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Depons, speaking of the means employed in America to obtain the same end, says, "I am convinced that it is impossible to engraft the Christian religion on the Indian mind without mixing up their own inclinations and customs with those of Christianity; this has been even carried so far, that at one time theologians raised the question, whether it was lawful to eat human flesh?
It has large silvery scales edged with green. This fish is extremely voracious, and destroys other kinds. The fishermen assured us that a small crocodile, the bava,* which often approached us when we were bathing, contributes also to the destruction of the fish. See volume 1. The name of bava, baveuse, has misled M. Depons; he takes this reptile for a fish of our seas, the Blennius pholis.
M. Depons, who lived in the town of Caracas longer than I, and whose statistical statements are generally accurate, reckons in those vast plains, from the mouths of the Orinoco to the lake of Maracaybo, 1,200,000 oxen, 180,000 horses, and 90,000 mules.
The law of the increase and decrease of the Orinoco is more difficult to determine with respect to space, or to the magnitude of the oscillations, than with regard to time, or the period of the maxima and minima. Hippisley, Expedition to the Orinoco page 38. Gumilla volume 1 pages 56 to 59. Depons volume 3 page 301.
So important an object of commerce merits a careful discussion; and I flatter myself, that, from the great number of materials I have collected on all the branches of colonial agriculture, I shall be able to add something to the information published by M. Depons, in his valuable work on the provinces of Venezuela.
The geography of South America, however, taking the term in the most philosophical and comprehensive sense, has been principally enriched within these few years, by the labours of Humboldt and his fellow-traveller Bompland, of Depons, Koster, Prince Maximilian, Luccock, Henderson, and by those Englishmen who joined the Spanish Americans during their struggle with the mother country.
The greatest height of the rise of the Mississippi is, at Natchez, fifty-five English feet. M. Depons, who has in general collected very accurate notions during his stay at Caracas, fixes it at thirteen fathoms. The heights naturally vary according to the breadth of the bed and the number of tributary streams which the principal trunk receives.
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