470 
NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
CHAP. 
3667. Hydranthelium calli- 
trichoides, H. B. K. 
Rocks 
(overflowed) 
Deeper 
Scrophulariaceje 
3668. „ „ var. 
3669. Platycarpum orinoc- 
ense, H. B. K.(tree) 
3670. Mayna laxiflora, Bth. 
Campos 
Forest 
Bignoniaceae 
Flacourtiaceae 
The Decadence of the Canton del Rio Negro 
under the republican government of 
Venezuela 
To Mr. John Teasdale 
San Carlos del Rio Negro, Venezuela, 
July 2, 1853. 
In most parts of the world, and especially the 
New World, some progress has been made during 
the last fifty years, but could Humboldt revisit 
bodily (as I know he often does in imagination) 
these scenes of his early wanderings, he would find 
in every respect a lamentable falling off. The 
missions which existed in the time of the Spanish 
rule, and which effected so much in drawing the 
Indians out of the forest and keeping them together 
in pueblos, have all disappeared. There is still in 
San Carlos a building called the convento, but 
no padre has resided in it for the last twenty years, 
nor has there been for that space of time a minister 
of religion in the whole Canton del Rio Negro — 
an immense territory comprising the whole of 
Spanish Guayana above the cataracts of the Orinoco. 
There is an equal destitution of doctors, lawyers, 
police, and military ; we are therefore (you may 
suppose) in a state so primitive that Jean Jacques 
would have delighted to form one of our com- 
