THE INDIAN SUBURB. 
155 
a few natives who were harpooning fish by throwing a pole 
tied to a cord, and terminating in an extremely sharp point. 
They asked them in the Havti language their name ; and 
the Indians, thinking that the question of the strangers re- 
lated to then- harpoons, which were formed of the hard and 
heavy wood of the Macana palm, answered r/uaike, guaike, 
which signifies pointed pole. A striking difierence at pre- 
sent exists between the Guayqucrias, a civilized tribe of skil- 
ful fishermen, and those savage Guaraounos of the Orinoco, 
who suspend their habitations on the trunks of the Moriche 
palm. The population of Cumana has been singularly 
exaggerated, but according to the most authentic registers 
it does not exceed 16,000 souls. 
Probably the Indian suburb will by degrees extend as far 
as the Embarcadero ; the plain, which is not yet covered 
with houses or huts, being more than 340 toises in length. 
The heat is somewhat less oppressive on the side near 
the sea-shore, than in the old town, where the reverberation 
of the calcareous soil, and the proximity of the mountain of 
San Antonio, raise the temperature to an excessive degree. 
In the suburb of the Gruayquerias, the sea breezes have free 
access ; the soil is clayey, and, for that reason, it is thought 
to be less exposed to violent shocks of earthquake, 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 spread to diminish the salubrity ot the air of 
Cumana. The soil of the plain is in part destitute ot vegetar 
tion in part covered with tufts of Sesuvium portularastrum, 
Gomphrena Hava, G.myrtifolia, Talinum cuspidatum, T.cuma- 
nense, and Portulaca lanuginosa. Among, these herbaceous 
plants we find at intervals the Avicennia tomentosa, the 
Scoparia dulcis, a frutescent mimosa with very irritable 
(so called on account of the vessel of Columbus having anchored there,) 
and the port of Manzanillo, where they first swore to the whites in 1498, 
that friendship which they have never betrayed, and which has obtained 
for them, in court phraseology, the title of fleles, loyal.— See p- 144. 
v Rhizophora mangle. M. Bonpland found on the Plaga Chiea the 
Allionia incarnata, in the same place where the unfortunate Loefling ha 
discovered this new genus of Nyctagine*. 
