It Is A Striking Spectacle To See The Grain Of Europe Cultivated From The Equator As Far As Lapland In The Latitude Of 69 Degrees, In Regions Where The Mean Heat Is From 22 To-2 Degrees, In Every Place Where The Temperature Of Summer Is Above 9 Or 10 Degrees.

We know the minimum of heat requisite to ripen wheat, barley, and oats; but we are less certain in respect to the maximum which these species of grain, accommodating as they are, can support.

We are even ignorant of all the circumstances which favour the culture of corn within the tropics at very small heights. La Victoria and the neighbouring village of San Mateo yield an annual produce of four thousand quintals of wheat. It is sown in the month of December, and the harvest is reaped on the seventieth or seventy-fifth day. The grain is large, white, and abounding in gluten; its pellicle is thinner and not so hard as that of the wheat of the very cold table-lands of Mexico. An acre* (* An arpent des eaux et forets, or legal acre of France, of which 1.95 = 1 hectare. It is about 1 1/4 acre English.) near Victoria generally yields from three thousand to three thousand two hundred pounds weight of wheat. The average produce is consequently here, as at Buenos Ayres, three or four times as much as that of northern countries. Nearly sixteenfold of the quantity of seed is reaped; while, according to Lavoisier, the surface of France yields on an average only five or six for one, or from one thousand to twelve hundred pounds per acre. Notwithstanding this fecundity of the soil, and this happy influence of the climate, the culture of the sugar-cane is more productive in the valleys of Aragua than that of corn.

La Victoria is traversed by the little river Calanchas, running, not into the Tuy, but into the Rio Aragua: it thence results that this fine country, producing at once sugar and corn, belongs to the basin of the lake of Valencia, to a system of interior rivers not communicating with the sea. The quarter of the town west of the Rio Calanchas is called la otra banda; it is the most commercial part; merchandize is everywhere exhibited, and ranges of shops form the streets. Two commercial roads pass through La Victoria, that of Valencia, or of Porto Cabello, and the road of Villa de Cura, or of the plains, called camino de los Llanos. We here find more whites in proportion than at Caracas. We visited at sunset the little hill of Calvary, where the view is extremely fine and extensive. We discover on the west the lovely valleys of Aragua, a vast space covered with gardens, cultivated fields, clumps of wild trees, farms, and hamlets. Turning south and south-east, we see, extending as far as the eye can reach, the lofty mountains of La Palma, Guayraima, Tiara, and Guiripa, which conceal the immense plains or steppes of Calabozo. This interior chain stretches westward along the lake of Valencia, towards the Villa de Cura, the Cuesta de Yusma, and the denticulated mountains of Guigne. It is very steep, and constantly covered with that light vapour which in hot climates gives a vivid blue tint to distant objects, and, far from concealing their outlines, marks them the more strongly. It is believed that among the mountains of the interior chain, that of Guayraima reaches an elevation of twelve hundred toises. I found in the night of the eleventh of February the latitude of La Victoria 10 degrees 13 minutes 35 seconds, the magnetic dip 40.8 degrees, the intensity of the forces equal to 236 oscillations in ten minutes of time, and the variation of the needle 4.4 degrees north-east.

We proceeded slowly on our way by the villages of San Mateo, Turmero, and Maracay, to the Hacienda de Cura, a fine plantation belonging to Count Tovar, where we arrived on the evening of the fourteenth of February. The valley, which gradually widens, is bordered with hills of calcareous tufa, called here tierra blanca. The scientific men of the country have made several attempts to calcine this earth, mistaking it for the porcelain earth proceeding from decomposed strata of feldspar. We stayed some hours with a very intelligent family, named Ustariz, at Concesion. Their house, which contains a collection of choice books, stands on an eminence, and is surrounded by plantations of coffee and sugar-cane. A grove of balsam-trees (balsamo* (* Amyris elata.)) gives coolness and shade to this spot. It was gratifying to observe the great number of scattered houses in the valley inhabited by freedmen. In the Spanish colonies, the laws, the institutions, and the manners, are more favourable to the liberty of the negroes than in other European settlements.

San Mateo, Turmero, and Maracay, are charming villages, where everything denotes the comfort of the inhabitants. We seemed to be transported to the most industrious districts of Catalonia. Near San Mateo we find the last fields of wheat, and the last mills with horizontal hydraulic wheels. A harvest of twenty for one was expected; and, as if that produce were but moderate, I was asked whether corn yielded more in Prussia and in Poland. By an error generally prevalent under the tropics, the produce of grain is supposed to degenerate in advancing towards the equator, and harvests are believed to be more abundant in northern climates. Since calculations have been made on the progress of agriculture in the different zones, and on the temperatures under the influence of which corn will flourish, it has been found that, beyond the latitude of 45 degrees, the produce of wheat is nowhere so considerable as on the northern coasts of Africa, and on the table-lands of New Grenada, Peru, and Mexico. Without comparing the mean temperature of the whole year, but only the mean temperature of the season which embraces the corn cycle of vegetation, we find for three months of summer,* in the north of Europe, from 15 to 19 degrees; in Barbary and in Egypt, from 27 to 29 degrees; within the tropics, between fourteen and three hundred toises of height, from 14 to 25.5 degrees of the centigrade thermometer.

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