I Never Observed The Mercury Rise In America, Amid A Wind Of Sand, Above 45.8 Degrees Centigrade.

Captain Lyon, with whom I had the pleasure of conversing on his return from Mourzouk, appeared to me also inclined to think that the temperature of fifty-two degrees, so often felt in Fezzan, is produced in great part by the grains of quartz suspended in the atmosphere.

Between Pao and the village of Santa Cruz de Cachipo, founded in 1749, and inhabited by five hundred Caribs, we passed the western elongation of the little table-land, known by the name of Mesa de Amana. This table-land forms a point of partition between the Orinoco, the Guarapiche, and the coast of New Andalusia. Its height is so inconsiderable that it would scarcely be an obstacle to the establishment of inland navigation in this part of the Llanos. The Rio Mano however, which flows into the Orinoco above the confluence of the Carony, and which D'Anville (I know not on what authority) has marked in the first edition of his great map as issuing from the lake of Valencia, and receiving the waters of the Guayra, could never have served as a natural canal between two basins of rivers. No bifurcation of this kind exists in the Llano. A great number of Carib Indians, who now inhabit the missions of Piritu, were formerly on the north and east of the table-land of Amana, between Maturin, the mouth of the Rio Arco, and the Guarapiche. The incursions of Don Joseph Careno, one of the most enterprising governors of the province of Cumana, occasioned a general migration of independent Caribs toward the banks of the Lower Orinoco in 1720.

The whole of this vast plain consists of secondary formations which to the southward rest immediately on the granitic mountains of the Orinoco. On the north-west they are separated by a narrow band of transition-rocks from the primitive mountains of the shore of Caracas. This abundance of secondary rocks, covering without interruption a space of more than seven thousand square leagues,* is a phenomenon the more remarkable in that region of the globe, because in the whole of the Sierra da la Parima, between the right bank of the Orinoco and the Rio Negro, there is, as in Scandinavia, a total absence of secondary formations. (* Reckoning only that part of the Llanos which is bounded by the Rio Apure on the south, and by the Sierra Nevada de Merida and the Parima de las Rosas on the west.) The red sandstone, containing some vestiges of fossil wood (of the family of monocotyledons) is seen everywhere in the plains of Calabozo: farther east it is overlaid by calcareous and gypseous rocks which conceal it from the research of the geologist. The marly gypsum, of which we collected specimens near the Carib mission of Cachipo, appeared to me to belong to the same formation as the gypsum of Ortiz. To class it according to the type of European formations I would range it among the gypsums, often muriatiferous, that cover the Alpine limestone or zechstein. Farther north, in the direction of the mission of San Josef de Curataquiche, M. Bonpland picked up in the plain some fine pieces of riband jasper, or Egyptian pebbles. We did not see them in their native place enchased in the rock, and cannot determine whether they belong to a very recent conglomerate or to that limestone which we saw at the Morro of Nueva Barcelona, and which is not transition limestone though it contains beds of schistose jasper (kieselschiefer).

We rested on the night of the 16th of July in the Indian village of Santa Cruz de Cachipo. This mission, founded in 1749 by several Carib families who inhabited the inundated and unhealthy banks of the Lagunetas de Auache, is opposite the confluence of the Zir Puruay with the Orinoco. We lodged at the house of the missionary, Fray Jose de las Piedras; and, on examining the registers of the parish, we saw how rapidly the prosperity of the community has been advanced by his zeal and intelligence. Since we had reached the middle of the plains, the heat had increased to such a degree that we should have preferred travelling no more during the day; but we were without arms and the Llanos were then infested by large numbers of robbers who attacked and murdered the whites who fell into their hands. Nothing can be worse than the administration of justice in these colonies. We everywhere found the prisons filled with malefactors on whom sentence is not passed till after the lapse of seven or eight years. Nearly a third of the prisoners succeed in making their escape; and the unpeopled plains, filled with herds, furnish them with booty. They commit their depredations on horseback in the manner of the Bedouins. The insalubrity of the prisons would be attended with fatal results but that these receptacles are cleared from time to time by the flight of the prisoners. It also frequently happens that sentences of death, tardily pronounced by the Audiencia of Caracas, cannot be executed for want of a hangman. In these cases the barbarous custom is observed of pardoning one criminal on condition of his hanging the others. Our guides related to us that, a short time before our arrival on the coast of Cumana, a Zambo, known for the great ferocity of his manners, determined to screen himself from punishment by turning executioner. The preparations for the execution however, shook his resolution; he felt a horror of himself, and preferring death to the disgrace of thus saving his life, he called again for his irons which had been struck off. He did not long remain in prison, and he underwent his sentence through the baseness of one of his accomplices. This awakening of a sentiment of honour in the soul of a murderer is a psychologic phenomenon worthy of reflection. The man who had so often shed the blood of travellers in the plains recoiled at the idea of becoming the passive instrument of justice in inflicting upon others a punishment which he felt that he himself deserved.

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