THREE DAYS ON THE ORINOCO, AND A JOURNEY 

 OVER THE LLANOS OP CUMANA. 



CIRCUMSTANCES, which it is not necessary here to detail, induced 

 me to visit New Spain in the year 1823. The scenes of lawless 

 violence, of human nature in its most disgusting shapes, which on 

 every side met my sight, it is not my intention to narrate. That the 

 Spaniards had been, for many generations, hard task-masters, and cruel 

 and grievous oppressors, few, even amongst themselves, will deny ; 

 but the miseries they had so long inflicted upon the various races 

 under their control have been retaliated ten-fold. The rancour, the 

 hatred pent up for so many ages, broke out with a fury too often in- 

 discriminate in the search of its victims. These cruelties were not 

 inflicted so much by the patient though cunning Indian, as by the 

 mixed races descended from Europeans and natives, from natives and 

 blacks, the Zambos and Mestizos, in whom a development of fierce 

 passions took place, which, during that turbulent period, when the 

 strong hand was the lawgiver, had unlimited scope for the exercise 

 of its bloodthirsty ferocity. Rapine, murder, sacrilege, were of 

 daily, nay hourly occurrence. The transition from one state of so- 

 ciety to another produced effects resembling those of the irruption of 

 a mountain-lake upon some quiet valley. It swept away every thing 

 that was fair and beautiful, covering the surface with broken, soiled, 

 and detached fragments, accompanied by the debris of its own turbid 

 stream. That a better and more healthy order of things may arise 

 from amidst these ruins, no one more sincerely wishes than I do. 

 This is, however, a consummation even yet remote ; the elements of 

 social order have been so completely broken up, that, as the storm 

 subsides, little else than wrecks are yet to be seen ; and a long series 

 of anarchy and confusion will devastate, and almost depopulate, some 

 of the very fairest portions of creation. 



On my arrival at Vera Cruz, I had suffered a very severe attack of 

 yellow fever, which reduced me to a state of deplorable weakness. 

 When I had to some degree recovered, I left the pestilential shores, 

 and proceeded to the table-land, formed by the northern extension 

 of the Cordilleras, intersecting the centre of Mexico. In these de- 

 lightful regions I spent several months, surrounded by scenery of 

 the most magnificent description, The whole treasures of the vege- 

 table world were profusely lavished around me the productions of 

 all climates and seasons were within my reach the banana, cacao, the 

 cotton-tree, the sugar-cane, the oak, the indigo, maize, wheat, coffee, 

 manioc, the potatoe, of a species growing to an immense size, oranges, 

 citrons, apples, gooseberries, the agave, and the pine. In this glorious 

 table-land I completely recovered my health, and prepared for a visit 

 to the more remote missions on the Orinoco and its tributary streams, 

 a proceeding of infinite peril, but one with which my visit was inti- 

 mately connected. 



M.M. No. 109. E 



