turesque appearance, those fine plantations of date-trees, near Elche, in Murcia, where in one square league are found upwards of 70,000 palms. The cocoa-tree bears fruit in abundance till it is thirty or forty years old; after this age, the produce diminishes, and a trunk a hundred years old, without being altogether barren, yields very little produce. In the town of Cumana a great quantity of oil of cocoas is made, which is limpid, without smell, and very fit for burning. The trade in this oil is not less brisk than that on the coast of Africa for palm oil, which is obtained from the elays guineensis, and is used as food. At Cumana I have often witnessed the arrival of canoes laden with 3000 cocoa-nuts. A tree in full bearing yields an annual revenue of two piastres and half (eleven shillings and tenpence halfpenny). But in the haciendas of cocoa, trees of different ages being mixed, the capital is estimated by appraisers only at four piastres.

* These valuations may serve to throw some light on the advantages derived from the culture of fruit-trees under the torrid zone. Near Cumana, a banana is valued by estimation at one real de plata (6‡d.). A nispero, or sapota, at 10 piastres. Four cocoa-nuts, or eight fruits of the nispero (achras sapota), are sold for half a real. The price of the former has doubled within these twenty years, on account of the great exportation that has been made to the islands. A good bearing nispero yields the farmer, who can sell the

We did not quit the farm of Pericantral till after sunset. The south coast of the Gulf, covered with a rich vegetation, presents the most agreeable aspect, while the northern coast is naked, dry, and rocky. In spite of this aridity, and the failure of rain, which is sometimes felt for fifteen months*, the peninsula of Araya, like the desert of Canound in India, produces patillas, or water melons, that weigh from fifty to seventy pounds. Under the torrid zone, the vapors contained by the air form about nine tenths of the quantity necessary to it's saturation; and vegetation is maintained by the ad

fruit in a neighbouring town, near eight piastres a year; a bixa [annotta tree] or a pomegranate tree yields only one piastre. The pomegranate is much sought after on account of the refreshing juice of it's fruit, which is preferred to those of the passiflora or parcha.

The rains appear to have been more frequent at the beginning of the 16th century. At least the Canon of Granada, Petrus Martyr d'Anghiera (De Reb. Ocean., Coloniæ, 1574, p. 93), speaking of the salt-works of Araya, or of Haraia, which we have described in the fifth Chapter, mentions showers (cadentes imbres) as a very common phenomenon. The same author, who died in 1526 (Cancelieri, Notizie di Columbo, p. 212), affirms, that the Indians wrought the salt works before the arrival of the Spaniards. They dried the salt in form of bricks, and Petrus Martyr even then discussed the geological question, whether the clayey soil of Haraia contained salt springs, or whether it had been impregnated with salt by the periodical inundations of the ocean for ages.

mirable property, which the leaves possess, of attracting the water dissolved in the atmosphere. We passed a very indifferent night in a narrow and deeply laden canoe; and reached the mouth of the river Mançanares at three in the morning. Accustomed for several weeks past to the aspect of mountains, to a stormy sky, and to gloomy forests, we were struck with the invariable clearness of the air, the nakedness of the soil, and the mass of reflected light, which characterize the site of Cumana.

At sunrise, we saw the zamuro vultures*, in flocks of forty or fifty, perched on the cocoatrees. These birds range themselves in files to sleep together like fowls; and their indolence is such, that they go to roost long before sunset, and awake not till after the sun is above the horizon. This idleness seems as if it were shared in those climates by the trees with pen nate leaves. The mimosas and the tamarinds close their leaves in a clear and serene sky, twenty-five or thirty-five minutes before the setting of the sun, and unfold them in the morning when it's disk has been visible for the same time. As I noticed pretty regularly the setting and rising of the sun, in order to observe the effect of the mirage, or of the terrestrial refractions, I was enabled to give continu

* Vultur oura.

ed attention to the phenomenon of the sleep of plants. I found them the same in the steppes, where no irregularity of the ground interrupted the view of the horizon. It appears, that, accustomed during the day to an extreme brilliancy of light, the sensitive and other leguminous plants with thin and delicate leaves are affected in the evening by the smallest decline in the intensity of the sun's rays; so that night begins for the vegetables, there as with us, before the total disappearance of the solar disk. But why, under a zone where there is scarcely any twilight, do not the first rays of the sun stimulate the leaves with so much more force, as the absence of light must have rendered them more irritable? Does the humidity deposited on the parenchyma by the cooling of the leaves, which is the effect of the nocturnal radiation, prevent perhaps 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 Languages.-Filiation of the Nations which inhabit New Andalusia.-Pariagotoes seen by Columbus.

I was unwilling to mingle with the narrative of our journey to the Missions of Caripe general considerations on the different tribes of natives, that inhabit New Andalusia; on their manners, their languages, and their common origin. Having returned to the spot from which we set out, I shall now bring into one point of view these objects, 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 more interesting than the phenomena of the physical world. The northeast part of equinoctial America, Terra Firma, and the shore of the Oroonoko, resemble, with respect to the multiplicity of the nations that inhabit them, the defiles of Caucasus, the mountains of Hindoo-kho, at the northern extremity of Asia, beyond the Tungooses, and the