If they shed tears before thy throne, it is that thou mayest send them hither to govern provinces. Dost thou know what sort of life they lead here? given up to luxury, acquiring possessions, selling the sacraments, being at once ambitious, violent, and gluttons; such is the life they lead in America. The faith of the Indians suffers by such bad examples. If thou dost not change all this, O king of Spain, thy government will not be stable.

"What a misfortune, that the Emperor, thy father, has conquered Germany at such a price, and has spent on that conquest the money, that we procured for him in these very Indies! In the year 1559, the Marquis of Canete sent to the Amazons Pedro de Ursua, a Navarrese, or rather a Frenchman: we sailed on the largest rivers of Peru, till we came to a gulf of fresh water. We had already gone three hundred leagues, when we killed that bad and ambitious captain. We chose a cavallero of Seville, Fernand de Guzman, for king: and we swore fealty to him, as is done to thyself. I was named quarter-master general: and because I did not consent to all his will, he wanted to kill me. But I killed this new king, the captain of his guards, his lieutenant-general, his chaplain, a woman, a knight of the order of Rhodes, two eusigns, and five or six domestics of the pretended king. I then resolved to punish thy ministers, and thy auditors (counsellers of the audiencia). I named captains and sergants: these again wanted to kill me, but I had them all hanged. In the midst of these adventures, we navigated eleven months, till we reached the mouth of the river. We sailed more than 1500 leagues. God knows how we got through that great mass of water. I advise thee, O great king, ucver to send Spanish fleets into that cursed river. God preserve thee in his holy keeping."

This letter was given by Aguirre to the vicar of the island of Margaretta, Pedro de Contreras, in order to be transmitted to king Philip II. Fray Pedro Simon, provincial of the order of St. Francis in New Grenada, saw

several manuscript copies of it in America, and in Spain. It was printed for the first time, in 1723, in the History of the Province of Venezuela by Oviedo, vol. i, p. 206. Complaints no less violent, on the conduct of the monks of the 16th century, were addressed directly to the Pope by the Milanese traveller, Girolamo Benzoni.

NOTE B.

The milk of the lactescent agarics has not been separately analysed; it contains an acrid principle in the agaricus piperatus; and in other species it is sweet and harmless. The fine experiments of Messrs. Braconnot, Bouillon-Lagrange, and Vauquelin (Annales de Chimie, vol. xlvi, p. 211; vol. li, p. 75; vol. lxxix, p. 265; vol. lxxx, p. 272; vol. lxxxv, p. 5), have pointed out a great quantity of albumen in the substance of the agaricus deliciosus, an edible mushroom. It is this albumen contained in their juice, which renders them so hard when boiled. I have mentioned above the experiments I made in 1796, to prove that morels (morchella esculenta) can be converted iuto a sebaceous and adipocerous matter, capable of being used in the fabrication of soap. (De Candolle, sur les Propriétés méd. des Plantes, p. 345.) The saccharine matter had already been found in mushrooms, in 1791, by Mr. Gunther (See my Aphorismi ex Physiologia chem. Plantarum, in the Flora Friberg, p. 175). It is in the family of the fungi, more especially in the clavariæ, phalli, helvetiæ, the merulii and the small gymnope which display themselves in a few hours after a storm of rain, that organic nature produces with most rapidity the greatest variety of chemical principles, sugar, albumen, adipocire, acetat of potash, fat, ozmazome, the aromatic principles, &c. It would be interesting to examine, beside the milk of the

lactescent fungi, those species, which, when cut in pieces, change their colonr at the contact of atmospheric air.

Though we have referred the palo de vaca to the family of the sapotas, we have nevertheless found in it a great resemblance with some plants of the urticeous kind, especially with the fig-tree, because of it's terminal stipulæ in the shape of a horn; and with the brosimum, on account of the structure of it's fruit. Mr. Kunth would even have preferred this last classification; if the description of the fruit, made on the spot, and the nature of the milk, which is acrid in the urticeæ, and sweet in the sapotas, did not seem to confirm the conjecture, which we have advanced above, p. 215. Mr. Bredemeyer saw, like us, the fruit, and not the flower of the cow-tree. He asserts, that he observed (sometimes?) two seeds, lying one against the other, as in the alligator pear-tree (laurus persea). Perhaps this botanist had the intention of expressing the same conformation of the nucleus, that Swartz indicates in the description of the brosimum : nucleus bilobus aut bipartibilis. We have mentioned the places where this remarkable tree grows: it will be easy for botanical travellers to procure the flower of the palo de vaca, and to remove the doubts, which still remain, of the family to which it belongs.

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER XVII.

Mountains that separate the valleys of Aragua from the Llanos of Caraccas.-Villa de Cura, —Parapara.—Llanos, or Steppes.-Calabozo.

THE chain of mountains, that borders the lake of Tacarigua toward the South, forms in some sort the northern shore of the great basin of the Llanos or savannahs of Caraccas. In order to descend from the valleys of Aragua into these savannahs, the mountains of Guigue and of Tucutunemo must be crossed. From a peopled country embellished by cultivation, we plunge into a vast solitude. Accustomed to the aspect of rocks, and to the shade of valleys, the traveller beholds with astonishment these savannahs without trees, these immense plains, that seem to ascend toward the horizon.

Before I trace the scenery of the Llanos, or of the region of pasturage *, I shall succinctly describe the road we took from Nueva Valencia,

* See above, chap. xii, vol. iii, p. 424.