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.

We descended towards Porto Cabello, having constantly the river of hot water on our right. The road is extremely picturesque, and the waters roll down on the shelves of rock. We might have fancied we were gazing on the cascades of the Reuss, that flows down Mount St. Gothard; but what a contrast in the vigour and richness of the vegetation! The white trunks of the cecropia rise majestically amid bignonias and melastomas. They do not disappear till we are within a hundred toises above the level of the ocean. A small thorny palm-tree extends also to this limit; the slender pinnate leaves of which look as if they had been curled toward the edges. This tree is very common in these mountains; but not having seen either its fruit or its flowers, we are ignorant whether it be the piritu palm-tree of the Caribbees, or the Cocos aculeata of Jacquin.

The rock on this road presents a geological phenomenon, the more remarkable as the existence of real stratified granite has long been disputed. Between La Trinchera and the Hato de Cambury a coarse-grained granite appears, which, from the disposition of the spangles of mica, collected in small groups, scarcely admits of confounding with gneiss, or with rocks of a schistose texture. This granite, divided into ledges of two or three feet thick, is directed 52 degrees north-east, and slopes to the north-west regularly at an angle of from 30 or 40 degrees. The feldspar, crystallized in prisms with four unequal sides, about an inch long, passes through every variety of tint from a flesh-red to yellowish white. The mica, united in hexagonal plates, is black, and sometimes green. The quartz predominates in the mass; and is generally of a milky white. I observed neither hornblende, black schorl, nor rutile titanite, in this granite. In some ledges we recognised round masses, of a blackish gray, very quartzose, and almost destitute of mica.

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