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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The Merchants Of Cadiz Assign The First Rank To
The Cacao Of Caracas, Immediately After That Of Socomusco; And Its
Price Is Generally From Thirty To Forty Per Cent Higher Than That Of
Guayaquil.
It is only since the middle of the seventeenth century, when the
Dutch, tranquil possessors of the island of Curacoa, awakened, by
their smuggling, the agricultural industry of the inhabitants of the
neighbouring coasts, that cacao has become an object of exportation in
the province of Caracas.
We are ignorant of everything that passed in
those countries before the establishment of the Biscay Company of
Guipuzcoa, in 1728. No precise statistical data have reached us: we
only know that the exportation of cacao from Caracas scarcely
amounted, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, to thirty
thousand fanegas a-year. From 1730 to 1748, the company sent to Spain
eight hundred and fifty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight
fanegas, which make, on an average, forty-seven thousand seven hundred
fanegas a-year; the price of the fanega fell, in 1732, to forty-five
piastres, when it had before kept at eighty piastres. In 1763 the
cultivation had so much augmented, that the exportation rose to eighty
thousand six hundred and fifty-nine fanegas.
In an official document, taken from the papers of the minister of
finance, the annual produce (la cosecha) of the province of Caracas is
estimated at a hundred and thirty-five thousand fanegas of cacao;
thirty-three thousand of which are for home consumption, ten thousand
for other Spanish colonies, seventy-seven thousand for the
mother-country, fifteen thousand for the illicit commerce with the
French, English, Dutch, and Danish colonies. From 1789 to 1793, the
importation of cacao from Caracas into Spain was, on an average,
seventy-seven thousand seven hundred and nineteen fanegas a-year, of
which sixty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty-six were consumed in
the country, and eleven thousand nine hundred and fifty-three exported
to France, Italy, and Germany.
The late wars have had much more fatal effects on the cacao trade of
Caracas than on that of Guayaquil. On account of the increase of
price, less cacao of the first quality has been consumed in Europe.
Instead of mixing, as was done formerly for common chocolate, one
quarter of the cacao of Caracas, with three-quarters of that of
Guayaquil, the latter has been employed pure in Spain. We must here
remark, that a great deal of cacao of an inferior quality, such as
that of Maranon, the Rio Negro, Honduras, and the island of St. Lucia,
bears the name, in commerce, of Guayaquil cacao. The exportation from
that port amounts only to sixty thousand fanegas; consequently it is
two-thirds less than that of the ports of the Capitania-General of
Caracas.
Though the plantations of cacao have augmented in the provinces of
Cumana, Barcelona, and Maracaybo, in proportion as they have
diminished in the province of Caracas, it is still believed that, in
general, this ancient branch of agricultural industry gradually
declines.
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