195 



by degrees will extend as far as the Embarca- 

 dere, the plain, which is not yet covered with 

 houses or huts, being more than 340 toises in 

 length*. The heats are somewhat less oppres- 

 sive on the side toward the seashore, than in the 

 old town, where the reverberation of the cal- 

 careous soil, and the proximity of the mountain 

 of St. Antonio, raise the temperature to an ex- 

 traordinary degree. In the suburb of the Guay- 

 querias, the sea breezes have free access ; the 

 soil is clayey, and, as it is thought, less exposed 

 from this reason to the violent shocks of earth- 

 quakes, than the houses at the foot of the rocks 

 and hills on the right bank of the Manzanares. 



The shore near the mouth of the small river 

 Santa Catalina is bordered with mangrove 

 trees^, but these mangroves are not sufficiently 



* I have deduced this distance from the vertical angles and 

 the azimuths of several edifices, of which I carefully mea- 

 sured the height. On the side of the river, in 1800, the 

 distance from the first hut of the suburbs of the Guayquerias 

 in the Casa blanca (of Don Pasqual God a) was 538 toises, 

 and from this first hut to the bridge of the Manzanares 210 

 toises. These data will one day be interesting, when the 

 progress of industry and prosperity at Cumana, from the be- 

 ginning of the nineteenth century, becomes a subject of in- 

 quiry. 



+ Rhizophora mangle. Mr. Bonpland found on the Plaga 

 Chica the allionia incarnata, in the same place where the 

 unfortunate Lcefling had discovered this new genus of nycta- 

 gines. 



