Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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A
Camel, Bought For Thirty Piastres, Costs Between Eight And Nine
Hundred Before It Reaches The Coast Of Caracas.
We saw four of these
animals at Mocundo; three of which had been bred in America.
Two
others had died of the bite of the coral, a venomous serpent very
common on the banks of the lake. These camels have hitherto been
employed only in the conveyance of the sugarcanes to the mill. The
males, stronger than the females, carry from forty to fifty arrobas. A
wealthy landholder in the province of Varinas, encouraged by the
example of the Marquis del Toro, has allotted a sum of 15,000 piastres
for the purpose of bringing fourteen or fifteen camels at once from
the Canary Islands. It is presumed these beasts of burden may be
employed in the conveyance of merchandise across the burning plains of
Casanare, from the Apure and Calabozo, which in the season of drought
resemble the deserts of Africa. How advantageous it would have been
had the Conquistadores, from the beginning of the sixteenth century,
peopled America with camels, as they have peopled it with horned
cattle, horses, and mules. Wherever there are immense distances to
cross in uninhabited lands; wherever the construction of canals
becomes difficult (as in the isthmus of Panama, on the table-land of
Mexico, and in the deserts that separate the kingdom of Quito from
Peru, and Peru from Chile), camels would be of the highest importance,
to facilitate inland commerce. It seems the more surprising, that
their introduction was not encouraged by the government at the
beginning of the conquest, as, long after the taking of Grenada,
camels, for which the Moors had a great predilection, were still very
common in the south of Spain.
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