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descent almost continual from the banks of the 

 lake to the sea-coast. La Trinchera takes it's 

 name from little fortifications in earth, thrown 

 up in 1677 by some French freebooters, who 

 sacked the town of Valencia. The hot springs, 

 which is a remarkable geological fact, do not 

 gush out to the South of the mountains, like 

 those of Mariara, Onoto, and the Brigantine 5 

 but they issue from the chain itself, almost at 

 it's northern declivity. They are much more 

 abundant than any we had till then seen, form- 

 ing a rivulet, which in the times of the greatest 

 drought is two feet deep and eighteen wide* 

 The temperature of the water, measured with 

 great care, was 90*3° of the centigrade thermo- 

 meter, Next to the springs of Urijino, in 

 Japan, which are asserted to be pure water at 

 100° of temperature, the waters of the Trinchera 

 of Porto Cabello appear to be the hottest in the 

 world. We breakfasted near the spring ; eggs 

 plunged into the thermal waters were boiled in 

 less than four minutes. These waters, strongly 

 charged with sulphuretted hydrogen, gush out 

 from the back of a hill rising one hundred and 

 fifty feet above the bottom of the ravine, and 

 trending from South-South-East to North-North- 

 West. The rock, from which the springs gush, 

 is a real coarse-grained granite, resembling that 

 of the Devil's Wall in the mountains of Mariara. 

 Wherever the waters evaporate in the air, they 



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