230 On the Culture of Wheat within the Tropics. 



At an early period after the conquest of South America, the corn of 

 Europe, as we learn from that intelligent and inquisitive traveller. Baron 

 Von Humboldt,* was successfully cultivated in regions which are now 

 regarded as too hot or too humid, for the successful prosecution of this 

 branch of agriculture. The first settlers from Europe, wedded to their 

 ancient tastes and habits, fastidiously rejected the novel flavour of the 

 Indian corn,t and looked for the harvests of Spain amidst the forests of 

 Columbia. 



With this object alone in view, with minds undazzled by specious theo- 

 ries, and unbiased by partial interests, these early adventurers, without 

 stopping to ascertain the comparative advantages of the culture of the cane, 

 the cerealia, the coffee or the cotton, boldly interrogated nature, and tried 

 seeds of every description, without v\asting their time in idly theorizing 

 upon their possible success. 



The successors, however, of the original conquestadores, being born in 

 America, and losing their predilection for European luxuries in proportion 

 as they receded from their primitive stock, became progressively indifferent 

 to the cultivation of the cerealia of their forefathers ; and the importation 

 of negroes from Africa, by facilitating the culture of the cane, and other 

 objects of greater profit, completed the expulsion of the wheat cultivation 

 from most of those situations in which sugar or coffee could be cultivated 

 to advantage. Thus, as Humboldt acquaints us, upon the authority of 

 Don Ignacio de Pombo,J: an intelligent merchant of Carthagena, and the 

 friend of the lamented Mutis, wheat was cultivated in the province of 

 Carthagena, " crossed by the mountains of Maria and Guamoco," " till the 

 sixteenth century." § This culture, he also informs us, is very ancient in 

 the province of Caraccas, " among the mountainous lands of Tocuyo, 

 Quibor, and Barquesimeto, which connect the littoral chain with the Sierra 

 Nevada of Merida. It is still happily practised there, and the environs of 

 the town of Tucuyo alone export annually more than eight thousand 

 quintals of excellent flour. "|| He immediately, however, adds that "though 

 the province of Caraccas, in its vast extent, presents several spots very 

 favourable to the production of European corn, I believe this branch of 

 agriculture will never become of great importance there. The most tem- 

 perate rallies are not sufficiently wide j they are not real table lands, and 

 their mean elevation above the level of the sea is not considerable enough 

 for the inhabitants to avoid perceiving that it is more their interest to 

 establish plantations of coffee than to cultivate corn." Hence, in place of 

 raising even a sufficiency for their own domestic consumption, we find the 

 inhabitants of regions in which Humboldt witnessed, in the year 1800, at 

 an elevation of from two hundred and seventy to three hundred toises, or 



* Pers. Narr. vol. 4, p. 112. -f- Zea Mayz. 



X Informe del real Consulado de Cartagena de Indias, 1810, p. 75. 



§ Personal Narrative, vol. iv. p. 112. || Humb. 1. c. 



