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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They Have Already
Established Tan-Yards And Cotton-Spinning In A Few Villages; And If
They Suffer The Indians Henceforth
To enjoy the fruit of their
labours, they will find great resources in the native population.
Concentered on a small
Space of land, these monks have the
consciousness of their political importance, and have from time to
time resisted the civil authority, and that of their bishop. The
governors who reside at Angostura have struggled against them with
very unequal success, according as the ministry of Madrid showed a
complaisant deference for the ecclesiastical hierarchy, or sought to
limit its power. In 1768 Don Manuel Centurion carried off twenty
thousand head of cattle from the missionaries, in order to distribute
them among the indigent inhabitants. This liberality, exerted in a
manner not very legal, produced very serious consequences. The
governor was disgraced on the complaint of the Catalonian monks though
he had considerably extended the territory of the missions toward the
south, and founded the Villa de Barceloneta, above the confluence of
the Carony with the Rio Paragua, and the Ciudad de Guirior, near the
union of the Rio Paragua and the Paraguamusi. From that period the
civil administration has carefully avoided all intervention in the
affairs of the Capuchins, whose opulence has been exaggerated like
that of the Jesuits of Paraguay.
The missions of the Carony, by the configuration of their soil* and
the mixture of savannahs and arable lands, unite the advantages of the
Llanos of Calabozo and the valleys of Aragua.
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