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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In Many Parts Coffee And Cotton-Trees Progressively Take
Place Of The Cacao, Of Which The Lingering Harvests Weary The Patience
Of The Cultivator.
It is also asserted, that the new plantations of
cacao are less productive than the old; the trees do not acquire the
same vigour, and yield later and less abundant fruit.
The soil is
still said to be exhausted; but probably it is rather the atmosphere
that is changed by the progress of clearing and cultivation. The air
that reposes on a virgin soil covered with forests is loaded with
humidity and those gaseous mixtures that serve for the nutriment of
plants, and arise from the decomposition of organic substances. When a
country has been long subjected to cultivation, it is not the
proportions between the azote and oxygen that vary. The constituent
bases of the atmosphere remain unaltered; but it no longer contains,
in a state of suspension, those binary and ternary mixtures of carbon,
hydrogen, and nitrogen, which a virgin soil exhales, and which are
regarded as a source of fecundity. The air, purer and less charged
with miasmata and heterogeneous emanations, becomes at the same time
drier. The elasticity of the vapours undergoes a sensible diminution.
On land long cleared, and consequently little favourable to the
cultivation of the cacao-tree (as, for instance, in the West India
Islands), the fruit is almost as small as that of the wild cacao-tree.
It is on the banks of the Upper Orinoco, after having crossed the
Llanos, that we find the true country of the cacao-tree; thick
forests, in which, on a virgin soil, and surrounded by an atmosphere
continually humid, the trees furnish, from the fourth year, abundant
crops. Wherever the soil is not exhausted, the fruit has become by
cultivation larger and bitter, but also later.
On seeing the produce of cacao gradually diminish in Terra Firma, it
may be inquired, whether the consumption will diminish in the same
proportion in Spain, Italy, and the rest of Europe; or whether it be
not probable, that by the destruction of the cacao plantations, the
price will augment sufficiently to rouse anew the industry of the
cultivator. This latter opinion is generally admitted by those who
deplore, at Caracas, the diminution of so ancient and profitable a
branch of commerce. In proportion as civilization extends towards the
humid forests of the interior, the banks of the Orinoco and the
Amazon, or towards the valleys that furrow the eastern declivity of
the Andes, the new planters will find lands and an atmosphere equally
favourable to the culture of the cacao-tree.
The Spaniards, in general, dislike a mixture of vanilla with the
cacao, as irritating the nervous system; the fruit, therefore, of that
orchideous plant is entirely neglected in the province of Caracas,
though abundant crops of it might be gathered on the moist and
feverish coast between Porto Cabello and Ocumare; especially at
Turiamo, where the fruits of the Epidendrum vanilla attain the length
of eleven or twelve inches. The English and the Anglo-Americans often
seek to make purchases of vanilla at the port of La Guayra, but the
merchants procure with difficulty a very small quantity. In the
valleys that descend from the chain of the coast towards the Caribbean
Sea, in the province of Truxillo, as well as in the Missions of
Guiana, near the cataracts of the Orinoco, a great quantity of vanilla
might be collected; the produce of which would be still more abundant,
if, according to the practice of the Mexicans, the plant were
disengaged, from time to time, from the creeping plants by which it is
entwined and stifled.
The hot and fertile valleys of the Cordillera of the coast of
Venezuela occupy a tract of land which, on the west, towards the lake
of Maracaybo, displays a remarkable variety of scenery. I shall
exhibit in one view, to close this chapter, the facts I have been able
to collect respecting the quality of the soil and the metallic riches
of the districts of Aroa, of Barquesimeto, and of Carora.
From the Sierra Nevada of Merida, and the paramos of Niquitao, Bocono,
and Las Rosas,* (Many travellers, who were monks, have asserted that
the little Paramo de Las Rosas, the height of which appears to be more
than 1,600 toises, is covered with rosemary, and the red and white
roses of Europe grow wild there. These roses are gathered to decorate
the altars in the neighbouring villages on the festivals of the
church. By what accident has our Rosa centifolia become wild in this
country, while we nowhere found it in the Andes of Quito and Peru? Can
it really be the rose-tree of our garden?) which contain the valuable
bark-tree, the eastern Cordillera of New Granada* (* The bark exported
from the port of Maracaybo does not come from the territory of
Venezuela, but from the mountains of Pamplona in New Grenada, being
brought down the Rio de San Faustino, that flows into the lake of
Maracaybo. (Pombo, Noticias sobre las Quinas, 1814 page 65.) Some is
collected near Merida, in the ravine of Viscucucuy.) decreases in
height so rapidly, that, between the ninth and tenth degrees of
latitude, it forms only a chain of little mountains, which, stretching
to the north-east by the Altar and Torito, separates the rivers that
join the Apure and the Orinoco from those numerous rivers that flow
either into the Caribbean Sea or the lake of Maracaybo. On this
dividing ridge are built the towns of Nirgua, San Felipe el Fuerte,
Barquesimeto, and Tocuyo. The first three are in a very hot climate;
but Tocuyo enjoys great coolness, and we heard with surprise, that,
beneath so fine a sky, the inhabitants have a strong propensity to
suicide. The ground rises towards the south; for Truxillo, the lake of
Urao, from which carbonate of soda is extracted, and La Grita, all to
the east of the Cordillera, though no farther distant, are four or
five hundred toises high.
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