At The Moment When He Fell, He Plunged A Dagger Into The Bosom Of His Only Daughter, "That She Might

Not have to blush before the Spaniards at the name of the daughter of a traitor." The soul of the

Tyrant (such is the belief of the natives) wanders in the savannahs, like a flame that flies the approach of men.* (* See volume 1 chapter 1.4.)

The second historical event connected with the name of Valencia is the great incursion made by the Caribs of the Orinoco in 1578 and 1580. That cannibal horde went up the banks of the Guarico, crossing the plains or llanos. They were happily repulsed by the valour of Garcia Gonzales, one of the captains whose names are still most revered in those provinces. It is gratifying to recollect, that the descendants of those very Caribs now live in the missions as peaceable husbandmen, and that no savage nation of Guiana dares to cross the plains which separate the region of the forests from that of cultivated land. The Cordillera of the coast is intersected by several ravines, very uniformly directed from south-east to north-west. This phenomenon is general from the Quebrada of Tocume, between Petares and Caracas, as far as Porto Cabello. It would seem as if the impulsion had everywhere come from the south-east; and this fact is the more striking, as the strata of gneiss and mica-slate in the Cordillera of the coast are generally directed from the south-west to the north-east. Most of these ravines penetrate into the mountains at their southern declivity, without crossing them entirely. But there is an opening (abra) on the meridian of Nueva Valencia, which leads towards the coast, and by which a cooling sea-breeze penetrates every evening into the valleys of Aragua. This breeze rises regularly two or three hours after sunset.

By this abra, the farm of Barbula, and an eastern branch of the ravine, a new road is being constructed from Valencia to Porto Cabello. It will be so short, that it will require only four hours to reach the port; and the traveller will be able to go and return in the same day from the coast to the valleys of Aragua. In order to examine this road, we set out on the 26th of February in the evening for the farm of Barbula.

On the morning of the 27th we visited the hot springs of La Trinchera, three leagues from Valencia. The ravine is very large, and the descent almost continual from the banks of the lake to the sea-coast. La Trinchera takes its name from some fortifications of earth, thrown up in 1677 by the French buccaneers, who sacked the town of Valencia. The hot springs (and this is a remarkable geological fact,) do not issue on the south side of the mountains, like those of Mariara, Onoto, and the Brigantine; but they issue from the chain itself almost at its northern declivity. They are much more abundant than any we had till then seen, forming a rivulet which, in times of the greatest drought, is two feet deep and eighteen wide. The temperature of the water, measured with great care, was 90.3 degrees of the centigrade thermometer. Next to the springs of Urijino, in Japan, which are asserted to be pure water at 100 degrees of temperature, the waters of the Trinchera of Porto Cabello appear to be the hottest in the world. We breakfasted near the spring; eggs plunged into the water were boiled in less than four minutes. These waters, strongly charged with sulphuretted hydrogen, gush out from the back of a hill rising one hundred and fifty feet above the bottom of the ravine, and tending from south-south-east to north-north-west. The rock from which the springs gush, is a real coarse-grained granite, resembling that of the Rincon del Diablo, in the mountains of Mariara. Wherever the waters evaporate in the air, they form sediments and incrustations of carbonate of lime; possibly they traverse strata of primitive limestone, so common in the mica-slate and gneiss of the coasts of Caracas. We were surprised at the luxuriant vegetation that surrounds the basin; mimosas with slender pinnate leaves, clusias, and fig-trees, have pushed their roots into the bottom of a pool, the temperature of which is 85 degrees; and the branches of these trees extended over the surface of the water, at two or three inches distance. The foliage of the mimosas, though constantly enveloped in the hot vapours, displayed the most beautiful verdure. An arum, with a woody stem, and with large sagittate leaves, rose in the very middle of a pool the temperature of which was 70 degrees. Plants of the same species vegetate in other parts of those mountains at the brink of torrents, the temperature of which is not 18 degrees. What is still more singular, forty feet distant from the point whence the springs gush out at a temperature of 90 degrees, other springs are found perfectly cold. They all follow for some time a parallel direction; and the natives showed us that, by digging a hole between the two rivulets, they could procure a bath of any given temperature they pleased. It seems remarkable, that in the hottest as well as the coldest climates, people display the same predilection for heat. On the introduction of Christianity into Iceland, the inhabitants would be baptized only in the hot springs of Hecla: and in the torrid zone, in the plains, as well as on the Cordilleras, the natives flock from all parts to the thermal waters. The sick, who come to La Trinchera to use vapour-baths, form a sort of frame-work over the spring with branches of trees and very slender reeds. They stretch themselves naked on this frame, which appeared to me to possess little strength, and to be dangerous of access. The Rio de Aguas Calientes runs towards the north-east, and becomes, near the coast, a considerable river, swarming with great crocodiles, and contributing, by its inundations, to the insalubrity of the shore.

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