Valencia affords some historical remembrances; but these, like

everything connected with the colonies, have no remote date, and

recall to mind either civil discords or sanguinary conflicts with the

savages. Lopez de Aguirre, whose crimes and adventures form some of

the most dramatic episodes of the history of the conquest, proceeded

in 1561, from Peru, by the river Amazon to the island of Margareta;

and thence, by the port of Burburata, into the valleys of Aragua. On

his entrance into Valencia, which proudly entitles itself the City of

the King, he proclaimed the independence of country, and the

deposition of Philip II. The inhabitants withdrew to the islands of

the lake of Tacarigua, taking with them all the boats from the shore,

to be more secure in their retreat. In consequence of this stratagem,

Aguirre could exercise his cruelties only on his own people. From

Valencia he addressed to the king of Spain, a remarkable letter, in

which he boasts alternately of his crimes and his piety; at the same

time giving advice to the king on the government of the colonies, and

the system of missions. Surrounded by savage Indians, navigating on a

great sea of fresh water, as he calls the Amazon, he is alarmed at the

heresies of Martin Luther, and the increasing influence of schismatics

in Europe.*

(* The following are some remarkable passages in the letter from

Aguirre to the king of Spain.

"King Philip, native of Spain, son of Charles the Invincible! I, Lopez

de Aguirre, thy vassal, an old Christian, of poor but noble parents,

and a native of the town of Onate in Biscay, passed over young to

Peru, to labour lance in hand. I rendered thee great services in the

conquest of India. I fought for thy glory, without demanding pay of

thy officers, as is proved by the books of thy treasury. I firmly

believe, Christian King and Lord, that, very ungrateful to me and my

companions, all those who write to thee from this land [America],

deceive thee much, because thou seest things from too far off. I

recommend to thee to be more just toward the good vassals whom thou

hast in this country: for I and mine, weary of the cruelties and

injustice which thy viceroys, thy governors, and thy judges, exercise

in thy name, are resolved to obey thee no more. We regard ourselves no

longer as Spaniards. We wage a cruel war against thee, because we will

not endure the oppression of thy ministers; who, to give places to

their nephews and their children, dispose of our lives, our

reputation, and our fortune. I am lame in the left foot from two shots

of an arquebuss, which I received in the valley of Coquimbo, fighting

under the orders of thy marshal, Alonzo de Alvarado, against Francis

Hernandez Giron, then a rebel, as I am at present, and shall be

always; for since thy viceroy, the Marquis de Canete, a cowardly,

ambitious, and effeminate man, has hanged our most valiant warriors, I

care no more for thy pardon than for the books of Martin Luther. It is

not well in thee, King of Spain, to be ungrateful toward thy vassals;

for it was whilst thy father, the emperor Charles, remained quietly in

Castile, that they procured for thee so many kingdoms and vast

countries. Remember, King Philip, that thou hast no right to draw

revenues from these provinces, the conquest of which has been without

danger to thee, but inasmuch as thou recompensest those who have

rendered thee such great services. I am certain that few kings go to

heaven. Therefore we regard ourselves as very happy to be here in the

Indies, preserving in all their purity the commandments of God, and of

the Roman Church; and we intend, though sinners during life, to become

one day martyrs to the glory of God. On going out of the river Amazon,

we landed in an island called La Margareta. We there received news

from Spain of the great faction and machination (maquina) of the

Lutherans. This news alarmed us extremely; we found among us one of

that faction; his name was Monteverde. I had him cut to pieces, as was

just: for, believe me, Senor, wherever I am, people live according to

the law. But the corruption of morals among the monks is so great in

this land that it is necessary to chastise it severely. There is not

an ecclesiastic here who does not think himself higher than the

governor of a province. I beg of thee, great King, not to believe what

the monks tell thee down yonder in Spain. They are always talking of

the sacrifices they make, as well as of the hard and bitter life they

are forced to lead in America: while they occupy the richest lands,

and the Indians hunt and fish for them every day. If they shed tears

before thy throne, it is that thou mayest send them hither to govern

provinces. Dost thou know what sort of life they lead here? Given up

to luxury, acquiring possessions, selling the sacraments, being at

once ambitious, violent, and gluttonous; such is the life they lead in

America. The faith of the Indians suffer by such bad examples. If thou

dost not change all this, O King of Spain, thy government will not be

stable.

"What a misfortune that the Emperor, thy father, should have conquered

Germany at such a price, and spent, on that conquest, the money we

procured for him in these very Indies! In the year 1559 the Marquis de

Canete sent to the Amazon, Pedro de Ursua, a Navarrese, or rather a

Frenchman: we sailed on the largest rivers of Peru till we came to a

gulf of fresh water. We had already gone three hundred leagues when we

killed that bad and ambitious captain. We chose a caballero of

Seville, Fernando de Guzman, for king: and we swore fealty to him, as

is done to thyself. I was named quarter-master-general: and because I

did not consent to all he willed, he wanted to kill me. But I killed

this new king, the captain of his guards, his lieutenant-general, his

chaplain, a woman, a knight of the order of Rhodes, two ensigns, and

five or six domestics of the pretended king. I then resolved to punish

thy ministers and thy auditors (counsellors of the audiencia). I named

captains and sergeants: these again wanted to kill me, but I had them

all hanged. In the midst of these adventures we navigated for eleven

months, till we reached the mouth of the river. We sailed more than

fifteen hundred leagues. God knows how we got through that great mass

of water. I advise thee, O great King, never to send Spanish fleets

into that accursed river. God preserve thee in his holy keeping."

This letter was given by Aguirre to the vicar of the island of

Margareta, Pedro de Contreras, in order to be transmitted to King

Philip II. Fray Pedro Simon, Provincial of the Franciscans in New

Grenada, saw several manuscript copies of it both in America and in

Spain. It was printed, for the first time, in 1723, in the History of

the Province of Venezuela, by Oviedo, volume 1 page 206. Complaints no

less violent, on the conduct of the monks of the 16th century, were

addressed directly to the pope by the Milanese traveller, Girolamo

Benzoni.)

Lopez de Aguirre, or as he is still called by the common people, the

Tyrant, was killed at Barquesimeto, after having been abandoned by his

own men. At the moment when he fell, he plunged a dagger into the

bosom of his only daughter, "that she might not have to blush before

the Spaniards at the name of the daughter of a traitor." The soul of

the tyrant (such is the belief of the natives) wanders in the

savannahs, like a flame that flies the approach of men.* (* See volume

1 chapter 1.4.)

The second historical event connected with the name of Valencia is the

great incursion made by the Caribs of the Orinoco in 1578 and 1580.

That cannibal horde went up the banks of the Guarico, crossing the

plains or llanos. They were happily repulsed by the valour of Garcia

Gonzales, one of the captains whose names are still most revered in

those provinces. It is gratifying to recollect, that the descendants

of those very Caribs now live in the missions as peaceable husbandmen,

and that no savage nation of Guiana dares to cross the plains which

separate the region of the forests from that of cultivated land. The

Cordillera of the coast is intersected by several ravines, very

uniformly directed from south-east to north-west. This phenomenon is

general from the Quebrada of Tocume, between Petares and Caracas, as

far as Porto Cabello. It would seem as if the impulsion had everywhere

come from the south-east; and this fact is the more striking, as the

strata of gneiss and mica-slate in the Cordillera of the coast are

generally directed from the south-west to the north-east. Most of

these ravines penetrate into the mountains at their southern

declivity, without crossing them entirely. But there is an opening

(abra) on the meridian of Nueva Valencia, which leads towards the

coast, and by which a cooling sea-breeze penetrates every evening into

the valleys of Aragua. This breeze rises regularly two or three hours

after sunset.

By this abra, the farm of Barbula, and an eastern branch of the

ravine, a new road is being constructed from Valencia to Porto

Cabello. It will be so short, that it will require only four hours to

reach the port; and the traveller will be able to go and return in the

same day from the coast to the valleys of Aragua. In order to examine

this road, we set out on the 26th of February in the evening for the

farm of Barbula.

On the morning of the 27th we visited the hot springs of La Trinchera,

three leagues from Valencia. The ravine is very large, and the descent

almost continual from the banks of the lake to the sea-coast. La

Trinchera takes its name from some fortifications of earth, thrown up

in 1677 by the French buccaneers, who sacked the town of Valencia. The

hot springs (and this is a remarkable geological fact,) do not issue

on the south side of the mountains, like those of Mariara, Onoto, and

the Brigantine; but they issue from the chain itself almost at its

northern declivity. They are much more abundant than any we had till

then seen, forming a rivulet which, in times of the greatest drought,

is two feet deep and eighteen wide. The temperature of the water,

measured with great care, was 90.3 degrees of the centigrade

thermometer. Next to the springs of Urijino, in Japan, which are

asserted to be pure water at 100 degrees of temperature, the waters of

the Trinchera of Porto Cabello appear to be the hottest in the world.

We breakfasted near the spring; eggs plunged into the water were

boiled in less than four minutes. These waters, strongly charged with

sulphuretted hydrogen, gush out from the back of a hill rising one

hundred and fifty feet above the bottom of the ravine, and tending

from south-south-east to north-north-west. The rock from which the

springs gush, is a real coarse-grained granite, resembling that of the

Rincon del Diablo, in the mountains of Mariara. Wherever the waters

evaporate in the air, they form sediments and incrustations of

carbonate of lime; possibly they traverse strata of primitive

limestone, so common in the mica-slate and gneiss of the coasts of

Caracas. We were surprised at the luxuriant vegetation that surrounds

the basin; mimosas with slender pinnate leaves, clusias, and

fig-trees, have pushed their roots into the bottom of a pool, the

temperature of which is 85 degrees; and the branches of these trees

extended over the surface of the water, at two or three inches

distance. The foliage of the mimosas, though constantly enveloped in

the hot vapours, displayed the most beautiful verdure. An arum, with a

woody stem, and with large sagittate leaves, rose in the very middle

of a pool the temperature of which was 70 degrees. Plants of the same

species vegetate in other parts of those mountains at the brink of

torrents, the temperature of which is not 18 degrees. What is still

more singular, forty feet distant from the point whence the springs

gush out at a temperature of 90 degrees, other springs are found

perfectly cold. They all follow for some time a parallel direction;

and the natives showed us that, by digging a hole between the two

rivulets, they could procure a bath of any given temperature they

pleased. It seems remarkable, that in the hottest as well as the

coldest climates, people display the same predilection for heat. On

the introduction of Christianity into Iceland, the inhabitants would

be baptized only in the hot springs of Hecla: and in the torrid zone,

in the plains, as well as on the Cordilleras, the natives flock from

all parts to the thermal waters. The sick, who come to La Trinchera to

use vapour-baths, form a sort of frame-work over the spring with

branches of trees and very slender reeds. They stretch themselves

naked on this frame, which appeared to me to possess little strength,

and to be dangerous of access. The Rio de Aguas Calientes runs towards

the north-east, and becomes, near the coast, a considerable river,

swarming with great crocodiles, and contributing, by its inundations,

to the insalubrity of the shore.

We descended towards Porto Cabello, having constantly the river of hot

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

mountains. These are not imbedded fragments, as at Greiffenstein in

Saxony, but aggregations of particles which seem to have been

subjected to partial attractions. I could not follow the line of

junction of the gneiss and granitic formations. According to angles

taken in the valleys of Aragua, the gneiss appears to descend below

the granite, which must consequently be of a more recent formation.

The appearance of a stratified granite excited my attention the more,

because, having had the direction of the mines of Fichtelberg in

Franconia for several years, I was accustomed to see granites divided

into ledges of three or four feet thick, but little inclined, and

forming masses like towers, or old ruins, at the summit of the highest

mountains.* (* At Ochsenkopf, at Rudolphstein, at Epprechtstein, at

Luxburg, and at Schneeberg. The dip of the strata of these granites of

Fichtelberg is generally only from 6 to 10 degrees, rarely (at

Schneeberg) 18 degrees. According to the dips I observed in the

neighbouring strata of gneiss and mica-slate, I should think that the

granite of Fichtelberg is very ancient, and serves as a basis for

other formations; but the strata of grunstein, and the disseminated

tin-ore which it contains, may lead us to doubt its great antiquity,

from the analogy of the granites of Saxony containing tin.)

The heat became stifling as we approached the coast. A reddish vapour

veiled the horizon. It was near sunset, and the breeze was not yet

stirring. We rested in the lonely farms known under the names of the

Hato de Cambury and the house of the Canarian (Casa del Isleno). The

river of hot water, along the banks of which we passed, became deeper.

A crocodile, more than nine feet long, lay dead on the strand. We

wished to examine its teeth, and the inside of its mouth; but having

been exposed to the sun for several weeks, it exhaled a smell so fetid

that we were obliged to relinquish our design and remount our horses.

When we arrived at the level of the sea, the road turned eastward, and

crossed a barren shore a league and a half broad, resembling that of

Cumana. We there found some scattered cactuses, a sesuvium, a few

plants of Coccoloba uvifera, and along the coast some avicennias and

mangroves. We forded the Guayguaza and the Rio Estevan, which, by

their frequent overflowing, form great pools of stagnant water. Small

rocks of meandrites, madrepores, and other corals, either ramified or

with a rounded surface, rise in this vast plain, and seem to attest

the recent retreat of the sea. But these masses, which are the

habitations of polypi, are only fragments imbedded in a breccia with a

calcareous cement. I say a breccia, because we must not confound the

fresh and white corallites of this very recent littoral formation,

with the corallites blended in the mass of transition-rocks,

grauwacke, and black limestone. We were astonished to find in this

uninhabited spot a large Parkinsonia aculeata loaded with flowers. Our

botanical works indicate this tree as peculiar to the New World; but

during five years we saw it only twice in a wild state, once in the

plains of the Rio Guayguaza, and once in the llanos of Cumana, thirty

leagues from the coast, near la Villa del Pao, but there was reason to

believe that this latter place had once been a conuco, or cultivated

enclosure. Everywhere else on the continent of America we saw the

Parkinsonia, like the Plumeria, only in the gardens of the Indians.

At Porto Cabello, as at La Guayra, it is disputed whether the port

lies east or west of the town, with which the communications are the

most frequent. The inhabitants believe that Porto Cabello is

north-north-west of Nueva Valencia; and my observations give a

longitude of three or four minutes more towards the west.

We were received with the utmost kindness in the house of a French

physician, M. Juliac, who had studied medicine at Montpelier. His

small house contained a collection of things the most various, but

which were all calculated to interest travellers. We found works of

literature and natural history; notes on meteorology; skins of the

jaguar and of large aquatic serpents; live animals, monkeys,

armadilloes, and birds. Our host was principal surgeon to the royal

hospital of Porto Cabello, and was celebrated in the country for his

skilful treatment of the yellow fever. During a period of seven years

he had seen six or eight thousand persons enter the hospitals,

attacked by this cruel malady. He had observed the ravages that the

epidemic caused in Admiral Ariztizabal's fleet, in 1793. That fleet

lost nearly a third of its men; for the sailors were almost all

unseasoned Europeans, and held unrestrained intercourse with the

shore. M. Juliac had heretofore treated the sick as was commonly

practised in Terra Firma, and in the island, by bleeding, aperient

medicines, and acid drinks. In this treatment no attempt was made to

raise the vital powers by the action of stimulants, so that, in

attempting to allay the fever, the languor and debility were

augmented. In the hospitals, where the sick were crowded, the

mortality was often thirty-three per cent among the white Creoles; and

sixty-five in a hundred among the Europeans recently disembarked.

Since a stimulant treatment, the use of opium, of benzoin, and of

alcoholic draughts, has been substituted for the old debilitating

method, the mortality has considerably diminished. It was believed to

be reduced to twenty in a hundred among Europeans, and ten among

Creoles;* even when black vomiting, and haemorrhage from the nose,

ears, and gums, indicated a high degree of exacerbation in the malady.

(* I have treated in another work of the proportions of mortality in

the yellow fever. (Nouvelle Espagne volume 2 pages 777, 785, and 867.)

At Cadiz the average mortality was, in 1800, twenty per cent; at

Seville, in 1801, it amounted to sixty per cent. At Vera Cruz the

mortality does not exceed twelve or fifteen per cent, when the sick

can be properly attended. In the civil hospitals of Paris the number

of deaths, one year with another, is from fourteen to eighteen per

cent; but it is asserted that a great number of patients enter the

hospitals almost dying, or at very advanced time of life.) I relate

faithfully what was then given as the general result of observation:

but I think, in these numerical comparisons, it must not be forgotten,

that, notwithstanding appearances, the epidemics of several successive

years do not resemble each other; and that, in order to decide on the

use of fortifying or debilitating remedies, (if indeed this difference

exist in an absolute sense,) we must distinguish between the various

periods of the malady.

The climate of Porto Cabello is less ardent than that of La Guayra.

The breeze there is stronger, more frequent, and more regular. The

houses do not lean against rocks that absorb the rays of the sun

during the day, and emit caloric at night, and the air can circulate

more freely between the coast and the mountains of Ilaria. The causes

of the insalubrity of the atmosphere must be sought in the shores that

extend to the east, as far as the eye can reach, towards the Punta de

Tucasos, near the fine port of Chichiribiche. There are situated the

salt-works; and there, at the beginning of the rainy season, tertian

fevers prevail, and easily degenerate into asthenic fevers. It is

affirmed that the mestizoes who are employed in the salt-works are

more tawny, and have a yellower skin, when they have suffered several

successive years from those fevers, which are called the malady of the

coast. The poor fishermen, who dwell on this shore, are of opinion

that it is not the inundations of the sea, and the retreat of the

salt-water, which render the lands covered with mangroves so

unhealthful;* (* In the West India Islands all the dreadful maladies

which prevail during the wintry season, have been for a long time

attributed to the south winds. These winds convey the emanations of

the mouths of the Orinoco and of the small rivers of Terra Firma

toward the high latitudes.) they believe that the insalubrity of the

air is owing to the fresh water, that is, to the overflowings of the

Guayguaza and Estevan, the swell of which is so great and sudden in

the months of October and November. The banks of the Rio Estevan have

been less insalubrious since little plantations of maize and plantains

have been established; and, by raising and hardening the ground, the

river has been confined within narrower limits. A plan is formed of

giving another issue to the Rio San Estevan, and thus to render the

environs of Porto Cabello more wholesome. A canal is to lead the

waters toward that part of the coast which is opposite the island of

Guayguaza.

The salt-works of Porto Cabello somewhat resemble those of the

peninsula of Araya, near Cumana. The earth, however, which they

lixivate by collecting the rain-water into small basins, contains less

salt. It is questioned here, as at Cumana, whether the ground be

impregnated with saline particles because it has been for ages covered

at intervals with sea-water evaporated by the heat of the sun, or

whether the soil be muriatiferous, as in a mine very poor in native

salt. I had not leisure to examine this plain with the same attention

as the peninsula of Araya. Besides, does not this problem reduce

itself to the simple question, whether the salt be owing to new or

very ancient inundations? The labouring at the salt-works of Porto

Cabello being extremely unhealthy, the poorest men alone engage in it.

They collect the salt in little stores, and afterwards sell it to the

shopkeepers in the town.

During our abode at Porto Cabello, the current on the coast, generally

directed towards the west,* ran from west to east. This upward current

(corriente por arriba), is very frequent during two or three months of

the year, from September to November. It is believed to be owing to

some north-west winds that have blown between Jamaica and Cape St.

Antony in the island of Cuba. (* The wrecks of the Spanish ships,

burnt at the island of Trinidad, at the time of its occupation by the

English in 1797, were carried by the general or rotary current to

Punta Brava, near Porto Cabello. This general current toward the east,

from the coasts of Paria to the isthmus of Panama and the western

extremity of the island of Cuba, was the subject of a violent dispute

between Don Diego Columbus, Oviedo, and the pilot Andres, in the

sixteenth century.)

The military defence of the coasts of Terra Firma rests on six points:

the castle of San Antonio at Cumana; the Morro of Nueva Barcelona; the

fortifications of La Guayra, (mounting one hundred and thirty-four

guns); Porto Cabello; fort San Carlos, (at the mouth of the lake of

Maracaybo); and Carthagena. Porto Cabello is, next to Carthagena, the

most important fortified place. The town of Porto Cabello is quite

modern, and the port is one of the finest in the world. Art has had

scarcely anything to add to the advantages which the nature of the

spot presents. A neck of land stretches first towards the north, and

then towards the west. Its western extremity is opposite to a range of

islands connected by bridges, and so close together that they might be

taken for another neck of land. These islands are all composed of a

calcareous breccia of extremely recent formation, and analagous to

that on the coast of Cumana, and near the castle of Araya. It is a

conglomerate, containing fragments of madrepores and other corals

cemented by a limestone basis and grains of sand. We had already seen

this conglomerate near the Rio Guayguaza. By a singular disposition of

the ground the port resembles a basin or a little inland lake, the

southern extremity of which is filled with little islands covered with

mangroves. The opening of the port towards the west contributes much

to the smoothness of the water.* (* It is disputed at Porto Cabello

whether the port takes its name from the tranquillity of its waters,

"which would not move a hair (cabello)," or (which is more probable)

derived from Antonio Cabello, one of the fishermen with whom the

smugglers of Curacoa had formed a connexion at the period when the

first hamlet was constructed on this half-desert coast.) One vessel

only can enter at a time; but the largest ships of the line can anchor

very near land to take in water. There is no other danger in entering

the harbour than the reefs of Punta Brava, opposite which a battery of

eight guns has been erected. Towards the west and south-west we see

the fort, which is a regular pentagon with five bastions, the battery

of the reef, and the fortifications that surround the ancient town,

founded on an island of a trapezoidal form. A bridge and the fortified

gate of the Staccado join the old to the new town; the latter is

already larger than the former, though considered only as its suburb.

The bottom of the basin or lake which forms the harbour of Porto

Cabello, turns behind this suburb to the south-west. It is a marshy

ground filled with noisome and stagnant water. The town, which has at

present nearly nine thousand inhabitants, owes its origin to an

illicit commerce, attracted to these shores by the proximity of the

town of Burburata, which was founded in 1549. It is only since the

administration of the Biscayans, and of the company of Guipuzcoa, that

Porto Cabello, which was but a hamlet, has been converted into a

well-fortified town. The vessels of La Guayra, which is less a port

than a bad open roadstead, come to Porto Cabello to be caulked and

repaired.

The real defence of the harbour consists in the low batteries on the

neck of land at Punta Brava, and on the reef; but from ignorance of

this principle, a new fort, the Mirador of Solano* has been

constructed at a great expense, on the mountains commanding the suburb

towards the south. (* The Mirador is situate eastward of the Vigia

Alta, and south-east of the battery of the salt-works and the

powder-mill.) More than ten thousand mules are annually exported from

Porto Cabello. It is curious enough to see these animals embarked;

they are thrown down with ropes, and then hoisted on board the vessels

by means of a machine resembling a crane. Ranged in two files, the

mules with difficulty keep their footing during the rolling and

pitching of the ship; and in order to frighten and render them more

docile, a drum is beaten during a great part of the day and night. We

may guess what quiet a passenger enjoys, who has the courage to embark

for Jamaica in a schooner laden with mules.

We left Porto Cabello on the first of March, at sunrise. We saw with

surprise the great number of boats that were laden with fruit to be

sold at the market. It reminded me of a fine morning at Venice. The

town presents in general, on the side towards the sea, a cheerful and

agreeable aspect. Mountains covered with vegetation, and crowned with

peaks called Las Tetas de Ilaria, which, from their outline would be

taken for rocks of a trap-formation, form the background of the

landscape. Near the coast all is bare, white, and strongly illumined,

while the screen of mountains is clothed with trees of thick foliage

that project their vast shadows upon the brown and rocky ground. On

going out of the town we visited an aqueduct that had been just

finished. It is five thousand varas long, and conveys the waters of

the Rio Estevan by a trench to the town. This work has cost more than

thirty thousand piastres; but its waters gush out in every street.

We returned from Porto Cabello to the valleys of Aragua, and stopped

at the Farm of Barbula, near which, a new road to Valencia is in the

course of construction. We had heard, several weeks before, of a tree,

the sap of which is a nourishing milk. It is called the cow-tree; and

we were assured that the negroes of the farm, who drink plentifully of

this vegetable milk, consider it a wholesome aliment. All the milky

juices of plants being acrid, bitter, and more or less poisonous, this

account appeared to us very extraordinary; but we found by experience

during our stay at Barbula, that the virtues of this tree had not been

exaggerated. This fine tree rises like the broad-leaved star-apple.*

(* Chrysophyllum cainito.) Its oblong and pointed leaves, rough and

alternate, are marked by lateral ribs, prominent at the lower surface,

and parallel. Some of them are ten inches long. We did not see the

flower: the fruit is somewhat fleshy, and contains one and sometimes

two nuts. When incisions are made in the trunk of this tree, it yields

abundance of a glutinous milk, tolerably thick, devoid of all

acridity, and of an agreeable and balmy smell. It was offered to us in

the shell of a calabash. We drank considerable quantities of it in the

evening before we went to bed, and very early in the morning, without

feeling the least injurious effect. The viscosity of this milk alone

renders it a little disagreeable. The negroes and the free people who

work in the plantations drink it, dipping into it their bread of maize

or cassava. The overseer of the farm told us that the negroes grow

sensibly fatter during the season when the palo de vaca furnishes them

with most milk. This juice, exposed to the air, presents at its

surface (perhaps in consequence of the absorption of the atmospheric

oxygen) membranes of a strongly animalized substance, yellowish,

stringy, and resembling cheese. These membranes, separated from the

rest of the more aqueous liquid, are elastic, almost like caoutchouc;

but they undergo, in time, the same phenomena of putrefaction as

gelatine. The people call the coagulum that separates by the contact

of the air, cheese. This coagulum grows sour in the space of five or

six days, as I observed in the small portions which I carried to Nueva

Valencia. The milk contained in a stopped phial, had deposited a

little coagulum; and, far from becoming fetid, it exhaled constantly a

balsamic odour. The fresh juice mixed with cold water was scarcely

coagulated at all; but on the contact of nitric acid the separation of

the viscous membranes took place. We sent two bottles of this milk to

M. Fourcroy at Paris: in one it was in its natural state, and in the

other, mixed with a certain quantity of carbonate of soda. The French

consul residing in the island of St. Thomas, undertook to convey them

to him.

The extraordinary tree of which we have been speaking appears to be

peculiar to the Cordillera of the coast, particularly from Barbula to

the lake of Maracaybo. Some stocks of it exist near the village of San

Mateo; and, according to M. Bredemeyer, whose travels have so much

enriched the fine conservatories of Schonbrunn and Vienna, in the

valley of Caucagua, three days journey east of Caracas. This

naturalist found, like us, that the vegetable milk of the palo de vaco

had an agreeable taste and an aromatic smell. At Caucagua, the natives

call the tree that furnishes this nourishing juice, the milk-tree

(arbol del leche). They profess to recognize, from the thickness and

colour of the foliage, the trunks that yield the most juice; as the

herdsman distinguishes, from external signs, a good milch-cow. No

botanist has hitherto known the existence of this plant. It seems,

according to M. Kunth, to belong to the sapota family. Long after my

return to Europe, I found in the Description of the East Indies by

Laet, a Dutch traveller, a passage that seems to have some relation to

the cow-tree. "There exist trees," says Laet,* "in the province of

Cumana, the sap of which much resembles curdled milk, and affords a

salubrious nourishment." (* "Inter arbores quae sponte hic passim

nascuntur, memorantur a scriptoribus Hispanis quaedam quae lacteum

quemdam liquorem fundunt, qui durus admodum evadit instar gummi, et

suavem odorem de se fundit; aliae quae liquorem quemdam edunt, instar

lactis coagulati, qui in cibis ab ipsis usurpatur sine noxa." (Among

the trees growing here, it is remarked by Spanish writers that there

are some which pour out a milky juice which soon grows solid, like

gum, affording a pleasant odour; and also others that give out a

liquid which coagulates like cheese, and which they eat at meals

without any ill effects). Descriptio Indiarum Occidentalium, lib. 18.)

Amidst the great number of curious phenomena which I have observed in

the course of my travels, I confess there are few that have made so

powerful an impression on me as the aspect of the cow-tree. Whatever

relates to milk or to corn, inspires an interest which is not merely

that of the physical knowledge of things, but is connected with

another order of ideas and sentiments. We can scarcely conceive how

the human race could exist without farinaceous substances, and without

that nourishing juice which the breast of the mother contains, and

which is appropriated to the long feebleness of the infant. The

amylaceous matter of corn, the object of religious veneration among so

many nations, ancient and modern, is diffused in the seeds, and

deposited in the roots of vegetables; milk, which serves as an

aliment, appears to us exclusively the produce of animal organization.

Such are the impressions we have received in our earliest infancy:

such is also the source of that astonishment created by the aspect of

the tree just described. It is not here the solemn shades of forests,

the majestic course of rivers, the mountains wrapped in eternal snow,

that excite our emotion. A few drops of vegetable juice recall to our

minds all the powerfulness and the fecundity of nature. On the barren

flank of a rock grows a tree with coriaceous and dry leaves. Its large

woody roots can scarcely penetrate into the stone. For several months

of the year not a single shower moistens its foliage. Its branches

appear dead and dried; but when the trunk is pierced there flows from

it a sweet and nourishing milk. It is at the rising of the sun that

this vegetable fountain is most abundant. The negroes and natives are

then seen hastening from all quarters, furnished with large bowls to

receive the milk, which grows yellow, and thickens at its surface.

Some empty their bowls under the tree itself; others carry the juice

home to their children.

In examining the physical properties of animal and vegetable products,

science displays them as closely linked together; but it strips them

of what is marvellous, and perhaps, therefore, of a part of their

charms. Nothing appears isolated; the chemical principles that were

believed to be peculiar to animals are found in plants; a common chain

links together all organic nature.

Long before chemists had recognized small portions of wax in the

pollen of flowers, the varnish of leaves, and the whitish dust of our

plums and grapes, the inhabitants of the Andes of Quindiu made tapers

with the thick layer of wax that covers the trunk of a palm-tree.* (*

Coroxylon andicola.) It is but a few years since we discovered, in

Europe, caseum, the basis of cheese, in the emulsion of almonds; yet

for ages past, in the mountains of the coast of Venezuela, the milk of

a tree, and the cheese separated from that vegetable milk, have been

considered as a salutary aliment. How are we to account for this

singular course in the development of knowledge? How have the

unlearned inhabitants of one hemisphere become cognizant of a fact

which, in the other, so long escaped the sagacity of the scientific?

It is because a small number of elements and principles differently

combined are spread through several families of plants; it is because

the genera and species of these natural families are not equally

distributed in the torrid, the frigid, and the temperate zones; it is

that tribes, excited by want, and deriving almost all their

subsistence from the vegetable kingdom, discover nutritive principles,

farinaceous and alimentary substances, wherever nature has deposited

them in the sap, the bark, the roots, or the fruits of vegetables.

That amylaceous fecula which the seeds of the cereal plants furnish in

all its purity, is found united with an acrid and sometimes even

poisonous juice, in the roots of the arums, the Tacca pinnatifida, and

the Jatropha manihot. The savage of America, like the savage of the

South Sea islands, has learned to dulcify the fecula, by pressing and

separating it from its juice. In the milk of plants, and in the milky

emulsions, matter extremely nourishing, albumen, caseum, and sugar,

are found mixed with caoutchouc and with deleterious and caustic

principles, such as morphine and hydrocyanic acid.* (* Opium contains

morphine, caoutchouc, etc.) These mixtures vary not only in the

different families, but also in the species which belong to the same

genus. Sometimes it is morphine or the narcotic principle, that

characterises the vegetable milk, as in some papaverous plants;

sometimes it is caoutchouc, as in the hevea and the castilloa;

sometimes albumen and caseum, as in the cow-tree.

The lactescent plants belong chiefly to the three families of the

euphorbiaceae, the urticeae, and the apocineae.* (* After these three

great families follow the papaveraceae, the chicoraceae, the

lobeliaceae, the campanulaceae, the sapoteae, and the cucurbitaceae.

The hydrocyanic acid is peculiar to the group of rosaceo-amygdalaceae.

In the monocotyledonous plants there is no milky juice; but the

perisperm of the palms, which yields such sweet and agreeable milky

emulsions, contains, no doubt, caseum. Of what nature is the milk of

mushrooms?) Since, on examining the distribution of vegetable forms

over the globe, we find that those three families are more numerous in

species in the low regions of the tropics, we must thence conclude,

that a very elevated temperature contributes to the elaboration of the

milky juices, to the formation of caoutchouc, albumen, and caseous

matter. The sap of the palo de vaca furnishes unquestionably the most

striking example of a vegetable milk in which the acrid and

deleterious principle is not united with albumen, caseum, and

caoutchouc: the genera euphorbia and asclepias, however, though

generally known for their caustic properties, already present us with

a few species, the juice of which is sweet and harmless. Such are the

Tabayba dulce of the Canary Islands, which we have already mentioned,*

(* Euphorbia balsamifera. The milky juice of the Cactus mamillaris is

equally sweet.) and the Asclepias lactifera of Ceylon. Burman relates

that, in the latter country, when cow's milk is wanting, the milk of

this asclepias is used; and that the ailments commonly prepared with

animal milk are boiled with its leaves. It may be possible, as

Decandolle has well observed, that the natives employ only the juice

that flows from the young plant, at a period when the acrid principle

is not yet developed. In fact, the first shoots of the apocyneous

plants are eaten in several countries.

I have endeavoured by these comparisons to bring into consideration,

under a more general point of view, the milky juices that circulate in

vegetables; and the milky emulsions that the fruits of the

amygdalaceous plants and palms yield. I may be permitted to add the

result of some experiments which I attempted to make on the juice of

the Carica papaya during my stay in the valleys of Aragua, though I

was then almost destitute of chemical tests. The juice has been since

examined by Vauquelin, and this celebrated chemist has very clearly

recognized the albumen and caseous matter; he compares the milky sap

to a substance strongly animalized--to the blood of animals; but his

researches were confined to a fermented juice and a coagulum of a

fetid smell, formed during the passage from the Mauritius to France.

He has expressed a wish that some traveller would examine the milk of

the papaw-tree just as it flows from the stem or the fruit.

The younger the fruit of the carica, the more milk it yields: it is

even found in the germen scarcely fecundated. In proportion as the

fruit ripens, the milk becomes less abundant, and more aqueous. Less

of that animal matter which is coagulable by acids and by the

absorption of atmospheric oxygen, is found in it. As the whole fruit

is viscous,* (* The same viscosity is also remarked in the fresh milk

of the palo de vaca. It is no doubt occasioned by the caoutchouc,

which is not yet separated, and which forms one mass with the albumen

and the caseum, as the butter and the caseum in animal milk. The juice

of a euphorbiaceous plant (Sapium aucuparium), which also yields

caoutchouc, is so glutinous that it is used to catch parrots.) it

might be supposed that, as it grows larger, the coagulable matter is

deposed in the organs, and forms a part of the pulp, or the fleshy

substance. When nitric acid, diluted with four parts of water, is

added drop by drop to the milk expressed from a very young fruit, a

very extraordinary phenomenon appears. At the centre of each drop a

gelatinous pellicle is formed, divided by greyish streaks. These

streaks are simply the juice rendered more aqueous, owing to the

contact of the acid having deprived it of the albumen. At the same

time, the centre of the pellicles becomes opaque, and of the colour of

the yolk of an egg; they enlarge as if by the prolongation of

divergent fibres. The whole liquid assumes at first the appearance of

an agate with milky clouds; and it seems as if organic membranes were

forming under the eye of the observer. When the coagulum extends to

the whole mass, the yellow spots again disappear. By agitation it

becomes granulous like soft cheese.* (* The substance which falls down

in grumous and filamentous clots is not pure caoutchouc, but perhaps a

mixture of this substance with caseum and albumen. Acids precipitate

the caoutchouc from the milky juice of the euphorbiums, fig-trees, and

hevea; they precipitate the caseum from the milk of animals. A white

coagulum was formed in phials closely stopped, containing the milk of

the hevea, and preserved among our collections, during our journey to

the Orinoco. It is perhaps the development of a vegetable acid which

then furnishes oxygen to the albumen. The formation of the coagulum of

the hevea, or of real caoutchouc, is nevertheless much more rapid in

contact with the air. The absorption of atmospheric oxygen is not in

the least necessary to the production of butter which exists already

formed in the milk of animals; but I believe it cannot be doubted

that, in the milk of plants, this absorption produces the pellicles of

caoutchouc, of coagulated albumen, and of caseum, which are

successively formed in vessels exposed to the open air.) The yellow

colour reappears on adding a few more drops of nitric acid. The acid

acts in this instance as the oxygen of the atmosphere at a temperature

from 27 to 35 degrees; for the white coagulum grows yellow in two or

three minutes, when exposed to the sun. After a few hours the yellow

colour turns to brown, no doubt because the carbon is set more free

progressively as the hydrogen, with which it was combined, is burnt.

The coagulum formed by the acid becomes viscous, and acquires that

smell of wax which I have observed in treating muscular flesh and

mushrooms (morels) with nitric acid. According to the fine experiments

of Mr. Hatchett, the albumen may be supposed to pass partly to the

state of gelatine. The coagulum of the papaw-tree, when newly

prepared, being thrown into water, softens, dissolves in part, and

gives a yellowish tint to the fluid. The milk, placed in contact with

water only, forms also membranes. In an instant a tremulous jelly is

precipitated, resembling starch. This phenomenon is particularly

striking if the water employed be heated to 40 or 60 degrees. The

jelly condenses in proportion as more water is poured upon it. It

preserves a long time its whiteness, only growing yellow by the

contact of a few drops of nitric acid. Guided by the experiments of

Fourcroy and Vauquelin on the juice of the hevea, I mixed a solution

of carbonate of soda with the milk of the papaw. No clot is formed,

even when pure water is poured on a mixture of the milk with the

alkaline solution. The membranes appear only when, by adding an acid,

the soda is neutralized, and the acid is in excess. I made the

coagulum formed by nitric acid, the juice of lemons, or hot water,

likewise disappear by mixing it with carbonate of soda. The sap again

becomes milky and liquid, as in its primitive state; but this

experiment succeeds only when the coagulum has been recently formed.

On comparing the milky juices of the papaw, the cow-tree, and the

hevea, there appears a striking analogy between the juices which

abound in caseous matter, and those in which caoutchouc prevails. All

the white and newly prepared caoutchouc, as well as the waterproof

cloaks, manufactured in Spanish America by placing a layer of milk of

hevea between two pieces of cloth, exhale an animal and nauseating

smell. This seems to indicate that the caoutchouc, in coagulating,

carries with it the caseum, which is perhaps only an altered albumen.

The produce of the bread-fruit tree can no more be considered as bread

than plantains before the state of maturity, or the tuberous and

amylaceous roots of the cassava, the dioscorea, the Convolvulus

batatas, and the potato. The milk of the cow-tree contains, on the

contrary, a caseous matter, like the milk of mammiferous animals.

Advancing to more general considerations, we may regard, with M.

Gay-Lussac, the caoutchouc as the oily part--the butter of vegetable

milk. We find in the milk of plants caseum and caoutchouc; in the milk

of animals, caseum and butter. The proportions of the two albuminous

and oily principles differ in the various species of animals and of

lactescent plants. In these last they are most frequently mixed with

other substances hurtful as food; but of which the separation might

perhaps be obtained by chemical processes. A vegetable milk becomes

nourishing when it is destitute of acrid and narcotic principles; and

abounds less in caoutchouc than in caseous matter.*

(* The milk of the lactescent agarics has not been separately

analysed; it contains an acrid principle in the Agaricus piperatus,

and in other species it is sweet and harmless. The experiments of MM.

Braconnot, Bouillon-Lagrange, and Vauquelin (Annales de Chimie, volume

46, volume 51, volume 79, volume 80, volume 85, have pointed out a

great quantity of albumen in the substance of the Agaricus deliciosus,

an edible mushroom. It is this albumen contained in their juice which

renders them so hard when boiled. It has been proved that morels

(Morchella esculenta) can be converted into sebaceous and adipocerous

matter, capable of being used in the fabrication of soap. (De

Candolle, sur les Proprietes medicinales des Plantes.) Saccharine

matter has also been found in mushrooms by Gunther. It is in the

family of the fungi, more especially in the clavariae, phalli,

helvetiae, the merulii, and the small gymnopae which display

themselves in a few hours after a storm of rain, that organic nature

produces with most rapidity the greatest variety of chemical

principles--sugar, albumen, adipocire, acetate of potash, fat,

ozmazome, the aromatic principles, etc. It would be interesting to

examine, besides the milk of the lactescent fungi, those species

which, when cut in pieces, change their colour on the contact of

atmospheric air.

Though we have referred the palo de vaca to the family of the sapotas,

we have nevertheless found in it a great resemblance to some plants of

the urticeous kind, especially to the fig-tree, because of its

terminal stipulae in the shape of a horn; and to the brosimum, on

account of the structure of its fruit. M. Kunth would even have

preferred this last classification; if the description of the fruit,

made on the spot, and the nature of the milk, which is acrid in the

urticeae, and sweet in the sapotas, did not seem to confirm our

conjecture. Bredemeyer saw, like us, the fruit, and not the flower of

the cow tree. He asserts that he observed [sometimes?] two seeds,

lying one against the other, as in the alligator pear-tree (Laurus

persea). Perhaps this botanist had the intention of expressing the

same conformation of the nucleus that Swartz indicates in the

description of the brosimum--"nucleus bilobus aut bipartibilis." We

have mentioned the places where this remarkable tree grows: it will be

easy for botanical travellers to procure the flower of the palo de

vaca and to remove the doubts which still remain, of the family to

which it belongs.)

Whilst the palo de vaca manifests the immense fecundity and the bounty

of nature in the torrid zone, it also reminds us of the numerous

causes which favour in those fine climates the careless indolence of

man. Mungo Park has made known the butter-tree of Bambarra, which M.

De Candolle suspects to be of the family of sapotas, as well as our

milk-tree. The plantain, the sago-tree, and the mauritia of the

Orinoco, are as much bread-trees as the rema of the South Sea. The

fruits of the crescentia and the lecythis serve as vessels for

containing food, while the spathes of the palms, and the bark of

trees, furnish caps and garments without a seam. The knots, or rather

the interior cells of the trunks of bamboos, supply ladders, and

facilitate in a thousand ways the construction of a hut, and the

fabrication of chairs, beds, and other articles of furniture that

compose the wealth of a savage household. In the midst of this lavish

vegetation, so varied in its productions, it requires very powerful

motives to excite man to labour, to rouse him from his lethargy, and

to unfold his intellectual faculties.

Cacao and cotton are cultivated at Barbula. We there found, what is

very rare in that country, two large cylindrical machines for

separating the cotton from its seed; one put in motion by an hydraulic

wheel, and the other by a wheel turned by mules. The overseer of the

farm, who had constructed these machines, was a native of Merida. He

was acquainted with the road that leads from Nueva Valencia, by the

way of Guanare and Misagual, to Varinas; and thence by the ravine of

Collejones, to the Paramo de Mucuchies and the mountains of Merida

covered with eternal snows. The notions he gave us of the time

requisite for going from Valencia by Varinas to the Sierra Nevada, and

thence by the port of Torunos, and the Rio Santo Domingo, to San

Fernando de Apure, were of infinite value to us. It can scarcely be

imagined in Europe, how difficult it is to obtain accurate information

in a country where the communications are so rare; and where distances

are diminished or exaggerated according to the desire that may be felt

to encourage the traveller, or to deter him from his purpose. I had

resolved to visit the eastern extremity of the Cordilleras of New

Grenada, where they lose themselves in the paramos of Timotes and

Niquitao. I learned at Barbula, that this excursion would retard our

arrival at the Orinoco thirty-five days. This delay appeared to us so

much the longer, as the rains were expected to begin sooner than

usual. We had the hope of examining afterwards a great number of

mountains covered with perpetual snow, at Quito, Peru, and Mexico; and

it appeared to me still more prudent to relinquish our project of

visiting the mountains of Merida, since by so doing we might miss the

real object of our journey, that of ascertaining by astronomical

observations the point of communication between the Orinoco, the Rio

Negro, and the river Amazon. We returned in consequence from Barbula

to Guacara, to take leave of the family of the Marquis del Toro, and

pass three days more on the borders of the lake.

It was the carnival season, and all was gaiety. The sports in which

the people indulge, and which are called carnes tollendas,* assume

occasionally somewhat of a savage character. (* Or "farewell to

flesh." The word carnival has the same meaning, these sports being

always held just before the commencement of Lent.) Some led an ass

loaded with water, and, where-ever they found a window open, inundated

the apartment within by means of a pump. Others carried bags filled

with hairs of picapica;* (* Dolichos pruriens (cowage).) and blew the

hair, which causes a great irritation of the skin, into the faces of

those who passed by.

From Guacara we returned to Nueva Valencia. We found there a few

French emigrants, the only ones we saw during five years passed in the

Spanish colonies. Notwithstanding the ties of blood which unite the

royal families of France and Spain, even French priests were not

permitted to take refuge in that part of the New World, where man with

such facility finds food and shelter. Beyond the Atlantic, the United

States of America afford the only asylum to misfortune. A government,

strong because it is free, confiding because it is just, has nothing

to fear in giving refuge to the proscribed.

We have endeavoured above to give some notions of the state of the

cultivation of indigo, cotton, and sugar, in the province of Caracas.

Before we quit the valley of Aragua and its neighbouring coast, it

remains for us to speak of the cacao-plantations, which have at all

times been considered as the principal source of the prosperity of

those countries. The province of Caracas,* (* The province, not the

capitania-general, consequently not including the cacao plantations of

Cumana, the province of Barcelona, of Maracaybo, of Varinas, and of

Spanish Guiana.) at the end of the eighteenth century, produced

annually a hundred and fifty thousand fanegas, of which a hundred

thousand were consumed in Spain, and thirty thousand in the province.

Estimating a fanega of cacao at only twenty-five piastres for the

price given at Cadiz, we find that the total value of the exportation

of cacao, by the six ports of the Capitania General of Caracas,

amounts to four million eight hundred thousand piastres. So important

an object of commerce merits a careful discussion; and I flatter

myself, that, from the great number of materials I have collected on

all the branches of colonial agriculture, I shall be able to add

something to the information published by M. Depons, in his valuable

work on the provinces of Venezuela.

The tree which produces the cacao is not at present found wild in the

forests of Terra Firma to the north of the Orinoco; we began to find

it only beyond the cataracts of Ature and Maypure. It abounds

particularly near the banks of the Ventuari, and on the Upper Orinoco,

between the Padamo and the Gehette. This scarcity of wild cacao-trees

in South America, north of the latitude of 6 degrees, is a very

curious phenomenon of botanical geography, and yet little known. This

phenomenon appears the more surprising, as, according to the annual

produce of the harvest, the number of trees in full bearing in the

cacao-plantations of Caracas, Nueva Barcelona, Venezuela, Varinas, and

Maracaybo, is estimated at more than sixteen millions. The wild

cacao-tree has many branches, and is covered with a tufted and dark

foliage. It bears a very small fruit, like that variety which the

ancient Mexicans called tlalcacahuatl. Transplanted into the conucos

of the Indians of Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro, the wild tree

preserves for several generations that force of vegetable life, which

makes it bear fruit in the fourth year; while, in the province of

Caracas, the harvest begins only the sixth, seventh, or eighth year.

It is later in the inland parts than on the coasts and in the valley

of Guapo. We met with no tribe on the Orinoco that prepared a beverage

with the seeds of the cacao-tree. The savages suck the pulp of the

pod, and throw away the seeds, which are often found in heaps where

they have passed the night. Though chorote, which is a very weak

infusion of cacao, is considered on the coast to be a very ancient

beverage, no historical fact proves that chocolate, or any preparation

whatever of cacao, was known to the natives of Venezuela before the

arrival of the Spaniards. It appears to me more probable that the

cacao-plantations of Caracas were suggested by those of Mexico and

Guatimala; and that the Spaniards inhabiting Terra Firma learned the

cultivation of the cacao-tree, sheltered in its youth by the foliage

of the erythrina and plantain;* (This process of the Mexican

cultivators, practised on the coast of Caracas, is described in the

memoirs known under the title of "Relazione di certo Gentiluomo del

Signor Cortez, Conquistadore del Messico." (Ramusio, tome 2 page

134).) the fabrication of cakes of chocolatl, and the use of the

liquid of the same name, in course of their communications with

Mexico, Guatimala, and Nicaragua.

Down to the sixteenth century travellers differed in opinion

respecting the chocolatl. Benzoni plainly says that it is a drink

"fitter for hogs than men."* (* Benzoni, Istoria del Mondo Nuovo, 1572

page 104.) The Jesuit Acosta asserts, that "the Spaniards who inhabit

America are fond of chocolate to excess; but that it requires to be

accustomed to that black beverage not to be disgusted at the mere

sight of its froth, which swims on it like yeast on a fermented

liquor." He adds, "the cacao is a prejudice (una supersticion) of the

Mexicans, as the coca is a prejudice of the Peruvians." These opinions

remind us of Madame de Sevigne's prediction respecting the use of

coffee. Fernando Cortez and his page, the gentilhombre del gran

Conquistador, whose memoirs were published by Ramusio, on the

contrary, highly praise chocolate, not only as an agreeable drink,

though prepared cold,* but in particular as a nutritious substance. (*

Father Gili has very clearly shown, from two passages in Torquemada

(Monarquia Indiana, lib. 14) that the Mexicans prepared the infusion

cold, and that the Spaniards introduced the custom of preparing

chocolate by boiling water with the paste of cacao.) "He who has drunk

one cup," says the page of Fernando Cortez, "can travel a whole day

without any other food, especially in very hot climates; for chocolate

is by its nature cold and refreshing." We shall not subscribe to the

latter part of this assertion; but we shall soon have occasion, in our

voyage on the Orinoco, and our excursions towards the summit of the

Cordilleras, to celebrate the salutary properties of chocolate. It is

easily conveyed and readily employed: as an aliment it contains a

large quantity of nutritive and stimulating particles in a small

compass. It has been said with truth, that in the East, rice, gum, and

ghee (clarified butter), assist man in crossing the deserts; and so,

in the New World, chocolate and the flour of maize, have rendered

accessible to the traveller the table-lands of the Andes, and vast

uninhabited forests.

The cacao harvest is extremely variable. The tree vegetates with such

vigour that flowers spring out even from the roots, wherever the earth

leaves them uncovered. It suffers from the north-east winds, even when

they lower the temperature only a few degrees. The heavy showers that

fall irregularly after the rainy season, during the winter months,

from December to March, are also very hurtful to the cacao-tree. The

proprietor of a plantation of fifty thousand trees often loses the

value of more than four or five thousand piastres in cacao in one

hour. Great humidity is favourable to the tree only when it augments

progressively, and is for a long time uninterrupted. If, in the season

of drought, the leaves and the young fruit be wetted by a violent

shower, the fruit falls from the stem; for it appears that the vessels

which absorb water break from being rendered turgid. Besides, the

cacao-harvest is one of the most uncertain, on account of the fatal

effects of inclement seasons, and the great number of worms, insects,

birds, and quadrupeds,* (* Parrots, monkeys, agoutis, squirrels, and

stags.) which devour the pod of the cacao-tree; and this branch of

agriculture has the disadvantage of obliging the new planter to wait

eight or ten years for the fruit of his labours, and of yielding after

all an article of very difficult preservation.

The finest plantations of cacao are found in the province of Caracas,

along the coast, between Caravalleda and the mouth of the Rio Tocuyo,

in the valleys of Caucagua, Capaya, Curiepe, and Guapo; and in those

of Cupira, between cape Conare and cape Unare, near Aroa,

Barquesimeto, Guigue, and Uritucu. The cacao that grows on the banks

of the Uritucu, at the entrance of the llanos, in the jurisdiction of

San Sebastian de las Reyes, is considered to be of the finest quality.

Next to the cacao of Uritucu comes that of Guigue, of Caucagua, of

Capaya, and of Cupira. The merchants of Cadiz assign the first rank to

the cacao of Caracas, immediately after that of Socomusco; and its

price is generally from thirty to forty per cent higher than that of

Guayaquil.

It is only since the middle of the seventeenth century, when the

Dutch, tranquil possessors of the island of Curacoa, awakened, by

their smuggling, the agricultural industry of the inhabitants of the

neighbouring coasts, that cacao has become an object of exportation in

the province of Caracas. We are ignorant of everything that passed in

those countries before the establishment of the Biscay Company of

Guipuzcoa, in 1728. No precise statistical data have reached us: we

only know that the exportation of cacao from Caracas scarcely

amounted, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, to thirty

thousand fanegas a-year. From 1730 to 1748, the company sent to Spain

eight hundred and fifty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight

fanegas, which make, on an average, forty-seven thousand seven hundred

fanegas a-year; the price of the fanega fell, in 1732, to forty-five

piastres, when it had before kept at eighty piastres. In 1763 the

cultivation had so much augmented, that the exportation rose to eighty

thousand six hundred and fifty-nine fanegas.

In an official document, taken from the papers of the minister of

finance, the annual produce (la cosecha) of the province of Caracas is

estimated at a hundred and thirty-five thousand fanegas of cacao;

thirty-three thousand of which are for home consumption, ten thousand

for other Spanish colonies, seventy-seven thousand for the

mother-country, fifteen thousand for the illicit commerce with the

French, English, Dutch, and Danish colonies. From 1789 to 1793, the

importation of cacao from Caracas into Spain was, on an average,

seventy-seven thousand seven hundred and nineteen fanegas a-year, of

which sixty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty-six were consumed in

the country, and eleven thousand nine hundred and fifty-three exported

to France, Italy, and Germany.

The late wars have had much more fatal effects on the cacao trade of

Caracas than on that of Guayaquil. On account of the increase of

price, less cacao of the first quality has been consumed in Europe.

Instead of mixing, as was done formerly for common chocolate, one

quarter of the cacao of Caracas, with three-quarters of that of

Guayaquil, the latter has been employed pure in Spain. We must here

remark, that a great deal of cacao of an inferior quality, such as

that of Maranon, the Rio Negro, Honduras, and the island of St. Lucia,

bears the name, in commerce, of Guayaquil cacao. The exportation from

that port amounts only to sixty thousand fanegas; consequently it is

two-thirds less than that of the ports of the Capitania-General of

Caracas.

Though the plantations of cacao have augmented in the provinces of

Cumana, Barcelona, and Maracaybo, in proportion as they have

diminished in the province of Caracas, it is still believed that, in

general, this ancient branch of agricultural industry gradually

declines. In many parts coffee and cotton-trees progressively take

place of the cacao, of which the lingering harvests weary the patience

of the cultivator. It is also asserted, that the new plantations of

cacao are less productive than the old; the trees do not acquire the

same vigour, and yield later and less abundant fruit. The soil is

still said to be exhausted; but probably it is rather the atmosphere

that is changed by the progress of clearing and cultivation. The air

that reposes on a virgin soil covered with forests is loaded with

humidity and those gaseous mixtures that serve for the nutriment of

plants, and arise from the decomposition of organic substances. When a

country has been long subjected to cultivation, it is not the

proportions between the azote and oxygen that vary. The constituent

bases of the atmosphere remain unaltered; but it no longer contains,

in a state of suspension, those binary and ternary mixtures of carbon,

hydrogen, and nitrogen, which a virgin soil exhales, and which are

regarded as a source of fecundity. The air, purer and less charged

with miasmata and heterogeneous emanations, becomes at the same time

drier. The elasticity of the vapours undergoes a sensible diminution.

On land long cleared, and consequently little favourable to the

cultivation of the cacao-tree (as, for instance, in the West India

Islands), the fruit is almost as small as that of the wild cacao-tree.

It is on the banks of the Upper Orinoco, after having crossed the

Llanos, that we find the true country of the cacao-tree; thick

forests, in which, on a virgin soil, and surrounded by an atmosphere

continually humid, the trees furnish, from the fourth year, abundant

crops. Wherever the soil is not exhausted, the fruit has become by

cultivation larger and bitter, but also later.

On seeing the produce of cacao gradually diminish in Terra Firma, it

may be inquired, whether the consumption will diminish in the same

proportion in Spain, Italy, and the rest of Europe; or whether it be

not probable, that by the destruction of the cacao plantations, the

price will augment sufficiently to rouse anew the industry of the

cultivator. This latter opinion is generally admitted by those who

deplore, at Caracas, the diminution of so ancient and profitable a

branch of commerce. In proportion as civilization extends towards the

humid forests of the interior, the banks of the Orinoco and the

Amazon, or towards the valleys that furrow the eastern declivity of

the Andes, the new planters will find lands and an atmosphere equally

favourable to the culture of the cacao-tree.

The Spaniards, in general, dislike a mixture of vanilla with the

cacao, as irritating the nervous system; the fruit, therefore, of that

orchideous plant is entirely neglected in the province of Caracas,

though abundant crops of it might be gathered on the moist and

feverish coast between Porto Cabello and Ocumare; especially at

Turiamo, where the fruits of the Epidendrum vanilla attain the length

of eleven or twelve inches. The English and the Anglo-Americans often

seek to make purchases of vanilla at the port of La Guayra, but the

merchants procure with difficulty a very small quantity. In the

valleys that descend from the chain of the coast towards the Caribbean

Sea, in the province of Truxillo, as well as in the Missions of

Guiana, near the cataracts of the Orinoco, a great quantity of vanilla

might be collected; the produce of which would be still more abundant,

if, according to the practice of the Mexicans, the plant were

disengaged, from time to time, from the creeping plants by which it is

entwined and stifled.

The hot and fertile valleys of the Cordillera of the coast of

Venezuela occupy a tract of land which, on the west, towards the lake

of Maracaybo, displays a remarkable variety of scenery. I shall

exhibit in one view, to close this chapter, the facts I have been able

to collect respecting the quality of the soil and the metallic riches

of the districts of Aroa, of Barquesimeto, and of Carora.

From the Sierra Nevada of Merida, and the paramos of Niquitao, Bocono,

and Las Rosas,* (Many travellers, who were monks, have asserted that

the little Paramo de Las Rosas, the height of which appears to be more

than 1,600 toises, is covered with rosemary, and the red and white

roses of Europe grow wild there. These roses are gathered to decorate

the altars in the neighbouring villages on the festivals of the

church. By what accident has our Rosa centifolia become wild in this

country, while we nowhere found it in the Andes of Quito and Peru? Can

it really be the rose-tree of our garden?) which contain the valuable

bark-tree, the eastern Cordillera of New Granada* (* The bark exported

from the port of Maracaybo does not come from the territory of

Venezuela, but from the mountains of Pamplona in New Grenada, being

brought down the Rio de San Faustino, that flows into the lake of

Maracaybo. (Pombo, Noticias sobre las Quinas, 1814 page 65.) Some is

collected near Merida, in the ravine of Viscucucuy.) decreases in

height so rapidly, that, between the ninth and tenth degrees of

latitude, it forms only a chain of little mountains, which, stretching

to the north-east by the Altar and Torito, separates the rivers that

join the Apure and the Orinoco from those numerous rivers that flow

either into the Caribbean Sea or the lake of Maracaybo. On this

dividing ridge are built the towns of Nirgua, San Felipe el Fuerte,

Barquesimeto, and Tocuyo. The first three are in a very hot climate;

but Tocuyo enjoys great coolness, and we heard with surprise, that,

beneath so fine a sky, the inhabitants have a strong propensity to

suicide. The ground rises towards the south; for Truxillo, the lake of

Urao, from which carbonate of soda is extracted, and La Grita, all to

the east of the Cordillera, though no farther distant, are four or

five hundred toises high.

On examining the law which the primitive strata of the Cordillera of

the coast follow in their dip, we believe we recognize one of the

causes of the extreme humidity of the land bounded by this Cordillera

and the ocean. The dip of the strata is most frequently to the

north-west; so that the waters flow in that direction on the ledges of

rock; and form, as we have stated above, that multitude of torrents

and rivers, the inundations of which become so fatal to the health of

the inhabitants, from cape Codera as far as the lake of Maracaybo.

Among the rivers which descend north-east toward the coast of Porto

Cabello, and La Punta de Hicacos, the most remarkable are those of

Tocuyo, Aroa, and Yaracuy. Were it not for the miasmata which infect

the atmosphere, the valleys of Aroa and of Yaracuy would perhaps be

more populous than those of Aragua. Navigable rivers would even give

the former the advantage of facilitating the exportation of their own

crops of sugar and cacao, and that of the productions of the

neighbouring lands; as the wheat of Quibor, the cattle of Monai, and

the copper of Aroa. The mines from which this copper is extracted, are

in a lateral valley, opening into that of Aroa; and which is less hot,

and less unhealthy, than the ravines nearer the sea. In the latter the

Indians have their gold-washings, and the soil conceals rich

copper-ores, which no one has yet attempted to extract. The ancient

mines of Aroa, after having been long neglected, have been wrought

anew by the care of Don Antonio Henriquez, whom we met at San Fernando

on the borders of the Apure. The total produce of metallic copper is

twelve or fifteen hundred quintals a year. This copper, known at Cadiz

by the name of Caracas copper, is of excellent quality. It is even

preferred to that of Sweden, and of Coquimbo in Chile. Part of the

copper of Aroa is employed for making bells, which are cast on the

spot. Some ores of silver have been recently discovered between Aroa

and Nirgua, near Guanita, in the mountain of San Pablo. Grains of gold

are found in all the mountainous lands between the Rio Yaracuy, the

town of San Felipe, Nirgua, and Barquesimeto; particularly in the Rio

de Santa Cruz, in which the Indian gold-gatherers have sometimes found

lumps of the value of four or five piastres. Do the neighbouring rocks

of mica-slate and gneiss contain veins? or is the gold disseminated

here, as in the granites of Guadarama in Spain, and of the Fichtelberg

in Franconia, throughout the whole mass of the rock? Possibly the

waters, in filtering through it, bring together the disseminated

grains of gold; in which case every attempt to work the rock would be

useless. In the Savana de la Miel, near the town of Barquesimeto, a

shaft has been sunk in a black shining slate resembling ampelite. The

minerals extracted from this shaft, which were sent to me at Caracas,

were quartz, non-auriferous pyrites, and carbonated lead, crystallized

in needles of a silky lustre.

In the early times of the conquest the working of the mines of Nirgua

and of Buria* was begun, notwithstanding the incursions of the warlike

nation of the Giraharas. (* The valley of Buria, and the little river

of the same name, communicate with the valley of the Rio Coxede, or

the Rio de Barquesimeto.) In this very district the accumulation of

negro slaves in 1553 gave rise to an event bearing some analogy to the

insurrection in St. Domingo. A negro slave excited an insurrection

among the miners of the Real de San Felipe de Buria. He retired into

the woods, and founded, with two hundred of his companions, a town,

where he was proclaimed king. Miguel, this new king, was a friend to

pomp and parade. He caused his wife Guiomar, to assume the title of

queen; and, according to Oviedo, he appointed ministers and

counsellors of state, officers of the royal household, and even a

negro bishop. He soon after ventured to attack the neighbouring town

of Nueva Segovia de Barquesimeto; but, being repulsed by Diego de

Losada, he perished in the conflict. This African monarchy was

succeeded at Nirgua by a republic of Zamboes, the descendants of

negroes and Indians. The whole municipality (cabildo) is composed of

men of colour to whom the king of Spain has given the title of "his

faithful and loyal subjects, the Zamboes of Nirgua." Few families of

Whites will inhabit a country where the system of government is so

adverse to their pretensions; and the little town is called in

derision La republica de Zambos y Mulatos.

If the hot valleys of Aroa, of Yaracuy, and of the Rio Tocuyo,

celebrated for their excellent timber, be rendered feverish by

luxuriance of vegetation, and extreme atmospheric humidity, it is

different in the savannahs of Monai and Carora. These Llanos are

separated by the mountainous tract of Tocuyo and Nirgua from the great

plains of La Portuguesa and Calabozo. It is very extraordinary to see

barren savannahs loaded with miasmata. No marshy ground is found

there, but several phenomena indicate a disengagement of hydrogen.* (*

What is that luminous phenomenon known under the name of the Lantern

(farol) of Maracaybo, which is perceived every night toward the

seaside as well as in the inland parts, at Merida for example, where

M. Palacios observed it during two years? The distance, greater than

40 leagues, at which the light is observed, has led to the supposition

that it might be owing to the effects of a thunderstorm, or of

electrical explosions which might daily take place in a pass in the

mountains. It is asserted that, on approaching the farol, the rolling

of thunder is heard. Others vaguely allege that it is an air-volcano,

and that asphaltic soils, like those of Mena, cause these inflammable

exhalations which are so constant in their appearance. The phenomenon

is observed on a mountainous and uninhabited spot, on the borders of

the Rio Catatumbo, near the junction with the Rio Sulia. The situation

of the farol is such that, being nearly in the meridian of the opening

(boca) of the lake of Maracaybo, navigators are guided by it as by a

lighthouse.) When travellers, who are not acquainted with natural

inflammable gases, are shown the Cueva del Serrito de Monai, the

people of the country love to frighten them by setting fire to the

gaseous combination which is constantly accumulated in the upper part

of the cavern. May we attribute the insalubrity of the atmosphere to

the same causes as those which operate in the plains between Tivoli

and Rome, namely, disengagements of sulphuretted hydrogen?* (* Don

Carlos del Pozo has discovered in this district, at the bottom of the

Quebrada de Moroturo, a stratum of clayey earth, black, strongly

soiling the fingers, emitting a powerful smell of sulphur, and

inflaming spontaneously when slightly moistened and exposed for a long

time to the rays of the tropical sun. The detonation of this muddy

substance is very violent.) Possibly, also, the mountainous lands,

near the llanos of Monai, may have a baneful influence on the

surrounding plains. The south-easterly winds may convey to them the

putrid exhalations that rise from the ravine of Villegas, and from La

Sienega de Cabra, between Carora and Carache. I am desirous of

collecting every circumstance having a relation to the salubrity of

the air; for, in a matter so obscure, it is only by the comparison of

a great number of phenomena, that we can hope to discover the truth.

The barren yet feverish savannahs, extending from Barquesimeto to the

eastern shore of the lake of Maracaybo, are partly covered with

cactus; but the good silvester-cochineal, known by the vague name of

grana de Carora, comes from a more temperate region, between Carora

and Truxillo, and particularly from the valley of the Rio Mucuju,* to

the east of Merida. (* This little river descends from the Paramo de

los Conejos, and flows into the Rio Albarregas.) The inhabitants

altogether neglect this production, so much sought for in commerce.