Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 30 of 635 - First - Home
At The Period Of My
Voyage, The Territory Of The Observantin Monks Of St. Francis
Contained Seven Thousand Three Hundred
Inhabitants, and that of the
Capuchinos Catalanes seventeen thousand; an astonishing disproportion,
when we reflect on the smallness of the
Latter territory compared to
the vast banks of the Upper Orinoco, the Atabapo, the Cassiquiare and
the Rio Negro. It results from these statements that nearly two-thirds
of the population of a province of sixteen thousand eight hundred
square leagues are found concentrated between the Rio Imataca and the
town of Santo Thome del Angostura, on a space of ground only
fifty-five leagues in length, and thirty in breadth. Both of these
monastic governments are equally inaccessible to Whites, and form
status in statu. The first, that of the Observantins, I have described
from my own observations; it remains for me to record here the notions
I could procure respecting the second of these governments, that of
the Catalonian Capuchins. Fatal civil dissensions and epidemic fevers
have of late years diminished the long-increasing prosperity of the
missions of the Carony; but, notwithstanding these losses, the region
which we are going to examine is still highly interesting with respect
to political economy.
The missions of the Catalonian Capuchins, which in 1804 contained at
least sixty thousand head of cattle grazing in the savannahs, extend
from the eastern banks of the Carony and the Paragua as far as the
banks of the Imataca, the Curumu, and the Cuyuni; at the south-east
they border on English Guiana, or the colony of Essequibo; and toward
the south, in going up the desert banks of the Paragua and the
Paraguamasi, and crossing the Cordillera of Pacaraimo, they touch the
Portuguese settlements on the Rio Branco.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 30 of 635
Words from 7856 to 8149
of 174507