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The Rio Tuy, flowing from the mountains of Las Cocuyzas, runs first towards the west, then turning to the south and to the east, it takes its course along the high savannahs of Ocumare, receives the waters of the valley of Caracas, and reaches the sea near cape Codera.
The length of the passage from Cumana to La Guayra depends on the degree of ease or difficulty with which Cape Codera can be doubled. On the 20th of November at sunrise we were so far advanced, that we might expect to double the cape in a few hours.
The gneiss did not act upon the magnetic needle; yet along the coast, which forms a cove near Cape Codera, and which is covered with a fine forest, I saw magnetic sand mixed with spangles of mica, deposited by the sea. This phenomenon occurs again near the port of La Guayra.
The wind was unfavourable, and we doubled Cape Codera with difficulty. The surges were short, and often broke one upon another. The sea ran the higher, owing to the wind being contrary to the current, till after midnight. The general motion of the waters within the tropics towards the west is felt strongly on the coast during two-thirds of the year.
On the west of Cape Codera the northern chain, composed of primitive granitic rocks, presents the loftiest summits of the whole Cordillera of Venezuela; but the culminant points east of that cape are composed in the southern chain of secondary calcareous rocks.
When we found ourselves to westward of the Morro of Barcelona, and the mouth of the river Unare, the sea, till then calm, became agitated and rough in proportion as we approached Cape Codera. The influence of that vast promontory is felt from afar, in that part of the Caribbean Sea.
The sea here forms a sort of bay, a slight inward curve of the land between Cumana and Cape Codera. The islets of Picua, Picuita, Caracas, and Boracha, appear like fragments of the ancient coast, which stretches from Bordones in the same direction east and west. The gulfs of Mochima and Santa Fe, which will no doubt one day become frequented ports, lie behind those little islands.
It belongs peculiarly to the mountains that bound the basin of the lake of Valencia towards the north; for in the islands of that lake, in the mountains near the Villa de Cura, and in the whole northern chain, between the meridian of Vittoria and Cape Codera, gneiss predominates, sometimes alternating with granite, or passing to mica-slate.
The sea-side has no beach on which the remains of fuci or molluscs are heaped up; but the neighbouring coast, which stretches eastward towards Cape Codera, and consequently to the windward of La Guayra, is extremely unhealthy.
Thus I observed them on a length of more than a hundred leagues, in the littoral chain of Venezuela; in the stratified granite of Las Trincheras at Porto Cabello; in the gneiss of the islands of the lake of Valencia, and in the vicinity of the Villa de Cura; in the transition-slate and greenstone on the north of Parapara; in the road from La Guayra to the town of Caracas, and through all the Sierra de Avila in Cape Codera; and in the mica-slate and clay-slate of the peninsula of Araya.
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