238 



and it's price is generally from thirty to forty 

 per cent, higher than that of Guayaquil. 



It is only since the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, that the Dutch , tranquil possessors of 

 the island of Curassoa, awakened by their 

 smuggling the agricultural industry of the in- 

 habitants of the neighbouring coasts, and that 

 cacao has become an object of exportation in 

 the province of Caraccas. We are ignorant of 

 every thing, that passed in those countries before 

 the establishment of the Biscay Company of 

 Guipuzcoa, in 1728. No precise statistical fact 

 has reached us ; we only know, that the expor- 

 tation of cacao from Caraccas 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 hundred 

 and fifty-eight thousand nine hundred and seven- 

 ty-eight fanegas, which make on an average 

 forty-seven thousand 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 *. 

 According to the registers of the custom-house 



* Of these 80,659 fanegas, 50,319 were sent directly to 

 Spain, 16,364 to La Vera Cruz, 11,160 to the Canaries, and 

 2316 to the West India islands. 



