Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 24, 2025
Before making the land to the southward of Punta Galera, the troops in the O'Higgins as well as the marines, were, in a high sea, removed into the Intrepido and Montezuma, to which I shifted my flag, ordering the O'Higgins to stand off and on out of sight of land, to avoid creating suspicion.
We may observe also, that a pretty considerable river, the Rio Pao, which rises at the entrance of the Llanos, at the foot of the range of hills called La Galera, heretofore mingled its waters with those of the lake, by uniting with the Cano de Cambury, on the road from the town of Nueva Valencia to Guigue. The course of this river was from south to north.
Surely you remember your former trials in Galicia?" "I have not forgotten them, lieber herr, nor the journey to Oviedo, nor 'the seven acorns, nor the fight with death in the barranco. But I must accomplish my destiny. I go now to Galicia, as is becoming a Swiss, at the expense of the government, with coach and mule, I mean in the galera.
They found here, however, the tokens of fishermen who had fled, leaving behind them some of their fishing tackle; and they noticed the prints of the feet of beasts, which they judged might have been goats, and they saw the bones of one, the head of which had no horns, and which, therefore, they thought might have been a monkey, or cat-o-mountain, as they afterwards found it to have been, having found many of these cats in Paria . This same day, being the 1st of August, while sailing between Cape Galera and la Plaga, they discovered the continent about twenty-five leagues distant, but thinking it another island, it was named Isla Santo, or the Holy Island . The coast of Trinidada between those two points was thirty leagues in length from E. to W. without any harbour, but all the country appeared pleasantly covered with trees down to the water side, and had abundance of towns.
The ships approached the island from the east, and then coasted its shore for five leagues beyond the cape named by Columbus La Galera, because of it's imagined resemblance to a galley under sail.
The mass assumes at the surface a yellowish crust like dolerite and basalt. In the midst of this tract of trap-formation, the Morros of San Juan rise like two castles in ruins. They appear linked to the mornes of St. Sebastian, and to La Galera which bounds the Llanos like a rocky wall.
Perhaps that which strikes the modern seaman most in this recital of all the useless matters with which the vessels of the great were burdened at this period is the extraordinary number of flags and banners with which they went to sea. The catalogue of those in the Galera Bastarda makes one rather wonder how there was room for anything else of more practical usefulness when it came to fighting.
The admiral's course, when he was going northwards, had been in the direction of the Carib islands, already well known to him; but with great delight he now turned towards Trinidad, making for a cape which, from the likeness of a little rocky islet near it to a galley in full sail, he named "La Galera."
From Punta de la Galera he sailed to the west and landed at a low cape, which he calls Punta del Arenal; this is our Punta de Icacos. As his ships drew a great deal of water, he found it difficult to enter the bocas chicas, and was obliged to construct flat-bottomed barks.
The cumbrous, oscillating galera, with its shaggy, straggling four-in-hand, the caracoling Gaucho couriers, the negro pricking on behind, the tall grass rolling out on every side, the muddy pool that forms the watering-place for beasts and men scattered over a hundred miles of brookless plain, the great sun streaming up from the herbage just in front, awakening the voices of a million insects and the carols of unnumbered birds in the thickets here and there!
Word Of The Day
Others Looking