480 
LA UUEA'A-VISTA 
of St. Domingo exported, in 1700, at the time of Iseckers 
administration, nearly seventy-six million pounds of coffee^* 
Tea could be cultivated as ‘veil as coffee in the mountaii. 
ous parts of the provinces of Caracas and Curoana. Ei erj 
climate is there found rising in stages one above another ; 
and this new culture would succeed there as well as in the 
southern hemisphere, where the government of Brazil, pre • 
tecting at the same time industry and religious toleration, 
suffered at once the introduction of Chinese tea .and of the 
dogmas of Fo. It is not yet a century since the first coffee- 
trees were planted at Surinam and in the West India 
Islands, and already the produce of America amounts to 
fifteen millions of piastres, reckoning the quintal of coftee at 
fourteen piastres only. 
On the eighth of February we set out at sunrise, to cross 
the Higuerote, a group of lofty mountains, separating the 
two longitudinal valleys of Caracas and Aragua. Alter pass- 
ing, near Fas A juntas, the junction of the two small nveis 
San Pedro and' Macarao, which form the Bio Guayra, we 
ascended a steep hill to the table-land of Fa Fuenavista, 
where we saw a few lonely houses. The view extends on 
the north-west to the city of Caracas, and on the south to 
the village of Los Teques. The country has a very wild 
aspect, and is thickly wooded. We had now gradually lost 
the plants of the valley of Caracas. t We were eight hun- 
* French pounds, containing 9216 grains. 112 English pounds — lOo 
French pounds; and ICO Spanish pounds = 93 French pounds. The 
island of St. Domingo was at that time, it must be remembered, a French 
C °f The Flora of Caracas is characterized chiefly by the following plants, 
which grow between the heights of four hundred and six hundred toises. 
Cipura martinicensis, Panicum mieranthum, Parthenium liysterophorus, 
Vernonia odoratissima, (Pevetera, with flowers having a delicious odour 
of heliotropium), Tagetes earacasana, T. scoparia of Lagasca (introduced 
bv M. Bonpland into the gardens of Spain), Croton hispidus, Smilax 
scabriusculus, Limnocharis liumboldti. Rich., Equisetum ramosissimum, 
Heteranthera alismoldes, Glycine punctata, Hyptis Plmneri, Pavonta 
cancellata, Cav., Spermacoee rigida, Crotalaria acutifolia, Polygala nemo- 
rosa, Stachytarpheta mntabilis, Cardiospermum ulinaccum. Amaranthus 
caracasanus, Elephantopua strigosus, Hydrotea mollis. Altcrnanthern 
earacasana, Eupatorium amydalinum, Elytraria fasciculata, Salvia fim* 
briata, Angclonia salicaria, Heliotropium strictum, Convolvulus batariila. 
Rubus iamaicensis, Datura arborea, Dalea enneaphylla, Buchnera rosea, 
Salix Ilumboldtiana; Willd. Thcophrasta longifolia, Tournefortia cars- 
