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 Region Of The Coast Is The
Centre Of Agricultural Industry; The Region Of The Llanos Serves Only
For The Pasturage Of The Animals Which Europe Has Given To America And
Which Live There In A Half-Wild State.
Each of those regions includes
from seven to eight thousand square leagues; further south, between
the delta of the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro, lies a
vast extent of land as large as France, inhabited by hunting nations,
covered with thick forests and impassable swamps.
The productions of
the vegetable kingdom belong to the zones at each extremity; the
intermediary savannahs, into which oxen, horses, and mules were
introduced about the year 1548, afford food for some millions of those
animals. At the time when I visited Venezuela the annual exportation
from thence to the West India Islands amounted to 30,000 mules,
174,000 ox-hides and 140,000 arrobas (of twenty-five pounds) of
tasajo,* or dried meat slightly salted. (* The back of the animal is
cut in slices of moderate thickness. An ox or cow of the weight of 25
arrobas produces only 4 to 5 arrobas of tasajo or tasso. In 1792 the
port of Barcelona alone exported 98,017 arrobas to the island of Cuba.
The average price is 14 reals and varies from 10 to 18 (the real is
worth about 6 1/2 pence English). M. Urquinasa estimates the total
exportation of Venezuela in 1809 at 200,000 arrobas of tasajo.) It is
not from the advancement of agriculture or the progressive
encroachments on the pastoral lands that the hatos (herds and flocks)
have diminished so considerably within twenty years; it is rather
owing to the disorders of every kind that have prevailed, and the want
of security for property.
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