334 STIOALS AND ISLANDS. 



towaids Cape Chichivacoa? These important problems can 

 only be solved when the chain of islands parallel with the 

 coast has been properly examined. It must not be for- 

 gotten, that a great irruption of the ocean appears to have 

 taken place between Trinidad and Grenada,* and that no 

 where else in the long series of the Lesser Antilles are two 

 neighbouring islands so far removed from each other. We 

 observe the effect of the rotatory current in the direction of 

 the coast of Trinidad, as in the coasts of the provinces of 

 Cumana and Caracas, between Cape Paria and Punta Araya, 

 and between Cape Codera and Porto Cabello. If a part of 

 the continent has been overwhelmed by the ocean on the 

 north of the peninsula of Araya, it is probable that the 

 enormous shoal which surrounds Cubagua, Coche, the island 

 of Marguerita, Los Frailes, La Sola, and the Testigos, marks 

 the extent and outline of the submerged land. This shoal 

 or placer, which is of the extent of 200 square leagues, is 

 well known only to the tribe of the Guayqueries ; it is fre- 

 quented by these Indians on account of its abundant fishery 

 in calm weather. The Gran Placer is believed to be sepa- 

 rated only by some canals or deep furrows of the bank of 

 Grenada from the sand-bank that extends like a narrow 

 dyke from Tobago to Grenada, and which is known by the 

 lowering of the temperature of the water, and from the 

 sand-banks of Los E-oques and Aves. The Guayquerie 

 Indians, and, generally speaking, all the inhabitants of the 

 coast of Cumana and Barcelona, are imbued with an idea 

 that the water of the shoals of Marguerita and the Testigos 

 diminishes from year to year ; they believe that, in the lapse 

 of ages, the Morro de Chacopata, on the peninsula of Araya, 

 will be joined by a neck of land to the islands of Lobos and 

 Coche. The partial retreat of the waters on the coast of 

 Cumana is undeniable, and the bottom of the sea has been 

 upheaved at various times by earthquakes ; but these local 

 phenomena, which it is so difficult to account for by the 



* It is affirmed that the island of Trinidad is traversed in the northern 

 part by a chain of primitive slate, and that Grenada furnishes basalt. It 

 would be important to examine of what rock the island of Tobago i 

 composed ; it appeared to me of dazzling whiteness ; and on what point 

 in going from Trinidad northward, the trachytic and trappean system 

 the Leiser Antilles begins. 



