46 VALENCIA AND PUEKTO CABELLO. 



xxntil introduced after the discovery of the 'New. Among 

 the ancient Aztecs and Incas it was used as a medium of 

 exchange, besides affording them a most delicious bever- 

 age and nutritions food. Bananas and the erythrina are 

 planted at the same time with the cacao ; the former, 

 which is a very rapidly-growing plant, protects the cacao 

 during the tirst stages of its growth, being removed as 

 soon as the latter tree attains sufficient size to afford the 

 requisite shade. The cacao-jjlant seldom rises liigher than 

 twenty feet, and commences to bear at the age of six or 

 seven years, yielding two crops annually for an indefinite 

 number of years. The manner in which the fruit grows, 

 attached to the trunks and large limbs of the trees, Avill 

 strike one as a little curious. It resembles a short, thick 

 cucumber, four or five inches long, and two and a half or 

 three inches in diameter, and contains thirty or forty 

 large, flat beans of a dark-brown color, enveloped in a 

 sweet pulp. One or one and a half pound is the average 

 annual yield of a single tree. Notwithstanding this small 

 return, it is an exceedingly lucrative branch of culture, 

 as a plantation, when once established, requires but little 

 attention beyond the harvesting of the crop. 



Toward evening of the same day of our arrival at the 

 estate of the consul, we climbed the mountain to an lapper 

 hacienda, also owned by him. On the way Ave were shown 

 some hieroglyphics, sculptured upon the rocks, the work 

 of a civilization prior to the conquest. The designs were 

 those of animals and various other objects in nature, 

 rudely executed and still in a good state of preseiwation, 

 notwithstanding the rocks upon which tliey are carved 

 have been for centuries subjected to the destroying agen- 

 cies of a tropical climate. On the old road over the njoun- 

 tains from Valencia to Puerto Cabello, and near the latter 

 place, are upon the rocks similar engravings, which must 

 be referred to the same origin and antiquity. 



