94 BANDITTI IN THE LLANOS. 



pled plains, filled with herds, furnish them with booty. They 

 commit their depredations on horseback, in the manner of 

 the Bedouins. The insalubrity of the prisons would be at- 

 tended with fatal results, but that these receptacles are 

 cleared from time to time by the flight of the prisoners. It 

 also frequently happens that sentences of death, tardily pro- 

 nounced by the Audiencia of Caracas, cannot be executed 

 for want of a hangman. In these cases the barbarous cus- 

 tom is observed of pardoning one criminal on condition of 

 his hanging the others. Our guides related to us, that, a 

 short time before our arrival on the coast of Cumana, a 

 Zambo, known for the great ferocity of his manners, deter- 

 mined to screen himself from punishment by turning exe- 

 cutioner. The preparations for the execution however, 

 shook his resolution ; he felt a horror of himself, and pre- 

 ferring death to the disgrace of thus saving his life, he 

 called again for his irons, which had been struck off. He 

 did not long remain in prison, and he underwent his sen 

 tence through the baseness of one of his accomplices. This 

 awakening of a sentiment of honour in the soul of a mur- 

 derer is a psychologic phenomenon worthy of reflection. 

 The man who had so often shed the blood of travellers in 

 the plains, recoiled at the idea of becoming the passive in- 

 strument of justice, in inflicting upon others a punishment 

 which he felt that he himself deserved. 



If, even in the peaceful times when M. Bonpland and 

 myself had the good fortune to travel through North and 

 South America, the Llanos were the refuge of malefactors, 

 who had committed crimes in the missions of the Orinoco, 

 or who had escaped from the prisons on the coast, how 

 much worse must that state of things have been rendered 

 by discord, during the continuance of that sanguinary 

 struggle which has terminated in conferring freedom and 

 independence on those vast regions ! Our European wastes 

 and heaths are but a feeble image of the savannahs of the 

 New Continent, which, for the space of eight or ten thou- 

 sand square leagues are smooth as the surface of the sea. 

 The immensity of their extent insures impunity to robbers, 

 who conceal themselves more effectually in the savannaha 

 than in our mountains and forests ; an 3. it is easy to con- 

 ceive, that even a European police would not be very efc 





