CONTENTS. CAAPTER VIII. CONTENTS. JOURNEY TO THE EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS THE NEW CONTINENT. BOOK III. CHAPTER VI. Mountains of New Andalusia.-Valley of Cumanacoa.-Summit of the Cocollar.- Missions of the Chayma Indians. OUR first visit to the peninsula of Araya was soon succeeded by a longer and more instructive excursion to the interior of the mountains of the missions of the Chayma Indians, where a variety of interesting objects claimed our attention. We entered on a country studded with forests; and visited a convent surrounded by palm trees and arborescent fern, situate in a narrow valley, where we felt the enjoyment of a cool and delicious climate, in the centre of the torrid zone. The surrounding mountains contain caverns haunted by thousands of nocturnal birds; and, what affects the imagination more than all the wonders of the physical world, we find beyond these mountains a people so lately nomade, and still nearly in a state of nature, savage without being barbarous, and stupid rather from ignorance than long rudeness. This interesting meditation was blended involuntarily with historical remembrances. It was in the promontory of Paria that Columbus first recognized the continent: there terminate these valleys, alternately devastated by the warlike anthropophagical Carib, and by the commercial and polished nations of Europe. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the unhappy Indians of the coasts of Carupano, of Macarapan, and of Caraccas, were treated in the same manner as the inhabitants of the coast of Guinea in our days. The soil of the islands was cultivated, the vegetables of the ancient continent were transplanted thither; but the regular system of colonization remained long unknown on the continent. If the Spaniards visited it's shores, it was only to procure, either by violence or exchange, slaves, pearls, grains of gold, and dye-woods. The motives of this insatiable avarice seemed to be ennobled by the pretence of an enthusiastic zeal for religion; for every age has its peculiar tint, and a character appropriate to itself. |