230 



misfortune. A government, strong because it 

 is free, confiding because it is just, had nothing 

 to fear in giving refuge to the proscribed. 



We have endeavoured above, to give some 

 precise notions of the state of the cultivation of 

 indigo, cotton, and sugar, in the province of 

 Caraccas. Before we quit the valley of Aragua 

 and it*§ neighbouring coast, it remains for us to 

 speak of the cacao-plantations, which have at all 

 times been considered as the principal source 

 of the prosperity of those countries. The pro- 

 vince of Caraccas *, at the end of the eighteenth 

 century, produced annually a hundred and fifty 

 thousand fanegas, of which a hundred thousand 

 were consumed in Spain, and thirty thousand in 

 the province. Estimating a fanega of cacao 

 at only twenty-five piastres for the price given 

 at Cadiz, we find, that the total value of the 

 exportation of cacao, by the six ports of the 



* The province, not the Capitania General, consequently 

 excluding the cacao-plantations of Cumana, of the province 

 of Barcelona, of Maracaybo, of Varinas, and of Spanish 

 Guyana. During the war, the price of a fanega was, in 1800, 

 in the province of Caraccas, twelve piastres, and in Spain, 

 seventy piastres. From 1781 to 1799, the prices of a fanega 

 varied at Cadiz from forty to a hundred piastres. The 

 expense of freight from La Guayra to Cadiz amounts in 

 time of peace to three piastres, and in time of war to eleven 

 or twelve piastres a fanega. In time of peace the price of 

 cacao is from twelve to twenty piastres the fanega at 

 Caraccas. 



