some eight hundred miles up the Orinoco and Apure; while a second will soon run up the Meta, almost to Santa Fe de Bogota, and bring down the Orinoco the wealth, not only of Southern Venezuela, but of central New Grenada; and then a day may come when the admirable harbour of Chaguaramas may be one of the entrepots of the world; if a certain swamp to windward, which now makes the place pestilential, could but be drained.  The usual method of so doing now is to lay the swamp as dry as possible by open ditches, and then plant it, with coconuts, whose roots have some mysterious power both of drying and purifying the soil; but were Chaguaramas ever needed as an entrepot, it would not be worth while to wait for coconuts to grow.  A dyke across the mouth, and a steam-pump on it, as in the fens of Norfolk and of Guiana, to throw the land-water over into the sea, would probably expel the evil spirit of malaria at once and for ever.

We rowed on past the Boca de Monos, by which we had entered the gulf at first, and looked out eagerly enough for sharks, which are said to swarm at Chaguaramas.  But no warning fin appeared above the ripple; only, more than once, close to the stern of the boat, a heavy fish broke water with a sharp splash and swirl, which was said to be a Barracouta, following us up in mere bold curiosity, but perfectly ready to have attacked any one who fell overboard.  These Barracoutas—­Sphyraenas as the learned, or ‘pike’ as the sailors call them, though they are no kin to our pike at home—­are, when large, nearly as dangerous as a shark.  In some parts of the West Indies folk dare not bathe for fear of them; for they lie close inshore, amid the heaviest surf; and woe to any living thing which they come across.  Moreover, they have this somewhat mean advantage over you, that while, if they eat you, you will agree with them perfectly, you cannot eat them, at least at certain or uncertain seasons of the year, without their disagreeing with you, without sickness, trembling pains in all joints, falling off of nails and hair for years to come, and possible death.  Those who may wish to know more of the poisonous fishes of the West Indies may profitably consult a paper in the Proceedings of the Scientific Association of Trinidad by that admirable naturalist, and—­let me say of him (though I have not the honour of knowing him) what has long been said by all who have that honour—­admirable man, the Hon. Richard Hill of Jamaica.  He mentions some thirteen species which are more or less poisonous, at all events at times:  but on the cause of their unwholesomeness he throws little light; and still less on the extraordinary but undoubted fact that the same species may be poisonous in one island and harmless in another; and that of two species so close as to be often considered as the same, one may be poisonous, the other harmless.  The yellow-billed sprat, {102} for instance, is usually so poisonous