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I arrived at the village of Chacao shortly after the tents belonging to the boats were pitched for the night. The land in this neighbourhood has been extensively cleared, and there were many quiet and most picturesque nooks in the forest.
Long before they have been accurately measured, a conventional height is assigned to them; and to entertain the least doubt respecting that height is to wound a national prejudice. The captain-general, Senor de Guevara, directed the teniente of Chacao to furnish us with guides to conduct us on our ascent of the Silla.
I accompanied this expedition, but instead of going in the boats the first day, I hired horses to take me to Chacao, at the northern extremity of the island. The road followed the coast; every now and then crossing promontories covered by fine forests.
The city of Caracas is seated at the entrance of the plain of Chacao, which extends three leagues eastward, in the direction of Caurimare and the Cuesta de Auyamas, and is two leagues and a half in breadth. This plain, through which runs the Rio Guayra, is at the elevation of four hundred and fourteen toises above the level of the sea.
But the success of the workings, which depends less on the abundance of the ore in a vast space of land than on its accumulation in one point, has not justified these favourable prepossessions. The mountain of Chacao, bordered by the ravine of Tucutunemo, rises seven hundred feet above the village of San Juan.
These last-named rocks are auriferous in the Quebrada del Oro, near Guigue; and between Villa de Cura and the Morros de San Juan, in the mountain of Chacao. The gold is contained in pyrites, which are found sometimes disseminated almost imperceptibly in the whole mass of the gneiss,* and sometimes united in small veins of quartz.
I accompanied this expedition, but instead of going in the boats the first day, I hired horses to take me to Chacao, at the northern extremity of the island. The road followed the coast; every now and then crossing promontories covered by fine forests.
Despairing of ever seeing my people, and still ignorant where Chacao was situated, having no chart of the island on which I could depend, I determined to change my style of writing to the governor, and try what could be done by threatening to use force. I therefore wrote, that I was determined to have provisions by fair means or foul.
The soil of these countries is found to be but little favourable to the cultivation of the coffee-tree, which in general is less productive in the valley of Caracas than was imagined when the first plantations were made near Chacao.
Seeing the English flag hoisted at the yawl's mast-head, he asked with the utmost indifference, whether it was always to fly at Chacao. In several places the inhabitants were much astonished at the appearance of men-of-war's boats, and hoped and believed it was the forerunner of a Spanish fleet, coming to recover the island from the patriot government of Chile.
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