Caracas was then, as it is now, the head-quarters of the colony, which
was separated from the Viceroyalty of New Granada in 1731. Three years
previously--in 1728--some merchants of Guipiscoa obtained exclusive
trading rights with Caracas, conditionally on their putting an end to
the trade with Curacoa, and landing all cargoes at Cadiz. So
successfully did they fulfil these conditions, and to such an extent did
they increase the development of the colony, that it was deemed
necessary to separate it from New Granada, and form an entirely new
administration.
[Illustration: POTOSI, IN BOLIVIA.
The famous centre of the silver-mining region which supplied the Spanish
Empire with bullion for three centuries.
_From a seventeenth-century engraving._]
Yet the climate, or some obscure effect of the mingling and
cross-breeding of conquerors and conquered, seems to have paralyzed
human effort in these colonies of the northern coast. The land was
something of an earthly paradise, and men were tempted to doze in it
rather than to develop its resources. The cacao of Venezuela takes first
place in the markets of the world, and has done so since its initial
cultivation there; but not one-tenth of the area available for the
growth of the bean has ever been utilized.
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