water on our right. The road is extremely picturesque, and the waters
roll down on the shelves of rock. We might have fancied we were gazing
on the cascades of the Reuss, that flows down Mount St. Gothard; but
what a contrast in the vigour and richness of the vegetation! The
white trunks of the cecropia rise majestically amid bignonias and
melastomas. They do not disappear till we are within a hundred toises
above the level of the ocean. A small thorny palm-tree extends also to
this limit; the slender pinnate leaves of which look as if they had
been curled toward the edges. This tree is very common in these
mountains; but not having seen either its fruit or its flowers, we are
ignorant whether it be the piritu palm-tree of the Caribbees, or the
Cocos aculeata of Jacquin.

The rock on this road presents a geological phenomenon, the more
remarkable as the existence of real stratified granite has long been
disputed. Between La Trinchera and the Hato de Cambury a
coarse-grained granite appears, which, from the disposition of the
spangles of mica, collected in small groups, scarcely admits of
confounding with gneiss, or with rocks of a schistose texture. This
granite, divided into ledges of two or three feet thick, is directed
52 degrees north-east, and slopes to the north-west regularly at an
angle of from 30 or 40 degrees. The feldspar, crystallized in prisms
with four unequal sides, about an inch long, passes through every
variety of tint from a flesh-red to yellowish white. The mica, united
in hexagonal plates, is black, and sometimes green. The quartz
predominates in the mass; and is generally of a milky white. I
observed neither hornblende, black schorl, nor rutile titanite, in
this granite. In some ledges we recognised round masses, of a blackish
gray, very quartzose, and almost destitute of mica. They are from one
to two inches diameter; and are found in every zone, in all granite