the African elephant. A complete head of a rhinoceros, with the horn and teeth, was also found very little altered. THE CARACCAS. From the third volume of Humboldt's After having described the scenery and the atmospheric constitution of La Guayra, we shall now leave the coasts of the Carribbean sea. The road that leads from the port to Caraccas, the capital of a government of near 900.000 inhabitants, resembles the passages over the Alps, the road of St. Gothard and the Great St. Bernard. The height of Caraccas is but a third of that of Mexico, Quito, and Santa Fe de Bagota; yet among all the capitals of Spanish America, which enjoy a cool and delicious climate in the midst of the torrid zone, Caraccas stands nearest the coast. What a privilege, to possess a sea-port at three leagues, distance, and to be situate among mountains, on a table land, which would produce wheat, if the cultivation of the coffee tree were not preferred! The road from La Guayra to the valley of Caraccas, is infinitely finer than that from Quayaquil to Quito, or that from Honda to Santa Fe. With good mules it requires but three hours to go from the port of La Guayra to the Caraccas; and only two hours to return. When I passed for the first time that table land, on my way to the capital of Venezuela, I found several travellers assembled around the little inn of Guayavo, to rest their mules. They were inhabitants of Caraccas, and were disputing on the efforts towards independence, which had been made a short time before. Joseph Espana had perished on the scaffold; and his wife groaned in prison, because she had given an asylum to her husband when a fugitive, and had not denounced him to the government. I was struck with the agitation which prevailed in every mind, and the bitterness with which questions were debated, on which men of the same country ought not to have differed in opinion. While they descanted on the hatred of the mulattoes against the free negroes and whites, on the wealth of the monks, and the difficulty of holding slaves in obedience, a cold wind that seemed to descend from the lofty summit of the Silla of Caraccas, enveloped us in a thick fog, and put an end to this animated conversation. Caraccas is the capital of a country which is nearly twice as large as Peru is at present, and which yields little in extent to the kingdom of Grenada. This country which the Spanish government designates by the name of the captain generalship of Caraccas, or of the (united) provinces of Venezuela, has nearly a million of inhabitants, among whom are sixty thousand slaves. It contains along the coast, New Andalusia, or the province of Cumana (with the island of Margaretta), Barcelona, Venezuela or Caraccas, Coro and Mara-Caybo; in the interior, the provinces of Varinas and Guayana, the first along the rivers of Santa Domingo and Apure, the second along the Oroonoko, the Casiquiare, the Atabapo, and the rio Negro. In the general view of the seven united provinces of Terra, we perceive, that they form three distinct zones extending from east to west. We find at first cultivated land along the shore, and near the chain of the mountains on the coast; next savannahs or pasturages, and finally beyond the Oroonoko, a third zone, that of forests, into which we can penetrate only by means of the rivers that traverse them. In the first zone are felt the preponderance of force, and the abuse of power, which is the necessary consequence. The natives carry on a civil war, and sometimes devour one another. The monks endeavour to augment the little villages of their missions, by availing themselves of the dissensions of the natives. The military live in a state of hostility with the monks, whom they were intended to protect. Every thing offers alike the melancholy picture of misery and privations. In the second region, in the plains and the pasture grounds, food is extremely abundant, but has little variety. Although more advanced in civilization, men without the circle of some scatered towns do not remain less isolated from one another. At the view of their dwellings, partly covered with skins and leather, it would seem that far from being fixed, they are scarcely encamped in those vast meadows, which extend to the horizon. Agriculture, which alone lays the basis, and draws closer the ties of society, occupies the third zone, the shore, and especially the hot and temperate vallies in the mountains near the sea. If we examine the state of the captain-generalship of Caraccas, we perceive that its agricultural industry, its great mass of population, its numerous towns, and whatever is connected with an advanced civilization, are found near the coast. This coast extends farther than two hundred leagues. It is bathed by the Little Carribbean sea, a sort of Mediterranean, on the shores of which almost all the nations of Europe have founded colonies. The coasts of Venezuela, from their extent, their stretching towards the east, the number of their ports, and the safety of their anchorage at differcnt seasons, enjoy all the advantages of the interior Carribbean sea. The communications with the greater islands, and even with those that are to windward, can no where be more frequent than from the ports of Cumana, Barcelona, La Guayra, Porto Cabello, Coro, and Maraycabo; and no where has it been found more difficult to restrain an illicit commerce with strangers. Can we wonder, that this facility of commercial intercourse with the inhabitants of free America, and the agitated nations of Europe, should have augmented in conjunction, in the provinces united under the captain generalship of Venezuela, opulence, knowledge, and that restless desire of local government, which is blended with the love of liberty and republican forms? The copper-coloured natives, or Indians, constitute a very important mass of the agricultural population only in those places, where the Spaniards found regular governments, a civil community, and ancient and very complicated institutions at the conquest, as in New Spain, south of Durango; and in Peru, from Cusco to Potosi. In the captaingeneralship of Caraccas, the Indian population is inconsiderable, at least beyond the missions and in the cultivated zone. At the moments of great political dissensions, the natives excite no fear in the whites, or the mingled casts. Computing in 1809 the total population of the seven united provinces at 900,000 souls, it appeared to me that the Indians made only one ninth; while at Mexico, they form nearly one half of the inhabitants. Among the casts that compose the population of Venezuela, that of the blacks, is not important from its num ber, but it is so from its accumulation on a small space of territory. In all the captain-generalship the slaves do not exceed a fifteenth of the whole population. In the island of Cuba, of all those in the West Indies where the negroes bear the smallest proportion to the whites, they were, in 1811, as one to three. The seven united provinces of Venezuela have sixty thousand slaves; Cuba, the extent of which is eight times less, has two hundred and twelve thousand. The sixty thousand slaves which the Seven United Provinces contain, are so unequally divided, that in the province of Caraccas alone, there are nearly forty thousand, one fifth of which are mulattoes; in that of Maracay bo, ten or twelve thousand; in those of Cumana and Barcelona, scarcely six thousand. To judge of the influence which the slaves and the men of colour exert in general, on the public tranquillity, it is not enough to know their number; we must consider their accumulation at certain points, and their manner of life, as cultivators or inhabitants of towns. In the province of Venezuela, the slaves are assembled together on a space of no great extent, between the coast and a line that passes (at twelve leagues from the coast) through Panaquire, Yare, Sabana de Ocumare, Villa de Cura, and Nirgua. The Leanos or vast plains of Calaboso, San Carlos, Guanare, and Barquecimeto contain only four or five thousand, who are scattered among the farms, and employed in the care of cattle. The number of freed men is very considerable; the Spanish laws and customs are favourable to affranchisement. What is most interesting in the colonies next to the state of the blacks, is to know the number of white creoles, whom I call Hispano-Americans, and that of the whites born in Europe. It is difficult to acquire notions sufficiently exact on so delicate a point. The people in the new, as well as in the old world, abhor numberings, suspecting them to be made in order to augment the weight of taxes. The men in office, on the other hand, sent by the mothercountry to the colonies, dislike these statistical enumerations as much as the people, and this from motives of jealous policy. If we compare the Seven United Pro vinces of Venezuela to the kingdom of Mexico, and the island of Cuba, we shall succeed in finding the approximate number of white creoles, and even of Europeans. The first, or Hispano-Americans, form in Mexico near ly one fifth, and in the island of Cuba, according to the very accurate enumeration of 1801, a third of the whole population. When we reflect, that the kingdom of Mexico is inhabited by two millions and a half of natives of the copper-coloured race; when we consider the state of the coasts that are bathed by the Pacific ocean, and the small number of whites in the intendencies of Puebla and Oaxaca, comparatively with the natives; we cannot doubt, that the province of Venezuela, at least, if not the capitania-general, has a greater proportion than that of one to five. The island of Cuba, in which the whites are even more numerous than in Chili, may furnish us with a limiting number, that is to say, the maximum that can be supposed in the capitania-general of Caraccas. I believe we must stop at two hundred, or two hundred and ten thousand Hispano-Americans, in a total population of nine hundred thousand souls. The number of Europeans included in the white race (not comprehending the troops sent from the mother-country) does not exceed twelve or fifteen thousaud. It certainly is not greater at Mexico than sixty thousand, and I find by several statements, that if we estimate the Spanish colonies at fourteen or fifteen millions of inhabitants, there are in this number, at most, three millions of creole whites, and two hundred thousand Europeans. It seems to excite surprise in Europe, that the Spaniards of the mother-country, of whom we have remarked the small number, have made during ages so long and so firm a resistance. Men forget that the European party in all the colonies is necessarily augmented by a great mass of the natives. Family interests, the desire of uninterrupted tranquillity, the fear of engaging in an enterprise that might fail, prevent these latter from embracing the cause of independence, or aspiring to establish a local and representative government, though dependant on the mother-country. Some shrink from violent measures, and flatter themselves, that a gradual reform may render the colonial system less oppressive. They see in revolutions only the loss of their slaves, the spoliation of the clergy, and the introduction of religious toleration, which they believe to be incompatible with the purity of the established worship. Others belong to the small number of families, which, either from hereditary opulence, or having been long settled in the colonies, exercise a real municipal aristocracy. They would rather be deprived of certain rights, than share them with all; they would prefer even a foreign yoke to the exercise of authority by the Americans of an inferior cast; they abhor every constitution founded on an equality of rights, and above all, they dread the loss of those decorations and titles which they have with so much difficulty acquired, and which, as we have observed above, compose so essential a part of their domestic happiness. St. Thomas, in Guiana, will be necessarily, at some future day. a place of trade of high importance, especially when the flour of New Grenada, embarked above the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Umadea, and descending by the Meta and Oroonoko, shall be preferred at Caraccas and Guiana to the flour of New England. It is a great advantage to the provinces of Venezuela, that their territorial wealth is not directed to one point, like that of Mexico and New Granada, which flows to Vera Cruz and Carthagena; but that they possess a great number of towns equally well peopled, and forming so many various centres of commerce and civilization. The climate of Caraccas has often been called a perpetual spring. It is found every where, half way up the Cordilleras of Equinoctial America, between four hundred and nine hundred toises of elevation, unless the great breadth of the valley joined to an arid soil causes an extraordinary intensity of radiant caloric. What, indeed, can we imagine more delightful, than a temperature, which in the day keeps between 20° and 26o; and at night between 16° and 18°, which is equally favourable to the plantain (cambury), the orange-tree, the coffee-tree, the apple, the apricot, and corn? A national writer compares the situation of Caraccas to the terrestrial paradise, and recognizes in the Anauco and the neighbouring torrents, the four rivers of the garden of Eden. |