APPBOACH TO CUMANA. 109 



months to the narrow circle of missionary life, we felt a 

 hiijh gratification at meeting for the first time with men 

 vim had sailed round the world, and whose ideas were en- 

 larged by so extensive and varied a course. I quitted the 

 English vessel with impressions which are not yet effaced 

 from my remembrance, and which rendered me more than 

 ever satisfied with the career on which I had entered. 



AVe continued our passage on the following day ; and 

 WITO surprised at the depth of the channels between the 

 ( 'unicas Islands, where the sloop worked her way through 

 thrm almost touching the rocks. How much do these cal- 

 careous islets, of which the form and direction call to mind 

 the great catastrophe that separated from them the main- 

 land, differ in aspect from the volcanic archipelago on the 

 north of Lanzerote, where the hills of basalt seem to have 

 been heaved up from the bottom of the sea ! Numbers of 

 pelicans and of flamingos, which fished in the nooks, or 

 harassed the pelicans in order to seize their prey, indicated 

 our approach to the coast of Cumana. It is curious to ob- 

 serve at sunrise how the sea-birds suddenly appear and ani- 

 mate the scene, reminding us, in the most solitary regions, of 

 the activity of our cities at the dawn of day. At nine in the 

 morning we reached the gulf of Cariaco, which serves as a 

 roadstead to the town of Cumana. The hill, crowned by the 

 castle of San Antonio, stood out, prominent from its white- 



. on the dark curtain of the inland mountains. "We 



I with interest on the shore, where we first gathered 

 plants in America, and where, some months later, M. Bon- 

 pland had been in such danger. Among the cactuses, that 



in columns twenty feet high, appear the Indian huts of 

 the Guaykeries. Every part of the landscape was familiar to 

 us; the forest of cactus, the scattered huts and that enor- 

 mous ceiba, beneath which we loved to bathe at the approach 

 >!' night. Our friends at Cumana came out to meet us : 

 men of all castes, whom our frequent herborizations had 

 brought into contact with us, expressed the greater joy 



ii;ht of us, as a report that we had perished on the 

 banks of the Orinoco had been current for several months. 

 These reports had their origin either in the severe illness ot 

 M . Bonpland, or in the fact of our boat having been nearly 

 lost in a gale above the mission of Uruana. 



