38 HOT 8PBITTGS OF LA TBLSCHEItA. 
mica-slate in the Cordillera of the coast are generally di- 
directed from the south--west to the north-east. Most of 
these ravines penetrate into the mountains at their southern 
declivity, without crossing them entirely. But there is an 
opening (abra) on the meridian of Nueva Valencia, which 
leads towards the coast, and by which a cooling sea-breeze 
penetrates every evening into the valleys of Aragua. This 
breeze rises regularly two or three hours after sunset. 
By this abra, the farm of Barbula, and an eastern branch 
of the ravine, a new road is being constructed from Va- 
lencia to Porto Cabello. It will be so short, that it will 
require only four hours to reach the port ; and the traveller 
will be able to go and return in the same day from the coast 
to the valleys of Aragua. In order to examine this road, we 
set out on the 26th of [February hi the evening for the farm 
of Barbula. 
On the morning of the 27th we visited the hot springs of 
La Trinchera, three leagues from Valencia. The ravine is 
very large, and the descent almost continual from the banks 
of the lake to the sea-coast. La Trinchera takes its name 
from some fortifications of earth, thrown up in 1677 by the 
[French buccaneers, who sacked the town of Valencia. The 
hot springs (and this is a remarkable geological fact,) do not 
issue on the south side of the mountains, like those of Ma- 
riara, Onoto, and the Brigantine; but they issue from the 
chain itself, almost at its northern declivity. They are much 
more abundant than any we had till then seen, forming a 
rivulet which, in 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 ther- 
mometer. Next to the springs of Urijino, in Japan, which 
are asserted to be pure water at 100 6 of temperature, the 
waters of the Trinchera of Porto Cabello appear to be the 
hottest in the world. Ve breakfasted near the spring; 
eggs plunged into the water were boiled in less than four 
minutes. These waters, strongly charged with sulphuretted 
hydrogen, gush out from the back of a hill rising one hun- 
dred and fifty feet above the bottom of the ravine, and tend- 
ing 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 Eincon del Diablo, in the mountains 
