PEARL-FISHERIES.

7.1

amusing them with a display of his knowledge, he drew from a leathern bag a few very small pearls, which he forced them to accept, enjoining them to note on their tablets, "that a poor shoemaker of Araya, but a white man, and of noble Castilian descent, was enabled to give them what on the other side of the sea would be sought for as a thing of great value."

The pearl-shell (Avicula margaritifera) is abundant on the shoals which extend from Cape Paria to the Cape of Vela. Margarita, Cubagua, Coche, Punta Araya, and the mouth of the Rio la Hacha were as celebrated in the sixteenth century for them as the Persian Gulf was among the ancients. At the beginning of the conquest the island of Coche alone furnished 1500 marks (1029 troy pounds) monthly. The portion which the king's officers drew from theproduce of the pearls amounted to 34067. 5s,; and it would appear that up to 1530 the value of those sent to Europe amounted, at a yearly average, to more than 130,000l. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, this fishery diminished rapidly; and, according to Laet, had been long given up in 1683. The artificial imitations, and the great diminution of the shells, rendered it less lucrative. At present, the Gulf of Panama and the mouth of the Rio de la Hacha are the only parts of South America in which this branch of industry is continued.

On the morning of the 20th, a young Indian conducted the travellers over Barigon and Caney to the village of Maniquarez. The thermometer kept as high as 78.5°, and before their guide had travelled a league he frequently sat down to rest himself, and expressed a desire to repose under the shade of a tamarind-tree until night should approach. Humboldt explains the circumstance, that the natives complain more of lassitude under an intense heat. than Europeans not inured to it, by a reference to

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GEOLOGICAL PHENOMENA.

their listless disposition, and their not being excited by the same stimulus.

In crossing the arid hills of Cape Cirial, they perceived a strong smell of petroleum, the wind blowing from the side where the springs of that substance occur. Near the village of Maniquarez, they found the mica-slate cropping out from below the secondary rocks. It was of a silvery white, contained garnets, and was traversed by small layers of quartz. From a detached block of this last, found on the shore, they separated a fragment of cyanite, the only specimen of that mineral seen by them in South America.

A rude manufacture of pottery is carried on at that hamlet by the Indian women. The clay is produced by the decomposition of mica-slate, and is of a reddish colour. The natives, being unacquainted with the use of ovens, place twigs around the vessels, and bake them in the open air.

At the same place they met with some Creoles who had been hunting small deer in the uninhabited islet of Cubagua, where they are very abundant. These creatures are of a brownish-red hue, spotted with white, and of the latter colour beneath. They belong to the species named by naturalists Cervus Mexicanus.

In the estimation of the natives, the most curious production of the coast of Araya is what they call the eye-stone. They consider it as both a stone and an animal, and assert that when it is found in the sand it is motionless; whereas on a polished surface, as an earthen plate, it moves when stimulated by Iemon-juice. When introduced into the eye it expels every other substance that may have accidentally insinuated itself. The people offered these stones to the travellers by hundreds, and wished to put sand into their eyes, that they might try the power of this wondrous remedy; which, however,

EXCURSION TO SAN FERNANDO.

73

was nothing else than the operculum of a small shellfish.

Near Cape de la Brea, at the distance of eighty feet from the shore, is a small stream of naphtha, the produce of which covers the sea to a great extent. It is a singular circumstance that this spring issues from mica-slate, all others that are known belonging to secondary deposites.

After examining the neighbourhood of Maniquarez, the adventurers embarked at night in a small fishing-boat, so leaky that a person was constantly employed in baling out the water with a calabash, and arrived in safety at Cumana.

CHAPTER VII.

Missions of the Chaymas.

Excursion to the Missions of the Chayma Indians-Remarks on Cultivation-The Impossible-Aspect of the Vegetation-San FernandoAccount of a Man who suckled a Child-Cumanacoa--Cultivation of Tobacco-Igneous Exhalations-Jaguars-Mountain of CocollarTurimiquiri-Missions of San Antonio and Guanaguana,

The

ON the 4th of September, at an early hour, our travellers commenced an excursion to the missionary stations of the Chayma Indians, and to the lofty mountains which traverse New-Andalusia. morning was deliciously cool; and from the summit of the hill of San Francisco they enjoyed in the short twilight an extensive view of the sea, the adjacent plain, and the distant peaks. After walking two hours they arrived at the foot of the chain, where they found different rocks, together with a new and more luxuriant vegetation. They observed that the latter was more brilliant wherever the limestone was

G

74

STATE OF CULTIVATION.

covered by a quartzy sandstone,-a circumstance which probably depends not so much on the nature of the soil as on its greater humidity; the thin layers of slate-clay, which the latter contains, preventing the water from_filtering into the crevices of the former. In those moist places they always discovered appearances of cultivation, huts inhabited by mestizoes, and placed in the centre of small enclosures, containing papaws, plantains, sugar-canes, and maize. In Europe, the wheat, barley, and other kinds of grain cover vast spaces of ground, and, in general, wherever the inhabitants live upon corn, the cultivated lands are not separated from each other by the intervention of large wastes; but in the torrid zone, where the fertility of the soil is proportionate to the heat and humidity of the air, and where man has appropriated plants that yield earlier and more abundant crops, an immense population finds ample subsistence on a narrow space. The scattered disposition of the huts in the midst of the forest indicates to the traveller the fecundity of nature.

In so mild and uniform a climate the only urgent want of man is that of food; and in the midst of abundance his intellectual faculties receive less improvement than in colder regions, where his necessities are numerous and diversified. While in Europe we judge of the inhabitants of a country by the extent of laboured ground; in the warmest parts of South America populous provinces seem to the traveller almost deserted, because a very small extent of soil is sufficient for the maintenance of a family. The insulated state in which the natives thus live prevents any rapid progress of civilization, although it develops the sentiments of independence and liberty.

As the travellers penetrated into the forests the barometer indicated the progressive elevation of the land. About three in the afternoon they halted on a small flat, where a few houses had been erected

near a spring, the water of which they found delicious. Its temperature was 72.5°, while that of the air was 83.70. From the top of a sandstone-hill in the vicinity they had a splendid view of the sea and part of the coast, while in the intervening space the tops of the trees, intermixed with flowery lianas, formed a vast carpet of deep verdure. As they advanced towards the south-west the soil became dry and loose. They ascended a group of rather high mountains, destitute of vegetation, and having steep declivities. This ridge is named the Impossible, it being imagined that in case of invasion it might afford a safe retreat to the inhabitants of Cumana. The prospect was finer and more extensive than from the fountain above mentioned.

They arrived on the summit only a little before dusk. The setting of the sun was accompanied by a very rapid diminution of temperature, the thermometer suddenly falling from 77.4° to 70.3°, although the air was calm. They passed the night in a house at which there was a military post of eight men, commanded by a Spanish sergeant. When, after the capture of Trinidad by the English in 1797, Cumana was threatened, many of the people fled to Cumanacoa, leaving the more valuable of their property in sheds constructed on this ridge. The solitude of the place reminded Humboldt of the nights which he had passed on the top of St. Gothard. Several parts of the surrounding forests were burning, and the reddish flames arising amid clouds of smoke, presented a most impressive spectacle. The shepherds set fire to the woods for the purpose of improving the pasturage, though conflagrations are often caused by the negligence of the wandering Indians. The number of old trees on the road from Cumana to Cumanacoa has been greatly reduced by these accidents; and in several parts of the province the dryness has increased, owing both to the diminution of the forests and the frequency of earthquakes which produce crevices in the soil.