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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Notwithstanding The Isolated State In
Which Most Of The Mother-Countries Endeavour To Hold Their
Colonies, The Agitations That Take Place Are Not The Less
Communicated From One To The Other.
The elements of discord are
everywhere the same; and, as if by instinct, an understanding is
established between men of the same colour, although separated by
difference of language, and inhabiting opposite coasts.
That
American Mediterranean formed by the shores of Venezuela, New
Grenada, Mexico, the United States, and the West India Islands,
counts upon its borders near a million and a half of free and
enslaved blacks; but so unequally distributed, that there are very
few to the south, and scarcely any in the regions of the west.
Their great accumulation is on the northern and eastern coasts,
which may be said to be the African part of the interior basin. The
commotions which since 1792 have broken out in St. Domingo, have
naturally been propagated to the coasts of Venezuela. So long as
Spain possessed those fine colonies in tranquillity, the little
insurrections of the slaves were easily repressed; but when a
struggle of another kind, that for independence, began, the blacks
by their menacing position excited alternately the apprehensions of
the opposite parties; and the gradual or instantaneous abolition of
slavery has been proclaimed in different regions of Spanish
America, less from motives of justice and humanity, than to secure
the aid of an intrepid race of men, habituated to privation, and
fighting for their own cause. I found in the narrative of the
voyage of Girolamo Benzoni, a curious passage, which proves that
the apprehensions caused by the increase of the black population
are of very old date. These apprehensions will cease only where
governments shall second by laws the progressive reforms which
refinement of manners, opinion, and religious sentiment, introduce
into domestic slavery. "The negroes," says Benzoni, "multiply so
much at St. Domingo, that in 1545, when I was in Terra Firma [on
the coast of Caracas], I saw many Spaniards who had no doubt that
the island would shortly be the property of the blacks."* (* "Vi
sono molti Spagnuoli che tengono per cosa certa, che quest' isola
(San Dominico) in breve tempo sara posseduta da questi Mori di
Guinea." (Benzoni Istoria del Mondo Nuovo ediz. 2da 1672 page 65.)
The author, who is not very scrupulous in the adoption of
statistical facts, believes that in his time there were at St.
Domingo seven thousand fugitive negroes (Mori cimaroni), with whom
Don Luis Columbus made a treaty of peace and friendship.) It was
reserved for our age to see this prediction accomplished; and a
European colony of America transform itself into an African state.
The sixty thousand slaves which the seven united provinces of
Venezuela are computed to contain, are so unequally divided, that
in the province of Caracas alone there are nearly forty thousand,
one-fifth of whom are mulattoes; in Maracaybo, there are ten or
twelve thousand; but in Cumana and Barcelona, scarcely six
thousand.
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