Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 327 of 779 - First - Home
It Was Situated In
A Narrow Valley, Where We Felt The Enjoyment Of A Cool And
Delicious Climate, In The Centre Of The Torrid Zone.
The
surrounding mountains contain caverns haunted by thousands of
nocturnal birds; and, what affects the imagination more than all
the wonders of the physical world, we find beyond these mountains a
people lately nomad, and still nearly in a state of nature, wild
without being barbarous.
It was in the promontory of Paria that
Columbus first descried the continent; there terminate these
valleys, laid waste alternately by the warlike anthropophagic Carib
and by the commercial and polished nations of Europe. At the
beginning of the sixteenth century the ill-fated Indians of the
coasts of Carupano, of Macarapan, and of Caracas, were treated in
the same manner as the inhabitants of the coast of Guinea in our
days. The soil of the islands was cultivated, the vegetable produce
of the Old World was transplanted thither, but a regular system of
colonization remained long unknown on the New Continent. If the
Spaniards visited its shores, it was only to procure, either by
violence or exchange, slaves, pearls, grains of gold, and
dye-woods; and endeavours were made to ennoble the motives of this
insatiable avarice by the pretence of enthusiastic zeal in the
cause of religion.
The trade in the copper-coloured Indians was accompanied by the
same acts of inhumanity as that which characterizes the traffic in
African negroes; it was attended also by the same result, that of
rendering both the conquerors and the conquered more ferocious.
Thence wars became more frequent among the natives; prisoners were
dragged from the inland countries to the coast, to be sold to the
whites, who Loaded them with chains in their ships.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 327 of 779
Words from 88696 to 88990
of 211363