MISSION or SAN ANTONIO. 
245 
leagues in length, pretty uniformly following the direction 
of east and west. In this valley are situated the Missions 
of San Antonio and Gruanaguana ; the first is famous on 
account of a small church with two towers, built of brick, in 
pretty good style, and ornamented with columns of the Doric 
order. It is the wonder of the country. The prefect of the 
Capuchins completed the building of this church in less than 
two summers, though he employed only the Indians of his 
village. The mouldings of the capitals, the cornices, and a 
Irieze decorated with suns and arabesques, are executed in 
clay mixed with pounded brick. If we are surprised to find 
churches in the purest Grecian style on the confines of 
Lapland,* we are still more struck with these first essays of 
art, in a region where everything indicates the wild state 
of man. and where the basis of civilization has not been 
laid by Europeans more than forty years. 
I stopped at the Mission of San Antonio only to open the 
barometer, and to take a few altitudes of the sun. The 
elevation of the great square above Cumana is 216 toises. 
After having crossed the village, we forded the rivers Colo- 
rado and Guarapiche, both of which rise in the mount ains 
of the Cocollar, and blend their waters lower down towards 
the east. The Colorado has a very rapid current, and be- 
comes at its mouth broader than the Rhine. The Guara- 
piche, at its junction with the Rio Areo, is more than 
twenty-five fathoms deep. Its banks are ornamented by a 
superb gramen, of which I made a drawing two years after- 
ward on ascending the river Magdalena. The distich-leaved 
stalk of this gramen often reaches the height of fifteen or 
twenty feet.f 
Towards evening we reached the Mission of Guanaguana, 
the site of which is almost on a level with the village of San 
Antonio. The missionary received us cordially ; he was an 
old man, and he seemed to govern his Indians with great 
* At Skelefter, near Torneo. — Buell, Voyage en Norwege. 
t Lata, or ca/ia brava. It is a new genus, between aira and arundo. 
This colossal gramen looks like the donax of Italy. This, the arun- 
dinaria of the Mississippi, (ludolfia, Willd., miegia of Persoon,) and the 
bamboos, are the highest gramens of the New Continent. Its seed has 
been carried to St. Domingo, where its stalk is employed to thatch the 
negroes’ huts. 
