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A committee of public safety was established and immediately the prisons of Caracas and Puerto Cabello were filled with men, many of whom died of suffocation. Into a dungeon in Puerto Cabello, a Spaniard threw five flasks of alkali, thus causing the death by asphyxiation of all the prisoners locked there. The properties of the leading citizens were seized.
The rays of the sun in that sheltered harbor seemed endued with a tenfold degree of calorie; and the poor fellow, as he stepped over the side, bowed down by the weight of his garments and sweltering with heat, was a legitimate object of pity, although a martyr to his selfish propensities. We left the harbor on our way to Porto Cabello; but our progress was slow, being interrupted by calms.
As the disaster occurred on Holy Thursday, the clergy were not slow to turn it to political account and to persuade the people that it was a direct chastisement of Heaven upon them for their rebellion against Spain. The cause of the Patriots steadily lost ground until the fall of Porto Cabello, through the inefficiency of Bolivar, caused its complete collapse.
Our host was principal surgeon to the royal hospital of Porto Cabello, and was celebrated in the country for his skilful treatment of the yellow fever. During a period of seven years he had seen six or eight thousand persons enter the hospitals, attacked by this cruel malady. He had observed the ravages that the epidemic caused in Admiral Ariztizabal's fleet, in 1793.
He never spared sex or age, and took a hellish pleasure in torturing his victims. He made several descents on the coast of this island, burned Maracaibo, Puerto Cabello, Veragua, and other places, and was killed at last by the Indians of Darien. Sir Henry Morgan, a Welsh aristocrat turned pirate, was another famous scourge of the Spanish colonies.
Captain Pigot, who commanded the frigate, after receiving several wounds, retreated to his cabin, and defended himself desperately with his dirk until he was bayoneted by the mutineers. The frigate, thus taken possession of, was carried into Porto Cabello and delivered up to the Spanish authorities; Spain at that time being at war with Great Britain.
He had 12,000 men and could have destroyed his enemy, but he preferred to wait. Meanwhile, Bolivar was requesting help to defend Puerto Cabello, where there were deposited many provisions, and also to attack Monteverde by the rear. Miranda refused assistance. Monteverde, upon being defeated in a second attack on La Victoria, withdrew in the direction of Puerto Cabello.
Thousands of the royalists in the cities hastened to leave the country, fearing the vengeance of the patriots, the Spanish commanders lost all spirit, and three months later the strong fortress of Carthagena surrendered to the Colombians. Maracaibo was held till 1823, when it surrendered, and in July, 1824, Porto Cabello capitulated and the long contest was at an end.
It is somewhat remarkable that the lake of Valencia, and the whole system of small rivers flowing into it, have no large alligators, though this dangerous animal abounds a few leagues off in the streams which flow either into the Apure or the Orinoco, or immediately into the Caribbean Sea between Porto Cabello and La Guayra.
I had plenty of work to do here, looking after all these scoundrels, having to keep my eyes open as much as possible in order to prevent wholesale robbery as far as I could, although it was utterly impossible to prevent petty pilfering of the ore on its way from the mine to Puerto Cabello, its general port for transhipment to Europe, to swell the treasure chest of the exiled.
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