200 
THE INDIAN MISSIONS, 
Chapter VI. 
Mountains of New Andalusia.— Valley of Cumanacoa.— Summit of th« 
Cocollar. — Missions of the Chayma Indians. 
Our first visit to tlie peninsula of Araya was soon suc- 
ceeded by an excursion to tbe mountains of the missions 
of the Chayma Indians, where a variety of interesting 
objects claimed our attention. ¥e entered on a country 
studded with forests, and visited a convent surrounded by 
palm-trees and arborescent ferns. It was situated in a nar- 
row valley, where we felt the enjoyment of a cool and deli- 
cious climate, in the centre of 'the torrid zone. The 
surrounding mountains contain caverns haunted by thou- 
sands of nocturnal birds; and, what affects the imagination 
more than all the wonders of the physical world, we find 
beyond, these mountains a people lately nomade, ’and still 
nearly in a state of nature, wild without being barbarous. 
It was in the promontory of Paria that Columbus first 
descried the continent; there terminate these valleys, laid 
waste alternately by the warlike anthropophagic Ca’rib arid 
by the commercial and polished nations of Europe. At the 
beginning of the sixteenth century the ill-fated Indians of 
the coasts of Carupano, of Macarapan, and of Caracas, 
were treated in the same manner as the inhabitants of the 
coast of Guinea in our day's. The soil of the islands was 
cultivated, the vegetable produce of the Old World was 
transplanted thither, but a regular system of colonization 
remained long unknown on the New Continent. If the 
Spaniards visited its shores, it was only to procure, either 
by violence or exchange, slaves, pearls, grains of gold, and 
dye-woods; and endeavours were made to ennoble the motives 
of this insatiable avarice by the pretence of enthusiastic zeal 
in the cause of religion. 
The trade in the copper-coloured Indians was accompanied 
by the same acts of inhumanity as that which characterizes the 
traffic in African negroes ; it was attended also by the same 
result, that ot rendering both the conquerors and the con- 
quered more ferocious. Thence wars became more frequent 
