Venezuela, The Eastern Part Of The Republic Of Columbia, Would Not, Even With Nine Millions, Have A More Considerable Population

Than Old Spain; and can it be doubted that that part of Venezuela which is most fertile and easy of

Cultivation, that is, the 10,000 square leagues remaining after deducting the Llanos and the almost impenetrable forests between the Orinoco and the Cassiquiare, could support in the fine climate of the tropics as many inhabitants as 10,000 square leagues of Estramadura, the Castiles, and other provinces of the table-land of Spain? These predictions are by no means problematical, inasmuch as they are founded on physical analogies and on the productive power of the soil; but before we can indulge the hope that they will be actually accomplished, we must be secure of another element less susceptible of calculation - that national wisdom which subdues hostile passions, destroys the germs of civil discord and gives stability to free and energetic institutions.

When we take a view of the soil of Venezuela and New Grenada we perceive that no other country of Spanish America furnishes commerce with such various and rich productions of the vegetable kingdom. If we add the harvests of the province of Caracas to those of Guayaquil, we find that the republic of Columbia alone can furnish nearly all the cacao annually demanded by Europe. The union of Venezuela and New Grenada has also placed in the hands of one people the greater part of the quinquina exported from the New Continent. The temperate mountains of Merida, Santa Fe, Popayan, Quito and Loxa produce the finest qualities of this febrifugal bark hitherto known. I might swell the list of these valuable productions by the coffee and indigo of Caracas, so long esteemed in commerce; the sugar, cotton and flour of Bogota; the ipecacuanha of the banks of the Magdelena; the tobacco of Varinas; the Cortex Angosturae of Caroni; the balsam of the plains of Tolu; the skins and dried provisions of the Llanos; the pearls of Panama, Rio Hacha and Marguerita; and finally the gold of Popayan and the platinum which is nowhere found in abundance but at Choco and Barbacoa: but conformably with the plan I have adopted, I shall confine myself to the old Capitania-General of Caracas.

Owing to a peculiar disposition of the soil in Venezuela the three zones of agricultural, pastoral and hunting-life succeed each other from north to south along the coast in the direction of the equator. Advancing in that direction we may be said to traverse, in respect to space, the different stages through which the human race has passed in the lapse of ages, in its progress towards cultivation and in laying the foundations of civilized society. 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. The impunity conceded to the skin-stealers and the accumulation of marauders in the savannahs preceded that destruction of cattle caused by the ravages of civil war and the supplies required for troops. A very considerable number of goat-skins is exported to the island of Marguerita, Punta Araya and Corolas; sheep abound only in Carora and Tocuyo. The consumption of meat being immense in this country the diminution of animals has a greater influence here than in any other district on the well-being of the inhabitants. The town of Caracas, of which the population in my time was one-tenth of that of Paris, consumed more than one-half the quantity of beef annually used in the capital of France.

I might add to the productions of the vegetable and animal kingdoms of Venezuela the enumeration of the minerals, the working of which is worthy the attention of the government; but having from my youth been engaged in the practical labours of mines I know how vague and uncertain are the judgments formed of the metallic wealth of a country from the mere appearance of the rocks and of the veins in their beds. The utility of such labours can be determined only by well directed experiments by means of shafts or galleries. All that has been done in researches of this kind, under the dominion of the mother-country, has left the question wholly undecided and the most exaggerated ideas have been recently spread through Europe concerning the riches of the mines of Caracas.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 55 of 170
Words from 55550 to 56564 of 174507