EXPORT OF CACAO. 61 



It is only since the middle of the seventeenth century, 

 when the Dutch, tranquil possessors of the island of Curacoa, 

 awakened, by their smuggling, the agricultural industry of 

 the inhabitants of the neighbouring coasts, that cacao 

 has become an object of exportation in the province of 

 Caracas. We are ignorant of everything that passed in 

 those countries before the establishment of the Biscay 

 Company of Guipuzcoa, in 1728. No precise statistical 

 data have reached us: we only know that the exportation 

 of cacao from Caracas scarcely amounted, at the beginning 

 of the eighteenth century, to thirty thousand fanegas a-year. 

 From 1730 to 1748, the company sent to Spain eight hun- 

 dred and fifty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventy- 

 eight i'anegas, which make, on an average, forty-seven thou- 

 sand seven hundred fanegas a-year ; the price of the fanega 

 fell, in 1732, to forty-five piastres, when it had before kept 

 at eighty piastres. In 1763 the cultivation had so much 

 augmented, that the exportation rose to eighty thousand 

 six hundred and fifty-nine fanegas. 



In an official document, taken from the papers of the 

 minister of finance, the annual produce (la cosecha) of the 

 province of Caracas is estimated at a hundred and thirty- 

 five thousand fauegas of cacao; thirty -three thousand of 

 which are for home consumption, ten thousand for other 

 Spanish colonies, seventy-seven thousand for the mother- 

 country, fifteen thousand for the illicit commerce with the 

 French, English, Dutch, and Danish colonies. From 1789 

 to 1793, the importation of cacao from Caracas into Spain 

 was, on an average, seventy-seven thousand seven hundred 

 aud nineteen fanegas a-year, of which sixty-five thousand 

 seven hundred and sixty-six were consumed in the country, 

 and eleven thousand nine hundred and fifty-three exported 

 to France, Italy, and Germany. 



The late wars have had much more fatal effects on the 

 cacao trade of Caracas than on that of Guayaquil. On 

 account of the increase of price, less cacao of the first quality 

 has been consumed in Europe. Instead of mixing, as was 

 done formerly for common chocolate, one quarter of the 

 cacao of Caracas, with three-quarters of that of Guayaquil, 

 the latter has been employed pure in Soain. We nii'st here 



