Besides the Caña de Otaheiti and the Caña Criolla, a reddish African variety, called Caña de Guinea, is cultivated in the West Indies: its juice is less in quantity than that of the common Asiatic cane, but is said to be better suited for making rum. In the province of Caraccas the dark shade of the cacao plantations contrasts beautifully with the light green of the Tahitian sugar cane. Few tropical trees have such thick foliage as the Theobroma cacao. It loves hot and humid valleys: great fertility of soil and insalubrity of atmosphere are inseparable from each other in South America as well as in Asia; and it has even been remarked that as increasing cultivation lessens the extent of the forests, and renders the soil and climate less humid, the cacao plantations become less flourishing. For these reasons these plantations are diminishing in number and extent in the province of Caraccas, and increasing rapidly in the more eastern provinces of New Barcelona and Cumana, and particularly in the moist woody district between Cariaco and the Golfo Triste. [2] p. 2.--“_‘Banks’ is the name given by the natives to this phenomenon._” The Llanos of Caraccas are occupied by a great and widely extended formation of conglomerate of an early period. In descending from the vallies of Aragua, and crossing over the most southern ridge of the coast chain of Guigue and Villa de Cura towards Parapara, one finds successively, gneiss and mica slate;--a probably silurian formation of clay slate and black limestone;--serpentine and greenstone in detached spheroidal masses;--and, lastly, close to the margin of the great plain, small hills of augitic amygdaloid and porphyritic slate. These hills between Parapara and Ortiz appear to me like volcanic eruptions on the ancient sea-shore of the Llanos. Farther to the north are the celebrated grotesque-shaped cavernous rocks of Morros de San Juan; they form a kind of rampart, have a crystalline grain like upheaved dolomite, and are rather to be regarded as parts of the shore of the ancient gulf than as islands. I term the Llanos a gulf, for when we consider their small elevation above the present sea level, their form open as it were to the equatorial current sweeping from east to west, and the lowness of the eastern coast between the mouth of the Orinoco and the Essequibo, we can scarcely doubt that the sea once overflowed the whole basin between the coast chain of Caraccas and the Sierra de la Parime, and beat against the mountains of Merida and Pamplona; (as it is supposed to have overflowed the plains of Lombardy, and beat against the Cottian and Pennine Alps). The strike or inclination of the American Llanos is also directed from west to east. Their height at Calabozo, 400 geographical miles from the sea, is barely 30 toises (192 English feet); being 15 toises (96 English feet) less than that of Pavia, and 45 toises (288 English feet) less than that of Milan, in the plains of Lombardy between the Alps and Apennines.