Moreover, a thick wood spreading over marshy grounds would diffuse noxious exhalations in the atmosphere, even though that wood were composed of trees possessing in themselves no deleterious properties. Wherever mangroves grow on the sea-shore, the beach is covered with infinite numbers of molluscs and insects. These animals love shade and faint light, and they find themselves sheltered from the shock of the waves amid the scaffolding of thick and intertwining roots, which rises like lattice-work above the surface of the waters. Shell-fish cling to this lattice; crabs nestle in the hollow trunks; and the seaweeds, drifted to the coast by the winds and tides, remain suspended on the branches which incline towards the earth. Thus, maritime forests, by the accumulation of a slimy mud between the roots of the trees, increase the extent of land. But whilst these forests gain on the sea, they do not enlarge their own dimensions; on the contrary, their progress is the cause of their destruction. Mangroves, and other plants with which they live constantly in society, perish in proportion as the ground dries and they are no longer bathed with salt water. Their old trunks, covered with shells, and half-buried in the sand, denote, after the lapse of ages, the path they have followed in their migrations, and the limits of the land which they have wrested from the ocean.

The bay of Higuerote is favourably situated for examining Cape Codera, which is there seen in its full extent seven miles distant. This promontory is more remarkable for its size than for its elevation, being only about two hundred toises high. It is perpendicular on the north-west and east. In these grand profiles the dip of the strata appears to be distinguishable. Judging from the fragments of rock found along the coast, and from the hills near Higuerote, Cape Codera is not composed of granite with a granular texture, but of a real gneiss with a foliated texture. Its laminae are very broad and sometimes sinuous.* (* Dickflasriger gneiss.) They contain large nodules of reddish feldspar and but little quartz. The mica is found in superposed lamellae, not isolated. The strata nearest the bay were in the direction of 60 degrees north-east, and dipped 80 degrees to north-west. These relations of direction and of dip are the same at the great mountain of the Silla, near Caracas, and to the east of Maniquarez, in the isthmus of Araya. They seem to prove that the primitive chain of that isthmus, after having been ruptured or swallowed up by the sea along a space of thirty-five leagues,* (* Between the meridians of Maniquarez and Higuerote.) appears anew in Cape Codera, and continues westward as a chain of the coast.

I was assured that, in the interior of the earth, south of Higuerote, limestone formations are found. The gneiss did not act upon the magnetic needle; yet along the coast, which forms a cove near Cape Codera, and which is covered with a fine forest, I saw magnetic sand mixed with spangles of mica, deposited by the sea. This phenomenon occurs again near the port of La Guayra. Possibly it may denote the existence of some strata of hornblende-schist covered by the waters, in which schist the sand is disseminated. Cape Codera forms on the north an immense spherical segment. A shallow which stretches along its foot is known to navigators by the name of the points of Tutumo and of San Francisco.

The road by land from Higuerote to Caracas, runs through a wild and humid tract of country, by the Montana of Capaya, north of Caucagua, and the valley of Rio Guatira and Guarenas. Some of our fellow-travellers determined on taking this road, and M. Bonpland also preferred it, notwithstanding the continual rains and the overflowing of the rivers. It afforded him the opportunity of making a rich collection of new plants.* (* Bauhinia ferruginea, Brownea racemosa, B ed. Inga hymenaeifolia, I. curiepensis (which Willdenouw has called by mistake I. caripensis), etc.) For my part, I continued alone with the Guaiqueria pilot the voyage by sea; for I thought it hazardous to lose sight of the instruments which we were to make use of on the banks of the Orinoco.

We set sail at night-fall. The wind was unfavourable, and we doubled Cape Codera with difficulty. The surges were short, and often broke one upon another. The sea ran the higher, owing to the wind being contrary to the current, till after midnight. The general motion of the waters within the tropics towards the west is felt strongly on the coast during two-thirds of the year. In the months of September, October, and November, the current often flows eastward for fifteen or twenty days in succession; and vessels on their way from Guayra to Porto Cabello have sometimes been unable to stem the current which runs from west to east, although they have had the wind astern. The cause of these anomalies is not yet discovered. The pilots think they are the effect of gales of wind from the north-west in the gulf of Mexico.

On the 21st of November, at sunrise, we were to the west of Cape Codera, opposite Curuao. The coast is rocky and very elevated, the scenery at once wild and picturesque. We were sufficiently near land to distinguish scattered huts surrounded by cocoa-trees, and masses of vegetation, which stood out from the dark ground of the rocks. The mountains are everywhere perpendicular, and three or four thousand feet high; their sides cast broad and deep shadows upon the humid land, which stretches out to the sea, glowing with the freshest verdure. This shore produces most of those fruits of the hot regions, which are seen in such great abundance in the markets of the Caracas. The fields cultivated with sugar-cane and maize, between Camburi and Niguatar, stretch through narrow valleys, looking like crevices or clefts in the rocks: and penetrated by the rays of the sun, then above the horizon, they presented the most singular contrasts of light and shade.

The mountain of Niguatar and the Silla of Caracas are the loftiest summits of this littoral chain. The first almost reaches the height of Canigou; it seems as if the Pyrenees or the Alps, stripped of their snows, had risen from the bosom of the ocean; so much more stupendous do mountains appear when viewed for the first time from the sea. Near Caravalleda, the cultivated lands enlarge; we find hills with gentle declivities, and the vegetation rises to a great height. The sugar-cane is here cultivated, and the monks of La Merced have a plantation with two hundred slaves. This spot was formerly extremely subject to fever; and it is said that the air has acquired salubrity since trees have been planted round a small lake, the emanations of which were dreaded, and which is now less exposed to the ardour of the sun. To the west of Caravalleda, a wall of bare rock again projects forward in the direction of the sea, but it has little extent. After having passed it, we immediately discovered the pleasantly situated village of Macuto; the black rocks of La Guayra, studded with batteries rising in tiers one over another, and in the misty distance, Cabo Blanco, a long promontory with conical summits, and of dazzling whiteness. Cocoa-trees border the shore, and give it, under that burning sky, an appearance of fertility.

I landed in the port of La Guayra, and the same evening made preparations for transporting my instruments to Caracas. Having been recommended not to sleep in the town, where the yellow fever had been raging only a few weeks previously, I fixed my lodging in a house on a little hill, above the village of Maiquetia, a place more exposed to fresh winds than La Guayra. I reached Caracas on the 21st of November, four days sooner than M. Bonpland, who, with the other travellers on the land journey, had suffered greatly from the rain and the inundations of the torrents, between Capaya and Curiepe.

Before proceeding further, I will here subjoin a description of La Guayra, and the extraordinary road which leads from thence to the town of Caracas, adding thereto all the observations made by M. Bonpland and myself, in an excursion to Cabo Blanco about the end of January 1800.

La Guayra is rather a roadstead than a port. The sea is constantly agitated, and ships suffer at once by the violence of the wind, the tideways, and the bad anchorage. The lading is taken in with difficulty, and the swell prevents the embarkation of mules here, as at New Barcelona and Porto Cabello. The free mulattoes and negroes, who carry the cacao on board the ships, are a class of men remarkable for muscular strength. They wade up to their waists through the water; and it is remarkable that they are never attacked by the sharks, so common in this harbour. This fact seems connected with what I have often observed within the tropics, with respect to other classes of animals which live in society, for instance monkeys and crocodiles. In the Missions of the Orinoco, and on the banks of the river Amazon, the Indians, who catch monkeys to sell them, know very well that they can easily succeed in taming those which inhabit certain islands; while monkeys of the same species, caught on the neighbouring continent, die of terror or rage when they find themselves in the power of man. The crocodiles of one lake in the llanos are cowardly, and flee even when in the water; whilst those of another lake will attack with extreme intrepidity. It would be difficult to explain this difference of disposition and habits, by the mere aspect of the respective localities. The sharks of the port of La Guayra seem to furnish an analogous example. They are dangerous and blood-thirsty at the island opposite the coast of Caracas, at the Roques, at Bonayre, and at Curassao; while they forbear to attack persons swimming in the ports of La Guayra and Santa Martha. The natives, who like the ignorant mass of people in every country, in seeking the explanation of natural phenomena, always have recourse to the marvellous, affirm that in the ports just mentioned, a bishop gave his benediction to the sharks.

The situation of La Guayra is very singular, and can only be compared to that of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe. The chain of mountains which separates the port from the high valley of Caracas, descends almost directly into the sea; and the houses of the town are backed by a wall of steep rocks. There scarcely remains one hundred or one hundred and forty toises breadth of flat ground between the wall and the ocean. The town has six or eight thousand inhabitants, and contains only two streets, running parallel with each other east and west. It is commanded by the battery of Cerro Colorado; and its fortifications along the sea-shore are well disposed, and kept in repair. The aspect of this place has in it something solitary and gloomy; we seemed not to be on a continent, covered with vast forests, but on a rocky island, destitute of vegetation. With the exception of Cabo Blanco and the cocoa-trees of Maiquetia, no view meets the eye but that of the horizon, the sea, and the azure vault of heaven. The heat is excessive during the day, and most frequently during the night. The climate of La Guayra is justly considered to be hotter than that of Cumana, Porto Cabello, and Coro, because the sea-breeze is less felt, and the air is heated by the radiant caloric which the perpendicular rocks emit from the time the sun sets. The examination of the thermometric observations made during nine months at La Guayra by an eminent physician, enabled me to compare the climate of this port, with those of Cumana, of the Havannah, and of Vera Cruz. This comparison is the more interesting, as it furnishes an inexhaustible subject of conversation in the Spanish colonies, and among the mariners who frequent those latitudes. As nothing is more deceiving in such matters than the testimony of the senses, we can judge of the difference of climates only by numerical calculations.

The four places of which we have been speaking are considered as the hottest on the shores of the New World. A comparison of them may serve to confirm what we have several times observed, that it is generally the duration of a high temperature, and not the excess of heat, or its absolute quantity, which occasions the sufferings of the inhabitants of the torrid zone.

A series of thermometric observations shows, that La Guayra is one of the hottest places on the earth; that the quantity of heat which it receives in the course of a year is a little greater than that felt at Cumana; but that in the months of November, December, and January (at equal distance from the two passages of the sun through the zenith of the town), the atmosphere cools more at La Guayra. May not this cooling, much slighter than that which is felt almost at the same time at Vera Cruz and at the Havannah, be the effect of the more westerly position of La Guayra? The aerial ocean, which appears to form only one mass, is agitated by currents, the limits of which are fixed by immutable laws; and its temperature is variously modified by the configuration of the lands and seas by which it is sustained. It may be subdivided into several basins, which overflow into each other, and of which the most agitated (for instance, that over the gulf of Mexico, or between the sierra of Santa Martha and the gulf of Darien) have a powerful influence on the refrigeration and the motion of the neighbouring columns of air. The north winds sometimes cause influxes and counter-currents in the south-west part of the Caribbean Sea, which seem, during particular months, to diminish the heat as far as Terra Firma.

At the time of my abode at La Guayra, the yellow fever, or calentura amarilla, had been known only two years; and the mortality it occasioned had not been very great, because the confluence of strangers on the coast of Caracas was less considerable than at the Havannah or Vera Cruz. A few individuals, even creoles and mulattoes, were sometimes carried off suddenly by certain irregular remittent fevers; which, from being complicated with bilious appearances, hemorrhages, and other symptoms equally alarming, appeared to have some analogy with the yellow fever. The victims of these maladies were generally men employed in the hard labour of cutting wood in the forests, for instance, in the neighbourhood of the little port of Carupano, or the gulf of Santa Fe, west of Cumana. Their death often alarmed the unacclimated Europeans, in towns usually regarded as peculiarly healthy; but the seeds of the sporadic malady were propagated no farther. On the coast of Terra Firma, the real typhus of America, which is known by the names vomito prieto (black vomit) and yellow fever, and which must be considered as a morbid affection sui generis, was known only at Porto Cabello, at Carthagena, and at Santa Martha, where Gastelbondo observed and described it in 1729. The Spaniards recently disembarked, and the inhabitants of the valley of Caracas, were not then afraid to reside at La Guayra. They complained only of the oppressive heat which prevailed during a great part of the year. If they exposed themselves to the immediate action of the sun, they dreaded at most only those attacks of inflammation of the skin or eyes, which are felt everywhere in the torrid zone, and are often accompanied by a febrile affection and congestion in the head. Many individuals preferred the ardent but uniform climate of La Guayra to the cool but extremely variable climate of Caracas; and scarcely any mention was made of the insalubrity of the former port.

Since the year 1797 everything has changed. Commerce being thrown open to other vessels besides those of the mother country, seamen born in colder parts of Europe than Spain, and consequently more susceptible to the climate of the torrid zone, began to frequent La Guayra. The yellow fever broke out. North Americans, seized with the typhus, were received in the Spanish hospitals; and it was affirmed that they had imported the contagion, and that the disease had appeared on board a brig from Philadelphia, even before the vessel had entered the roads of La Guayra. The captain of the brig denied the fact; and asserted that, far from having introduced the malady, his crew had caught it in the port. We know from what happened at Cadiz in 1800, how difficult it is to elucidate facts, when their uncertainty serves to favour theories diametrically opposite one to another. The more enlightened inhabitants of Caracas and La Guayra, divided in opinion, like the physicians of Europe and the United States, on the question of the contagion of yellow fever, cited the instance of the American vessel; some for the purpose of proving that the typhus had come from abroad, and others, to show that it had taken birth in the country itself. Those who advocated the latter opinion, admitted that an extraordinary alteration had been caused in the constitution of the atmosphere by the overflowings of the Rio de La Guayra. This torrent, which in general is not ten inches deep, was swelled after sixty hours' rain in the mountains, in so extraordinary a manner, that it bore down trunks of trees and masses of rock of considerable size. During this flood the waters were from thirty to forty feet in breadth, and from eight to ten feet deep. It was supposed that, issuing from some subterranean basin, formed by successive infiltrations, they had flowed into the recently cleared arable lands. Many houses were carried away by the torrent; and the inundation became the more dangerous for the stores, in consequence of the gate of the town, which could alone afford an outlet to the waters, being accidentally closed. It was necessary to make a breach in the wall on the sea-side. More than thirty persons perished, and the damage was computed at half a million of piastres. The stagnant water, which infected the stores, the cellars, and the dungeons of the public prison, no doubt diffused miasms in the air, which, as a predisposing cause, may have accelerated the development of the yellow fever; but I believe that the inundation of the Rio de la Guayra was no more the primary cause, than the overflowings of the Guadalquivir, the Xenil, and the Gual-Medina, were at Seville, at Ecija, and at Malaga, the primary causes of the fatal epidemics of 1800 and 1804. I examined with attention the bed of the torrent of La Guayra; and found it to consist merely of a barren soil, blocks of mica-slate, and gneiss, containing pyrites detached from the Sierra de Avila, but nothing that could have had any effect in deteriorating the purity of the air.

Since the years 1797 and 1798, at which periods there prevailed dreadful mortality at Philadelphia, St. Lucia, and St. Domingo, the yellow fever has continued its ravages at La Guayra. It has proved fatal not only to the troops newly arrived from Spain, but also to those levied in parts remote from the coasts, in the llanos between Calabozo and Uritucu, regions almost as hot as La Guayra, but favourable to health. This latter fact would seem more surprising, did we not know, that even the natives of Vera Cruz, who are not attacked with typhus in their own town, sometimes sink under it during the epidemics of the Havannah and the United States. As the black vomit finds an insurmountable barrier at the Encero (four hundred and seventy-six toises high), on the declivity of the mountains of Mexico, in the direction of Xalapa, where oaks begin to appear, and the climate begins to be cool and pleasant, so the yellow fever scarcely ever passes beyond the ridge of mountains which separates La Guayra from the valley of Caracas. This valley has been exempt from the malady for a considerable time; for we must not confound the vomito and the yellow fever with the irregular and bilious fevers. The Cumbre and the Cerro do Avila form a very useful rampart to the town of Caracas, the elevation of which a little exceeds that of the Encero, but of which the mean temperature is above that of Xalapa.

I have published in another work* (* Nouvelle Espagne tome 2.) the observations made by M. Bonpland and myself on the locality of the towns periodically subject to the visitation of yellow fever; and I shall not hazard here any new conjectures on the changes observed in the pathogenic constitution of particular localities. The more I reflect on this subject, the more mysterious appears to me all that relates to those gaseous emanations which we call so vaguely the seeds of contagion, and which are supposed to be developed by a corrupted air, destroyed by cold, conveyed from place to place in garments, and attached to the walls of houses. How can we explain why, for the space of eighteen years prior to 1794, there was not a single instance of the vomito at Vera Cruz, though the concourse of unacclimated Europeans and of Mexicans from the interior, was very considerable; though sailors indulged in the same excesses with which they are still reproached; and though the town was not so clean as it has been since the year 1800?

The following is the series of pathological facts, considered in their simplest point of view. When a great number of persons, born in a cold climate, arrive at the same period in a port of the torrid zone, not particularly dreaded by navigators, the typhus of America begins to appear. Those persons have not had typhus during their passage; it appears among them only after they have landed. Is the atmospheric constitution changed? or is it that a new form of disease develops itself among individuals whose susceptibility is highly increased?

The typhus soon begins to extend its ravages among other Europeans, born in more southern countries. If propagated by contagion, it seems surprising that in the towns of the equinoctial continent it does not attach itself to certain streets; and that immediate contact* does not augment the danger, any more than seclusion diminishes it. (* In the oriental plague (another form of typhus characterised by great disorder of the lymphatic system) immediate contact is less to be feared than is generally thought. Larrey maintains that the tumified glands may be touched or cauterized without danger; but he thinks we ought not to risk putting on the clothes of persons attacked with the plague.—Memoire sur les Maladies de l'Armee Francoise en Egypte page 35.) The sick, when removed to the inland country, and especially to cooler and more elevated spots, to Xalapa, for instance, do not communicate typhus to the inhabitants of those places, either because the disease is not contagious in its nature, or because the predisposing causes are not the same as in the regions of the shore. When there is a considerable lowering of the temperature, the epidemic usually ceases, even on the spot where it first appeared. It again breaks out at the approach of the hot season, and sometimes long before; though during several months there may have been no sick person in the harbour, and no ship may have entered it.

The typhus of America appears to be confined to the shore, either because persons who bring the disease disembark there, and goods supposed to be impregnated with deleterious miasms are there accumulated; or because on the sea-side gaseous emanations of a particular nature are formed. The aspect of the places subject to the ravages of typhus seems often to exclude all idea of a local or endemical origin. It has been known to prevail in the Canaries, the Bermudas, and among the small West India Islands, in dry places formerly distinguished for the great salubrity of their climate. Examples of the propagation of the yellow fever in the inland parts of the torrid zone appear very doubtful: that malady may have been confounded with remitting bilious fevers. With respect to the temperate zone, in which the contagious character of the American typhus is more decided, the disease has unquestionably spread far from the shore, even into very elevated places, exposed to cool and dry winds, as in Spain at Medina-Sidonia, at Carlotta, and in the city of Murcia. That variety of phenomena which the same epidemic exhibits, according to the difference of climate, the union of predisposing causes, its shorter or longer duration, and the degree of its exacerbation, should render us extremely circumspect in tracing the secret causes of the American typhus. M. Bailly, who, at the time of the violent epidemics in 1802 and 1803, was chief physician to the colony of St. Domingo, and who studied that disease in the island of Cuba, the United States, and Spain, is of opinion that the typhus is very often, but not always, contagious.

Since the yellow fever has made such ravages in La Guayra, exaggerated accounts have been given of the uncleanliness in that little town as well as of Vera Cruz, and of the quays or wharfs of Philadelphia. In a place where the soil is extremely dry, destitute of vegetation, and where scarcely a few drops of water fall in the course of seven or eight months, the causes that produce what are called miasms, cannot be of very frequent occurrence. La Guayra appeared to me in general to be tolerably clean, with the exception of the quarter of the slaughter-houses. The sea-side has no beach on which the remains of fuci or molluscs are heaped up; but the neighbouring coast, which stretches eastward towards Cape Codera, and consequently to the windward of La Guayra, is extremely unhealthy. Intermitting, putrid, and bilious fevers often prevail at Macuto and at Caravalleda; and when from time to time the breeze is interrupted by a westerly wind, the little bay of Cotia sends air loaded with putrid emanations towards the coast of La Guayra, notwithstanding the rampart opposed by Cabo Blanco.

The irritability of the organs being so different in the people of the north and those of the south, it cannot be doubted, that with greater freedom of commerce, and more frequent and intimate communication between countries situated in different climates, the yellow fever will extend its ravages in the New World. It is even probable that the concurrence of so many exciting causes, and their action on individuals so differently organized, may give birth to new forms of disease and new deviations of the vital powers. This is one of the evils that inevitably attend rising civilization.

The yellow fever and the black vomit cease periodically at the Havannah and Vera Cruz, when the north winds bring the cold air of Canada towards the gulf of Mexico. But from the extreme equality of temperature which characterizes the climates of Porto Cabello, La Guayra, New Barcelona, and Cumana, it may be feared that the typhus will there become permanent, whenever, from a great influx of strangers, it has acquired a high degree of exacerbation.

Tracing the granitic coast of La Guayra westward, we find between that port (which is in fact but an ill-sheltered roadstead) and that of Porto Cabello, several indentations of the land, furnishing excellent anchorage for ships. Such are the small bay of Catia, Los Arecifes, Puerto-la-Cruz, Choroni, Sienega de Ocumare, Turiamo, Burburata, and Patanebo. All these ports, with the exception of that of Burburata, from which mules are exported to Jamaica, are now frequented only by small coasting vessels, which are there laden with provisions and cacao from the surrounding plantations. The inhabitants of Caracas are desirous to avail themselves of the anchorage of Catia, to the west of Cabo Blanco. M. Bonpland and myself examined that point of the coast during our second abode at La Guayra. A ravine, called the Quebrada de Tipe, descends from the table-land of Caracas towards Catia. A plan has long been in contemplation for making a cart-road through this ravine and abandoning the old road to La Guayra, which resembles the passage over St. Gothard. According to this plan, the port of Catia, equally large and secure, would supersede that of La Guayra. Unfortunately, however, all that shore, to leeward of Cabo Blanco, abounds with mangroves, and is extremely unhealthy. I ascended to the summit of the promontory, which forms Cabo Blanco, in order to observe the passage of the sun over the meridian. I wished to compare in the morning the altitudes taken with an artificial horizon and those taken with the horizon of the sea; to verify the apparent depression of the latter, by the barometrical measurement of the hill. By this method, hitherto very little employed, on reducing the heights of the sun to the same time, a reflecting instrument may be used like an instrument furnished with a level. I found the latitude of the cape to be 10 degrees 36 minutes 45 seconds; I could only make use of the angles which gave the image of the sun reflected on a plane glass; the horizon of the sea was very misty, and the windings of the coast prevented me from taking the height of the sun on that horizon.

The environs of Cabo Blanco are not uninteresting for the study of rocks. The gneiss here passes into the state of mica-slate (Glimmerschiefer.), and contains, along the sea-coast, layers of schistose chlorite. (Chloritschiefer.) In this latter I found garnets and magnetical sand. On the road to Catia we see the chloritic schist passing into hornblende schist. (Hornblendschiefer.) All these formations are found together in the primitive mountains of the old world, especially in the north of Europe. The sea at the foot of Cabo Blanco throws up on the beach rolled fragments of a rock, which is a granular mixture of hornblende and lamellar feldspar. It is what is rather vaguely called PRIMITIVE GRUNSTEIN. In it we can recognize traces of quartz and pyrites. Submarine rocks probably exist near the coast, which furnish these very hard masses. I have compared them in my journal to the PATERLESTEIN of Fichtelberg, in Franconia, which is also a diabase, but so fusible, that glass buttons are made of it, which are employed in the slave-trade on the coast of Guinea. I believed at first, according to the analogy of the phenomena furnished by the mountains of Franconia, that the presence of these hornblende masses with crystals of common (uncompact) feldspar indicated the proximity of transition rocks; but in the high valley of Caracas, near Antimano, balls of the same diabase fill a vein crossing the mica-slate. On the western declivity of the hill of Cabo Blanco, the gneiss is covered with a formation of sandstone, or conglomerate, extremely recent. This sandstone combines angular fragments of gneiss, quartz, and chlorite, magnetical sand, madrepores, and petrified bivalve shells. Is this formation of the same date as that of Punta Araya and Cumana?

Scarcely any part of the coast has so burning a climate as the environs of Cabo Blanco. We suffered much from the heat, augmented by the reverberation of a barren and dusty soil; but without feeling any bad consequences from the effects of insolation. The powerful action of the sun on the cerebral functions is extremely dreaded at La Guayra, especially at the period when the yellow fever begins to be felt. Being one day on the terrace of the house, observing at noon the difference of the thermometer in the sun and in the shade, a man approached me holding in his hand a potion, which he conjured me to swallow. He was a physician, who from his window, had observed me bareheaded, and exposed to the rays of the sun. He assured me, that, being a native of a very northern climate, I should infallibly, after the imprudence I had committed, be attacked with the yellow fever that very evening, if I refused to take the remedy against it. I was not alarmed by this prediction, however serious, believing myself to have been long acclimated; but I could not resist yielding to entreaties, prompted by such benevolent feelings. I swallowed the dose; and the physician doubtless counted me among the number of those he had saved.

The road leading from the port to Caracas (the capital of a government of near 900,000 inhabitants) resembles, as I have already observed, the passage over the Alps, the road of St. Gothard, and of the Great St. Bernard. Taking the level of the road had never been attempted before my arrival in the province of Venezuela. No precise idea had even been formed of the elevation of the valley of Caracas. It had indeed been long observed, that the descent was much less from La Cumbre and Las Vueltas (the latter is the culminating point of the road towards the Pastora at the entrance of the valley of Caracas), than towards the port of La Guayra; but the mountain of Avila having a very considerable bulk, the eye cannot discern simultaneously the points to be compared. It is even impossible to form a precise idea of the elevation of Caracas, from the climate of the valley, where the atmosphere is cooled by the descending currents of air, and by the mists, which envelope the lofty summit of the Silla during a great part of the year.

When in the season of the great heats we breathe the burning atmosphere of La Guayra, and turn our eyes towards the mountains, it seems scarcely possible that, at the distance of five or six thousand toises, a population of forty thousand individuals assembled in a narrow valley, enjoys the coolness of spring, a temperature which at night descends to 12 degrees of the centesimal thermometer. This near approach of different climates is common in the Cordillera of the Andes; but everywhere, at Mexico, at Quito, in Peru, and in New Granada, it is only after a long journey into the interior, either across plains or along rivers, that we reach the great cities, which are the central points of civilization. The height of Caracas is but a third of that of Mexico, Quito, and Santa Fe de Bogota; yet of all the capitals of Spanish America which enjoy a cool and delicious climate in the midst of the torrid zone, Caracas is nearest to the coast. What a privilege for a city to possess a seaport at three leagues distance, and to be situated among mountains, on a table-land, which would produce wheat, if the cultivation of the coffee-tree were not preferred!

The road from La Guayra to the valley of Caracas is infinitely finer than the road from Honda to Santa Fe, or that from Guayaquil to Quito. It is kept in better order than the old road, which led from the port of Vera Cruz to Perote, on the eastern declivity of the mountains of New Spain. With good mules it takes but three hours to go from the port of La Guayra to Caracas; and only two hours to return. With loaded mules, or on foot, the journey is from four to five hours. The road runs along a ridge of rocks extremely steep, and after passing the stations bearing respectively the names of Torre Quemada, Curucuti, and Salto, we arrive at a large inn (La Venta) built at six hundred toises above the level of the sea. The name Torre Quemada, or Burnt Tower, indicates the sensation that is felt in descending towards La Guayra. A suffocating heat is reflected from the walls of rock, and especially from the barren plains on which the traveller looks down. On this road, as on that from Vera Cruz to Mexico, and wherever on a rapid declivity the climate changes, the increase of muscular strength and the sensation of well-being, which we experience as we advance into strata of cooler air, have always appeared to me less striking than the feeling of languor and debility which pervades the frame, when we descend towards the burning plains of the coast. But such is the organization of man; and even in the moral world, we are less soothed by that which ameliorates our condition than annoyed by a new sensation of discomfort.

From Curucuti to Salto the ascent is somewhat less laborious. The sinuosities of the way render the declivity easier, as in the old road over Mont Cenis. The Salto (or Leap) is a crevice, which is crossed by a draw-bridge. Fortifications crown the summit of the mountain. At La Venta the thermometer at noon stood at 19.3 degrees, when at La Guayra it kept up at the same hour at 26.2 degrees. La Venta enjoys some celebrity in Europe and in the United States, for the beauty of its surrounding scenery. When the clouds permit, this spot affords a magnificent view of the sea, and the neighbouring coasts. An horizon of more than twenty-two leagues radius is visible; the white and barren shore reflects a dazzling mass of light; and the spectator beholds at his feet Cabo Blanco, the village of Maiquetia with its cocoa-trees, La Guayra, and the vessels in the port. But I found this view far more extraordinary, when the sky was not serene, and when trains of clouds, strongly illumined on their upper surface, seemed projected like floating islands on the ocean. Strata of vapour, hovering at different heights, formed intermediary spaces between the eye and the lower regions. By an illusion easily explained, they enlarged the scene, and rendered it more majestic. Trees and dwellings appeared at intervals through the openings, which were left by the clouds when driven on by the winds, and rolling over one another. Objects then appear at a greater depth than when seen through a pure and uniformly serene air. On the declivity of the mountains of Mexico, at the same height (between Las Trancas and Xalapa), the sea is twelve leagues distant, and the view of the coast is confused; while on the road from La Guayra to Caracas we command the plains (the tierra caliente), as from the top of a tower. How extraordinary must be the impression created by this prospect on natives of the inland parts of the country, who behold the sea and ships for the first time from this point.

I determined by direct observations the latitude of La Venta, that I might be enabled to give a more precise idea of the distance of the coasts. The latitude is 10 degrees 33 minutes 9 seconds. Its longitude appeared to me by the chronometer, nearly 2 minutes 47 seconds west of the town of Caracas. I found the dip of the needle at this height to be 41.75 degrees, and the intensity of the magnetic forces equal to two hundred and thirty-four oscillations. From the Venta, called also La Venta Grande, to distinguish it from three or four small inns formerly established along the road, but now destroyed, there is still an ascent of one hundred and fifty toises to Guayavo. This is nearly the most lofty point of the road.

Whether we gaze on the distant horizon of the sea, or turn our eyes south-eastward, in the direction of the serrated ridge of rocks, which seems to unite the Cumbre and the Silla, though separated from them by the ravine (quebrada) of Tocume, everywhere we admire the grand character of the landscape. From Guayavo we proceed for half an hour over a smooth table-land, covered with alpine plants. This part of the way, on account of its windings, is called Las Vueltas. We find a little higher up the barracks or magazines of flour, which were constructed in a spot of cool temperature by the Guipuzcoa Company, when they had the exclusive monopoly of the trade of Caracas, and supplied that place with provision. On the road to Las Vueltas we see for the first time the capital, situated three hundred toises below, in a valley luxuriantly planted with coffee and European fruit-trees. Travellers are accustomed to halt near a fine spring, known by the name of Fuente de Sanchorquiz, which flows down from the Sierra on sloping strata of gneiss. I found its temperature 16.4 degrees; which, for an elevation of seven hundred and twenty-six toises, is considerably cool, and it would appear much cooler to those who drink its limpid water, if, instead of gushing out between La Cumbre and the temperate valley of Caracas, it were found on the descent towards La Guayra. But at this descent on the northern side of the mountain, the rock, by an uncommon exception in this country, does not dip to north-west, but to south-east, which prevents the subterranean waters from forming springs there.

We continued to descend from the small ravine of Sanchorquiz to la Cruz de la Guayra, a cross erected on an open spot, six hundred and thirty-two toises high, and thence (entering by the custom-house and the quarter of the Pastora) to the city of Caracas. On the south side of the mountain of Avila, the gneiss presents several geognostical phenomena worthy of the attention of travellers. It is traversed by veins of quartz, containing cannulated and often articulated prisms of rutile titanite two or three lines in diameter. In the fissures of the quartz we find, on breaking it, very thin crystals, which crossing each other form a kind of network. Sometimes the red schorl occurs only in dendritic crystals of a bright red.* (* Especially below the Cross of La Guayra, at 594 toises of absolute elevation.) The gneiss of the valley of Caracas is characterized by the red and green garnets it contains; they however disappear when the rock passes into mica-slate. This same phenomenon has been remarked by Von Buch in Sweden; but in the temperate parts of Europe garnets are in general contained in serpentine and mica-slates, not in gneiss. In the walls which enclose the gardens of Caracas, constructed partly of fragments of gneiss, we find garnets of a very fine red, a little transparent, and very difficult to detach. The gneiss near the Cross of La Guayra, half a league from Caracas, presented also vestiges of azure copper-ore* (* Blue carbonate of copper.) disseminated in veins of quartz, and small strata of plumbago (black lead), or earthy carburetted iron. This last is found in pretty large masses, and sometimes mingled with sparry iron-ore, in the ravine of Tocume, to the west of the Silla.

Between the spring of Sanchorquiz and the Cross of La Guayra, as well as still higher up, the gneiss contains considerable beds of saccharoidal bluish-grey primitive limestone, coarse-grained, containing mica, and traversed by veins of white calcareous spar. The mica, with large folia, lies in the direction of the dip of the strata. I found in the primitive limestone a great many crystallized pyrites, and rhomboidal fragments of sparry iron-ore of Isabella yellow. I endeavoured, but without success, to find tremolite (Grammatite of Hauy. The primitive limestone above the spring of Sanchorquiz, is directed, as the gneiss in that place, hor. 5.2, and dips 45 degrees north; but the general direction of the gneiss is, in the Cerro de Avila, hor. 3.4 with 60 degrees of dip north-west. Exceptions merely local are observed in a small space of ground near the Cross of La Guayra (hor. 6.2, dip 8 degrees north); and higher up, opposite the Quebrada of Tipe (hor. 12, dip 50 degrees west).), which in the Fichtelberg, in Franconia, is common in the primitive limestone without dolomite. In Europe beds of primitive limestone are generally observed in the mica-slates; but we find also saccharoidal limestone in gneiss of the most ancient formation, in Sweden near Upsala, in Saxony near Burkersdorf, and in the Alps in the road over the Simplon. These situations are analogous to that of Caracas. The phenomena of geognosy, particularly those which are connected with the stratification of rocks, and their grouping, are never solitary; but are found the same in both hemispheres. I was the more struck with these relations, and this identity of formations, as, at the time of my journey in these countries, mineralogists were unacquainted with the name of a single rock of Venezuela, New Grenada, and the Cordilleras of Quito.

CHAPTER 1.12.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE PROVINCES OF VENEZUELA. DIVERSITY OF THEIR INTERESTS. CITY AND VALLEY OF CARACAS. CLIMATE.

In all those parts of Spanish America in which civilization did not exist to a certain degree before the Conquest (as it did in Mexico, Guatimala, Quito, and Peru), it has advanced from the coasts to the interior of the country, following sometimes the valley of a great river, sometimes a chain of mountains, affording a temperate climate. Concentrated at once in different points, it has spread as if by diverging rays. The union into provinces and kingdoms was effected on the first immediate contact between civilized parts, or at least those subject to permanent and regular government. Lands deserted, or inhabited by savage tribes, now surround the countries which European civilization has subdued. They divide its conquests like arms of the sea difficult to be passed, and neighbouring states are often connected with each other only by slips of cultivated land. It is less difficult to acquire a knowledge of the configuration of coasts washed by the ocean, than of the sinuosities of that interior shore, on which barbarism and civilization, impenetrable forests and cultivated land, touch and bound each other. From not having reflected on the early state of society in the New World, geographers have often made their maps incorrect, by marking the different parts of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, as though they were contiguous at every point in the interior. The local knowledge which I obtained respecting these boundaries, enables me to fix the extent of the great territorial divisions with some certainty, to compare the wild and inhabited parts, and to appreciate the degree of political influence exercised by certain towns of America, as centres of power and of commerce.

Caracas is the capital of a country nearly twice as large as Peru, and now little inferior in extent to the kingdom of New Grenada.* (* The Capitania-General of Caracas contains near 48,000 square leagues (twenty-five to a degree). Peru, since La Paz, Potosi, Charcas and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, have been separated from it, contains only 30,000. New Grenada, including the province of Quito, contains 65,000. Reinos, Capitanias-Generales, Presidencies, Goviernos, and Provincias, are the names by which Spain formerly distinguished her transmarine possessions, or, as they were called, Dominios de Ultramar (Dominions beyond Sea.)) This country which the Spanish government designates by the name of Capitania-General de Caracas,* (* The captain-general of Caracas has the title of "Capitan-General de las Provincias de Venezuela y Ciudad do Caracas.") or of the united provinces of Venezuela, has nearly a million of inhabitants, among whom are sixty thousand slaves. It comprises, along the coasts, New Andalusia, or the province of Cumana (with the island of Margareta),* (* This island, near the coast of Cumana, forms a separate govierno, depending immediately on the captain-general of Caracas.) Barcelona, Venezuela or Caracas, Coro, and Maracaybo; in the interior, the provinces of Varinas and Guiana; the former situated on the rivers of Santo Domingo and the Apure, the latter stretching along the Orinoco, the Casiquiare, the Atabapo, and the Rio Negro. In a general view of the seven united provinces of Terra Firma, we perceive that they form three distinct zones, extending from east to west.

We find, first, cultivated land along the sea-shore, and near the chain of the mountains on the coast; next, savannahs or pasturages; and finally, beyond the Orinoco, a third zone, that of the forests, into which we can penetrate only by the rivers which traverse them. If the native inhabitants of the forests lived entirely on the produce of the chase, like those of the Missouri, we might say that the three zones into which we have divided the territory of Venezuela, picture the three states of human society; the life of the wild hunter, in the woods of the Orinoco; pastoral life, in the savannahs or llanos; and the agricultural state, in the high valleys, and at the foot of the mountains on the coast. Missionary monks and some few soldiers occupy here, as throughout all Spanish America, advanced posts along the frontiers of Brazil. In this first zone are felt the preponderance of force, and the abuse of power, which is its necessary consequence. The natives carry on civil war, and sometimes devour one another. The monks endeavour to augment the number of little villages of their Missions, by taking advantage of the dissensions of the natives. The military live in a state of hostility to the monks, whom they were intended to protect. Everything presents a melancholy picture of misery and privation. We shall soon have occasion to examine more closely that state of man, which is vaunted as a state of nature, by those who inhabit towns. In the second region, in the plains and pasture-grounds, food is extremely abundant, but has little variety. Although more advanced in civilization, the people beyond the circle of some scattered towns are not less isolated from one another. At sight of their dwellings, partly covered with skins and leather, it might be supposed that, far from being fixed, they are scarcely encamped in those vast plains which extend to the horizon. Agriculture, which alone consolidates the bases, and strengthens the bonds of society, occupies the third zone, the shore, and especially the hot and temperate valleys among the mountains near the sea.

It may be objected, that in other parts of Spanish and Portuguese America, wherever we can trace the progressive development of civilization, we find the three ages of society combined. But it must be remembered that the position of the three zones, that of the forests, the pastures, and the cultivated land, is not everywhere the same, and that it is nowhere so regular as in Venezuela. It is not always from the coast to the interior, that population, commercial industry, and intellectual improvement, diminish. In Mexico, Peru, and Quito, the table-lands and central mountains possess the greatest number of cultivators, the most numerous towns situated near to each other, and the most ancient institutions. We even find, that, in the kingdom of Buenos Ayres, the region of pasturage, known by the name of the Pampas, lies between the isolated part of Buenos Ayres and the great mass of Indian cultivators, who inhabit the Cordilleras of Charcas, La Paz, and Potosi. This circumstance gives birth to a diversity of interests, in the same country, between the people of the interior and those who inhabit the coasts.

To form an accurate idea of those vast provinces which have been governed for ages, almost like separate states, by viceroys and captains-general, we must fix our attention at once on several points. We must distinguish the parts of Spanish America opposite to Asia from those on the shores of the Atlantic; we must ascertain where the greater portion of the population is placed; whether near the coast, or concentrated in the interior, on the cold and temperate table-lands of the Cordilleras. We must verify the numerical proportions between the natives and other castes; search into the origin of the European families, and examine to what race, in each part of the colonies, belongs the greater number of whites. The Andalusian-Canarians of Venezuela, the Mountaineers* (* Montaneses. The inhabitants of the mountains of Santander are called by this name in Spain.) and the Biscayans of Mexico, the Catalonians of Buenos Ayres, differ essentially in their aptitude for agriculture, for the mechanical arts, for commerce, and for all objects connected with intellectual development. Each of those races has preserved, in the New as in the Old World, the shades that constitute its national physiognomy; its asperity or mildness of character; its freedom from sordid feelings, or its excessive love of gain; its social hospitality, or its taste for solitude. In the countries where the population is for the most part composed of Indians and mixed races, the difference between the Europeans and their descendants cannot indeed be so strongly marked, as that which existed anciently in the colonies of Ionian and Doric origin. The Spaniards transplanted to the torrid zone, estranged from the habits of their mother-country, must have felt more sensible changes than the Greeks settled on the coasts of Asia Minor, and of Italy, where the climates differ so little from those of Athens and Corinth. It cannot be denied that the character of the Spanish Americans has been variously modified by the physical nature of the country; the isolated sites of the capitals on the table-lands or in the vicinity of the coasts; the agricultural life; the labour of the mines, and the habit of commercial speculation: but in the inhabitants of Caracas, Santa Fe, Quito, and Buenos Ayres, we recognize everywhere something which belongs to the race and the filiation of the people.

If we examine the state of the Capitania-General of Caracas, according to the principles here laid down, we perceive that agricultural industry, the great mass of population, the numerous towns, and everything connected with advanced civilization, are found near the coast. This coast extends along a space of two hundred leagues. It is washed by the Caribbean Sea, a sort of Mediterranean, on the shores of which almost all the nations of Europe have founded colonies; which communicates at several points with the Atlantic; and which has had a considerable influence on the progress of knowledge in the eastern part of equinoctial America, from the time of the Conquest. The kingdoms of New Grenada and Mexico have no connection with foreign colonies, and through them with the nations of Europe, except by the ports of Carthagena, of Santa Martha, of Vera Cruz, and of Campeachy. These vast countries, from the nature of their coasts, and the isolation of their inhabitants on the back of the Cordilleras, have few points of contact with foreign lands. The gulf of Mexico also is but little frequented during a part of the year, on account of the danger of gales of wind from the north. The coasts of Venezuela, on the contrary, from their extent, their eastward direction, the number of their ports, and the safety of their anchorage at different seasons, possess all the advantages of the Caribbean Sea. The communications with the larger islands, and even with those situated to windward, can nowhere be more frequent than from the ports of Cumana, Barcelona, La Guayra, Porto Cabello, Coro, and Maracaybo. Can we wonder that this facility of commercial intercourse with the inhabitants of free America, and the agitated nations of Europe, should in the provinces united under the Capitania-General of Venezuela, have augmented opulence, knowledge, and that restless desire of a local government, which is blended with the love of liberty and republican forms?

The copper-coloured natives, or Indians, constitute an important mass of the agricultural population only in those places where the Spaniards, at the time of the Conquest, found regular governments, social communities, and ancient and very complicated institutions; as, for example, in New Spain, south of Durango; and in Peru, from Cuzco to Potosi. In the Capitania-General of Caracas, the Indian population is inconsiderable, at least beyond the Missions and in the cultivated zone. Even in times of great political excitement, the natives do not inspire any apprehension in the whites or the mixed castes. Computing, in 1800, the total population of the seven united provinces at nine hundred thousand souls, it appeared to me that the Indians made only one-ninth; while at Mexico they form nearly one half of the inhabitants.

Considering the Caribbean Sea, of which the gulf of Mexico makes a part, as an interior sea with several mouths, it is important to fix our attention on the political relations arising out of this singular configuration of the New Continent, between countries placed around the same basin. Notwithstanding the isolated state in which most of the mother-countries endeavour to hold their colonies, the agitations that take place are not the less communicated from one to the other. The elements of discord are everywhere the same; and, as if by instinct, an understanding is established between men of the same colour, although separated by difference of language, and inhabiting opposite coasts. That American Mediterranean formed by the shores of Venezuela, New Grenada, Mexico, the United States, and the West India Islands, counts upon its borders near a million and a half of free and enslaved blacks; but so unequally distributed, that there are very few to the south, and scarcely any in the regions of the west. Their great accumulation is on the northern and eastern coasts, which may be said to be the African part of the interior basin. The commotions which since 1792 have broken out in St. Domingo, have naturally been propagated to the coasts of Venezuela. So long as Spain possessed those fine colonies in tranquillity, the little insurrections of the slaves were easily repressed; but when a struggle of another kind, that for independence, began, the blacks by their menacing position excited alternately the apprehensions of the opposite parties; and the gradual or instantaneous abolition of slavery has been proclaimed in different regions of Spanish America, less from motives of justice and humanity, than to secure the aid of an intrepid race of men, habituated to privation, and fighting for their own cause. I found in the narrative of the voyage of Girolamo Benzoni, a curious passage, which proves that the apprehensions caused by the increase of the black population are of very old date. These apprehensions will cease only where governments shall second by laws the progressive reforms which refinement of manners, opinion, and religious sentiment, introduce into domestic slavery. "The negroes," says Benzoni, "multiply so much at St. Domingo, that in 1545, when I was in Terra Firma [on the coast of Caracas], I saw many Spaniards who had no doubt that the island would shortly be the property of the blacks."* (* "Vi sono molti Spagnuoli che tengono per cosa certa, che quest' isola (San Dominico) in breve tempo sara posseduta da questi Mori di Guinea." (Benzoni Istoria del Mondo Nuovo ediz. 2da 1672 page 65.) The author, who is not very scrupulous in the adoption of statistical facts, believes that in his time there were at St. Domingo seven thousand fugitive negroes (Mori cimaroni), with whom Don Luis Columbus made a treaty of peace and friendship.) It was reserved for our age to see this prediction accomplished; and a European colony of America transform itself into an African state.

The sixty thousand slaves which the seven united provinces of Venezuela are computed to contain, are so unequally divided, that in the province of Caracas alone there are nearly forty thousand, one-fifth of whom are mulattoes; in Maracaybo, there are ten or twelve thousand; but in Cumana and Barcelona, scarcely six thousand. To judge of the influence which the slaves and men of colour exercise on the public tranquility, it is not enough to know their number, we must consider their accumulation at certain points, and their manner of life, as cultivators or inhabitants of towns. In the province of Venezuela, the slaves are assembled together on a space of no great extent, between the coast, and a line which passes (at twelve leagues from the coast) through Panaquire, Yare, Sabana de Ocumare, Villa de Cura, and Nirgua. The llanos or vast plains of Calaboso, San Carlos, Guanare, and Barquecimeto, contain only four or five thousand slaves, who are scattered among the farms, and employed in the care of cattle. The number of free men is very considerable; the Spanish laws and customs being favourable to affranchisement. A master cannot refuse liberty to a slave who offers him the sum of three hundred piastres, even though the slave may have cost double that price, on account of his industry, or a particular aptitude for the trade he practises. Instances of persons who voluntarily bestow liberty on a certain number of their slaves, are more common in the province of Venezuela than in any other place. A short time before we visited the fertile valleys of Aragua and the lake of Valencia, a lady who inhabited the great village of Victoria, ordered her children, on her death-bed, to give liberty to all her slaves, thirty in number. I feel pleasure in recording facts that do honour to the character of a people from whom M. Bonpland and myself received so many marks of kindness.

If we compare the seven united provinces of Venezuela with the kingdom of Mexico and the island of Cuba, we shall succeed in finding the approximate number of white Creoles, and even of Europeans. The white Creoles, whom I may call Hispano-Americans,* (* In imitation of the word Anglo-American, adapted in all the languages of Europe. In the Spanish colonies, the whites born in America are called Spaniards; and the real Spaniards, those born in the mother country, are called Europeans, Gachupins, or Chapetons.) form in Mexico nearly a fifth, and in the island of Cuba, according to the very accurate enumeration of 1801, a third of the whole population. When we reflect that the kingdom of Mexico contains two millions and a half of natives of the copper-coloured race; when we consider the state of the coasts bordering on the Pacific, and the small number of whites in the intendencias of Puebla and Oaxaca, compared with the natives, we cannot doubt that the province of Venezuela at least, if not the capitania-general, has a greater proportion than that of one to five. The island of Cuba,* (* I do not mention the kingdom of Buenos Ayres, where, among a million of inhabitants, the whites are extremely numerous in parts near the coast; while the table-lands, or provinces of the sierra are almost entirely peopled with natives.) in which the whites are even more numerous than in Chile, may furnish us with a limiting number, that is to say, the maximum which may be supposed in the capitania-general of Caracas. I believe we must stop at two hundred, or two hundred and ten thousand Hispano-Americans, in a total population of nine hundred thousand souls. The number of Europeans included in the white race (not comprehending the troops sent from the mother-country) does not exceed twelve or fifteen thousand. It certainly is not greater at Mexico than sixty thousand; and I find by several statements, that, if we estimate the whole of the Spanish colonies at fourteen or fifteen millions of inhabitants, there are in that number at most three millions of Creole whites, and two hundred thousand Europeans.

When Tupac-Amaru, who believed himself to be the legitimate heir to the empire of the Incas, made the conquest of several provinces of Upper Peru, in 1781, at the head of forty thousand Indian mountaineers, all the whites were filled with alarm. The Hispano-Americans felt, like the Spaniards born in Europe, that the contest was between the copper-coloured race and the whites; between barbarism and civilization. Tupac-Amaru, who himself was not destitute of intellectual cultivation, began with flattering the creoles and the European clergy; but soon, impelled by events, and by the spirit of vengeance that inspired his nephew, Andres Condorcanqui, he changed his plan. A rising for independence became a cruel war between the different castes; the whites were victorious, and excited by a feeling of common interest, from that period they kept watchful attention on the proportions existing in the different provinces between their numbers and those of the Indians. It was reserved for our times to see the whites direct this attention towards themselves; and examine, from motives of distrust, the elements of which their own caste is composed. Every enterprise in favour of independence and liberty puts the national or American party in opposition to the men of the mother-country. When I arrived at Caracas, the latter had just escaped from the danger with which they thought they were menaced by the insurrection projected by Espana. The consequences of that bold attempt were the more deplorable, because, instead of investigating the real causes of the popular discontent, it was thought that the mother-country would be saved by employing vigorous measures. At present, the commotions which have arisen throughout the country, from the banks of the Rio de la Plata to New Mexico, an extent of fourteen hundred leagues, have divided men of a common origin.

The Indian population in the united provinces of Venezuela is not considerable, and is but recently civilized. All the towns were founded by the Spanish conquerors, who could not carry out, as in Mexico and Peru, the old civilization of the natives. Caracas, Maracaybo, Cumana, and Coro, have nothing Indian but their names. Compared with the three capitals of equinoctial America,* (* Mexico, Santa Fe de Bogota, and Quito. The elevation of the site of the capital of Guatimala is still unknown. Judging from the vegetation, we may infer that it is less than 500 toises.) situated on the mountains, and enjoying a temperate climate, Caracas is the least elevated. It is not a central point of commerce, like Mexico, Santa Fe de Bogota, and Quito. Each of the seven provinces united in one capitania-general has a port, by which its produce is exported. It is sufficient to consider the position of the provinces, their respective degree of intercourse with the Windward Islands, the direction of the mountains, and the course of the great rivers, to perceive that Caracas can never exercise any powerful political influence over the territories of which it is the capital. The Apure, the Meta, and the Orinoco, running from west to east, receive all the streams of the llanos, or the region of pasturage. St. Thomas de la Guiana will necessarily, at some future day, be a trading-place of high importance, especially when the flour of New Grenada, embarked above the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Umadea, and descending by the Meta and Orinoco, shall be preferred at Caracas and Guiana to the flour of New England. It is a great advantage to the provinces of Venezuela, that their territorial wealth is not directed to one point, like that of Mexico and New Grenada, which flows to Vera Cruz and Carthagena; but that they possess a great number of towns equally well peopled, and forming various centres of commerce and civilization.

The city of Caracas is seated at the entrance of the plain of Chacao, which extends three leagues eastward, in the direction of Caurimare and the Cuesta de Auyamas, and is two leagues and a half in breadth. This plain, through which runs the Rio Guayra, is at the elevation of four hundred and fourteen toises above the level of the sea. The ground on which the city of Caracas is built is uneven, and has a steep slope from north-north-west to south-south-east. To form an accurate idea of the situation of Caracas, we must bear in mind the general direction of the mountains of the coast, and the great longitudinal valleys by which they are traversed. The Rio Guayra rises in the group of primitive mountains of Higuerote, which separates the valley of Caracas from that of Aragua. It is formed near Las Ajuntas, by the junction of the little rivers of San Pedro and Macarao, and runs first eastward as far as the Cuesta of Auyamas, and then southward, uniting its waters with those of the Rio Tuy, below Yare. The Rio Tuy is the only considerable river in the northern and mountainous part of the province.

The river flows in a direct course from west to east, the distance of thirty leagues, and it is navigable along more than three quarters of that distance. By barometrical measurements I found the slope of the Tuy along this length, from the plantation of Manterola* (* At the foot of the high mountain of Cocuyza, 3 east from Victoria.) to its mouth, east of Cape Codera, to be two hundred and ninety-five toises. This river forms in the chain of the coast a kind of longitudinal valley, while the waters of the llanos, or of five-sixths of the province of Caracas, follow the slope of the land southward, and join the Orinoco. This hydrographic sketch may throw some light on the natural tendency of the inhabitants of each particular province, to export their productions by different roads.

The valleys of Caracas and of the Tuy run parallel for a considerable length. They are separated by a mountainous tract, which is crossed in going from Caracas to the high savannahs of Ocumare, passing by La Valle and Salamanca. These savannahs themselves are beyond the Tuy; and the valley of the Tuy being a great deal lower than that of Caracas, the descent is almost constantly from north to south. As Cape Codera, the Silla, the Cerro de Avila between Caracas and La Guayra, and the mountains of Mariara, constitute the most northern and elevated range of the coast chain; so the mountains of Panaquire, Ocumare, Guiripa, and of the Villa de Cura, form the most southern range. The general direction of the strata composing this vast chain of the coast is from south-east to north-west; and the dip is generally towards north-west: hence it follows, that the direction of the primitive strata is independent of that of the whole chain. It is extremely remarkable, tracing this chain* from Porto Cabello as far as Maniquarez and Macanao, in the island of Margareta (* I have spoken, in the preceding chapter, of the interruption in the chain of the coast to the east of Cape Codera.), to find, from west to east, first granite, then gneiss, mica-slate, and primitive schist; and finally, compact limestone, gypsum, and conglomerates containing sea-shells.

It is to be regretted that the town of Caracas was not built farther to the east, below the entrance of the Anauco into the Guayra; on that spot near Chacao, where the valley widens into an extensive plain, which seems to have been levelled by the waters. Diego de Losada, when he founded* the town, followed no doubt the traces of the first establishment made by Faxardo. At that time, the Spaniards, attracted by the high repute of the two gold mines of Los Teques and Baruta, were not yet masters of the whole valley, and preferred remaining near the road leading to the coast. (* The foundation of Santiago de Leon de Caracas dates from 1567, and is posterior to that of Cumana, Coro, Nueva Barcelona, and Caravalleda, or El Collado.) The town of Quito is also built in the narrowest and most uneven part of a valley, between two fine plains, Turupamba and Rumipamba.

The descent is uninterrupted from the custom-house of the Pastora, by the square of Trinidad and the Plaza Mayor, to Santa Rosalia, and the Rio Guayra. This declivity of the ground does not prevent carriages from going about the town; but the inhabitants make little use of them. Three small rivers, descending from the mountains, the Anauco, the Catuche, and the Caraguata, intersect the town, running from north to south. Their banks are very high; and, with the dried-up ravines which join them, furrowing the ground, they remind the traveller of the famous Guaicos of Quito, only on a smaller scale. The water used for drinking at Caracas is that of the Rio Catuche; but the richer class of the inhabitants have their water brought from La Valle, a village a league distant on the south. This water and that of Gamboa are considered very salubrious, because they flow over the roots of sarsaparilla.* (* Throughout America water is supposed to share the properties of those plants under the shade of which it flows. Thus, at the Straits of Magellan, that water is much praised which comes in contact with the roots of the Canella winterana.) I could not discover in them any aromatic or extractive matter. The water of the valley does not contain lime, but a little more carbonic acid than the water of the Anauco. The new bridge over this river is a handsome structure. Caracas contains eight churches, five convents, and a theatre capable of holding fifteen or eighteen hundred persons. When I was there, the pit, in which the seats of the men are apart from those of the women, was uncovered. By this means the spectators could either look at the actors or gaze at the stars. As the misty weather made me lose a great many observations of Jupiter's satellites, I was able to ascertain, as I sat in a box in the theatre, whether the planet would be visible that night. The streets of Caracas are wide and straight, and they cross each other at right angles, as in all the towns built by the Spaniards in America. The houses are spacious, and higher than they ought to be in a country subject to earthquakes. In 1800, the two squares of Alta Gracia and San Francisco presented a very agreeable aspect; I say in the year 1800, because the terrible shocks of the 26th of March, 1812, almost destroyed the whole city, which is only now slowly rising from its ruins. The quarter of Trinidad, in which I resided, was destroyed as completely as if a mine had been sprung beneath it.

The small extent of the valley, and the proximity of the high mountains of Avila and the Silla, give a gloomy and stern character to the scenery of Caracas; particularly in that part of the year when the coolest temperature prevails, namely, in the months of November and December. The mornings are then very fine; and on a clear and serene sky we could perceive the two domes or rounded pyramids of the Silla, and the craggy ridge of the Cerro de Avila. But towards evening the atmosphere thickens; the mountains are overhung with clouds; streams of vapour cling to their evergreen slopes, and seem to divide them into zones one above another. These zones are gradually blended together; the cold air which descends from the Silla, accumulates in the valley, and condenses the light vapours into large fleecy clouds. These often descend below the Cross of La Guayra, and advance, gliding on the soil, in the direction of the Pastora of Caracas, and the adjacent quarter of Trinidad. Beneath this misty sky, I could scarcely imagine myself to be in one of the temperate valleys of the torrid zone; but rather in the north of Germany, among the pines and the larches that cover the mountains of the Hartz.

But this gloomy aspect, this contrast between the clearness of morning and the cloudy sky of evening, is not observable in the midst of summer. The nights of June and July are clear and delicious. The atmosphere then preserves, almost without interruption, the purity and transparency peculiar to the table-lands and elevated valleys of these regions in calm weather, as long as the winds do not mingle together strata of air of unequal temperature. That is the season for enjoying the beauty of the landscape, which, however, I saw clearly illumined only during a few days at the end of January. The two rounded summits of the Silla are seen at Caracas, almost under the same angles of elevation* as the peak of Teneriffe at the port of Orotava.* (* I found, at the square of Trinidad, the apparent height of the Silla to be 11 degrees 12 minutes 49 seconds. It was about four thousand five hundred toises distant.) The first half of the mountain is covered with short grass; then succeeds the zone of evergreen trees, reflecting a purple light at the season when the befaria, the alpine rose-tree* (* Rhododendron ferrugineum of the Alps.) of equinoctial America, is in blossom. The rocky masses rise above this wooded zone in the form of domes. Being destitute of vegetation, they increase by the nakedness of their surface the apparent height of a mountain which, in the temperate parts of Europe, would scarcely rise to the limit of perpetual snow. The cultivated region of the valley, and the gay plains of Chacao, Petare, and La Vega, form an agreeable contrast to the imposing aspect of the Silla, and the great irregularities of the ground on the north of the town.

The climate of Caracas has often been called a perpetual spring. The same sort of climate exists everywhere, halfway up the Cordilleras of equinoctial America, between four hundred and nine hundred toises of elevation, except in places where the great breadth of the valleys, combined with an arid soil, causes an extraordinary intensity* of radiant caloric. (* As at Carthago and Ibague in New Grenada.) What can we conceive to be more delightful than a temperature which in the day keeps between 20 and 26 degrees (Between 16 and 20.8 degrees Reaum.); and at night between 16 and 18 degrees (Between 12.8 and 14.4 degrees Reaum.), which is equally favourable to the plantain, the orange-tree, the coffee-tree, the apple, the apricot, and corn? Jose de Oviedo y Banos, the historiographer of Venezuela, calls the situation of Caracas that of a terrestrial paradise, and compares the Anauco and the neighbouring torrents to the four rivers of the Garden of Eden.

It is to be regretted that this delightful climate is generally inconstant and variable. The inhabitants of Caracas complain of having several seasons in one and the same day; and of the rapid change from one season to another. In the month of January, for instance, a night, of which the mean temperature is 16 degrees, is sometimes followed by a day when the thermometer during eight successive hours keeps above 22 degrees in the shade. In the same day, we may find the temperature of 24 and 18 degrees. These variations are extremely common in our temperate climates of Europe, but in the torrid zone, Europeans themselves are so accustomed to the uniform action of exterior stimulus, that they suffer from a change of temperature of 6 degrees. At Cumana, and everywhere in the plains, the temperature from eleven in the morning to eleven at night changes only 2 or 3 degrees. Moreover, these variations act on the human frame at Caracas more violently than might be supposed from the mere indications of the thermometer. In this narrow valley the atmosphere is in some sort balanced between two winds, one blowing from the west, or the seaside, the other from the east, or the inland country. The first is known by the name of the wind of Catia, because it blows from Catia westward of Cabo Blanco through the ravine of Tipe. It is, however, only a westerly wind in appearance, and it is oftener the breeze of the east and north-east, which, rushing with extreme impetuosity, engulfs itself in the Quebrada de Tipe. Rebounding from the high mountains of Aguas Negras, this wind finds its way back to Caracas, in the direction of the hospital of the Capuchins and the Rio Caraguata. It is loaded with vapours, which it deposits as its temperature decreases, and consequently the summit of the Silla is enveloped in clouds, when the catia blows in the valley. This wind is dreaded by the inhabitants of Caracas; it causes headache in persons whose nervous system is irritable. In order to shun its effects, people sometimes shut themselves up in their houses, as they do in Italy when the sirocco is blowing. I thought I perceived, during my stay at Caracas, that the wind of Catia was purer (a little richer in oxygen) than the wind of Petare. I even imagined that its purity might explain its exciting property. The wind of Petare coming from the east and south-east, by the eastern extremity of the valley of the Guayra, brings from the mountains and the interior of the country, a drier air, which dissipates the clouds, and the summit of the Silla rises in all its beauty.

We know that the modifications produced by winds in the composition of the air in various places, entirely escape our eudiometrical experiments, the most precise of which can estimate only as far as .0003 degrees of oxygen. Chemistry does not yet possess any means of distinguishing two jars of air, the one filled during the prevalence of the sirocco or the catia, and the other before these winds have commenced. It appears to me probable, that the singular effects of the catia, and of all those currents of air, to the influence of which popular opinion attaches so much importance, must be looked for rather in the changes of humidity and of temperature, than in chemical modifications. We need not trace miasms to Caracas from the unhealthy shore on the coast: it may be easily conceived that men accustomed to the drier air of the mountains and the interior, must be disagreeably affected when the very humid air of the sea, pressed through the gap of Tipe, reaches in an ascending current the high valley of Caracas, and, getting cooler by dilatation, and by contact with the adjacent strata, deposits a great portion of the water it contains. This inconstancy of climate, these somewhat rapid transitions from dry and transparent to humid and misty air, are inconveniences which Caracas shares in common with the whole temperate region of the tropics—with all places situated between four and eight hundred toises of elevation, either on table-lands of small extent, or on the slope of the Cordilleras, as at Xalapa in Mexico, and Guaduas in New Granada. A serenity, uninterrupted during a great part of the year, prevails only in the low regions at the level of the sea, and at considerable heights on those vast table-lands, where the uniform radiation of the soil seems to contribute to the perfect dissolution of vesicular vapours. The intermediate zone is at the same height as the first strata of clouds which surround the surface of the earth; and the climate of this zone, the temperature of which is so mild, is essentially misty and variable.

Notwithstanding the elevation of the spot, the sky is generally less blue at Caracas than at Cumana. The aqueous vapour is less perfectly dissolved; and here, as in our climates, a greater diffusion of light diminishes the intensity of the aerial colour, by introducing white into the blue of the air. This intensity, measured with the cyanometer of Saussure, was found from November to January generally 18, never above 20 degrees. On the coasts it was from 22 to 25 degrees. I remarked, in the village of Caracas, that the wind of Petare sometimes contributes singularly to give a pale tint to the celestial vault. On the 22nd of January, the blue of the sky was at noon in the zenith feebler than I ever saw it in the torrid zone.* (* At noon, thermometer in the shade 23.7 (in the sun, out of the wind, 30.4 degrees); De Luc's hygrometer, 36.2; cyanometer, at the zenith, 12, at the horizon 9 degrees. The wind ceased at three in the afternoon. Thermometer 21; hygrometer 39.3; cyanometer 16 degrees. At six o'clock, thermometer 20.2; hygrometer 39 degrees.) It corresponded only to 12 degrees of the cyanometer. The atmosphere was then remarkably transparent, without clouds, and of extraordinary dryness. The moment the wind of Petare ceased, the blue colour rose at the zenith as high as 16 degrees. I have often observed at sea, but in a smaller degree, a similar effect of the wind on the colour of the serenest sky.

We know less exactly the mean temperature of Caracas, than that of Santa Fe de Bogota and of Mexico. I believe, however, I can demonstrate, that it cannot be very distant from twenty to twenty-two degrees. I found by my own observations, during the three very cool months of November, December, and January, taking each day the maximum and minimum of the temperature, the heights were 20.2; 20.1; 20.2 degrees.

Rains are extremely frequent at Caracas in the months of April, May, and June. The storms always come from the east and south-east, from the direction of Petare and La Valle. No hail falls in the low regions of the tropics; yet it occurs at Caracas almost every four or five years. Hail has even been seen in valleys still lower; and this phenomenon, when it does happen, makes a powerful impression on the people. Falls of aerolites are less rare with us than hail in the torrid zone, notwithstanding the frequency of thunder-storms at the elevation of three hundred toises above the level of the sea.

The cool and delightful climate we have just been describing is also suited for the culture of equinoctial productions. The sugar-cane is reared with success, even at heights exceeding that of Caracas; but in the valley, owing to the dryness of the climate, and the stony soil, the cultivation of the coffee-tree is preferred: it yields indeed but little fruit, but that little is of the finest quality. When the shrub is in blossom, the plain extending beyond Chacao presents a delightful aspect. The banana-tree, which is seen in the plantations near the town, is not the great Platano harton; but the varieties camburi and dominico, which require less heat. The great plantains are brought to the market of Caracas from the haciendas of Turiamo, situated on the coast between Burburata and Porto Cabello. The finest flavoured pine-apples are those of Baruto, of Empedrado, and of the heights of Buenavista, on the road to Victoria. When a traveller for the first time visits the valley of Caracas, he is agreeably surprised to find the culinary plants of our climates, as well as the strawberry, the vine, and almost all the fruit-trees of the temperate zone, growing beside the coffee and banana-tree. The apples and peaches esteemed the best come from Macarao, or from the western extremity of the valley. There, the quince-tree, the trunk of which attains only four or five feet in height, is so common, that it has almost become wild. Preserved apples and quinces, particularly the latter,* (* "Dulce de manzana y de membrillo," are the Spanish names of these preserves.) are much used in a country where it is thought that, before drinking water, thirst should be excited by sweetmeats. In proportion as the environs of the town have been planted with coffee, and the establishment of plantations (which dates only from the year 1795) has increased the number of agricultural negroes,* the apple and quince-trees scattered in the savannahs have given place, in the valley of Caracas, to maize and pulse. (* The consumption of provisions, especially meat, is so considerable in the towns of Spanish America, that at Caracas, in 1800, there were 40,000 oxen killed every year: while in Paris, in 1793, with a population fourteen times as great, the number amounted only to 70,000.) Rice, watered by means of small trenches, was formerly more common than it now is in the plain of Chacao. I observed in this province, as in Mexico and in all the elevated lands of the torrid zone, that, where the apple-tree is most abundant, the culture of the pear-tree is attended with great difficulty. I have been assured, that near Caracas the excellent apples sold in the markets come from trees not grafted. There are no cherry-trees. The olive-trees which I saw in the court of the convent of San Felipe de Neri, were large and fine; but the luxuriance of their vegetation prevented them from bearing fruit.

If the atmospheric constitution of the valley be favourable to the different kinds of culture on which colonial industry is based, it is not equally favourable to the health of the inhabitants, or to that of foreigners settled in the capital of Venezuela. The extreme inconstancy of the weather, and the frequent suppression of cutaneous perspiration, give birth to catarrhal affections, which assume the most various forms. A European, once accustomed to the violent heat, enjoys better health at Cumana, in the valley of Aragua, and in every place where the low region of the tropics is not very humid, than at Caracas, and in those mountain-climates which are vaunted as the abode of perpetual spring.

Speaking of the yellow fever of La Guayra, I mentioned the opinion generally adopted, that this disease is propagated as little from the coast of Venezuela to the capital, as from the coast of Mexico to Xalapa. This opinion is founded on the experience of the last twenty years. The contagious disorders which were severely felt in the port of La Guayra, were scarcely felt at Caracas. I am not convinced that the American typhus, rendered endemic on the coast as the port becomes more frequented, if favoured by particular dispositions of the climate, may not become common in the valley: for the mean temperature of Caracas is considerable enough to allow the thermometer, in the hottest months, to keep between twenty-two and twenty-six degrees. The situation of Xalapa, on the declivity of the Mexican mountains, promises more security, because that town is less populous, and is five times farther distant from the sea than Caracas, and two hundred and thirty toises higher: its mean temperature being three degrees cooler. In 1696, a bishop of Venezuela, Diego de Banos, dedicated a church (ermita) to Santa Rosalia of Palermo, for having delivered the capital from the scourge of the black vomit (vomito negro), which is said to have raged for the space of sixteen months. A mass celebrated every year in the cathedral, in the beginning of September, perpetuates the remembrance of this epidemic, in the same manner as processions fix, in the Spanish colonies, the date of the great earthquakes. The year 1696 was indeed very remarkable for the yellow fever, which raged with violence in all the West India Islands, where it had only begun to gain an ascendancy in 1688. But how can we give credit to an epidemical black vomit, having lasted sixteen months without interruption, and which may be said to have passed through that very cool season when the thermometer at Caracas falls to twelve or thirteen degrees? Can the typhus be of older date in the elevated valley of Caracas, than in the most frequented ports of Terra Firma. According to Ulloa, it was unknown in Terra Firma before 1729. I doubt, therefore, the epidemic of 1696 having been the yellow fever, or real typhus of America. Some of the symptoms which accompany yellow fever are common to bilious remittent fevers; and are no more characteristic than haematemeses of that severe disease now known at the Havannah and Vera Cruz by the name of vomito. But though no accurate description satisfactorily demonstrates that the typhus of America existed at Caracas as early as the end of the seventeenth century, it is unhappily too certain, that this disease carried off in that capital a great number of European soldiers in 1802. We are filled with dismay when we reflect that, in the centre of the torrid zone, a table-land four hundred and fifty toises high, but very near the sea, does not secure the inhabitants against a scourge which was believed to belong only to the low regions of the coast.

CHAPTER 1.13.

ABODE AT CARACAS. MOUNTAINS IN THE VICINITY OF THE TOWN. EXCURSION TO THE SUMMIT OF THE SILLA. INDICATIONS OF MINES.

I remained two months at Caracas, where M. Bonpland and I lived in a large house in the most elevated part of the town. From a gallery we could survey at once the summit of the Silla, the serrated ridge of the Galipano, and the charming valley of the Guayra, the rich culture of which was pleasingly contrasted with the gloomy curtain of the surrounding mountains. It was in the dry season, and to improve the pasturage, the savannahs and the turf covering the steepest rocks were set on fire. These vast conflagrations, viewed from a distance, produce the most singular effects of light. Wherever the savannahs, following the undulating slope of the rocks, have filled up the furrows hollowed out by the waters, the flame appears in a dark night like currents of lava suspended over the valley. The vivid but steady light assumes a reddish tint, when the wind, descending from the Silla, accumulates streams of vapour in the low regions. At other times (and this effect is still more curious) these luminous bands, enveloped in thick clouds, appear only at intervals where it is clear; and as the clouds ascend, their edges reflect a splendid light. These various phenomena, so common in the tropics, acquire additional interest from the form of the mountains, the direction of the slopes, and the height of the savannahs covered with alpine grasses. During the day, the wind of Petare, blowing from the east, drives the smoke towards the town, and diminishes the transparency of the air.

If we had reason to be satisfied with the situation of our house, we had still greater cause for satisfaction in the reception we met with from all classes of the inhabitants. Though I have had the advantage, which few Spaniards have shared with me, of having successively visited Caracas, the Havannah, Santa Fe de Bogota, Quito, Lima, and Mexico, and of having been connected in these six capitals of Spanish America with men of all ranks, I will not venture to decide on the various degrees of civilization, which society has attained in the several colonies. It is easier to indicate the different shades of national improvement, and the point towards which intellectual development tends, than to compare and class things which cannot all be considered under one point of view. It appeared to me, that a strong tendency to the study of science prevailed at Mexico and Santa Fe de Bogota; more taste for literature, and whatever can charm an ardent and lively imagination, at Quito and Lima; more accurate notions of the political relations of countries, and more enlarged views on the state of colonies and their mother-countries, at the Havannah and Caracas. The numerous communications with commercial Europe, with the Caribbean Sea (which we have described as a Mediterranean with many outlets), have exercised a powerful influence on the progress of society in the five provinces of Venezuela and in the island of Cuba. In no other part of Spanish America has civilization assumed a more European character. The great number of Indian cultivators who inhabit Mexico and the interior of New Grenada, impart a peculiar, I may almost say, an exotic aspect, on those vast countries. Notwithstanding the increase of the black population, we seem to be nearer to Cadiz and the United States, at Caracas and the Havannah, than in any other part of the New World.

When, in the reign of Charles V, social distinctions and their consequent rivalries were introduced from the mother-country to the colonies, there arose in Cumana and in other commercial towns of Terra Firma, exaggerated pretensions to nobility on the part of some of the most illustrious families of Caracas, distinguished by the designation of los Mantuanos. The progress of knowledge, and the consequent change in manners, have, however, gradually and pretty generally neutralized whatever is offensive in those distinctions among the whites. In all the Spanish colonies there exist two kinds of nobility. One is composed of creoles, whose ancestors only from a very recent period filled great stations in America. Their prerogatives are partly founded on the distinction they enjoy in the mother-country; and they imagine they can retain those distinctions beyond the sea, whatever may be the date of their settlement in the colonies. The other class of nobility has more of an American character. It is composed of the descendants of the Conquistadores, that is to say, of the Spaniards who served in the army at the time of the first conquest. Among the warriors who fought with Cortez, Losada, and Pizarro, several belonged to the most distinguished families of the Peninsula; others, sprung from the inferior classes of the people, have shed lustre on their names, by that chivalrous spirit which prevailed at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the records of those times of religious and military enthusiasm, we find, among the followers of the great captains, many simple, virtuous, and generous characters, who reprobated the cruelties which then stained the glory of the Spanish name, but who, being confounded in the mass, have not escaped the general proscription. The name of Conquistadares remains the more odious, as the greater number of them, after having outraged peaceful nations, and lived in opulence, did not end their career by suffering those misfortunes which appease the indignation of mankind, and sometimes soothe the severity of the historian.