ology, that we can confirm them in our own days. Besides, they bear very strongly on the long disputed question respecting final causes. The existence of the nipple in men has long puzzled philosophers; and it has even been recently affirmed, "that nature has refused to one of the sexes the faculty of sucking, because this faculty would not accord with the dignity of man."

Tobacco of Cumana.-Next to the tobacco of the isle of Cuba, and of the Rio Negro, that of Cumana is the most aromatic. It excels all the tobacco of New Spain, and of the province of Varinas. We shall give some particulars of its culture, as it is essentially different from that which is practised in Virginia. The prodigious expansion which is remarked in the solaneous plants of the valley of Cumanacoa, especially in the abundant species of the solanum arborescens, of aquartia, and of cestrum, seems to indicate how favourable this spot is for plantations of tobacco.The seed is sowed in the open ground, at the beginning of September; though sometimes not until the month of December, which is less favourable for the harvest. The cotyledons appear on the eighth day: and the young plants are covered with large leaves of heliconia or plantain to shelter them from the direct action of the sun. Great care is also taken to destroy the weeds, which, between the tropics, spring up with astonishing rapidity. The tobacco is transplanted into a rich and well prepared ground, a month or two after it has risen from the seed. The plants are disposed in regular rows, three or four feet distant from each other. Care is taken to weed them often, and the principal stalk is several times topped, till greenish blue spots indicate to the cultivator the maturity of the leaves.— They begin to gather them in the fourth month, and this first gathering generally terminates in the space of a few days. It would be better to pluck the leaves only as they dry. In good years, the cultivators cut the plant when it is only four feet high; and the shoot, which springs from the root, throws out new leaves with such rapidity, that they may be gathered on the thirteenth or fourteenth day. These last have the cellular texture very much extended; and they contain more water, more al

bumen, and less of that acrid, volatile principle, which is but little soluble in water, and in which the stimulant property of tobacco seems to reside.

The preparation which the tobacco, after being gathered, undergoes at Cumanacoa, is what the Spaniards callcura seca. Monsieur de Pons has very well described it, as it is practised at Uritucu, and in the valleys of Aragua. The leaves are suspended by threads of cocuiza: their ribs are taken out, and they are twisted into cords. The prepared tobacco should be carried to the king's warehouses in the month of June! but the laziness of the inhabitants, and the preference they give to the cultivation of maize and cassava, commonly prevent them from finishing the preparation before the month of August.It is easy to conceive, that the leaves, so long exposed to very moist air, must lose some of their flavour.

The soil of Cumanacoa is so proper for this branch of culture, that tobacco grows wild, wherever the seed finds any moisture. It grows thus spontaneously at Cerro del Cuchivano, and around the cavern of Caripe. Besides, the only kind of tobacco cultivated at Cumanacoa, as well as in the neighbouring districts of Aricagua and San Lorenzo, is the tobacco with large sestile leaves, called Virginia tobacco. The tobacco with petiolate leaves, which is the yetl of the ancient Mexicans, is unknown, though it is designated in Germany under the singular name of Turkish tobacco.

If the culture of tobacco were free, the province of Cumana might furnish a great part of Europe. It even appears that other districts would not be less favourable to this branch of colonial industry, than the valley of Cumanacoa, in which the too great frequency of rains often injures the aromatic property of the leaves.

The Cocoa-Tree.-The contrary winds and rainy weather forced us to go on shore at Pericantral, a small farm situate on the south side of the gulf.The whole of this coast covered with beautiful vegetation, is almost without cultivation. There are scarcely seven hundred inhabitants: and, except the village of Mariguitar, we saw only plantations of cocoa-trees, which are the olives of the country. This palm

tree occupies on both continents a zone; of which the mean temperature of the year is not below 309. It is, like the chamærops of the basin of the Mediterranean, a true palm-tree of the coast. It prefers salt to fresh waters; and flourishes less inland, where the air is not loaded with saline particles, than on the coasts. When cocoa-trees are planted in Terra Firma, or in the Missions of the Oroonoko, at a distance from the sea, a considerable quantity of salt, sometimes as much as half a bushel, is thrown into the hole that receives the cocoa-nut. Among the plants cultivated by man, the sugarcane, the plantain, the mamiee apple, and alligator-pear (laurus persea), alone have the property of the cocoa-tree; that of being watered alike with fresh and salt water. This circumstance is favourable to their migrations; and if the sugar-cane of the shore yield a sirup that is a little brackish, it is believed at the same time to be better fitted for the distillation of spirit, than the juice produced from the canes in the interior.

The cocoa-tree, in the rest of America, is in general cultivated around farm-houses, to be eaten as fruit; in the gulf of Cariaco, it forms real plantations. At Cumana, they talk of a hacienda de coco, as of a hacienda de canna or de caсао. In a fertile and moist ground, the cocoa-tree begins to bear fruit in abundance the fourth year; but in dry soils it yields produce at the end of ten years only. The duration of the tree does not in general exceed eighty or a hundred years; and it's mean height at this period is from seventy to eighty feet. This rapid growth is so much the more remarkable, as other palm-trees, for instance, the moriche, and the palm of Sombrero, the longevity of which is very great, frequently do not reach above fourteen or eighteen feet in sixty years. In the first thirty or forty years, a cocoa-tree of the gulf of Cariaco bears every lunation a cluster of ten or fourteen nuts, all of which however do not ripen. It may be reckoned that, on an average, a tree produces annually a hundred nuts, which yield eight flascos of oil.The flasco is sold for two rials and a half of plate, or sixteen pence. In Provence, an olive-tree thirty years old yields twenty pounds, or seven flascoes of oil, so that it produces something less than a cocoa-tree. There are in

Port of Barcelona.-The port of Barcelona, of which the name is scarcely to be found on our maps, has had a very active commerce ever since 1795. From it is exported great part of the produce of those vast steppes which extend from the south side of the chain of the coast as far as the Oroonoko, and which abound in cattle of every kind, almost as much as the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. The commercial industry of these countries depends on the demand in the great and little West India islands for salted provision, oxen, mules, and horses. The coasts of Terra Firma being opposite to those of the Island of Cuba, at a distance of fifteen or eighteen days' sail, the merchants of the Havannah prefer, especially in time of peace, drawing their provision from the port of Barcelona, to the risque of a long voyage in another hemisphere to the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. Of a black population amounting to 1,300,000, which the archipelago of the West India islands now contains, Cuba alone has more than 230,000 slaves, who are fed with vegetables, salt provision, and dried fish. Every vessel, that trades in salt meat, or tasajo, from Terra Firma, carries twenty or thirty thousand arobas, the sale price of which

is more than forty-five thousand piastres. The situation of Barcelona is singularly advantageous for the trade in cattle. The animals have only three days' journey from the Llanos to the port, while it requires eight or nine days to reach Cumana, on account of the chain of mountains of the Brigantine and the Impossible. According to the best information I could obtain, eight thousand mules were embarked at Barcelona, six thousand at PortoCabello, and three thousand at Carupano, in 1799 and 1800, for the Spanish, English, and French islands. I am ignorant of the precise exportation of Burburata, Coro, and the mouths of the Guarapiche and the Oroonoko; but I believe, notwithstanding the causes that have diminished the quantity of cattle in the Llanos of Cumana, Barcelona, and Caraccas, those immense steppes did not furnish less at that period than thirty thousand mules a year for the West India trade. Estimating each mule at twenty-five piastres (the cost price) we find that this branch of trade alone produces nearly 3,700,000 francs, without reckoning the profits on the freight of the vessels. Mr. de Pons, in general very exact in his statistical computations, estimates them at a much smaller number. But as he could not himself visit the Llanos, his place of agent to the French government obliging him to reside constantly at the town of Caraccas, the proprietors of the Hatos perhaps communicated to him too low estimations.

La Guayra.-La Guayra is rather a roadstead than a port. The sea is constantly agitated, and the ships suffer at once by the action of the wind, the tideways, the bad anchorage, and the worms. The lading is taken in with difficulty, and the heights of the swell prevents embarking mules here, as at New Barcelona and Porto Cabello. The free mulattos and negroes, who carry the cocoa on board the ships, are a class of men of very remarkable muscular strength. They go up to their middles through the water; and what is well worthy of attention, they have nothing to fear from the sharks, which are so frequent in this harbour. This fact seems connected with what I have often observed between the tropics, relatively to other classes of animals

that live in society, for instance, monkeys and crocodiles. In the missions of the Oroonoko, and the river of Amazons, the Indians, who catch monkeys to sell them, know very well, that they can easily succeed in taming those which inhabit certain islands; while monkeys of the same species, caught on the neighbouring continent, die of terror or rage when they find themselves in the power of man. The crocodiles of one pool in the Llanos are cowardly, and flee even in the water; while those of another attack with extreme intrepidity. It would be difficult to explain this difference of manners and habits, by the aspect of their respective localities. The sharks of the port of La Guayra seem to furnish an analogous example. They are dangerous and blood-thirsty at the island opposite the coast of Caraccas, at the Roques, at Bonayre, and at Curassao; while they forbear to attack persons swimming in the ports of La Guayra and Santa Martha. The people who, in order to simplify the explanation of natural phenomena, have always recourse to the marvellous, affirm, that in both places a bishop gave his benediction to the sharks.

The situation of La Guayra is very singular, and can only be compared to that of Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe. The chain of mountains, that separates the port from the high valley of Carracas, descends almost directly into the sea; and the houses of the town are backed by a wall of steep rocks. There scarcely remains one hundred or one hundred and forty toises breadth of flat ground between the wall and the ocean. The town has six or eight thousand inhabitants, and contains only two streets, running parallel to each other, east and west. It is commanded by the battery of Cerro colorado; and its fortifications along the sea-side are well disposed, and kept in repair. The aspect of this place has something solitary and gloomy; we seemed not to be on a continent, covered with vast forests, but in a rocky island, destitute of mould and vegetation. With the exception of Cape Blanco, and the cocoa-trees of Maiqueta, no view meets the eye but that of the horizon, the sea, and the azure vault of heaven. The heat is stifling during the day, and most frequently during the night. The climate

At the time of my abode at La Guayra, the scourge of yellow fever, or calentura amarilla, had been known only two years; and the mortality had not been considerable, because the confluence of strangers on the coast of Caraccas was less than that at Havannah and Vera Cruz. A few individuals, even Creoles and mulattos, were sometimes taken off suddenly by certain irregular remittent fevers; which, from being complicated with bilious appearances, hemorrhages, and other symptoms equally alarming, appeared to have some analogy with the yellow fever. They were generally men employed in the hard labour of cutting wood; in the forests, for instance, in the neighbourhood of the little port of Carupano, or the gulf of Sante-Fe, west of Cumana. Their death often alarmed the unseasoned Europeans, in towns that were regarded as eminently healthy; but the seeds of the sporadical malady by which they had been attacked, were propagated no farther. On the coast of Terra Firma, the real typus of America, which is known by the names vomito prieto (the black vomit) and of yellow fever, and which ought to be considered as a morbid affection sui generis, was known only at Porto Cabello, at Carthagena, and at Santa Martha, where Gastelbondo had observed and described it in 1729. The Spaniards who had recently disembarked, and the inhabitants of the valley of Caraccas, were not then afraid to reside at La Guayra. They complained only of the oppressive heat, which prevailed during a great part of the year. If they opposed themselves to the immediate action of the sun, they dreaded at most only those inflammations of the skin or eyes, which are felt every where in the torrid zone, and which are often accompanied by a febrile affection, and powerful congestions in the head. Many individuals preferred the ardent but uniform climate of La Guayra, to the cool but tremely variable climate of Carac

cas; and scarcely any mention was made of the insalubrity of that port.

Since the year 1797, every thing has changed. Commerce being opened to other vessels than those of the mother country, seamen born in colder climates than Spain, and consequently more sensible to the impressions of the climate of the torrid zone, began to frequent La Guayra. The yellow fever declared itself; North Americans, seized with the typhus, were received in the Spanish hospitals; and it was affirmed, that they had imported the contagion, and that, before they entered the road, the disease had appeared on board a brig, which came from Philadelphia. The captain of the brig denied the fact; and asserted, that, far from having introduced this malady, his sailors had caught it in the port. We know from what happened in Cadiz, in 1800, how difficult it is to elucidate facts, when their uncertainty serves to favour theories, that are diametrically opposite. The more enlightened inhabitants of Caraccas and La Guayra, divided in opinion, like the physicians in Europe and the United States, on the principle of contagion of the yellow fever, cited the instance of the same American vessel to prove, some, that the typhus came from abroad, and others, that it took birth in the country itself.

Since the years 1797, and 1798, the same in which there was a dreadful mortality at Philadelphia, Santa Lucia, and St. Domingo, the yellow fever has continued its ravages at La Guayra. It has proved fatal not only to the troops newly arrived from Spain, but also to those which had been raised far from the coasts, in the Llanos between Calabozo and Uritucu, in a region almost as hot as La Guayra, but favourable to health. This latter phenomenon would surprise us more, if we did not know, that even the natives of Vera Cruz, who are not attacked with the typhus in their own town, sometimes sink under it in the epidemics of the Havannah and the United States. As the black vomit finds an insurmountable limit at the Encero, (four hundred and seventy-six toises high) on the declivity of the mountains of Mexico, on the road to Xalapa, where the oaks, and a cool and deli

cious climate begin; the yellow fever scarcely ever passes beyond the ridge of mountains that separates La Guayra from the valley of Caraccas. This valley has been exempted from it for a long time; for we must not confound the vomito and the yellow fever with the irregular and bilious fevers.

Since the yellow fever has made such cruel ravages in La Guayra, the want of cleanliness in that little town has been exaggerated, like that of Vera Cruz, and of the quays or wharves of Philadelphia. In a place where the soil is extremely dry, destitute of vegetation, and where a few drops of water scarcely fall in seven or eight months, the causes that produce what are called miasmata, cannot be very frequent. The streets of La Guayra appeared to me in general to be tolerably clean, with the exception of the quarter of the slaughter-houses. The sea-side has no beach, on which the remains of fuci and of mollusca are heaped up; but the neighbouring coast, which stretches to the east toward Cape Codera, and consequently to the windward of La Guay ra, is extremely unhealthy. Intermitting, putrid, and bilious fevers often prevail at Macuto, and at Caravalleda; and when, from time to time, the breeze is interrupted by a westerly wind, the little bay of Cotia, which I shall often have occasion to mention, sends an air loaded with putrid emanations toward the coast of La Guayra, notwithstanding the rampart opposed by Cape Blanco. The irritability of the organs being so different in the people of the north and those of the south, it cannot be doubted, that with a greater freedom of commerce, and a more frequent and intimate communication between countries situate in different climates, the yellow fever will extend its ravages in the New World. It is even probable, that the concurrence of so many exciting causes, and their action on individuals so differently organized, may give birth to new forms of disease, and new deviations of the vital powers. This is one of the evils, that inevitably attends a rising civilization. To point it out is not to regret barbarism; it is not to partake the opinions of those, who would break the bands that unite nations, not in order to render the ports of the colonies more healthy, but

to thwart the introduction of knowledge, and slacken the progress of

reason.

The yellow fever and the black vomit, cease periodically at the Havannah and Vera Cruz, when the north winds bring the cold air of Canada toward the Gulf of Mexico. But from the extreme equality of temperature, which characterizes the climates of Porto Cabello, La Guayra, New Barcelona, and Cumana, it may be feared that the typhus will there become permanent, whenever, from a great concourse of strangers, it has acquired a high degree of exacerbation.

Character of South American Popu lation.— Although I had the advantage, which few Spaniards have shared with me, of having successively visited Caraccas, the Havannah, Santa Fe de Bogota, Quito, Lima, and Mexico, and of having been connected in these six capitals of Spanish America with men of all ranks, I shall not venture to decide on the various degrees of civilization, which society has attained in the different colonies. It is easier to indicate the different shades of national improvement, and the point toward which the unfolding of the intellect tends in preference, than to compare and class things that cannot be investigated under the same point of view. It appeared to me, that a strong tendency toward the study of the sciences prevailed at Mexico and Santa Fe de Bogota; more taste for literature, and whatever can charm an ardent and lively imagination, at Quito and Lima; more accurate notions of the political relations of countries, and more enlarged views on the state of colonies and their mother countries, at the Havannah and Caraccas. The numerous communications with commercial Europe, with that sea of the West Indies, which we have described as a mediterranean with many outlets, have had a powerful influence on the progress of society in the island of Cuba, and in the five provinces of Venezuela. Civilization has in no other part of Spanish America assumed a more European physiognomy, The great number of Indian cultivators who inhabit Mexico and the interior of New Grenada, have impressed a peculiar, I might almost say an exotic character, on