MANGROVE THICKETS. 
371 
to double the cape in a few hours. We hoped to reach 
La Guayra the same day ; but our Indian pilot being afraid 
of the privateers who were near that port, thought it would 
be prudent to make for land, and anchor in the little har- 
bour of Higuerote, which we had already passed, and await 
the shelter of night to proceed on our voyage. 
On tlie 20th of November at nine in the mornum we 
were at anchor in the bay just mentioned, situated westward 
of the mouth of the liio Capaya. We found there neither 
village nor farm, but merely two or three huts, inhabited 
by Mestizo fishermen. Their livid hue, and the meagre 
condition of their children, sufficed to remind us that this 
spot is one of the most unhealthy of the whole coast. The 
sea has so little depth along these shores, that even with the 
smallest barks it is impossible to reach the shore without 
wading through the water. The forests come down nearlv to 
the beach, which is covered with thickets of mangroves avi- 
cenmas, manchineel-trees, and that species of suriana which 
the natives call romero de la mar* To these thickets, and 
particularly to the exhalations of the mangroves, the ex- 
treme insalubrity of the air is attributed here, as in other 
places in both Indies. On quitting the boats, and whilst we 
were yet fifteen or twenty toises distant from land, we per- 
ceived a faint and sickly smell, which reminded me of that 
diffused through the galleries of deserted mines, where the 
lights begin to be extinguished, and the timber is covered 
with flocculent byssus. The temperature of the air rose to 
34°, heated by the reverberation from the white sands which 
form a line between the mangroves and the great trees of the 
forest. As the shore descends with a gentle slope, small 
tides are sufficient alternately to cover and uncover the 
roots and part of the trunks of the mangroves. It is 
doubtless whilst the sun heats the humid wood, and causes 
the fermentation, as it were, of the ground, of the remains 
of dead leaves and of the molluscs enveloped in the drift of 
floating seaweed, that those deleterious gases are formed, 
which escape our researches. We observed that the sea- 
v ater, along the whole coast, acquired a yellowish brown 
tint, wherever it came into contact with the mangrove trees 
* Suriana maritima. 
2 b 2 
