In Porlamar one may arrange for a passage in one of the little sloops or schooners to any of the other islands of the State, and it is as well to be prepared for a drenching if it is necessary to sail against the wind. Porlamar is a _triste_ little town with about 3,500 inhabitants. We had the good (or ill) fortune to be there on the night when this planet passed through the tail of Halley’s comet, which for some time previous had been a magnificent sight in the early morning. The priest had given out that the earth was to be destroyed by the comet at 2 a.m. prompt unless perhaps repentance, signified by devotion to mother-Church, was sufficiently general to avert disaster. As a result all the evening the churches, brilliantly lighted by myriads of candles, were crammed with devotees who professed and doubtless felt penitence for past misdeeds, if thereby they might prevent the threatened destruction or secure safety for themselves. Two o’clock came and passed, but, the night being cloudy, there was no sign of the comet, and the crowd flocked to the club and the _botiquins_ to make up for lost time. It was in vain for the priests to tell them that the comet would come back if they persisted in their evil ways: the churches have remained as empty as they were before the months of the comet. After this digression we may glance at Cubagua, the once famous pearl island, now perhaps on the eve of obtaining a new importance as a source of petroleum. There are springs of mineral oil along the northern shore, a tiny fishing village at the south-west corner, one small patch of cultivation with a single hut near the centre of the island, and a small cattle-ranch at the eastern end, and that is all—not a visible trace on all its barren surface of the once great city of New Cadiz. The eastern end is the most pleasant to-day, supporting more vegetation than the rest, and it is here, I was told, that diligent search and delving will reveal relics of the fifteenth-century settlement. Nothing seems to have been done in the way of archæological exploration, and even the old coat-of-arms graven in stone was picked up by chance on the shore to be lost again (apparently) in Carácas. It was displayed at the Bolivar Centenary Exhibition in 1883, and lay neglected in the patio of the building in 1891.