West Indies *. The cotton of the valleys of: Aragua is of a fine quality, being inferior only to that of Brazil; for it is preferred to that of Carthagena, St. Domingo, and the Caribbee islands. The cultivation of cotton extends on one side of the lake from Maracay to Valencia; and on the other, from Guayca to Guigue. The large plantations yield from sixty to seventy thousand pounds a year. When we reflect, that in the United States, consequently beyond the tropics, in a variable climate, often unfavourable. to this produce,

e exportation of indigenous

cotton rose in eighteen years, from 1797 to 1815, from 1,200,000 pounds to 83,000,000, it is difficult to form an idea of the immense extent, which this branch of commerce will

Mr. Medford, in his researches on the manufactories of England, reckons, that, of 61,380,000 pounds of cotton, which these manufactories consumed in 1805, there were thirty-one millions from the United States; ten millions from Brazil; and ten millions from the West Indies. This last quantity was not the produce of a single year, or of the islands alone. The great and little islands together produced in 1812 only 5,200,000 pounds of cotton, the greater part of which grew in Barbadoes, the Bahama Islands, Dominica, and Grenada. The produce of the soil of the West Indies. must not be confounded with their exportation, which is augmented by the carrying trade. Colquhoun, p. 378; Page, tom i, p. 3.

+ The cotton manufactures of Great Britain alone furnish, in all kinds of cotton goods (printed calicoes, stockings, &c.)

attain, when national industry shall cease to be shackled in the united provinces of Venezuela, in New Grenada, in Mexico, and on the banks of the river Plate. In the present state of things, the coasts of Dutch Guyana, the gulf of Cariaco, the valleys of Aragua, and the provinces of Maracaybo and Carthagena, produce, next to Brazil, the greatest quantity of cotton in South America.

During our stay at Cura, we made numerous excursions to the rocky islands, that rise in the midst of the lake of Valencia, to the warm springs of Mariara, and to the lofty granitic mountain, called el Cucurucho de Coco; a dangerous and narrow path leads to the port of Turiamo and the celebrated cacao-plantations of the coast. In all these excursions we were agreeably surprised, not only at the progress of agriculture, but the increase of a free, laborious population, accustomed to toil, and too poor to rely on the assistance of slaves. White and mulatto farmers had every where small separate establishments. Our host, whose father had a revenue of 40,000 piastres, possessed more lands than he could clear; he distributed them in the valleys of Aragua among poor families, who

to the value of twenty-nine millions sterling; and the value of the material, in it's unwrought state, amounts to six millions.

chose to apply themselves to the cultivation of cotton. He endeavoured to surround his ample plantations with freemen, who, working as they chose, either in their own land, or in the neighbouring plantations, supplied him with daylabourers at the time of harvest. Nobly occupied on the means best adapted gradually to extinguish the slavery of the Blacks in these provinces, Count Tovar flattered himself with the double hope of rendering slaves less necessary to the landholders, and furnishing the freedmen with opportunities of becoming farmers. On departing for Europe he had parcelled out and let a part of the lands of Cura, which extend toward the West at the foot of the rock of Las Viruelas. Four years after, at his return to America, he found on this spot, finely cultivated in cotton, a little hamlet of thirty or forty houses, which is called Punta Zamuro, and which we after visited with him. The inhabitants of this hamlet are almost all Mulattoes, Zamboes, or free Blacks. This example of letting out land has been happily followed by several other great proprietors. The rent is ten piastres for a vanega of ground, and is paid in money, or in cotton. As the small farmers are often in want, they sell their cotton at a very moderate price. They sell it even before the harvest; and these advances, made by rich neighbours, place the debtor in a situation of dependance,

which frequently obliges him to offer his services as a labourer. The price of hands is cheaper here than in France. A freeman, working as a day-labourer (peon), is paid in the valleys of Aragua, and in the Llanos, four or five piastres a month, not including food, which is very cheap on account of the abundance of meat and vegetables. I love to dwell on these details of colonial industry, because they prove to the inhabitants of Europe, what to the enlightened inhabitants of the colonies has long ceased to be doubtful, that the continent of Spanish America can produce sugar and indigo by free hands: and that the unhappy slaves are capable of becoming peasants, farmers, and landholders.

CHAPTER XVI.

Lake of Tacarigua.-Hot Springs of Mariara. -Town of Nueva Valencia de el Rey. Descent toward the coasts of Porto Cabello,

THE Valleys of Aragua, of which we have displayed the rich cultivation and the admirable fecundity, form a narrow basin between granitic and calcareous mountains of unequal height. On the North, they are separated by the Sierra Mariara from the seacoast; and toward the South, the chain of Guacimo and Yusma serves them as a rampart against the heated air of the steppes. Groups of hills, high enough to determine the course of the waters, close this basin on the East and West, like transverse dikes. We find these hills between the Tuy and La Victoria *, as well as on the road from

The lofty mountains of Los Teques, which give birth to the Tuy, may be looked upon as the eastern boundary of the valleys of Aragua. The level of the ground continues in fact to rise from La Victoria (269 t.) to the Hacienda de