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they do not bear till the sixth or eighth year. 

 The soil of these countries is sandy, wherever it 

 is not marshy ; but the light lands of the Tua- 

 mini and Pimichin are extremely productive *. 

 When we reflect, that the cacao tree is a native 

 of these forests of the Parima south of six de- 

 grees of north latitude, and that the humid 

 climate of the Upper Oroonoko far better suits 

 this valuable tree, than the air of the provinces 

 of Caraccas and Barcelona, which becomes 

 every year dryer, we saw with regret this fine 

 part of the globe in the hands of monks, who 

 encourage no kind of cultivation. The mission 

 of the Observantins alone could furnish annually 



* At Javita, an extent of fifty feet square, planted with 

 jatropha manihot (yucca) yields in two years, in the worst 

 soil, a harvest of six tortas of cassava ; the same extent on a 

 middling soil yields in fourteen months a produce of nine 

 tortas. In an excellent soil, around clumps of mauritia (in 

 the palmares morichales), there is every year from fifty feet 

 square a produce of thirteen or fourteen tortas. A torta 

 weighs three quarters of a pound, and three tortas cost gene- 

 rally in the province of Caraccas one rial of plate, or one 

 eighth of a piastre. These statements appear to me to be 

 of some importance, when we wish to compare the nutritive 

 matter, which man can obtain from the same extent of soil, 

 by covering it, in different climates, with bread-trees, plan- 

 tains, jatropha, maize, potatoes, rice, and corn. The slow- 

 ness of the harvest of jatropha has, I believe, a beneficial 

 influence on the mariners of the natives, by fixing them to 

 the soil, and compelling them to sojourn longer on the 

 same spot. 



