CROCODILES. 19 



attaint only three or four feet in length. It is said to be 

 very harmless ; its habits however, as well as its form, much 

 resemble those of the alh'gator (Crocodilus acutus). It 

 swims in such a manner as to show only the point of its 

 snout, and the extremity of its tail ; and places itself 

 at mid-day on the bare beach. It is certainly neither a 

 monitor (the real monitors living only in the old continent,) 

 nor the sauvegarde of Seba (Lacerta teguixin,) which dives 

 and does not swim. It is somewhat remarkable that the 

 lake of Valencia, and the whole system of small rivers 

 flowing into it, have no large alligators, though this dan- 

 gerous animal abounds a few leagues off in the streams 

 that flow either into the Apure or the Orinoco, or imme- 

 diately into the Caribbean Sea between Porto Cabello and 

 La Guayra. 



In the islands that rise like bastions in the midst of the 

 waters, and wherever the rocky bottom of the lake is visible, 

 I recognised a uniform direction in the strata of gneiss. 

 This direction is nearly that of the chains of mountains 011 

 the north and south of the lake. In the hills of Cabo 

 Blanco there are found among the gneiss, angular masses 

 of opaque quartz, slightly translucid on the edges, and vary- 

 ing from grey to deep black. This quartz passes sometimes 

 into hornstein, and sometimes into kieselschiefer (schistose 

 jasper). I do not think it constitutes a vein. The waters 

 of the lake* decompose the gneiss by erosion in a very 

 extraordinary manner. I have found parts of it porous, 

 almost cellular, and split in the form of cauliflowers, fixed 

 on gneiss perfectly compact. Perhaps the action ceases 

 with the movement of the waves, and the alternate contact 

 of air and water. 



The island of Chamberg is remarkable for its height. 

 It is a rock of gneiss, with two sumimiti in the form of 

 a saddle, and raised two hundred feet above the surface of 

 the water. The slope of this rock is barren, and affords 

 only nourishment for a few plants of clusia with large white 



* The water of the lake is not salt, as is asserted at Caracas. It may 

 be drunk without being filtered. On evaporation it leaves a very small 

 residuum of carbonate of lime, and perhaps a little nitrate of potash. It 

 u surprising that an inland lake should not be richer in alkaline and 

 arthy salts, acquired from the neighbouring soils. 



'* 



