climate, arrive at the same period in 
 a port of the torrid zone, not particularly dreaded by naviga- 
 tors, the typhus of America begins to appear. Those per- 
 sons have not had typhus during their passage ; it appears 
 among them only after they have landed. Is the atmospheric 
 constitution changed ? or is it that a new form of disease 
 developes itself among individuals whose susceptibility is 
 highly increased ? 
 
 The typhus soon begins to extend its ravages among other 
 Europeans, born in more southern countries. If propagated 
 by contagion, it seems surprising that in the towns of the 
 equinoctial continent it does not attach itself to certain 
 streets ; and that immediate contact* does not augment the 
 danger, any more than seclusion diminishes it. The sick, 
 when removed to the inland country, and especially to cooler 
 and more elevated spots, to Xalapa, for instance, do not com- 
 municate typhus to the inhabitants of those places, either 
 because the disease is not contagious in its nature, or 
 because the predisposing causes are not the same as in the 
 regions of the shore. When there is a considerable lowering 
 of the temperature, the epidemic usually ceases, even on the 
 spot where it first appeared. It again breaks out at the ap- 
 proach of the hot season, and sometimes long before ; though 
 
 * In the oriental plague (another form of typhus characterised by 
 great disorder of the lymphatic system) immediate contact is less to be 
 feared than is generally thought. Larrey maintains that the tumified 
 glands may be touched or cauterized without danger ; but he thinks we 
 ought not to risk putting on the clothes of persons attacked with the 
 plague. — Mémoire sur les Maladies de l’Armée Françoise en Egypte, 
 p. 35. 
 
THE AMEEICAN TYPHUS. 
 
 383 
 
 during several months there may have been no sick person in 
 the harbour, and no ship may have entered it. 
 
 The typhus of America appears to be confined to the 
 shore, either because persons who bring the disease disem- 
 bark there, and goods supposed to be impregnated with dele- 
 terious miasms are there accumulated; or because on the 
 sea-side gaseous emanations of a particular nature are formed. 
 The aspect of the places subject to the ravages of typhus, 
 seems often to exclude all idea of a local or endemical origin. 
 It has been known to prevail in the Canaries, the Bermudas, 
 and among the small West India Islands, in dry places for- 
 merly distinguished for the great salubrity of their climate. 
 Examples of the propagation of the yellow fever in the in- 
 land parts of the torrid zone appear very doubtful: that 
 malady may have been confounded with remitting bilious 
 fevers. With respect to the temperate zone, in which the 
 contagious character of the American typhus is more decided, 
 the disease has unquestionably spread far from the shore, even 
 into very elevated places, exposed to cool and dry winds, as 
 in Spain at Medina-Sidonia, at Carlotta, and in the city of 
 Murcia. That variety of phenomena which the same epi- 
 demic exhibits, according to the difference of climate, the 
 union of predisposing causes, its shorter or longer duration, 
 and the degree of its exacerbation, should render us ex- 
 tremely circumspect in tracing the secret causes of the 
 American typhus. M. Bailly, who, at the time of the violent 
 epidemics in 1802 and 1803, was chief physician to the colony 
 of St. Domingo, and who studied that disease in the island of 
 Cuba, the United States, and Spain, is of opinion that the 
 typhus is very often, but not always, contagious. 
 
 Since the yellow fever has made such ravages in La Guayra, 
 exaggerated accounts have been given of the uncleanliness in 
 that little town as well as of Vera Cruz, and of the quays or 
 wharfs of Philadelphia. In a place where the soil is extremely 
 dry, destitute of vegetation, and where scarcely a few drops of 
 water fall in the course of seven or eight months, the causes 
 that produce what are called miasms, cannot be of very fre- 
 quent occurrence. La Guayra appeared to me in general to 
 be tolerably clean, with the exception of the quarter of the 
 slaughter-houses. The sea-side has no beach on which the 
 remains of fuci or molluscs are heaped up ; but the neigh- 
 
384 
 
 PROPAGATION OP PETERS. 
 
 bouring coast, which stretches eastward towards Cape 
 Codera, and consequently to the windward of La Guayra, is 
 extremely unhealthy. Intermitting, putrid, and bilious fevers 
 often prevail at Macuto and at Caravalleda ; and when from 
 time to time the breeze is interrupted by a westerly wind, 
 the little bay of Cotia sends air loaded with putrid emana- 
 tions towards the coast of La Guayra, notwithstanding the 
 rampart opposed by Cabo Blanco. 
 
 The irritability of the organs being so different in the 
 people of the north and those of the south, it cannot be 
 doubted, that with greater freedom of commerce, and more 
 frequent and intimate communication between countries 
 situated in different climates, the yellow fever will extend its 
 ravages in the New World. It is even probable that the 
 concurrence of so many exciting causes, and their action on 
 individuals so differently organized, may give birth to new 
 forms of disease and new deviations of the vital powers. 
 This is one of the evils that inevitably attend rising civili- 
 zation. 
 
 The yellow fever and the black vomit cease periodically at 
 the Havannah and Vera Cruz, when the north winds bring 
 the cold air of Canada towards the gulf of Mexico. But 
 from the extreme equality of temperature which charac- 
 terizes the climates of Porto Cabello, La Guayra, New Bar- 
 celona, and Cumana, it may be feared that the typhus will 
 there become permanent, whenever, from a great influx of 
 strangers, it has acquired a high degree of exacerbation. 
 
 Tracing the granitic coast of La Guayra westward, we 
 find between that port (w T hich is in fact but an ill-shel- 
 tered roadstead) and that of Porto Cabello, several indent- 
 ations of the land, furnishing excellent anchorage for ships. 
 Such are the small bay of Catia, Los Arecifes, Puerto-la- 
 Cruz, Choroni, Sienega de Ocumare, Turiamo, Burburata, 
 and Patanebo. All these ports, with the exception of that 
 of Burburata, from which mules are exported to Jamaica, 
 are now frequented only by small coasting vessels, which 
 are there laden with provisions and cacao from the sur- 
 rounding plantations. The inhabitants of Caracas are de- 
 sirous to avail themselves of the anchorage of Catia, to 
 the west of Cabo Blanco. M. Bonpland and myself ex- 
 amined that point of the coast during our second abode 
 
CABO BLANCO. 
 
 385 
 
 at La Guayra. A ravine, called the Quebrada de Tipe, 
 descends from the table-land of Caracas towards Catia. A 
 plan has long been in contemplation for making a cart- 
 road through this ravine and abandoning the old road 
 to La Guayra, which resembles the passage over St. Go- 
 thard. According to this plan, the port of Catia, equally 
 large and secure, would supersede that of La Guayra. Un- 
 fortunately, however, all that shore, to leeward of Cabo 
 Blanco, abounds with mangroves, and is extremely un- 
 healthy. I ascended to the summit of the promontory, 
 which forms Cabo Blanco, in order to observe the passage 
 of the sun over the meridian. I wished to compare in the 
 morning the altitudes taken with an artificial horizon and 
 those taken with the horizon of the sea ; to verify the ap- 
 parent depression of the latter, by the barometrical mea- 
 surement of the hill. By this method, hitherto very little 
 employed, on reducing the heights of the sun to the same 
 time, a reflecting instrument may be used like an instru- 
 ment furnished with a level. I found the latitude of the 
 cape to be 10° 36' 45" ; I could only make ifse of the 
 angles which gave the image of the sun reflected on a 
 plane glass ; the horizon of the sea was very misty, and the 
 windings of the coast prevented me from taking the height 
 of the sun on that horizon. 
 
 The environs of Cabo Blanco are not uninteresting for 
 the study of rocks. The gneiss here passes into the state 
 of mica-slate,* and contains, along the sea-coast, layers of 
 schistose chlorite. t In this latter I found garnets and 
 magnetical sand. On the road to Catia we see the chlo- 
 ritic schist passing into hornblende schist. J All these for- 
 mations are found together in the primitive mountains of 
 the old world, especially in the north of Europe. The sea 
 at the foot of Cabo Blanco throws up on the beach rolled 
 fragments of a rock, which is a granular mixture of horn- 
 blende and lamellar feldspar. It is what is rather vaguely 
 called ‘primitive grunstein. In it we can recognize traces 
 of quartz and pyrites. Submarine rocks probably exist near 
 the coast, which furnish these very hard masses. I have 
 
 * Glimmerschiefer. 
 
 f Chloritschiefer. 
 
 H ornblendscliiefer . 
 
 2 o 
 
 TOL. I. 
 
386 
 
 EXCESSIVE HEAT. 
 
 compared them in my journal to the paterlestein of Fich- 
 telberg, in Franconia, which is also a diabase, but so fusi- 
 ble, that glass buttons are made of it, which are employed 
 in the slave-trade on the coast of G-uinea. I believed at 
 first, according to the analogy of the phenomena furnished 
 by the mountains of Franconia, that the presence of these 
 hornblende masses with crystals of common (uncompact) 
 feldspar indicated the proximity of transition rocks ; but 
 in the high valley of Caracas, near Antimano, balls of the 
 same diabase fill a vein crossing the mica-slate. On the 
 western declivity of the hill of Cabo Blanco, the gneiss is 
 covered with a formation of sandstone, or conglomerate, 
 extremely recent. This sandstone combines angular frag- 
 ments of gneiss, quartz, and chlorite, magnetical sand, 
 madrepores, and petrified bivalve shells. Is this formation 
 of the same date as that of Punta Araya and Cumana ? 
 
 Scarcely any part of the coast has so burning a climate 
 as the environs of Cabo Blanco. We suffered much from 
 the heat, augmented by the reverberation of a barren and 
 dusty soil ; but without feeling any bad consequences from 
 the effects of insolation. The powerful action of the sun 
 on the cerebral functions is extremely dreaded at La G-uayra, 
 especially at the period when the yellow fever begins to 
 be felt. Being one day on the terrace of the house, observ- 
 ing at noon the difference of the thermometer in the sun 
 and in the shade, a man approached me holding in his hand 
 a potion, which he conjured me to swallow. He was a phy- 
 sician, who from his window, had observed me bareheaded, 
 and exposed to the rays of the sun. He assured me, that, 
 being a native of a very northern climate, I should infalli- 
 bly, after the imprudence I had committed, be attacked with 
 the yellow fever that very evening, if I refused to take the 
 remedy against it. I was not alarmed by this prediction, 
 however serious, believing myself to have been long ac- 
 climated; but I could not resist yielding to entreaties, 
 prompted by such benevolent feelings. I swallowed the 
 dose ; and the physician doubtless counted me among the 
 number of those he had saved. 
 
 The road leading from the port to Caracas (the capi- 
 tal of a government of near 900,000 inhabitants) resem- 
 bles, as I have already observed, the passage over the Alps, 
 
TEilPEEATTJEE OE CAEACAS. 
 
 387 
 
 the road of St. Gothard, and of the Great St. Bernard. 
 Taking the level of the road had never been attempted be- 
 fore my arrival in the province of Venezuela. No precise 
 idea had even been formed of the elevation of the valley of 
 Caracas. It had indeed been long observed, that the 
 descent was much less from La Cumbre and Las Vueltas 
 (the latter is the culminating point of the road towards the 
 Pastora at the entrance of the valley of Caracas), than to- 
 wards the port of La Guayra ; but the mountain of Avila 
 having a very considerable bulk, the eye cannot discern 
 simultaneously the points to be compared. It is even im- 
 possible to form a precise idea of the elevation of Caracas, 
 from the climate of the valley, where the atmosphere is 
 cooled by the descending currents of air, and by the mists, 
 which envelope the lofty summit of the Silla during a great 
 part of the year. 
 
 When in the season of the great heats we breathe the 
 burning atmosphere of La Guayra, and turn our eyes towards 
 the mountains, it seems scarcely possible that, at the dis- 
 tance of five or six thousand toises, a population of forty 
 thousand individuals assembled in a narrow valley, enjoys 
 the coolness of spring, a temperature which at night des- 
 cends to 12° of the centesimal thermometer. This near 
 approach of different climates is common in the Cordillera 
 of the Andes; but everywhere, at Mexico, at Quito, in 
 Peru, and in New Granada, it is only after a long journey 
 into the interior, either across plains or along rivers, that we 
 reach the great cities, which are the central points of civi- 
 lization. The height of Caracas is but a third of that of 
 Mexico, Quito, and Santa Fé de Bogota; yet of all the 
 capitals of Spanish America which enjoy a cool and deli- 
 cious climate in the midst of the torrid zone, Caracas is 
 nearest to the coast. What a privilege for a city to possess 
 a seaport at three leagues distance, and to be situated 
 among mountains, on a table-land, which would produce 
 wheat, if the cultivation of the coffee-tree were not preferred ! 
 
 The road from La Guayra to the valley of Caracas is infi- 
 nitely finer than the road from Honda to Santa Fé, or that 
 from Guayaquil to Quito. It is kept in better order than 
 the old road, which led from the port of Vera Cruz to 
 Perote, on the eastern declivity of the mountains of New 
 
 2 c 2 
 
388 
 
 IA TENTA. 
 
 Spain. With good mules it takes but three hours to go 
 from the port of La Gruayra to Caracas ; and only two hours 
 to return. With loaded mules, or on foot, the journey is 
 from four to five hours. The road runs along a ridge of 
 rocks extremely steep, and after passing the stations bearing 
 respectively the names of Torre Quemada, Curucuti, and 
 Salto, we arrive at a large inn (La Yenta) built at six hun- 
 dred toises above the level of the sea. The name Torre 
 Quemada, or Burnt Tower, indicates the sensation that is 
 felt in descending towards La Gruayra. A suffocating heat is 
 reflected from the walls of rock, and especially from the 
 barren plains on which the traveller looks down. On this 
 road, as on that from Yera Cruz to Mexico, and wherever 
 on a rapid declivity the climate changes, the increase of 
 muscular strength and the sensation of well-being, which we 
 experience as we advance into strata of cooler air, have 
 always appeared to me less striking than the feeling of 
 languor and debility which pervades the frame, when we 
 descend towards the burning plains of the coast. But such is 
 the organization of man ; and even in the moral world, we 
 are less soothed by that which ameliorates our condition than 
 annoyed by a new sensation of discomfort. 
 
 From Curucuti to Salto the ascent is somewhat less labo- 
 rious. The sinuosities of the way render the declivity easier, 
 as in the old road over Mont Cenis. The Salto (or Leap) 
 is a crevice, which is crossed by a draw-bridge. Fortifica- 
 tions crown the summit of the mountain. At La Yenta the 
 thermometer at noon stood at 19*3°, when at La Gruayra it 
 kept up at the same hour at 26*2°. La Yenta enjoys some 
 celebrity in Europe and in the United States, for the beauty 
 of its surrounding scenery. When the clouds permit, this 
 spot affords a magnificent view of the sea, and the neigh- 
 bouring coasts. An horizon of more than twenty-two leagues 
 radius is visible ; the white and barren shore reflects a 
 dazzling mass of light; and the spectator beholds at his 
 feet Cabo Blanco, the village of Maiquetia with its cocoa- 
 trees, La Gruayra, and the vessels in the port. But I found 
 this view far more extraordinary, when the sky was not 
 s rene, and when trains of clouds, strongly illumined on 
 their upper surface, seemed projected like floating islands 
 on the ocean. Strata of vapour, hovering at different 
 
OPTICAL ILLUSION. 
 
 389 
 
 heights, formed intermediary spaces between the eye and 
 the lower regions. By an illusion easily explained, they 
 enlarged the scene, and rendered it more majestic. Trees 
 and dwellings appeared at intervals through the openings, 
 which were left by the clouds when driven on by the winds, 
 and rolling over one another. Objects then appear at a 
 greater depth than when seen through a pure and uniformly 
 serene air. On the declivity of the mountains of Mexico, at 
 the same height (between Las Trancas and Xàlapa), the sea 
 is twelve leagues distant, and the view of the coast is con- 
 fused; while on the road from La Guayra to Caracas we 
 command the plains (the tierra caliente ), as from the top of 
 a tower. How extraordinary must be the impression created 
 by this prospect on natives of the inland parts of the country, 
 who behold the sea and ships for the first time from this 
 point. 
 
 I determined by direct observations the latitude of La 
 Venta, that I might be enabled to give a more precise idea 
 of the distance of the coasts. The latitude is 10° 33' 9". 
 Its longitude appeared to me by the chronometer, nearly 
 2' 47" west of the town of Caracas. I found the dip of the 
 needle at this height to be 4L 75°, and the intensity of the 
 magnetic forces equal to two hundred and thirty-four oscil- 
 lations. From the Venta, called also La Venta Grande, to 
 distinguish it from three or four small inns formerly esta- 
 blished along the road, but now destroyed, there is still an 
 ascent of one hundred and fifty toises to Guayavo. This is 
 nearly the most lofty point of the road. 
 
 Whether we gaze on the distant horizon of the sea, or 
 turn our eyes south-eastward, in the direction of the serrated 
 ridge of rocks, which seems to unite the Cumbre and the 
 Silla, though separated from them by the ravine (quebrada) 
 of Tocume, everywhere we admire the grand character of the 
 landscape. From Guayavo we proceed for half an hour over 
 a smooth table-land, covered with alpine plants. This part 
 of the way, on account of its windings, is called Las Vueltas. 
 We find a little higher up the barracks or magazines of flour, 
 which were constructed in a spot of cool temperature by the 
 Guipuzcoa Company, when they had the exclusive monopoly 
 of the trade of Caracas, and supplied that place with provi- 
 sion. On the road to Las Vueltas we see for the first time 
 
390 
 
 CITY OF CAEACAS. 
 
 the .capita^ situated three hundred toises below, in a valley 
 luxuriantly planted with coffee and European fruit-trees. 
 Travellers are accustomed to halt near a fine spring, known 
 by the name of Euente de Sanchorquiz, which flows down 
 from the Sierra on sloping strata of gneiss. I found its 
 temperature 16 4° ; which, for an elevation of seven hundred 
 and twenty-six toises, is considerably cool, and it would 
 appear much cooler to those who drink its limped water, if, 
 instead of gushing out between La Cumbre and the tempe- 
 rate valley of Caracas, it were found on the descent towards 
 La Gruayra. But at this descent on the northern side of 
 the mountain, the rock, by an uncommon exception in this 
 country, does not dip to north-west, but to south-east, which 
 prevents the subterranean waters from forming springs 
 there. 
 
 We continued to descend from the small ravine of San- 
 chorquiz to la Cruz de la Gruayra, a cross erected on an open 
 spot, six hundred and thirty-two toises high, and thence 
 (entering by the custom-house and the quarter of the Pas- 
 tora) to the city of Caracas. On the south side of the 
 mountain of Avila, the gneiss presents several geognostical 
 phenomena worthy of the attention of travellers. It is tra- 
 versed by veins of quartz, containing cannulated and often 
 articulated prisms of rutile titanite two or three lines in 
 diameter. In the fissures of the quartz we find, on breaking 
 it, very thin crystals, which crossing each other form a kind 
 of network. Sometimes the red schorl occurs only in den- 
 dritic crystals of a bright red.* The gneiss of the valley of 
 Caracas is characterized by the red and green garnets it con- 
 tains ; they however disappear when the rock passes into 
 mica-slate. This same phenomenon has been remarked by 
 Yon Buch in Sweden ; but in the temperate parts ot Europe 
 garnets are in general contained in serpentine and mica- 
 slates, not in gneiss. In the walls which enclose the gardens 
 of Caracas, constructed partly of fragments of gneiss, we 
 find garnets of a very fine red, a little transparent, and very 
 difficult to detach. The gneiss near the Cross of La 
 Gruayra, half a league from Caracas, presented also vestiges of 
 
 * Especially below the Cross of La Guavra, at 594 toises of absolute 
 elevation. 
 
STBATIFICATIOK OF BOCKS. 
 
 391 
 
 azure copper-ore* disseminated in veins of quartz, and small 
 strata of plumbago (black lead), or earthy carburetted iron. 
 This last is found in pretty large masses, and sometimes 
 mingled with sparry iron-ore, in the ravine of Tocume, to 
 the west of the Silla. 
 
 Between the spring of Sanchorquiz and the Cross of La 
 Guayra, as well as still higher up, the gneiss contains consi- 
 derable beds of saccharoidal bluish-grey primitive limestone, 
 coarse-grained, containing mica, and traversed by veins of 
 white calcareous spar. The mica, with large folia, lies in the 
 direction of the dip of the strata. I found in the primitive 
 limestone a great many crystallized pyrites, and rhomboidal 
 fragments of sparry iron-ore of Isabella yellow. I endea- 
 voured, but without success, to find tremolite,+ which in the 
 Titchelberg, in Franconia, is common in the primitive lime- 
 stone without dolomite. In Europe beds of primitive lime- 
 stone are generally observed in the mica-slates ; but we find 
 also saccharoidal limestone in gneiss of the most ancient for- 
 mation, in Sweden near TJpsala, in Saxony near Burkersdorf, 
 and in the Alps in the road over the Simplon. These situa- 
 tions are analogous to that of Caracas. The phenomena of 
 geognosy, particularly those which are connected with the 
 stratification of rocks, and their grouping, are never solitary; 
 but are found the same in both hemispheres. I was the 
 more struck with these relations, and this identity of forma- 
 tions, as, at the time of my journey in these countries, mine- 
 ralogists were unacquainted with the name of a single rock 
 of Venezuela, New Grenada, and the Cordilleras of Quito. 
 
 * Blue carbonate of copper. 
 
 f Grammatite of Haiiy. The primitive limestone above the spring of 
 Sanchorquiz, is directed, as the gneiss in that place, hor. 5*2, and dips 
 45° north ; but the general direction of the gneiss is, in the Cerro de 
 Avila, hor. 3*4 with 60° of dip N.W. Exceptions merely local are 
 observed in a small space of ground near the Cross of La Guayra (hor. 
 6*2, dip 8° N.); and higher up, opposite the Quebrada of Tipe (hor. 12, 
 dip 50° W.). 
 
392 
 
 PROVINCES OF VENEZUELA. 
 
 Chapter XII. 
 
 General View of the Provinces of Venezuela. — Diversity of their Interests. 
 
 — City and Valley of Caracas. — Climate. 
 
 In all those parts of Spanish America in which civilization 
 did not exist to a certain degree before the Conquest (as it 
 did in Mexico, Gruatimala, Quito, and Peru), it has advanced 
 from the coasts to the interior of the country, following 
 sometimes the valley of a great river, sometimes a chain of 
 mountains, affording a temperate climate. Concentrated at 
 once in different points, it has spread as if hy diverging rays. 
 The union into provinces and kingdoms was effected on the 
 first immediate contact between civilized parts, or at least 
 those subject to permanent and regular government. Lands 
 deserted, or inhabited by savage tribes, now surround the 
 countries which European civilization lias subdued. They 
 divide its conquests like arms of the sea difficult to be passed, 
 and neighbouring states are often connected with each other 
 only by slips of cultivated land. It is less difficult to acquire 
 a knowledge of the configuration of coasts washed by the 
 ocean, than of the sinuosities of that interior shore, on which 
 barbarism and civilization, impenetrable forests and culti- 
 vated land, touch and bound each other. Erom not having 
 reflected on the early state of society in the New World, 
 geographers have often made their maps incorrect, by marking 
 the different parts of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, as 
 though they were contiguous at every point in the interior. 
 The local knowledge which I obtained respecting these 
 boundaries, enables me to fix the extent of the great terri- 
 torial divisions with some certainty, to compare the wild and 
 inhabited parts, and to appreciate the degree of political 
 influence exercised by certain towns of America, as centres 
 of power and of commerce. 
 
 Caracas is the capital of a country nearly twice as large 
 as Peru, and now little inferior in extent to the kingdom of 
 New Grenada.* This country which the Spanish govern- 
 
 * The Capitania-General of Caracas contains near 48,000 square 
 leagues (twenty-five to a degree). Peru, since La Paz, Potosi, Charcas, 
 
GE ALE S OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 393 
 
 ment designates by tbe name of Capitania- General de Cara- 
 cas,* or of tbe united provinces of Venezuela, bas nearly a 
 million of inhabitants, among whom are sixty thousand 
 slaves. It comprises, along the coasts, New Andalusia, or the 
 province of Cumana (with the island of Margareta),t Barce- 
 lona, Venezuela or Caracas, Coro, and Maracaybo ; in the 
 interior, the provinces of Varinas and Guiana ; the former 
 situated on the rivers of Santo Domingo and the Apure, the 
 latter stretching along the Orinoco, the Casiquiare, the Ata- 
 bapo, and the Bio Negro. In a general view of the seven 
 united provinces of Terra Firma, we perceive that they form 
 three distinct zones, extending from east to west. 
 
 We find, first, cultivated land along the sea-shore, and 
 near the chain of the mountains on the coast ; next, savan- 
 nahs or pasturages ; and finally, beyond the Orinoco, a third 
 zone, that of the forests, into which we can penetrate only 
 by the rivers which traverse them. If the native inhabitants 
 of the forests lived entirely on the produce of the chase, like 
 those of the Missouri, we might say that the three zones 
 into which we have divided the territory of Venezuela, 
 picture the three states of human society ; the life of the 
 wild hunter, in the woods of the Orinoco ; pastoral life, in 
 the savannahs or llanos ; and the agricultural state, in tha 
 high valleys, and at the foot of the mountains on the coast. 
 Missionary monks and some few soldiers occupy here, as 
 throughout all Spanish America, advanced posts along the 
 frontiers of Brazil. In this first zone are felt the prepon- 
 derance of force, and the abuse of power, which is its 
 necessary consequence. The natives carry on civil war, and 
 sometimes devour one another. The monks endeavour to 
 augment the number of little villages of their Missions, by 
 taking advantage of the dissensions of the natives. The mili- 
 
 and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, have been separated from it, contains only 
 
 30.000. New Grenada, including the province of Quito, contains 
 
 65.000. Reinos, Capitanias- Generates, Presidencies, Goviernos, and 
 Provincias, are the names by which Spain formerly distinguished her 
 transmarine possessions, or, as they were called, ‘ Dominios de Ultramar’ 
 (Dominions beyond Sea.) 
 
 * The captain -general of Caracas has the title of “ Capitan- General de 
 las Provincias de Venezuela y Ciudad de Caracas.” 
 
 ■f This island, near the coast of Cumana, forms a separate govierno^ 
 depending immediately on the captain-general of Caracas. 
 
394 
 
 THE THREE AGES OE SOCIETY. 
 
 tary live in a state of hostility to the monks, whom they 
 were intended to protect. Everything presents a melancholy 
 picture of misery and privation. W e shall soon have occa- 
 sion to examine more closely that state of man, which is 
 vaunted as a state of nature, by those who inhabit towns. 
 In the second region, in the plains and pasture-grounds, 
 food is extremely abundant, but has little variety. Although 
 more advanced in civilization, the people beyond the circle 
 of some scattered towns are not less isolated from one 
 another. At sight of their dwellings, partly covered with 
 skins and leather, it might be supposed that, far from being 
 fixed, they are scarcely encamped in those vast plains which 
 extend to the horizon. A griculture, which alone consolidates 
 the bases, and strengthens the bonds of society, occupies the 
 third zone, the shore, and especially the hot and temperate 
 valleys among the mountains near the sea. 
 
 It may be objected, that in other parts of Spanish and 
 Portuguese America, wherever we can trace the progressive 
 development of civilization, we find the three ages of society 
 combined. But it must be remembered that the position of 
 the three zones, that of the forests, the pastures, and the 
 cultivated land, is not everywhere the same, and that it is 
 nowhere so regular as in "Venezuela. It is not always from 
 the coast to the interior, that population, commercial in- 
 dustry, and intellectual improvement, diminish. In Mexico, 
 Peru, and Quito, the table-lands and central mountains 
 possess the greatest number of cultivators, the most nu- 
 merous towns situated near to each other, and the most 
 ancient institutions. We even find, that, in the kingdom of 
 Buenos Ayres, the region of pasturage, known by the name 
 of the Pampas, lies between the isolated part of Buenos Ayres 
 and the great mass of Indian cultivators, who inhabit the 
 Cordilleras of Charcas, La Paz, and Potosi. This circum- 
 stance gives birth to a diversity of interests, in the same 
 country, between the people of the interior and those who 
 inhabit the coasts. 
 
 To form an accurate idea of those vast provinces which 
 have been governed for ages, almost like separate states, by 
 viceroys and captains-general, we must fix our attention at 
 once on several points. We must distinguish the parts of 
 Spanish America opposite to Asia from those on the shores 
 
DIFFEEEFCE OF FACES. . 
 
 395 
 
 of the Atlantic ; we must ascertain where the greater por- 
 tion of the population is placed ; whether near the coast, or 
 concentrated in the interior, on the cold and temperate 
 table-lands of the Cordilleras. "We must verify the nume- 
 rical proportions between the natives and other castes; 
 search into the origin of $ie European families, and examine 
 to what race, in each part of the colonies, belongs the greater 
 number of whites. The Andalusian-Canarians of Venezuela, 
 the Mountaineers* and the Biscayans of Mexico, the Cata- 
 lonians of Buenos Ayres, differ essentially in their aptitude 
 for agriculture, for the mechanical arts, for commerce, and 
 for all objects connected with intellectual development. 
 Each of those races has preserved, in the New as in the Old 
 World, the shades that constitute its national physiognomy ; 
 its asperity or mildness of character; its freedom from sordid 
 feelings, or its excessive love of gain ; its social hospitality, 
 or its taste for solitude. In the countries where the popu- 
 lation is for the most part composed of Indians and mixed 
 races, the difference between the Europeans and their 
 descendants cannot indeed be so strongly marked, as that 
 which existed anciently in the colonies of Ionian and Doric, 
 origin. The Spaniards transplanted to the torrid zone, 
 estranged from the habits of their mother-country, must 
 have felt more sensible changes than the Greeks settled on 
 the coasts of Asia Minor, and of Italy, where the climates 
 differ so little from those of Athens and Corinth. It cannot 
 be denied that the character of the Spanish Americans has 
 been variously modified by the physical nature of the 
 country ; the isolated sites of the capitals on the table-lands 
 or in the vicinity of the coasts ; the agricultural life ; the 
 labour of the mines, and the habit of commercial speculation: 
 but in the inhabitants of Caracas, Santa Eé, Quito, and 
 Buenos Ayres, we recognize everywhere something which 
 belongs to the race and the filiation of the people. 
 
 If we examine the state of the Capitania- General of 
 Caracas, according to the principles here laid down, we 
 perceive that agricultural industry, the great mass of popu- 
 lation, the numerous towns, and everything connected with 
 advanced civilization, are found near the coast. This coast 
 
 * Montaneses. The inhabitants of the mountains of Santander are 
 called by this name in Spain. 
 
396 
 
 NATIVE POPULATION. 
 
 extends along a space of two hundred leagues. It is 
 washed by the Caribbean Sea, a sort of Mediterranean, on 
 the shores of which almost all the nations of Europe have 
 founded colonies; which communicates at several points 
 with the Atlantic; and which has had a considerable in- 
 fluence on the progress of knowledge in the eastern part of 
 equinoctial America, from the time of the Conquest. The 
 kingdoms of New Grenada and Mexico have no connection 
 with foreign colonies, and through them with the nations 
 of Europe, except by the ports of Carthagena, of Santa 
 Martha, of Vera Cruz, and of Campeachy. These vast 
 countries, from the nature of their coasts, and the isolation 
 of their inhabitants on the back of the Cordilleras, have 
 few points of contact with foreign lands. The gulf of 
 Mexico also is but little frequented during a part of the 
 year, on account of the danger of gales of wind from the 
 north. The coasts of Venezuela, on the contrary, from their 
 extent, their eastward direction, the number of their ports, 
 and the safety of their anchorage at different seasons, 
 possess all the advantages of the Caribbean Sea. The com- 
 munications with the larger islands, and even with those 
 situated to windward, can nowhere be more frequent than 
 from the ports of Cumana, Barcelona, La Guayra, Porto- 
 Cabeflo, Coro, and Maracaybo. Can we wonder that this 
 facility of commercial intercourse with the inhabitants of 
 free America, and the agitated nations of Europe, should in 
 the provinces united under the Capitania- General of Vene- 
 zuela, have augmented opulence, knowledge, and that rest- 
 less desire of a local government, which is blended with the 
 love of liberty and republican forms ? 
 
 The copper-coloured natives, or Indians, constitute an 
 important mass of the agricultural population only in those 
 places where the Spaniards, at the time of the Conquest, 
 found regular governments, social communities, and ancient 
 and very complicated institutions ; as, for example, in New 
 Spain, south of Durango; and in Peru, from Cuzco to 
 Potosi. In the Capitania- General of Caracas, the Indian 
 population is inconsiderable, at least beyond the Missions 
 and in the cultivated zone. Even in times of great political 
 excitement, the natives do not inspire any apprehension in 
 the whites or the mixed castes. Computing, in 1800, the 
 
B LACE. INHABITANTS. 
 
 397 
 
 total population of the seven united provinces at nine 
 hundred thousand souls, it appeared to me that the Indians 
 made only one-ninth ; while at Mexico they form nearly one 
 half of the inhabitants. # 
 
 Considering the Caribbean Sea, of which the gulf of 
 Mexico makes a part, as an interior sea with several mouths, 
 it is important to fix our attention on the political relations 
 arising out of this singular configuration of the New Con- 
 tinent, between countries placed around the same basin. 
 Notwithstanding the isolated state in which most of the 
 mother-countries endeavour to hold their colonies, the agi- 
 tations that take place are not the less communicated from 
 one to the other. The elements of discord are everywhere 
 the same ; and, as if by instinct, an understanding is esta- 
 blished between men of the same colour, although separated 
 by difference of language, and inhabiting opposite coasts. 
 That American Mediterranean formed by the shores of 
 Venezuela, New Grenada, Mexico, the United States, and 
 the West India Islands, counts upon its borders near a 
 million and a half of free and enslaved blacks ; but so un- 
 equally distributed, that there are very few to the south, 
 and scarcely any in the regions of the west. Their great 
 accumulation is on the northern and eastern coasts, which 
 may be said to be the African part of the interior basin. 
 The commotions which since 1792 have broken out in St. 
 Domingo, have naturally been propagated to the coasts of 
 Venezuela. So long as Spain possessed those fine colonies 
 in tranquillity, the little insurrections of the slaves were 
 easily repressed ; but when a struggle of another kind, that 
 for independence, began, the blacks by their menacing posi- 
 tion excited alternately the apprehensions of the opposite 
 parties ; and the gradual or instantaneous abolition of slavery 
 has been proclaimed in different regions of Spanish America, 
 less from motives of justice and humanity, than to secure 
 the aid of an intrepid race of men, habituated to privation, 
 and fighting for their own cause. I found in the narrative 
 of the voyage of Girolamo Benzoni, a curious passage, which 
 proves that the apprehensions caused by the increase of the 
 black population are of very old date. These apprehensions 
 will cease only where governments shall second by laws the 
 progressive reforms which refinement of manners, opinion, 
 
398 
 
 STATISTICS OE SLAVERY. 
 
 and religious sentiment, introduce into domestic slavery. 
 “The negroes,” says Benzoni, “multiply so much at St. 
 Domingo, that in 1545, when I was in Terra Firma [on the 
 coast of Caracas], I saw many Spaniards who had no doubt 
 that the island would shortly be the property of the blacks.”* 
 It was reserved for our age to see this prediction accom- 
 plished : and a European colony of America transform itself 
 into an African state. 
 
 The sixty thousand slaves which the seven united pro- 
 vinces of Venezuela are computed to contain, are so un- 
 equally divided, that in the province of Caracas alone there 
 are nearly forty thousand, one-fifth of whom are mulattoes ; 
 in Maracaybo, there are ten or twelve thousand ; but in 
 Cumana and Barcelona, scarcely six thousand. To judge 
 of the influence which the slaves and men of colour exer- 
 cise on the public tranquility, it is not enough to know 
 their number, we must consider their accumulation at 
 certain points, and their manner of life, as cultivators or 
 inhabitants of towns. In the province of Venezuela, the 
 slaves are assembled together on a space of no great 
 extent, between the coast, and a line which passes (at twelve 
 leagues from the coast) through Panaquire, Yare, Sabana 
 de Ocumare, Villa de Cura, and Nirgua. The llanos or 
 vast plains of Calaboso, San Carlos, Gruanare, and Barque- 
 cimeto, contain only four or five thousand slaves, who are 
 scattered among the farms, and employed in the care of 
 cattle. The number of free men is very considerable ; the 
 Spanish laws and customs being favourable to affranchise- 
 ment. A master cannot refuse liberty to a slave who offers 
 him the sum of three hundred piastres, even though the 
 slave may have cost double that price, on account of his 
 industry, or a particular aptitude for the trade he practises. 
 Instances of persons who voluntarily bestow liberty on a 
 certain number of their slaves, are more common in the 
 
 * l< Vi sono molti Spagnuoli che tengono per cosacerta, che quest’ isola 
 (San Dominico) in breve tempo sara posseduta da questi Mori di Guinea.” 
 (Benzoni, Istoria del Mondo Nuovo, ediz. 2da, 1672, p. 65.) The 
 author, who is not very scrupulous in the adoption of statistical facts, 
 believes that in his time there were at St. Domingo seven thousand 
 fugitive negroes (Mori cimaroni), with whom Don Luis Columbus made a 
 treaty of peace and friendship. 
 
PEOPOETION O E EACES. 
 
 399 
 
 province of Venezuela than in any other place. A short 
 time before we visited the fertile valleys of Aragua and 
 the lake of Valencia, a lady who inhabited the great village 
 of Victoria, ordered her children, on her death-bed, to give 
 liberty to all her slaves, thirty in number. I feel pleasure 
 in recording facts that do honour to the character of a 
 people from whom M. Bonpland and myself received so 
 many marks of kindness. 
 
 If we compare the seven united provinces of Venezuela 
 with the kingdom of Mexico and the island of Cuba, we 
 shall succeed in finding the approximate number of white 
 Creoles, and even of Europeans. The white Creoles, whom 
 I may call Ilispano- Americans,* form in Mexico nearly a 
 fifth, and in the island of Cuba, according to the very accu- 
 rate enumeration of 1801, a third of the whole population. 
 When we reflect that the kingdom of Mexico contains two 
 millions and a half of natives of the copper-coloured race ; 
 when we consider the state of the coasts bordering on the 
 Pacific, and the small number of whites in the intenden- 
 cias of Puebla and Oaxaca, compared with the natives, we 
 cannot doubt that the province of Venezuela at least, if not 
 the capitania-general, has a greater proportion than that of 
 one to five. The island of Cuba,+ in which the whites are 
 even more numerous than in Chile, may furnish us with a 
 limiting number, that is to say, the maximum which may be 
 supposed in the capitania-general of Caracas. I believe we 
 must stop at at two hundred, or two hundred and ten thou- 
 sand Hi ypano- Americans, in a total population of nine hun- 
 dred thousand souls. The number of Europeans included 
 in the white race (not comprehending the troops sent from 
 the mother-country) does not exceed twelve or fifteen thou- 
 sand. It certainly is not greater at Mexico than sixty 
 thousand ; and I find by several statements, that, if we 
 estimate the whole of the Spanish colonies at fourteen or 
 
 * In imitation of the word Anglo-American, adapted in all the lan- 
 guages of Europe. In the Spanish colonies, the whites born in America 
 are called Spaniards ; and the real Spaniards, those born in the mother- 
 country, are called Europeans , Gachupins , or Chapetons. 
 
 t I do not mention the kingdom of Buenos Ayres, where, among a 
 million of inhabitants, the whites are extremely numerous in parts 
 near the coast ; while the table-lands, or provinces of the sierra, are 
 almost entirely peopled with natives. 
 
400 
 
 TUPAC- AMAEU. 
 
 fifteen millions of inhabitants, there are in that number 
 at most three millions of Creole whites, and two hundred 
 thousand Europeans. 
 
 When Tupac- Amaru, who believed himself to be the legi- 
 timate heir to the empire of the Incas, made the conquest of 
 several provinces of Upper Peru, in 1781, at the head of 
 forty thousand Indian mountaineers, all the whites were 
 filled with alarm. The Hispano-Americans felt, like the 
 Spaniards born in Europe, that the contest was between 
 the copper-coloured race and the whites ; between barbarism 
 and civilization. Tupac- Amaru, who himself was not des- 
 titute of intellectual cultivation, began with flattering the 
 creoles and the European clergy; but soon, impelled by 
 events, and by the spirit of vengeance that inspired his 
 nephew, Andres Condorcanqui, he changed his plan. A 
 rising for independence became a cruel war between the 
 different castes ; the whites were victorious, and excited by 
 a feeling of common interest, from that period they kept 
 watchful attention on the proportions existing in the different 
 provinces between their numbers and those of the Indians. 
 It was reserved for our times to see the whites direct this 
 attention towards themselves ; and examine, from motives of 
 distrust, the elements of which their own caste is composed. 
 Every enterprise in favour of independence and liberty puts 
 the national or American party in opposition to the men 
 of the mother-country. When I arrived at Caracas, the 
 latter had just escaped from the danger with which they 
 thought they were menaced by the insurrection projected 
 by Espana. The consequences of that bold attempt were 
 the more deplorable, because, instead of investigating the 
 real causes of the popular discontent, it was thought that 
 the mother-country would be saved by employing vigorous 
 measures. At present, the commotions which have arisen 
 throughout the country, from the banks of the Bio de la 
 Plata to New Mexico, an extent of fourteen hundred leagues, 
 have divided men of a common origin. 
 
 The Indian population in the united provinces of Vene- 
 zuela is not considerable, and is but recently civilized. All 
 the towns were founded by the Spanish conquerors, who 
 could not carry out, as in Mexico and Peru, the old civili- 
 zation of the natives. Caracas, Maracaybo, Cumana, and 
 
CITY or CAEACAS. 
 
 401 
 
 Coro, have nothing Indian hut their names. Compared with 
 the three capitals of equinoctial America,* situated on the 
 mountains, and enjoying a temperate climate, Caracas is the 
 least elevated. It is not a central point of commerce, like 
 Mexico, Santa Fé de Bogota, and Quito. Each of the seven 
 provinces united in one capitania-general has a port, by 
 which its produce is exported. It is sufficient to consider 
 the position of the provinces, their respective degree of 
 intercourse with the Windward Islands, the direction of the 
 mountains, and the course of the great rivers, to perceive 
 that Caracas can never exercise any powerful political in- 
 fluence over the territories of which it is the capital. The 
 Apure, the Meta, and the Orinoco, running from west to 
 east, receive all the streams of the llanos, or the region of 
 pasturage. St. Thomas de la Guiana will necessarily, at some 
 future day, he a trading-place of high importance, especially 
 when the flour of New Grenada, embarked above the con- 
 fluence of the Bio Negro and the Umadea, and descending 
 by the Meta and Orinoco, shall be preferred at Caracas and 
 Guiana to the flour of New England. It is a great advan- 
 tage to the provinces of Venezuela, that their territorial 
 wealth is not directed to one point, like that of Mexico and 
 New Grenada, which flows to Vera Cruz and Carthagena; 
 hut that they possess a great number of towns equally well 
 peopled, and forming various centres of commerce and 
 civilization. 
 
 The city of Caracas is seated at the entrance of the plain 
 of Chacao, which extends three leagues eastward, in the 
 direction of Caurimare and the Cuesta de Auyamas, and is 
 two leagues and a half in breadth. This plain, through 
 which runs the Bio Guayra, is at the elevation of four hun- 
 dred and fourteen toises above the level of the sea. The 
 ground on which the city of Caracas is built is uneven, and 
 has a steep slope from N.N.W. to S.S.E. To form an accu- 
 rate idea of the situation of Caracas, we must bear in mind 
 the general direction of the mountains of the coast, and the 
 great longitudinal valleys by which they are traversed. The 
 
 * Mexico, Santa Fé de Bogotâ, and Quito. The elevation of the 
 site of the capital of Guatimala is still unknown. Judging from the 
 vegetation, we may infer that it is less than 500 toises. 
 
 VOL. I. 2d 
 
402 TALLEYS OE CAEACAS AND OF THE THY. 
 
 Rio Gruayra rises in the group of primitive mountains of 
 Higuerote, which separates the valley of Caracas from that 
 of Aragua. It is formed near Las Ajuntas, by the junction 
 of the little rivers of San Pedro and Macarao, and runs first 
 eastward as far as the Cuesta of Auyamas, and then south- 
 ward, uniting its waters with those of the Rio Tuy, below 
 Tare. The Rio Tuy is the only considerable river in the 
 northern and mountainous part of the province. 
 
 The river flows in a direct course from west to east, the 
 distance of thirty leagues, and it is navigable along more 
 than three quarters of that distance. By barometrical mea- 
 surements I found the slope of the Tuy along this length, 
 from the plantation of Manterola* to its mouth, east of 
 Cape Codera, to be two hundred and ninety-five toises. 
 This river forms in the chain of the coast a kind of longi- 
 tudinal valley, while the waters of the llanos, or of five- 
 sixths of the province of Caracas, follow the slope of the 
 land southward, and join the Orinoco. This hydrographic 
 sketch may throw some light on the natural tendency of the 
 inhabitants of each particular province, to export their pro- 
 ductions by different roads. 
 
 The valleys of Caracas and of the Tuy run parallel for a 
 considerable length. Theyrfire separated by a mountainous 
 tract, which is crossed in going from Caracas to the high 
 savannahs of Ocumare, passing by La Valle and Salamanca. 
 These savannahs themselves are beyond the Tuy; and the 
 valley of the Tuy being a great deal lower than that of 
 Caracas, the descent is almost constantly from north to 
 south. As Cape Codera, the Silla, the Cerro de Avila 
 between Caracas and La Gruayra, and the mountains of 
 Mariara, constitute the most northern and elevated range of 
 the coast chain ; so the mountains of Panaquire, Ocumare, 
 Guiripa, and of the Villa de Cura, form the most southern 
 range. The general direction of the strata composing this 
 vast chain of the coast is from south-east to north-west; 
 and the dip is generally towards north-west : hence it follows, 
 that the direction of the primitive strata is independent 
 of that of the whole chain. It is extremely remarkable, 
 
 At the foot of the high mountain of Cocuvza, 3 east from Victoria. 
 
POSITION OP CABACAS. 
 
 403 
 
 tracing this chain* from Porto Cabello as far as Maniquarez 
 and Macanao, in the island of Margareta, to find, from west 
 to east, first granite, then gneiss, mica-slate, and primitive 
 schist ; and finally, compact limestone, gypsum, and conglo- 
 merates containing sea-shells. 
 
 It is to be regretted that the town of Caracas was not 
 built farther to the east, below the entrance of the Anauco 
 into the Gruayra ; on that spot near Chacao, where the valley 
 widens into an extensive plain, which seems to have been 
 levelled by the waters. Diego de Loaada, when he founded f 
 the town, followed no doubt the traces of the first establish- 
 ment made by Paxardo. At that time, the Spaniards, at- 
 tracted by the high repute of the two gold mines of Los 
 Teques and Baruta, were not yet masters of the whole 
 valley, and preferred remaining near the road leading to the 
 coast. The town of Quito is also built in the narrowest 
 and most uneven part of a valley, between two fine plains, 
 Turupamba and Rumipamba. 
 
 The descent is uninterrupted from the custom-house of 
 the Pastora, by the square of Trinidad and the Plaza Mayor, 
 to Santa Rosalia, and the Rio Gruayra. This declivity of the 
 ground does not prevent carriages from going about the 
 town ; but the inhabitants make little use of them. Three 
 small rivers, descending from the mountains, the Anauco, 
 the Catuche, and the Caraguata, intersect the town, running 
 from north to south. Their banks are very high ; and, with 
 the dried-up ravines which join them, furrowing the ground, 
 they remind the traveller of the famous Gruaicos of Quito, 
 only on a smaller scale. The water used for drinking at 
 Caracas is that of the Rio Catuche ; but the richer class of 
 the inhabitants have their water brought from La Valle, a 
 village a league distant on the south. This water and that 
 of Glamboa are considered very salubrious, because they flow 
 over the roots of sarsaparilla. J I could not discover in 
 
 * I have spoken, in the preceding chapter, p. 374, of the interruption 
 in the chain of the coast to the east of Cape Codera. 
 
 + The foundation of Santiago de Leon de Caracas dates from 1567, 
 and is posterior to that of Cumana, Coro, Nueva Barcelona, and Caraval- 
 leda, or El Collado. 
 
 Î Throughout America water is supposed to share the properties of 
 those plants under the shade of which it flows. Thus, at the Straits 
 
 2 d 2 
 
404 
 
 PUBLIC EDIPICES A2sD STBUCTUBES. 
 
 them any aromatic or extractive matter. The water of the 
 valley does not contain lime, hut a little more carbonic acid 
 than the water of the Anauco. The new bridge over this 
 river is a handsome structure. Caracas contains eight 
 churches, five convents, and a theatre capable of holding 
 fifteen or eighteen hundred persons. When I was there, the 
 pit, in which the seats of the men are apart from those of the 
 women, was uncovered. By this means the spectators could 
 either look at the actors or gaze at the stars. As the misty 
 weather made me lose a great many observations of Jupiter’s 
 satellites, I was able to ascertain, as I sat in a box in the 
 theatre, whether the planet would be visible that night. The 
 streets of Caracas are wide and straight, and they cross each 
 other at right angles, as in all the towns built by the 
 Spaniards in America. The houses are spacious, and higher 
 than they ought to be in a country subject to earthquakes. 
 In 1800, the two squares of Alta Gracia and San Francisco 
 presented a very agreeable aspect ; I say in the year 1800, 
 because the terrible shocks of the 26th of March, 1812, 
 almost destroyed the whole city, which is only now slowly 
 rising from its ruins. The quarter of Trinidad, in which I 
 resided, was destroyed as completely as if a mine had been 
 sprung beneath it. 
 
 The small extent of the valley, and the proximity of the 
 high mountains of Avila and the Silla, give a gloomy and 
 stem character to the scenery of Caracas; particularly in 
 that part of the year when the coolest temperature prevails, 
 viz., in the months of November and December. The morn- 
 ings are then very fine ; and on a clear and serene sky we 
 could perceive the two domes or rounded pyramids of the 
 Silla, and the craggy ridge of the Cerro de Avila. But 
 towards evening the atmosphere thickens ; the mountains are 
 overhung with clouds ; streams of vapour cling to their ever- 
 green slopes, and seem to divide them into zones one above 
 another. These zones are gradually blended together ; the 
 cold air which descends from the Silla, accumulates in the 
 valley, and condenses the light vapours into large fleecy 
 clouds. These often descend below the Cross of La Guayra, 
 and advance, gliding on the soil, in the direction of the Pastora 
 
 of Magellan, that water is much praised which comes in contact with the 
 roots of the Canella winterana. 
 
DELIGHTFUL CLIMATE. 
 
 405 
 
 of Caracas, and the adjacent quarter of Trinidad. Beneath 
 this misty sky, I could scarcely imagine myself to be in one 
 of the temperate valleys of the torrid zone ; but rather in the 
 north of Germany, among the pines and the larches that 
 cover the mountains of the Hartz. 
 
 But this gloomy aspect, this contrast between the clear- 
 ness of morning and the cloudy sky of evening, is not 
 observable in the midst of summer. The nights of June 
 and July are clear and delicious. The atmosphere then pre- 
 serves, almost without interruption, the purity and trans- 
 parency peculiar to the table-lands and elevated valleys of 
 these regions in calm weather, as long as the winds do not 
 mingle together strata of air of unequal temperature. That 
 is the season for enjoying the beauty of the landscape, 
 which, however, I saw clearly illumined only during a few 
 days at the end of January. The two rounded summits of 
 the Silla are seen at Caracas, almost under the same angles 
 of elevation* as the peak of Teneriffe at the port of Orotava. 
 The first half of the mountain is covered with short grass ; 
 then succeeds the zone of evergreen trees, reflecting a purple 
 light at the season when the befaria, the alpine rose-tree t 
 of equinoctial America, is in blossom. The rocky masses 
 rise above this wooded zone in the form of domes. Being 
 destitute of vegetation, they increase by the nakedness of 
 their surface the apparent height of a mountain winch, in 
 the temperate parts of Europe, would scarcely rise to the 
 limit of perpetual snow. The cultivated region of the valley, 
 and the gay plains of Chacao, Petare, and La Vega, form 
 an agreeable contrast to the imposing aspect of the Silla, 
 and the great irregularities of the ground on the north of 
 the town. 
 
 The climate of Caracas has often been called a perpetual 
 spring. The same sort of climate exists everywhere, half- 
 way up the Cordilleras of equinoctial America, between four 
 hundred and nine hundred toises of elevation, except in 
 places where the great breadth of the valleys, combined with 
 an arid soil, causes an extraordinary intensity J of radiant 
 
 * I found, at the square of Trinidad, the apparent height of the Silla 
 to be 11° 12' 49". It was about four thousand five hundred toises 
 distant. 
 
 + Rhododendron ferrugincum of the Alps. 
 
 Î As at Carthago and Ibague in New Grenada. 
 
406 
 
 CHANGES OF TEMPERATURE. 
 
 caloric. What can we conceive to be more delightful than 
 a temperature which in the day keeps between 20 3 and 26° ;» 
 and at night between 16° and 18°, f which is equally favour- 
 able to the plantain, the orange-tree, the coffee-tree, the 
 apple, the apricot, and com? Jose de Oviedo y Banos, the 
 historiographer of Venezuela, calls the situation of Caracas 
 that of a terrestrial paradise, and compares the Anauco and 
 the neighbouring torrents to the four rivers of the Garden 
 of Eden. 
 
 It is to be regretted that this delightful climate is gene- 
 rally inconstant and variable. The inhabitants of Caracas 
 complain of having several seasons in one and the same day ; 
 and of the rapid change from one season to another. In the 
 month of January, for instance, a night, of which the mean 
 temperature is 16°, is sometimes followed by a day when the 
 thermometer during eight successive hours keeps above 22° 
 in the shade. In the same day, we may find the temperature 
 of 24° and 18°. These variations are extremely common in 
 our temperate climates of Europe, but in the torrid zone, 
 Europeans themselves are so accustomed to the uniform 
 action of exterior stimulus, that they suffer from a change of 
 temperature of 6°. At Cumana, and everywhere in the plains, 
 the temperature from eleven in the morning to eleven at 
 night changes only 2° or 3°. Moreover, these variations act 
 on the human frame at Caracas more violently than might 
 be supposed from the mere indications of the thermometer. 
 In this narrow valley the atmosphere is in some sort ba- 
 lanced between two winds, one blowing from the west, or 
 the seaside, the other from the east, or the inland country. 
 The first is known by the name of the wind of Catia, 
 because it blows from Catia westward of Cabo Blanco 
 through the ravine of Tipe. It is, however, only a westerly 
 wind in appearance, and it is oftener the breeze of the east 
 and north-east, which, rushing with extreme impetuosity, 
 engulfs itself in the Quebrada de Tipe. .Rebounding from 
 the high mountains of Aguas Negras, this wind finds its 
 way back to Caracas, in the direction of the hospital of the 
 Capuchins and the Bio Caraguata. It is loaded with 
 vapours, which it deposits as its temperature decreases, 
 and consequently the summit of the Silla is enveloped in 
 
 * Between 16° and 20 '8° Reaum. 
 
 f Between 12-8° and 14’4 0 Reaum. 
 
INSALUBRIOUS WINDS. 
 
 407 
 
 clouds, when the catia blows in the valley. This wind is 
 dreaded by the inhabitants of Caracas ; it causes headache 
 in persons whose nervous system is irritable. In order to 
 shun its effects, people sometimes shut themselves up in 
 their houses, as they do in Italy when the sirocco is blow- 
 ing. 1 thought I perceived, during my stay at Caracas, 
 that the wind of Catia was purer (a little richer in oxygen) 
 than the wind of JPetare. I even imagined that its purity 
 might explain its exciting property. The wind of retare 
 coming fnm the east and south-east, by the eastern extremity 
 of the valley of the Gruayra, brings from the mountains and 
 the interior of the country, a drier air, which dissipates 
 the cloudy and the summit of the Silla rises in all its 
 beauty. 
 
 We knew that the modifications produced by winds 
 in the conposition of the air in various places, entirely 
 escape our eudiometrical experiments, the most precise of 
 which can estimate only as far as ‘0003° of oxygen. Che- 
 mistry does not yet possess any means of distinguishing 
 two jars oi air, the one filled during the prevalence of the 
 sirocco or tie catia, and the other before these winds have 
 commenced It appears to me probable, that the singular 
 effects of he catia, and of all those currents of air, to 
 the influeme of which popular opinion attaches so much 
 importance must be looked for rather in the changes 
 of humidity and of temperature, than in chemical modi- 
 fications. We need not trace miasms to Caracas from 
 the unhealhy shore on the coast: it may be easily con- 
 ceived tha; men accustomed to the drier air of the moun- 
 tains and the interior, must be disagreeably affected when 
 the very lumid air of the sea, pressed through the gap 
 of Tipe, leaches in an ascending current the high valley 
 of Caracas, and, getting cooler by dilatation, and by contact 
 with the adjacent strata, deposits a great portion of the 
 water it contains. This inconstancy of climate, these some- 
 what rajid transitions from dry and transparent to humid 
 and mis^y air, are inconveniences which Caracas shares in 
 commoD with the whole temperate region of the tropics — 
 with a! places situated between four and eight hundred 
 toise» of elevation, either on table-lands of small extent, 
 or oi the slope of the Cordilleras, as at Xalapa in Mexico, 
 
408 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 and Guaduas in New Granada. A serenity, uninterrupted 
 during a great part of the year, prevails only in the low 
 regions at the level of the sea, and at considerable heights 
 on those vast table-lands, where the uniform radiation of 
 the soil seems to contribute to the perfect dissolution of 
 vesicular vapours. The intermediate zone is at the same 
 height as the first strata of clouds which surround the 
 surface of the earth; and the climate of this «one, the 
 temperature of which is so mild, is essentially misty and 
 variable. 
 
 Notwithstanding the elevation of the spot, ihe sky is 
 generally less blue at Caracas than at Cumtna. The 
 aqueous vapour is less perfectly dissolved ; and /here, as in 
 our climates, a greater diffusion of light diminishes the 
 intensity of the aërial colour, by introducing white into the 
 blue of the air. This intensity, measured with the cyano- 
 meter of Saussure, was found from November/to January 
 generally 18°, never above 20°. On the coasts it was from 
 22° to 25°. I remarked, in the village of Caracas, that the 
 wind of Petare sometimes contributes singulaiy to give a 
 pale tint to the celestial vault. On the 22ndlof January, 
 the blue of the sky was at noon in the zenith feebler than 
 I ever saw it in the torrid zone.* It correspoided only to 
 12° of the cyanometer. The atmosphere was tien remark- 
 ably transparent, without clouds, and of extrao'dinary dry- 
 ness. The moment the wind of Petare ceasel, the blue 
 colour rose at the zenith as high as 16°. I have often 
 observed at sea, but in a smaller degree, a simiar effect of 
 the wind on the colour of the serenest sky. 
 
 ¥e know less exactly the mean temperature of Caracas, 
 than that of Santa Pé de Bogota and of Mexico. I believe, 
 however, I can demonstrate, that it cannot be wry distant 
 from twenty to twenty-two degrees. I found ty my own 
 observations, during the three very cool months <f Novem- 
 ber, December, and January, taking each day thetnaximum 
 and minimum of the temperature, the heights wtre 202° ; 
 20T° ; 20*2°. 
 
 * At noon, thermometer in the shade 23.7° (in the sun, »ut of the 
 wind, 30*4°); De Luc’s hygrometer, 36*2°; cyanometer, at the zenith, 12°, 
 at the horizon 9°. The wind ceased at three in the afternoon. Uierm. 
 21°; hygr, 39’3°; cyan. 16°. At six o’clock, therm. 20.2°; hygr. *9°. 
 
VEGETABLE PRODTTCTIOKS. 
 
 409 
 
 Rains are extremely frequent at Caracas in tlie months 
 of April, May, and June. The storms always come from 
 the east and south-east, from the direction of Petare and 
 La Yalle. No hail falls in the low regions of the tropics ; 
 yet it occurs at Caracas almost every four or five years. 
 Hail has even been seen in valleys still lower ; and this 
 phenomenon, w'hen it does happen, makes a powerful im- 
 pression on the people. Palls of aerolites are less rare with 
 us than hail in the torrid zone, notwithstanding the frequency 
 of thunder-storms at the elevation of three hundred toises 
 above the level of the sea. 
 
 The cool and delightful climate we have just been des- 
 cribing is also suited for the culture of equinoctial pro- 
 ductions. The sugar-cane is reared with success, even at 
 heights exceeding that of Caracas ; but in the valley, owing 
 to the dryness of the climate, and the stony soil, the cul- 
 tivation of the coffee-tree is preferred : it yields indeed but 
 little fruit, but that little is of the finest quality. When 
 the shrub is in blossom, the plain extending beyond Chacao 
 presents a delightful aspect. The banana-tree, which is 
 seen in the plantations near the town, is not the great 
 Platano harton; but the varieties camburi and dominico , 
 which require less heat. The great plantains are brought 
 to the market of Caracas from the haciendas of Turiamo, 
 situated on the coast between Burburata and Porto Cabello. 
 The finest flavoured pine-apples are those of Baruto, of 
 Empedrado, and of the heights of Buenavista, on the road 
 to Victoria. When a traveller for the first time visits the 
 valley of Caracas, he is agreeably surprised to find the culi- 
 nary plants of our climates, as well as the strawberry, the 
 vine, and almost all the fruit-trees of the temperate zone, 
 growing beside the coffee and banana-tree. The apples and 
 peaches esteemed the best come from Macarao, or from the 
 western extremity of the valley. There, the quince-tree, 
 the trunk of which attains only four or five feet in height, 
 is so common, that it has almost become wild. Preserved 
 apples and quinces, particularly the latter,* are much, used 
 in a country where it is thought that, before drinking 
 water, thirst should be excited by sweetmeats. In pro- 
 portion as the environs of the town have been planted with 
 
 * “ Dulce de manzana y de membrillo,” are the Spanish names of 
 these preserves. 
 
410 
 
 PEEYALENT DISEASES. 
 
 coffee, and the establishment of plantations (which dates 
 only from the year 1795) has increased the number of 
 agricultural negroes,* the apple and quince-trees scattered 
 in the savannahs have given place, in the valley of Caracas, 
 to maize and pulse. Rice, watered by means of small 
 trenches, was formerly more common than it now is in the 
 plain of Chacao. I observed in this province, as in Mexico 
 and in all the elevated lands of the torrid zone, that, where 
 the apple-tree is most abundant, the culture of the pear- 
 tree is attended with great difficulty. I have been assured, 
 that near Caracas the excellent apples sold in the markets 
 come from trees not grafted. There are no cherry-trees. 
 The olive-trees which I saw in the court of the convent 
 of San Felipe de Neri, were large and fine ; but the luxu- 
 riance of their vegetation prevented them from hearing 
 fruit. 
 
 If the atmospheric constitution of the valley he favour- 
 able to the different kinds of culture on which colonial 
 industry is based, it is not equally favourable to the health 
 of the inhabitants, or to that of foreigners settled in the 
 capital of Venezuela. The extreme inconstancy of the wea- 
 ther, and the frequent suppression of cutaneous perspira- 
 tion, give birth to catarrhal affections, which assume the 
 most various forms. A European, once accustomed to the 
 violent heat, enjoys better health at Cumana, in the valley 
 of Aragua, and in every place where the low region of the 
 tropics is not very humid, than at Caracas, and in those 
 mountain-climates which are vaunted as the abode of per- 
 petual spring. 
 
 Speaking of the yellow fever of La Guayra, I mentioned 
 the opinion generally adopted, that this disease is propa- 
 gated as little from the coast of Venezuela to the capital, 
 as from the coast of Mexico to Xalapa. This opinion is 
 founded on the experience of the last twenty years. The 
 contagious disorders which were severely felt in the port 
 of La G-uayra, were scarcely felt at Caracas. I am not 
 convinced that the American typhus, rendered endemic on 
 
 * The consumption of provisions, especially meat, is so considerable 
 in the towns of Spanish America, that at Caracas, in 1800, there were 
 40,000 oxen killed every year: while in Paris, in 1793, with a population 
 fourteen times as great, the number amounted only to 70,000. 
 
PREVALENT DISEASES. 
 
 411 
 
 the coast as the port becomes more frequented, if favoured 
 by particular dispositions of the climate, may not become 
 common in the valley : for the mean temperature of Caracas 
 is considerable enough to allow the thermometer, in the 
 hottest months, to keep between twenty-two and twenty- 
 six degrees. The situation of Xalapa, on the declivity of 
 the Mexican mountains, promises more security, because 
 that town is less populous, and is five times farther distant 
 from the sea than Caracas, and two hundred and thirty 
 toises higher: its mean temperature being three degrees 
 cooler. In 1696, a bishop of Venezuela, Diego de Banos, 
 dedicated a church (ermita) to Santa Rosalia of Palermo, 
 for having delivered the capital from the scourge of the 
 black vomit (vomito negro), which is said to have raged for 
 the space of sixteen months. A mass celebrated every year 
 in the cathedral, in the beginning of September, perpetu- 
 ates the remembrance of this epidemic, in the same manner 
 as processions fix, in the Spanish colonies, the date of the 
 great earthquakes. The year 1696 was indeed very remark- 
 able for the yellow fever, which raged with violence in all 
 the West India Islands, where it had only begun to gain 
 an ascendancy in 1688. But how can we give credit to an 
 epidemical black vomit, having lasted sixteen months with- 
 out interruption, and which may be said to have passed 
 through that very cool season when the thermometer at 
 Caracas falls to twelve or thirteen degrees ? Can the typhus 
 be of older date in the elevated valley of Caracas, than in 
 the most frequented ports of Terra Pirma. According to 
 Ulloa, it was unknown in Terra Firma before 1729. I doubt, 
 therefore, the epidemic of 1696 having been the yellow 
 fever, or real typhus of America. Some of the symptoms 
 which accompany yellow fever are common to bilious re- 
 mittent fevers ; and are no more characteristic than hœmate- 
 meses of that severe disease now known at the Havannah 
 and Vera Cruz by the name of vomito. But though no 
 accurate description satisfactorily demonstrates that the 
 typhus of America existed at Caracas as early as the end 
 of the seventeenth century, it is unhappily too certain, that 
 this disease carried off in that capital a great number of 
 European soldiers in 1802. We are filled with dismay when 
 we reflect that, in the centre of the torrid zone, a table-land 
 
412 
 
 RESIDENCE AT CARACAS. 
 
 four hundred and fifty toises high, hut very near the sea, 
 does not secure the inhabitants against a scourge which was 
 believed to belong only to the low regions of the coast. 
 
 Chapter XIII. 
 
 Abode at Caracas. — Mountains in the vicinity of the Town. — Excursion 
 to the Summit of the Silla. — Indications of Mines. 
 
 I remained two months at Caracas, where M. Bonpland 
 and I lived in a large house in the most elevated part of the 
 town. Prom a gallery we could survey at once the summit 
 of the Silla, the serrated ridge of the Gralipano, and the 
 charming valley of the Gruayra, the rich culture of which was 
 pleasingly contrasted with the gloomy curtain of the sur- 
 rounding mountains. It was in the dry season, and to im- 
 prove the pasturage, the savannahs and the turf covering the 
 steepest rocks were set on fire. These vast conflagrations, 
 viewed from a distance, produce the most singular effects of 
 light. "Wherever the savannahs, following the undulating 
 slope of the rocks, have filled up the furrows hollowed out 
 by the waters, the flame appears in a dark night like currents 
 of lava suspended over the valley. The vivid but steady 
 light assumes a reddish tint, when the wind, descending 
 from the Silla, accumulates streams of vapour in the low 
 regions. At other times (and this effect is still more 
 curious) these luminous bands, enveloped in thick clouds, 
 appear only at intervals where it is clear ; and as the clouds 
 ascend, their edges reflect a splendid light. These various 
 phenomena, so common in the tropics, acquire additional 
 interest from the form of the mountains, the direction of 
 the slopes, and the height of the savannahs covered with 
 alpine grasses. During the day, the wind of Petare, blowing 
 from the east, drives the smoke towards the town, and 
 diminishes the transparency of the air. 
 
 If we had reason to be satisfied with the situation of our 
 house, we had still greater cause for satisfaction in the 
 reception we met with from all classes of the inhabitants. 
 Though I have had the advantage, which few Spaniards have 
 
STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 413 
 
 shared with me, of having successively visited Caracas, the 
 Savannah, Santa Eé de Bogota, Quito, Lima, and Mexico, 
 and of having been connected in these six capitals of Spanish 
 America with men of all ranks, I will not venture to decide 
 on the various degrees of civilization, which society has 
 attained in the several colonies. It is easier to indicate 
 the different shades of national improvement, and the point 
 towards which intellectual development tends, than to com- 
 pare and class things which cannot all be considered under 
 one point of view. It appeared to me, that a strong 
 tendency to the study of science prevailed at Mexico and 
 Santa Fé de Bogota; more taste for literature, and what- 
 ever can charm an ardent and lively imagination, at Quito 
 and Lima ; more accurate notions of the political relations 
 of countries, and more enlarged views on the state of colo- 
 nies and their mother-countries, at the Havannah and 
 Caracas. The numerous communications with commercial 
 Europe, with the Caribbean Sea (which we have described 
 as a Mediterranean with many outlets), have exercised a 
 powerful influence on the progress of society in the five 
 provinces of Venezuela and in the island of Cuba. In 
 no other part of Spanish America has civilization assumed 
 a more European character. The great number of Indian 
 cultivators who inhabit Mexico and the interior of New 
 Grenada, impart a peculiar, I may almost say, an exotic 
 aspect, on those vast countries. Notwithstanding the 
 increase of the black population, we seem to be nearer to 
 Cadiz and the United States, at Caracas and the Havannah, 
 than in any other part of the New World. 
 
 When, in the reign of Charles V, social distinctions and 
 their consequent rivalries were introduced from the mother- 
 country to the colonies, there arose in Cumana and in other 
 commercial towns of Terra Eirma, exaggerated pretensions 
 to nobility on the part of some of the most illustrious 
 families of Caracas, distinguished by the designation of los 
 Mantuanos. The progress of knowledge, and the consequent 
 change in manners, have, however, gradually and pretty 
 generally neutralized whatever is offensive in those distinctions 
 among the whites. In all the Spanish colonies there exist 
 two kinds of nobility. One is composed of creoles, whose 
 ancestors only from a very recent period filled great stations 
 
414 
 
 JEALOUSIES OF BACE. 
 
 in America. Their prerogatives are partly founded on the dis- 
 tinction they enjoy in the mother-country ; and they imagine 
 they can retain those distinctions beyond the sea, whatever 
 may be the date of their settlement in the colonies. The 
 other class of nobility has more of an American character. 
 
 It is composed of the descendants of the Conquistadores , 
 that is to say, of the Spaniards who served in the army at 
 the time of the first conquest. Among the warriors who i 
 fought with Cortez, Losada, and Pizarro, several belonged 
 to the most distinguished families of the Peninsula ; others, 1 
 sprung from the inferior classes of the people, have shed j 
 lustre on their names, by that chivalrous spirit which pre- 
 vailed at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the 
 records of those times of religious and military enthusiasm, 
 we find, among the followers of the great captains, many 
 simple, virtuous, and generous characters, who reprobated 
 the cruelties which then stained the glory of the Spanish 
 name, but who, being confounded in the mass, have not 
 escaped the general proscription. The name of Conquista- 
 dores remains the more odious, as the greater number of 
 them, after having outraged peaceful nations, and lived in 
 opulence, did not end their career by suffering those mis- 
 fortunes which appease the indignation of mankind, and 
 sometimes soothe the severity of the historian. 
 
 But it is not only the progress of ideas, and the conflict 
 between two classes of different origin, which have induced 
 the privileged castes to abandon their pretensions, or at 
 least cautiously to conceal them. Aristocracy in the Spanish 
 colonies has a counterpoise of another kind, the action 
 of which becomes every day more powerful. A sentiment 
 of equality, among the whites, has penetrated every bosom. 
 Wherever men of colour are either considered as slaves, or as 
 having been enfranchised, that which constitutes nobility is 
 hereditary liberty — the proud boast of having never reckoned 
 among ancestors any but freemen. In the colonies, the 
 colour of the skin is the real badge of nobility. In Mexico, 
 as well as Peru, at Caracas as in the island of Cuba, a bare- 
 footed fellow with a white skin, is often heard to exclaim : 
 “Does that rich man think himself whiter than I am?” 
 The population which Europe pours into America being very 
 considerable, it may easily be supposed, that the axiom, 
 
NOBILITY OF COMPLEXION. 
 
 415 
 
 ‘every white man is noble’ (todo bianco es caballerd), must 
 singularly wound the pretensions of many ancient and illus- 
 trious European families. But it may be further observed, 
 that the truth of this axiom has long since been acknow- 
 ledged in Spain, among a people justly celebrated for 
 probity, industry, and national spirit. Every Biscayan calls 
 himself noble; and there being a greater number of Bis- 
 cayans in America and the Philippine Islands, than in the 
 Peninsula, the whites of that race have contributed, in no 
 small degree, to propagate in the colonies the system of 
 equality among all men whose blood has not been mixed 
 with that of the African race. 
 
 Moreover, the countries of which the inhabitants, even 
 without a representative government, or any institution of 
 peerage, annex so much importance to genealogy and the 
 advantages of birth, are not always those in which family 
 aristocracy is most offensive. We do not find among the 
 natives of Spanish origin, that cold and assuming air which 
 the character of modem civilization seems to have rendered 
 less common in Spain than in the rest of Europe. Con- 
 viviality, candour, and great simplicity of manner, unite the 
 different classes of society in the colonies, as well as in the 
 mother-country. It may even be said, that the expression 
 of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains 
 something of simplicity and frankness. 
 
 I found in several families at Caracas a love of infor- 
 mation, an acquaintance with the masterpieces of Erench 
 and Italian literature, and a marked predilection for music, 
 which is greatly cultivated, and which (as always results 
 from a taste for the fine arts) brings the different classes 
 of society nearer to each other. The mathematical sciences, 
 drawing, and painting, cannot here boast of any of those 
 establishments with which royal munificence and the patri- 
 otic zeal of the inhabitants have enriched Mexico. In the 
 midst of the marvels of nature, so rich in interesting pro- 
 ductions, it is strange that we found no person on this coast 
 devoted to the study of plants and minerals. In a Fran- 
 ciscan convent I met, it is true, with an old monk who drew 
 up the almanac for all the provinces of Venezuela, and who 
 possessed some accurate knowledge of astronomy. Our 
 instruments interested him deeply, and one day our house 
 
416 
 
 FIRST PRINTING-OFFICE IN CARACAS. 
 
 was filled with all the monks of San Francisco, begging to see 
 a dipping-needle. The curiosity excited by physical pheno- 
 mena is naturally great in countries undermined by volcanic 
 fires, and in a climate where nature is at once so majestic 
 and so mysteriously convulsed. 
 
 When we remember, that in the United States of North 
 America, newspapers are published in small towns not con- 
 taining more than three thousand inhabitants, it seems sur- 
 prising that Caracas, with a population of forty or fifty thou- 
 sand souls, should have possessed no printing office before 
 1808 ; for we cannot give the name of a printing establish- 
 ment to a few presses which served only from year to year 
 to promulgate an almanac of a few pages, or the pastoral 
 letter of a bishop. Though the number of those who feel 
 reading to he a necessity is not very considerable, even in 
 the Spanish colonies most advanced in civilization, yet it 
 would be unjust to reproach the colonists for a state of 
 intellectual lassitude which has been the result of a jealous 
 policy. A Frenchman, named Delpeche, has the merit of 
 having established the first printing office in Caracas. It 
 appears somewhat extraordinary that an establishment of this 
 kind should have followed, and not preceded, a political 
 revolution. 
 
 In a country abounding in such magnificent scenery, and 
 at a period when, notwithstanding some symptoms of po- 
 pular commotion, most of the inhabitants seem only to 
 direct attention to physical objects, such as the fertility of 
 the year, the long drought, or the conflicting winds of 
 Petare and Catia, I expected to find many individuals well 
 acquainted with the lofty surrounding mountains. But I 
 was disappointed ; and we could not find in Caracas a single 
 person who had visited the summit of the Silla. Hunters 
 do not ascend so high on the ridges of mountains ; and in 
 these countries journeys are not undertaken for such pur- 
 poses as gathering alpine plants, carrying a barometer to an 
 elevated point, or examining the nature of rocks. Accus- 
 tomed to a uniform and domestic life, the people dread 
 fatigue and sudden changes of climate. They seem to live 
 not to enjoy life, but only to prolong it. 
 
 Our walks led us often in the direction of two coffee 
 plantations, the proprietors of which, Don Andres de Ibarra 
 
ASCENT OF THE SILLA 
 
 417 
 
 and M. Blandin, were men of agreeable manners. These 
 plantations were situated opposite the Silla de Caracas. 
 Surveying, by a telescope, the steep declivity of the moun- 
 tains, and the form of the two peaks by which it is termi- 
 nated, we could form an idea of the difficulties we should 
 have to encounter in reaching its summit. Angles of ele- 
 vation, taken with the sextant at our house, had led me to 
 believe that the summit was not so high above sea-level as 
 the great square of Quito. This estimate was far from cor- 
 responding with the notions entertained by the inhabitants 
 of the city. Mountains which command great towns, have 
 acquired, from that very circumstance, an extraordinary cele- 
 brity in both continents. Long before they have been accu- 
 rately measured, a conventional height is assigned to them ; 
 and to entertain the least doubt respecting that height is to 
 wound a national prejudice. 
 
 The captain-general, Senor de G-uevara, directed the te- 
 nienie of Chacao to furnish us with guides to conduct us on 
 our ascent of the Silla. These guides were negroes, and 
 they knew something of the path leading over the ridge of 
 the mountain, near the western peak of the Silla. This path 
 is frequented by smugglers, but neither the guides, nor the 
 most experienced of the militia, accustomed to pursue the 
 smugglers in these wild spots, had been on the eastern peak, 
 forming the most elevated summit of the Silla. Luring the 
 whole month of December, the mountain (of which the 
 angles of elevation made me acquainted with the effects of 
 the terrestrial refractions) had appeared only five times free 
 of clouds. In this season two serene days seldom succeed 
 each other, and we were therefore advised not to choose a 
 clear day for our excursion, but rather a time when, the 
 clouds not being elevated, we might hope, after having 
 crossed the first layer of vapours uniformly spread, to enter 
 into a dry and transparent air. We passed the night of the 
 2d of January in the Estancia de G-allegos, a plantation of 
 coffee-trees, near which the little river of Chacaito, flowing 
 in a luxuriantly shaded ravine, forms some fine cascades in 
 descending the mountains. The night was pretty clear; 
 and though on the day preceding a fatiguing journey it 
 might have been well to have enjoyed some repose, M. 
 Bonpland and I passed the whole night in watching three 
 
 yol. i. 2 E 
 
418 
 
 PUERTA DE LA SILLA. 
 
 occultations of the satellites of Jupiter. I had previously- 
 determined the instant of the observation, hut we missed 
 them all, owing to some error of calculation in the Con- 
 naissance des Temps. The apparent time had been mis- 
 taken for mean time. 
 
 I was much disappointed by this accident; and after 
 having observed at the foot of the mountain the intensity- of 
 the magnetic forces, before sunrise, we set out at five in the 
 morning, accompanied by slaves carrying our instruments. 
 Our party consisted of eighteen persons, and we all walked 
 one behind another, in a narrow path, traced on a steep 
 acclivity, covered with turf. We endeavoured first to reach 
 a hill, which towards the south-east seems to form a promon- 
 tory of the Silla. It is connected with the body of the 
 mountain by a narrow dyke, called by the shepherds the 
 Gate, or Puerta de la Silla. We reached this dyke about 
 seven. The morning was fine and cool, and the sky till then 
 seemed to favour our excursion. I saw that the thermometer 
 kept a little below 14° (11*2° Peaum.). The barometer 
 showed that we were already six hundred and eighty-five 
 toises above the level of the sea, that is, nearly eighty toises 
 higher than at the Venta, where we enjoyed so magnificent 
 a view of the coast. Our guides thought that it would 
 require six hours more to reach the summit of the Silla. 
 
 We crossed a narrow dyke of rocks covered with turf ; 
 which led us from the promontory of the Puerta to the 
 ridge of the great mountain. Here the eye looks down on 
 two valleys, or rather narrow defiles, filled with thick vege- 
 tation. On the right is perceived the ravine which descends 
 between the two peaks to the farm of Munoz ; on the left 
 we see the defile of Chacaito, with its waters flowing out 
 near the farm of Gallegos. The roaring of the cascades is 
 heard, while the water is unseen, being concealed by thick 
 groves of erythrina, clusia, and the Indian fig-tree. # No- 
 thing can be more picturesque, in a climate where so many 
 plants have broad, large, shining, and coriaceous leaves, than 
 the aspect of trees when the spectator looks down from a 
 great height above them, and when they are illumined by 
 the almost perpendicular rays of the sun. 
 
 * Ficus nymphæifolia, Erythrina mitis. Two fine species of mimosa 
 are found in the same valley ; Inga fastuosa, and I. cinerea. 
 
DIFFICULT ASCENT. 
 
 419 
 
 Erom the Puerta de la Silla the steepness of the ascent 
 increases, and we were obliged to incline our bodies con- 
 siderably forwards as we advanced. The slope is often from. 
 30° to 32°.* We felt the want of cramp-irons, or sticks 
 shod with iron. Short grass covered the rocks of gneiss, 
 and it was equally impossible to hold by the grass, or to 
 form steps as we might have done in softer ground. This 
 ascent, which was attended with more fatigue than danger, 
 discouraged those who accompanied us from the town, and 
 who were unaccustomed to climb mountains. We lost a 
 great deal of time in waiting for them, and we did not 
 resolve to proceed alone till we saw them descending the 
 mountain instead of climbing up it. The weather was be- 
 coming cloudy; the mist already issued in the form of 
 smoke, and in slender and perpendicular streaks, from a 
 small humid wood which bordered the region of alpine 
 savannahs above us. It seemed as if a fire had burst forth 
 at once on several points of the forest. These streaks of 
 vapour gradually accumulated together, and rising above 
 the ground, were carried along by the morning breeze, and 
 glided like a light cloud over the rounded summit of the 
 mountain. 
 
 M. Bonpland and I foresaw from these infallible signs, 
 that we should soon be covered by a thick fog ; and lest our 
 guides should take advantage of this circumstance and leave 
 us, we obliged those who carried the most necessary instru- 
 ments to precede us. We continued climbing the slopes 
 which lead towards the ravine of Chacaito. The familiar 
 loquacity of the Creole blacks formed a striking contrast 
 with the taciturn gravity of the Indians, who had constantly 
 accompanied us in the missions of Caripe. The negroes 
 amused themselves by laughing at the persons who had 
 been in such haste to abandon an expedition so long in pre- 
 paration ; above all, they did not spare a young Capuchin 
 monk, a professor of mathematics, who never ceased to 
 boast of the superior physical strength and courage pos- 
 
 * Since my experiments on slopes, mentioned at p. 94, I have dis- 
 covered in the Figure de la Terre of Bouguer, a passage, which shows 
 that this astronomer, whose opinions are of such weight, considered also 
 36° as the inclination of a slope quite inaccessible, if the nature of the 
 ground did not admit of forming steps with the foot. 
 
 2 e 2 
 
420 
 
 PEAKS OP THE SILLA. 
 
 sessed by all classes of European Spaniards over those bom 
 in Spanish America. He had provided himself with long 
 slips of white paper, which were to be cut, and flung on 
 the savannah, to indicate to those who might stray behind, 
 the direction they ought to follow. The professor had even 
 promised the friars of his order to fire off some rockets, to 
 announce to the whole town of Caracas that we had suc- 
 ceeded in an enterprise which to him appeared of the utmost 
 importance. He had forgotten that his long and heavy i 
 garments would embarrass him in the ascent. Having lost 
 courage long before the creoles, he passed the rest of the 
 day in a neighbouring plantation, gazing at us through a I 
 glass directed to the Silla, as we climbed the mountain. 
 TJnfortunately for us, he had taken charge of the water and 
 the provision so necessary in an excursion to the mountains. 
 The slaves, who were to rejoin us, were so long detained 
 by him, that they arrived very late, and we were ten hours 
 without either bread or water. 
 
 The eastern peak is the most elevated of the two which 
 form the summit of the mountain, and to this we directed 
 our course with our instruments. The hollow between 
 these two peaks has suggested the Spanish name of Silla 
 (saddle), which is given to the whole mountain. The 
 narrow defile which we have already mentioned, descends 
 from this hollow toward the valley of Caracas, commencing 
 near the western dome. The eastern summit is accessible 
 only by going first to the west of the ravine over the pro- 
 montory of the Puerta, proceeding straight forward to the 
 lower summit ; and not turning to the east till the ridge, 
 or the hollow of the Silla between the two peaks, is nearly 
 reached. The general aspect of the mountain points out 
 this path ; the rocks being so steep on the east of the ravine 
 that it would be extremely difficult to reach the summit of 
 the Silla by ascending straight to the eastern dome, instead 
 of going by the way of the Puerta. 
 
 Prom the foot of the cascade of Chacaito to one thousand 
 toises of elevation, we found only savannahs. Two small 
 liliaceous plants, with yellow flowers,* alone lift up their 
 heads, among the grasses which cover the rocks. A few 
 
 * Cypura martinicensis, and Sisyrinchium iridifolium. This last is 
 found also near the Yenta of La Guayra, at 600 toises of elevation. 
 
GROVE OF PALM-TREES. 
 
 421 
 
 brambles* remind us of the form of our European vege- 
 tation. We in vain hoped to find on the mountains of 
 Caracas, and subsequently on the back of the Andes, an 
 eglantine near these brambles. We did not find one in- 
 digenous rose-tree in all South America, notwithstanding 
 the analogy existing between the climates of the high 
 mountains of the torrid zone and the climate of our tem- 
 perate zone. It appears that this charming shrub is want- 
 ing in all the southern hemisphere, within and beyond the 
 tropics. It was only on the Mexican mountains that we 
 were fortunate enough to discover, in the nineteenth degree 
 of latitude, American eglantines. f 
 
 We were sometimes so enveloped in mist, that we could 
 not, without difficulty, find our way. At this height there 
 is no path, and we were obliged to climb with our hands, 
 when our feet failed us, on the steep and slippery acclivity. 
 A vein filled with porcelain-clay attracted oui’ attention. J 
 It is of snowy whiteness, and is no doubt the remains of 
 a decomposed feldspar. I forwarded a considerable portion 
 of it to the intendant of the province. In a country where 
 fuel is not scarce, a mixture of refractory earths may be 
 useful, to improve the earthenware, and even the bricks. 
 Every time that the clouds surrounded us, the thermometer 
 sunk as low as 12° (to 9‘6° E.) ; with a serene sky it rose 
 to 21°. These observations were made in the shade. But 
 it is difficult, on such rapid declivities, covered with a dry, 
 shining, yellow turf, to avoid the effects of radiant heat. 
 We were at nine hundred and forty toises of elevation; and 
 yet at the same height, towards the east, we perceived in a 
 ravine, not merely a few solitary palm-trees, but a whole 
 grove. It was the palma real; probably a species of the 
 genus Oreodoxa. This group of palms, at so considerable 
 
 * Rubus jamaicensis. 
 
 f M. Redouté, in his superb work on rose-trees, has given our 
 Mexican eglantine, under the name of Rosier de Montezuma, Montezuma 
 rose. 
 
 $ The breadth of the vein is three feet. This porcelain-clay, when 
 moistened, readily absorbs oxygen from the atmosphere. I found, at 
 Caracas, the residual nitrogen very slightly mingled with carbonic acid, 
 though the experiment was made in phials with ground-glass stoppers, 
 not filled with water. 
 
422 
 
 MOUNTAIN SHRUBS. 
 
 an elevation, formed a striking contrast with the willows* * * § 
 scattered on the depth of the more temperate valley of 
 Caracas. We here discovered plants of European forms, 
 situated below those of the torrid zone. 
 
 After proceeding for the space of four hours across the 
 savannahs, we entered into a little wood composed of shrubs 
 and small trees, called el Pejual ; doubtless from the great 
 abundance here of the pejoa (Gaultheria odorata), a plant 
 with very odoriferous leaves. t The steepness of the moun- 
 tain became less considerable, and we felt an indescribable 
 pleasure in examining the plants of this region. Nowhere, j 
 
 perhaps, can be found collected together, in so small a space, j 
 
 productions so beautiful, and so remarkable in regard to 
 the geography of plants. At the height of a thousand 
 toises, the lofty savannahs of the hills terminate in a zone of 
 shrubs which, by their appearance, their tortuous branches, 
 their stiff leaves, and the magnitude and beauty of their 
 purple flowers, remind us of what is called, in the Cordil- 
 leras of the Andes, the vegetation of the 'paramos and the 
 punas. % We there find the family of the alpine rhododen- 
 drons, the thibaudias, the andromedas, the vacciniums, and 
 those befarias with resinous leaves, which we have several 
 times compared to the rhododendron of our European 
 Alps. 
 
 Even when nature does not produce the same species in 
 analogous climates, either in the plains of isothermal pa- 
 rallels^ or on table-lands, the temperature of which re- 
 
 * Salix Humboldtiana of Willdenouw. On the alpine palm-trees, see 
 my Prolegomena de Dist. Plant, p. 235. 
 
 f It is a great advantage of the Spanish language, and a peculiarity 
 which it shares in common with the Latin, that, from the name of a tree, 
 may be derived a word designating an association or group of trees of the 
 same species. Thus are formed the words olivar, robledar, and pinal, 
 from olivo, roble, and pino. The Hispano-Americans have added tunal , 
 pejual , guayaval, & c., places where a great many Cactuses, Gualtheria 
 odoratas, and Psidiums, grow together. 
 
 X For the explanation of these words, see p. 178. 
 
 § We may compare together either latitudes which in the same hemi- 
 sphere present the same mean temperature (as, for instance, Pennsylvania 
 and the central part of France, Chile and the southern part of New Hol- 
 land); or we may consider the relations that may exist between the 
 vegetation of the two hemispheres under isothermal parallels. 
 
DISTRIBUTION OP PLANTS. 
 
 423 
 
 semblés that of places nearer the poles,* we still remark a 
 striking resemblance of appearance and physiognomy in the 
 vegetation of the most distant countries. This phenomenon 
 is one of the most curious in the history of organic forms. 
 I say the history ; for in vain would reason forbid man to 
 form hypotheses on the origin of things; he still goes on 
 puzzling himself with insoluble problems relating to the 
 distribution of beings. 
 
 A gramen of Switzerland grows on the granitic rocks of 
 the straits of Magellan.t JSew Holland contains above 
 forty European phanerogamous plants: and the greater 
 number of those plants, which are found equally in the 
 temperate zones of both hemispheres, are entirely wanting 
 in the intermediary or equinoctial region, as well in the 
 plains as on the mountains. A downy-leaved violet, which 
 terminates in some sort the zone of the phanerogamous 
 plants at Teneriffe, and which was long thought peculiar 
 to that island, J is seen three hundred leagues farther north, 
 near the snowy summit of the Pyrenees. Gramina and 
 cyperaceous plants of Germany, Arabia, and Senegal, have 
 
 * The geography of plants comprises not merely an examination of the 
 analogies observed in the same hemisphere ; as between the vegetation of 
 the Pyrenees and that of the Scandinavian plains ; or between that of the 
 Cordilleras of Peru and of the coasts of Chile. It also investigates the 
 relations between the alpine plants of both hemispheres. It compares 
 the vegetation of the Alleghanies and the Cordilleras of Mexico, with 
 that of the mountains of Chile and Brazil. Bearing in mind that every 
 isothermal line has an alpine branch (as, for instance, that which connects 
 Upsala with a point in the Swiss Alps), the great problem of the analogy 
 of vegetable forms may be defined as follows : 1st, examining in each 
 hemisphere, and at the level of the coasts, the vegetation on the same 
 isothermal line, especially near convex or concave summits; 2nd, com- 
 paring, with respect to the form of plants, on the same isothermal line 
 north and south of the equator, the alpine branch with that traced in 
 the plains ; 3rd, comparing the vegetation on homonymous isothermal 
 lines in the two hemispheres, either in the low regions, or in the alpine 
 regions. 
 
 •f Phleum alpinum, examined by Mr. Brown. The investigations of 
 this great botanist prove that a certain number of plants are at once 
 common to both hemispheres. Potentilla anserina, Prunella vulgaris, 
 Scirpus mucronatus, and Panicum crus-galli, grow in Germany, in Aus- 
 tralia, and in Pennsylvania. 
 
 + The Viola cheiranthifolia has been found by MM. Kunth and Von 
 Buch among the alpine plants which Jussieu brought from the Pyrenees. 
 
424 
 
 MIGEATIOS* OF PLANTS. 
 
 been recognized among those that were gathered by M. 
 Bonpland and myself on the cold table-lands of Mexico, 
 along the burning shores of the Orinoco, and in the south- 
 ern hemisphere on the Andes and Quito.* How can we 
 conceive the migration of plants through regions now co- 
 vered by the ocean ? How have the germs of organic life, 
 which resemble each other in their appearance, and even in 
 their internal structure, unfolded themselves at unequal dis- 
 tances from the poles and from the surface of the seas, 
 wherever places so distant present any analogy of tempe- 
 rature? Notwithstanding the influence exercised on the 
 vital functions of plants by the pressure of the air, and the 
 greater or less extinction of light, heat, unequally distri- 
 buted in different seasons of the year, must doubtless be 
 considered as the most powerful stimulus of vegetation. 
 
 The number of identical species in the two continents 
 and in the two hemispheres is far less than the statements 
 of early travellers would lead us to believe. The lofty 
 mountains of equinoctial America have certainly plantains, 
 valerians, arenarias, ranunculuses, medlars, oaks, and pines, 
 which from their physiognomy we might confound with 
 those of Europe; but they are all specifically different. 
 "When nature does not present the same species, she loves 
 to repeat the same genera. Neighbouring species are often 
 placed at enormous distances from each other, in the low 
 regions of the temperate zone, and on the alpine heights of 
 the equator. At other times (and the Silla of Caracas 
 affords a striking example of this phenomenon), they are 
 not the European genera, which have sent species to people 
 like colonists the mountains of the torrid zone, but genera 
 of the same tribe, difficult to be distinguished by their 
 appearance, which take the place of each other in different 
 latitudes. 
 
 The mountains of New Grenada surrounding the table- 
 lands of Bogota are more than two hundred leagues dis- 
 tant from those of Caracas, and yet the Silla, the only 
 elevated peak in the chain of low mountains, presents those 
 singular groupings of befarias with purple flowers, of 
 
 * Cyperus mucronatus, Poa eragrostis, Festuca myurus, Andropogon 
 avenaceus, Lapago racemosa. (See the Nova Genera et Species Plantarum, 
 vol. i. p. xxv.) 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY. 
 
 425 
 
 andromedas, of gualtherias, of myrtilli, of uvas camaronas * 
 of nerteras, and of aralias with hoary leaves, + which charac- 
 terize the vegetation of the paramos on the high Cordilleras 
 of Santa Fé. We found the same Thibaudia glandulosa 
 at the entrance of the table-land of Bogota, and in the 
 Pejual of the Silla. The coast-chain of Caracas is unques- 
 tionably connected (by the Torito, the Palomera, Tocuyo, 
 and the paramos of Posas, of Bocono, and of Mquitao) 
 with the high Cordilleras of Merida, Pamplona, and Santa 
 Fé ; but from the Silla to Tocuyo, along a distance of seventy 
 leagues, the mountains of Caracas are so low, that the shrubs 
 of the family of the ericineous plants, just cited, do not find 
 the cold climate which is necessary for their development. 
 Supposing, as is probable, that the thibaudias and the 
 rhododendron of the Andes, or befaria, exist in the paramo 
 of Mquitao and in the Sierra de Merida, covered with 
 eternal snow, these plants would nevertheless want a ridge 
 sufficiently lofty and long for their migration towards the 
 Silla of Caracas. 
 
 The more we study the distribution of organized beings 
 on the globe, the more we are inclined, if not to abandon 
 the ideas of migration, at least to consider them as hypo- 
 theses not entirely satisfactory. The chain of the Andes 
 divides the whole of South America into two unequal longi- 
 tudinal parts. At the foot of this chain, on the east and 
 west, we found a great number of plants specifically the 
 same. The various passages of the Cordilleras nowhere 
 permit the vegetable productions of the warm regions to 
 proceed from the coats of the Pacific to the banks of the 
 Amazon. When a peak attains a great elevation, either in 
 the middle of very low mountains and plains, or in the 
 centre of an archipelago heaved up by volcanic fires, its 
 summit is covered with alpine plants, many of which are 
 again found, at immense distances, on other mountains 
 
 * The names vine-tree, and uvas camaronas, are given in the Andes to 
 plants of the genus Thibaudia, on account of their large succulent fruits. 
 Thus the ancient botanists gave the name of bear’s vine, uva ursi, and 
 vine of Mount Ida (Vitis idæa), to an arbutus and a myrtillus, which 
 belong, like the thibaudia, to the family of the Ericineæ. 
 
 + Nertera depressa, Aralia reticulata, Hedyotis blærioïdes. 
 
426 
 
 AMERICAN RHODODENDRONS. 
 
 having an analogous climate. Such are the general pheno- 
 mena of the distribution of plants. 
 
 It is now said that a mountain is high enough to enter 
 into the limits of the rhododendrons and the befarias, as it 
 has long been said that such a mountain reached the limit 
 of perpetual snow. In using this expression, it is tacitly 
 admitted, that under the influence of certain temperatures, 
 certain vegetable forms must necessarily be developed. Such 
 a supposition, however, taken in all its generality, is not 
 strictly accurate. The pines of Mexico are wanting on the 
 Cordilleras of Peru. The Silla of Caracas is not covered 
 with the oaks which flourish in New Grenada at the. same 
 height. Identity of forms indicates an analogy of climate ; 
 but in similar climates the species may be singularly diver- 
 sified. 
 
 The charming rhododendron of the Andes (the befaria) was 
 first described by M. Mutis, who observed it near Pamplona 
 and Santa Eé de Bogota, in the fourth and seventh degree of 
 north latitude. It was so little known before our expedition 
 to the Silla, that it was scarcely to be found in any herbal in 
 Europe. The learned editors of the Elora of Peru had even 
 described it under another name, that of acunna. In the same 
 manner as the rhododendrons of Lapland, Caucasus, and the 
 Alps* differ from each other, the two species of befaria we 
 brought from the Sillaf are also specifically different from 
 that of Santa Eé and Bogota. £ Near the equator the 
 
 rhododendrons of the Andes § cover the mountains as far 
 as the highest paramos, at sixteen and seventeen hundred 
 toises of elevation. Advancing northward, on the Silla de 
 Caracas, we find them much lower, a little below one thou- 
 sand toises. The befaria recently discovered in Florida, in 
 latitude 30°, grows even on hills of small elevation. Thus 
 in a space of six hundred leagues in latitude, these shrubs 
 descend towards the plains in proportion as their distance 
 
 * Rhododendron lapponicum, R. caucasicum, R. ferrugineum, and 
 R. hirsutum. 
 
 t Befaria glauca, B. ledifolia. 
 
 Î Befaria æstuans, and B. resinosa. 
 
 § Particularly B. æstuans of Mutis, and two new species of the southern 
 hemisphere, which we have described under the name of B. coarctata, and 
 B. grandiflora. 
 
EHODODEKDBONS OF ETTEOPE. 
 
 427 
 
 from the equator augments. The rhododendron of Lapland 
 grows also at eight or nine hundred toises lower than the 
 rhododendron of the Alps and the Pyrenees. We were 
 surprised at not meeting with any species of befaria in the 
 mountains of Mexico, between the rhododendrons of Santa 
 Fé and Caracas, and those of Florida. 
 
 In the small grove which crowns the Silla, the Befaria 
 ledifolia is only three or four feet high. The trunk is 
 divided from its root into a great many slender and even 
 verticillate branches. The leaves are oval, lanceolate, glau- 
 cous on their inferior part, and curled at the edges. The 
 whole plant is covered with long and viscous hairs, and 
 emits a very agreeable resinous smell. The bees visit its 
 fine purple flowers, which are very abundant, as in all the 
 alpine plants, and, when in full blossom, they are often 
 nearly an inch wide. 
 
 The rhododendron of Switzerland, in those places where 
 it grows, at the elevation of between eight himdred and a 
 thousand toises, belongs to a climate, the mean temperature 
 of which is + 2° and — 1°, like that of the plains of Lap- 
 land. In this zone the coldest months are — 4°, and — 10° : 
 the hottest, 12° and 7°. Thermometrical observations, made 
 at the same heights and in the same latitudes, render it 
 probable that, at the Pejual of the Silla, one thousand toises 
 above the Caribbean Sea, the mean temperature of the air 
 is still 17° or 18° ; and that the thermometer keeps, in the 
 coolest season, between 15° and 20° in the day, and in the 
 night between 10° and 12°. At the hospital of St. Gothard, 
 situated nearly on the highest limit of the rhododendron of 
 the Alps, the maximum of heat, in the month of August at 
 noon, in the shade, is usually 12° or 13° ; in the night, at the 
 same season, the air is cooled by the radiation of the soil 
 down to + 1° or — L5°. Under the same barometric pres- 
 sure, consequently at the same height, but thirty degrees of 
 latitude nearer the equator, the befaria of the Silla is often, 
 at noon, in the sun, exposed to a heat of 23° or 24°. The 
 greatest nocturnal refrigeration probably never exceeds 7 C . 
 W e have carefully compared the climate, under the influence 
 of which, at different latitudes, two groups of plants of the 
 same family vegetate at equal heights above the level of the 
 sea. The results would have been far different, had we com- 
 
428 
 
 AROMATIC SHRUBS. 
 
 pared zones equally distant, either from the perpetual snow, 
 or from the isothermal line of 0°.* 
 
 In the little thicket of the Pejual, near the purple-flowered 
 befaria, grows a heath-leaved hedyotis, eight feet high ; the 
 caparosa,t which is a large arborescent hypericum ; a lepi- 
 dium, which appears identical with that of Virginia ; and 
 lastly, lycopodiaceous plants and mosses, which cover the 
 rocks and roots of the trees. That which gives most cele- 
 brity in the country to the little thicket, is a shrub ten or 
 fifteen feet high, of the corymbiferous family. The Creoles call 
 it incense (incienso)4 Its tough and crenate leaves, as well 
 as the extremities of the branches, are covered with a white 
 wool. It is a new species of Trixis, extremely resinous, the 
 flowers of which have the agreeable odour of storax. This 
 smell is very different from that emitted by the leaves of the 
 Trixis terebinthinacea of the mountains of Jamaica, opposite 
 to those of Caracas. The people sometimes mix the incienso 
 of the Silla with the flowers of the pevetera, another compo- 
 site plant, the smell of which resembles that of the helio- 
 tropium of Peru. The pevetera does not, however, grow on 
 the mountains so high as the zone of the befarias; it 
 vegetates in the valley of Chacao, and the ladies of Caracas 
 prepare from it an extremely pleasant odoriferous water. 
 
 We spent a long time in examining the fine resinous and 
 fragrant plants of the Pejual. The sky became more and 
 more cloudy, and the thermometer sank below 11°, a tempe- 
 rature at which, in this zone, people begin to suffer from the 
 cold. Quitting the little thicket of alpine plants, we found 
 ourselves again in a savannah. We climbed over a part of 
 the western dome, in order to descend into the hollow of 
 the Silla, a valley which separates the two summits of the 
 
 * The stratum of air, the mean temperature of which is 0°, and which 
 scarcely coincides with the superior limit of perpetual snow, is found in 
 the parallel of the rhododendrons of Switzerland at nine hundred toises ; 
 in the parallel of the befarias of Caracas, at two thousand seven hundred 
 toises of elevation. 
 
 -f Vismia caparosa (a loranthus clings to this plant, and appropriates 
 to itself the yellow juice of the vismia) ; Davallia meifolia, Heracium 
 avilse, Aralia arborea, Jacq., and Lepidium virginicum. Two new species 
 of lycopodium, the thyoides, and the aristatum, are seen lower down, 
 near the Puerta de la Silla. 
 
 J Trixis nereifolia of M. Bonpland. 
 
DANGEROUS SITUATION. 
 
 429 
 
 mountain. We there had great difficulties to overcome, 
 occasioned by the force of the vegetation. A botanist would 
 not readily guess that the thick wood covering this valley is 
 formed by the assemblage of a plant of the musaceous 
 family.* It is probably a maranta, or a heliconia ; its 
 leaves are large and shining ; it reaches the height of 
 fourteen or fifteen feet, and its succulent stalks grow near 
 one another like the stems of the reeds found in the humid 
 regions of the south of Europe. t We were obliged to cut 
 our way through this forest. The negroes walked before 
 with their cutlasses or machetes. The people confound this 
 alpine scitamineous plant with the arborescent gramina, 
 under the name of carice. We saw neither its fruit nor 
 flowers. We are surprised to meet with a monocotyledonous 
 family, believed to be exclusively found in the hot and low 
 regions of the tropics, at eleven hundred toises of elevation ; 
 much higher than the andromedas, the thibaudias, and the 
 rhododendron of the Cordilleras.^ In a chain of mountains 
 no less elevated, and more northern (the Blue Mountains of 
 Jamaica), the Heliconia, of the 'parrots and the bihai, rather 
 grow in the alpine shaded situations.§ 
 
 Wandering in this thick wood of musaceæ or arborescent 
 plants, we constantly directed our course towards the eastern 
 peak, which we perceived from time to time through an 
 opening. On a sudden we found ourselves enveloped in a 
 thick mist ; the compass alone could guide us ; but in ad- 
 vancing northward we were in danger at every step of find- 
 ing ourselves on the brink of that enormous wall of rocks, 
 which descends almost perpendicularly to the depth of six 
 thousand feet towards the sea. We were obliged to halt. 
 Surrounded by clouds sweeping the ground, we began to 
 doubt whether we should reach the eastern peak before 
 night. Happily, the negroes who carried our water and 
 provisions, rejoined us, and we resplved to take some refresh- 
 ment. Our repast did not last long. Possibly the Capuchin 
 father had not thought of the great number of persons who 
 
 * Scitamineous plants, or family of the plantains. 
 
 + Arundo donax. 
 
 J Befaria. 
 
 § Heliconia psittacorum, and H. bihai. These two heliconias are very 
 common in the plains of Terra Firma. 
 
430 
 
 A SCANTY BEPAST. 
 
 accompanied us, or perhaps the slaves had made free with 
 our provisions on the way; be that as it may, we found 
 nothing but olives, and scarcely any bread. Horace, in his 
 retreat at Tibur, never boasted of a repast more light and 
 frugal ; but olives, which might have afforded a satisfactory 
 mfeal to a poet, devoted to study, and leading a sedentary 
 life, appeared an aliment by no means sufficiently substantial 
 for travellers climbing mountains. We had watched the 
 greater part of the night, and we walked for nine hours 
 without finding a single spring. Our guides were discou- 
 raged ; they wished to go back, and we had great difficulty 
 in preventing them. 
 
 In the midst of the mist I made trial of the electrometer 
 of Volta, armed with a smoking match. Though very near 
 a thick wood of heliconias, I obtained very sensible signs of 
 atmospheric electricity. It often varied from positive to 
 negative, its intensity changing every instant. These vari- 
 ations, and the conflict of several small currents of air, 
 which divided the mist, and transformed it into clouds, the 
 borders of which were visible, appeared to me infallible prog- 
 nostics of a change in the weather. It was only two o’clock 
 in the afternoon ; we entertained some hope of reaching the 
 eastern summit of the Silla before sunset, and of re-descend- 
 ing into the valley separating the two peaks, intending there 
 to pass the night, to light a great fire, and to make our 
 negroes construct a hut with the leaves of the heliconia. 
 We sent off half of our servants with orders to hasten the 
 next morning to meet us, not with olives, but with a supply 
 of salt beef. 
 
 We had scarcely made these arrangements when the east 
 wind began to blow violently from the sea; The thermo- 
 meter rose to 12 , 5°. It was no doubt an ascending wind, 
 which, by heightening the temperature, dissolved the vapours. 
 In less than two minutes ^he clouds dispersed, and the two 
 domes of the Silla appeared to us singularly near. We 
 opened the barometer in the lowest part of the hollow that 
 separates the two summits, near a little pool of very mucdy 
 water. Here, as in the West India Islands, marshy plains 
 are found at great elevations ; not because the woody moun- 
 tains attract the clouds, but because they condense the 
 vapours by the effect of nocturnal refrigeration, occasioned 
 
SUMMIT OF THE SILLA. 
 
 431 
 
 by the radiation of heat from the ground, and from the 
 parenchyma of the leaves. The mercury was at 21 inches 
 5*7 lines. We shaped our course direct to the eastern sum- 
 mit. The obstruction caused by the vegetation gradually 
 diminished; it was, however, necessary to cut down some 
 hehconias ; but these arborescent plants were not now very 
 thick or high. The peaks of the Silla themselves, as we 
 have several times mentioned, are covered only with gramina 
 and small shrubs of befaria. Their barrenness, however, is 
 not owing to their height : the limit of trees in this region 
 is four hundred toises higher; since, judging according to 
 the analogy of other mountains, this limit would be found 
 here only at a height of eighteen hundred toises. The 
 absence of large trees on the two rocky summits of the 
 Silla may be attributed to the aridity of the soil, the vio- 
 lence of the winds blowing from the sea, and the conflagra- 
 tions so frequent in all the mountains of the equinoctial 
 region. 
 
 To reach the eastern peak, which is the highest, it is 
 necessary to approach as near as possible the great preci- 
 pice which descends towards Caravalleda and the coast. The 
 gneiss as far as this spot preserves its lamellar texture and 
 its primitive direction; but where we climbed the summit 
 of the Silla, we found it had passed into granite. Its tex- 
 ture becomes granular; the mica, less frequent, is more 
 unequally spread through the rock. Instead of garnets we 
 met with a few solitary crystals of hornblende. It is, how- 
 ever, not a syenite, but rather a granite of new formation. 
 We were three quarters of an hour in reaching the summit 
 of the pyramid. This part of the way is not dangerous, 
 provided the traveller carefully examines the stability of 
 each fragment of rock on which he places his foot. The 
 granite superposed on the gneiss does not present a regular 
 separation into beds: it is divided by clefts, which often 
 cross one another at right angles. Prismatic blocks, one 
 foot wide and twelve long, stand out from the ground 
 obliquely, and appear on the edges of the precipice like 
 enormous beams suspended over the abyss. 
 
 Having arrived at the summit, we enjoyed, for a few 
 minutes only, the serenity of the sky. The eye ranged 
 over a vast extent of country : looking down to the north 
 
432 
 
 ENOEMOUS PEECIPICE. 
 
 was the sea, and to the south, the fertile valley of Caracas. 
 The barometer was at 20 inches 7'6 lines; the thermo- 
 meter at 13' 7°. We were at thirteen hundred and fifty 
 toises of elevation. We gazed on an extent of sea, the 
 radius of which was thirty-six leagues. Persons who are 
 affected by looking downward from a considerable height 
 should remain at the centre of the small flat which crowns 
 the eastern summit of the Silla. The mountain is not very 
 remarkable for height : it is nearly eighty toises lower than 
 the Canigou; but it is distinguished among all the moun- 
 tains I have visited by an enormous precipice on the side 
 next the sea. The coast forms only a narrow border ; and 
 looking from the summit of the pyramid on the houses of 
 Caravalleda, this wall of rocks seems, by an optical illusion, 
 to be nearly perpendicular. The real slope of the declivity 
 appeared to me, according to an exact calculation, 53° 28'.* 
 The mean slope of the peak of Teneriffe is scarcely 12° 3C/. 
 A precipice of six or seven thousand feet, like that of the 
 Silla of Caracas, is a phenomenon far more rare than is 
 generally believed by those who cross mountains without 
 measuring their height, their bulk, and their slope. Since 
 the experiments on the fall of bodies, and on their deviation 
 to the south-east, have been resumed in several parts of 
 Europe, a rock of two hundred and fifty toises of perpen- 
 dicular elevation has been in vain sought for among all the 
 Alps of Switzerland. The declivity of Mont Blanc towards 
 the Allée Blanche does not even reach an angle of 45°; 
 though in the greater number of geological works, Mont 
 Blanc is described as perpendicular on the south side. 
 
 At the Silla of Caracas, the enormous northern cliff is 
 partly covered with vegetation, notwithstanding the extreme 
 steepness of its slope. Tufts of befaria and andromedas 
 appear as if suspended from the rock, JFhe little valley 
 which separates the domes towards the south, stretches in 
 the direction of the sea. Alpine plants fill this hollow; 
 and, not confined to the ridge of the mountain, they follow 
 the sinuosities of the ravine. It would seem as if torrents 
 
 * Observations of the latitude give for the horizontal distance between 
 the foot of the mountain near Caravalleda, and the vertical line passing 
 through its summit, scarcely 1000 toises. 
 
DISTANT HOEIZON. 
 
 433 
 
 were concealed under that fresh foliage ; and the disposition 
 of the plants, the grouping of so many inanimate objects, 
 give the landscape all the charm of motion and of life. 
 
 Seven months had now elapsed since we had been on the 
 summit of the peak of Teneriffe, whence we surveyed a 
 space of the globe equal to a fourth part of France. The 
 apparent horizon of the sea is there six leagues farther 
 distant than at the top of the Silla, and yet we saw that 
 horizon, at least for some time, very distinctly. It was 
 strongly marked, and not confounded with the adjacent 
 strata of air. At the Silla, which is five hundred and fifty 
 toises lower than the peak of Teneriffe, the horizon, though 
 nearer, continued invisible towards the north and north- 
 north-east. Following with the eye the surface of the sea, 
 which was smooth as glass, we were struck with the pro- 
 gressive diminution of the reflected fight. Where the visual 
 ray touched the last limit of that surface, the water was lost 
 among the superposed strata of air. This appearance has 
 something in it very extraordinary. We expect to see the 
 horizon level with the eye ; but, instead of distinguishing at 
 this height a marked limit between the two elements, the 
 more distant strata of water seem to be transformed into 
 vapour, and mingled with the aërial ocean. I observed the 
 same appearance, not in one spot of the horizon alone, but 
 on an extent of more than a hundred and sixty degrees, 
 along the Pacific, when I found myself for the first time on 
 the pointed rock that commands the crater of Pichincha ; a 
 volcano, the elevation of which exceeds that of Mont Blanc.* 
 The visibility of a very distant horizon depends, when there 
 is no mirage, upon two distinct things: the quantity of 
 fight received on that part of the sea where the visual ray 
 terminates ; and the extinction of the reflected fight during 
 its passage through the intermediate strata of air. It may 
 happen, notwithstanding the serenity of the sky and the 
 transparency of the atmosphere, that the ocean is «feebly 
 illuminated at thirty or forty leagues’ distance ; or that the 
 strata of air nearest the earth may extinguish a great deal 
 of the fight, by absorbing the rays that traverse them. 
 
 The rounded peak, or western dome of the Silla, con- 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 See Views of Nature, Bohn’s edition, p. 358. 
 
 2 P 
 
434 
 
 EXTENDED PBOSPECT. 
 
 cealed from us the view of the town of Caracas; hut we 
 distinguished the nearest houses, the villages of Chacao and 
 Petare, the coffee plantations, and the course of the Eio 
 G-uayra, a slender streak of water reflecting a silvery light. 
 The narrow band of cultivated ground was pleasingly con- 
 trasted with the wild and gloomy aspect of the neighbouring 
 mountains. Whilst contemplating these grand scenes, we 
 feel little regret that the solitudes of the New World are 
 not embellished with the monuments of antiquity. 
 
 But we could not long avail ourselves of the advan- 
 tage arising from the position of the Silla, in commanding 
 all the neighbouring summits. While we were examining 
 with our glasses that part of the sea, the horizon of which 
 was clearly defined, and the chain of the mountains of 
 Ocumare, behind which begins the unknown world of the 
 Orinoco and the Amazon, a thick fog from the plains rose 
 to the elevated regions, first filling the bottom of the valley 
 of Caracas. The vapours, illumined from above, presented 
 a uniform tint of a milky white. The valley seemed over- 
 spread with water, and looked like an arm of the sea, of 
 which the adjacent mountains formed the steep shore. In 
 vain we waited for the slave who carried Eamsden’s great 
 sextant. Eager to avail myself of the favourable state 
 of the sky, I resolved to take a few solar altitudes with a 
 sextant by Troughton of two inches radius. The disk of 
 the sun was half-concealed by the mist. The difference of 
 longitude between the quarter of the Trinidad and the 
 eastern peak of the Silla appears scarcely to exceed 
 0 ° 3 ' 22 "*. 
 
 Whilst, seated on the rock, I was determining the dip of 
 the needle, I found my hands covered with a species of 
 hairy bee, a little smaller than the honey-bee of the north of 
 Europe. These insects make their nests in the ground. 
 They seldom fly ; and, from the slowness of their move- 
 ments, I should have supposed they were benumbed by the 
 cold of the mountains. The people, in these regions, call 
 them angelitos (little angels), because they very seldom 
 sting. They are no doubt of the genus Apis, of the division 
 melipones. It has been erroneously affirmed that these 
 
 * The difference of longitude between the Silla and La Guayra, accord- 
 ing to Fidalgo, is 0° 6' 40". 
 
METEOBOLOGICAL OBSEBYATIONS. 
 
 435 
 
 bees, which are peculiar to the New World, are destitute of 
 all offensive weapons. Their sting is indeed comparatively 
 feeble, and they use it seldom ; but a person, not fully con- 
 vinced of the harmlessness of these angelitos, can scarcely 
 divest himself of a sensation of fear. I must confess, that, 
 whilst engaged in my astronomical observations, I was often 
 on the point of letting my instruments fall, when I felt my 
 hands and face covered with these hairy bees. Our guides 
 assured us that they attempt to defend themselves only 
 when irritated by being seized by their legs. I was not 
 tempted to try the experiment on myself. 
 
 The dip of the needle at the Silla was one centesimal 
 degree less than in the town of Caracas. In collecting the 
 observations which I made during calm weather and in 
 very favourable circumstances, on the mountains as well as 
 along the coast, it would at first seem, that we discover, in 
 that part of the globe, a certain influence of the heights on 
 the dip of the needle, and the intensity of the magnetical 
 forces; hut we must remark, that the dip at Caracas is much 
 greater than could he supposed, from the situation of the 
 town, and that the magnetical phenomena are modified by 
 the proximity of certain rocks, which constitute so many 
 particular centres or little systems of attraction.* 
 
 The temperature of the atmosphere varied on the summit 
 of the Silla from eleven to fourteen degrees, according as 
 the weather was calm or windy. Every one knows how 
 difficult it is to verify, on the summit of a mountain, the 
 temperature, which is to serve for the barometric calcula 
 tion. The wind was east, which would seem to prove 
 that the trade-winds, extend in this latitude much higher 
 than fifteen hundred toises. Yon Buch had observed that, 
 at the peak of Teneriffe, near the northern limit of the 
 trade-winds, there exists generally at the elevation of one 
 thousand nine hundred toises, a contrary current from the 
 
 * I have seen fragments of quartz traversed by parallel bands of mag- 
 netic iron, carried into the valley of Caracas by the waters descending 
 from the Galipano and the Cerro de Avila. This banded magnetic iron- 
 ore is found also in the Sierra Nevada of Merida. Between the two 
 peaks of the Silla, angular fragments of cellular quartz are found, covered 
 with red oxide of iron. They do not act on the needle. This oxide is of 
 a cinnabar-red colour. 
 
 2 e 2 
 
436 
 
 DRYNESS OE THE ATMOSPHERE. 
 
 west. The Academy of Sciences recommended the men of 
 science who accompanied the unfortunate La Pérouse, to 
 employ small air-balloons for the purpose of ascertaining 
 at sea the extent of the trade-winds within the tropics. 
 Such experiments are very difficult. Small balloons do 
 not in general reach the height of the Silla ; and the light 
 clouds which are sometimes perceived at an elevation of 
 three or four thousand toises, for instance, the fleecy clouds, 
 called by the Prench moutons , remain almost fixed, .or have 
 such a slow motion, that it is impossible to judge of the 
 direction of the wind. 
 
 During the short space of time that the sky was serene 
 at the zenith, I found the blue of the atmosphere sensibly 
 deeper than on the coasts. It is probable that, in the 
 months of July and August, the difference between the 
 colour of the sky on the coasts and on the summit of the 
 Silla is still more considerable, but the meteorological phe- 
 nomenon with which M. Bonpland and myself were most 
 struck during the hour we passed on the mountain, was 
 the apparent dryness of the air, which seemed to increase 
 as the fog augmented. 
 
 This fog soon became so dense that it would have been 
 imprudent to remain longer on the edge of a precipice of 
 seven or eight thousand feet deep.* We descended the 
 eastern dome of the Silla, and gathered in our descent a 
 gramen, which not only forms a new and very remarkable 
 genus, but which, to our great astonishment, we found again 
 some time after on the summit of the volcano of Pichincha, 
 at the distance of four hundred leagues from the Silla, in the 
 southern hemisphere. 1 ! The Lichen floridus, so common 
 in the north of Europe, covered the branches of the befaria 
 and the Grualtheria odorata, descending even to the roots 
 of these shrubs. Examining the mosses which cover the 
 rocks of gneiss in the valley between the two peaks, I was 
 surprised at finding real pebbles, — rounded fragments of 
 
 * In the direction of north-west the slopes appear more accessible; and 
 I have been told of a path frequented by smugglers, which leads to Cara- 
 valleda, between the two peaks of the Silla. From the eastern peak I took 
 the bearings of the western peak, 64° 40' S.W. ; and of the houses, which 
 I was told belonged to Caravalleda, 55° 20' N.W. 
 
 t Aegopogon cenchroides. 
 
PEEPAEATIONS POE THE DESCENT. 437 
 
 quartz.* It may be conceived that the valley of Caracas 
 was once an inland lake, before the Rio Gruayra found an 
 issue to the east near Caurimare, at the foot of the hill 
 of Auyamas, and before the ravine of Tipe opened on the 
 west, in the direction of Gratia and Cabo Blanco. But how 
 can we imagine that these waters could ascend as high as 
 the Silla, when the mountains opposite this peak, those of 
 Ocumare, were too low to prevent their overflow into the 
 llanos? The pebbles could not have been brought by 
 torrents from more elevated points, since there is no height 
 that commands the Silla. Must we admit that they have 
 been heaved up, like all the mountains which border the 
 coast. 
 
 It was half after four in the afternoon when we finished 
 our observations. Satisfied with the success of our journey, 
 we forgot that there might be danger in descending in the 
 dark, steep declivities covered by a smooth and slippery turf. 
 The mist concealed the valley from us ; but we distinguished 
 the double hill of La Puerta, which, like all objects lying 
 almost perpendicularly beneath the eye, appeared extremely 
 near. We relinquished our design of passing the night 
 between the two summits of the Silla, and having again 
 found the path we had cut through the thick wood of 
 heliconia, we soon arrived at the Pejual, the region of 
 odoriferous and resinous plants. The beauty of the befarias, 
 and their branches covered with large purple flowers, again 
 rivetted our attention. When, in these climates, a botanist 
 gathers plants to form his herbal, he becomes difficult in 
 his choice in proportion to the luxuriance of vegetation. He 
 casts away those which have been first cut, because they 
 appear less beautiful than those which were out of reach. 
 Though loaded with plants before quitting the Pejual, we 
 still regretted not having made a more ample harvest. We 
 tarried so long in this spot, that night surprised us as we 
 entered the savannah, at the elevation of upwards of nine 
 hundred toises. 
 
 As there is scarcely any twilight in the tropics, we pass 
 suddenly from bright daylight to darkness. The moon was 
 on the horizon ; but her disk was veiled from time to time 
 
 * Fragments of brown copper-ore were found mixed with these pebbles, 
 at an elevation of 1170 toises. 
 
438 
 
 ARRIVAL AT THE VALLEY. 
 
 by thick clouds, drifted by a cold and rough wind. Rapid 
 slopes, covered with yellow and dry grass, now seen in 
 shade, and now suddenly illumined, seemed like precipices, 
 the depth of which the eye sought in vain to measure. 
 We proceeded onwards, in single file, and endeavoured to 
 support ourselves by our hands, lest we should roll down. 
 The guides, who carried our instruments, abandoned us 
 successively, to sleep on the mountain. Among those who 
 remained with us was a Congo black, who evinced great ad- 
 dress, bearing on his head a large dipping-needle : he held it 
 constantly steady, notwithstanding the extreme declivity of 
 the rocks. The fog had dispersed by degrees in the bottom 
 of the valley ; and the scattered lights we perceived below 
 us caused a double illusion. The steeps appeared still more 
 dangerous than they really were ; and, during six hours of 
 continual descent, we seemed to be always equally near the 
 farms at the foot of the Silla. We heard very distinctly 
 the voices of men and the notes of guitars. Sound is ge- 
 nerally so well propagated upwards, that in a balloon at 
 the elevation of three thousand toises, the barking of dogs 
 is sometimes heard.* 
 
 We did not arrive till ten at night at the bottom of the 
 valley. We were overcome with fatigue and thirst, having 
 walked for fifteen hours, nearly without stopping. The soles 
 of our feet were cut and torn by the asperities of a rocky soil 
 and the hard and dry stalks of the gramina, for we had been 
 obliged to pull off our boots, the soles having become too 
 slippery. On declivities devoid of shrubs or ligneous herbs, 
 which may be grasped by the hand, the danger of the 
 descent is diminished by walking barefoot. In order to 
 shorten the way, our guides conducted us from the Puerta 
 de la Silla to the farm of Gallegos by a path leading to a 
 reservoir of water, called el Tanque. They missed their 
 way, however; and this last descent, the steepest of all, 
 brought us near the ravine of Chacaito. The noise of the 
 cascades gave this nocturnal scene a grand and wild cha- 
 racter. 
 
 We passed the night at the foot of the Silla. Our friends 
 at Caracas had been able to distinguish us with glasses on 
 
 * Gay-Lussac’s account of his ascent on the 15th of September, 1805. 
 
STEATA OS' THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 439 
 
 the summit of the eastern peak. They felt interested in 
 hearing the account of our expedition, but they were not 
 satisfied with the result of our measurement, which did not 
 assign to the Silla even the elevation of the highest summit 
 of the Pyrenees.* One cannot blame the national feeling 
 which suggests exaggerated ideas of the monuments of 
 nature, in a country in which the monuments of art are 
 nothing ; nor can we wonder that the inhabitants of Quito 
 and Kiobamba, who have prided themselves for ages on the 
 height of Chimborazo, mistrust those measurements which 
 elevate the mountains of Himalaya above all the colossal 
 Cordilleras ? 
 
 During our journey to the Silla, and in all our excursions 
 in the valley of Caracas, we were very attentive to the lodes 
 and indications of ore which we found in the strata 01 
 gneiss. No regular diggings having been made, we could 
 only examine the fissures, the ravines, and the land-slips 
 occasioned by torrents in the rainy season. The rock oi 
 gneiss, passing sometimes into a granite of new formation, 
 sometimes into mica-slate, t belongs in Germany to the 
 most metalliferous rocks ; but in the New Continent, the 
 gneiss has not hitherto been remarked as very rich in ores 
 worth working. The most celebrated mines of Mexico and 
 Peru are found in the primitive and transition schists, in 
 the trap-porphyries, the grauwakke, and the alpine lime- 
 stones. In several spots of the valley of Caracas, the gneiss 
 contains a small quantity of gold, disseminated in small 
 veins of quartz, sulphuretted silver, azure copper-ore, and 
 galena ; but it is doubtful whether these different metalli- 
 ferous substances are not too poor to encourage any attempt 
 at working them. Such attempts were, however, made at 
 the conquest of the province, about the middle of the six- 
 teenth century. 
 
 From the promontofy of Paria to beyond cape Vela, the 
 early navigators had seen gold ornaments and gold dust, in 
 the possession of the inhabitants of the coast. They pene- 
 trated into the interior of the country, to discover whence the 
 
 * It was formerly believed that the height of the Silla of Caracas 
 scarcely differed from that of the peak of Teneriffe. 
 
 f Especially at great elevations. 
 
440 
 
 MUTE RAL "WEALTH. 
 
 precious metal came ; and though the information obtained 
 in the province of Coro, and the markets of Curiana and 
 Cauchieto,* clearly proved that real mineral wealth was to 
 be found only to the west and south-west of Coro (that is 
 to say, in the mountains near those of New Grenada), the 
 whole province of Caracas was nevertheless eagerly explored. 
 A governor, newly arrived on that coast, could recommend 
 himself to the Spanish court only by boasting of the mines 
 of his province ; and in order to take from cupidity what 
 was most ignoble and repulsive, the thirst of gold was 
 justified by the purpose to which it was pretended the 
 riches acquired by fraud and violence might be employed. 
 “ Gold,” says Christopher Columbus, in his last letter t to 
 King Ferdinand, “ gold is a thing so much the more neces- 
 sary to your majesty, because, in order to fulfil the ancient 
 prophecy, Jerusalem is to be rebuilt by a prince of the 
 Spanish monarchy. Gold is the most excellent of metals. 
 What becomes of those precious stones, which are sought 
 for at the extremities of the globe? They are sold, and 
 are finally converted into gold. With gold we not only do 
 whatever we please in this world, but we can even employ 
 it to snatch souls from Purgatory, and to people Paradise.” 
 These words bear the stamp of the age in which Columbus 
 lived ; but we are surprised to see this pompous eulogium 
 of riches written by a man whose whole life was marked 
 by the most noble disinterestedness. 
 
 The conquest of the province of Venezuela having been 
 begun at its western extremity, the neighbouring mountains 
 of Coro, Tocuyo, and Barquisimeto, first attracted the at- 
 
 * The Spaniards found, in 1500, in the country of Curiana (now Coro), 
 little birds, frogs, and other ornaments made of gold. Those who had cast 
 these figures lived atCauchieto, a place nearer the Rio de la Hacha. I have 
 seen ornaments resembling those described by Peter Martyr of Anghiera 
 (which indicate tolerable skill in goldsmiths’ *work), among the remains of 
 the ancient inhabitants of Cundinamarca. The same art appears to have 
 been practised in places along the coasts, and also farther to the south, 
 among the mountains of New Grenada. 
 
 ■f* Lettera rarissima data nelle Indie nella isola di Jamaica a 7 Julio 
 del 1503. — “Le oro è métallo sopra gli altri excellentissimo ; e dell’ oro 
 si fanno li tesori e chi lo tiene fa e opera quanto vuole nel mondo, e final- 
 mente aggionge a mandare le anime al Paradiso.” 
 
GOLD MIKE QF BUBIA. 
 
 441 
 
 tention of the Conquistadores. These mountains join the 
 Cordilleras of New Grenada (those of Santa Fé, Pamplona, 
 la Grita, and Merida) to the littoral chain of Caracas. 
 It is a land the more interesting in a geognostical point 
 of view, as no map has yet made known the mountainous 
 ramifications which the paramos of Niquitao and Las Posas 
 send out towards the north-east. Between Tocuyo, Araurej 
 and Barquisimeto, rises the group of the Altar Mountains, 
 connected on the south-east with the paramo of Las Posas. 
 A branch of the Altar stretches north-east by San Felipe 
 el Fuerte, joining the granitic mountains of the coast near 
 Porto Cabello. The other branch takes an eastward direc- 
 tion towards Nirgua and Tinaco, and joins the chain of the 
 interior, that of Tusma, Yilla de Cura, and Sabana de 
 Ocumare. 
 
 The region we have been here describing separates the 
 waters which flow to the Orinoco from those which run 
 into the immense lake of Maracaybo and the Caribbean 
 Sea. It includes climates which may be termed temperate 
 rather than hot ; and it is looked upon in the country, not- 
 withstanding the distance of more than a hundred leagues, 
 as a prolongation of the metalliferous soil of Pamplona. It 
 was in the group of the western mountains of Venezuela, 
 that the Spaniards, in the year 1551, worked the gold mine 
 of Buria,* which was the origin of the foundation of the 
 town of Barquisimeto.t But these works, like many other 
 mines successively opened, were soon abandoned. Here, as 
 in all the mountains of Venezuela, the produce of the ore 
 has been found to be very variable. The lodes are very often 
 divided, or they altogether cease ; and the metals appear only 
 in kidney-ores, and present the most delusive appearances. 
 It is, however, only in this group of mountains of San 
 Felipe and Barquisimeto, that the working of mines has 
 been continued till the present time. Those of Aroa, near 
 San Felipe el Fuerte, situated in the centre of a very 
 insalubrious country, are the only mines which are wrought 
 in the whole capitania-general of Caracas. They yield a 
 small quantity of copper. 
 
 * Real de Minas de San Felipe de Buna, 
 f Nueva Segovia. 
 
442 
 
 MIKES or LOS TEQUES. 
 
 Next to the works at Buria, near Barquisimeto, those of 
 the valley of Caracas, and of the mountains near the capital, 
 are the most ancient. Francisco Faxardo and his wife 
 Isabella, of the nation of the Gruaiquerias,* often visited 
 the table-land where the capital of Venezuela is now situ- 
 ated. They had given this table-land the name of Valle 
 de San Francisco ; and having seen some bits of gold in 
 the hands of the natives, Faxardo succeeded, in the year 
 1560, in discovering the mines of Los Teques, f to the 
 south-west of Caracas, near the group of the mountains of 
 Cocuiza, which separate the valleys of Caracas and Aragua. 
 It is thought that in the first of these valleys, near 
 Baruta, south of the village of Valle, the natives had made 
 some excavations in veins of auriferous quartz ; and that, 
 when the Spaniards first settled there, and founded the 
 town of Caracas, they filled the shafts, which had been dry, 
 with water. It is now impossible to ascertain this fact; 
 hut it is certain that, long before the Conquest, grains of 
 gold were a medium of exchange, I do not say generally, 
 but among certain nations of the New Continent. They 
 gave gold for the purchase of pearls ; and it does not appear 
 extraordinary, that, after having for a long time picked up 
 grains of gold in the rivulets, people who had fixed habita- 
 tions, and were devoted to agriculture, should have tried to 
 trace the auriferous veins in the superior surface of the soil. 
 The mines of Los Teques could not be peaceably wrought, 
 till the defeat of the Cacique Gruaycaypuro, a celebrated 
 chief of the Teques, who long contested with the Spaniards 
 the possession of the province of Venezuela. 
 
 We have yet to mention a third point to which the 
 attention of the Conquistadores was called by indications 
 
 Faxardo and his wife were the founders of the town of the Collado, 
 now called Caravalleda. 
 
 + Thirteen years later, in 1573, Gabriel de Avila, one of the alcaldes of 
 the new town of Caracas, renewed the working of these mines, which 
 were from that time called the “ Real de ’Minas de Nuestra Senora.” 
 Probably this same Avila, on account of a few farms which he possessed 
 in the mountains adjacent to La Guayra and Caracas, has occasioned the 
 Cumbre to receive the name of Montana de Avila. This name has sub- 
 sequently been applied erroneously to the Silla, and to all the chain which 
 extends towards cape Codera. 
 
ABANDONMENT OE THE MINES. 
 
 443 
 
 of mines, so early as the end of the sixteenth century. In 
 following the valley of Caracas eastward beyond Caurimare, 
 on the road to Caucagùa, we reach a mountainous and 
 woody country, where a great quantity of charcoal is now 
 made, and which anciently bore the name of the Province 
 of Los Mariches. In these eastern mountains of Venezuela, 
 the gneiss passes into the state of talc. It contains, as at 
 Salzburg, lodes of auriferous quartz. The works anciently 
 begun in those mines have often been abandoned and 
 resumed. 
 
 The mines of Caracas were forgotten during more than 
 a hundred years. But at a period comparatively recent, 
 about the end of the last century, an Intendant of Vene- 
 zuela, Don Jose Avalo, again fell into the illusions which 
 had flattered the cupidity of the Conquistadores. He fan- 
 cied that all the mountains near the capital contained great 
 metallic riches. Some Mexican miners were engaged, and 
 their operations were directed to the ravine of Tipe, and 
 the ancient mines of Baruta to the south of Caracas, where 
 the Indians gather even now some little gold-washings. But 
 the zeal which had prompted the enterprise soon diminished, 
 and after much useless expense, the working of the mines 
 of Caracas was totally abandoned. A small quantity of 
 auriferous pyrites, sulphuretted silver, and a little native 
 gold, were found ; but these were only feeble indications ; 
 and in a country where labour is extremely dear, there was 
 no inducement to pursue works so little productive. 
 
 We visited the ravine of Tipe, situated in that part of the 
 valley which opens in the direction of Cabo Blanco. Proceed- 
 ing from Caracas, we traverse, in the direction of the great 
 barracks of San Carlos, a barren and rocky soil. Only a very 
 few plants of Argemone mexicana are to be found. The 
 gneiss appears everywhere above ground. We might have 
 fancied ourselves on the table-land of Freiberg. We crossed 
 first the little rivulet of Agua Salud, a limpid stream, which 
 has no mineral taste, and then the Bio Garaguata. The 
 road is commanded on the right by the Cerro de Avila and 
 the Cumbre ; and on the left, by the mountains of Aguas 
 Negras. This defile is very interesting in a geological 
 point of view. At this spot the valley of Caracas commu- 
 
444 
 
 VEINS OF QUAETZ. 
 
 nicates, by the valleys of Tacagua and of Tipe, with the 
 coast near Catia. A ridge of rock, the summit of which is 
 forty toises above the bottom of the valley of Caracas, and 
 more than three hundred toises above the valley of Tacagua, 
 divides the waters which flow into the Rio Gruayra and , 
 towards Cabo Blanco. On this point of division, at the 
 entrance of the branch, the view is highly pleasing. The 
 climate changes as we descend westward. In the valley 
 of Tacagua we found some new habitations, and also conucos 
 of maize and plantains. A very extensive plantation of 
 tuna, or cactus, stamps this barren country with a peculiar 
 character. The cactuses reach the height of fifteen feet, , 
 and grow in the form of candelabra, like the euphorbia of 
 Africa. They are cultivated for the purpose of selling their 
 refreshing fruits in the market of Caracas. The variety 
 which has no thorns is called, strangely enough, in the colo- 
 nies, tuna de JEspana (Spanish cactus). We measured, at 
 the same place, magueys or agaves, the long stems of which, 
 laden with flowers, were forty-four feet high. However 
 common this plant is become in the south of Europe, the 
 native of a northern climate is never weary of admiring the 
 rapid development of a liliaceous plant, which contains at 
 once a sweet juice and astringent and caustic liquids, em- 
 ployed to cauterize wounds. 
 
 We found several veins of quartz in the valley of Tipe 
 visible above the soil. They contained pyrites, carbonated 
 iron-ore, traces of sulphuretted silver (glasserz), and grey 
 copper-ore (fahlerz). The works which had been under- 
 taken, either for extracting the ore, or exploring the nature 
 of its bed, appeared to be very superficial. The earth falling 
 in had filled up those excavations, and we could not judge 
 of the richness of the lobe. Notwithstanding the expense 
 incurred under the intendancy of Hon Jose Avalo, the 
 great question whether the province of Venezuela contains 
 mines rich enough to be worked, is yet problematical. 
 Though in countries where hands are wanting, the cul- 
 ture of the soil demands unquestionably the first care of 
 the government, yet the example of New Spain suffi- 
 ciently proves that mining is not always unfavourable to ; 
 the progress of agriculture. The best-cultivated Mexican 
 
EABTHQTJAKES AT C ABAC AS. 
 
 445 
 
 lands, those which remind the traveller of the most beau- 
 tiful districts of Trance and the south of Germany, 
 extend from Silao towards the Villa of Leon : they are in 
 the neighbourhood of the mines of Guanaxuato, which 
 alone furnish a sixth part of all the silver of the New 
 World. 
 
 Chaptee XIV. 
 
 Earthquakes at Caracas. — Connection of those Phenomena with the 
 Volcanic Eruptions of the West India Islands. 
 
 On the evening of the 7th of February we took our 
 departure from Caracas. Since the period of our visit to 
 that place, tremendous earthquakes have changed the sur- 
 face of the soil. The city, which I have described, has dis- 
 appeared ; and on the same spot, on the ground fissured in 
 various directions, another city is now slowly rising. The 
 heaps of ruins, which were the grave of a numerous popula- 
 tion, are becoming anew the habitation of men. In retracing 
 changes of so general an interest, I shall he led to notice 
 events which took place long after my return to Europe. I 
 shall pass over in silence the popular commotions which have 
 taken place, and the modifications which society has under- 
 gone. Modern nations, careful of their own remembrances, 
 snatch from oblivion the history of human revolutions, which 
 is, in fact, the history of ardent passions and inveterate 
 hatred. It is not the same with respect to the revolutions 
 of the physical world. These are described with least accu- 
 racy when they happen to be contemporary with civil dis- 
 sensions. Earthquakes and eruptions of volcanos strike the 
 imagination by the evils which are their necessary conse- 
 quence. Tradition seizes on whatever is vague and mar- 
 vellous; and amid great public calamities, as in private 
 misfortunes, man seems to shun that light which leads us 
 to discover the real causes of events, and to understand the 
 circumstances by which they are attended. 
 
 I have recorded in this work all I have been able to 
 
446 
 
 SUPPOSED SECURITY OE CARACAS. 
 
 collect, and on the accuracy of which I can rely, respecting 
 the earthquake of the 26th of March, 1812. By that catas- 
 trophe the town of Caracas was destroyed, and more than 
 twenty thousand persons perished throughout the extent of 
 the province of Venezuela. The intercourse which I have 
 kept up with persons of all classes has enabled me to com- 
 pare the description given by many eye-witnesses, and to in- 
 terrogate them on objects that may throw light on physical 
 science in general. The traveller, as the historian of nature, 
 should verify the dates of great catastrophes, examine their 
 connection and their mutual relations, and should mark in 
 the rapid course of ages, in the continual progress of suc- 
 cessive changes, those fixed points with which other catas- 
 trophes may one day be compared. All epochs are proxi- 
 mate to each other in the immensity of time comprehended 
 in the history of nature. Years which have passed away 
 seem but a few instants ; and the physical descriptions of a 
 country, even when they offer subjects of no very powerful 
 and general interest, have at least the advantage of never 
 becoming old. Similar considerations, no doubt, led M. de 
 la Condamine to describe in his Voyage à l’Equateur, the 
 memorable eruptions of the volcano of Cotopaxi,* which 
 took place long after his departure from Quito. I feel the 
 less hesitation in following the example of that celebrated 
 traveller, as the events I am about to relate will help to 
 elucidate the theory of volcanic reaction, or the influence 
 of a system of volcanos on a vast space of circumjacent 
 territory. 
 
 At the time when M. Bonpland and myself visited the 
 provinces of New Andalusia, New Barcelona, and Caracas, 
 it was generally believed that the most eastern parts of 
 those coasts were especially exposed to the destructive 
 effects of earthquakes. The inhabitants of Cumana dreaded 
 the valley of Caracas, on account of its damp and variable 
 climate, and its gloomy and misty sky; whilst the inhabitants 
 of the temperate valley regarded Cumana as a town whose 
 inhabitants incessantly inhaled a burning atmosphere, and 
 whose soil was periodically agitated by violent commotions. 
 Unmindful of the overthrow of Biobamba and other very 
 
 * Those of the 30th of November, 1744, and of the 3rd of Sep- 
 tember, 1750. 
 
rSTLTTES'CE OF VOLCANOS. 
 
 447 
 
 elevated towns, and not aware that the peninsula of Araya, 
 composed of mica-slate, shares the commotions of the cal- 
 careous coast of Cumana, well-informed persons imagined 
 they discerned security in the structure of the primitive 
 rocks of Caracas, as well as in the elevated situation of this 
 valley. Beligious ceremonies celebrated at La Gruayra, and 
 even in the capital, in the middle of the night,* doubtless 
 called to mind the fact that the province of Venezuela had 
 been subject at intervals to earthquakes; but dangers of 
 rare occurrence are slightly feared. However, in the year 
 1811, fatal experience destroyed the illusion of theory and 
 of popular opinion. Caracas, situated in the mountains, 
 three degrees west of Cumana, and five degrees west of the 
 volcanos of the Caribbee islands, has suffered greater 
 shocks than were ever experienced on the coast of Paria or 
 Hew Andalusia. 
 
 At my arrival in Terra Pirrna, I was struck with the con- 
 nection between the destruction of Cumana on the 14th 
 of December, 1797, and the eruption of the volcanos in the 
 smaller West India Islands. This connection was again 
 manifest in the destruction of Caracas on the 26th of 
 March, 1812. The volcano of Gruadaloupe seemed in 1797 
 to have exercised a reaction on the coasts of Cumana. 
 Pfteen years later, it was a volcano situated nearer the 
 continent (that of St. Vincent), which appeared to have 
 extended its influence as far as Caracas and the banks of 
 Apure. Possibly, at both those periods, the centre of the 
 explosion was, at an immense depth, equally distant from 
 the regions towards which the motion was propagated at the 
 surface of the globe. 
 
 From the beginning of 1811 to 1813, a vast superficies of 
 the earth, f bound by the meridian of the Azores, the valley 
 of the Ohio, the Cordilleras of Hew Grenada, the coasts of 
 Venezuela, and the volcanos of the smaller West India 
 Islands, was shaken throughout its whole extent, by com- 
 
 * For instance, the nocturnal procession of the 21st of October, insti- 
 tuted in commemoration of the great earthquake which took place on 
 that day of the month, at one o’clock in the morning, in 1778. Other 
 very violent shocks were those of 1641, 1703, and 1802. 
 
 t Between latitudes 5° and 36° North, and 31° and 91° West Ion. 
 from Paris. 
 
448 
 
 SAB KINA ISLAND. 
 
 motions wliicli may be attributed to subterranean fires. 
 The following series of phenomena seems to indicate com- 
 munications at enormous distances. On the 30th of 
 January, 1811, a submarine volcano broke out near the 
 island of St. Michael, one of the Azores. At a place where 
 the sea was sixty fathoms deep, a rock made its appearance 
 above the surface of the waters. The heaving-up of the 
 softened crust of the globe appears to have preceded the 
 eruption of flame at the crater, as had already been observed 
 at the volcanos of Jorullo in Mexico, and on the appearance 
 of the little island of Kameni, near Santorino. The new 
 islet of the Azores was at first a mere shoal ; but on the 
 15th of June, an eruption, which lasted six days, enlarged 
 its extent, and carried it progressively to the height of fifty 
 toises above the surface of the sea. This new land, of which 
 captain Tillard took possession in the name of the British 
 government, giving it the name of Sabrina Island, was nine 
 hundred toises in diameter. It has again, it seems, been 
 swallowed up by the ocean. This is the third time that 
 submarine volcanos have presented this extraordinary spec- 
 tacle near the island of St. Michael ; and, as if the eruptions 
 of these volcanos were subject to periodical recurrence, 
 owing to a certain accumulation of elastic fluids, the island 
 raised up has appeared at intervals of ninety-one or ninety- 
 two years.* 
 
 At the time of the appearance of the new island of 
 Sabrina, the smaller West India Islands, situated eight 
 hundred leagues south-west of the Azores, experienced 
 frequent earthquakes. More than two hundred shocks were 
 felt from the month of May 1811, to April 1812, at St. 
 Yincent; one of the three islands in which there are still 
 active volcanos. The commotion was not circumscribed 
 to the insular portion of eastern America ; and from the 
 16th of December, 1811, till the year 1813, the earth was 
 almost incessantly agitated in the valleys of the Mississippi, 
 
 * Malte-Brun, Géographie Universelle. There is, however, some 
 doubt respecting the eruption of 1628, to which some accounts assign the 
 date of 1638. The rising always happened near the island of St. 
 Michael, though not identically on the same spot. It is remarkable that 
 the small island of 1720 reached the same elevation as the island of 
 Sabrina in 1811. 
 
CENTRES OE YOLCANIC ACTION. 
 
 449 
 
 the Arkansas river, and the Ohio. The oscillations were 
 more feeble on the east of the Alleghanies, than to the west 
 of these mountains, in Tennessee and Kentucky. They 
 were accompanied by a great subterranean noise, proceeding 
 from the south-west. In some places between New Madrid 
 and Little Prairie, as at the Saline, north of Cincinnati, in 
 latitude 37° 45', shocks were felt every day, nay almost 
 every hour, during several months. The whole of these 
 phenomena continued from the 16th of December 1811, till 
 the year 1813. The commotion, confined at first to the 
 south, in the valley of the lower Mississippi, appeared to 
 advance slowly northward. 
 
 Precisely at the period when this long series of earthquakes 
 commenced in the Transalleghanian States (in the month of 
 December 1811), the town of Caracas felt the first shock in 
 calm and serene weather. This coincidence of phenomena 
 was probably not accidental ; for it must be borne in mind 
 that, notwithstanding the distance which separates these 
 countries, the low grounds of Louisiana and the coasts of 
 Venezuela and Cumana belong to the same basin, that of 
 the Giulf of Mexico. "When we consider geologically the 
 basin of the Caribbean Sea, and of the Gulf of Mexico, 
 we find it bounded on the south by the coast-chain of 
 Venezuela and the Cordilleras of Merida and Pamplona; 
 on the east by the mountains of the West India Islands, 
 and the Alleghanies ; on the west by the Andes of Mexico, 
 and the Kocky Mountains ; and on the north by the very 
 inconsiderable elevations which separate the Canadian lakes 
 from the rivers which flow into the Mississippi. More than 
 two-thirds of this basin are covered with water. It is 
 bordered by two ranges of active volcanos ; on the east, in 
 the Carribee Islands, between latitudes 13° and 16° ; and on 
 the west in 'the Cordilleras of Nicaragua, Guatimala, and 
 Mexico, between latitudes 11° and 20°. When we reflect 
 that the great earthquake at Lisbon, of the 1st of Novem- 
 ber, 1755, was felt almost simultaneously on the coasts of 
 Sweden, at lake Ontario, and at the island of Martinique, it 
 may not seem unreasonable to suppose, that all this basin of 
 the West Indies, from Cumana and Caracas as far as the 
 plains of Louisiana, should be simultaneously agitated by 
 commotions proceeding from the same centre of action. 
 yol. i. 2 a 
 
450 
 
 COINCIDENT PHENOMENA. 
 
 It is an opinion very generally prevalent on the coasts 
 of Terra Firma, that earthquakes become more frequent 
 when electric explosions have been during some years rare. 
 It is supposed to have been observed, at Cumana and at 
 Caracas, that the rains were less frequently attended with 
 thunder from the year 1792 ; and the total destruction of 
 Cumana in 1797, as well as the commotions felt in 1800, 
 1801, and 1802, at Maracaibo, Porto Cabello, and Caracas, 
 have not failed to be attributed to an accumulation of 
 electricity in the interior of the earth. Persons who have 
 lived long in New Andalusia, or in the low regions of Peru, 
 will admit that the period most to be dreaded for the fre- 
 quency of earthquakes is the beginning of the rainy season, 
 which, however, is also the season of thunder-storms. The 
 atmosphere and the state of the surface of the globe seem 
 to exercise an influence unknown to us on the changes 
 which take place at great depths ; and I am inclined to 
 think that the connection which it is supposed has been 
 traced between the absence of thunder-storms and the fre- 
 quency of earthquakes, is rather a physical hypothesis 
 framed by the half-learned of the country than the result 
 of long experience. The coincidence of certain phenomena 
 may be favoured by chance. The extraordinary commotions 
 felt almost continually during the space of two years on 
 the banks of the Mississippi and the Ohio, and which cor- 
 responded in 1812 with those of the valley of Caracas, were 
 preceded at Louisiana by a year almost exempt from thun- 
 der-storms. The public mind was again struck with this 
 phenomenon. We cannot be surprised that there should be 
 in the native land of Franklin a great readiness to receive 
 explanations founded on the theory of electricity. 
 
 The shock felt at Caracas in the month of December 
 1811, was the only one which preceded the tbrrible catas- 
 trophe of the 26th of March, 1812. The inhabitants of 
 Terra Firma were alike ignorant of the agitations of the 
 volcano in the island of St. Vincent, and of those felt in 
 the basin of the Mississippi, where, on the 7th and 8th 
 of February, 1812, the earth was day and night in perpetual 
 oscillation. A great drought prevailed at this period in 
 the province of Venezuela. Not a single drop of rain had 
 fallen at Caracas or in the country to the distance of ninety 
 
EARTHQUAKE OE CARACAS. 451 
 
 leagues round, during five months preceding the destruction 
 of the capital. The 26th of March was a remarkably hot 
 day. The air was calm, and the sky unclouded. It was 
 Ascension-day, and a great portion of the population was 
 assembled in the churches. Nothing seemed to presage the 
 calamities of the day. At seyen minutes after four in the 
 afternoon the first shock was felt. It was sufficiently forci- 
 ble to make the bells of the churches toll ; and it lasted five 
 or six seconds. During that interval the ground was in a 
 continual undulating, movement, and seemed to heave up like 
 a boiling liquid. The danger was thought to be past, when 
 a tremendous subterranean noise was heard, resembling the 
 rolling of thunder, but louder and of longer continuance than 
 that heard within the tropics in the time of storms. This 
 noise preceded a perpendicular motion of three or four 
 seconds, followed by an undulatory movement somewhat 
 longer. The shocks were in opposite directions, proceeding 
 from north to south, and from east to west. Nothing could 
 resist the perpendicular movement and the transverse undu- 
 lations. The town of Caracas was entirely overthrown, and 
 between nine and ten thousand of the inhabitants were 
 buried under the ruins of the houses and churches. The 
 procession of Ascension-day had not yet begun to pass 
 through the streets, but the crowd was so great within the 
 churches that nearly three or four thousand persons were 
 crushed by the fall of the roofs. The explosion was most 
 violent towards the north, in that part of the town situated 
 nearest the mountain of Avila arid the Silla. The churches 
 of la Trinidad and Alta Gracia, which were more than one 
 hundred and fifty feet high, and the naves of which were 
 supported by pillars of twelve or fifteen feet diameter, were 
 reduced to a mass of ruins scarcely exceeding five or six 
 feet in elevation. The sinking of the ruins has been so 
 considerable that there now scarcely remain any vestiges 
 of pillars or columns. The barracks, called el Quartel de 
 San Carlos, situated north of the church of la Trinidad, 
 on the road from the custom-house of La Pastora, almost 
 entirely disappeared. A regiment of troops of the line, 
 under arms, and in readiness to join the procession, was, 
 with the exception of a few men, buried beneath the 
 ruins of the barracks. Nine-tenths of the fine city of 
 
 2 G 2 
 
452 
 
 SCENE OF DESOLATION. 
 
 Caracas were entirely destroyed. The walls of some houses 
 not thrown down, as those in the street San Juan, near the 
 Capuchin Hospital, were cracked in such a manner as to 
 render them uninhabitable. The effects of the earthquake 
 were somewhat less violent in the western and southern 
 parts of the city, between the principal square and the 
 ravine of Caraguata. There, the cathedral, supported by 
 enormous buttresses, remains standing. 
 
 It is computed that nine or ten thousand persons were 
 killed in the city of Caracas, exclusive of those who, being 
 dangerously wounded, perished several months after, for 
 want of food and proper care. The night of the Festival of 
 the Ascension witnessed an awful scene of desolation and 
 distress. The thick cloud of dust which, rising above the 
 ruins, darkened the sky like a fog, had settled on the ground. 
 Ho commotion was felt, and never was a night more calm or 
 more serene. The moon, then nearly at the full, illumined 
 the rounded domes of the Silla, and the aspect of the sky 
 formed a perfect contrast to that of the earth, which was 
 covered with the bodies of the dead, and heaped with ruins. 
 Mothers were seen bearing in their arms their children, 
 whom they hoped to recall to life. Desolate families were 
 wandering through the city, seeking a brother, a husband, or 
 a friend, of whose fate they were ignorant, and whom they 
 believed to be lost in the crowd. The people pressed along 
 the streets, which could be traced only by long lines of 
 ruins. 
 
 All the calamities experienced in the great catastrophes 
 of Lisbon, Messina, Lima, and Kiobamba were renewed at 
 Caracas on the fatal 26th of March, 1812. Wounded per- 
 sons, buried beneath the ruins, were heard imploring by their 
 cries the help of the passers-by, and nearly two thousand 
 were dug out. Hever was pity more tenderly evinced ; never 
 was it more ingeniously active than in the efforts employed 
 to save the miserable victims whose groans reached the ear. 
 Implements for digging and clearing away the ruins were 
 entirely wanting ; and the people were obliged to use their 
 bare hands, to disinter the living. The wounded, as well as 
 the invalids who had escaped from the hospitals, were laid 
 on the banks of the small river Gruayra, where there was 
 no shelter but the foliage of trees. Beds, linen to dress the 
 
BUIlSrS OP THE CITY. 
 
 453 
 
 wounds, instruments of surgery, medicines, every object of 
 the most urgent necessity, was buried in the ruins. Every- 
 thing, even food, was w'anting ; and for the space of several 
 days water became scarce in the interior of the city. The 
 commotion had rent the pipes of the fountains; and the 
 falling in of the earth had choaked up the springs that 
 supplied them. To procure water it was necessary to go 
 down to the river Gruayra, which was considerably swelled ; 
 and even when the water was obtained vessels for convey- 
 ing it were wanting. 
 
 There was a duty to be fulfilled to the dead, enjoined 
 at once by piety and the dread of infection. It being 
 impossible to inter so many thousand bodies, half-buried 
 under the ruins, commissioners were appointed to burn 
 them: and for this purpose funeral piles were erected 
 between the heaps of ruins. This ceremony lasted several 
 days. Amidst so many public calamities, the people devoted 
 themselves to those religious duties which they thought 
 best fitted to appease the wrath of heaven. Some, assem- 
 bling in processions, sang funeral hymns ; others, in a state 
 of distraction, made their confessions aloud in the streets. In 
 Caracas was then repeated what had been remarked in the 
 province of Quito, after the tremendous earthquake of 1797 ; 
 a number of marriages were contracted between persons who 
 had neglected for many years to sanction their union by the 
 sacerdotal benediction. Children found parents, by whom 
 they had never till then been acknowledged; restitutions 
 were promised by persons who had never been accused of 
 fraud; and families who had long been at enmity were 
 drawn together by the tie of common calamity. But if this 
 feeling seemed to calm the passions of some, and open the 
 heart to pity, it had a contrary effect on others, rendering 
 them more rigorous and inhuman. In great calamities 
 vulgar minds evince less of goodness than of energy. Mis- 
 fortune acts in the same manner as the pursuits of litera- 
 ture and the study of nature ; the happy influence of which 
 is felt only by a few, giving more ardour to sentiment, more 
 elevation to the thoughts, and increased benevolence to the 
 disposition. 
 
 Shocks as violent as those which in about the space of a 
 
454 
 
 LINE OF COMMOTION. 
 
 minute * overthrew the city of Caracas, could not he con- 
 fined to a small portion of the contineut. Their fatal effects 
 extended as far as the provinces of Venezuela, Varinas, and 
 Maracaibo, along the coast ; and especially to the inland 
 mountains. La Guayra, Mayquetia, Antimano, Baruta, La 
 Vega, San Felipe, and Merida, were almost entirely de- 
 stroyed. The number of the dead exceeded four or five 
 thousand at La Guayra, and at the town of San Felipe, near 
 the copper-mines of Aroa. It would appear that on a line 
 running E.N.E. and AV.SAV. from La Guayra and Caracas 
 to the lofty mountains of Niquitao and Merida, the violence 
 of the earthquake was principally directed. It was felt in 
 the kingdom of New Grenada from the branches of the 
 high Sierra de Santa Martha t as far as Santa Fé de Bogota 
 and Honda, on the hanks of the Magdalena, one hundred 
 and eighty leagues from Caracas. It was everywhere more 
 violent in the Cordilleras of gneiss and mica-slate, or imme- 
 diately at their base, than in the plains ; and this difference 
 was particularly striking in the savannahs of Varinas and 
 Casanara.J In the valleys of Aragua, between Caracas and 
 the town of San Felipe, the commotions were very slight ; 
 and La Victoria, Maracay, and Valencia, scarcely suffered at 
 all, notwithstanding their proximity to the capital. At 
 Valecillo, a few leagues from Valencia, the yawning earth 
 threw out such an immense quantity of water, that it formed 
 a new torrent. The same phenomenon took place near 
 Porto-Cabello.§ On the other hand, the lake of Maracaibo 
 diminished sensibly. At Coro no commotion was felt, 
 though the town is situated on the coast, between other 
 towns which suffered from the earthquake. Fishermen, who 
 
 * The duration of the earthquake, that is to say the whole of the 
 movements of undulation and rising (undulacion y trepidacion), which 
 occasioned the horrible catastrophe of the 26th of March, 1812, was 
 -estimated by some at 50", by others at 1' 12". 
 
 •f As far as Villa de Los Remedios, and even to Carthagena. 
 
 + This is easily explained according to the system of those geologists 
 who are of opinion that all chains of mountains, volcanic and not vol- 
 canic, have been formed by being raised up, as if through crevices. 
 
 § It is asserted that, in the mountains of Aroa, the ground, immedi- 
 ately after the great shocks, was found covered with a very fine and 
 white earth, which appeared to have been projected through crevices. 
 
TOLCANIC FOCUS. 
 
 455 
 
 had passed the day of the 26th of March in the island of 
 Orchila, thirty leagues north-east of La Guayra, felt no 
 shock. These differences in the direction and propagation 
 of the shock, are probably owing to the peculiar position of 
 the stony strata. 
 
 Having thus traced the effects of the earthquake to the 
 west of Caracas, as far as the snowy mountains of Santa 
 Martha, and the table-land of Santa Fé de Bogota, we will 
 proceed to consider their action on the country eastward of 
 the capital. The commotions were very violent beyond Cauri- 
 mare, in the valley of Capaya, where they extended as far as 
 the meridian of Cape Codera : but it is extremely remark- 
 able that they were very feeble on the coasts of Nueva 
 Barcelona, Cumana, and Paria ; though these coasts are the 
 continuation of the shore of La Guayra, and were formerly 
 known to have been often agitated by subterranean com- 
 motions. Admitting that the destruction of the four towns 
 of Caracas, La Guayra, San Felipe, and Merida, may be 
 attributed to a volcanic focus situated under or near the 
 island of St. Vincent, we may conceive that the motion 
 might have been propagated from north-east to south-west 
 in a line passing through the islands of Los Hermanos, near 
 Blanquilla, without touching the coasts of Araya, Cumana, 
 and Nueva Barcelona. This propagation of the shock might 
 even have taken place without any commotion having been 
 felt at the intermediate points on the surface of the globe 
 (the Hermanos Islands for instance) . This phenomenon is 
 frequently remarked at Peru and Mexico, in earthquakes 
 which have followed during ages a fixed direction. The 
 inhabitants of the Andes say, speaking of an intermediary 
 tract of ground, not affected by the general commotion, “ that 
 it forms a bridge” ( que hace puente)-. as if they mean to indi- 
 cate by this expression that the undulations are propagated 
 at an immense depth under an inert rock. 
 
 At Caracas, fifteen or eighteen hours after the great catas- 
 trophe, £he earth was tranquil. The night, as has already 
 been observed, was fine and calm ; and the commotions did 
 not recommence till after the 27th. They were then at- 
 tended by a very loud and long continued subterranean 
 noise (bramido). The inhabitants of the destroyed city 
 wandered into the country; but the villages and farms 
 
456 
 
 SINKING OF MOUNTAINS. 
 
 having suffered as much as the town, they could find no 
 shelter till they were beyond the mountains of los Teques, 
 in the valleys of Aragua, and in the llanos or savannahs. 
 No less than fifteen oscillations were felt in one day. On 
 the 5th of April there was almost as violent an earthquake 
 as that which overthrew the capital. During several hours 
 the ground was in a state of perpetual undulation. Large 
 heaps of earth fell in the mountains ; and enormous masses 
 of rock were detached from the Silla of Caracas. It was 
 even asserted, and this opinion prevails still in the country, 
 that the two domes of the Silla sunk fifty or sixty toises ; 
 hut this statement is not founded on any measurement. I 
 am informed that, in like manner, in the province of Quito, 
 the people, at every period of great commotions, imagine 
 that the volcano of Tunguragua diminishes in height. It has 
 been affirmed, in many published accounts of the destruction 
 of Caracas, that the mountain of the Silla is an extinguish- 
 ed volcano; that a great quantity of volcanic substances 
 are found on the road from La Gruayra to Caracas ; that the 
 rocks do not present any regular stratification; and that 
 everything bears the stamp of the action of fire. It has 
 even been stated that twelve years prior to the great catas- 
 trophe, M. Bonpland and myself had, from our own obser- 
 vations, considered the Silla as a very dangerous neighbour 
 to the city of Caracas, because the mountain contained a, 
 great quantity of sulphur, and the commotions must come 
 from the north-east. It is seldom that observers of nature 
 have to justify themselves for an accomplished prediction ; 
 but I think it my duty to oppose ideas which are too easily 
 adopted on the local causes of earthquakes. 
 
 In all places where the soil has been incessantly agitated 
 for whole months, as at Jamaica in 1693, Lisbon in 1755, 
 Cumana in 1766, and Piedmont in 1808, a volcano is ex- 
 pected to open. People forget that we must seek the focus 
 or centre of action, far from the surface of the earth ; that, 
 acc ording to undeniable evidence, the undulations are pro- 
 pagated almost at the same instant across seas of immense 
 depth, at the distance of a thousand leagues ; and that the 
 greatest commotions take place not at the foot of active 
 volcanos, but in chains of mountains composed of the most 
 heterogeneous rocks. In our geognostical observation of 
 
VOLCANIC FOEHATIONS. 
 
 457 
 
 the country round Caracas we found gneiss, and mica-slate 
 containing beds of primitive limestone. The strata are 
 scarcely more fractured or irregularly inclined than near 
 Ereyburg in Saxony, or wherever mountains of primitive 
 formation rise abruptly to great heights. I found at Caracas 
 neither basalt nor dorolite, nor even trachytes or trap-por- 
 phyries; nor in general any trace of an extinguished vol- 
 cano, unless we choose to regard the diabases of primitive 
 griinstein, contained in gneiss, as masses of lava, which have 
 filled up fissures. These diabases are the same as those of 
 Bohemia, Saxony, and Franconia ; # and whatever opinion 
 may be entertained respecting the ancient causes of the 
 oxidation of the globe at its surface, all those primitive 
 mountains, which contain a mixture of hornblende and feld- 
 spar, either in veins or in balls with concentric layers, will 
 not, I presume, be called volcanic formations. Mont Blanc 
 and Mont d’Or will not be ranged in one and the same 
 class. Even the partisans of the Huttonian or volcanic 
 theory make a distinction between the lavas melted under 
 the mere pressure of the atmosphere at the surface of the 
 globe, and those layers formed by fire beneath the immense 
 weight of the ocean and superincumbent rocks. They would 
 not confound Auvergne and the granitic valley of Caracas 
 in the same denomination; that of a country of extinct 
 volcanos. 
 
 I never could have pronounced the opinion, that the Silla 
 and the Cerro de Avila, mountains of gneiss and mica-slate, 
 were in dangerous proximity to the city of Caracas because 
 they contained a great quantity of pyrites in subordinate 
 beds of primitive limestone. But I remember having said, 
 during my stay at Caracas, that the eastern extremity of 
 Terra Firma appeared, since the great earthquake of Quito, 
 in a state of agitation, which warranted apprehension that 
 the province of Venezuela would gradually be exposed to 
 violent commotions. I added, that when a country had 
 been long subject to frequent shocks, new subterranean 
 communications seemed to open with neighbouring coun- 
 tries; and that the volcanos of the West India Islands, 
 
 * These griinsteins are found in Bohemia, near Pilsen, in granite ; in 
 Saxony, in the mica-slates of Scheenberg; in Franconia, between Steeben 
 and Lauenstein, in transition-slates. 
 
458 
 
 SUBTERRANEAN THUNDER. 
 
 lying in the direction of the Silla, north-east of the city, 
 were perhaps the vents, at the time of an eruption, for those 
 elastic fluids which cause earthquakes on the coasts of the 
 continent. These considerations, founded on local know- 
 ledge of the place, and on simple analogies, are very far 
 from a prediction justified by the course of physical events. 
 
 On the 30th of April, 1812, whilst violent commotions 
 were felt simultaneously in the valley of the Mississippi, in 
 the island of St. Vincent, and in the province of Venezuela, 
 a subterranean noise resembling frequent discharges of 
 large cannon was heard at Caracas, at Calabozo (situated in 
 the midst of the steppes), and on the borders of the Rio 
 Apure, over a superficies of four thousand square leagues. 
 This noise began at two in the morning. It was accom- 
 panied by no shock ; and it is very remarkable, that it was 
 as loud on the coast as at the distance of eighty leagues 
 inland. It was everywhere believed to be transmitted 
 through the air; and was so far from being thought a 
 subterranean noise, that in several places, preparations were 
 made for defence against an enemy, who seemed to be 
 advancing with heavy artillery. Senor Palacio, crossing the 
 Rio Apure below the Orivante, near the junction of the 
 Rio Nula, was told by the inhabitants, that the firing of 
 cannon had been heard distinctly at the western extremity 
 of the province of Varinas, as well as at the port of La 
 G-uayra to the north of the chain of the coast. 
 
 The day on which the inhabitants of Terra Firma were 
 alarmed by a subterranean noise was that of the great 
 eruption of the volcano in the island of St. Vincent. That 
 mountain, near five hundred toises high, had not thrown 
 out lava since the year 1718. Scarcely was any smoke 
 perceived to issue from it, when, in the month of May 1811, 
 frequent shocks announced that the volcanic fire was either 
 rekindled, or directed anew to that part of the West Indies. 
 The first eruption did not take place till the 27th of April, 
 1812, at noon. It was merely an ejection of ashes, but 
 attended with a tremendous noise. On the 30th, the lava 
 overflowed the brink of the crater, and, after a course of 
 four hours, reached the sea. The sound of the explosion 
 is described as resembling that of alternate discharges of 
 very large cannon and musketry ; and it is worthy of re- 
 
SHOCKS AT SEA. 
 
 459 
 
 mark, that it seemed much louder to persons out at sea, 
 and at a great distance from land, than to those within sight 
 of land, and near the burning volcano. 
 
 The distance in a straight line from the volcano of St. 
 Vincent to the Eio Apure, near the mouth of the Nula, is 
 two hundred and ten leagues.* The explosions were conse- 
 quently heard at a distance equal to that between Vesu- 
 vius and Paris. This phenomenon, in conjunction with a 
 great number of facts observed in the Cordilleras of the 
 Andes, shows that the sphere of the subterranean activity of 
 a volcano is much more extensive than we should be disposed 
 to admit, if we judged merely from the small changes 
 effected at the surface of the globe. The detonations heard 
 during whole days together in the New World, eighty, one 
 hundred, or even two hundred leagues distant from a crater, 
 do not reach us by the propagation of the sound through 
 the air ; they are transmitted by the earth, perhaps in the 
 yery place where we happen to he. If the eruptions 
 of the valcano of St. Vincent, Cotopaxi, or Tunguragua, 
 resounded from afar, like a cannon of immense magnitude, 
 the noise ought to increase in the inverse ratio of the dis- 
 tance : hut observations prove, that this augmentation does 
 not take place. I must further observe, that M. Bonpland 
 and I, going from Guayaquil to the coast of Mexico, 
 crossed latitudes in the Pacific, where the crew of our ship 
 were dismayed by a hollow sound coming from the depth of 
 the ocean, and transmitted by the waters. At that time a 
 new eruption of Cotopaxi took place, but we were as far 
 distant from the volcano, as Etna from the city of Naples. 
 The little town of Honda, on the banks of the Magdalena, 
 is not less than one hundred and forty-five leagues! from 
 Cotopaxi ; and yet, in the great explosions of this volcano, 
 in 1744, a subterranean noise was heard at Honda, and 
 supposed to be discharges of heavy artillery. The monks 
 of San Erancisco spread a report that the town of Car- 
 thagena was besieged and bombarded by the English ; and 
 the intelligence was believed throughout the country. Now 
 
 * Where the contrary is not expressly stated, nautical leagues of 
 twenty to a degree, or two thousand eight hundred and fifty-five toises, 
 are always to be understood. 
 
 + This is the distance from Vesuvius to Mont Blanc. 
 
460 
 
 YOLCANIC SYSTEMS. 
 
 the volcano of Cotopaxi is a cone, more than one thousand 
 eight hundred toises above the basin of Honda, and it 
 rises from a table-land, the elevation of which is more than 
 one thousand five hundred toises above the valley of the 
 Magdalena. In all the colossal mountains of Quito, of the 
 province of los Pastos, and of Popayan, crevices and val- 
 leys without number intervene. It cannot be admitted, 
 under these circumstances, that the noise was transmitted 
 through the air, or over the surface of the globe, and that 
 it came from the point at which the cone and crater of 
 Cotapaxi are situated. It appears probable, that the more 
 elevated part of the kingdom of Quito and the neighbour- 
 ing Cordilleras, far from being a group of distinct vol- 
 canoes, constitute a single swollen mass, an enormous vol- 
 canic wall, stretching from south to north, and the crest 
 of which presents a superficies of more than six hundred 
 square leagues. Cotopaxi, Tunguragua, Antisana, and Pi- 
 chincha, are on this same raised ground. They have differ- 
 ent names, hut they are merely separate summits of the 
 same volcanic mass. The fire issues sometimes from one, 
 sometimes from another of these summits. The obstructed 
 craters appear to he extinguished volcanos; but we may 
 presume, that, while Cotopaxi or Tunguragua have only one 
 or two eruptions in the course of a century, the fire is not 
 less continually active under the town of Quito, under 
 Pichincha and Imbabura. 
 
 Advancing northward we find, between the volcano of 
 Cotopaxi and the town of Honda, two other systems of 
 volcanic mountains, those of los Pastos and of Popayan. 
 The connection between these systems was manifested in 
 the Andes by a phenomenon which I have already had 
 occasion to notice, in speaking of the last destruction of 
 Cumana. In the month of November 1796 a thick column 
 of smoke began to issue from the volcano of Pasto, west of 
 the town of that name, and near the valley of Rio Guaytara. 
 The mouths of the volcano are lateral, and situated on its 
 western declivity, yet during three successive months the 
 column of smoke rose so much higher than the ridge of the 
 mountain that it was constantly visible to the inhabitants of 
 the town of Pasto. They described to us their astonish- 
 ment when, on the 4th of February, 1797, they observed the 
 
VOLCANIC REACTIONS. 
 
 461 
 
 smoke disappear in an instant, whilst no shock whatever 
 was felt. At that very moment, sixty-five leagues south- 
 ward, between Chimborazo, Tunguragua, and the Altar 
 (Capac-Urcu), the town of Eiobamba was overthrown by 
 the most terrible earthquake on record. Is it possible to 
 doubt, from this coincidence of phenomena, that the vapours 
 issuing from the small apertures or ventanillas of the volcano 
 of Pasto had an influence on the pressure of those elastic 
 fluids which convulsed the earth in the kingdom of Quito, 
 and destroyed in a few minutes thirty or forty thousand 
 inhabitants ? 
 
 To explain these great effects of volcanic reactions, and 
 to prove that the group or system of the volcanos of the 
 West India Islands may sometimes shake the continent, I 
 have cited the Cordillera of the Andes. Geological reason- 
 ing can he supported only by the analogy of facts which are 
 recent, and consequently well authenticated: and in what 
 other region of the globe could we find greater and more 
 varied volcanic phenomena than in that double chain of 
 mountains heaved up by fire ? in that land where nature has 
 covered every mountain and every valley with her marvels ? 
 If we consider a burning crater only as an isolated pheno- 
 menon, if we he satisfied with merely examining the mass of 
 stony substances which it has thrown up, the volcanic action 
 at the surface of the globe will appear neither very powerful 
 nor very extensive. But the image of this action becomes 
 enlarged in the mind when we study the relations which 
 link together volcanos of the same group ; for instance, 
 those of Naples and Sicily, of the Canary Islands,* of the 
 
 * I have already observed (p. 113) that the whole group of the Canary 
 Islands rises, as we may say, above one and the same submarine vol- 
 cano. Since the sixteenth century, the fire of this volcano has burst 
 forth alternately in Palma, Teneriffe, and Lancerote. Auvergne presents 
 a whole system of volcanos, the action of which has now ceased ; but in 
 the middle of a system of active volcanos, for instance, in that of Quito, 
 we must not consider as an extinguished volcano a mountain, the crater 
 of which is obstructed, and through which the subterraneous fire has 
 not issued for ages. Etna, the Æolian Isles, Vesuvius, and Epomeo ; 
 the peak of Teyde, Palma, and Lancerote ; St. Michael, La Caldiera of 
 Fayal, and Pico ; St. Vincent, St. Lucia, and Guadaloupe ; Orizava, 
 Popocatepetl, Jorullo, and La Colima ; Bombacho, the volcano of Gre- 
 nada, Telica, Momotombo, Isalco, and the volcano of Guatimala ; 
 
462 
 
 SIMULTANEOUS ACTION. 
 
 Azores, of the Caribbee islands of Mexico, of Guatimala, 
 and of the table-land of Quito ; when we examine either the 
 reactions of these different systems of volcanos on one 
 another, or the distance at which, by subterranean commu- 
 nication, they simultaneously convulse the earth. 
 
 The study of volcanos may be divided into two distinct 
 branches ; one, simply mineralogical, is directed to the exa- 
 mination of the stony strata, altered or produced by the 
 action of fire ; from the formation of the trachytes or trap- 
 porphyries, of basalts, phonolites, and dolerites, to the most 
 recent lavas: the other branch, less accessible and more 
 neglected, comprehends the physical relations which link 
 volcanos together, the influence of one volcanic system on 
 another, the connection existing between the action of 
 burning mountains and the commotions which agitate the 
 earth at great distances, and during long intervals, in the 
 same direction. This study cannot progress till the various 
 epochs of simultaneous action, the direction, the extent, and 
 the force of the convulsions are carefully noted ; till we have 
 attentively observed their progressive advance to regions 
 which they had not previously reached ; and the coincidence 
 between distant volcanic eruptions and those noises which 
 the inhabitants of the Andes very expressively term subter- 
 raneous thunders, or roarings.* All these objects are com- 
 prehended in the domain of the history of nature. 
 
 Though the narrow circle within which all certain tradi- 
 tions are confined, does not present any of those general 
 revolutions which have heaved up the Cordilleras and buried 
 myriads of pelagian animals ; yet Nature, acting under our 
 eyes, nevertheless exhibits violent though partial changes, 
 the study of which may throw light on the most remote 
 epochs. In the interior of the earth those mysterious powers 
 exist, the effects of which are manifested at the surface by 
 the production of vapours, of incandescent scoriae, of new 
 volcanic rocks and thermal springs, by the appearance of 
 
 Cotopaxi, Tunguragua, Pichincha, Antisana, and Sangai, belong to the 
 same system of burning volcanos ; they are generally ranged in rows, as 
 if they had issued from a creviee, or vein not filled up ; and, it is very 
 remarkable, that their position is in some parts in the general direction of 
 the Cordilleras, and in others in a contrary direction. 
 
 * Bramidos y truenos subterraneos. 
 
PERIODS OE TRANQUILLITY. 
 
 463 
 
 new islands and mountains, by commotions propagated with 
 the rapidity of an electric shock, finally by those subter- 
 ranean thunders,* heard during whole months, without 
 shaking the earth, in regions far distant from active 
 volcanos. 
 
 In proportion as equinoctial America shall increase in 
 culture and population, and the system of volcanos of the 
 central table-land of Mexico, of the Caribbee Islands, of 
 Popayan, of los Pastos, and Quito, shall be more atten- 
 tively observed, the connection of eruptions and of earth- 
 quakes, which precede and sometimes accompany those 
 eruptions, will be more generally recognized. The volcanos 
 just mentioned, particularly those of the Andes, which rise 
 above the enormous height of two thousand five hundred 
 toises, present great advantages for observation. The 
 periods of their eruptions are singularly regular. They 
 remain thirty or forty years without emitting scoriæ, ashes, 
 or even vapours. I could not perceive the smallest trace 
 of smoke on the summit of Tunguragua or Cotopaxi. A 
 gust of vapour issuing from the crater of Mount Vesuvius 
 scarcely attracts the attention of the inhabitants of Naples, 
 accustomed to the movements of that little volcano, which 
 throws out scoriæ sometimes during two or three years 
 successively. Thence it becomes difficult to judge whether 
 the emission of scoriæ may have been more frequent at 
 the time when an earthquake has been felt in the Apen- 
 nines. On the ridge of the Cordilleras everything assumes 
 a more decided character. An eruption of ashes, which 
 lasts only a few minutes, is often followed by a calm of 
 ten years. In such circumstances it is easy to mark the 
 periods, and to observe the coincidence of phenomena. 
 
 If, as there appears to be little reason to doubt, that the 
 destruction of Cumana in 1797, and of Caracas in 1812, indi- 
 
 * In the town of Guanaxuato, in Mexico, these thunders lasted from 
 the 9th of January till the 12th of February, 1784. Guanaxuato is 
 situated forty leagues north of the volcano of Jorullo, and sixty leagues 
 north-west of the volcano of Popocatepetl. In places nearer these two 
 volcanos, three leagues distant from Guanaxuato, the subterranean 
 thunders were not heard. The noise was circumscribed within a very 
 narrow space, in the region of a primitive schist, which approaches a 
 transition-schist, containing the richest silver mines of the known world, 
 and on which rest trap -porphyries, slates, and diabasis (grlinstein.) 
 
464 
 
 Y0LCA3TIC ISLAÏTDS. 
 
 r 
 
 eate the influence of the volcanos of the West India Islands* 1 
 on the commotions felt on the coasts of Terra Firma, it 
 may he desirable, before we close this chapter, to take a 
 cursory view of this Mediterranean archipelago. The vol- 
 canic islands form one-fifth of that great arc extending S 
 from the coast of Paria to the peninsula of Florida. Fun- 
 ning from south to north, they close the Caribbean Sea 
 on the eastern side, while the greater West India Islands ! 
 appear like the remains of a group of primitive mountains, 
 the summit of which seems to have been between Cape 
 Abacou, Point Morant, and the Copper Mountains, in that 
 part where the islands of St. Domingo, Cuba, and Jamaica, 
 are nearest to each other. Considering the basin of the 
 Atlantic as an immense valley + which separates the two 
 continents, and where, from 20° south to 30° north, the 
 salient angles (Brazil and Senegambia) correspond to the 
 receding angles (the gulf of Guinea and the Caribbean Sea), 
 we are led to think that the latter sea owes its formation 
 to the action of currents, which, like the current of rotation 
 now existing, have flowed from east to west ; and have given 
 
 * The following is the series of the phenomena : — 
 
 27th of September, 1796. Eruption in the West India Islands. 
 (Volcano of Guadaloupe). 
 
 November, 1796. The volcano of Pasto began to emit smoke. 
 
 14th of December, 1796. Destruction of Cumana. 
 
 4th of February, 1797. Destruction of Riobamba. 
 
 30th of January, 1811. Appearance of Sabrina Island, in the Azores. 
 The island enlarged very considerably on the 15th of June, 1811. 
 
 May, 1811. Commencement of the earthquakes in the island of St. 
 "Vincent, which lasted till May 1812. 
 
 16th of December, 1811. Commencement of the commotions in the 
 valley of the Mississippi and the Ohio, which lasted till 1813. 
 
 December, 1811. Earthquake at Caracas. 
 
 26th of March, 1811. Destruction of Caracas. Earthquakes, which 
 continued till 1813. 
 
 30th of April, 1811. Eruption of the volcano in St. Vincent; and 
 the same day subterranean noises at Caracas, and on the banks of the 
 Apure. 
 
 *f* The valley is narrowest (300 leagues) between Cape St. Roque and 
 Sierra Leone. Proceeding toward the north along the coasts of the New 
 Continent, from its pyramidal extremity, or the 'Straits of Magellan, we 
 imagine we recognise the effect* «f a repulsion directed first toward the 
 north-east, then toward the north-west, and finally again to the north- 
 
VOLCANIC RANGES. 
 
 465 
 
 the southern coast of Porto Pico, 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 take 
 place through elongated crevices, usually take a straight 
 direction, we shall find it difficult to judge from the dis- 
 position of the craters alone, whether the volcanos have 
 belonged to the same chain, or have always been isolated. 
 Supposing an irruption of the ocean 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 burning 
 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 Almaguer ; 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 smafier 
 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. The principal line of 
 the volcanos of Java, on a distance of 160 leagues, runs from west to east, 
 through the mountains of Gagak, Gedé, Tankuban-Prahu, Ungarang, 
 Merapi, Lawu, Wilis, Arjuna, Dasar, and Tashem. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 H 
 
466 
 
 CONNEXION O E YOLCAÏ>OS. 
 
 Parime, stretching from west to east,* in the interior of 
 the continent, and not in a direction parallel with the coast, 
 between the mouths of the river Amazon and the Orinoco. 
 But though we find no chain of mountains at the north- 
 east extremity of Terra Pirma, having the same direction 
 as the archipelago of the smaller West India Islands, it 
 does not therefore follow that the volcanic mountains of 
 the archipelago may not have belonged originally to the 
 continent, and formed a part of the littoral chain of Caracas 
 and Cumana.t 
 
 In opposing the objections of some celebrated naturalists, 
 I am far from maintaining the ancient contiguity of all 
 the smaller West India Islands. I am rather inclined to 
 consider them as islands heaved up by fire, and ranged in 
 that regular fine, of which we find striking examples in so 
 many volcanic hills in Auvergne, in Mexico, and in Peru. 
 The geological constitution of the Archipelago appears, 
 from the little we know respecting it, to be very similar to 
 that of the Azores and the Canary Islands. Primitive for- 
 inations are nowhere seen above ground ; we find only what 
 belongs unquestionably to volcanos : feldspar-lava, dole- 
 rite, basalt, conglomerated scoriae, tufa, and pumice-stone. 
 Among the limestone formations we must distinguish those 
 which are essentially subordinate to volcanic tufas J from 
 
 * From the cataracts of Atures towards the Essequibo River. This 
 chain of Pacaraimo divides the waters cf the Carony from those of the 
 Rio Parime, or Rio de Aguas Blancas. 
 
 + Among many such examples which the structure of the globe 
 displays, we shall mention ônly the inflexion at a right angle formed by 
 the Higher Alps towards the maritime Alps, in Europe ; and the Belour- 
 Tagh, which joins transversely the Mouz-Tagh and the Himalaya, in Asia. 
 -Amid the prejudices which impede the progress of mineralogical geo- 
 graphy, we may reckon, 1st, the supposition of a perfect uniformity of 
 direction in the chains of mountains ; 2nd, the hypothesis of the conti- 
 nuity of all chains ; 3rd, the supposition that the highest summits deter- 
 mine the direction of a central chain ; 4th, the idea that, in all places 
 where great rivers take rise, we may suppose the existence of great table- 
 lands, or very high mountains. 
 
 + We have noticed some of the above, following Yon Buch, at Lance- 
 rote, and at Fortaventura, in the system of the Canary Islands. Among 
 the smaller islands of the West Indies, the following islets are entirely 
 'calcareous, according to M. Cortès : Mariegalante, La Desirade, the 
 Grande Terre of Guadaloupe, and the Grenadillas. According to the 
 observations of that naturalist, Curaçoa and Buenos Ayres present only 
 
WEST INDIAN" VOLCANOS. 
 
 467 
 
 those which appear to be the work of madrepores and other 
 zoophytes. The latter, according to M. Moreau de Jonnès, 
 seem to lie on shoals of a volcanic nature. Those moun- 
 tains, which present traces of the action of fire more or less 
 recent, and some of which reach nearly nine hundred toises 
 of elevation, are all situated on the western skirt of the 
 smaller West India Islands.* Each island is not the effect 
 of one single heaving-up : most of them appear to consist 
 of isolated masses which have been progressively united 
 together. The matter has not been emitted from one crater, 
 hut from several; so that a single island of small extent 
 contains a whole system of volcanos, regions purely basaltic, 
 and others covered with recent lavas. The volcanos still 
 burning are those of St. Vincent, St. Lucia, and Guadeloupe. 
 The first threw out lava in 1718 and 1812 ; in the second 
 there is a continual formation of sulphur by the conden- 
 sation of vapours, which issue from the crevices of an 
 ancient crater. The last eruption of the volcano of G-uada- 
 loupe took place in 1797. The Solfatara of St. Christopher’s 
 was still burning in 1692. At Martinique, Vauclin, Mon- 
 tagne Pelée, and. the crater surrounded by the five Paps of 
 Carbet, must be considered as three extinguished volcanos. 
 The effects of thunder have been often confounded in that 
 place with subterranean fire. ISTo good observation has con- 
 firmed the supposed eruption of the 22nd of January, 
 
 calcareous formations. M. Cortes divides the West India Islands into, 
 1st, those containing at once primitive, secondary, and volcanic for- 
 mations, like the greater islands ; 2nd, those entirely calcareous, (or at 
 least so considered) as Mariegalante and Curaçoa; 3rd, those at onee 
 volcanic and calcareous, as Antigua, St. Bartholomew, St. Martin, and 
 St. Thomas ; 4th, those which have volcanic rocks only, as St. Vincent, 
 St. Lucia, and St. Eustache. 
 
 * Journal des Mines, tom. iii. p. 59. In order to exhibit in one point 
 of view the whole system of the volcanos of the smaller West India 
 . Islands, I will here trace the direction of the islands from south to 
 north. — Grenada, an ancient crater, filled with water ; boiling springs ; 
 basalts between St. George and Goave. — St. Vincent, a burning volcano. 
 — St. Lucia, a very active solfatara, named Oualibou, two or three 
 hundred toises high ; jets of hot water, by which small basins are peri- 
 odically filled. — Martinique, three great extinguished volcanos ; Vauclin, 
 the Paps of Carbet, which are perhaps the most elevated summits of the 
 ; smaller islands, and Montagne Pelée. (The height of this last mountain 
 is probably 800 toises; according to Leblond it is 670 toises; according 
 
468 
 
 STTBTEEEANEAîT THUNDEE. 
 
 1792. The group of volcanos in the Caribhee Islands 
 resembles that of the volcanos of Quito and Los Pastos ; 
 craters with which the subterranean fire does not appear to 
 communicate are ranged on the same line with burning 
 craters, and alternate with them. 
 
 Notwithstanding the intimate connection manifested in 
 the action of the volcanos of the smaller West India Islands 
 and the earthquakes of Terra Pirma, it often happens that 
 shocks felt in the volcanic archipelago are not propagated to 
 the island of Trinidad, or to the coasts of Caracas and 
 Cumana. This phenomenon is in no way surprising : even 
 in the Caribbees the commotions are often confined to one 
 place. The great eruption of the volcano in St. Vincent’s 
 did not occasion an earthquake at Martinique or Guada- 
 loupe. Loud explosions were heard there as well as at 
 Venezuela, but the ground was not convulsed. 
 
 These explosions must not be confounded with the rolling 
 noise which everywhere precedes the slightest commotions ; 
 they are often heard on the banks of the Orinoco, and (as 
 we were assured by persons living on the spot) between the 
 Bio Arauca and Cuchivero. Bather MoreHo relates that at 
 the Mission of Cabruta the subterranean noise so mucli 
 resembles discharges of small cannon (pedreros) that it 
 has seemed as if a battle were being fought at a distance. 
 On the 21st of October, 1766, the day of the terrible earth- 
 quake which desolated the province of New Andalusia, the 
 ground was simultaneously shaken at Cumana, at Caracas, 
 at Maracaybo, and on the banks of the Casanare, the Meta, 
 the Orinoco, and the Ventuario. Bather Grili has described 
 
 to Dupuget, 736 toises. Between Vauclin and the feldspar-lavas of the 
 Paps of Carbet is found, as M. Moreau de Jonnès asserts, in a neck of 
 land, a region of early basalt called La Roche Carrée). Thermal waters 
 of Prêcheur and Lameutin. — Dominica, completely volcanic. — Guada- 
 loupe, an active volcano, the height of which, according to Leboucher, is 
 799 toises ; according to Amie, 850 toises. — Montserrat, a solfatara ; fine 
 porphyritic lavas with large crystals of feldspar and hornblende near 
 Galloway, according to Mr. Nugent. — Nevis, a solfatara. — St. Christo- 
 pher’s, a solfatara at Mount Misery. — St. Eustache, a crater of an extin- 
 guished volcano, surrounded by pumice-stone. (Trinidad, which is 
 traversed by a chain of primitive slate, appears to have anciently formed 
 a part of the littoral chain of Cumana, and not of the system of the 
 mountains of the Caribbee Islands.) 
 
TTKSATISEACTORY THEORIES. 
 
 469 
 
 these commotions at the Mission of Encaramada, a country 
 entirely granitic, where they were accompanied by loud ex- 
 plosions. Great fallings-in of the earth took place in the 
 mountain Paurari, and near the rock Aravacoto a small 
 island disappeared in the Orinoco. The undulatory motion 
 continued during a whole hour. This seemed the first 
 signal of those violent commotions which shook the coasts 
 of Cumana and Cariaco for more than ten months. It 
 might he supposed that men living in woods, with no other 
 shelter than huts of reeds and palm-leaves, could have little 
 to dread from earthquakes. But at Erevato and Caura, 
 where these phenomena are of rare occurrence, they terrify 
 the Indians, frighten the beasts of the forests, and impel 
 the crocodiles to quit the waters for the shore. Nearer the 
 sea, where shocks are frequent, far from being dreaded by 
 Ihe inhabitants, they are regarded with satisfaction as the 
 prognostics of a wet and fertile year. 
 
 In this dissertation on the earthquakes of Terra Eirma 
 and on the volcanos of the neighbouring archipelago of the 
 West India Islands, I have pursued the plan of first relating 
 a number of particular facts, and then considering them in 
 one general point of view. Everything announces in the 
 interior of the globe the operation of active powers, which, 
 by mutual reaction, balance and modify one another. The 
 greater our ignorance of the causes of these undulatory 
 movements, these evolutions of heat, these formations of 
 elastic fluids, the more it becomes the duty of persons who 
 apply themselves to the study of physical science to examine 
 the relations which these phenomena so uniformly present 
 at great distances apart. It is only by considering these 
 various relations under a general point of view, and tracing 
 them over a great extent of the surface of the globe, through 
 formations of rocks the most different, that we are led to 
 abandon the supposition of trifling local causes, strata of 
 pyrites, or of ignited coal. # 
 
 The following is the series of phenomena remarked on the 
 northern coasts of Cumana, Nueva Barcelona, and Caracas ; 
 and presumed to be connected with the causes which pro- 
 
 * See “ Views of Nature,” — On the structure and action of volcanos 
 in different parts of the world, — p. 353 (Bohn’s ed.); also “Cosmos,” 
 pp. 199 — 225 (Bohn’s ed.). 
 
47a 
 
 CONNECTED PHENOMENA.- 
 
 duce earthquakes and eruptions of lava. We shall begin 
 with the most eastern extremity, the island of Trinidad;- 
 which seems rather to belong to the shore of the continent 
 than to the system of the mountains of the West India 
 Islands. 
 
 I. The pit which throws up asphaltum in the bay of 1 
 Mayaro, on the eastern coast of the island of Trinidad, 
 southward of Point Guataro. This is the mine of chapapote 
 or mineral tar of the country. I was assured that in the 
 months of March and June the eruptions are often attended 
 with violent explosions, smoke, and flames. Almost on the 
 same parallel, and also in the sea, but westward of the 
 island (near Punta de la Brea, and to the south of the port 
 of Naparaimo), we find a similar vent. On the neighbour- 
 ing coast, in a clayey ground, appears the celebrated lake of * 
 asphaltum (Laguna de la Brea), a marsh, the waters of which 
 have the same temperature as the atmosphere. The small, 
 cones situated at the south-western extremity of the island, 
 between Point Icacos and the Bio Erin, appear to have some 
 analogy with the volcanos of air and mud which I met with 
 at Turbaeo in the kingdom of New Grenada. I mention 
 these situations of asphaltum on account of the remarkable 
 circumstances peculiar to them in these regions ; for I am not 
 unaware that naphtha, petroleum, and asphaltum are found 
 equally in volcanic and secondary regions, # and even more 
 frequently in the latter. Petroleum is found floating on the 
 sea thirty leagues north of Trinidad, around the island of 
 Grenada, which contains an extinguished crater and basalts. 
 
 II. Hot Springs of Irapa, at the north-eastern extremity 
 of New Andalusia, between Bio Caribe, Soro, and Yagua- 
 rapayo. 
 
 ILL Air-volcano, or Salce, of Cumacatar, to the south of 
 San Jose and Carupano, near the northern coast of the 
 continent, between La Montana de Paria and the town of 
 Cariaco. Almost constant explosions are felt in a clayey 
 
 * The inflammable emanations of Pietra Mala, (consisting of hydrogen 
 gas containing naphtha in a state of suspension) issue from the Alpine 
 limestone, which may be traced from Covigliano to Raticofa, and which 
 lies on ancient sandstone near Scarica 1’Asino. Under this sandstone 
 (old red sandstone) we find black transition limestone and the grauwacke 
 (quartzose psammite) of Florence. .t 
 
CONNECTED PHENOMENA. 
 
 471 
 
 soil, which is affirmed to be impregnated with sulphur. 
 Hot sulphureous waters gush out with such violence that 
 the ground is agitated by very sensible shocks. It is said 
 that flames have been frequently seen issuing out since the 
 great earthquake of 1797. These facts are well worthy of 
 being examined. 
 
 IV. Petroleum-spring of the Buen Pastor, near Bio Areo. 
 Large masses of sulphur have been found in clayey soils at 
 Gruayuta, as in the valley of San Bonifacio, and near the 
 junction of the Bio Pao with the Orinoco. 
 
 Y. The Hot AV aters (Aguas Calientes) south of the Bio 
 Azul, and the Hollow Ground of Cariaco, which, at the 
 time of the great earthquake of Cumana, threw up sulphu- 
 retted water and viscous petroleum. 
 
 VI. Hot waters of the gulf of Cariaco. 
 
 VII. Petroleum-spring in the same gulf, near Maniquarez. 
 It issues from mica-slate. 
 
 VIII. Blames issuing from the earth, near Cumana, on 
 the banks of the Manzanares, and at Mariguitar, on the 
 southern coast of the gulf of Cariaco, at the time of the 
 great earthquake of 1797. 
 
 IX. Igneous phenomena of the mountain of Cuchivano, 
 near Cumanacoa. 
 
 X. Petroleum-spring gushing from a shoal to the north 
 of the Caracas Islands. The smell of this spring warns ships 
 of the danger of this shoal, on which there is only one 
 fathom of water. 
 
 XI. Thermal springs of the mountain of the Brigantine, 
 near Hue va Barcelona. Temperature 43 - 2° (centigrade). 
 
 XII. Thermal springs of Provisor, near San Diego, in 
 the province of Hew Barcelona. 
 
 XIII. Thermal spriugs of Onoto, between Turmero and 
 Maracay, in the valleys of Aragua, west of Caracas. 
 
 XIV. Thermal springs of Mariara, in the same valleys. 
 Temperature 58 ’9°. 
 
 XV. Thermal springs of Las Trincheras, between Porto 
 Cabello and Valencia, issuing from granite like those of 
 Mariara, and forming a river of warm water (Bio de Aguas 
 Calientes). Temperature 904° . 
 
 XVI. Boiling springs of the Sierra He va da of Merida. 
 
 XVII. Aperture of Mena, on the borders of Lake Mara- 
 
472 
 
 EXPLOSIONS OE YAPOTTE. 
 
 caybo. It throws up asphaltum, and is said to emit gaseous 
 emanations, which ignite spontaneously, and are seen at a 
 great distance. 
 
 These are the springs of petroleum and of thermal waters, 
 the igneous meteors, and the ejections of muddy substances 
 attended with explosions, of which I acquired a knowledge 
 in the vast provinces of Venezuela, whilst travelling over a 
 space of two hundred leagues from east to west. These 
 various phenomena have occasioned great excitement among 
 the inhabitants since the catastrophes of 1797 and 1812 : 
 yet they present nothing which constitutes a volcano, in the 
 sense hitherto attributed to that word. If the apertures, 
 which throw up vapours and water with violent noise, be 
 sometimes called volcancitos, it is only by such of the inha- 
 bitants as persuade themselves that volcanos must necessa- 
 rily exist in countries so frequently exposed to earthquakes. 
 Advancing from the burning crater of St. Vincent in the 
 directions of south, west and south-west, first by the chain 
 of the Caribbee Islands, then by the littoral chain of 
 Cumana and Venezuela, and finally by the Cordilleras of 
 New Grenada, along a distance of three hundred and eighty 
 leagues, we find no active volcano before we arrive at Purace, 
 near Popayan. The total absence of apertures, through 
 which melted substances can issue, in that part of the con- 
 tinent, which stretches eastward of the Cordillera of the 
 Andes, and eastward of the Pocky Mountains, is a most 
 remarkable geological fact. 
 
 In this chapter we have examined the great commotions 
 which from time to time convulse the stony crust of the 
 globe, and scatter desolation in regions favoured by the 
 most precious gifts of nature. An uninterrupted calm pre- 
 vails in the upper atmosphere ; but, to use an expression of 
 Pranklin, more ingenious than accurate, thunder often rolls 
 in the subterranean atmosphere , amidst that mixture of 
 elastic fluids, the impetuous movements of which are fre- 
 quently felt at the surface of the earth. The destruction 
 of so many populous cities presents a picture of the greatest 
 calamities which afflict mankind. A people struggling for 
 independence are suddenly exposed to the want of sub- 
 sistence, and of all the necessaries of life. Pamished and 
 without shelter, the inhabitants are dispersed through the 
 
DEPARTURE FROM CARACAS. 
 
 473 
 
 country, and numbers who bave escaped from tbe ruin of 
 tbeir dwellings are swept away by disease. Tar from 
 strengthening mutual confidence among tbe citizens, tbe 
 feeling of misfortune destroys it; physical calamities aug- 
 ment civil discord ; nor does tbe aspect of a country bathed 
 in tears and blood appease tbe fury of tbe victorious 
 party. 
 
 After tbe recital of so many calamities, tbe mind is 
 soothed by turning to consolatory remembrances. When 
 tbe great catastrophe of Caracas was known in tbe United 
 States, tbe Congress, assembled at Washington, unanimously 
 decreed that five ships laden with flour should be sent to 
 tbe coast of Venezuela; tbeir cargoes to be distributed 
 among tbe most needy of tbe inhabitants. Tbe generous 
 contribution was received with -the warmest gratitude ; and 
 this solemn act of a free people, this mark of national inte- 
 rest, of which tbe advanced civilization of tbe Old World 
 affords but few examples, seemed to be a valuable pledge 
 of the mutual sympathy which ought for ever to unite tbe 
 nations of North and South America. 
 
 Chapter XV. 
 
 Departure from Caracas. — Mountains of San Pedro and of Los Teques. — 
 La Victoria. — Valleys of Aragua. 
 
 To take tbe shortest road from Caracas to tbe banks of 
 tbe Orinoco, we should have crossed tbe southern chain of 
 mountains between Baruta, Salamanca, and the savannahs 
 of Ocumare, passed over the steppes or llanos of Orituco, 
 and embarked at Cabruta, near the mouth of the Bio 
 G-uarico. But this direct route would have deprived us of 
 the opportunity of surveying the valleys of Aragua, which 
 are the finest and most cultivated portion of the province ; 
 of taking the level of an important part of the chain of the 
 coast by means of the barometer; and of descending the 
 Bio Apure as far as its junction with the Orinoco. A 
 traveller who has the intention of studying the configuration 
 and natural productions of a country is not guided by 
 
474 
 
 TALLEY OF LA PASCUA. 
 
 distances, but by the peculiar interest attached to the 
 regions he may traverse. This powerful motive led us to 
 the mountains of Los Teques, to the hot springs of Mariara,, 
 to the fertile banks of the lake of Valencia, and through 
 the immense savannahs of Calabozo to San Fernando de 
 Apure, in the eastern part of the province of Varinas. 
 Having determined on this route, our first direction was 
 westward, then southward, and finally to east-south-east, 
 so that we might enter the Orinoco by the Apure in 
 latitude 7° 36' 23". 
 
 On the day on which we quitted the capital of Venezuela, 
 we reached the foot of the woody mountains which close 
 the valley on the south-west. There we halted for the 
 night, and on the following day we proceeded along the 
 right bank of the Rio Grnayra as far as the village of Anti- 
 mano, by a very fine road, partly scooped out of the rock. 
 We passed by La Vega and Carapa. The church of La 
 Vega rises very picturesquely above a range of hills covered 
 with thick vegetation. Scattered houses surrounded with 
 date-trees seem to denote the comfort of their inhabitants. 
 A chain of low mountains separates the little river Gruayra 
 from the valley of La Pascua * (so celebrated in the history 
 of the country), and from the ancient gold-mines of Baruta 
 and Oripoto. Ascending in the direction of Carapa, we 
 enjoy once more the sight of the Silla, which appears like an 
 immense dome with a cliff on the side next the sea. This 
 rounded summit, and the ridge of Gralipano crenated like a 
 wall, are the only objects which in this basin of gneiss and 
 mica-slate impress a peculiar character on the landscape. 
 The other mountains have a uniform and monotonous 
 aspect. 
 
 A little before reaching the village of Amtimano we 
 observed on the right a very curious geological phenomenon. 
 In hollowing the new road out of the rock, two large veins 
 of gneiss were discovered in the mica-slate. They are nearly 
 perpendicular, intersecting all the mica-slate strata, and are 
 
 * Valley of Cortes, or Easter Valley, so called because Diego de 
 Losada, after having defeated the Teques Indians, and their cacique 
 Guaycaypuro, in the mountains of San Pedro, spent the Easter there in 
 1567, before entering the valley of San Fx*ancisco. In the latter place he 
 founded the city of Caracas. 
 
CURIOUS PHENOMENON. 
 
 475 
 
 from six to eight toises thick. These veins contain not 
 fragments, but balls or spheres of granular diabasis,* formed 
 of concentric layers. These balls are composed of lamellar 
 feldspar and hornblende closely commingled. The feldspar 
 approximates sometimes to vitreous feldspar when dissemi- 
 nated in very thin laminæ in a mass of granular diabasis, 
 decomposed, and emitting a ’strong argillaceous smell. The 
 diameter of the spheres is very unequal, sometimes four or 
 eight inches, sometimes three or four feet; their nucleus, 
 which is more dense, is without concentric layers, and of a 
 very dark green hue, inclining to black. I could not per- 
 ceive any mica in them ; but, what is very remarkable, I 
 found great quantities of disseminated garnets. These gar-!- 
 nets are of a very fine red, and are found in the griinstein 
 only. They are neither in the gneiss, which serves as a 
 cement to the balls, nor in the mica-slate, which the veins 
 traverse. The gneiss, the constituent parts of which are in 
 a state of considerable disintegration, contains large crystals 
 of feldspar ; and, though it forms the body of the vein in the 
 mica-slate, it is itself traversed by threads of quartz two' 
 inches thick, and of very recent formation. The aspect of 
 this phenomenon is very curious : it appears as if cannon- 
 balls were embedded in a wall of rock. I also thought I 
 recognized in these same regions, in the Montana de Avila, 
 and at Cabo Blanco, east of La Guayra, a granular diabasis, 
 mixed with a small quantity of quartz and pyrites, and des- 
 titute of garnets, not in veins,- but in subordinate strata in 
 the mica-slate. This position is unquestionably to be found 
 in Europe in primitive mountains ; but in general the gra- 
 nular diabasis is more frequently connected with the system 
 of transition rocks, especially with a schist (iibergangs-thons- 
 chiefer) abounding in beds of Lydian stone strongly carbu- 
 retted, of schistose jasper, t ampelites,* and black limestope. 
 
 Near Antimano all the orchards were full of peach-trees 
 loaded with blossom. This village, the Valle, and the banks 
 of the Macarao, furnish great abundance of peaches, quinces, 
 
 * Ur-griinstein. I remember having seen similar balls filling a vein in 
 transition -slate, near the castle of Schauenstein in the margravate of 
 Bayreuth. I sent several balls from Antimano to the collection of thé 
 king of Spain at Madrid. 
 
 t Kieselschiefer. % Alaunschiefer. 
 
476 
 
 CONFIGURATION OF THE TALLEY. 
 
 f 
 
 and other European fruits for the market of Caracas, j 
 Between Antimano and Ajuntas we crossed the Bio Gruayra f r 
 seventeen times. The road is very fatiguing ; yet, instead] D 
 of making a new one, it would perhaps be better to ! j f 
 change the bed of the river, which loses a great quantity of j f j 
 water by the combined effects of filtration and evaporation. I ^ 
 Each sinuosity forms a marsh more or less extensive. This a 
 loss of water is to be regretted in a province, nearly all the j 
 cultivated portions of which are extremely dry. The rains j . 
 are much less frequent and less violent in this place than in ç 
 the interior of New Andalusia, at Cumanacoa, and on the 
 banks of the Gruarapiche. Many of the mountains of, : 
 Caracas enter the region of the clouds ; but the strata of \ 
 primitive rocks dip at an angle of 70° or 80°, and generally ) * 
 to northwest, so that the waters are either lost in the ] 
 interior of the earth, or gush out in copious springs not 
 southward but northward of the mountains of the coast of ‘ 
 Niguatar, Avila, and Mariara. The rising of the gneiss and 
 mica-slate strata to the south appears to me to explain in a 
 considerable degree the extreme humidity of the coast. In 
 the interior of the province we meet with portions of land, 
 two or three leagues square, in which there are no springs ; } 
 consequently sugar-cane, indigo, and coffee, grow only in 
 places where running waters can be made to supply artificial j 
 irrigation during very dry weather. The early colonists im- 
 prudently destroyed the forests. Evaporation is enormous 
 on a stony soil surrounded with rocks, which radiate heat 
 on every side. The mountains of the coast, like a wall, 
 extending east and west from Cape Codera toward Point 
 Tucacas, prevent the humid air of the shore (that is to say, 
 those inferior strata of the atmosphere resting immediately ' 
 on the sea, and dissolving the largest proportion of water) 
 from penetrating to the islands. There are few openings, | 
 few ravines, which, like those of Catia or of Tipe, lead from j 
 the coast to the high longitudinal valleys, and there is no 
 bed of a great river, no gulf allowing the sea to flow inland, 
 spreading moisture by abundant evaporation. In the eighth 
 and tenth degrees of latitude, in regions where the clouds 
 do not, as it were, skim the surface of the soil, many trees 
 are stripped of their leaves in the months of January and 
 Eebruary; not by the sinking of the temperature as in 
 
A SUGAB PLANTATION. 
 
 477 
 
 ‘ • 
 
 Europe, but because the air at this period, the most distant 
 from the rainy season, nearly attains its maximum of dry- 
 ness. Only those plants which have very tough and glossy 
 leaves resist this absence of humidity. Beneath the fine 
 sky of the tropics the traveller is struck with the almost 
 hibernal aspect of the country; but the freshest verdure 
 again appears when he reaches the banks of the Orinoco, 
 where another climate prevails ; and the great forests pre- 
 serve by their shade a certain quantity of moisture in the 
 soil, by sheltering it from the devouring heat of the sun. 
 
 Beyond the small village of Antimano the valley becomes 
 much narrower. The river is bordered with Lata , a fine 
 gramineous plant with distich leaves, which sometimes 
 reaches the height of thirty feet.* Every hut is surrounded 
 with enormous trees of persea,t at the foot of which the 
 aristolochiæ, paullinia, and other creepers vegetate. The 
 neighbouring mountains, covered with forests, seem to spread 
 humidity over the western extremity of the valley of 
 Caracas. We passed the night before our arrival at Las 
 Ajuntas at a sugar-cane plantation. A square house (the 
 hacienda or farm of Don Eernando Key-Munoz) contained 
 nearly eighty negroes; they were lying on skins of oxen 
 spread upon the ground. In each apartment of the house 
 were four slaves : it looked like a barrack. A dozen fires 
 were burning in the farm-yard, where people were em- 
 ployed in dressing food, and the noisy mirth of the blacks 
 almost prevented us from sleeping. The clouds hindered 
 me from observing the stars ; the moon appeared only at 
 intervals. The aspect of the landscape was dull and uni- 
 form, and all the surrounding hills were covered with aloes. 
 Workmen were employed at a small canal, intended for con- 
 veying the waters of the Bio San Pedro to the farm, at a 
 height of more than seventy feet. According to a baro- 
 metric calculation, the site of the hacienda is only fifty 
 toises above the bed of the Bio Giuayra at La Noria, near 
 Caracas. 
 
 The soil of these countries is found to be but little favour- 
 able to the cultivation of the coffee-tree, which in general is 
 less productive in the valley of Caracas than was imagined 
 
 * G. saccharoides. 
 
 1* Laurus persea (alligator pear). 
 
'478 
 
 COFFEE PLANTATIONS. 
 
 * 
 
 when the first plantations were made near Chacao. The 
 finest coffee-plantations are now found in the savannah of 
 Ocumare, near Salamanca, and at Rincon, in the mountain- 
 ous countries of Los Mariches, San Antonio Hatillo, and 
 Los Budares. The coffee of the three last mentioned 
 places, situated eastward of Caracas, is of a superior quality; 
 but the trees bear a smaller quantity, which is attributed to 
 the height of the spot and the coolness of the climate. 
 The greater plantations of the province of Venezuela (as 
 Aguacates, near Valencia and Rincon) yield in good years 
 a produce of three thousand quintals. 
 
 The extreme predilection entertained in this province for 
 the culture of the coffee-tree is partly founded on the cir- 
 cumstance that the berry can be preserved during a great ' 
 number of years ; whereas, notwithstanding every possible 
 care, cacao spoils in the warehouses after ten or twelve 
 months. During the long dissensions of the European 
 powers, at a time when Spain was too weak to protect the 
 commerce of her colonies, industry was directed in pre- 
 ference to productions of which the sale was less urgent, 
 and could await the chances of political and commercial 
 events. I remarked that in the coffee-plantations the 
 nurseries are formed not so much by collecting together 
 young plants, accidentally rising under trees which have ; 
 yielded a crop, as by exposing the seeds of coffee to germi- 1 
 nation during five days, in heaps, between plantain leaves, j 
 These seeds are taken out of the pulp, but yet retaining a 
 part of it adherent to them. When the seed has germi- | 
 mated it is sown, and it produces plants capable of bearing I 
 the heat of the sun better than those which spring up in 
 the shade in coffee-plantations. In this country five thou- 1 
 sand three hundred coffee-trees are generally planted in a 
 fanega of ground, amounting to five thousand four hundred ] 
 and seventy-six square toises. This land, if it be capable j 
 of artificial irrigation, costs five hundred piastres in the 
 northern part of the province. The coffee-tree flowers only 
 in the second year, and its flowering lasts only twenty-four 
 hours. At this time the shrub has a charming appearance ; 
 and, when seen from afar, it appears covered with snow. 
 The produce of the third year becomes very abundant. In 
 plantations well. weeded and watered, and recently culti- 
 
PRODUCE OE THE COEEEE-TREE. 
 
 479 
 
 voted, trees will bear sixteen, eighteen, and even twenty 
 pounds of coffee. In general, however, more than a pound 
 .and a half or two pounds cannot be expected from each 
 plant ; and even this is superior to the mean produce of the 
 West India Islands. The coffee trees suffer much from 
 rain at the time of flowering, as well as from the want of 
 water for artificial irrigation, and also from a parasitic plant, 
 a new species of loranthus, which clings to the branches. 
 WTien, in plantations of eighty or a hundred thousand 
 shrubs, we consider the immense quantity of organic matter 
 contained in the pulpy berry of the coffee-tree, we may be 
 astonished that no attempts have been made to extract a 
 spirituous liquor from them.* 
 
 If the troubles of St. Domingo, the temporary rise in the 
 price of colonial produce, and the emigration of Drench 
 planters, were the first causes of the establishment of coffee- 
 plantations on the continent of America, in the island of 
 Cuba, and in Jamaica; their produce has far more than 
 compensated the deficiency of the exportation from the 
 Drench West India Islands. This produce has augmented 
 in proportion to the population, the change of customs, and 
 the increasing luxury of the nations of Europe. The island 
 
 * The berries heaped together produce a vinous fermentation, during 
 which a very pleasant alcoholic smell is emitted. Placing, at Caracas, 
 the ripe fruit of the coffee-tree under an inverted jar, quite filled with 
 water, and exposed to the rays of the sun, I remarked that no extrication 
 of gas took place in the first twenty-four hours. After thirty-six hours 
 the berries became brown, and yielded gas. A thermometer, enclosed in 
 the jar in contact with the fruit, kept at night 4° or 5° higher than the 
 external air. In the space of eighty-seven hours, sixty berries, under 
 various jars, yielded me from thirty- eight to forty cubic inches of a gas, 
 which underwent no sensible diminution with nitrous gas. Though a 
 great quantity of carbonic acid had been absorbed by the water as it was 
 produced, I still found 0*78 in the forty inches. The remainder, or 0'22, 
 was nitrogen. The carbonic acid had not been formed by the absorption 
 of the atmospheric oxygen. That which is evolved from the berries 
 of the coffee-tree slightly moistened, and placed in a phial with a glass 
 stopple filled with air, contains alcohol in suspension ; like the foul air 
 which is formed in our cellars during the fermentation of must. On 
 agitating the gas in contact with water, the latter acquires a decidedly 
 alcoholic flavour. How many substances are perhaps contained in a state 
 of suspension in those mixtures of carbonic acid and hydrogen, which are 
 called deleterious miasmata, and which rise everywhere within the tropics, 
 in marshy grounds, on the sea-shore, and in forests where the soil is 
 strewed with dead leaves, rotten fruits, and putrefying insects. 
 
480 
 
 LA ET7E2TAYISTA. 
 
 of St. Domingo exported, in 1700, at the time of ISTecker’s jJ 
 administration, nearly seventy-six million pounds of coffee.* | 
 
 Tea could be cultivated as well as coffee in the mountain- 
 ous parts of the provinces of Caracas and Cumana. Every « 
 climate is there found rising in stages one above another ; 
 and this new culture would succeed there as well as in the 
 southern hemisphere, where the government of Brazil, pro • < 
 tecting at the same time industry and religious toleration, 
 suffered at once the introduction of Chinese tea and of the ' 
 dogmas of Eo. It is not yet a century since the first coffee- ! 
 trees were planted at Surinam and in the West India 
 Islands, and already the produce of America amounts to 
 fifteen millions of piastres, reckoning the quintal of coffee at 
 fourteen piastres only. 
 
 On the eighth of February we set out at sunrise, to cross | 
 the Higuerote, a group of lofty mountains, separating the ; 
 two longitudinal valleys of Caracas and Aragua. After pass- , 
 ing, near Las Ajuntas, the junction of the two small rivers 
 San Pedro and Macarao, which form the Bio Gruayra, we ! 
 ascended a steep hill to the table-land of La Buenavista, 
 where we saw a few lonely houses. The view extends on 
 the north-west to the city of Caracas, and on the south to 
 the village of Los Teques. The country has a very wild 
 aspect, and is thickly wooded. We had now gradually lost 
 the plants of the valley of Caracas. f We were eight hun- 
 
 * French pounds, containing 9216 grains. 112 English pounds = 105 
 French pounds; and 160 Spanish pounds = 93 French pounds. The 
 island of St. Domingo was at that time, it must be remembered, a French 
 colony. 
 
 f The Flora of Caracas is characterized chiefly by the following plants, 
 which grow between the heights of four hundred and six hundred toises. 
 Cipura martinicensis, Panicum mieranthum, Parthenium liysterophorus, 
 Vernonia odoratissima, (Pevetera, with flowers having a delicious odour 
 of heliotropium), Tagetes caracasana, T. scoparia of Lagasca (introduced 
 by M. Bonpland into the gardens of Spain), Croton hispidus, Smilax 
 scabriusculus, Limnocharis Humboldti, Rich., Equisetum ramosissimum, 
 Heteranthera alismoïdes. Glycine punctata, Hyptis Plumeri, Pavonia 
 cancellata, Cav., Spermacoce rigida, Crotalaria acutifolia, Polygala nemo- 
 rosa, Stachytarpheta mutabilis, Cardiospermum ulmaceum, Amaranthus 
 caracasanus, Elephantopus strigosus, Hydrolea mollis, Alternanthera 
 caracasana, Eupatorium amydalinum, Elytraria fasciculata, Salvia fim- 
 briata, Angelonia salicaria, Heliotropium strictum, Convolvulus batatilla, 
 Rubus jamaicensis, Datura arborea, Dalea enneaphylla, Buchnera rosea, 
 Salix Humboldtiana ; Willd., Theophrasta longifolia, Tournefortia cara- 
 
ARBORESCENT EERNS. 
 
 481 
 
 dred and tbirty-five toises above tbe level of the ocean, 
 which is almost the height of Popayan ; but the mean tem- 
 perature of this place is probably only 17° or 18°. The road 
 over these mountains is much frequented; we met contin- 
 ually long files of mules and oxen ; it is the great road lead- 
 ing from the capital to La Victoria, and the valleys of Aragua. 
 This road is cut out of a talcose gneiss* in a state of decom- 
 position. A clayey soil mixed with spangles of mica covered 
 the rock, to the depth of three feet. Travellers suffer from 
 the dust in winter, while in the rainy season the place is 
 changed into a slough. On descending the table-land of 
 Buenavista, about fifty toises to the south-east, an abundant 
 spring, gushing from the gneiss, forms several cascades sur- 
 rounded with thick vegetation. The path leading to the 
 spring is so steep that we could touch with our hands the 
 tops of the arborescent ferns, the trunks of which reach a 
 height of more than twenty-five feet. The surrounding 
 rocks are covered with jungermannias and hypnoid mosses. 
 The torrent, formed by the spring, and shaded with helico- 
 nias, uncovers, as it falls, the roots of the plumerias, t cupeys,£ 
 browneas, and Ficus gigantea. This humid spot, though 
 
 casana, Inga cinerea, I. ligustrina, I. sapindioïdes, I. fastuosa, Schwenkia 
 patens, Erythrina mitis. The most agreeable places for herborizing near 
 Caracas are the ravines of Tacagua, Tipe, Cotecita, Catoche, Anauco, and 
 Cbacaito. 
 
 * The direction of the strata of gneiss varies; it is either hor. 3’4, 
 dipping to the NW. or hor. 8'2, dipping to the S.E. 
 
 + The red jasmine-tree, frangipanier of the French West India 
 Islands. The plumeria, so common in the gardens of the Indians, has 
 been very seldom found in a wild state. It is mixed here with the Piper 
 flagellare, the spadix of which sometimes reaches three feet long. With 
 the new kind of hg-tree (which we have called Ficus gigantea, because it 
 frequently attains the height of a hundred feet), we find in the mountains 
 of Buenavista and of Los Teques, the Ficus nymphæifolia of the garden 
 of Schonbrunn, introduced into our hot-houses by M. Bredemeyer. I 
 am certain of the identity of the species found in the same places; but 
 I doubt really whether it be really the F. nymphæifolia of Linnaeus, 
 which is supposed to be a native of the East Indies. 
 
 + In the experiments I made at Caracas, on the air which circulates 
 in plants, I was struck with the fine appearance presented by the petioles 
 and leaves of the Clusia rosea, when cut open under water, and exposed 
 to the rays of the sun. Each trachea gives out a current of gas, purer 
 by 0’08 than atmospheric air. The phenomenon ceases the moment the 
 apparatus is placed in the shade. There is only a very slight disengage- 
 
 VOL. I, 2 I 
 
482 
 
 MOUNTAIN VEGETATION. 
 
 infested by serpents, presents a rich harvest to the botanist. 
 The Brownea, which the inhabitants call rosa del monte , or 
 polo de cruz , bears four or five hundred purple flowers 
 together in one thyrsus ; each flower has invariably eleven 
 stamina, and this majestic plant, the trunk of which grows 
 to the height of fifty or sixty feet, is becoming rare, because 
 its wood yields a highly valued charcoal. The soil is covered 
 with pines (ananas), hemimeris, polygala, and melastomas. 
 A climbing gramen* with its light festoons unites trees, 
 the presence of which attests the coolness of the climate of 
 these mountains. Such are the Aralia capitata, t the Vismia 
 caparosa, and the Clethra fagifolia. Among these plants, 
 peculiar to the fine region of the arborescent ferns, J some 
 palm-trees rise in the openings, and some scattered groups 
 of guarwmo , or cecropia with silvery leaves. The trunks of 
 the latter are not very thick, and are of a black colour 
 towards the summit, as if burnt by the oxygen of the atmo- 
 sphere. We are surprised to find so noble a tree, which 
 has the port of the theophrasta and the palm-tree, bearing 
 generally only eight or ten terminal leaves. The ants, which 
 inhabit the trunk of the guarumo , or jarumo , and destroy 
 its interior cells, seem to impede its growth. We had 
 already made one herborization in the temperate mountains 
 of the Higuerote in the month of December, accompanying 
 the capitan-general, Senor de Gruevara, in an excursion with 
 the intendant of the province to the Valles de Aragua. ' M. 
 Bonpland then found in the thickest part of the forest some 
 plants of aguatire, the wood of which, celebrated for its 
 fine red colour, will probably one day become an article of 
 exportation to Europe. It is the Sickingia erythroxylon 
 described by Bredemeyer and Willdenow. 
 
 nient of air at the two surfaces of the leaves of the clusia exposed to the 
 sun without being cut open. The gas enclosed in the capsules of the 
 Cardiospermum vesicariura appeared to me to contain the same propor- 
 tion of oxygen as the atmosphere, while that contained between the knots, 
 in the hollow of the stalk, is generally less pure, containing only from 
 O’ 12 to 0T5 of oxygen. It is necessary to distinguish between the air 
 circulating in the tracheae, and that which is stagnant in the great cavities 
 of the stems and pericarps. 
 
 * Carice. See p. 207. 
 
 ■f Ccndelero. We found it also at La Cumbre, at a height of 700 
 toises. 
 
 + Called by the inhabitants of the country * Region de los helechos.' 
 
TALLET OE SAN PEDRO. 
 
 483 
 
 Descending the woody mountain of the Higuerote to the 
 south-west, we reached the small village of San Pedro, 
 situated in a basin where several valleys meet, and almost 
 three hundred toises lower than the table-land of Buena- 
 vista. Plantain-trees, potatoes,* and coffee are cultivated 
 together on this spot. The village is very small, and the 
 church not yet finished. We met at an inn (pulperia) 
 several European Spaniards employed at the government 
 tobacco farm. Their dissatisfaction formed a strange con- 
 trast to our feelings. They were fatigued with their 
 journey, and they vented their displeasure in complaints 
 and maledictions on the wretched country, or to use their 
 own phrase, estas tierras inf elices , in which they were doomed 
 to live. We, on the other hand, were enchanted with 
 the wild scenery, the fertility of the soil, and the mildness 
 of the climate. Near San Pedro, the talcose gneiss of Bue- 
 navista passes into a mica-slate filled with garnets, and con- 
 taining subordinate beds of serpentine. Something ana- 
 logous to this is met with at Zôblitz in Saxony. The 
 serpentine, which is very pure and of a fine green, varied with 
 spots of a lighter tint, often appears only superimposed on 
 the mica-slatje. I found in it a few garnets, but no metal- 
 loid diallage. 
 
 The valley of San Pedro, through which flows the river of 
 the same name, separates two great masses of mountains, 
 the Higuerote and Las Cocuyzas. We ascended westward 
 in the direction of the small farms of Las Lagunetos and 
 Garavatos. These are solitary houses, which serve as inns, 
 and where the mule-drivers obtain their favourite beverage, 
 the guarapo , or fermented juice of the sugar-cane : intoxi- 
 cation is very common among the Indians who frequent 
 this road. Near Garavatos there is a mica-slate rock of 
 singular form ; it is a ridge, or steep wall, crowned by a 
 tower. We opened the barometer at the highest point of 
 the mountain Las Cocuyzas, f and found ourselves almost 
 at the same elevation as on the table-land of Buenavista, 
 which is scarcely ten toises higher. 
 
 . The prospect at Las Lagunetas is extensive, but rather 
 uniform. This mountainous and uncultivated tract of ground 
 
 * Solanum tuberosum, 
 f Absolute height 845 toises. 
 
 2 I 2 
 
484 
 
 TALLET OE THE KIO TUT. 
 
 between tbe sources of tbe Guayra and the Tuy is more 
 than twenty-five square leagues in extent. We there found 
 only one miserable village, that of Los Teques, south-east 
 of San Pedro. The soil is as it were furrowed by a multi- 
 tude of valleys, the smallest of which, parallel with each 
 other, terminate at right angles in the largest valleys. The 
 back of the mountains presents an aspect as monotonous as 
 the ravines ; it has no pyramidal forms, no ridges, no steep 
 declivities. I am inclined to think that the undulation of 
 this ground, which is for the most part very gentle, is less 
 owing to the nature of the rocks, (to the decomposition of 
 the gneiss for instance), than to the long presence of the 
 water and the action of currents. The limestone mountains 
 of Cumana present the same phenomenon north of Tumi- 
 riquiri. 
 
 Prom Las Lagunetas we descended into the valley of the 
 Bio Tuy. This western slope of the mountains of Los 
 Teques bears the name of Las Cocuyzas, and it is covered 
 with two plants with agave leaves ; the maguey of Cocwyza, 
 and the maguey of Cocuy. The latter belongs to the genus 
 Yucca.* Its sweet and fermented juice yields a spirit by 
 distillation ; and I have seen the young leaves of this plant 
 eaten. The fibres of the full-grown leaves furnish cords 
 of extraordinary strength.f Leaving the mountains of the 
 Higuerote and Los Teques, we entered a highly cultivated 
 country, covered with hamlets and villages ; several of which 
 would in Europe be called towns. From east to west, on 
 a line of twelve leagues in extent, we passed La Victoria, San 
 Mateo, Turmero, and Maracay, containing together more 
 than 28,000 inhabitants. The plains of the Tuy may be con- 
 sidered as the eastern extremity of the valleys of Aragua, 
 extending from Gluigne, on the borders of the lake of 
 Valencia, as far as the foot of Las Cocuyzas. A barometri- 
 cal measurement gave me 295 toises for the absolute height 
 of the Valle del Tuy, near the farm of Manterola, and 222 
 toises for that of the surface of the lake. The Bio Tuy, 
 flowing from the mountains of Las Cocuyzas, runs first 
 towards the west, then turning to the south and to the east, 
 
 * Yucca acaulis, Humb. 
 
 4 At the clock of the cathedral of Caracas, a cord of maguey, half au 
 inch in diameter, sustained for fifteen years a weight of 350 pounds. 
 
AGBEEABLE TEiTPEEATEBE. 
 
 485 
 
 it takes its course along the high savannahs of Ocumare, 
 receives the waters of the valley of Caracas, and reaches 
 the sea near cape Codera. It is • the small portion of its 
 basin in the westward direction which, geologically speak- 
 ing, would seem bo belong to the valley of Aragua, if the 
 hills of calcareous tufa, breaking the continuity of these 
 valleys between Consejo and La Victoria, did not deserve 
 some consideration. . We shall here again remind the reader 
 that the group of the mountains of Los Teques, eight 
 hundred and fifty toises high, separates two longitudinal 
 valleys, formed in gneiss, granite, and mica-slate. The most 
 eastern of these valleys, containing the capital of Caracas, 
 is 200 toises higher than the western valley, which may be 
 considered as the centre of agricultural industry. 
 
 Having been for a long time accustomed to a moderate 
 temperature, we found the plains of the Tuy extremely hot, 
 although the thermometer kept, in the day-time, between 
 eleven in the morning and five in the afternoon, at only 
 23° or 24°. The nights were delightfully cool, the tempera- 
 ture falling as low as 17 ' 5 °. As the heat gradually abated, 
 the air became more and more fragrant with the odour of 
 flowers. We remarked above all the delicious perfume of 
 the Lirio hermoso,* a new species of pancratium, of which 
 the flower, eight or nine inches long, adorns the banks of 
 the Eio Tuy. We spent two very agreeable days at the 
 plantation of Don Jose de Manterola, who in his youth had 
 accompanied the Spanish embassy to Eussia. The farm is 
 a fine plantation of sugar-canes ; and the ground is as smooth 
 as the bottom of a drained lake. The Eio Tuy winds 
 through districts covered with plantains, and a little wood 
 of Huia crepitans, Erythrina corallodendron, and fig-trees 
 with nymphæa leaves. The bed of the river is formed of 
 pebbles of quartz. I never met with more agreeable bath- 
 ing than in the Tuy. The water, as clear as crystal, 
 preserves even during the day a temperature of 18 6° ; a 
 considerable coolness for these climates, and for a height of 
 three hundred toises ; but the sources of the river are in 
 the surrounding mountains. The house of the proprietor, 
 situated on a hillock, of fifteen or twenty toises of elevation, 
 is surrounded by the huts of the negroes. Those who are 
 * Pancratium undulatum. 
 
486 
 
 SPECIES or THE SUGAR-CAÎfE. 
 
 married provide food for themselves; and here, as everywhere 
 else in the valleys of Aragua, a small spot of ground is al- 
 lotted to them to cultivate. They labour on that ground on 
 Saturdays and Sundays, the only days in the week on which 
 they are free. They keep poultry, and* sometimes even a 
 pig. Their masters boast of their happiness, as in the north 
 of Europe the great landholders love to descant upon the 
 ease enjoyed by peasants who are attached to the glebe. On 
 the day of our arrival we saw three fugitive negroes brought 
 hack ; they were slaves newly purchased. I dreaded having 
 to witness one of those punishments which, wherever 
 slavery prevails, destroys all the charm of a country life. 
 Happily these blacks were treated with humanity. 
 
 In this plantation, as in all those of the province of 
 Venezuela, three species of sugar-cane can be distinguished 
 even at a distance by the colour of their leaves ; the old 
 Creole sugar-cane, the Otaheite cane, and the Batavia cane. 
 The first has a deep-green leaf, the stem not very thick, and 
 the knots rather near together. This sugar-cane was the 
 first introduced from India into Sicily, the Canary Islands, 
 and West Indies. The second is of a lighter green ; and its 
 stem is higher, thicker, and more succulent. The whole 
 plant exhibits a more luxuriant vegetation. We owe this 
 plant to the voyages of Bougainville, Cook, and Bligh. 
 Bougainville carried it to the Mauritius, whence it passed to 
 Cayenne, Martinique, and, since 1792, to the rest of the 
 West India Islands. The sugar-cane of Otaheite, called by 
 the people of that island To, is one of the most important 
 acquisitions for which colonial agriculture is indebted to the 
 travels of naturalists. It yields not only one-third more 
 juice than the creolian cane on the same space of ground ; 
 but from the thickness of its stem, and the tenacity of its 
 ligneous fibres, it furnishes much more fuel. This last 
 advantage is important in the West Indies, where the 
 destruction of the forests has long obliged the planters to 
 use canes deprived of juice, to keep up the fire under the 
 boilers. But for the knowledge of this new plant, together 
 with the progress of agriculture on the continent of Spanish 
 America, and the introduction of the East India and Java 
 sugar, the prices of colonial produce in Europe would have 
 been much more sensibly affected by the revolutions of St. 
 

 SUPPOSED GOLD-MIKE. 
 
 487 
 
 Domingo, and the destruction of the great sugar plantations 
 of that island. The Otaheite sugar-cane was carried from 
 the island of Trinidad to Caracas, under the name of Cana 
 solera , and it passed from Caracas to Cucuta and San Gril in 
 the kingdom of New Grenada. In our days its cultivation 
 during twenty-five years has almost entirely removed the 
 apprehension at first entertained, that being transplanted to 
 America, the cane would by degrees degenerate, and become 
 as slender as the creole cane. The third species, the violet 
 sugar-cane, called Cana de Batavia, or de Guinea , is certainly 
 indigenous in the island of Java, where it is cultivated in 
 preference in the districts of Japara and Pasuruan.* Its 
 foliage is purple and very broad ; and this cane is preferred 
 in the province of Caracas for rum. The tablones, or grounds 
 planted with sugar-canes, are divided by hedges of a colossal 
 gramen ; the lata , or gynérium, with distich leaves. At the 
 Tuy, men were employed in finishing a dyke, to form a 
 canal of irrigation. This enterprise had cost the proprietor 
 seven thousand piastres for the expense of labour, and four 
 thousand piastres for the costs of lawsuits in which he had 
 become engaged with his neighbours. While the lawyers 
 were disputing about a canal of which only one-half was 
 finished, Don Jose de Manterola began to doubt even of 
 the possibility of carrying the plan into execution. I took 
 the level of the ground with a lunette d’epreuve, on an 
 artificial horizon, and found, that the dam had been con- 
 structed eight feet too low. WTiat sums of money have I 
 seen expended uselessly in the Spanish colonies, for under- 
 takings founded on erroneous levelling ! 
 
 The valley of the Tuy has its ‘gold mine,’ like almost 
 every part of America inhabited by whites, and backed by 
 primitive mountains. I was assured, that in 1780, foreign 
 gold-gatherers had been engaged in picking up grains of that 
 metal, and had established a place for washing the sand in 
 the Quebrada del Oro. An overseer of a neighbouring plan- 
 tation had followed these indications ; and after his death, a 
 waistcoat with gold buttons being found among his clothes, 
 this gold, according to the logic of the people here, could only 
 have proceeded from a vein, which the falling-in of the earth 
 had rendered invisible. In vain I objected, that I could 
 * Raffles, History of Java, tom. i. p. 124. 
 
488 
 
 QUEBBAjDA SECA. 
 
 not, by tbe mere view of the soil, without digging a large 
 trench in the direction of the vein, judge of the existence of 
 the mine; I was compelled to yield to the desire of my 
 hosts. For twenty years past the overseer’s waistcoat had 
 been the subject of conversation in the country. Gold 
 extracted from the bosom of the earth is far more alluring 
 in the eyes of the vulgar, than that which is the produce of 
 agricultural industry, favoured by the fertility of the soil, 
 and the mildness of the climate. 
 
 North-west of the Hacienda del Tuy, in the northern 
 range of the chain of the coast, we find a deep ravine, 
 called the Quebrada Seca, because the torrent, by which it 
 was formed, loses its waters through the crevices of the 
 rock, before it reaches the extremity of the ravine. The 
 whole of this mountainous country is covered with thick 
 vegetation. We there found the same verdure as had 
 charmed us by its freshness in the mountains of Buenavista 
 and Las Lagunetas, wherever the ground rises as high as 
 the region of the clouds, and where the vapours of the sea 
 have free access. In the plains, on the contrary, many 
 trees are stripped of a part of their leaves during the 
 winter ; and when we descend into the valley of the Tuy, 
 we are struck with the almost hibernal aspect of the 
 country. The dryness of the air is such that the hygro- 
 meter of Deluc keeps day and night between 36° and 40°, 
 At a distance from the river scarcely any huras or piper- 
 trees extend their foliage over thickets destitute of verdure. 
 This seems owing to the dryness of the air, which attains its 
 maximum in the month of February; and not, as the 
 European planters assert, “ to the seasons of Spain, of which 
 the empire extends as far as the torrid zone.” It is only 
 plants transported from one hemisphere to the other, which, 
 in their organic functions, in the development of their leaves 
 and flowers, still retain their affinity to a distant climate : 
 faithful to their habits, they follow for a long time the 
 periodical changes of their native hemisphere. In the 
 province of Venezuela the trees stripped of their foliage 
 begin to renew their leaves nearly a month before the rainy 
 season. It is probable, that at this period the electrical 
 equilibrium of the air is already disturbed, and the atmo- 
 sphere, although not yet clouded, becomes gradually more 
 
ENORMOUS TRES. 
 
 489 
 
 humid. The azure of the sky is paler, and the elevated 
 regions are loaded with light vapours, uniformly diffused. 
 This season may be considered as the awakening of nature ; 
 it is a spring which, according to the received language of 
 the Spanish colonies, proclaims the beginning of winter, and 
 succeeds to the heats of summer. # 
 
 Indigo was formerly cultivated in the Quebrada Seca; 
 but as the soil covered with vegetation cannot there con- 
 centrate so much heat as the plains and the bottom of 
 the Tuy valley receive and radiate, the cultivation of coffee 
 has been substituted in its stead. As we advanced in the 
 ravine we found the moisture increase. Near the Hato, 
 at the northern extremity of the Quebrada, a torrent rolls 
 down over sloping beds of gneiss. An aqueduct was being 
 formed there to convey the water to the plain. Without 
 irrigation, agriculture makes no progress in these climates. 
 A tree of monstrous size fixed our attention. - ! It lay on 
 the slope of the mountain, above the house, of the Hato. 
 On the least dislodgment of the earth, its fall would have 
 crushed the habitation which it shaded : it had therefore been 
 burnt near its foot, and cut down in such a manner, that 
 it fell between some enormous fig-trees, which prevented it 
 from rolling into the ravine. We measured the fallen tree ; 
 and though its summit had been burnt, the length of its 
 trunk was still one hundred and fifty-four feet.î It was 
 eight feet in diameter near the roots, and four feet two 
 inches at the upper extremity. 
 
 Our guides, less anxious than ourselves to measure the 
 bulk of trees, continually pressed us to proceed onward and 
 seek the ‘ gold mine.’ This part of the ravine is little fre- 
 quented, and is not uninteresting. We made the following 
 observations on the geological constitution of the soil. At 
 the entrance of the Quebrada Seca we remarked great 
 masses of primitive saccharoidal limestone, tolerably fine 
 
 * That part of the year most abundant in rain is called winter; so that 
 in Terra Firma, the season which begins by the winter solstice, is desig- 
 nated by the name of summer; and it is usual to hear, that it is winter 
 on the mountains, at the time when summer prevails in the neighbouring 
 plains. 
 
 *f* Hura crepitans. 
 
 X French measure, nearly fifty metres. 
 
490 
 
 VISIT TO THE GOLD-WASHINGS. 
 
 grained, of a bluish tint, and traversed by veins of calca- 
 reous spar of dazzling whiteness. These calcareous masses 
 must not be confounded with the very recent depositions of 
 tufa, or carbonate of lime, which fill the plains of the Tuy ; | 
 
 they form beds of mica-slate, passing into talc-slate. # The 
 primitive limestone often simply covers this latter rock in 
 concordant stratification. Very near the Hato the talcose 
 slate becomes entirely white, and contains small layers of 
 soft and unctuous graphic ampelite.t Some pieces, desti- 
 tute of veins of quartz, are real granular plumbago, which 
 might be of use in the arts. The aspect of the rock is very I , 
 singular in those places where thin plates of black ampelite 
 alternate with thin, sinuous, and satiny plates of a talcose 
 slate as white as snow. It would seem as if the carbon and | 
 iron, which in other places colour the primitive rocks, are 
 here concentrated in the subordinate strata. 
 
 Turniug westward we reached at length the ravine of 
 gold (Quebrada del Oro). On examining the slope of 
 a hill, we could hardly recognize the vestige of a vein of 
 quartz. The falling of the earth caused by the raius had 
 changed the surface of the ground, and rendered it impos- 
 sible to make any observation. Great trees were growing 
 in the places where the gold-washers had worked twenty 
 years before. It is probable that the mica-slate contains 
 here, as near G-oldcronach in Franconia, and in Salzburgh, 
 auriferous veins ; but how is it possible to judge whether 
 they be worth the expense of being wrought, or whether i 
 the ore is only in nodules, and in the less abundance in 
 proportion as it is rich? We made a long herborization 
 in a thick forest, extending beyond the Hato, and abound- 
 ing in cedrelas, browneas, and fig-trees with nymphæa 
 leaves. The trunks of these last are covered with very ; 
 odoriferous plants of vanilla, which in general flower only in 
 the month of April. We were here again struck with those I 
 ligneous excrescences, which in the form of ridges, or ribs, , 
 augment to the height of twenty feet above the ground, the # 
 thickness of the trunk of the fig-trees of America. I found 
 
 * Talkschiefer of Werner, without garnets or serpentine ; not eurite or 
 weisstein. It is in the mountains of Buenavista that the gneiss mamtests 
 a tendency to pass into eurite. 
 
 t Zeichenschiefer. 
 
ZODIACAL LIGHT. 
 
 491 
 
 trees twenty-two feet and a half in diameter near the roots. 
 These ligneous ridges sometimes separate from the trunk at 
 a height of eight feet, and are transformed into cylindrical 
 roots two feet thick. The tree looks as if it were supported 
 by buttresses. This scaffolding however does not penetrate 
 very deep into the earth. The lateral roots wind at the 
 surface of the ground, and if at twenty feet distance from 
 the trunk they are cut with a hatchet, we see gushing out 
 the milky juice of the fig-tree, which, when deprived of the 
 vital infiuence of the organs of the tree, is altered and 
 coagulates. What a wonderful combination of cells and 
 vessels exist in these vegetable masses, in these gigantic 
 trees of the torrid zone, which without interruption, perhaps 
 during the space of a thousand years, prepare nutritious 
 fluids, raise them to the height of one hundred and eighty 
 feet, convey them down again to the ground, and conceal, 
 beneath a rough and hard bark, under inanimate layers of 
 ligneous matter, all the movements of organic life ! 
 
 I availed myself of the clearness of the nights, to observe 
 at the plantation of Tuy two emersions of the first and third 
 satellites of Jupiter. These two observations gave, accord- 
 ing to the tables of Delambre, long. 4 h 39' 14" ; and by the 
 chronometer I found 4 h 39' 10". During my stay in the 
 valleys of the Tuy and Aragua the zodiacal light appeared 
 almost every night with extraordinary brilliancy. I had 
 perceived it for the first time between the tropics at Caracas, 
 on the 18th of January, after seven in the evening. The 
 point of the pyramid was at the height of 53°. The light 
 totally disappeared at 9 h 35' (apparent time), nearly 3 h 50' 
 after sunset, without any diminution in the serenity of the 
 sky. La Caille, in his voyage to Rio Janeiro and the Cape, 
 was struck with the beautiful appearance displayed by the 
 zodiacal light within the tropics, not so much on account 
 of its less inclined position, as of the greater transparency 
 of the air.* It may appear singular, that Childrey and 
 Dominic Cassini, navigators who were well acquainted with 
 the seas of the two Indies, did not at a much earlier period 
 direct the attention of scientific Europe to this light, and 
 its regular form and progress. Until the middle of the 
 
 * The great serenity of the air caused this phenomenon to be remarked, 
 in 1668, in the arid plains of Persia. 
 
492 
 
 ZODIACAL LIGHT. 
 
 eighteenth century mariners were little interested by any- 
 thing not having immediate relation to the course of a ship, 
 and the demands of navigation. 
 
 However brilliant the zodiacal light in the dry valley of 
 Tuy, I have observed it more beautiful still at the back of 
 the Cordilleras of Mexico, on the banks of the lake of 
 Tezcuco, eleven hundred and sixty toises above the surface 
 of the ocean. In the month of January, 1804, the light 
 rose sometimes to more than 60° above the horizon. The 
 Milky Way appeared to grow pale compared with the bril- 
 liancy of the zodiacal light ; and if small, bluish, scattered 
 clouds were accumulated toward the west, it seemed as if 
 the moon were about to rise. 
 
 I must here relate another very singular fact. On the 
 18th of January, and the 15th of February, 1800, the 
 intensity of the zodiacal light changed in a very perceptible 
 manner, at intervals of two or three minutes. Sometimes 
 it was very faint, at others it surpassed the brilliancy of the 
 Milky Way in Sagittarius. The changes took place in the 
 whole pyramid, especially toward the interior, far from the 
 edges. During these variations of the zodiacal light, the 
 hygrometer indicated considerable dryness. The stars of 
 the fourth and fifth magnitude appeared constantly to the 
 naked eye with the same degree of light. Ho stream of 
 vapour was visible: nothing seemed to alter the transparency 
 of the atmosphere. In other years I saw the zodiacal light 
 augment in the southern hemisphere half an hour before 
 its disappearance. Cassini admitted “ that the zodiacal 
 light was feebler in certain years, and then returned to its 
 former brilliancy.” He thought that these slow changes 
 were connected with “ the same emanations which render 
 the appearance of spots and faculæ periodical on the solar 
 disk.” But this excellent observer does not mention those 
 changes of intensity in the zodiacal light which I have 
 several times remarked within the tropics, in the space of 
 a few minutes. Mairan asserts, that in France it is common 
 enough to see the zodiacal light, in the months of February 
 and March, mingling with a kind of Aurora Borealis, which 
 he calls ‘ undecided,’ and the nebulous matter of which 
 spreads itself all around the horizon, or appears toward the 
 west. I very much doubt, whether, in the observations I 
 
AGED NEGRESS. 
 
 493 
 
 have been describing, there was any mixture of these two 
 species of light. The variations in intensity took place at 
 considerable altitudes ; the light was white, and not coloured ; 
 steady, and not undulating. Besides, the Aurora Borealis 
 is so seldom visible within the tropics, that during five years, 
 though almost constantly sleeping in the open air, and 
 observing the heavens with unremitting attention, I never 
 perceived the least traces of that phenomenon. 
 
 I am rather inclined to think that the variations of the 
 zodiacal light are not all appearances dependent on certain 
 modifications in the state of our atmosphere. Sometimes, 
 during nights equally clear, I sought in vain for the zodiacal 
 light, when, on the previous night, it had appeared with 
 the greatest brilliancy. Must we admit that emanations 
 which reflect white fight, and seem to have some analogy 
 with the tails of comets, are less abundant at certain 
 periods P Eesearches on the zodiacal fight have acquired 
 a new degree of interest since geometricians have taught 
 us that we are ignorant of the real causes of this phenome- 
 non. The illustrious author of “La Mécanique Céleste” 
 has shown that the solar atmosphere cannot reach even the 
 planet Mercury ; and that it could not in any case display 
 the lenticular form which has been attributed to the 
 zodiacal fight. We may also entertain the same doubts 
 respecting the nature of this fight, as with regard to that 
 of the tails of comets. Is it in fact a reflected or a direct 
 light ? 
 
 We left the plantation of Manterola on the 11th of Feb- 
 ruary, at sunrise. The road runs along the smiling banks 
 of the Tuy ; the morning was cool and humid, and the air 
 seemed embalmed by the delicious odour of the Pancratium 
 undulatum, and other large liliaceous plants. In our way 
 to La Victoria, we passed the pretty village of Mamon or 
 of Consejo, celebrated in the country for a miraculous image 
 of the Virgin. A little before we reached Mamon, we 
 stopped at a farm belonging to the family of Monteras. 
 A negress more than a hundred years old was seated 
 before a small hut built of earth and reeds. Her age was 
 known because she was a creole slave. She seemed still to 
 enjoy very good health. “ I keep her in the sun” (la tengo 
 al sol), said her grandson ; “ the heat keeps her alive.” 
 
494 
 
 -ROAD TO LA YICTOEIA. 
 
 This appeared to us not a very agreeable mode of prolong- 
 ing life, for the sun was darting his rays almost perpendi- 
 cularly. The brown-skinned nations, blacks well seasoned, 
 and Indians, frequently attain a very advanced age in the 
 torrid zone. A native of Peru named Hilario Pari died at 1 
 the extraordinary age of one hundred and forty-three years, 
 after having been ninety years married. 
 
 Don Francisco Montera and his brother, a well-informed 
 young priest, accompanied us with the view of conducting \ 
 us to their house at La Victoria. Almost all the families 
 with whom we had lived in friendship at Caracas were 
 assembled in the fine valleys of Aragua, and they vied 
 with each other in their efforts to render our stay agreeable. I 
 Before we plunged into the forests of the Orinoco, we 
 enjoyed once more all the advantages which advanced civili- 
 zation affords. 
 
 The road from Mamon to La Victoria runs south and 
 south-west. We soon lost sight of the river Tuy, which, I 
 turning eastward, forms an elbow at the foot of the high | 
 mountains of Gruayraima, As we drew nearer to Victoria I 
 the ground became smoother ; it seemed like the bottom of * 
 a lake, the waters of which had been drained off. We might 1 
 have fancied ourselves in the valley of Hasli, in the canton 1 
 of Berne. The neighbouring hills, only one hundred and 
 forty toises in height, are composed of calcareous tufa ; but 
 their abrupt declivities project like promontories on the 
 plain. Their form indicates thé ancient shore of the lake. 1 
 The eastern extremity of this valley is parched and un- , 
 cultivated. Iso advantage has been derived from the ravines I 
 which water the neighbouring mountains ; but fine culti- I 
 vation is commencing in the proximity of the town. I say I 
 of the town, though in my time Victoria was considered I 
 only as a village (pueblo) . 
 
 The environs of La Victoria present a very remarkable I 
 agricultural aspect. The height of the cultivated ground is I 
 from two hundred and seventy to three hundred toises 1 
 above the level of the ocean, and yet we there find fields * 
 of corn mingled with plantations of sugar-cane, coflee, a 
 and plantains. Excepting the interior of the island of 
 Cuba,"' we scarcely find elsewhere in the equinoctial regions 
 * The district of Quatro Villas. 
 
MEAN TEMPERATURE. 
 
 495 
 
 European corn cultivated in large quantities in so low a 
 region. The fine fields of wheat in Mexico are between six 
 hundred and twelve hundred toises of absolute elevation; 
 and it is rare to see them descend to four hundred toises. 
 We shall soon perceive that the produce of grain augments 
 sensibly, from high latitudes towards the equator, with the 
 mean temperature of the climate, in comparing spots of 
 different elevations. The success of agriculture depends on 
 the dryness of the air; on the rains distributed through 
 different seasons, or accumulated in one season ; on winds 
 blowing constantly from the east ; or bringing the cold 
 air of the north into very low latitudes, as in the gulf of 
 Mexico ; on mists, which for whole months diminish the 
 intensity of the solar rays ; in short, on a thousand local 
 circumstances which have less influence on the mean tempe- 
 rature of the whole year than on the distribution of the 
 same quantity of heat through the different parts of the year. 
 It is a striking spectacle to see the grain of Europe culti- 
 vated from the equator as far as Lapland in the latitude of 
 69°, in regions where the mean heat is from 22° to — 2°, in 
 every place where the temperature of summer is above 9 ° or 
 10°. We know the minimum of heat requisite to ripen 
 wheat, barley, and oats ; but we are less certain in respect 
 to the maximum which these species of grain, accommo- 
 dating as they are, can support. We are even ignorant of 
 all the circumstances which favour the culture of corn 
 within the tropics at very small heights. La Victoria and 
 the neighbouring village of San Mateo yield an annual 
 produce of four thousand quintals of wheat. It is sown in 
 the month of December, and the harvest is reaped on the 
 seventieth or seventy-fifth day. The grain is large, white, 
 and abounding ‘n gluten ; its pellicle is thinner and not so 
 hard as that of the wheat of the very cold table-lands of 
 Mexico. An acre* near Victoria generally yields from 
 three thousand to three thousand two hundred pounds 
 weight of wheat. The average produce is consequently 
 here, as at Buenos Ayres, three or four times as much as 
 that of northern countries. Nearly sixteenfold of the 
 quantity of seed is reaped; while, according to Lavoisier, 
 
 * An arpent des eaux et forêts, or legal acre of France, of which 1’95 
 =?= 1 hectare. It is about 1£ acre English. 
 
496 
 
 TOWN OP VICTORIA. 
 
 the surface of France yields on an average only five or six for 
 one, or from one thousand to twelve hundred pounds per 
 acre. Notwithstanding this fecundity of the soil, and this 
 happy influence of the climate, the culture of the sugar-cane 
 is more productive in the valleys of Aragua than that of 
 corn. 
 
 La Yictoria is traversed by the little river Calanchas, 
 running, not into the Tuy, hut into the Rio Aragua : it 
 thence results that this fine country, producing at once 
 sugar and corn, belongs to the basin of the lake of Valen- 
 cia, to a system of interior rivers not communicating with 
 the sea. The quarter of the town west of the Rio Calan- 
 chas is called la otra banda; it is the most commercial 
 part; merchandize is everywhere exhibited, and ranges of 
 shops form the streets. Two commercial roads pass through 
 La Victoria, that of Valencia, or of Porto Cabello, and the 
 road of Villa de Cura, or of the plains, called camino de los 
 Llanos. "We here find more whites in proportion than at 
 Caracas. We visited at sunset the little hill of Calvary, 
 where the view is extremely fine and extensive. We dis- 
 cover on the west the lovely valleys of Aragua, a vast 
 space covered w'ith gardens, cultivated fields, clumps of wild 
 trees, farms, and hamlets. Turning south and south-east, 
 we see, extending as far as the eye can reach, the lofty 
 mountains of La Palma, Guayraima, Tiara, and Guiripa, 
 which conceal the immense plains or steppes of Calabozo. 
 This interior chain stretches westward along the lake of 
 Valencia, towards the Villa de Cura, the Cuesta de Yusma, 
 and the denticulated mountains of Guigne. It is very 
 steep, and constantly covered with that light vapour which 
 in hot climates gives a vivid blue tint to distant objects, 
 and, far from concealing their outlines, marks them the 
 more strongly. It is believed that among the mountains of 
 the interior chain, that of Guayraima reaches an elevation 
 of twelve nundred toises. I found in the night of the 
 eleventh of February the latitude of La Victoria 10° 13' 35", 
 the magnetic dip 40’ 8°, the intensity of the forces equal to 
 236 oscillations in ten minutes of time, and the variation of 
 the needle 4‘4° north-east. 
 
 We proceeded slowly on our way by the villages of San 
 Mateo, Turmero, and Maracay, to the Hacienda de Cura, a 
 
PEODUCE OF COEN - . 
 
 497 
 
 fine plantation belonging to Count Tovar, where we arrived 
 on the evening of the fourteenth of February. The valley, 
 which gradually widens, is bordered with hills of calcareous 
 tufa, called here tierra lilanca. The scientific men of the 
 country have made several attempts to calcine this earth, 
 mistaking it for the porcelain earth proceeding from decom- 
 posed strata of feldspar. We stayed some hours with a 
 very intelligent family, named Ustariz, at Concesion. Their 
 house, which contains a collection of choice books, stands 
 on an eminence, and is surrounded by plantations of coffee 
 and sugar-cane. A grove of balsam-trees (balsamo*) gives 
 coolness and shade to this spot. It was gratifying to observe 
 the great number of scattered houses in the valley inhabited 
 by freedmen. In the Spanish colonies, the laws, the insti- 
 tutions, and the manners, are more favourable to the liberty 
 of the negroes than in other European settlements. 
 
 San Mateo, Turmero, and Maracay, are charming vil- 
 lages, where everything denotes the comfort of the inha- 
 bitants. We seemed to be transported to the most indus- 
 trious districts of Catalonia. Near San Mateo we find the 
 last fields of wheat, and the last mills with horizontal 
 hydraulic wheels. A harvest of twenty for one was ex- 
 pected ; and, as if that produce were but moderate, I was 
 asked whether corn yielded more in Prussia and in Poland. 
 By an error generally prevalent under the tropics, the pro- 
 duce of grain is supposed to degenerate in advancing 
 towards the equator, and harvests are believed to be more 
 abundant in northern climates. Since calculations have 
 been made on the progress of agriculture in the different 
 zones, and on the temperatures under the influence of which 
 corn will flourish, it has been found that, beyond the 
 latitude of 45°, the produce of wheat is nowhere so con- 
 siderable as on the northern coasts of Africa, and on the 
 table-lands of New Grenada, Peru, and Mexico. Without 
 comparing the mean temperature- of the whole year, but 
 only the mean temperature of the season which embraces 
 the corn cycle of vegetation, we find for three months of 
 summer,! in the north of Europe, from 15° to 19° ; in Bar- 
 
 * Amyris data. 
 
 ! The mean heat of the summers of Scotland in the environs of 
 
 VOL. I. 2 K 
 
498 
 
 LIMITS OF THE GROWTH OF CORN. 
 
 bary and in Egypt, from 27° to 29°; within the tropics, 
 between fourteen and three hundred toises of height, from 
 14° to 25 - 5° of the centigrade thermometer. 
 
 The fine harvests of Egypt and of Algiers, as well as 
 those of the valleys of Aragua and the interior of the island 
 of Cuba, sufficiently prove that the augmentation of heat is 
 not prejudicial to the harvest of wheat and other alimentary 
 grain, unless it be attended with an excess of drought or 
 moisture. To this circumstance no doubt we must attri- 
 bute the apparent anomalies sometimes observed within the 
 tropics, in the lower limit of corn. We are astonished to 
 see, eastward of the Havannah, in the famous district of 
 Quatro Yillas, that this limit descends almost to the level 
 of the ocean ; whilst west of the Havannah, on the slope of 
 •the mountains of Mexico and Xalapa, at six hundred and 
 seventy-seven toises of height, the luxuriance of vegetation’ 
 is such, that wheat does not form ears. At the beg innin g 
 of the Spanish conquest, the corn of Europe was cultivated 
 with success in several regions now supposed to be too hot, 
 or too damp, for this branch of agriculture. The Spaniards 
 on their first removal to America were little accustomed to 
 five on maize. They still adhered to their European habits. 
 They did not calculate whether corn would be less profitable 
 than coffee or cotton. They tried seeds of every kind, 
 making experiments the more boldly because their reason- 
 ings were less founded on false theories. The province of 
 Carthagena, crossed by the chain of the mountains Maria 
 and G-uamoco, produced wheat till the sixteenth century. 
 In the province of Caracas, this culture is of very ancient 
 date in the mountainous lands of Tocuyo, Quibor, and Bar- 
 
 Edinburgh, (lat. 56 c ), is found again on the table-lands of New Grenada* 
 so rich in wheat, at 1400 toises of elevation, and at 4° N. latitude. On 
 the other hand, we find the mean temperature of the valleys of Aragua* 
 lat. 10° 13', and of all the plains which are not very elevated in the torrid 
 zone, in the summer temperature of Naples and Sicily, lat. 39° to 40? 
 These figures indicate the situation of the isotheric lines (lines of the 
 same summer heat), and not that of the isothermal lines \those of equal 
 annual temperature). Considering the quantity of heat received on the 
 same spot of the globe during a whole year, the mean temperatures of the 
 valleys of Aragua, and the table-lands of New Grenada, at 300 and 1400 
 toises of elevation, correspond to the mean temperatures of the coasts at 
 23° and 45° of latitude. 
 
VILLAGE OF TURMERO. 
 
 499 
 
 quesimetd, which connect the littoral chain with the Sierra 
 Nevada of Merida. Wheat is still successfully cultivated 
 there, and the environs of the town of Tocuyo alone export 
 annually more than eight thousand quintals of excellent 
 flour. But, though the province of Caracas, in its vast ex- 
 tent, includes several spots very favourable to the cultivation 
 of European com, I believe that in general this branch of 
 agriculture will never acquire any great importance there. 
 The most temperate valleys are not sufficiently wide ; they 
 are not real table-lands ; and their mean elevation above the 
 level of the sea is not so considerable but that the inhabitants 
 cannot fail to perceive that it is more their interest to estab- 
 lish plantations of coffee, than to cultivate corn. Elour now 
 comes to Caracas either from Spain or from the United States. 
 
 The village of Turmero is four leagues distant from San 
 Mateo. The road leads through plantations of sugar, indigo, 
 cotton, and coffee. The regularity observable in the con- 
 struction of the villages, reminded us that they all owe 
 their origin to monks and missions. The streets are straight 
 and parallel, crossing each other at right angles ; and the 
 church is invariably erected in the great square, situated in 
 the centre of the village. The church of Turmero is a 
 fine edifice, but overloaded with architectural ornaments. 
 Since the missionaries have been replaced by vicars, the 
 whites have mingled their habitations with those of the 
 Indians. The latter are gradually disappearing as a sepa- 
 rate race ; that is to say, they are represented in the general 
 statement of the population by the Mestizoes and the Zam- 
 boes, whose numbers daily increase. I still found, however, 
 four thousand tributary Indians in the valleys of Aragua. 
 Those of Turmero and Guacara are the most numerous. 
 They are of small stature, but less squat than the Chaymas ; 
 their eyes denote more vivacity and intelligence, owing less 
 perhaps to a diversity in the race, than to a superior state 
 of civilization. They work like freemen by the day. Though 
 active and laborious during the short time they allot to 
 labour, yet what they earn in two months is spent in one 
 week, in the purchase of strong liquors at the small inns, of 
 which unhappily the numbers daily increase. 
 
 We saw at Turmero the remains of the assembled militia 
 
 2 k 2 
 
500 
 
 GEE AT ZAMANG TEEE. 
 
 of the country, and their appearance alone sufficiently indi- 
 cated that these valleys had enjoyed for ages undisturbed 
 peace. The capitan-general, in order to give a new impulse 
 to the military service, had ordered a grand review ; and the 
 battalion of Turmero, in a mock fight, had fired on that of 
 La Victoria. Our host, a lieutenant of the militia, was 
 never weary of describing to us the danger of these 
 manoeuvres, which seemed more burlesque than imposing. 
 "With what rapidity do nations, apparently the most pacific, 
 acquire military habits ! Twelve years afterwards, those 
 valleys of Aragua, those peaceful plains of La Victoria and 
 Turmero, the defile of Cabrera, and the fertile banks of the 
 lake of Valencia, became the scenes of obstinate and san- 
 guinary conflicts between the natives and the troops of the 
 mother-country. 
 
 South of Turmero, a mass of limestone mountains ad- 
 vances into the plain, separating two fine sugar-plantations, 
 Guayavita and Paja. The latter belongs to the family of 
 Count Tovar, who have property in every part of the pro- 
 vince. Near Guayavita, brown iron-ore has been discovered. 
 To the north of Turmero, a granitic summit (the Chuao) 
 rises in the Cordillera of the coast, from the top of which 
 we discern at once the sea and the lake of Valencia. Cross- 
 ing this rocky ridge, which runs towards the west farther 
 than the eye can reach, paths somewhat difficult lead to 
 the rich plantations of cacao on the coast, to Choroni, Tu- 
 riamo, and Ocumare, noted alike for the fertility of the soil 
 and the insalubrity of their climate. Turmero, Maracay, 
 Cura, Guacara, every point of the valley of Aragua, has its 
 mountain-road, which terminates at one of the small ports 
 on the coast. 
 
 On quitting the village of Turmero, we discover, at a 
 league distant, an object, which appears at the horizon like 
 a round hillock, or tumulus, covered with vegetation. It is 
 neither a hill, nor a group of trees close to each other, but 
 one single tree, the famous zamang del Guayre , known 
 throughout the province for the enormous extent of its 
 branches, which form a hemispheric head five hundred and 
 seventy-six feet in circumference. The zamang is a fine 
 species of mimosa, and its tortuous branches are divided by 
 
GEE AT ZAMANG TEEE. 
 
 SOI 
 
 bifurcation. Its delicate and tender foliage was agreeably 
 relieved on tbe azure of the sky. We stopped a long 
 time under this vegetable roof. The trunk of the zamang 
 del Ghiayre, # which is found on the road from Turmero to 
 Maracay, is only sixty feet high, and nine thick ; but its 
 real beauty consists in the form of its head. The branches 
 extend like an immense umbrella, and bend toward the 
 ground, from which they remain at a uniform distance of 
 twelve or fifteen feet. The circumference of this head is so 
 regular, that, having traced different diameters, I found 
 them one hundred and ninety-two and one hundred and 
 eighty-six feet. One side of the tree was entirely stripped 
 of its foliage, owing to the drought ; but on the other side 
 there remained both leaves and flowers. Tillandsias, loran- 
 theæ, Cactus Pitahaya, and other parasite plants, covei its 
 branches, and crack the bark. The inhabitants of these 
 villages, but particularly the Indians, hold in veneration the 
 zamang del G-uayre, which the first conquerors found almost 
 in the same state in which it now remains. Since it has 
 been observed with attention, no change has appeared in its 
 thickness or height. This zamang must be at least as old 
 as the Orotava dragon-tree. There is something solemn 
 and majestic in the aspect of aged trees ; and the violation of 
 these monuments of nature is severely punished in countries 
 destitute of monuments of art. We heard with satisfaction 
 that the present proprietor of the zamang had brought an 
 action against a cultivator who had been guilty of cutting 
 off a branch. The cause was tried, and the tribunal con- 
 demned the offender. We find near Turmero and the Haci- 
 enda de Cura other zamangs, having trunks larger than 
 that of G-uayre, but their hemispherical heads are not of 
 equal extent. 
 
 The culture and population of the plains augment in the 
 direction of Cura and Gruacara, on the northern side of the 
 lake. The valleys of Aragua contain more than 52,000 
 inhabitants, on a space thirteen leagues in length, and two 
 in width. This is a relative population of two thousand 
 souls on a square league. The village, or rather the small 
 
 * The mimos of La Guayre; zamang being the Indian name for the 
 genera mimosa, desmanthus, and acacia. The place where the tree is 
 found is called El Guayre. 
 
502 
 
 HOSPITABLE FEIENDS. 
 
 town of Maracay was heretofore the centre of the indigo 
 plantations, when this branch of colonial industry was in its 
 greatest prosperity. The houses are all of masonry, and 
 every court contains cocoa-trees, which rise above the habi- 
 tations. The aspect of general wealth is still more striking 
 at Maracay, than at Turmero. The anil , or indigo, of these 
 provinces has always been considered in commerce as equal 
 and sometimes superior to that of Guatemala. The indigo 
 plant impoverishes the soil, where it is cultivated during a 
 long series of years, more than any other. The lands of 
 Maracay, Tapatapa, and Turmero, are looked upon as ex- 
 hausted; and indeed the produce of indigo has been con- 
 stantly decreasing. But in proportion as it has diminished 
 in the valleys of Aragua, it has increased in the province of 
 Yarinas, and in the burning plains of Cucuta, where, on 
 the banks of the Bio Tachira, virgin land yields an abun- 
 dant produce, of the richest colour. 
 
 We arrived very late at Maracay, and the persons to 
 whom we were recommended were absent. The inhabitants 
 perceiving our embarrassmeut, contended with each other 
 in offering to lodge us, to place our instruments, and take ' 
 care of our mules. It has been said a thousand times, but 
 the traveller always feels desirous of repeating it again, that 
 the Spanish colonies are the land of hospitality ; they are 
 so even in those places where industry and commerce have 
 diffused wealth and improvement. A family of Canarians 
 received us with the most amiable cordiality ; an excellent 
 repast was prepared, and everything was carefully avoided 
 that might act as any restraint on us. The master of the 
 house, Don Alexandre Gonzales, was travelling on com- 
 mercial business, and his young wife had lately had the 
 happiness of becoming a mother. She was transported 
 with joy when she heard that on our return from the Bio 
 Negro we should proceed by the banks of the Orinoco to 
 Angostura, where her husband was. We were to bear to him 
 the tidings of the birth of his first child. In those countries, 
 as among the ancients, travellers are regarded as the safest 
 means of communication. There are indeed posts estab- 
 lished, but they make such great circuits that private persons 
 seldom entrust them with letters for the llanos or savannahs 
 of the interior. The child was brought to us at the moment 
 
NAÏIYE MANNER OE LIYIKG. 
 
 508 
 
 of our departure : we had seen him asleep at night, but it 
 was deemed indispensable that we should see him awake in 
 the morning. We promised to describe his features exactly 
 to his father, but the sight of our books and instruments 
 somewhat chilled the mother’s confidence. She said “ that 
 in a long journey, amidst so many cares of another kind, 
 we might well forget the colour of her child’s eyes.” 
 
 On the road from Maracay to the Hacienda de Cura we 
 enjoyed from time to time the view of the lake of Valencia. 
 An arm of the granitic chain of the coast stretches south- 
 ward into the plain. ’ortachuelo 
 
 by a narrow defile from the rock of La Cabrera. This place 
 has acquired a sad celebrity in the late revolutionary wars 
 of Caracas ; each party having obstinately disputed its pos- 
 session, as opening the way to Valencia, and to the Llanos. 
 La Cabrera now forms a peninsula : not sixty years ago it 
 was a rocky island in the lake, the waters of which gra- 
 dually diminish. We spent seven very agreeable days at 
 the Hacienda da Cura, in a small habitation surrounded by 
 thickets. 
 
 We lived after the manner of the rich in this country; 
 we bathed twice, slept three times, and made three meals 
 in the twenty-four hours. The temperature of the water 
 of the lake is rather warm, being from twenty-four to 
 twenty-five degrees ; but there is another cool and delicious 
 Dathing-place at Toma, under the shade of ceibas and large 
 zamangs, in a torrent gushing from the granitic mountains 
 of the Rincon del Diablo. In entering this bath, we had 
 not to fear the sting of insects, but to guard against the 
 little brown hairs which cover the pods of the Dolichos 
 pruriens. When these small hairs, well characterised by 
 the name oipicapica, stick to the body, they excite a violent 
 irritation on the skin; the dart is felt, but the cause is 
 unperceived. 
 
 Hear Cura we found all the people occupied in clearing 
 the ground covered with mimosa, sterculia, and Coccoloba 
 excoriata, for the purpose of extending the cultivation of 
 cotton. This product, which partly supplies the place of 
 indigo, has succeeded so well during some years, that the 
 *cotton-tree now grows wild on the borders of the lake of 
 
 which would almost 
 
 separated 
 
504 
 
 PXANTATIONS OE THE COAST. 
 
 Valencia. We have found shrubs of eight or ten feet high 
 entwined with bignonia and other ligneous creepers. The 
 exportation of cotton from Caracas, however, is yet of small 
 importance. It amounted at an average at La Gruayra 
 scarcely to three or four hundred thousand pounds in a 
 year ; but including all the ports of the Capitania-general, it 
 arose, on account of the flourishing culture of Cariaco, Nueva 
 Barcelona, and Maracaybo, to more than 22,000 quintals. 
 The cotton of the valleys of Aragua is of fine quality, being 
 inferior only to that of Brazil ; for it is preferred to that of 
 Carthagena, St. Domingo, and the Caribbee Islands. The 
 cultivation of cotton extends on one side of the lake from 
 Maracay to Valencia; and on the other from Gruayca to 
 Gruigue. The large plantations yield from sixty to seventy 
 thousand pounds a year. 
 
 During our stay at Cura we made numerous excursions 
 to the rocky islands (which rise in the midst of the lake of 
 Valencia.) to the warm springs of Mariara, and to the lofty 
 granitic mountain called El Cucurucho de Coco. A dan- 
 gerous and narrow path leads to the port of Turiamo and 
 the celebrated cacao-plantations of the coast. In all these 
 excursions we were agreeably surprised, not only at the pro- 
 gress of agriculture, but at the increase of a free laborious 
 population, accustomed to toil, and too poor to rely on the 
 assistance of slaves. White and mulatto farmers had every- 
 where small separate establishments. Our host, whose 
 father had a revenue of 40,000 piastres, possessed more 
 lands than he could clear; he distributed them in the 
 valleys of Aragua among poor families who chose to apply 
 themselves to the cultivation of cotton. He endeavoured 
 to surround his ample plantations with freemen, who, 
 working as they chose, either in their own land or in the 
 neighbouring plantations, supplied him with day-labourers 
 at the time of harvest. Nobly occupied on the means best 
 adapted gradually to extinguish the slavery of the blacks in 
 these provinces, Count Tovar flattered himself with the 
 double hope of rendering slaves less necessary to the land- 
 holders, and furnishing the freedmen with opportunities of 
 becoming farmers. On departing for Europe he had par- 
 celled out and let a part of the lands of Cura, which extend 
 towards the west at the foot of the rock of Las Viruelas. 
 
FREE AND SLAVE LABOUR. 
 
 505 
 
 Pour years after, at his return to America, he found on this 
 spot, finely cultivated in cotton, a little hamlet of thirty or 
 forty houses, which is called Punta Zamuro, and which we 
 visited with him. The inhabitants of this hamlet are almost 
 all mulattos, Zamboes, or free blacks. This example of 
 letting out land has been happily followed by several other 
 great proprietors. The rent is ten piastres for a fanega 
 of ground, and is paid in money or in cotton. As the small 
 farmers are often in want, they sell their cotton at a very 
 moderate price. They dispose of it even before the harvest ; 
 and the advances, made by rich neighbours, place the 
 debtor in a situation of dependence, which frequently 
 obliges him to offer his services as a labourer. The price 
 of labour is cheaper here than in Prance. A freeman, 
 working as a day-labourer (peon), is paid in the valleys of 
 Aragua and in the llanos four or five piastres per month, 
 not including food, which is very cheap on account of the 
 abundance of meat and vegetables. I love to dwell on 
 these details of colonial industry, because they serve to 
 prove to the inhabitants of Europe, a fact which to the 
 enlightened inhabitants of the colonies has long ceased to 
 he doubtful, viz., that the continent of Spanish America can 
 produce sugar, cotton, and indigo by free hands, and that 
 the unhappy slaves are capable of becoming peasants, 
 farmers, and landholders. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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