206 



basins, contains less salt. It is questioned here* 

 as at Cum an a, whether the ground be impreg- 

 nated with saline particles, because it has been 

 for ages covered at intervals with sea-water, 

 evaporated by the heat of the Sun ; or whether 

 the soil be muriatiferous, as in a mine very poor 

 in native salt. I had not leisure to examine this 

 plain with the same attention as the peninsula 

 of Araya. Besides, does not this problem re- 

 duce itself to the simple question, whether the 

 salt be owing to new or very ancient inundations ? 

 The labouring at the salt-works of Porto-Cabello 

 being extremely unhealthy, the poorest men 

 alone employ themselves in it. They collect 

 the salt in little stores, and afterward sell it to 

 the shopkeepers in the town. 



During our abode at Porto-Cabello, the cur- 

 rent on the coast, generally* directed toward 



* The wrecks of tbe Spanish ships, burnt at the island of 

 Trinidad, at the time of it's occupation bj the English, in 

 1797, were carried by the general or rotary current to Punta 

 Brava, near Porto-Cabello. This general current toward 

 the East, from the coasts of Paria to the isthmus of Panama 

 and the western extremity of the island of Cuba, was the 

 subject of a violent dispute between Don Diego Columbus, 

 Oviedo, and the pilot Andres, in the sixteenth century. 

 See " De novis opinionibus fluentis ad occidentem pelagi 

 Pariensis ; et de impulsu cselorum, quo torrentes exeunt ad 

 occidentem, et per universum circumaguntur." Pet, Mart* 

 Ocean., Dec. ii } lib. x, p. 327. 



