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 détails 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

Valencia to Nirgua, and at the mountains of Torito. From this extraordinary configuration of the land, the little rivers of the valleys of Aragua form a peculiar system, and direct their course toward a basin closed on all sides. These rivers do not bear their waters to the ocean; they are collected in an interior lake, and, subject to the powerful influence of evaporation, they lose themselves, if we may use the expression, in the atmosphere. On the existence of these rivers and lakes the fertility of the soil, and the produce of cultivation in these valleys, depend. The aspect of the spot, and the experience of half a century have proved, that the level of the waters is not invariable; the waste by evaporation, and the increase from the waters running into the lake, do not uninterruptedly balance each other. The lake, being elevated one thousand feet above the neighbouring steppes of Calabozo, and one thousand three hundred and thirty-two feet above the level of the ocean, it has been suspected, that

Tuy (295 t.) but the river Tuy, turning South toward the Sierras of Guairaima and Tiara, has found an issue on the East; and it is more natural to consider as the limits of the basin of Aragua a line drawn through the sources of the streams flowing into the lake of Valencia. The charts and sections I have traced of the road from Caraccas to Nueva Valencia, and from Porto Cabello to Villa de Cura, exhibit the whole of these geological relations.

there are subterraneous communications and filtrations. The appearance of new islands, and the gradual retreat of the waters, have led to the belief, that the lake may perhaps become entirely dry. An assemblage of physical circumstances so remarkable was well fitted to fix my attention on those valleys, where the wild beauty of nature is embellished by agricultural industry, and the arts of rising civilization.

The lake of Valencia, called Tacarigua* by the Indians, exceeds in magnitude the lake of Neufchatel in Switzerland; but it's general form has more resemblance to the lake of Geneva, which is nearly at the same height above the level of the sea. The slope of the ground in the valleys of Aragua tending toward the South and the West, that part of the basin, which has remained covered with water, is the nearest to the southern chain of the mountains of Guigue, of Yusma, and of Guacimo, which stretch toward the high savannahs of Ocumare. The opposite banks of the lake of Valencia display a singular contrast; those on the South are desert, and almost uninhabited, and a screen of high mountains gives them a gloomy and monotonous aspect. The northern shore, on the contrary, is cheerful, pastoral, and decked

Fray Pedro Simon calls the lake, no doubt by mistake, Acarigua and Tarigua. (Notic. Hist., p. 533 and 668.)