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 Province Of Caracas,* (* The Province, Not The
Capitania-General, Consequently Not Including The Cacao Plantations Of
Cumana, The Province
Of Barcelona, of Maracaybo, of Varinas, and of
Spanish Guiana.) at the end of the eighteenth century, produced
annually a
Hundred and fifty thousand fanegas, of which a hundred
thousand were consumed in Spain, and thirty thousand in the province.
Estimating a fanega of cacao at only twenty-five piastres for the
price given at Cadiz, we find that the total value of the exportation
of cacao, by the six ports of the Capitania General of Caracas,
amounts to four million eight hundred thousand piastres. So important
an object of commerce merits a careful discussion; and I flatter
myself, that, from the great number of materials I have collected on
all the branches of colonial agriculture, I shall be able to add
something to the information published by M. Depons, in his valuable
work on the provinces of Venezuela.
The tree which produces the cacao is not at present found wild in the
forests of Terra Firma to the north of the Orinoco; we began to find
it only beyond the cataracts of Ature and Maypure. It abounds
particularly near the banks of the Ventuari, and on the Upper Orinoco,
between the Padamo and the Gehette. This scarcity of wild cacao-trees
in South America, north of the latitude of 6 degrees, is a very
curious phenomenon of botanical geography, and yet little known. This
phenomenon appears the more surprising, as, according to the annual
produce of the harvest, the number of trees in full bearing in the
cacao-plantations of Caracas, Nueva Barcelona, Venezuela, Varinas, and
Maracaybo, is estimated at more than sixteen millions.
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