Without This Community Of Action And Effort Slavery, With Its Miseries And Excesses, Will Survive As It Did In Ancient

Rome,* along with elegance of manners, progressive intelligence, and all the charms of the civilization which its presence accuses, and

Which it threatens to destroy, whenever the hour of vengeance shall arrive. (* The argument deduced from the civilization of Rome and Greece in favour of slavery is much in vogue in the West Indies, where sometimes we find it adorned with all the graces of erudition. Thus, in speeches delivered in 1795, in the Legislative Assembly of Jamaica, it was alleged that from the example of elephants having been employed in the wars of Pyrrhus and Hannibal, it could not be blamable to have brought a hundred dogs and forty hunters from the island of Cuba to hunt the maroon negroes. Bryan Edwards volume 1 page 570.) Civilization, or slow national demoralization, merely prepare the way for future events; but to produce great changes in the social state there must be a coincidence of certain events, the period of the occurrence of which cannot be calculated. Such is the complication of human destiny, that the same cruelties which tarnished the conquest of America have been re-enacted before our own eyes in times which we suppose to be characterized by vast progress, information and general refinement of manners. Within the interval embraced by the span of one life we have seen the reign of terror in France, the expedition to St. Domingo,* (* The North American Review for 1821 Number 30 contains the following passage: Conflicts with slaves fighting for their freedom are not only dreadful on account of the atrocities to which they give rise on both sides; but even after freedom has been gained they help to confound every sentiment of justice and injustice. Some planters are condemning to death all the male negro population above six years of age. They affirm that those who have not borne arms will be contaminated by the example of those who have been fighting. This merciless act is the consequence of the result of the continued misfortunes of the colonies. Charault, Reflexions sur Saint Domingue.), the political re-action in Naples and Spain, I may also add, the massacres of Chio, Ipsara and Missolonghi, the work of the barbarians of Eastern Europe, which the civilized nations of the north and west did not deem it their duty to prevent. In slave countries, where the effect of long habit tends to legitimize institutions the most adverse to justice, it is vain to count on the influence of information, of intellectual culture, or refinement of manners, except in as much as all those benefits accelerate the impulse given by governments and facilitate the execution of measures once adopted. Without the directive action of governments and legislatures a peaceful revolution is a thing not to be hoped for. The danger becomes the more imminent when a general inquietude pervades the public mind; when amidst the political dissensions of neighbouring countries the faults and the duties of governments have been revealed: in such cases tranquillity can be restored only by a ruling authority which, in the noble consciousness of its power and right, sways events by entering itself on the career of improvement.

CHAPTER 3.32.

GEOGNOSTIC DESCRIPTION OF SOUTH AMERICA, NORTH OF THE RIVER AMAZON, AND EAST OF THE MERIDIAN OF THE SIERRA NEVADA DE MERIDA.

The object of this memoir is to concentrate the geological observations which I collected during my journeys among the mountains of New Andalusia and Venezuela, on the banks of the Orinoco and in the Llanos of Barcelona, Calabozo and the Apure; consequently, from the coast of the Caribbean Sea to the valley of the Amazon, between 2 and 10 1/2 degrees north latitude.

The extent of country which I traversed in different directions was more than 15,400 square leagues. It has already formed the subject of a geological sketch, traced hastily on the spot, after my return from the Orinoco, and published in 1801. At that period the direction of the Cordillera on the coast of Venezuela and the existence of the Cordillera of Parime were unknown in Europe. No measure of altitude had been attempted beyond the province of Quito; no rock of South America had been named; there existed no description of the superposition of rocks in any region of the tropics. Under these circumstances an essay tending to prove the identity of the formations of the two hemispheres could not fail to excite interest. The study of the collections which I brought back with me, and four years of journeying in the Andes, have enabled me to rectify my first views, and to extend an investigation which, by reason of its novelty, had been favourably received. That the most remarkable geological relations may be the more easily seized, I shall treat aphoristically, in different sections, the configuration of the soil, the general division of the land, the direction and inclination of the beds and the nature of the primitive, intermediary, secondary and tertiary rocks.

SECTION 1.

Configuration of the Country. Inequalities of the Soil. Chains and Groups of Mountains. Divisionary Ridges. Plains or Llanos.

South America is one of those great triangular masses which form the three continental parts of the southern hemisphere of the globe. In its exterior configuration it resembles Africa more than Australia. The southern extremities of the three continents are so placed that, in sailing from the Cape of Good Hope (latitude 33 degrees 55 minutes) to Cape Horn (latitude 55 degrees 58 minutes), and doubling the southern point of Van Diemen's Land (latitude 43 degrees 38 minutes), we see those lands stretching out towards the south pole in proportion as we advance eastward. A fourth part of the 571,000 square sea leagues* (* Almost double the extent of Europe.) which South America comprises is covered with mountains distributed in chains or gathered together in groups. The other parts are plains forming long uninterrupted bands covered with forests or gramina, flatter than in Europe, and rising progressively, at the distance of 300 leagues from the coast, between 30 and 170 toises above the level of the sea.

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