The Red Sandstone Of The Llanos Of Caracas Lies In A Concave Position, Between The Primitive Mountains Of The Shore And Of Parime.

On the north it is backed by the transition-slates,* (* At Malpaso and Piedras Azules.) and on the south it rests immediately on the granites of the Orinoco.

We observed in it rounded fragments of quartz (kieselschiefer), and Lydian stone, cemented by an olive-brown ferruginous clay. The cement is sometimes of so bright a red that the people of the country take it for cinnabar. We met a Capuchin monk at Calabozo, who was in vain attempting to extract mercury from this red sandstone. In the Mesa de Paja this rock contains strata of another quartzose sandstone, very fine-grained; more to the south it contains masses of brown iron, and fragments of petrified trees of the monocotyledonous family, but we did not see in it any shells. The red sandstone, called by the Llaneros, the stone of the reefs (piedra de arrecifes), is everywhere covered with a stratum of clay. This clay, dried and hardened in the sun, splits into separate prismatic pieces with five or six sides. Does it belong to the trap-formation of Parapara? It becomes thicker, and mixed with sand, as we approach the Rio Apure; for near Calabozo it is one toise thick, near the mission of Guayaval five toises, which may lead to the belief that the strata of red sandstone dips towards the south. We gathered in the Mesa de Pavones little nodules of blue iron-ore disseminated in the clay.

A dense whitish-gray limestone, with a smooth fracture, somewhat analogous to that of Caripe, and consequently to that of Jura, lies on the red sandstone between Tisnao and Calabozo.* (* Does this formation of secondary limestone of the Llanos contain galena? It has been found in strata of black marl, at Barbacoa, between Truxillo and Barquesimeto, north-west of the Llanos.) In several other places, for instance in the Mesa de San Diego, and between Ortiz and the Mesa de Paja,* (* Also near Cachipe and San Joacquim, in the Llanos of Barcelona.) we find above the limestone lamellar gypsum alternating with strata of marl. Considerable quantities of this gypsum are sent to the city of Caracas,* which is situated amidst primitive mountains. (* This trade is carried on at Parapara. A load of eight arrobas sells at Caracas for twenty-four piastres.)

This gypsum generally forms only small beds, and is mixed with a great deal of fibrous gypsum. Is it of the same formation as that of Guire, on the coast of Paria, which contains sulphur? or do the masses of this latter substance, found in the valley of Buen Pastor and on the banks of the Orinoco, belong, with the argillaceous gypsum of the Llanos, to a secondary formation much more recent.

These questions are very interesting in the study of the relative antiquity of rocks, which is the principal basis of geology. I know not of any salt-deposits in the Llanos. Horned cattle prosper here without those famous bareros, or muriatiferous lands, which abound in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres.* (* Known in North America under the name of salt-licks.)

After having wandered for a long time, and without any traces of a road, in the desert savannahs of the Mesa de Pavones, we were agreeably surprised when we came to a solitary farm, the Hato de Alta Gracia, surrounded with gardens and basins of limpid water. Hedges of bead-trees encircled groups of icacoes laden with fruit. Farther on we passed the night near the small village of San Geronymo del Guayaval, founded by Capuchin missionaries. It is situated near the banks of the Rio Guarico, which falls into the Apure. I visited the missionary, who had no other habitation than his church, not having yet built a house. He was a young man, and he received us in the most obliging manner, giving us all the information we desired. His village, or to use the word established among the monks, his Mission, was not easy to govern. The founder, who had not hesitated to establish for his own profit a pulperia, in other words, to sell bananas and guarapo in the church itself, had shown himself to be not very nice in the choice of the new colonists. Many marauders of the Llanos had settled at Guayaval, because the inhabitants of a Mission are exempt from the authority of secular law. Here, as in Australia, it cannot be expected that good colonists will be formed before the second or third generation.

We passed the Guarico, and encamped in the savannahs south of Guayaval. Enormous bats, no doubt of the tribe of Phyllostomas, hovered as usual over our hammocks during a great part of the night. Every moment they seemed to be about to fasten on our faces. Early in the morning we pursued our way over low grounds, often inundated. In the season of rains, a boat may be navigated, as on a lake, between the Guarico and the Apure. We arrived on the 27th of March at the Villa de San Fernando, the capital of the Mission of the Capuchins in the province of Varinas. This was the termination of our journey over the Llanos; for we passed the three months of April, May, and June on the rivers.

CHAPTER 2.18.

SAN FERNANDO DE APURE. INTERTWININGS AND BIFURCATIONS OF THE RIVERS APURE AND ARAUCA. NAVIGATION ON THE RIO APURE.

Till the second half of the eighteenth century the names of the great rivers Apure, Arauca, and Meta were scarcely known in Europe: certainly less than they had been in the two preceding centuries, when the valiant Felipe de Urre and the conquerors of Tocuyo traversed the Llanos, to seek, beyond the Apure, the great legendary city of El Dorado, and the rich country of the Omeguas, the Timbuctoo of the New Continent. Such daring expeditions could not be carried out without all the apparatus of war; and the weapons, which had been destined for the defence of the new colonists, were employed without intermission against the unhappy natives.

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