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POPULATION OF VENEZUELA. 145 
long. The inhabitants of the different districts 
of the mother-country preserve in some measure 
their moral peculiarities in the New World, al- 
though they have undergone various modifications 
depending upon the physical constitution of their 
new abode. 
In Venezuela, whatever is connected with an 
advanced state of civilisation is found along the 
coast, which has an extent of more than two hun- 
dred leagues. It is washed by the Caribbean Sea, 
a kind of Mediterranean, on the shores of which 
almost all the European nations have founded colo- 
nies, and which communicates at several points with 
the Atlantic Ocean. Possessing much facility of 
intercourse with the inhabitants of other parts of 
America, and with those of Europe, the natives 
have acquired a great degree of knowledge and. 
opulence. 
The Indians constitute a large proportion of the 
agricultural residents in those places only where 
the conquerors found regular and long-established 
governments, as in New Spain and Peru. In the 
province of Caraccas, for example, the native po- 
pulation is inconsiderable, having been in 1800 not 
more than one-ninth of the whole, while in Mexico 
it formed nearly one-half. The black slaves do 
not exceed one-fifteenth of the general mass, where- 
as in Cuba they were in 1811 as one to three, and 
in other West India islands still more numerous. In 
the Seven United Provinces of Venezuela, there 
were 60,000 slaves ; while Cuba, which has but 
one-eighth of the extent, had 212,000. The blacks 
of these countries are so unequally distributed, that 
in the district of Caraccas alone there were nearly 
I 
