other temperate regions of the New World. He feels, at every step, that he is not on the confines, but in the centre of the torrid zone; not in one of the West India Islands, but on a vast continent, where every thing is gigantic-the mountains, the rivers, and the mass of vegetation. If he feel strongly the beauty of picturesque scenery, he can scarcely define the various emotions which crowd upon his mind; he can scarcely distinguish what most excites his admiration-the deep silence of those solitudes, the individual beauty and contrast of forms, or that vigour and freshness of vegetable life, which characterize the climate of the tropics. It might be said that the earth, overloaded with plants, does not allow them space enough to unfold themselves. The trunks of the trees are every-where concealed under a thick carpet of verdure; and if we carefully transplanted the orchidea, the pipers, and the pothos, which a single courbaril, or American fig tree, nourishes, we should cover a vast extent of ground. By this singular assemblage, the forests, as well as the flanks of the rocks and mountains, enlarge the domains of organic nature. The same lianas which creep on the ground, reach the tops of the trees, and pass from one to another at the height of more than a hundred feet.-We walked for some hours under the shade of these arcades, that scarcely admit a glimpse of the sky, which appeared to

me of an indigo blue, so much the deeper as the green of the equinoctial plants is generally of a stronger hue, with somewhat of a brownish tint. A great fern tree, very different from the polypodium arboreum of the West Indies, rose above masses of scattered rocks. In this place we were struck for the first time with the sight of those nests in the shape of bottles, or small pockets, which are suspended to the branches of the lowest trees, and which attest the admirable industry of the orioles, which mingle their warblings with the hoarse cries of the parrots and the macaws. These last, so well known for their vivid colours, fly only in pairs, while the real parrots wander about in flocks of several hundreds. A man must have lived in those climates, particularly in the hot valleys of the Andes, to conceive how these birds sometimes drown with their voice the noise of the torrents which rush down from rock to rock."

Of Caracas, in particular, it is observed, that in a general view of the seven provinces, they form three distinct zones, extending from east to west.

We find at first cultivated land along the shore, and near the chain of the mountains on the coast; next, savannahs or pasturages; and finally, beyond the Orinoco, a third zone, that of the forests, into which we can penetrate only by means of the rivers that traverse

them.-If the native inhabitants of the forests lived entirely on the produce of the chase, like those of the Missoury, we might say, that the three zones into which the territory of Caracas is divided, present an image of the three states of human society-the life of the wild hunter, in the woods of the Orinoco; the pastoral life, in the savannahs, or llanos; and the agricultural, in the high valleys, and at the foot of the mountains on the coast.

Missionary monks, and, before the Revolution, a few soldiers, occupied here, as in all America, advanced posts on the frontiers of Brazil. In this first zone were felt the preponderance of force, and the abuse of power, which is a necessary consequence. The natives carried on civil wars: The monks endeavoured to augment the little villages of their missions, by availing themselves of the dissensions of the natives: The military lived in a state of hostility with the monks, whom they were intended to protect. Every thing offered alike the melancholy picture of misery and privations.

In the second region, in the plains and the pasture grounds, food is extremely abundant, but has little variety. Although more advanced in civilization, men without the circle of some scattered towns do not remain less isolated from one another. At the view of their dwellings, partly covered with skins and leather, it would seem, that, far from being fixed, they

are scarcely encamped in those vast meadows, which extend to the horizon.

Agriculture, which alone lays the basis, and draws closer the ties of society, occupies the third zone, the shore, and especially the hot and temperate valleys in the mountains near the sea.-In Caracas, then, we perceive that its agricultural industry, its great mass of population, its numerous towns, and whatever is connected with an advanced civilization, are found near the coast. This coast extends farther than two hundred leagues. It is bathed by the Little Caribbean Sea, a sort of Mediterranean, on the shores of which all the nations of Europe have founded colonies; which communicates at several points with the Atlantic Ocean; and the existence of which has had a considerable influence on the progress of knowledge in the eastern part of equinoctial America, from the time of the conquest.

Cundinamarca and Mexico have no connection with foreign colonies, and through them with that part of Europe which is not Spanish, except by the ports of Carthagena and of Santa Martha, of Vera Cruz and of Campeachy. These vast countries, from the nature of their coasts, and the remoteness of their population on the back of the Cordilleras, present few points of contact with foreign lands. The Gulf of Mexico is even less frequented during a part of the year, on account of the danger of

gales of wind from the north.-The coasts of Caracas, on the contrary, from their extent, their stretching toward the east, the number of their ports, and the safety of their anchorage at different seasons, possess all the advantages of the interior Caribbean Sea. The communications with the greater islands, and even with those that are to windward, can no where be more frequent than from the ports of Cumana, Barcelona, La Guayra, Porto Cabello, Coro, and Maracaibo; and no where has it been found more difficult to restrain an illicit commerce with strangers. Can we wonder, that this facility of commercial intercourse with the inhabitants of free America and the agitated nations of Europe, should have augmented in conjunction, in the provinces of Caracas, opulence, knowledge, and that restless desire of a local government, which is blended with the love of liberty and republican forms?

It may be objected, that in other parts of Spanish and Portuguese America, wherever we can trace the progressive development of civilization, we find the three ages of society united. But it ought to be remembered, and this observation is extremely important to those who desire to become thoroughly acquainted with the political state of these colonies, that the disposition of the three zones-that of the forests, the pastures, and the cultivated land, is not every-where the same, and that it is no