Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Its Blue Colour
(A Dark Indigo Tint) And The Heightening Of The Temperature Proved How
Much The Depth Of The Water Had Augmented.
We tried, under favour of
the variable winds on sea and shore, to steer eastward as far as the
Port of La Trinidad so that we might be less opposed by the north-east
winds which then prevail in the open sea, in making the passage to
Carthagena, of which the meridian falls between Santiago de Cuba and
the bay of Guantanamo. Having passed the marshy coast of Camareos,* (*
Here the celebrated philanthropist Bartolomeo de las Casas obtained in
1514 from his friend Velasquez, the governor, a good repartimiente de
Indios (grant of land so called). But this he renounced in the same
year, from scruples of conscience, during a short stay at Jamaica.) we
arrived (latitude 21 degrees 50 minutes) in the meridian of the
entrance of the Bahia de Xagua. The longitude the chronometer gave me
at this point was almost identical with that since published (in 1821)
in the map of the Deposito hidrografico of Madrid.
The port of Xagua is one of the finest but least frequented of the
island. "There cannot be another such in the world," is the remark of
the Coronista major (Antonio de Herrera). The surveys and plans of
defence made by M. Le Maur, at the time of the commission of Count
Jaruco, prove that the anchorage of Xagua merits the celebrity it
acquired even in the first years of the conquest.
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