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 Judge Of The Influence Which The Slaves And Men Of
Colour Exercise On The Public Tranquility, It Is Not Enough To Know
Their Number, We Must Consider Their Accumulation At Certain
Points, And Their Manner Of Life, As Cultivators Or Inhabitants Of
Towns.
In the province of Venezuela, the slaves are assembled
together on a space of no great extent, between the coast, and a
line which passes (at twelve leagues from the coast) through
Panaquire, Yare, Sabana de Ocumare, Villa de Cura, and Nirgua.
The
llanos or vast plains of Calaboso, San Carlos, Guanare, and
Barquecimeto, contain only four or five thousand slaves, who are
scattered among the farms, and employed in the care of cattle. The
number of free men is very considerable; the Spanish laws and
customs being favourable to affranchisement. A master cannot refuse
liberty to a slave who offers him the sum of three hundred
piastres, even though the slave may have cost double that price, on
account of his industry, or a particular aptitude for the trade he
practises. Instances of persons who voluntarily bestow liberty on a
certain number of their slaves, are more common in the province of
Venezuela than in any other place. A short time before we visited
the fertile valleys of Aragua and the lake of Valencia, a lady who
inhabited the great village of Victoria, ordered her children, on
her death-bed, to give liberty to all her slaves, thirty in number.
I feel pleasure in recording facts that do honour to the character
of a people from whom M. Bonpland and myself received so many marks
of kindness.
If we compare the seven united provinces of Venezuela with the
kingdom of Mexico and the island of Cuba, we shall succeed in
finding the approximate number of white Creoles, and even of
Europeans. The white Creoles, whom I may call Hispano-Americans,*
(* In imitation of the word Anglo-American, adapted in all the
languages of Europe. In the Spanish colonies, the whites born in
America are called Spaniards; and the real Spaniards, those born in
the mother country, are called Europeans, Gachupins, or Chapetons.)
form in Mexico nearly a fifth, and in the island of Cuba, according
to the very accurate enumeration of 1801, a third of the whole
population. When we reflect that the kingdom of Mexico contains two
millions and a half of natives of the copper-coloured race; when we
consider the state of the coasts bordering on the Pacific, and the
small number of whites in the intendencias of Puebla and Oaxaca,
compared with the natives, we cannot doubt that the province of
Venezuela at least, if not the capitania-general, has a greater
proportion than that of one to five. The island of Cuba,* (* I do
not mention the kingdom of Buenos Ayres, where, among a million of
inhabitants, the whites are extremely numerous in parts near the
coast; while the table-lands, or provinces of the sierra are almost
entirely peopled with natives.) in which the whites are even more
numerous than in Chile, may furnish us with a limiting number, that
is to say, the maximum which may be supposed in the
capitania-general of Caracas.
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