avenue of carolineas leads from Guacara to Mocundo. It was the first
time I had seen in the open air this majestic plant, which forms one
of the principal ornaments of the extensive conservatories of
Schonbrunn.* (* Every tree of the Carolinea princeps at Schonbrunn has
sprung from seeds collected from one single tree of enormous size,
near Chacao, east of Caracas.) Mocundo is a rich plantation of
sugar-canes, belonging to the family of Toro. We there find, what is
so rare in that country, a garden, artificial clumps of trees, and on
the border of the water, upon a rock of gneiss, a pavilion with a
mirador, or belvidere. The view is delightful over the western part of
the lake, the surrounding mountains, and a forest of palm-trees that
separates Guacara from the city of Nueva Valencia. The fields of
sugar-cane, from the soft verdure of the young reeds, resemble a vast
meadow. Everything denotes abundance; but it is at the price of the
liberty of the cultivators. At Mocundo, with two hundred and thirty
negroes, seventy-seven tablones, or cane-fields, are cultivated, each
of which, ten thousand varas square,* (* A tablon, equal to 1849
square toises, contains nearly an acre and one-fifth: a legal acre has
1344 square toises, and 1.95 legal acre is equal to one hectare.)
yields a net profit of two hundred or two hundred and forty piastres
a-year. The creole cane and the cane of Otaheite* are planted in the
month of April, the first at four, the second at five feet distance.
(* In the island of Palma, where in the latitude of 29 degrees the
sugar-cane is said to be cultivated as high as 140 toises above the
level of the Atlantic, the Otaheite cane requires more heat than the
Creole cane.) The cane ripens in fourteen months. It flowers in the
month of October, if the plant be sufficiently vigorous; but the top
is cut off before the panicle unfolds. In all the monocotyledonous
plants (for example, the maguey cultivated at Mexico for extracting
pulque, the wine-yielding palm-tree, and the sugar-cane), the