42 
ABBIVAL AT P0ET0 CABELLO. 
from the coast, near la Yilla del Pao, but the:e was reason 
to beiieve that this latter place had once been a conuco, or 
cultivated enclosure. Everywhere else on the continent of 
America we saw the Parkinsonia, like the Plumeria, only in 
the gardens of the Indians. 
At Porto Cabello, as at La G-uayra, it is disputed whether 
the port lies east or west of the town, with which the com- 
munications are the most frequent. The inhabitants believe 
that Porto Cabello is north-north-west of Nueva Valencia ; 
and my observations give a longitude of three or four 
minutes more towards the west. 
We were received with the utmost kindness in the house 
of a Prench physician, M. Juliac, who had studied medicine 
at Montpelier. His small house contained a collection of 
things the most various, but which were all calculated to 
interest travellers. We found works of literature and 
natural history ; notes on meteorology ; skins of the jaguar 
and of large aquatic serpents ; live animals, monkeys, arma- 
dilloes, and birds. Our host was principal surgeon to the 
royal hospital of Porto Cabello, and was celebrated in the 
country for his skilful treatment of the yellow fever. 
During a period of seven years he had seen six or eight 
thousand persons enter the hospitals, attacked by this 
cruel malady. He had observed the ravages that the epi- 
demic caused in Admiral Ariztizabal’s fleet, in 1793. That 
fleet lost nearly a third of its men; for the sailors were 
almost all unseasoned Europeans, and held unrestrained 
intercourse with the shore. M. Juliac had heretofore treated 
the sick as was commonly practised in Terra Pirma, and in 
the island, by bleeding, aperient medicines, and acid drinks. 
In this treatment no attempt was made to raise the vital 
powers by the action of stimulants, so that, in attempting to 
allay the fever, the languor and debility were augmented. 
In the hospitals, where the sick were crowded, the mortality 
w as often thirty-three per cent, among the white Creoles ; 
and sixty-five in a hundred among the Europeans recently 
disembarked. Since a stimulant treatment, the use of opium, 
of benzoin, and of alcoholic draughts, has been substituted 
for the cld debilitating method, the mortality has con- 
siderably diminished. It was believed to be reduced to 
twenty in a hundred among Europeans, and ten among 
