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 Marly Gypsum, Of Which We Collected Specimens Near
The Carib Mission Of Cachipo, Appeared To Me To Belong To The Same
Formation As The Gypsum Of Ortiz.
To class it according to the type of
European formations I would range it among the gypsums, often
muriatiferous, that cover the Alpine limestone or zechstein.
Farther
north, in the direction of the mission of San Josef de Curataquiche,
M. Bonpland picked up in the plain some fine pieces of riband jasper,
or Egyptian pebbles. We did not see them in their native place
enchased in the rock, and cannot determine whether they belong to a
very recent conglomerate or to that limestone which we saw at the
Morro of Nueva Barcelona, and which is not transition limestone though
it contains beds of schistose jasper (kieselschiefer).
We rested on the night of the 16th of July in the Indian village of
Santa Cruz de Cachipo. This mission, founded in 1749 by several Carib
families who inhabited the inundated and unhealthy banks of the
Lagunetas de Auache, is opposite the confluence of the Zir Puruay with
the Orinoco. We lodged at the house of the missionary, Fray Jose de
las Piedras; and, on examining the registers of the parish, we saw how
rapidly the prosperity of the community has been advanced by his zeal
and intelligence. Since we had reached the middle of the plains, the
heat had increased to such a degree that we should have preferred
travelling no more during the day; but we were without arms and the
Llanos were then infested by large numbers of robbers who attacked and
murdered the whites who fell into their hands. Nothing can be worse
than the administration of justice in these colonies. We everywhere
found the prisons filled with malefactors on whom sentence is not
passed till after the lapse of seven or eight years. Nearly a third of
the prisoners succeed in making their escape; and the unpeopled
plains, filled with herds, furnish them with booty. They commit their
depredations on horseback in the manner of the Bedouins. The
insalubrity of the prisons would be attended with fatal results but
that these receptacles are cleared from time to time by the flight of
the prisoners. It also frequently happens that sentences of death,
tardily pronounced by the Audiencia of Caracas, cannot be executed for
want of a hangman. In these cases the barbarous custom is observed of
pardoning one criminal on condition of his hanging the others. Our
guides related to us that, a short time before our arrival on the
coast of Cumana, a Zambo, known for the great ferocity of his manners,
determined to screen himself from punishment by turning executioner.
The preparations for the execution however, shook his resolution; he
felt a horror of himself, and preferring death to the disgrace of thus
saving his life, he called again for his irons which had been struck
off. He did not long remain in prison, and he underwent his sentence
through the baseness of one of his accomplices.
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