Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
If your excellency should be so ill-advised as to refuse these terms, and thereby impose upon me the necessity of reducing your fort at the cost of some lives, I warn you that you may expect no quarter from us, and that I shall begin by leaving a heap of ashes where this pleasant city of Maracaybo now stands."
It was some months after the rescue of Mademoiselle d'Ogeron in August of that year 1687 that this little fleet, after some minor adventures which I pass over in silence, sailed into the great lake of Maracaybo and effected its raid upon that opulent city of the Main. The affair did not proceed exactly as was hoped, and Blood's force came to find itself in a precarious position.
It is calculated that in the plains from the mouths of the Orinoco to the lake Maracaybo, there are 1,200,000 head of cattle, 180,000 horses, and 90,000 mules, which belong to individual proprietors.
I make no terms with Captain Blood. I know my duty to my King, and I intend to perform it. I also know my duty to myself. I have a private score with this rascal, and I intend to settle it. Take you that message back." So back to Maracaybo, back to his own handsome house in which Captain Blood had established his quarters, came the Deputy-Governor with the Admiral's answer.
This phenomenon appears the more surprising, as, according to the annual produce of the harvest, the number of trees in full bearing in the cacao-plantations of Caracas, Nueva Barcelona, Venezuela, Varinas, and Maracaybo, is estimated at more than sixteen millions. The wild cacao-tree has many branches, and is covered with a tufted and dark foliage.
Their sloop had encountered and had been sunk three days ago by the Santo Nino, and Cahusac had narrowly escaped hanging merely that for some time he might be a mock among the Brethren of the Coast. For many a month thereafter he was to hear in Tortuga the jeering taunt: "Where do you spend the gold that you brought back from Maracaybo?"
It rises abruptly like a fortified castle, amidst the plains extending from the gulf of Darien, by the mouth of the Magdalena, to the lake of Maracaybo. The old geographers erroneously considered this insulated group of mountains covered with eternal snow, as the extremity of the high Cordilleras of Chita and Pamplona.
Levasseur meanwhile would effect certain necessary repairs, and then proceeding south, await his admiral at Saltatudos, an island conveniently situated in the latitude of 11 deg. 11' N. for their enterprise against Maracaybo. To Levasseur's relief, Captain Blood not only agreed, but pronounced himself ready to set sail at once.
He spoke with a restraint which I trust you will agree was admirable when I tell you that the Spanish fleet guarding the bottle-neck exit of the great Lake of Maracaybo, and awaiting there the coming forth of Captain Blood with a calm confidence based upon its overwhelming strength, was commanded by his implacable enemy, Don Miguel de Espinosa y Valdez, the Admiral of Spain.
The movement for independence, which had nearly broken out at Caracas in 1798, had been preceded and followed by great agitation among the slaves at Coro, Maracaybo, and Cariaco. At the last of these places an unfortunate negro had been condemned to die, and our host, the vicar of Catuaro, was going thither to offer him spiritual comfort.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking