ASCENT OF THE COKDILLEEA. 5 



ready. It is two p. m. as wc take our departure. The 

 rays of a tropical sun pour down without mercy, and arc 

 reverberated by every stone and rock until the very air 

 we breathe seems as if drawn from a heated furnace. We 

 lay aside our outer garments and make ourselves as com- 

 fortable as circumstances will permit. The road leads 

 out of the town on the north, skirting the base of tlie 

 mountains, between which and the sea there is for some 

 distance scarcely room for the coach to pass ; then the 

 space widens, and we find ourselves riding through the 

 village of Marquitia with its beautiful cocoa-nut grove ; 

 then turning up the mountain-slope, we wind along the 

 eastern side of the Quebrada de Tipe, a large ravine, the 

 aspect of the landscape varying at every tui-n. Here the 

 maguey, a jDlant with agave leaves, finds its native home 

 and adorns by its unsurpassed beauty tliese rugged wilds. 

 Its lofty arboreal form, with its thousands of drooping 

 liliaceous flowers, presents a sight of which the traveller 

 never wearies. 



As we continue our journey, slowly vrinding up the 

 zigzag road, we find ourselves rising into a purer atmos- 

 phere. We breathe more freely, and no longer feel that 

 languor and debility experienced while amid the burning- 

 sands of the ferra calieyite, or hot land below. Reaching 

 what is called the half-way station, we stop and change 

 horses. There are two or three other wayside inns we have 

 passed, and which afibrd resting-places to the traveller and 

 trains of animals that daily pass over the road between La 

 Guaira and Caracas. Our gai*ments, removed at the outset 

 of our journey, we now gladly replace, for we have at- 

 tained an altitude of nearly five thousand feet above the 

 sea. Above us and along the summit heavy clouds are gath- 

 ering, and, as they come sweeping down the mountain-side, 

 threaten to soon envelop us in their gloom. From this 

 point, the view, Avhich the traveller has spread out before 



