A
bright clear sky, with a few light clouds at sunset, reposes on the
ocean, on the treeless peninsula, and on the plains of Cumana,
while we see the storms accumulate and descend in fertile showers
among the inland mountains. Thus on these coasts, as well as at the
foot of the Andes, the earth and the sky present the extremes of
clear weather and fogs, of drought and torrents of rain, of
absolute nudity and never-ceasing verdure.
The analogies which we have just indicated, between the sea-coasts
of New Andalusia and those of Peru, extend also to the recurrence
of earthquakes, and the limits which nature seems to have
prescribed to these phenomena. We have ourselves felt very violent
shocks at Cumana; and we learned on the spot, the most minute
circumstances that accompanied the great catastrophe of the 14th
December, 1797.
It is a very generally received opinion on the coasts of Cumana,
and in the island of Margareta, that the gulf of Cariaco owes its
existence to a rent of the continent attended by an irruption of
the sea. The remembrance of that great event was preserved among
the Indians to the end of the fifteenth century; and it is related
that, at the time of the third voyage of Christopher Columbus, the
natives mentioned it as of very recent date.
