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 destitute 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 granular diabasis is more frequently connected with the system of transition rocks, especially with a schist (ubergangs-thonschiefer) abounding in beds of Lydian stone strongly carburetted, of schistose jasper,* (Kieselschiefer.) ampelites,* (Alaunschiefer.) and black limestone.

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, and other European fruits for the market of Caracas. Between Antimano and Ajuntas we crossed the Rio Guayra seventeen times. The road is very fatiguing; yet, instead of making a new one, it would perhaps be better to change the bed of the river, which loses a great quantity of water by the combined effects of filtration and evaporation. Each sinuosity forms a marsh more or less extensive. This loss of water is to be regretted in a province, nearly all the cultivated portions of which are extremely dry. The rains are much less frequent and less violent in this place than in the interior of New Andalusia, at Cumanacoa, and on the banks of the Guarapiche. 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 degrees, 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 irrigation during very dry weather. The early colonists imprudently 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 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 February; not by the sinking of the temperature as in Europe, but because the air at this period, the most distant from the rainy season, nearly attains its maximum of dryness. 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 preserve 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.* (* G. saccharoides.) Every hut is surrounded with enormous trees of persea,* (* Laurus persea (alligator pear).) at the foot of which the aristolochiae, 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 Fernando 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 employed 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 uniform, and all the surrounding hills were covered with aloes. Workmen were employed at a small canal, intended for conveying the waters of the Rio San Pedro to the farm, at a height of more than seventy feet. According to a barometric calculation, the site of the hacienda is only fifty toises above the bed of the Rio Guayra at La Noria, near Caracas.

The soil of these countries is found to be but little favourable to the cultivation of the coffee-tree, which in general is less productive in the valley of Caracas than was imagined when the first plantations were made near Chacao.

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