SUPPOSED GOLD-MINE. 
487 
Domingo, and the destruction of the great sugar plantations 
of that island. The Otaheite sugar-cane was carried from 
the island of Trinidad to Caracas, under the name of Cana 
solera, and it passed from Caracas to Cucuta and San Gil in 
the kingdom of New Grenada. In our days its cultivation 
during twenty-five years has almost entirely removed the 
apprehension at first entertained, that being transplanted to 
America, the cane would by degrees degenerate, and become 
as slender as the creole cane. The third species, the violet 
sugar-cane, called Cana de Batavia, or de Guinea, is certainly 
indigenous in the island of Java, where it is cultivated in 
preference in the districts of Japara and Pasuruan.* Its 
foliage is purple and very broad ; and this cane is preferred 
in the province of Caracas for nun. The tablones, or grounds 
planted with sugar-canes, are divided by hedges of a colossal 
gramen ; the lata, or gyrierium, with distich leaves. At the 
Tuy, men were employed in finishing a dyke, to form a 
canal of irrigation. This enterprise had cost the proprietor 
seven thousand piastres for the expense of labour, and four 
thousand piastres for the costs of lawsuits in which he had 
become engaged with his neighbours. While the lawyers 
were disputing about a canal of which only one-half was 
finished, Don Jose de Ifauterola began to doubt even of 
the possibility of carrying the plan into execution. I took 
the level of the ground with a lunette d’epreuve, on an 
artificial horizon, and found, that the dam had been con- 
structed eight feet too low. What sums of money have 1 
seen expended uselessly in the Spanish colonies, for under- 
takings founded on erroneous levelling 1 
The valley of the Tuy has its ‘ gold mine,’ like almost 
every part of America inhabited by whites, and backed by 
primitive mountains. I was assured, that in 1780, foreign 
gold-gatherers had been engaged in picking up grains of that 
metal, and had established a place for washing the sand in 
the Quebrada del Oro. An overseer of a neighbouring plan- 
tation had followed these indications ; and after his death, a 
waistcoat with gold buttons being found among his clothes, 
this gold, according to the logic of the people here, could only 
have proceeded from a vein, which the falliug-in of the earth 
had rendered invisible. In vain I objected, that I could 
* Ilafflus, History of Java, tom. i. p. 12 1 
