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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Beyond The Small Village Of Antimano The Valley Becomes Much
Narrower.
The river is bordered with Lata, a fine gramineous plant
with distich leaves, which sometimes reaches the height of
Thirty
feet.* (* G. saccharoides.) Every hut is surrounded with enormous
trees of persea,* (* Laurus persea (alligator pear).) at the foot
of which the aristolochiae, paullinia, and other creepers vegetate.
The neighbouring mountains, covered with forests, seem to spread
humidity over the western extremity of the valley of Caracas. We
passed the night before our arrival at Las Ajuntas at a sugar-cane
plantation. A square house (the hacienda or farm of Don Fernando
Key-Munoz) contained nearly eighty negroes; they were lying on
skins of oxen spread upon the ground. In each apartment of the
house were four slaves: it looked like a barrack. A dozen fires
were burning in the farm-yard, where people were employed in
dressing food, and the noisy mirth of the blacks almost prevented
us from sleeping. The clouds hindered me from observing the stars;
the moon appeared only at intervals. The aspect of the landscape
was dull and uniform, and all the surrounding hills were covered
with aloes. Workmen were employed at a small canal, intended for
conveying the waters of the Rio San Pedro to the farm, at a height
of more than seventy feet. According to a barometric calculation,
the site of the hacienda is only fifty toises above the bed of the
Rio Guayra at La Noria, near Caracas.
The soil of these countries is found to be but little favourable to
the cultivation of the coffee-tree, which in general is less
productive in the valley of Caracas than was imagined when the
first plantations were made near Chacao. The finest
coffee-plantations are now found in the savannah of Ocumare, near
Salamanca, and at Rincon, in the mountainous countries of Los
Mariches, San Antonio Hatillo, and Los Budares. The coffee of the
three last mentioned places, situated eastward of Caracas, is of a
superior quality; but the trees bear a smaller quantity, which is
attributed to the height of the spot and the coolness of the
climate. The greater plantations of the province of Venezuela (as
Aguacates, near Valencia and Rincon) yield in good years a produce
of three thousand quintals.
The extreme predilection entertained in this province for the
culture of the coffee-tree is partly founded on the circumstance
that the berry can be preserved during a great number of years;
whereas, notwithstanding every possible care, cacao spoils in the
warehouses after ten or twelve months. During the long dissensions
of the European powers, at a time when Spain was too weak to
protect the commerce of her colonies, industry was directed in
preference to productions of which the sale was less urgent, and
could await the chances of political and commercial events. I
remarked that in the coffee-plantations the nurseries are formed
not so much by collecting together young plants, accidentally
rising under trees which have yielded a crop, as by exposing the
seeds of coffee to germination during five days, in heaps, between
plantain leaves.
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