GOLD WASHINGS. 
25 
for the ecclesiastical hierarchy, or sought to limit its powe:^ 
In 1768 Don Manuel Centurion carried ofl twenty thousand 
Dead of cattle from the missionaries, in order to distribute 
them among the indigent inhabitants. This liberality, 
oserted in a manner not very legal, produced very serious 
consequences. The governor was disgraced on the com- 
plaint of the Catalonian monks, though he had considerably 
extended the territory of the missions toward the south, and 
founded the Villa de Barceloneta, above the conduence of 
the^ Carony with the Kio Paragua, and the Ciudad de 
Cuirior, near the union of the Bio Paragua and the Para- 
guamusi. From that period the civil adminisfration has 
carefully avoided all intervention in the aflairs of the Capu- 
^ins, whose opulence has been exaggerated like that of the 
Jesuits of Paraguay. 
The missions of the Carony, by the configuration of their 
sod* and the mixture of savannahs and arable lands, unite 
the advantages of the Llanos of Calabozo and the valleys of 
Aragua. The real wealth of this country is founded on the 
care of the herds and the cultivation of colonial produce. 
It Were to be wished that here, as in the fine and fertile pro* 
^mce of V enezuela, the inhabitants, faithful to the labours 
of the fields, woidd not addict themselves too hastily to the 
research of mines. The example of Germany and Mexico 
proves, no doubt, that the working of metals is not at all 
incompatible with a fiourishing state of agriculture; but, 
Mcordlug to popular traditions, the banks of the Carouj 
iead to the lake Dorado and the palace of “the gilded 
man ; ’f and this lake, and this palace, being a local fable, it 
might be dangerous to awaken remembrances which begin 
gradually to be effaced. I was assured that, in 1760, the 
indepndent Caribs went to Cerro de Pajarcima, a mountain 
to the south of Vieja Guayana, to submit the decomposed 
rock to the action of washing. The gold-dust coUocted by 
this labour was put into calabashes of the Crescentia cujete 
and sold to the Dutch at Essequibo. Still more recently, 
some Mexican miners, who abused the credulity of Don 
TT * wears, that the little table-lands between the mountains of 
Gpata, Cumanu, and Tui)uqusn, arc more than one hundred and fifty 
toises above the level of the sea. 
T Dorado^ that is, el rey 6 homhre dorado^ See vol. ii, p. 400. 
