Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Population Amounted, In 1800, To More Than 6000
Souls.
The inhabitants are active in the cultivation of cotton,
which is of a very fine quality.
The capsules of the cotton-tree,
when separated from the woolly substance, are carefully burnt; as
those husks if thrown into the river, and exposed to putrefaction,
yield noxious exhalations. The culture of the cacao-tree has of
late considerably diminished. This valuable tree bears only after
eight or ten years. Its fruit keeps very badly in the warehouses,
and becomes mouldy at the expiration of a year, notwithstanding all
the precautions employed for drying it.
It is only in the interior of the province, to the east of the
Sierra de Meapire, that new plantations of the cacao-tree are seen.
They become there the more productive, as the lands, newly cleared
and surrounded by forests, are in contact with an atmosphere damp,
stagnant, and loaded with mephitic exhalations. We there see
fathers of families, attached to the old habits of the colonists,
slowly amass a little fortune for themselves and their children.
Thirty thousand cacao-trees will secure competence to a family for
a generation and a half. If the culture of cotton and coffee have
led to the diminution of cacao in the province of Caracas and in
the small valley of Cariaco, it must be admitted that this last
branch of colonial industry has in general increased in the
interior of the provinces of New Barcelona and Cumana. The causes
of the progressive movement of the cacao-tree from west to east may
be easily conceived. The province of Caracas has been from a remote
period cultivated: and, in the torrid zone, in proportion as a
country has been cleared, it becomes drier and more exposed to the
winds. These physical changes have been adverse to the propagation
of cacao-trees, the plantations of which, diminishing in the
province of Caracas, have accumulated eastward on a newly-cleared
and virgin soil. The cacao of Cumana is infinitely superior to that
of Guayaquil. The best is produced in the valley of San Bonifacio;
as the best cacao of New Barcelona, Caracas, and Guatimala, is that
of Capiriqual, Uritucu, and Soconusco. Since the island of Trinidad
has become an English colony, the whole of the eastern extremity of
the province of Cumana, especially the coast of Paria, and the gulf
of the same name, have changed their appearance. Foreigners have
settled there, and have introduced the cultivation of the
coffee-tree, the cotton-tree, and the sugar-cane of Otaheite. The
population has greatly increased at Carupano, in the beautiful
valley of Rio Caribe, at Guira, and at the new town of Punta di
Piedra, built opposite Spanish Harbour, in the island of Trinidad.
The soil is so fertile in the Golfo Triste, that maize yields two
harvests in the year, and produces three hundred and eighty fold
the quantity sown.
Early in the morning we embarked in a sort of narrow canoe, called
a lancha, in hopes of crossing the gulf of Cariaco during the day.
The motion of the waters resembles that of our great lakes, when
they are agitated by the winds.
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