TREE AND SLATE LABOUR. 
505 
Four years after, at his return to America, he found on this 
spot, finely cultivated in cotton, a little hamlet of thirty or 
forty houses, which is called I’unta Zamuro, and which we 
visited with him. The inhabitants of tins hamlet are almost 
all mulattos, Zamboes, or free blacks. This example ol 
letting out land has been happily followed by several other 
great proprietors. The rent is ten piastres for a fanega 
of ground, and is paid in money or in cotton. As the small 
farmers are often in want, they sell their cotton at a very 
moderate price. They dispose of it even before the harvest : 
and the advances, made by rich neighbours, place the 
debtor in a situation of dependence, which frequently 
obliges him to offer his services as a labourer. The price 
of labour is cheaper here than in France. A freeman, 
working as a day-labourer (peon), is paid in the valleys of 
Aragua and in the llanos four or five piastres per month, 
not including^ food, which is very cheap on account of the 
abundance of meat and vegetables. I love to dwell on 
these details of colonial industry, because they serve to 
prove to the inhabitants of Europe, a fact which to the 
enlightened inhabitants of the colonies has long ceased to 
be doubtful, viz., that the continent of Spanish America can 
produce sugar, cotton, and indigo by free hands, and that 
the unhappy slaves are capable of becoming peasant*!, 
farmers, and landholders. 
END OP VOL. I. 
2 L 
VOL. I. 
