142 DEPARTURE FROM CARACCAS. quent shocks occurred, and a discharge of ashes, attended with a tremendous bellowing, followed on the 27th April next year. On the 30th the lava flowed, and after a course of four hours reached the sea. The explosions resembled alternate volleys of very large cannon and musketry. As the space between the volcano of St. Vincent and the Rio Apure is 725 miles, these were heard at a distance equal to that between Vesuvius and Paris, and must have been propagated by the earth, and not by the air. After adducing numerous instances of the coincidence of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, Humboldt endeavours to prove that subterranean communications extend to vast distances, that the phenomena of volcanoes and earthquakes are intimately connected, and that the latter have certain lines of direction. CHAPTER XIV. Journey from Caraccas to the Lake of Valencia. Departure from Caraccas-La Buenavista-Valleys of San Pedro and the Tuy-Manterola-Zamang-tree-Valleys of Aragua-Lake of Valencia -Diminution of its Waters-Hot Springs-Jaguar-New-ValenciaThermal Waters of La Trinchera-Porto Cabello-Cow-tree-Cocoaplantations-General View of the Littoral District of Venezuela. LEAVING the city of Caraccas, on their way to the Orinoco, our travellers slept the first night at the base of the woody mountains which close the valley towards the south-west. They followed the right bank of the Rio Guayra, as far as the village Antimano, by an excellent road, partly scooped out of the rock. The mountains were all of gneiss or mica-slate. A little before reaching that hamlet they COFFEE PLANTATIONS. 143 observed two large veins of gneiss in the slate, containing balls of granular diabase or greenstone, composed of felspar and hornblende, with garnet disseminated. In the vicinity all the orchards were full of peach-trees covered with flowers: Between Antimano and Ajuntas, they crossed the Rio Guayra seventeen times, and proceeded along the bottom of the valley. The river was bordered by a gramineous plant, the Gynerium saccharoides, which sometimes reaches the height of 32 feet, while the huts were surrounded by enormous trees of Laurus persea, covered by creepers. They passed the night in a sugar-plantation. In a square house were nearly eighty negroes, lying on skins of oxen spread on the floor, while a dozen fires were burning in the yard, at which people were cooking. A great predilection for the culture of the coffeetree was entertained in the province. The young plants were chiefly procured by exposing the seeds to germination between plaintain-leaves. They were then sown, and produced shoots better adapted to bear the heat of the sun than such as spring up in the shade of the plantations. The tree bears flowers only the second year, and its blossoms last only twenty-four hours. The returns of the third year are very abundant; at an average each plant yielding a pound and a half or two pounds of coffee. Humboldt remarks, that although it is not yet a century since the first trees were introduced at Surinam and in the West Indies, the produce of America already amounts to fifteen millions of piasters, or 2,437,500l. sterling. On the 8th February the travellers set out at sunrise, and after passing the junction of the two small rivers San Pedro and Macarao, which form the Rio Guayra, ascended a steep hill to the table-land of La Buenavista. The country here had a wild appearance, and was thickly wooded. The road, which was so much frequented that long files of mules and 144 VALLEY OF THE TUY. oxen met them at every step, was cut out of a talcose gneiss, in a state of decomposition. Descending from that point, they came upon a ravine, in which a fine spring formed several cascades. Here they found an abundant and diversified vegetation, consisting of arborescent ferns, more than twentyseven feet high, heliconias, plumerias, browneæ, gigantic figs, palms, and other plants. The brownea, which bears four or five hundred purple flowers in a single thyrsus, reaches the height of fifty or sixty feet. At the base of the wooded mountain of Higuerota they entered the small village of San Pedro, situated in a basin where several valleys meet. Plantains, potatoes, and coffee were sedulously cultivated. The rock was mica-slate, filled with garnets, and containing beds of serpentine of a fine green, varied with spots of a lighter tint. Ascending from the low ground, they passed by the farms of Las Lagunetas and Garavatos, near the latter of which there is a mica-slate rock of a singular form, that of a ridge, or wall, crowned by a tower. The country is mountainous, and almost entirely uninhabited; but beyond this they entered a fertile district, covered with hamlets and small towns. This beautiful region is the valley of the Tuy, where they spent two days at the plantation of Don Jose de Manterola, on the bank of the river, the water of which was as clear as crystal. Here they observed three species of sugar-cane, the old creole, the Otaheitan, and the Batavian, which are easily distinguished, and of which the most valuable is the Otaheitan, as it not only yields a third more of juice than the creole cane, but furnishes a much greater quantity of fuel. As this valley, like most other parts of the Spanish colonies, has its gold mine, Humboldt was desired to visit it. In the ravine leading to it an enormous tree fixed the attention of the travellers. It had grown on a steep declivity above a house, which it was apprehended it might injure in its fall, should the earth happen to give way. It had therefore been burnt near the root, and cut so as to sink between some large fig-trees, which would prevent it from rolling down. It was eight and a half feet in diameter at the lower end, four feet five inches at the other (the top having been burnt off), and one hundred and sixty feet in length. The rocks were micaslate passing into talc-slate, and contained masses of bluish granular limestone, together with graphite. At the place where the gold-mine was said to have been they found some vestiges of a vein of quartz; but the subsidence of the earth, in consequence of the rain, rendered it impossible to make any observation. The travellers, however, found a recompense for their fatigues in the harvest of plants which they made in the thick forest abounding in cedrælas, browneas, and fig-trees. They were struck by the woody excrescences, which, as far as twenty feet above the ground, augment the thickness of the latter. Some of these trunks were observed to be twenty-three feet in diameter near the roots. At the plantation of Tuy, the dip of the needle was 41.6°, and the intensity of the magnetic power was indicated by 228 oscillations in ten minutes. The variation of the former was 4° 30' N.E. The zodiacal light appeared almost every night with extraordinary brilliancy. On the 11th, at sunrise, they left the plantation of Manterola, and proceeded along the beautiful banks of the river. At a farm by the way they found a negress more than a hundred years old, seated before a small hut, to enjoy the benefit of the sun's rays, the heat of which, according to her grandson, kept her alive. As they drew near to Victoria the ground became smoother, and resembled the bottom of a lake, the waters of which had been drained off. The neighbouring hills were composed of calcareous N 146 ZAMANG OF GUAYRA. tufa. Fields of corn were mingled with crops of sugar-canes, coffee, and plantains. The level of the country above the sea is only from 576 to 640 yards; and, except in the district of Quatro Villas in the island of Cuba, wheat is scarcely cultivated in large quantities in any other part of the equinoctial regions. La Victoria and the neighbouring village of San Matheo yielded 4000 quintals, or 3622 cwt., annually. It is sown in December, and is fit for being cut in seventy or seventy-five days. The grain is large and white, and the average produce is three or four times as much as in Europe. The culture of the sugar-cane, however, is still more productive. Proceeding slowly on their way, the travellers passed through the villages of San Matheo, Turmero, and Maracay, where every thing was indicative of prosperity. "On leaving the village of Turmero," says Humboldt, "we discover, at the distance of a league, an object which appears on the horizon like a round hillock, or a tumulus covered with vegetation. It is not a hill, however, nor a group of very close trees, but a single tree, the celebrated Zamang of Guayra, known over the whole province for the enormous extent of its branches, which form a hemispherical top of 614 feet in circumference. The zamang is a beautiful species of mimosa, whose tortuous branches divide by forking. Its slim and delicate foliage is agreeably detached on the blue of the sky. We rested a long while beneath this vegetable arch. The trunk of the Guayra zamang, which grows on the road from Turmero to Maracay, is not more than sixty-four feet high and nine and a half in diameter; but its real beauty consists in the general form of its top. The branches stretch out like the spokes of a great umbrella, and all incline towards the ground, from which they uniformly remain twelve or fifteen feet distant. The circumference of the branches or foliage is so regular, that I |