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 Population, Which Augments Perceptibly As
You Advance Toward The Capital, Comprises But Few Indians, And Is
Composed Chiefly Of Whites, Negroes, And Men Of Mixed Descent.
The
number of the negroes is not great; but here, as everywhere else, the
poverty of their masters does not tend to procure for them more humane
treatment.
An inhabitant of Caycara had just been condemned to four
years' imprisonment, and a fine of one hundred piastres for having, in
a paroxysm of rage, tied a negress by the legs to the tail of his
horse, and dragged her at full gallop through the savannah till she
expired. It is gratifying to record that the Audiencia was generally
blamed in the country for not having punished more severely so
atrocious an action. Yet some few persons, who pretended to be the
most enlightened and most sagacious of the community, deemed the
punishment of a white contrary to sound policy, at the moment when the
blacks of St. Domingo were in complete insurrection. Since I left
those countries, civil dissensions have put arms into the hands of the
slaves; and fatal experience has led the inhabitants of Venezuela to
regret that they refused to listen to Don Domingo Tovar, and other
right-thinking men, who, as early as the year 1795, lifted up their
voices in the cabildo of Caracas, to prevent the introduction of
blacks, and to propose means that might ameliorate their condition.
After having slept on the 10th of June in an island in the middle of
the river (I believe that called Acaru by Father Caulin), we passed
the mouth of the Rio Caura.
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