Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.2 — Chapter 2.16, Part 5

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.

They are from one to two inches diameter; and are found in every zone, in all granite mountains.

These are not imbedded fragments, as at Greiffenstein in Saxony, but aggregations of particles which seem to have been subjected to partial attractions.

I could not follow the line of junction of the gneiss and granitic formations.

According to angles taken in the valleys of Aragua, the gneiss appears to descend below the granite, which must consequently be of a more recent formation.

The appearance of a stratified granite excited my attention the more, because, having had the direction of the mines of Fichtelberg in Franconia for several years, I was accustomed to see granites divided into ledges of three or four feet thick, but little inclined, and forming masses like towers, or old ruins, at the summit of the highest mountains.

* (* At Ochsenkopf, at Rudolphstein, at Epprechtstein, at Luxburg, and at Schneeberg.

The dip of the strata of these granites of Fichtelberg is generally only from 6 to 10 degrees, rarely (at Schneeberg) 18 degrees.

According to the dips I observed in the neighbouring strata of gneiss and mica-slate, I should think that the granite of Fichtelberg is very ancient, and serves as a basis for other formations; but the strata of grunstein, and the disseminated tin-ore which it contains, may lead us to doubt its great antiquity, from the analogy of the granites of Saxony containing tin.

) The heat became stifling as we approached the coast.

A reddish vapour veiled the horizon.

It was near sunset, and the breeze was not yet stirring.

We rested in the lonely farms known under the names of the Hato de Cambury and the house of the Canarian (Casa del Isleno).

The river of hot water, along the banks of which we passed, became deeper.

A crocodile, more than nine feet long, lay dead on the strand.

We wished to examine its teeth, and the inside of its mouth; but having been exposed to the sun for several weeks, it exhaled a smell so fetid that we were obliged to relinquish our design and remount our horses.

When we arrived at the level of the sea, the road turned eastward, and crossed a barren shore a league and a half broad, resembling that of Cumana.

We there found some scattered cactuses, a sesuvium, a few plants of Coccoloba uvifera, and along the coast some avicennias and mangroves.

We forded the Guayguaza and the Rio Estevan, which, by their frequent overflowing, form great pools of stagnant water.

Small rocks of meandrites, madrepores, and other corals, either ramified or with a rounded surface, rise in this vast plain, and seem to attest the recent retreat of the sea.

But these masses, which are the habitations of polypi, are only fragments imbedded in a breccia with a calcareous cement.

I say a breccia, because we must not confound the fresh and white corallites of this very recent littoral formation, with the corallites blended in the mass of transition-rocks, grauwacke, and black limestone.

We were astonished to find in this uninhabited spot a large Parkinsonia aculeata loaded with flowers.

Our botanical works indicate this tree as peculiar to the New World; but during five years we saw it only twice in a wild state, once in the plains of the Rio Guayguaza, and once in the llanos of Cumana, thirty leagues from the coast, near la Villa del Pao, but there was reason to believe that this latter place had once been a conuco, or cultivated enclosure.

Everywhere else on the continent of America we saw the Parkinsonia, like the Plumeria, only in the gardens of the Indians.

At Porto Cabello, as at La Guayra, it is disputed whether the port lies east or west of the town, with which the communications are the most frequent.

The inhabitants believe that Porto Cabello is north-north-west of Nueva Valencia; and my observations give a longitude of three or four minutes more towards the west.

We were received with the utmost kindness in the house of a French physician, M. Juliac, who had studied medicine at Montpelier.

His small house contained a collection of things the most various, but which were all calculated to interest travellers.

We found works of literature and natural history; notes on meteorology; skins of the jaguar and of large aquatic serpents; live animals, monkeys, armadilloes, and birds.

Our host was principal surgeon to the royal hospital of Porto Cabello, and was celebrated in the country for his skilful treatment of the yellow fever.

During a period of seven years he had seen six or eight thousand persons enter the hospitals, attacked by this cruel malady.

He had observed the ravages that the epidemic caused in Admiral Ariztizabal's fleet, in 1793. That fleet lost nearly a third of its men; for the sailors were almost all unseasoned Europeans, and held unrestrained intercourse with the shore.

M.

Juliac had heretofore treated the sick as was commonly practised in Terra Firma, and in the island, by bleeding, aperient medicines, and acid drinks.

In this treatment no attempt was made to raise the vital powers by the action of stimulants, so that, in attempting to allay the fever, the languor and debility were augmented.

In the hospitals, where the sick were crowded, the mortality was often thirty-three per cent among the white Creoles; and sixty-five in a hundred among the Europeans recently disembarked.

Since a stimulant treatment, the use of opium, of benzoin, and of alcoholic draughts, has been substituted for the old debilitating method, the mortality has considerably diminished.

It was believed to be reduced to twenty in a hundred among Europeans, and ten among Creoles;* even when black vomiting, and haemorrhage from the nose, ears, and gums, indicated a high degree of exacerbation in the malady.

(* I have treated in another work of the proportions of mortality in the yellow fever.

(Nouvelle Espagne volume 2 pages 777, 785, and 867. ) At Cadiz the average mortality was, in 1800, twenty per cent; at Seville, in 1801, it amounted to sixty per cent.

At Vera Cruz the mortality does not exceed twelve or fifteen per cent, when the sick can be properly attended.

In the civil hospitals of Paris the number of deaths, one year with another, is from fourteen to eighteen per cent; but it is asserted that a great number of patients enter the hospitals almost dying, or at very advanced time of life.

) I relate faithfully what was then given as the general result of observation: but I think, in these numerical comparisons, it must not be forgotten, that, notwithstanding appearances, the epidemics of several successive years do not resemble each other; and that, in order to decide on the use of fortifying or debilitating remedies, (if indeed this difference exist in an absolute sense,) we must distinguish between the various periods of the malady.

The climate of Porto Cabello is less ardent than that of La Guayra.

The breeze there is stronger, more frequent, and more regular.

The houses do not lean against rocks that absorb the rays of the sun during the day, and emit caloric at night, and the air can circulate more freely between the coast and the mountains of Ilaria.

The causes of the insalubrity of the atmosphere must be sought in the shores that extend to the east, as far as the eye can reach, towards the Punta de Tucasos, near the fine port of Chichiribiche.

There are situated the salt-works; and there, at the beginning of the rainy season, tertian fevers prevail, and easily degenerate into asthenic fevers.

It is affirmed that the mestizoes who are employed in the salt-works are more tawny, and have a yellower skin, when they have suffered several successive years from those fevers, which are called the malady of the coast.

The poor fishermen, who dwell on this shore, are of opinion that it is not the inundations of the sea, and the retreat of the salt-water, which render the lands covered with mangroves so unhealthful;* (* In the West India Islands all the dreadful maladies which prevail during the wintry season, have been for a long time attributed to the south winds.

These winds convey the emanations of the mouths of the Orinoco and of the small rivers of Terra Firma toward the high latitudes.

) they believe that the insalubrity of the air is owing to the fresh water, that is, to the overflowings of the Guayguaza and Estevan, the swell of which is so great and sudden in the months of October and November.

The banks of the Rio Estevan have been less insalubrious since little plantations of maize and plantains have been established; and, by raising and hardening the ground, the river has been confined within narrower limits.

A plan is formed of giving another issue to the Rio San Estevan, and thus to render the environs of Porto Cabello more wholesome.

A canal is to lead the waters toward that part of the coast which is opposite the island of Guayguaza.

The salt-works of Porto Cabello somewhat resemble those of the peninsula of Araya, near Cumana.

The earth, however, which they lixivate by collecting the rain-water into small basins, contains less salt.

It is questioned here, as at Cumana, whether the ground be impregnated with saline particles because it has been for ages covered at intervals with sea-water evaporated by the heat of the sun, or whether the soil be muriatiferous, as in a mine very poor in native salt.

I had not leisure to examine this plain with the same attention as the peninsula of Araya.

Besides, does not this problem reduce itself to the simple question, whether the salt be owing to new or very ancient inundations?

The labouring at the salt-works of Porto Cabello being extremely unhealthy, the poorest men alone engage in it.

They collect the salt in little stores, and afterwards sell it to the shopkeepers in the town.

During our abode at Porto Cabello, the current on the coast, generally directed towards the west,* ran from west to east.

This upward current (corriente por arriba), is very frequent during two or three months of the year, from September to November.

It is believed to be owing to some north-west winds that have blown between Jamaica and Cape St. Antony in the island of Cuba.

(* The wrecks of the Spanish ships, burnt at the island of Trinidad, at the time of its occupation by the English in 1797, were carried by the general or rotary current to Punta Brava, near Porto Cabello.

This general current toward the east, from the coasts of Paria to the isthmus of Panama and the western extremity of the island of Cuba, was the subject of a violent dispute between Don Diego Columbus, Oviedo, and the pilot Andres, in the sixteenth century.

) The military defence of the coasts of Terra Firma rests on six points: the castle of San Antonio at Cumana; the Morro of Nueva Barcelona; the fortifications of La Guayra, (mounting one hundred and thirty-four guns); Porto Cabello; fort San Carlos, (at the mouth of the lake of Maracaybo); and Carthagena.

Porto Cabello is, next to Carthagena, the most important fortified place.

The town of Porto Cabello is quite modern, and the port is one of the finest in the world.

Art has had scarcely anything to add to the advantages which the nature of the spot presents.

A neck of land stretches first towards the north, and then towards the west.

Its western extremity is opposite to a range of islands connected by bridges, and so close together that they might be taken for another neck of land.

These islands are all composed of a calcareous breccia of extremely recent formation, and analagous to that on the coast of Cumana, and near the castle of Araya.

It is a conglomerate, containing fragments of madrepores and other corals cemented by a limestone basis and grains of sand.

We had already seen this conglomerate near the Rio Guayguaza.

By a singular disposition of the ground the port resembles a basin or a little inland lake, the southern extremity of which is filled with little islands covered with mangroves.

The opening of the port towards the west contributes much to the smoothness of the water.

* (* It is disputed at Porto Cabello whether the port takes its name from the tranquillity of its waters, "which would not move a hair (cabello)," or (which is more probable) derived from Antonio Cabello, one of the fishermen with whom the smugglers of Curacoa had formed a connexion at the period when the first hamlet was constructed on this half-desert coast.

) One vessel only can enter at a time; but the largest ships of the line can anchor very near land to take in water.

There is no other danger in entering the harbour than the reefs of Punta Brava, opposite which a battery of eight guns has been erected.

Towards the west and south-west we see the fort, which is a regular pentagon with five bastions, the battery of the reef, and the fortifications that surround the ancient town, founded on an island of a trapezoidal form.

A bridge and the fortified gate of the Staccado join the old to the new town; the latter is already larger than the former, though considered only as its suburb.

The bottom of the basin or lake which forms the harbour of Porto Cabello, turns behind this suburb to the south-west.

It is a marshy ground filled with noisome and stagnant water.

The town, which has at present nearly nine thousand inhabitants, owes its origin to an illicit commerce, attracted to these shores by the proximity of the town of Burburata, which was founded in 1549. It is only since the administration of the Biscayans, and of the company of Guipuzcoa, that Porto Cabello, which was but a hamlet, has been converted into a well-fortified town.

The vessels of La Guayra, which is less a port than a bad open roadstead, come to Porto Cabello to be caulked and repaired.

The real defence of the harbour consists in the low batteries on the neck of land at Punta Brava, and on the reef; but from ignorance of this principle, a new fort, the Mirador of Solano* has been constructed at a great expense, on the mountains commanding the suburb towards the south.

(* The Mirador is situate eastward of the Vigia Alta, and south-east of the battery of the salt-works and the powder-mill.

) More than ten thousand mules are annually exported from Porto Cabello.

It is curious enough to see these animals embarked;

they are thrown down with ropes, and then hoisted on board the vessels by means of a machine resembling a crane.

Ranged in two files, the mules with difficulty keep their footing during the rolling and pitching of the ship; and in order to frighten and render them more docile, a drum is beaten during a great part of the day and night.

We may guess what quiet a passenger enjoys, who has the courage to embark for Jamaica in a schooner laden with mules.

We left Porto Cabello on the first of March, at sunrise.

We saw with surprise the great number of boats that were laden with fruit to be sold at the market.

It reminded me of a fine morning at Venice.

The town presents in general, on the side towards the sea, a cheerful and agreeable aspect.

Mountains covered with vegetation, and crowned with peaks called Las Tetas de Ilaria, which, from their outline would be taken for rocks of a trap-formation, form the background of the landscape.

Near the coast all is bare, white, and strongly illumined, while the screen of mountains is clothed with trees of thick foliage that project their vast shadows upon the brown and rocky ground.

On going out of the town we visited an aqueduct that had been just finished.

It is five thousand varas long, and conveys the waters of the Rio Estevan by a trench to the town.

This work has cost more than thirty thousand piastres; but its waters gush out in every street.

We returned from Porto Cabello to the valleys of Aragua, and stopped at the Farm of Barbula, near which, a new road to Valencia is in the course of construction.

We had heard, several weeks before, of a tree, the sap of which is a nourishing milk.

It is called the cow-tree; and we were assured that the negroes of the farm, who drink plentifully of this vegetable milk, consider it a wholesome aliment.

All the milky juices of plants being acrid, bitter, and more or less poisonous, this account appeared to us very extraordinary; but we found by experience during our stay at Barbula, that the virtues of this tree had not been exaggerated.

This fine tree rises like the broad-leaved star-apple.

* (* Chrysophyllum cainito.

) Its oblong and pointed leaves, rough and alternate, are marked by lateral ribs, prominent at the lower surface, and parallel.

Some of them are ten inches long.

We did not see the flower: the fruit is somewhat fleshy, and contains one and sometimes two nuts.

When incisions are made in the trunk of this tree, it yields abundance of a glutinous milk, tolerably thick, devoid of all acridity, and of an agreeable and balmy smell.

It was offered to us in the shell of a calabash.

We drank considerable quantities of it in the evening before we went to bed, and very early in the morning, without feeling the least injurious effect.

The viscosity of this milk alone renders it a little disagreeable.

The negroes and the free people who work in the plantations drink it, dipping into it their bread of maize or cassava.

The overseer of the farm told us that the negroes grow sensibly fatter during the season when the palo de vaca furnishes them with most milk.

This juice, exposed to the air, presents at its surface (perhaps in consequence of the absorption of the atmospheric oxygen) membranes of a strongly animalized substance, yellowish, stringy, and resembling cheese.

These membranes, separated from the rest of the more aqueous liquid, are elastic, almost like caoutchouc;

but they undergo, in time, the same phenomena of putrefaction as gelatine.

The people call the coagulum that separates by the contact of the air, cheese.

This coagulum grows sour in the space of five or six days, as I observed in the small portions which I carried to Nueva Valencia.

The milk contained in a stopped phial, had deposited a little coagulum; and, far from becoming fetid, it exhaled constantly a balsamic odour.

The fresh juice mixed with cold water was scarcely coagulated at all; but on the contact of nitric acid the separation of the viscous membranes took place.

We sent two bottles of this milk to M.

Fourcroy at Paris: in one it was in its natural state, and in the other, mixed with a certain quantity of carbonate of soda.

The French consul residing in the island of St. Thomas, undertook to convey them to him.

The extraordinary tree of which we have been speaking appears to be peculiar to the Cordillera of the coast, particularly from Barbula to the lake of Maracaybo.

Some stocks of it exist near the village of San Mateo; and, according to M. Bredemeyer, whose travels have so much enriched the fine conservatories of Schonbrunn and Vienna, in the valley of Caucagua, three days journey east of Caracas.

This naturalist found, like us, that the vegetable milk of the palo de vaco had an agreeable taste and an aromatic smell.

At Caucagua, the natives call the tree that furnishes this nourishing juice, the milk-tree (arbol del leche).

They profess to recognize, from the thickness and colour of the foliage, the trunks that yield the most juice; as the herdsman distinguishes, from external signs, a good milch-cow.

No botanist has hitherto known the existence of this plant.

It seems, according to M. Kunth, to belong to the sapota family.

Long after my return to Europe, I found in the Description of the East Indies by Laet, a Dutch traveller, a passage that seems to have some relation to the cow-tree.

"There exist trees," says Laet,* "in the province of Cumana, the sap of which much resembles curdled milk, and affords a salubrious nourishment."

(* "Inter arbores quae sponte hic passim nascuntur, memorantur a scriptoribus Hispanis quaedam quae lacteum quemdam liquorem fundunt, qui durus admodum evadit instar gummi, et suavem odorem de se fundit; aliae quae liquorem quemdam edunt, instar lactis coagulati, qui in cibis ab ipsis usurpatur sine noxa."

(Among the trees growing here, it is remarked by Spanish writers that there are some which pour out a milky juice which soon grows solid, like gum, affording a pleasant odour; and also others that give out a liquid which coagulates like cheese, and which they eat at meals without any ill effects).

Descriptio Indiarum Occidentalium, lib.

18. ) Amidst the great number of curious phenomena which I have observed in the course of my travels, I confess there are few that have made so powerful an impression on me as the aspect of the cow-tree.

Whatever relates to milk or to corn, inspires an interest which is not merely that of the physical knowledge of things, but is connected with another order of ideas and sentiments.

We can scarcely conceive how the human race could exist without farinaceous substances, and without that nourishing juice which the breast of the mother contains, and which is appropriated to the long feebleness of the infant.

The amylaceous matter of corn, the object of religious veneration among so many nations, ancient and modern, is diffused in the seeds, and deposited in the roots of vegetables; milk, which serves as an aliment, appears to us exclusively the produce of animal organization.

Such are the impressions we have received in our earliest infancy: such is also the source of that astonishment created by the aspect of the tree just described.

It is not here the solemn shades of forests, the majestic course of rivers, the mountains wrapped in eternal snow, that excite our emotion.

A few drops of vegetable juice recall to our minds all the powerfulness and the fecundity of nature.

On the barren flank of a rock grows a tree with coriaceous and dry leaves.

Its large woody roots can scarcely penetrate into the stone.

For several months of the year not a single shower moistens its foliage.

Its branches appear dead and dried; but when the trunk is pierced there flows from it a sweet and nourishing milk.

It is at the rising of the sun that this vegetable fountain is most abundant.

The negroes and natives are then seen hastening from all quarters, furnished with large bowls to receive the milk, which grows yellow, and thickens at its surface.

Some empty their bowls under the tree itself; others carry the juice home to their children.