Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Such Daring Expeditions Could Not Be Carried Out Without
All The Apparatus Of War; And The Weapons, Which Had Been Destined For
The Defence Of The New Colonists, Were Employed Without Intermission
Against The Unhappy Natives.
When more peaceful times succeeded to
those of violence and public calamity, two powerful Indian tribes, the
Cabres and the Caribs of the Orinoco, made themselves masters of the
country which the Conquistadores had ceased to ravage.
None but poor
monks were then permitted to advance to the south of the steppes.
Beyond the Uritucu an unknown world opened to the Spanish colonists;
and the descendants of those intrepid warriors who had extended their
conquests from Peru to the coasts of New Grenada and the mouth of the
Amazon, knew not the roads that lead from Coro to the Rio Meta. The
shore of Venezuela remained a separate country; and the slow conquests
of the Jesuit missionaries were successful only by skirting the banks
of the Orinoco. These fathers had already penetrated beyond the great
cataracts of Atures and Maypures, when the Andalusian Capuchins had
scarcely reached the plains of Calabozo, from the coast and the
valleys of Aragua. It would be difficult to explain these contrasts by
the system according to which the different monastic orders are
governed; for the aspect of the country contributes powerfully to the
more or less rapid progress of the Missions. They extend but slowly
into the interior of the land, over mountains, or in steppes, wherever
they do not follow the course of a particular river.
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