Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 156 of 407 - First - Home
These Advantages Were Unknown At The
Time Of The Conquest; Colonial Industry Had Then Made So Little
Progress, That The Salt Of Araya Was Carried, At Great Expense, To
The West India Islands, Carthagena, And Portobello.
In 1605, the
court of Madrid sent armed ships to Punta Araya, with orders to
expel the Dutch by force of arms.
The Dutch, however, continued to
carry on a contraband trade in salt till, in 1622, there was built
near the salt-works a fort, which afterwards became celebrated
under the name of the Castillo de Santiago, or the Real Fuerza de
Araya. The great salt-marshes are laid down on the oldest Spanish
maps, sometimes as a bay, and at other times as a lagoon. Laet, who
wrote his Orbis Novus in 1633, and who had some excellent notions
respecting these coasts, expressly states, that the lagoon was
separated from the sea by an isthmus above the level of high water.
In 1726, an impetuous hurricane destroyed the salt-works of Araya,
and rendered the fort, the construction of which had cost more than
a million of piastres, useless. This hurricane was a very rare
phenomenon in these regions, where the sea is in general as calm as
the water in our large rivers. The waves overflowed the land to a
great extent; and by the effect of this eruption of the ocean the
salt lake was converted into a gulf several miles in length. Since
that period, artificial reservoirs, or pits, (vasets,) have been
formed, to the north of the range of hills which separates the
castle from the north coast of the peninsula.
The consumption of salt amounted, in 1799 and 1800, in the two
provinces of Cumana* and Barcelona, to nine or ten thousand
fanegas, each sixteen arrobas, or four hundredweight. This
consumption is very considerable, and gives, if we deduct from the
total population fifty thousand Indians, who eat very little salt,
sixty pounds for each person. Salt beef, called tasajo, is the most
important article of export from Barcelona. Of nine or ten thousand
fanegas furnished by the two provinces conjointly, three thousand
only are produced by the salt-works of Araya; the rest is extracted
from the sea-water at the Morro of Barcelona, at Pozuelos, at
Piritu, and in the Golfo Triste. In Mexico, the salt lake of Penon
Blanco alone furnishes yearly more than two hundred and fifty
thousand fanegas of unpurified salt. (* At the period of my visit
to that country the government of Cumana comprehended the two
provinces of New Andalusia and New Barcelona. The words province
and govierno, or government of Cumana, are consequently not
synonymous. A Catalonian, Juan de Urpin, who had been by turns a
canon, a doctor of laws, a counsellor in St. Domingo, and a private
soldier in the castle of Araya, founded in 1636, the city of New
Barcelona, and attempted to give the name of New Catalonia (Nueva
Cathaluna) to the province of which this newly constructed city
became the capital.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 156 of 407
Words from 80683 to 81188
of 211363