Volume Iii Part 7 (1/2)

As the breeze freshened in the direction of north-east we sought to avoid the group of the Caymans but the current drove us towards those islands. Sailing to south 1/4 south-east, we gradually lost sight of the palm-covered sh.o.r.e, the hills rising above the town of Trinidad and the lofty mountains of the island of Cuba. There is something solemn in the aspect of land from which the voyager is departing and which he sees sinking by degrees below the horizon of the sea. The interest of this impression was heightened at the period to which I here advert; when Saint Domingo was the centre of great political agitations, and threatened to involve the other islands in one of those sanguinary struggles which reveal to man the ferocity of his nature. These threatened dangers were happily averted; the storm was appeased on the spot which gave it birth; and a free black population, far from troubling the peace of the neighbouring islands, has made some steps in the progress of civilization and has promoted the establishment of good inst.i.tutions. Porto Rico, Cuba and Jamaica, with 370,000 whites and 885,000 men of colour, surround Hayti, where a population of 900,000 negros and mulattos have been emanc.i.p.ated by their own efforts. The negros, more inclined to cultivate alimentary plants than colonial productions, augment with a rapidity only surpa.s.sed by the increase of the population of the United States.

CHAPTER 3.30.

Pa.s.sAGE FROM TRINIDAD DE CUBA TO RIO SINU.

CARTHAGENA.

AIR VOLCANOES OF TURBACO.

Ca.n.a.l OF MAHATES.

On the morning of the 17th of March, we came within sight of the most eastern island of the group of the Lesser Caymans. Comparing the reckoning with the chronometric longitude, I ascertained that the currents had borne us in seventeen hours twenty miles westward. The island is called by the English pilots Cayman-brack, and by the Spanish pilots, Cayman chico oriental. It forms a rocky wall, bare and steep towards the south and south-east. The north and north-west part is low, sandy, and scantily covered with vegetation. The rock is broken into narrow horizontal ledges. From its whiteness and its proximity to the island of Cuba, I supposed it to be of Jura limestone. We approached the eastern extremity of Cayman-brack within the distance of 400 toises. The neighbouring coast is not entirely free from danger and breakers; yet the temperature of the sea had not sensibly diminished at its surface. The chronometer of Louis Berthoud gave me 82 degrees 7 minutes 37 seconds for the longitude of the eastern cape of Cayman-brack. The lat.i.tude reduced by the reckoning on the rhumbs of wind at the meridian observation, appeared to me to be 19 degrees 40 minutes 50 seconds.

As long as we were within sight of the rock of Cayman-brack sea-turtles of extraordinary dimensions swam round our vessel. The abundance of these animals led Columbus to give the whole group of the Caymans the name of Penascales de las Tortugas (rocks of the turtles.) Our sailors would have thrown themselves into the water to catch some of these animals; but the numerous sharks that accompany them rendered the attempt too perilous. The sharks fixed their jaws on great iron hooks which were flung to them; these hooks were very sharp and (for want of anzuelos encandenados* (* Fish-hooks with chains.)) they were tied to cords: the sharks were in this manner drawn up half the length of their bodies; and we were surprised to see that those which had their mouths wounded and bleeding continued to seize the bait over and over again during several hours.* (* Vidimus quoque squales, quotiescunque, hamo icti, dimidia parte corporis e fluctibus extrahebantur, cito alvo stercus emittere haud absimile excrementis caninis. Commovebat intestina (ut arbitramur) subitus pavor. Although the form and number of teeth change with age, and the teeth appear successively in the shark genus, I doubt whether Don Antonio Ulloa be correct in stating that the young sharks have two, and the old ones four rows of grinders. These, like many other sea-fish, are easily accustomed to live in fresh water, or in water slightly briny. It is observed that sharks (tiburones) abound of late in the Laguna of Maracaybo, whither they have been attracted by the dead bodies thrown into the water after the frequent battles between the Spanish royalists and the Columbian republicans.) At the sight of these voracious fish the sailors in a Spanish vessel always recollect the local fable of the coast of Venezuela, which describes the benediction of a bishop as having softened the habits of the sharks, which are everywhere else the dread of mariners. Do these wild sharks of the port of La Guayra specifically differ from those which are so formidable in the port of the Havannah? And do the former belong to the group of Emissoles with small sharp teeth, which Cuvier distinguishes from the Melandres, by the name of Musteli?

The wind freshened more and more from the south-east, as we advanced in the direction of Cape Negril and the western extremity of the great bank of La Vibora. We were often forced to diverge from our course; and, on account of the extreme smallness of our vessel, we were almost constantly under water. On the 18th of March at noon we found ourselves in lat.i.tude 18 degrees 17 minutes 40 seconds, and in 81 degrees 50 minutes longitude. The horizon, to the height of 50 degrees, was covered with those reddish vapours so common within the tropics, and which never seem to affect the hygrometer at the surface of the globe. We pa.s.sed fifty miles west of Cape Negril on the south, nearly at the point where several charts indicate an insulated flat of which the position is similar to that of Sancho Pardo, opposite to Cape San Antonio de Cuba. We saw no change in the bottom. It appears that the rocky shoal at a depth of four fathoms, near Cape Negril, has no more existence than the rock (cascabel) itself, long believed to mark the western extremity of La Vibora (Pedro Bank, Portland Rock or la Sola), marking the eastern extremity. On the 19th of March, at four in the afternoon, the muddy colour of the sea denoted that we had reached that part of the bank of La Vibora where we no longer find fifteen, and indeed scarcely nine or ten, fathoms of water. Our chronometric longitude was 81 degrees 3 minutes; and our lat.i.tude probably below 17 degrees. I was surprised that, at the noon observation, at 17 degrees 7 minutes of lat.i.tude, we yet perceived no change in the colour of the water. Spanish vessels going from Batabano or Trinidad de Cuba to Carthagena, usually pa.s.s over the bank of La Vibora, on its western side, at between fifteen and sixteen fathoms water. The dangers of the breakers begin only beyond the meridian 80 degrees 45 minutes west longitude. In pa.s.sing along the bank on its southern limit, as pilots often do in proceeding from c.u.mana or other parts of the mainland, to the Great Caymnan or Cape San Antonio, they need not ascend along the rocks, above 16 degrees 47 minutes lat.i.tude.

Fortunately the currents run on the whole bank to south-west.

Considering La Vibora not as a submerged land, but as a heaved-up part of the surface of the globe, which has not reached the level of the sea, we are struck at finding on this great submarine island, as on the neighbouring land of Jamaica and Cuba, the loftiest heights towards its eastern boundary. In that direction are situated Portland Rock, Pedro Keys and South Key, all surrounded by dangerous breakers.

The depth is six or eight fathoms; but, in advancing to the middle of the bank, along the line of the summit, first towards the west and then towards the north-west, the depth becomes successively ten, twelve, sixteen and nineteen fathoms. When we survey on the map the proximity of the high lands of San Domingo, Cuba and Jamaica, in the neighbourhood of the Windward Channel, the position of the island of Navaza and the bank of Hormigas, between Capes Tiburon and Morant; when we trace that chain of successive breakers, from the Vibora, by Baxo Nuevo, Serranilla, and Quita Sueno, as far as the Mosquito Sound, we cannot but recognize in this system of islands and shoals the almost-continued line of a heaved-up ridge running from north-east to south-west. This ridge, and the old d.y.k.e, which link, by the rock of Sancho Pardo, Cape San Antonio to the peninsula of Yucatan, divide the great sea of the West Indies into three partial basins, similar to those observed in the Mediterranean.

The colour of the troubled waters on the shoal of La Vibora has not a milky appearance like the waters in the Jardinillos and on the bank of Bahama; but it is of a dirty grey colour. The striking differences of tint on the bank of Newfoundland, in the archipelago of the Bahama Islands and on La Vibora, the variable quant.i.ties of earthy matter suspended in the more or less troubled waters of the soundings, may all be the effects of the variable absorption of the rays of light, contributing to modify to a certain point the temperature of the sea.

Where the shoals are 8 to 10 degrees colder at their surface than the surrounding sea, it cannot be surprising that they should produce a local change of climate. A great ma.s.s of very cold water, as on the bank of Newfoundland, in the current of the Peruvian sh.o.r.e (between the port of Callao and Punta Parina* (* I found the surface of the Pacific ocean, in the month of October 1802 on the coast of Truxillo, 15.8 degrees centigrade; in the port of Callao, in November, 15.5; between the parallel of Callao and Punta Parina, in December, 19 degrees; and progressively, when the current advanced towards the equator and receded towards the west-north-west, 20.5 and 22.3 degrees)), or in the African current near Cape Verd, have necessarily an influence on the atmosphere that covers the sea, and on the climate of the neighbouring land; but it is less easy to conceive that those slight changes of temperature (for instance, a centesimal degree on the bank of La Vibora) can impart a peculiar character to the atmosphere of the shoals. May not these submarine islands act upon the formation and acc.u.mulation of the vesicular vapours in some other way than by cooling the waters of the surface?

Quitting the bank of La Vibora, we pa.s.sed between the Baxo Nuevo and the light-house of Camboy; and on the 22nd March we pa.s.sed more than thirty leagues to westward of El Roncador (The Snorer), a name which this shoal has received from the pilots who a.s.sert, on the authority of ancient traditions, that a sound like snoring is heard from afar.

If such a sound be really heard, it arises, no doubt, from a periodical issuing of air compressed by the waters in a rocky cavern.

I have observed the same phenomenon on several coasts, for instance, on the promontories of Teneriffe, in the limestones of the Havannah,*

(* Called by the Spanish sailors El Cordonazo de San Francisco.) and in the granite of Lower Peru between Truxillo and Lima. A project was formed at the Canary Islands for placing a machine at the issue of the compressed air and allowing the sea to act as an impelling force.

While the autumnal equinox is everywhere dreaded in the sea of the West Indies (except on the coast of c.u.mana and Caracas), the spring equinox produces no effect on the tranquillity of those tropical regions: a phenomenon almost the inverse of that observable in high lat.i.tudes. Since we had quitted La Vibora the weather had been remarkably fine; the colour of the sea was indigo-blue and sometimes violet, owing to the quant.i.ty of medusae and eggs of fish (purga de mar) which covered it. Its surface was gently agitated. The thermometer kept up, in the shade, from 26 to 27 degrees; not a cloud arose on the horizon although the wind was constantly north, or north-north-west. I know not whether to attribute to this wind, which cools the higher layers of the atmosphere, and there produces icy crystals, the halos which were formed round the moon two nights successively. The halos were of small dimensions, 45 degrees diameter.

I never had an opportunity of seeing and measuring any* of which the diameter had attained 90 degrees. (* In Captain Parry's first voyage halos were measured round the sun and moon, of which the rays were 22 1/2 degrees; 22 degrees 52 minutes; 38 degrees; 46 degrees. North-west Pa.s.sage, 1821.) The disappearance of one of those lunar halos was followed by the formation of a great black cloud, from which fell some drops of rain; but the sky soon resumed its fixed serenity, and we saw a long series of falling-stars and bolides which moved in one direction and contrary to that of the wind of the lower strata.

On the 23rd March, a comparison of the reckoning with the chronometric longitude, indicated the force of a current bearing towards west-south-west. Its swiftness, in the parallel of 17 degrees, was twenty to twenty-two miles in twenty-four hours. I found the temperature of the sea somewhat diminished; in lat.i.tude 12 degrees 35 minutes it was only 25.9 degrees (air 27.0 degrees). During the whole day the firmament exhibited a spectacle which was thought remarkable even by the sailors and which I had observed on a previous occasion (June 13th, 1799). There was a total absence of clouds, even of those light vapours called dry; yet the sun coloured, with a fine rosy tint, the air and the horizon of the sea. Towards night the sea was covered with great bluish clouds; and when they disappeared we saw, at an immense height, fleecy clouds in regular s.p.a.ces, and ranged in convergent bands. Their direction was from north-north-west to south-south-east, or more exactly, north 20 degrees west, consequently contrary to the direction of the magnetic meridian.

On the 24th March we entered the gulf which is bounded on the east by the coast of Santa Marta, and on the west by Costa Rica; for the mouth of the Magdalena and that of the Rio San Juan de Nicaragua are on the same parallel, nearly 11 degrees lat.i.tude. The proximity of the Pacific Ocean, the configuration of the neighbouring lands, the smallness of the isthmus of Panama, the lowering of the soil between the gulf of Papagayo and the port of San Juan de Nicaragua, the vicinity of the snowy mountains of Santa Marta, and many other circ.u.mstances too numerous to mention, combine to create a peculiar climate in this gulf. The atmosphere is agitated by violent gales known in winter by the name of the brizotes de Santa Marta. When the wind abates, the currents bear to north-east, and the conflict between the slight breezes (from east and north-east) and the current renders the sea rough and agitated. In calm weather, the vessels going from Carthagena to Rio Sinu, at the mouth of the Atrato and at Portobello, are impeded in their course by the currents of the coast. The heavy or brizote winds, on the contrary, govern the movement of the waters, which they impel in an opposite direction, towards west-south-west. It is the latter movement which Major Rennell, in his great hydrographic work, calls drift; and he distinguishes it from real currents, which are not owing to the local action of the wind, but to differences of level in the surface of the ocean; to the rising and acc.u.mulation of waters in very distant lat.i.tudes. The observations which I have collected on the force and direction of the winds, on the temperature and rapidity of the currents, on the influence of the seasons, or the variable declination of the sun, have thrown some light on the complicated system of those pelagic floods that furrow the surface of the ocean: but it is less easy to conceive the causes of the change in the movement of the waters at the same season and with the same wind.

Why is the Gulf-stream sometimes borne on the coast of Florida, sometimes on the border of the shoal of Bahama? Why do the waters flow, for the s.p.a.ce of whole weeks, from the Havannah to Matanzas, and (to cite an example of the corriente por arriba, which is sometimes observed in the most eastern part of the main land during the prevalence of gentle winds) from La Guayra to Cape Codera and c.u.mana?

As we advanced, on the 25th of March, towards the coast of Darien, the north-east wind increased with violence. We might have imagined ourselves transported to another climate. The sea became very rough during the night yet the temperature of the water kept up (from lat.i.tude 10 degrees 30 minutes, to 9 degrees 47 minutes) at 25.8 degrees. We perceived at sunrise a part of the archipelago* of Saint Bernard, which closes the gulf of Morrosquillo on the north. (* It is composed of the islands Mucara, Ceycen, Maravilla, Tintipan, Panda, Palma, Mangles, and Salamanquilla, which rise little above the sea.

Several of them have the form of a bastion. There are two pa.s.sages in the middle of this archipelago, from seventeen to twenty fathoms.

Large vessels can pa.s.s between the Isla Panda and Tintipan, and between the Isla de Mangles and Palma.) A clear spot between the clouds enabled me to take the horary angles. The chronometer, at the little island of Mucara, gave longitude 78 degrees 13 minutes 54 seconds. We pa.s.sed on the southern extremity of the Placer de San Bernardo. The waters were milky, although a sounding of twenty-five fathoms did not indicate the bottom; the cooling of the water was not felt, doubtless owing to the rapidity of the current. Above the archipelago of Saint Bernard and Cape Boqueron we saw in the distance the mountains of Tigua. The stormy weather and the difficulty of going up against the wind induced the captain of our frail vessel to seek shelter in the Rio Sinu, or rather, near the Punta del Zapote, situated on the eastern bank of the Ensenada de Cispata, into which flows the river Sinu or the Zenu of the early Conquistadores. It rained with violence, and I availed myself of that occasion to measure the temperature of the rain-water: it was 26.3 degrees, while the thermometer in the air kept up, in a place where the bulb was not wet, at 24.8 degrees. This result differed much from that we had obtained at c.u.mana, where the rain-water was often a degree colder than the air.* (* As, within the tropics, it takes but little time to collect some inches of water in a vase having a wide opening, and narrowing towards the bottom, I do not think there can be any error in the observation, when the heat of the rain-water differs from that of the air. If the heat of the rain-water be less than that of the air it may be presumed that only a part of the total effect is observed. I often found at Mexico at the end of June, the rain at 19.2 or 19.4 degrees, when the air was at 17.8 and 18 degrees. In general it appeared to me that, within the torrid zone, either at the level of the sea, or on table-lands from 1200 to 1500 toises high, there is no rain but that during storms, which falls in large drops very distant from each other, and is sensibly colder than the air. These drops bring with them, no doubt, the low temperature of the high regions. In the rain which I found hotter than the air, two causes may act simultaneously.

Great clouds heat by the absorption of the rays of the sun which strike their surface; and the drops of water in falling cause an evaporation and produce cold in the air. The temperature of rain-water, to which I devoted much attention during my travels, has become a more important problem since M. Boisgiraud, Professor of Experimental Philosophy at Poitiers, has proved that in Europe rain is generally sufficiently cold, relatively to the air, to cause precipitation of vapour at the surface of every drop. From this fact he traces the cause of the unequal quant.i.ty of rain collected at different heights. When we recollect that one degree only of cooling precipitates more water in the hot climate of the tropics, than by a temperature of 10 to 13 degrees, we may cease to be surprised at the enormous size of the drops of rain that fall at c.u.mana, Carthagena and Guayaquil.)

Our pa.s.sage from the island of Cuba to the coast of South America terminated at the mouth of the Rio Sinu, and it occupied sixteen days.

The roadstead near the Punta del Zapote afforded very bad anchorage; and in a rough sea, and with a violent wind, we found some difficulty in reaching the coast in our canoe. Everything denoted that we had entered a wild region rarely visited by strangers. A few scattered houses form the village of Zapote: we found a great number of mariners a.s.sembled under a sort of shed, all men of colour, who had descended the Rio Sinu in their barks, to carry maize, bananas, poultry and other provisions to the port of Carthagena. These barks, which are from fifty to eighty feet long, belong for the most part to the planters (haciendados) of Lorica. The value of their largest freight amounts to about 2000 piastres. These boats are flat-bottomed, and cannot keep at sea when it is very rough. The breezes from the north-east had, during ten days, blown with violence on the coast, while, in the open sea, as far as 10 degrees lat.i.tude, we had only had slight gales, and a constantly calm sea. In the aerial, as in the pelagic currents, some layers of fluids move with extreme swiftness, while others near them remain almost motionless. The zambos of the Rio Sinu wearied us with idle questions respecting the purpose of our voyage, our books, and the use of our instruments: they regarded us with mistrust; and to escape from their importunate curiosity we went to herborize in the forest, although it rained. They had endeavoured, as usual, to alarm us by stories of boas (traga-venado), vipers and the attacks of jaguars; but during a long residence among the Chayma Indians of the Orinoco we were habituated to these exaggerations, which arise less from the credulity of the natives, than from the pleasure they take in tormenting the whites. Quitting the coast of Zapote, covered with mangroves,* (* Rhizophora mangle.) we entered a forest remarkable for a great variety of palm-trees. We saw the trunks of the Corozo del Sinu* pressed against each other, which formed heretofore our species Alfonsia, yielding oil in abundance (* In Spanish America palm-trees with leaves the most different in kind and species are called Corozo: the Corozo del Sinu, with a short, thick, glossy trunk, is the Elaeis melanococca of Martius, Palm. page 64 tab.

33, 55. I cannot believe it to be identical with the Elaeis guineensis (Herbal of Congo River page 37) since it vegetates spontaneously in the forests of the Rio Sinu. The Corozo of Caripe is slender, small and covered with thorns; it approaches the Cocos aculeata of Jacquin.

The Corozo de los Marinos of the valley of Cauca, one of the tallest palm-trees, is the Cocus butyracea of Linnaeus.); the Cocos butyracea, called here palma dolce or palma real, and very different from the palma real of the island of Cuba; the palma amarga, with fan-leaves that serve to cover the roofs of houses, and the latta,* (* Perhaps of the species of Aiphanes.) resembling the small piritu palm-tree of the Orinoco. This variety of palm-trees was remarked by the first Conquistadores.* (* Pedro de Cieca de Leon, a native of Seville, who travelled in 1531, at the age of thirteen years, in the countries I have described, observes that Las tierras comarcanas del Rio Cenu y del Golfo de Uraba estan llena de unos palmares muy grandes y espessos, que son unos arboles gruessos, y llevan unas ramas como palma de datiles. [The lands adjacent to the Rio Cenu and the Gulf of Uraba are full of very tall, spreading palm-trees. They are of vast size and are branched like the date-palm.] See La Cronica del Peru nuevamenta escrita, Antwerp 1554 pages 21 and 204.) The Alfonsia, or rather the species of Elais, which we had nowhere else seen, is only six feet high, with a very large trunk; and the fecundity of its spathes is such that they contain more than 200,000 flowers. Although a great number of those flowers (one tree bearing 600,000 at the same time) never come to maturity,* the soil remains covered with a thick layer of fruits. (* I have carefully counted how many flowers are contained in a square inch on each amentum, from 100 to 120 of which are found united in one spathe.) We often made a similar observation under the shade of the mauritia palm-tree, the Cocos butyracea, the Seje and the Pihiguao of the Atabapo. No other family of arborescent plants is so prolific in the development of the organs of flowering.

The almond of the Corozo del Sinu is peeled in the water. The thick layer of oil that swims in the water is purified by boiling, and yields the b.u.t.ter of Corozo (manteca de Corozo) which is thicker than the oil of the cocoa-tree, and serves to light churches and houses.

The palm-trees of the section of Cocoinies of Mr. Brown are the olive-trees of the tropical regions. As we advanced in the forest, we began to find little pathways, looking as though they had been recently cleared out by the hatchet. Their windings displayed a great number of new plants: Mougeotia mollis, Nelsonia albicans, Melampodium paludosum, Jonidium anomalum, Teucrium pal.u.s.tre, Gomphia lucens, and a new kind of Composees, the Spiracantha cornifolia. A fine Pancratium embalmed the air in the humid spots, and almost made us forget that those gloomy and marshy forests are highly dangerous to health.