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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I Will Here Cite A Passage Strongly Characteristic Of La
Bruyere's Benevolent Feeling For His Fellow-Creatures.
"We find
(under the torrid zone) certain wild animals, male and female,
scattered through the country, black, livid, and all over scorched
by the sun, bent to the earth which they dig and turn up with
invincible perseverance.
They have something like articulate
utterance; and when they stand up on their feet, they exhibit a
human face, and in fact these creatures are men.")
In 1800 the number of slaves did not exceed six thousand in the two
provinces of Cumana and Barcelona, when at the same period the
whole population was estimated at one hundred and ten thousand
inhabitants. The trade in African slaves, which the laws of the
Spaniards have never favoured, is almost as nothing on these coasts
where the trade in American slaves was carried on in the sixteenth
century with desolating activity. Macarapan, anciently called
Amaracapana, Cumana, Araya, and particularly New Cadiz, built on
the islet of Cubagua, might then be considered as commercial
establishments for facilitating the slave trade. Girolamo Benzoni
of Milan, who at the age of twenty-two visited Terra Firma, took
part in some expeditions in 1542 to the coasts of Bordones,
Cariaco, and Paria, to carry off the unfortunate natives, he
relates with simplicity, and often with a sensibility not common in
the historians of that time, the examples of cruelty of which he
was a witness. He saw the slaves dragged to New Cadiz, to be marked
on the forehead and on the arms, and for the payment of the quint
to the officers of the crown.
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