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 84 of 208 - First - Home
A Small
Number, Bound From Affection To Their Native Soil, Remained In This
Wild And Barren Spot.
These poor people live by catching fish,
which are extremely abundant on the coast and the neighbouring
shoals.
They appear satisfied with their condition, and think it
strange when they are asked why they have no gardens or culinary
vegetables. Our gardens, they reply, are beyond the gulf; when we
carry our fish to Cumana, we bring back plantains, cocoa-nuts, and
cassava. This system of economy, which favours idleness, is
followed at Maniquarez, and throughout the whole peninsula of
Araya. The chief wealth of the inhabitants consists in goats, which
are of a very large and very fine breed, and rove in the fields
like those at the Peak of Teneriffe. They have become entirely
wild, and are marked like the mules, because it would be difficult
to recognize them from their colour or the arrangement of their
spots. These wild goats are of a brownish yellow, and are not
varied in colour like domestic animals. If in hunting, a colonist
kills a goat which he does not consider as his own property, he
carries it immediately to the neighbour to whom it belongs. During
two days we heard it everywhere spoken of as a very extraordinary
circumstance, that an inhabitant of Maniquarez had lost a goat, on
which it was probable that a neighbouring family had regaled
themselves.
Among the Mulattoes, whose huts surround the salt lake, we found it
shoemaker of Castilian descent. He received us with the air of
gravity and self-sufficiency which in those countries characterize
almost all persons who are conscious of possessing some peculiar
talent. He was employed in stretching the string of his bow, and
sharpening his arrows to shoot birds. His trade of a shoemaker
could not be very lucrative in a country where the greater part of
the inhabitants go barefooted; and he only complained that, on
account of the dearness of European gunpowder, a man of his quality
was reduced to employ the same weapons as the Indians. He was the
sage of the plain; he understood the formation of the salt by the
influence of the sun and full moon, the symptoms of earthquakes,
the marks by which mines of gold and silver are discovered, and the
medicinal plants, which, like all the other colonists from Chile to
California, he classified into hot and cold.* (* Exciting or
debilitating, the sthenic and asthenic, of Brown's system.) Having
collected the traditions of the country, he gave us some curious
accounts of the pearls of Cubagua, objects of luxury, which he
treated with the utmost contempt. To show us how familiar to him
were the sacred writings he took a pride in reminding us that Job
preferred wisdom to all the pearls of the Indies. His philosophy
was circumscribed to the narrow circle of the wants of life. The
possession of a very strong ass, able to carry a heavy load of
plantains to the embarcadero, was the consummation of all his
wishes.
After a long discourse on the emptiness of human greatness, he drew
from a leathern pouch a few very small opaque pearls, which he
forced us to accept, enjoining us at the same time to note on our
tablets that a poor shoemaker of Araya, but a white man, and of
noble Castilian race, had been enabled to give us something which,
on the other side of the sea,* was sought for as very precious. (*
'Por alla,' or, 'del otro lado del charco,' (properly 'beyond,' or
'on the other side of the great lake'), a figurative expression, by
which the people in the Spanish colonies denote Europe.) I here
acquit myself of the promise I made to this worthy man, who
disinterestedly refused to accept of the slightest retribution. The
Pearl Coast presents the same aspect of misery as the countries of
gold and diamonds, Choco and Brazil; but misery is not there
attended with that immoderate desire of gain which is excited by
mineral wealth.
The pearl-breeding oyster (Avicula margaritifera, Cuvier) abounds
on the shoals which extend from Cape Paria to Cape la Vela. The
islands of Margareta, Cubagua, Coche, Punta Araya, and the mouth of
the Rio la Hacha, were, in the sixteenth century, as celebrated as
were the Persian Gulf and the island of Taprobana among the
ancients. It is incorrectly alleged by some historians that the
natives of America were unacquainted with the luxury of pearls. The
first Spaniards who landed in Terra Firma found the savages decked
with pearl necklaces and bracelets; and among the civilized people
of Mexico and Peru, pearls of a beautiful form were extremely
sought after. I have published a dissertation on the statue of a
Mexican priestess in basalt, whose head-dress, resembling the
calantica of the heads of Isis, is ornamented with pearls. Las
Casas and Benzoni have described, but not without some
exaggeration, the cruelties which were exercised on the unhappy
Indian slaves and negroes employed in the pearl fishery. At the
beginning of the conquest the island of Coche alone furnished
pearls amounting in value to fifteen hundred marks per month.
The quint which the king's officers drew from the produce of
pearls, amounted to fifteen thousand ducats; which, according to
the value of the precious metals in those times, and the
extensiveness of contraband trade, may be regarded as a very
considerable sum. It appears that till 1530 the value of the pearls
sent to Europe amounted yearly on an average to more than eight
hundred thousand piastres. In order to judge of the importance of
this branch of commerce to Seville, Toledo, Antwerp, and Genoa, we
should recollect that at the same period the whole of the mines of
America did not furnish two millions of piastres; and that the
fleet of Ovando was thought to contain immense wealth, because it
had on board nearly two thousand six hundred marks of silver.
Pearls were the more sought after, as the luxury of Asia had been
introduced into Europe by two ways diametrically opposite:
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 84 of 208
Words from 84612 to 85633
of 211363