361 



mon in the Oroonoko, which so much resem- 

 bles the crocodile of Egypt, that they have long 

 been confounded together. We may conceive 

 that an animal, the body of which is surround- 

 ed with a kind of armour, must be nearly in- 

 different to the saltness of the water. Pigafetta # 

 had already seen, as he relates in his journal 

 recently published at Milan, crocodiles that 

 inhabit alike the land and the sea. These 

 facts must be interesting to geologists, since 

 their attention has been fixed on the fresh-wa- 

 ter formation, and the curious mixture of ma- 

 rine and fluviatile petrifactions, which are 

 sometimes observed in certain very recent 

 rocks. 



The port of Barcelona, of which the name is 

 scarcely to be found on our maps, has had a 

 very active commerce ever since 1795. From 

 it is exported great part of the produce of those 

 vast steppes, which extend from the south side 

 of the chain of the coast as far as the Oroonoko, 

 and which abound in cattle of every kind, al- 

 most as much as the Pampas of Buenos AyreS. 

 The commercial industry of these countries de- 

 pends on the demand in the great and little 

 West India islands for salted provision, oxen, 

 mules, and horses. The coasts of Terra Firma 

 being opposite to those of the Island of Cuba, 



* A ruoretti's translation, p. 154. 



