CABNIVAL SPOUTS. 57 



Marquis del Toro, and pass three days more on the borders 

 of the lake. 



It was the carniva* season, and all was gaiety. The 

 sports in which the people indulge, and which are called 

 carnes tollendas* assume occasionally somewhat of a savage 

 character. Some led an ass loaded with water, and, where- 

 ever they found a window open, inundated the apartment 

 within by means of a pump. Others carried bags filled with 

 hairs of picapica ;t and blew the hair, which causes a great 

 irritation of the skin, into the faces of those who passed by. 



From Gruacara we returned to Nueva Valencia. We 

 found there a few French emigrants, the only ones we saw 

 during five years passed in the Spanish colonies. Notwith- 

 standing the ties of blood which unite the royal families of 

 France and Spain, even French priests were not permitted 

 to take refuge in that part of the New World, where man 

 with such facility finds food and shelter. Beyond the At- 

 lantic, the United States of America afford the only asylum 

 to misfortune. A government, strong because it is free, con- 

 fiding because it is just, has nothing to fear in giving refuge 



the proscribed. 



We have endeavoured above to give some notions of the 

 tate of the cultivation of indigo, cotton, and sugar, in the 

 >rovince of Caracas. Before we quit the valley of Aragua 



id its neighbouring coast, it remains for us to speak of the 



icao-plantations, which have at all times been considered as 

 the principal source of the prosperity of those countries. 

 The province of Caracas,^ at trie end of the eighteenth 

 century, produced annually a hundred and fifty thousand 

 'megas, of which a hundred thousand were consumed in 

 Spain, and thirty thousand in the province. Estimating a 

 "mega of cacao at only twenty-five piastres for the price 

 ;iven at Cadiz, we find that the total value of the exporta- 

 tion of cacao, by the six ports of the Capitania General of 



* Or "farewell to flesh." The word carnival has the same meaning, 

 these sports being always held just before the commencement of Lent. 



t Dolichos pruriens (cowage). 



t The province, not the capitania-general, consequently not including 

 the cacao plantations of Cqmana, the province of Barcelona, of Maracaybo, 

 * Yarinas, and of Spanish Guiana. 



