Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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To Our Great Annoyance, The Missionary Of Catuaro
Insisted On Conducting Us To Cariaco; And We Could Not Decline The
Proposal.
The movement for independence, which had nearly broken
out at Caracas in 1798, had been preceded and followed by great
agitation among the slaves at Coro, Maracaybo, and Cariaco.
At the
last of these places an unfortunate negro had been condemned to
die, and our host, the vicar of Catuaro, was going thither to offer
him spiritual comfort. During our journey we could not escape
conversations, in which the missionary pertinaciously insisted on
the necessity of the slave-trade, on the innate wickedness of the
blacks, and the benefit they derived from their state of slavery
among the Christians! The mildness of Spanish legislation, compared
with the Black Code of most other nations that have possessions in
either of the Indies, cannot be denied. But such is the state of
the negroes, that justice, far from efficaciously protecting them
during their lives, cannot even punish acts of barbarity which
cause their death.
The road we took across the forest of Catuaro resembled the descent
of the mountain Santa Maria; here also, the most difficult and
dangerous places have fanciful names. We walked as in a narrow
furrow, scooped out by torrents, and filled with fine tenacious
clay. The mules lowered their cruppers and slid down the steepest
slopes. This descent is called Saca Manteca.* (* Or the
Butter-Slope. Manteca in Spanish signifies butter.) There is no
danger in the descent, owing to the great address of the mules of
this country. The clay, which renders the soil so slippery, is
produced by the numerous layers of sandstone and schistose clay
crossing the bluish grey alpine limestone. This last disappears as
we draw nearer to Cariaco. When we reached the mountain of Meapira,
we found it formed in great part of a white limestone, filled with
fossil remains, and from the grains of quartz agglutinated in the
mass, it appeared to belong to the great formation of the sea-coast
breccias. We descended this mountain on the strata of the rock, the
section of which forms steps of unequal height. Farther on, going
out of the forest, we reached the hill of Buenavista,* (* Mountain
of the Fine Prospect.) well deserving the name it bears; since it
commands a view of the town of Cariaco, situated in the midst of a
vast plain filled with plantations, huts, and scattered groups of
cocoa-palms. To the west of Cariaco extends the wide gulf; which a
wall of rock separates from the ocean: and towards the east are
seen, like bluish clouds, the high mountains of Paria and Areo.
This is one of the most extensive and magnificent prospects that
can be enjoyed on the coast of New Andalusia. In the town of
Cariaco we found a great part of the inhabitants suffering from
intermittent fever; a disease which in autumn assumes a formidable
character. When we consider the extreme fertility of the
surrounding plains, their moisture, and the mass of vegetation with
which they are covered, we may easily conceive why, amidst so much
decomposition of organic matter, the inhabitants do not enjoy that
salubrity of air which characterizes the climate of Cumana.
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