Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The
King's Officers Doubled Their Zeal In Furnishing Provision For The
Little Squadron.
Strangers, who boasted that they were free, appeared
to these people troublesome guests; and in a country of which
The
growing prosperity depended on clandestine communication with the
islands, and on a freedom of trade forced from the ministry, the
European Spaniards extolled the wisdom of the old code of laws (leyes
de Indias) which permitted the entrance of foreign vessels into their
ports only in extreme cases of want or distress. These contrasts
between the restless desires of the colonists and the distrustful
apathy of the government, throw some light on the great political
events which, after long preparation, have separated Spain from her
colonies.
We again passed a few agreeable days, from the third to the fifth of
November, at the peninsula of Araya, situated beyond the gulf of
Cariaco, opposite to Cumana.* (* I have already described the pearls
of Araya; its sulphurous deposits and submarine springs of liquid and
colourless petroleum. See volume 1.5.) We were informed that the
Indians carried to the town from time to time considerable quantities
of native alum, found in the neighbouring mountains. The specimens
shown to us sufficiently indicated that it was neither alunite,
similar to the rock of Tolfa and Piombino, nor those capillary and
silky salts of alkaline sulphate of alumina and magnesia that line the
clefts and cavities of rocks, but real masses of native alum, with a
conchoidal or imperfectly lamellar fracture. We were led to hope that
we should find the mine of alum (mina de alun) in the slaty cordillera
of Maniquarez, and so new a geological phenomenon was calculated to
rivet our attention.
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