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They are thirty feet long, and not more than 

 three feet high at the gunwale ; they have no 

 decks, and their lading is generally from two 

 hundred, to two hundred and fifty quintals. 

 Although the sea is extremely rough from Cape 

 Codera as far as La Guayra, and although the 

 boats have an enormous triangular sail, some- 

 what dangerous in those gusts which issue from 

 the passes of the mountains, there is not an 

 example during thirty years of one of these 

 boats being lost in the passage from Cumana 

 to the coast of Caraccas. The skill of the 

 Guaiqueria pilots is so great, that shipwrecks 

 are very rare, even in the frequent trips they 

 make from Cumana to Guadaloupe, or the 

 Danish islands, surrounded with breakers. 

 These voyages of 120 or 150 leagues, in an 

 open sea, out of sight of land, are performed in 

 boats without decks, in the manner of the an- 

 cients, without any observations of the meridian 

 altitude of the sun, without charts, and generally 

 without a compass. The Indian pilot directs his 

 way at night by the polar star, and in the day 

 by the course of the Sun and the wind, which 

 he believes to be little variable. I have seen 

 Guaiqueries and pilots of the coast of the Zam- 

 boes, who could find the polestar by the direc- 

 tion of the pointers, & and 0 of the Great Bear, 

 and they seemed to me to steer less from the 

 view of the polestar itself, than from the line 



