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Although the sea is extremely rough from Cape Codera to La Guayra, and although the boats have an enormous triangular sail, somewhat dangerous in those gusts which issue from the mountain-passes, no instance has occurred during thirty years, of one of these boats being lost in the passage from Cumana to the coast of Caracas.
The Rio Tuy runs through the rest of the basin, from west to east, as far as its mouth which is situated on the north of the mountains of Panaquire. Cape Codera seems to terminate the northern range of the littoral mountains of Venezuela but this termination is only apparent.
All night long they struggled through the billows, with the huge wall of Cape Codera a thousand feet above their heads to the left, and beyond it again, bank upon bank of mountain, bathed in the yellow moonlight. Morning showed them a large ship, which had passed them during the night upon the opposite course, and was now a good ten miles to the eastward. Yeo was for going back and taking her.
I found the dip of the needle 42.20 degrees: the intensity of the forces was equal to 224 oscillations. From the Morro of Barcelona to Cape Codera, the land becomes low, as it recedes southward; and the soundings extend to the distance of three miles. Beyond this we find the bottom at forty-five or fifty fathoms.
The commotions were very violent beyond Caurimare, in the valley of Capaya, where they extended as far as the meridian of Cape Codera: but it is extremely remarkable that they were very feeble on the coasts of Nueva Barcelona, Cumana, and Paria; though these coasts are the continuation of the shore of La Guayra, and were formerly known to have been often agitated by subterranean commotions.
Judging from the fragments of rock found along the coast, and from the hills near Higuerote, Cape Codera is not composed of granite with a granular texture, but of a real gneiss with a foliated texture. The mica is found in superposed lamellae, not isolated. The strata nearest the bay were in the direction of 60 degrees north-east, and dipped 80 degrees to north-west.
It contains, in the peninsula of Araya, garnets disseminated in the mass, cyanite and, when it passes to clayey-slate, small layers of native alum. Mica-slate constituting an independent formation must be distinguished from mica-slate subordinate to a stratum of gneiss, on the east of Cape Codera.
They ran, therefore, south-west across the mouth of that great bay which stretches from the Peninsula of Paria to Cape Codera, leaving on their right hand Tortuga, and on their left the meadow-islands of the Piritoos, two long green lines but a few inches above the tideless sea.
They are perceived to augment enormously at Nueva Barcelona, and more to the west, on the coast that extends towards Cape Codera.
As Cape Codera, the Silla, the Cerro de Avila between Caracas and La Guayra, and the mountains of Mariara, constitute the most northern and elevated range of the coast chain; so the mountains of Panaquire, Ocumare, Guiripa, and of the Villa de Cura, form the most southern range.
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