RETURN TO CUM ANA. 
r.)d 
After having examined the environs of Maniquarez, we em- 
barked at night in a fishing-boat for Cumaua. The small 
crazy boats employed by the natives here, bear testimony to 
the extreme calmness of the sea in these regions. Our boat, 
though the best xve could procure, was so leaky, that the 
pilot’s son was constantly employed in baling out the water 
with a tutuma, or shell of the Crescentia cujete (calabash). 
It often happens in the gulf of Cariaco, and especially to the 
north of the peninsula of Araya, that canoes laden with 
cocoa-nuts are upset in sailing too near the wind, and 
against the tide. 
The inhabitants of Araya, whom we visited a second time 
on returning from the Orinoco, have not forgotten that their 
peninsula was one of the points first peopled by the Spaniards. 
They love to talk of the pearl fishery; of the ruins of the 
castle of Santiago, which they hope to see some day rebuilt ; 
and of everything that recalls to mind the ancient splendour 
of those countries. In China and Japan those inventions 
are considered as recent, which have not been known above 
two thousand years; in the European colonies an event 
appears extremely old, if it dates back three centuries, or 
about the period of the discovery of America. 
