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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In This Country, So Little
Frequented, The Power Of Vegetation Is Such At The Period Of The
Great Rains, That A Man On Horseback Can With Difficulty Make His
Way Through Narrow Paths, Covered With Lianas And Intertwining
Branches.
To our great annoyance, the missionary of Catuaro
insisted on conducting us to Cariaco; and we could not decline the
proposal.
The movement for independence, which had nearly broken
out at Caracas in 1798, had been preceded and followed by great
agitation among the slaves at Coro, Maracaybo, and Cariaco. At the
last of these places an unfortunate negro had been condemned to
die, and our host, the vicar of Catuaro, was going thither to offer
him spiritual comfort. During our journey we could not escape
conversations, in which the missionary pertinaciously insisted on
the necessity of the slave-trade, on the innate wickedness of the
blacks, and the benefit they derived from their state of slavery
among the Christians! The mildness of Spanish legislation, compared
with the Black Code of most other nations that have possessions in
either of the Indies, cannot be denied. But such is the state of
the negroes, that justice, far from efficaciously protecting them
during their lives, cannot even punish acts of barbarity which
cause their death.
The road we took across the forest of Catuaro resembled the descent
of the mountain Santa Maria; here also, the most difficult and
dangerous places have fanciful names. We walked as in a narrow
furrow, scooped out by torrents, and filled with fine tenacious
clay.
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