In the year 1728 a body of merchants of _Guipuscoa_ received an exclusive right to the commerce with _Caracas_ and _Cumaná_, on condition of their clearing these coasts of interlopers--that is to say, of the Dutch, who, from their island of _Curaçao_, monopolized the lucrative trade in the nuts of the cacao-tree, thus compelling the Spaniards to receive from abroad the produce of one of their own colonies. The new company, which was under the necessity of landing its cargoes at Cadiz, conducted its operations with such success that the above-mentioned reproach was soon removed; whilst the inhabitants of _Caracas_ received such an impetus to their industrial life that, ere the company had been three years in existence, it was deemed expedient to detach from the Viceroyalty of _New Granada_ the provinces of _Venezuela_, _Maracaibo_, _Varinas_, _Cumaná_, and Spanish _Guyana_, and to form them into a separate Captain-Generalship, the residence of the ruler being fixed at _Caracas_ in _Venezuela_. [Sidenote: 1771.] In the year 1771 there were scattered on the banks of the _Orinoco_ thirteen villages, which numbered amongst them four thousand two hundred Spaniards, half-castes or negroes, who possessed considerable property inland, besides twelve or thirteen thousand cattle, mules or horses. At the same period the Indians who had been detached from savage life were distributed in forty-nine hamlets. In all there were sixty-two centres of population, containing sixteen thousand six hundred people, three thousand one hundred and forty properties, and seventy-two thousand head of cattle. Up to this period the Dutch from _Curaçao_ monopolized the trade with this establishment. In return for the goods which they supplied, they received payment in tobacco, hides, and herds; all the affairs being concluded at _St. Thomas_. The Europeans and the negroes carried out their transactions themselves, but those affecting the Indians were conducted by the missionaries. The province of _Venezuela_ does not bear a high name for government, even amongst the States of South America; but, in estimating Spanish civilization in this quarter, it is only right to consider the state of things which it displaced. The tyranny, we are told, which was exercised by the savages along the banks of the _Orinoco_ towards their women was such that infanticide of their female children became a common practice on the part of the latter; in order that their offspring might be spared a repetition of their own dreadful lot, which is thus described to a missionary by one of themselves:--