The last of my pleasant rides, and one which would have been perhaps the pleasantest of all, had I had (as on other occasions) the company of my host, was to the Cocal, or Coco-palm grove, of the east coast, taking on my way the Savanna of Aripo.

It had been our wish to go up the Orinoco, as far as Ciudad Bolivar (the Angostura of Humboldt's travels), to see the new capital of Southern Venezuela, fast rising into wealth and importance under the wise and pacific policy of its president, Senor Dalla Costa, a man said to possess a genius and an integrity far superior to the average of South American Republicans--of which latter the less said the better; to push back, if possible, across those Llanos which Humboldt describes in his Personal Narrative, vol.iv.p.

295; it may be to visit the Falls of the Caroni.

But that had to be done by others, after we were gone.

My days in the island were growing short; and the most I could do was to see at Aripo a small specimen of that peculiar Savanna vegetation, which occupies thousands of square miles on the mainland.
If, therefore, the reader cares nothing for botanical and geological speculations, he will be wise to skip this chapter.