of the conquest, pearls to the amount of 1,500 marcs every month. At a time that the whole of the mines. of America did not furnish two millions of piastres per annum, the value of the pearls sent to Europe amounted on an average to upwards of 800,000 piastres. "Pearls were so much the more sought after, as the luxury of Asia had been introduced into Europe by two opposite channels; that of Constantinople, where the paleologi wore garments covered with strings of pearls; and that of Grenada, where the Moorish kings displayed at their court all the luxury of the East. The pearls of the East Indies were preferred to those of the West; but the number of the latter which circulated in commerce, was not less considerable in the times that immediately followed the discovery of America. In Italy, as well as in Spain, the islet of Cubagua became the object of numerous mercantile speculations. The pearl fishery diminished rapidly towards the end of the sixteenth century, and had long ceased in 1683. The industry of the Venetians, who imitated fine pearls with great exactness, and the frequent use of cut diamonds, rendered the fisheries of Cubagua less lucrative. At the same time, the oysters which yielded the pearls became scarcer, because their propagation had been checked by the imprudent destruction of the shells by thousands. At present, Spanish America furnishes no other pearls for trade, than those of the Gulf of Panama and the mouth of the Rio de la Hacha. On the shoals that surround Cabagua, Coche, and the island of Margarita, the fishery is as much neglected as on the coasts of California.*

"It is believed," adds M. Humboldt, “that after two centuries of repose, the pearl aronde has again greatly multiplied." In 1812, some attempts were made at Margarita to revive the pearl fishery. M.

*See Mod, Trav., Mexico, vol. ii. p. 93.

Lavaysse, indeed, states, that he saw an individual in 1807, who had procured about 400 pearls in the course of the preceding year. There seems reason to believe, however, that, from some cause or other, the oyster has degenerated, the pearls now found being much smaller and of less brilliancy than those obtained at the time of the conquest. The first Spaniards who landed in Terra Firma, found the savages decked with necklaces and bracelets of beautiful pearls. These treasures of the deep proved not less fatal to the natives than the gold of Brazil and the silver of Mexico Indeed, the hardships endured by those who were compelled to labour in the mines, were not to be compared with the sufferings inflicted on the pearl-divers. Las Casas has described, "not without some exaggeration," says M. Humboldt, the cruelties exercised on the unhappy Indian and negro slaves employed in the pearl fishery. It is certain, however, that the waste of human life was most horrible.

Four hours' walk from the salt-water lake is the village of Maniquarez, celebrated for its potteries, which are entirely in the hands of the Indian women. Three centuries have been insufficient to introduce the potter's wheel on a coast which is not above thirty or forty days' sail from Spain. Being unacquainted with the use of ovens, they place twigs of cassia and other shrubs round the pots, and bake them in the open air. The clay, which is found in quarries half a league to the east of Maniquarez, is produced by the natural decomposition of a mica-slate reddened by oxide of iron.

Of all the productions on the coasts of Araya, that which the natives deem the most extraordinary, is the piedra de los ojos (stone of the eyes): according to their natural philosophy, it is both a stone and an animal. "It is found in the sand, where it is motionless; but, placed singly on a polished surface, for instance, on a pewter or earthen plate, it moves when

VOL. I.

5*

excited by lemon-juice. Placed in the eye, the pretended animal turns on itself, and expels any other foreign substance that may have been accidentally introduced. At the new salt-works, and at the village of Maniquarez," continues Humboldt, "the 'stones of the eyes' were offered us by hundreds, and the natives were eager to shew us the experiment of the lemon-juice. The wished to put sand into our eyes, in order that we might ourselves try the efficacy of the remedy. It was easy to perceive that these stones are thin and porous opercula, which have formed part of small univalve shells. Their diameter varies from one to four lines. One of their surfaces is plane, the other convex. These calcareous opercula effervesce with lemon-juice, and put themselves in motion as the carbonic acid is disengaged. By the effect of a similar re-action, loaves placed in an oven times move in a horizontal plane; a phenomenon that has given rise to the popular notion of enchanted ovens. Introduced into the eye, the piedras de los ojos, act like small pearls and different sound grains employed by the American savages to increase the flowing of tears. These explanations were little to the taste of the inhabitants of Araya.”

some

Proceeding along the southern coast to the east of Maniquarez, three strips of lands are found running out into the sea very near each other, called Punta de Soto, Punta de la Brea (Tar Cape), and Punta Guaratarito. Near the second of these points, at eighty feet distance from the shore, a spring of naphtha rises, and covers the surface of the sea for a distance of more than a thousand feet. The smell spreads itself into the interior of the peninsula. phenomenon is the more remarkable, as the bottom of the gulf is here formed of primitive mica-slate; whereas all the fountains of naphtha hitherto known originate in secondary formations, and have been supposed to be produced by the decomposition of vegetable

This

and animal substances, or the burning of coal. It is observable also, that the same primitive rocks contain the subterraneous fires; that the smell of petroleum is frequently perceived on the brink of burning craters; and that the greater number of hot springs in the American continent, issue from gneiss and micaceous schist. The largest reservoir of petroleum is that of the island of Trinidad.

FROM CUMANA TO THE MISSIONS OF THE CHAYMA

INDIANS.

Another excursion made by the learned Travellers we are following, during their residence at Cumana, was to the missions of the Chayma Indians in the interior of the mountains. To the exertions of the religious orders by whom these institutions were founded, we must certainly attribute the introduction of a more humane system of civilisation, which put a stop to the effusion of blood, and laid the foundation of social communities in the recesses of the wilderness. But these same institutions have, in their result, proved hostile to the progress of civilisation. "The Indians have remained in a state little different from that in which they existed when their scattered dwellings were not as yet collected round the habitation of the missionary. Their number has considerably augmented, but the sphere of their ideas is not enlarged. They have progressively lost that vigour of character, and that natural vivacity which, in every state of society, are the noble fruits of independence. In subjecting to invariable rules even the slightest actions of their domestic life, they have been rendered stupid by the effort to render them obedient. Their subsistence is in general more certain, and their habits more pacific; but, subject to the constraint and the dull monotony of the government of the missions,

they discover by their gloomy and reserved looks, that they have not without regret sacrificed their liberty to their repose. The monastic system, confined to the cloister, while it deprives the state of useful citizens, may sometimes contribute to calm the passions, to soothe incurable sorrows, and fit the mind for meditation; but, transplanted into the forests of the New World, and applied to the numerous relations of civil society, it has consequences so much the more fatal as its duration is prolonged. It enchains, from generation to generation, the intellectual faculties, interrupts the intercourse of nations, and is hostile to whatever elevates the mind or enlarges its conceptions." Such is the very just and striking picture which Humboldt draws, of the effects of the hierocratic government of the Romish missions, connected as it always has been with the fatal policy of accommodating Christianity to the prejudices and superstitions of its nominal converts. "From these united causes," he adds, "the natives who inhabit the missions, are kept in a state remote from all improvement, and which we should call stationary, did not societies follow the course of the human mind, and retrograde whenever they cease to go forward.”*

The Travellers left Cumana on the 4th of September, 1799. The road," or rather path," follows the right bank of the Manzanares. At the hospital of the Divina Pastora, it turns to the north-east, and lies for two leagues over a level tract bare of trees, along the southern side of hills which Humboldt supposes to have formed at one time an island. the end of two hours, they arrived at the foot of the high chain stretching east and west from the Brigantine to the Cerro de San Lorenzo. Here, every object begins to assume a more majestic and picturesque character. New rocks appear, and the

* Pers. Narr. vol. iii. pp. 4—6.

At