SECTION XII.

THE CITY OF ANGOSTURA, &c.

ANGOSTURA stands in latitude 8° 8', at the foot of a hill of amphibolic schist, destitute of vegetation.

Since the end of the sixteenth century, says Humboldt, by whose observations on Angostura we are happy to profit, " three towns have successively borne the name of Saint Thomas of Guayana. The first was opposite the island of Faxardo, at the confluence of the Caroni and the Orinoco. It was this which was destroyed by the Dutch under the command of Captain Adrian Janson, in 1579. The second, founded by Antonio de Berrio, in 1591, near twelve leagues east of the mouth of the Caroni, made a courageous resistance to Sir Walter Raleigh, whom the Spanish writers of the conquest know only by the name of the pirate Reali. The third town, now the capital of the province, is fifty leagues west of the confluence of the Caroni. It was begun in 1764, under the governor Don Joaquin Moreno de Mendoza, and is distinguished in the public documents from the second town, vulgarly called the Fortress (el Castillo, las Fortalezas), or Old Guayana (Vieja Guayana), by the name of Santo Tomé de la Nueva Guayana. This name being very long,

that of Angostura (the strait) has been commonly substituted for it. The inhabitants of those countries find it difficult to recognize on our maps, in Santiago de Leon and Santo Tomé, the two capitals of Venezuela and Guayana."

The scenery around the town of Angostura is little varied, but the view of the river, which forms a vast canal stretching from the southwest to the north-east, is singularly majestic.

The Government, at the end of a long controversy on the defence of the place, and the reach of cannon shot, wished to know exactly the breadth of the Orinoco at the point called the Strait, where stands a rock (el Peñon) that disappears entirely when the waters are at their height. Though there was an engineer attached to the provincial government, a few months before Humboldt's arrival at Angostura, Don Mathias Yturbur had been sent from Caracas to measure the Orinoco between the demolished fort of San Gabriel and the redoubt of San Rafael. He was told vaguely, that this measure had given a little more than eight hundred varas castellanas. The plan of the town, annexed to the great map of South America by La Cruz Olmedilla, indicates nine hundred and forty. Humboldt took with great care two trigonometric measurements, one in the Strait itself, between the two forts of San Gabriel and San Rafael; the other east of

Angostura, in the great walk (Alameda) near the Embarcadero del Ganado. The result of

the first measure* (at the minimum of breadth) was three hundred and eighty toises; and that of the second t four hundred and ninety. These measures surpass four or five times that of the Seine near the Jardin des Plantes, and yet this part of the Orinoco is called a choking, or a strait. Nothing is better fitted to give an idea of the mass of water of the great rivers of America, than the dimensions of these pretended straits. The Amazons, according to Humboldt's measurement,‡ is two hundred and seventy toises wide at the Pongo de Rentema; and according to M. de la Condamine, twentyfive toises at the Pongo de Manseriche, and at the Strait of Pauxis nine hundred toises. This last strait consequently differs little from the breadth of the Orinoco at the Strait of Baraguan. S

* The base measured along the key, 245-6 met. Angles; 74° 33' 10" and 90°. Distance deduced, 889 metres, or 456 toises; but we must subtract 76 toises, or the distance from Punta San Gabriel to the Carcel on the key. Now 456+-76380 t., or 885 varas cast.

491 t.,

† Base measured in the Alameda, 193-6 met. Angles; 78° 34′ 25′′ and 90°. Distance deduced, 958 met. or 1145 varas. The breadth naturally varies according to the rising of the waters.

He measured the Amazons when the water was low, 400 toises above the mouth of the Rio Chincripe. He found it to be 889 toises.

When the waters are high, the river inundates the keys; and it sometimes happens that, even in the town, imprudent men become the prey of crocodiles.

The streets of Angostura are regular, and for the most part parallel with the course of the river. Several of the houses are built on the bare rock. They are for the most part built as in Caracas, of lime and sand, with terraces on the tops, where they sleep in the seasons of greatest heat, without receiving from the dew any injury to their health or sight. They are lofty, agreeable, and the greater number built of stone; which construction proves that the inhabitants have little dread of earthquakes.

Unhappily this security is not founded on induction from very precise facts. It is true, that the shore of Nueva Andalusia sometimes undergoes very violent shocks, without the commotion being propagated across the Llanos. The fatal catastrophe of Cumana on the 4th of February 1794 was not felt at Angostura; but, in the great earthquake of 1766, which destroyed the same city, the granitic soil of the two banks of the Orinoco was agitated as far as the Raudales of Atures and Maypures. South of these Raudales shocks are sometimes felt, which are confined to the basin of the Upper Orinoco and the Rio Negro. They appear to depend on a volcanic focus distant from that of the Caribbee Islands. Humboldt was told by

the missionaries at Javita and San Fernando de Atalpo, that in 1798 violent earthquakes took place between the Guaviare and the Rio Negro, which were not propagated on the north toward Maypures. We cannot be sufficiently attentive to whatever relates to the simultaneity of the oscillations, and to the independence of the movements in contiguous ground. Every thing seems to prove that the propagation of the commotion is not superficial, but depends on very deep crevices, that terminate in different centres of action.

The town of San Tomé had, in 1807, a population of about eight thousand five hundred persons, among whom were three hundred Negroes.

Though it is situate in 8° 8' of latitude, and elevated only thirty toises above the level of the sea, it still enjoys a very mild temperature. It seldom happens that Reaumur's thermometer rises above twenty-four degrees in the hottest time of the year; and from the beginning of November to the end of April, it rarely rises above 20° during the day, and generally descends to 17° at night. The regular breezes, a great number of rivers and streams which water it, and the immense forests which surround it in almost every direction, are the causes which tend to diminish the excessive heat that seems natural to its latitude and trifling elevation above the sea. Here, as at