72 A NATURALIST IN THE GUIANAS 



not, I believe, be found in any Spanish dictionary ; they 

 are essentially Venezuelan. 



If I have described the light side of a visit to Araya 

 before tackling the serious business of the handling of a 

 cargo of salt, I have but followed the system in vogue in 

 the country I am wrriting about, the motto of whose in- 

 habitants is, pleasure before duty. 



The salt is gathered from the edges of a lagoon of 

 intensely saline nature, the bed of which is composed of 

 a thick deposit of crystals of chloride of sodium ^ mixed 

 with some earth and sand ; and, according to Humboldt, 

 surcharged with muriate ^ and sulphate of magnesia.^ This 

 salt deposit, still in course of formation, gives one a very 

 good idea of how those beds of rock-salt, so extensively 

 worked in Austria at depths of many hundreds of feet, 

 were formed in the past. We can imagine that mine in 

 Galicia, in whose bowels Polish criminals have toiled 

 their lives away, being at one time a broad sheet of water 

 glistening in bright sunlight in a region where it never 

 rained. And the stretch of open country on which we 

 stood drinking in the fresh sea-breeze and enjojdng the 

 glories of the sunshine, will it not also be buried with its 

 wealth of salt in the depths of the earth, to be, perhaps, 

 the prison-house of the convicts of a f ature generation ? 



From the salina the salt, put up in bags, is carried 

 by donkeys to the seashore, where it is taken on board by 

 the crew. The vessel, having completed her cargo, sails 

 to one of the coast towns or beats her way up against 

 the current of the Orinoco to Ciudad-Bolivar, where the 

 price of salt is generally 15 pesos the fanega. Considering 

 that the same sort of salt can be obtained at Trinidad 

 at something like 3s. the barrel of 300 pounds, we 

 ' NaCl. = MgCl,. =• MgSO^.THjO. 



