The town is connected with the port by about half a mile of dusty road across the sand-flats, and alongside runs a tramway, the motive power for which is supplied by mules; projects for utilising steam-engines have been formed but have never materialised, though an efficient service ought to pay. To the east the Gulf of Cariaco stretches away for about fifty miles, with a mean width of six or seven. At the eastern end its waters are covered with wild fowl of all kinds, and the local peasants catch them for their plumage by diving under the birds and drowning them, a feat necessitating a considerable development of fish-like qualities. At the western end of the peninsula of Araya is the site of the old castle of Araya, built at the suggestion of Las Casas for the preservation of peace between the Cubaguans and the Caribs; here, too, are the extensive salinas, and on the south side there are oil-springs, indicating deposits whose value and extent have still to be investigated. The product of the salt-pans is, both in quality and quantity, second only to that of Coche, and amounts to some 6,000 tons in the year. The neighbourhood of Cumaná, along the banks of its river, the Manzanares, is famous for fruits of all kinds, principally pineapples, grapes, and mangoes; the less fertile hills look like cotton country, but none is grown, or very little. The chief exports of Puerto Sucre are coffee, tobacco, sugar, beans, and hides, brought from the interior. This produce is carried on mule-back along the mountain roads of Sucre. The main route from the interior follows the Manzanares for most of its course, but the last few leagues lie over a steep ridge, a shorter but more troublesome route than that along the river, were the latter properly looked after. The upper valley of the Manzanares has some beautiful pieces of scenery as the gorge is followed through the limestone hills; until Cumanacoa is reached, however, fifty miles from Cumaná, there is no cultivation in the valley, and little possibility of it, and the coastal region generally seems only fit for cotton or fibre cultivation. Round Cumanacoa there are fertile hillsides and rich alluvial flats, chiefly devoted to coffee and sugar or beans. When the town was founded by Domingo Arias in 1717, he named it San Baltazar de las Arias, but as in the case of Cumaná, the old Italian name of the district has ousted the later Spanish one. Above Cumanacoa the valley narrows down into a gorge running up into the mountain-mass on the borders of Sucre and Monágas, the watershed forming the boundary between the two States. On the high, open grass-lands there is pasturage for many more sheep and cattle than one sees at present, and the change in climate from the hot, damp valleys is very pleasant, though somewhat sudden.