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A number of Columbus' men having landed here in January, 1493. were attacked by Indians and in the ensuing engagement an Indian was wounded. The occurrence induced Columbus to name the Bay Golfo de las Flechas, Gulf of the Arrows.
It contains, as substances accidentally disseminated in the mass, brown iron-ore, spathic iron, even rock-crystal. As subordinate layers it contains numerous strata of carburetted and slaty marl with pyrites; quartzose sandstone, alternating with very thin strata of clayey slate; gypsum with sulphur near Guire in the Golfo Triste on the coast of Paria.
A few land birds, which had been driven to sea by the impetuosity of the wind followed us for several days. The latitude diminished rapidly, from the parallel of Madeira to the tropic. When we reached the zone where the trade-winds are constant, we crossed the ocean from east to west, on a calm sea, which the Spanish sailors call the Ladies' Gulf, el Golfo de las Damas.
In the same year, 1534; Jaques Cartier, a native of Britanny, went with three ships to the land of Corterealis , and the gulf of St Lawrence, otherwise called Golfo Quadrato, or the square gulf, which he fell in with in lat. 48° 30' N. He proceeded northwards to the latitude of 51°, in the hope of being able to penetrate in that direction to China, by a north- west passage, to bring drugs and other merchandize from thence to France.
He ran from Punta Galera, at the north-eastern extremity so named from the likeness of a certain rock to a galley under sail along the east and south of the island; turned eastward at Punta Galeota; and then northward, round Punta Icacque, through the Boca Sierpe, or serpent's mouth, into the Gulf of Paria, which he named 'Golfo de Balena, the Gulf of the Whale, and 'Golfo Triste, the Sad Gulf; and went out by the northern passage of the Boca Drago.
Salt beef, called tasajo, is the most important article of export from Barcelona. Of nine or ten thousand fanegas furnished by the two provinces conjointly, three thousand only are produced by the salt-works of Araya; the rest is extracted from the sea-water at the Morro of Barcelona, at Pozuelos, at Piritu, and in the Golfo Triste.
What made the steep cliff at the south end of Punta Grande, on which a mangrove swamp now abuts? No trade-surf, no current capable of doing that work, has disturbed the dull waters of the 'Golfo Triste, as the Spaniards named the Gulf of Paria, since the land was of anything like its present shape.
We shall not dwell upon the sufferings and misery which tried the expedition in these sparsely-peopled countries, until it arrived at San Gil de Buena-Vista, upon the Golfo Dolce, where Cortès, after receiving the news of the execution of Olid and the re-establishment of the central authority, embarked upon his return to Mexico.
The soil is so fertile in the Golfo Triste, that maize yields two harvests in the year, and produces three hundred and eighty fold the quantity sown. Early in the morning we embarked in a sort of narrow canoe, called a lancha, in hopes of crossing the gulf of Cariaco during the day. The motion of the waters resembles that of our great lakes, when they are agitated by the winds.
"It must have been terribly dark!" "It was the worst darkness of the Golfo," the Capataz assented, briefly. He was mollified by what seemed a sign of some faint interest in such things as had befallen him, and dropped a few descriptive phrases with an affected and curt nonchalance. At that moment he felt communicative.
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