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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If We Examine The State Of The Capitania-General Of Caracas,
According To The Principles Here Laid Down, We Perceive That
Agricultural Industry, The Great Mass Of Population, The Numerous
Towns, And Everything Connected With Advanced Civilization, Are
Found Near The Coast.
This coast extends along a space of two
hundred leagues.
It is washed by the Caribbean Sea, a sort of
Mediterranean, on the shores of which almost all the nations of
Europe have founded colonies; which communicates at several points
with the Atlantic; and which has had a considerable influence on
the progress of knowledge in the eastern part of equinoctial
America, from the time of the Conquest. The kingdoms of New Grenada
and Mexico have no connection with foreign colonies, and through
them with the nations of Europe, except by the ports of Carthagena,
of Santa Martha, of Vera Cruz, and of Campeachy. These vast
countries, from the nature of their coasts, and the isolation of
their inhabitants on the back of the Cordilleras, have few points
of contact with foreign lands. The gulf of Mexico also is but
little frequented during a part of the year, on account of the
danger of gales of wind from the north. The coasts of Venezuela, on
the contrary, from their extent, their eastward direction, the
number of their ports, and the safety of their anchorage at
different seasons, possess all the advantages of the Caribbean Sea.
The communications with the larger islands, and even with those
situated to windward, can nowhere be more frequent than from the
ports of Cumana, Barcelona, La Guayra, Porto Cabello, Coro, and
Maracaybo. Can we wonder that this facility of commercial
intercourse with the inhabitants of free America, and the agitated
nations of Europe, should in the provinces united under the
Capitania-General of Venezuela, have augmented opulence, knowledge,
and that restless desire of a local government, which is blended
with the love of liberty and republican forms?
The copper-coloured natives, or Indians, constitute an important
mass of the agricultural population only in those places where the
Spaniards, at the time of the Conquest, found regular governments,
social communities, and ancient and very complicated institutions;
as, for example, in New Spain, south of Durango; and in Peru, from
Cuzco to Potosi. In the Capitania-General of Caracas, the Indian
population is inconsiderable, at least beyond the Missions and in
the cultivated zone. Even in times of great political excitement,
the natives do not inspire any apprehension in the whites or the
mixed castes. Computing, in 1800, the total population of the seven
united provinces at nine hundred thousand souls, it appeared to me
that the Indians made only one-ninth; while at Mexico they form
nearly one half of the inhabitants.
Considering the Caribbean Sea, of which the gulf of Mexico makes a
part, as an interior sea with several mouths, it is important to
fix our attention on the political relations arising out of this
singular configuration of the New Continent, between countries
placed around the same basin.
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