be reached in less than six days, and it is the only part of South
America to which one can go without first crossing the Isthmus of
Panama and then taking a long trip down the western coast, or sailing
for nearly a month along the eastern coast; and it is a wonderfully
beautiful country, and its cities of Caracas and Valencia are typical
of the best South-American cities. When you have seen them you have
an intelligent idea of what the others are like; and when you read
about revolutions in Rio Janeiro, or Valparaiso, or Buenos Ayres, you
will have in your mind’s eye the background for all of these dramatic
uprisings, and you will feel superior to other people who do not know
that the republic of Venezuela is larger than France, Spain, and
Portugal together, and that the inhabitants of this great territory are
less in number than those of New York city.
[Illustration: THE RAILROAD UP THE MOUNTAIN]
La Guayra is the chief seaport of Venezuela. It lies at the edge of a
chain of great mountains, where they come down to wet their feet in the
ocean, and Caracas, the capital, is stowed away three thousand feet
higher up behind these mountains, and could only be bombarded in time
of war by shells that would rise like rockets and drop on the other
side of the mountains, and so cover a distance quite nine miles away
from the vessel that fired them. Above La Guayra, on the hill, is a
little fortress which was once the residence of the Spanish governor
when Venezuela was a colony of Spain. It is of interest now chiefly
because Charles Kingsley describes it in _Westward Ho!_ as the fortress
in which the Rose of Devon was imprisoned. Past this fortress, and up
over the mountains to the capital, are a mule-trail and an ancient
wagon-road and a modern railway.
It is a very remarkable railroad; its tracks cling to the perpendicular
surface of the mountain like the tiny tendrils of a vine on a
stone-wall, and the trains creep and crawl along the edge of its
precipices, or twist themselves into the shape of a horseshoe magnet,
so that the engineer on the locomotive can look directly across a
bottomless chasm into the windows of the last car. The view from this
train, while it pants and puffs on its way to the capital, is the most
beautiful combination of sea and plain and mountain that I have ever
seen. There are higher mountains and more beautiful, perhaps, but
they run into a brown prairie or into a green plain; and there are as
beautiful views of the ocean, only you have to see them from the level
of the ocean itself, or from a chalk-cliff with the downs behind you
and the white sand at your feet. But nowhere else in the world have I
seen such magnificent and noble mountains running into so beautiful and
green a plain, and beyond that the great blue stretches of the sea.
When you look down from the car-platform you see first, stretching
three thousand feet below you, the great green ribs of the mountain and
its valleys and waterways leading into a plain covered with thousands
and thousands of royal palms, set so far apart that you can distinguish
every broad leaf and the full length of the white trunk. Among these
are the red-roofed and yellow villages, and beyond them again the white
line of breakers disappearing and reappearing against the blue as
though some one were wiping out a chalk-line and drawing it in again,
and then the great ocean weltering in the heat and stretching as far as
the eye can see, and touching a sky so like it in color that the two
are joined in a curtain of blue on which the ships seem to lie flat,
like painted pictures on a wall.
[Illustration: COURT-YARD OF A HOUSE IN CARACAS]
You pass through clouds on your way up that leave the trees and
rocks along the track damp and shining as after a heavy dew, and
at some places you can peer through them from the steps of the car
down a straight fall of three thousand feet. When you have climbed
to the top of the mountain, you see below you on the other side the
beautiful valley in which lies the city of Caracas, cut up evenly by
well-kept streets, and diversified by the towers of churches and public
buildings and open plazas, with the white houses and gardens of the
coffee-planters lying beyond the city at the base of the mountains.
Venezuela, after our experiences of Central America, was like a
return to civilization after months on the alkali plains of Texas. We
found Caracas to be a Spanish-American city of the first class, with a
suggestion of the boulevards, and Venezuela a country that possessed
a history of her own, and an Academy of wise men and artists, and a
Pantheon for her heroes. I suppose we should have known that this was
so before we visited Venezuela; but as we did not, we felt as though
we were discovering a new country for ourselves. It was interesting to
find statues of men of whom none of us had ever heard, and who were
distinguished for something else than military successes, men who had
made discoveries in science and medicine, and who had written learned
books; to find the latest devices for comfort of a civilized community,
and with them the records of a fierce struggle for independence, a long
period of disorganization, where the Church had the master-hand, and
then a rapid advance in the habits and customs of enlightened nations.
There are the most curious combinations and contrasts, showing on
one side a pride of country and an eagerness to emulate the customs
of stable governments, and on the other evidences of the Southern
hot-blooded temperament and dislike of restraint.
On the corner of the principal plaza stands the cathedral, with a
tower. Ten soldiers took refuge in this tower four years ago, during
the last revolution, and they made so determined a fight from that
point of vantage that in order to dislodge them it was found necessary
to build a fire in the tower and smoke them out with the fumes of
sulphur. These ten soldiers were the last to make a stand within the
city, and when they fell, from the top of the tower, smothered to
death, the revolution was at an end. This incident of warfare is of
value when you contrast the thing done with its environment, and know
that next to the cathedral-tower are confectionery-shops such as you
find on Regent Street or upper Broadway, that electric lights surround
the cathedral, and that tram-cars run past it on rails sunk below the
surface of the roadway and over a better street than any to be found in
New York city.
[Illustration: THE MARKET OF CARACAS]
Even without acquaintances among the people of the capital there are
enough public show-places in Caracas to entertain a stranger for a
fortnight. It is pleasure enough to walk the long, narrow streets under
brilliantly colored awnings, between high one- and two-story houses,
painted in blues and pinks and greens, and with overhanging red-tiled
roofs and projecting iron balconies and open iron-barred windows,
through which you gain glimpses beyond of cool interiors and beautiful
courts and gardens filled with odd-looking plants around a splashing
fountain.
The ladies of Caracas seem to spend much of their time sitting at
these windows, and are always there in the late afternoons, when they
dress themselves and arrange their hair for the evening, and put a
little powder on their faces, and take their places in the cushioned
window-seats as though they were in their box at the opera. And though
they are within a few inches of the passers-by on the pavement, they
can look through them and past them, and are as oblivious of their
presence as though they were invisible. In the streets are strings of
mules carrying bags of coffee or buried beneath bales of fodder, and
jostled by open fiacres, with magnificent coachmen on the box-seat
in top-boots and gold trimmings to their hats and coats, and many
soldiers, on foot and mounted, hurrying along at a quick step in
companies, or strolling leisurely alone. They wear blue uniforms with
scarlet trousers and facings, and the president’s body-guard are in
white duck and high black boots, and are mounted on magnificent horses.
[Illustration: VIEW OF CARACAS]
There are three great buildings in Caracas--the Federal Palace, the
Opera-house, and the Pantheon, which was formerly a church, and which
has been changed into a receiving-vault and a memorial for the great
men of the country. Here, after three journeys, the bones of Bolivar
now rest. The most interesting of these buildings is the Federal
Palace. It is formed around a great square filled with flowers and
fountains, and lit with swinging electric lights. It is the handsomest
building in Caracas, and within its four sides are the chambers of
the upper and lower branches of the legislature, the offices of
the different departments of state, and the reception-hall of the
president, in which is the National Portrait Gallery. The palace is
light and unsubstantial-looking, like a canvas palace in a theatre,
and suggests the casino at a French watering-place. It is painted in
imitation of stone, and the statues are either of plaster-of-paris or
of wood, painted white to represent marble. But the theatrical effect
is in keeping with the colored walls and open fronts of the other
buildings of the city, and is not out of place in this city of such
dramatic incidents.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT CRESPO, OF VENEZUELA]
The portraits in the state-room of the palace immortalize the
features of fierce-looking, dark-faced generals, with old-fashioned
high-standing collars of gold-braid, and green uniforms. Strange and
unfamiliar names are printed beneath these portraits, and appear
again painted in gold letters on a roll of honor which hangs from the
ceiling, and which faces a list of the famous battles for independence.
High on this roll of honor are the names “General O’Leary” and “Colonel
Fergurson,” and among the portraits are the faces of two blue-eyed,
red-haired young men, with fair skin and broad chests and shoulders,
one wearing the close-clipped whiskers of the last of the
Georges, and the other the long Dundreary whiskers of the Crimean wars.
Whether the Irish general and the English colonel gave their swords
for the sake of the cause of independence or fought for the love of
fighting, I do not know, but they won the love of the Spanish-Americans
by the service they rendered, no matter what their motives may have
been for serving. Many people tell you proudly that they are descended
from “O’Leari,” and the names of the two foreigners are as conspicuous
on pedestals and tablets of honor as are their smiling blue eyes
and red cheeks among the thin-visaged, dark-skinned faces of their
brothers-in-arms.
[Illustration: LEGISLATIVE BUILDING, CARACAS]
At one end of the room is an immense painting of a battle, and the
other is blocked by as large a picture showing Bolivar dictating to
members of Congress, who have apparently ridden out into the field to
meet him, and are holding an impromptu session beneath the palm leaves
of an Indian hut. The dome of the chamber, which latter is two hundred
feet in length, is covered with an immense panorama, excellently well
done, showing the last of the battles of the Venezuelans against
the Spaniards, in which the figures are life-size and the action
most spirited, and the effect of color distinctly decorative. These
paintings in the National Gallery would lead you to suppose that there
was nothing but battles in the history of Venezuela, and that her
great men were all soldiers, but the talent of the artists who have
painted these scenes and the actors in them corrects the idea. Among
these artists are Arturo Michelena, who has exhibited at the World’s
Fair, and frequently at the French Salon, from which institution he has
received a prize, M. Tovar y Tovar, A. Herrea Toro, and Cristobal Rojas.
[Illustration: THE PRESIDENT’S BODY-GUARD OF COWBOYS]
It was that “Illustrious American, Guzman Blanco,” one of the
numerous presidents of Venezuela, and probably the best known, who
was responsible for most of the public buildings of the capital.
These were originally either convents or monasteries, which he
converted, after his war with the Church, into the Federal Palace, the
Opera-house, and a university. Each of these structures covers so much
valuable ground, and is situated so advantageously in the very heart
of the city, that one gets a very good idea of how powerful the Church
element must have been before Guzman overthrew it.
He was a peculiar man, apparently, and possessed of much force and
of a progressive spirit, combined with an overmastering vanity. The
city was at its gayest under his régime, and he encouraged the arts
and sciences by creating various bodies of learned men, by furnishing
the nucleus for a national museum, by subsidizing the Opera-house,
and by granting concessions to foreign companies which were of quite
too generous a nature to hold good, and which now greatly encumber
and embarrass his successors. But while he was president, and before
he went to live in luxurious exile on the Avenue Kléber, which seems
to be the resting-place of all South-American presidents, he did much
to make the country prosperous and its capital attractive, and he was
determined that the people should know that he was the individual who
accomplished these things. With this object he had fifteen statues
erected to himself in different parts of the city, and more tablets
than one can count. Each statue bore an inscription telling that it
was erected to that “Illustrious American, Guzman Blanco,” and every
new bridge and road and public building bore a label to say that it was
Guzman Blanco who was responsible for its existence. The idea of a man
erecting statues to himself struck the South-American mind as extremely
humorous, and one night all the statues were sawed off at the ankles,
and to-day there is not one to be seen, and only raw places in the
walls to show where the memorial tablets hung. But you cannot wipe out
history by pulling down columns or effacing inscriptions, and Guzman
Blanco undoubtedly did do much for his country, even though at the same
time he was doing a great deal for Guzman Blanco.
[Illustration: BAPTIZING INDIANS AT A VENEZUELAN STATION AT THE CUYUNI
RIVER]
Guzman was followed in rapid succession by three or four other
presidents and dictators, who filled their pockets with millions
and then fled the country, only waiting until their money was first
safely out of it. Then General Crespo, who had started his revolution
with seven men, finally overthrew the government’s forces, and was
elected president, and has remained in office ever since. To set
forth with seven followers to make yourself president of a country as
large as France, Portugal, and Spain together requires a great deal
of confidence and courage. General Crespo is a fighter, and possesses
both. It was either he or one of his generals--the story is told
of both--who, when he wanted arms for his cowboys, bade them take off
their shirts and grease their bodies and rush through the camp of the
enemy in search of them. He told them to hold their left hands out
as they ran, and whenever their fingers slipped on a greased body
they were to pass it by, but when they touched a man wearing a shirt
they were to cut him down with their machetes. In this fashion three
hundred of his plainsmen routed two thousand of the regular troops,
and captured all of their rifles and ammunition. The idea that when
you want arms the enemy is the best person from whom to take them is
excellent logic, and that charge of the half-naked men, armed only with
their knives, through the sleeping camp is Homeric in its magnificence.
Crespo is more at home when fighting in the field than in the
council-chamber of the Yellow House, which is the White House of the
republic; but that may be because he prefers fighting to governing,
and a man generally does best what he likes best to do. He is as
simple in his habits to-day as when he was on the march with his seven
revolutionists, and goes to bed at eight in the evening, and is deep in
public business by four the next morning; many an unhappy minister has
been called to an audience at sunrise. The president neither smokes nor
drinks; he is grave and dignified, with that dignity which enormous
size gives, and his greatest pleasure is to take a holiday and visit
his ranch, where he watches the round-up of his cattle and gallops
over his thousands of acres. He is the idol of the cowboys, and has a
body-guard composed of some of the men of this class. I suppose they
are very much like our own cowboys, but the citizens of the capital
look upon them as the Parisians regarded Napoleon’s Mamelukes, and tell
you in perfect sincerity that when they charge at night their eyes
flash fire in a truly terrifying manner.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL HUNTING-PARTY IN VENEZUELA]
I saw the president but once, and then but for a few moments. He was
at the Yellow House and holding a public reception, to which every one
was admitted with a freedom that betokened absolute democracy. When my
turn came he talked awhile through Colonel Bird, our consul, but there
was no chance for me to gain any idea of him except that he was very
polite, as are all Venezuelans, and very large. They tell a story of
him which illustrates his character. He was riding past the university
when a group of students hooted and jeered at him, not because of his
politics, but because of his origin. A policeman standing by, aroused
to indignation by this insult to the president, fired his revolver into
the crowd. Crespo at once ordered the man’s arrest for shooting at a
citizen with no sufficient provocation, and rode on his way without
even giving a glance at his tormentors. The incident seemed to show
that he was too big a man to allow the law to be broken even in his own
defence, or, at least, big enough not to mind the taunts of ill-bred
children.
The boys of the university are taken very seriously by the people of
Caracas, as are all boys in that country, where a child is listened
to, if he be a male child, with as much grave politeness as though
it were a veteran who was speaking. The effect is not good, and the
boys, especially of the university, grow to believe that they are very
important factors in the affairs of the state, when, as a matter of
fact, they are only the cat’s-paws of clever politicians, who use them
whenever they want a demonstration and do not wish to appear in it
themselves. So these boys are sent forth shouting into the streets, and
half the people cheer them on, and the children themselves think they
are patriots or liberators, or something equally important.
I obtained a rather low opinion of them because they stoned an
unfortunate American photographer who was taking pictures in the
quadrangles, and because I was so far interested in them as to get
a friend of mine to translate for me the sentences and verses they
had written over the walls of their college. The verses were of a
political character, but so indecent that the interpreter was much
embarrassed; the single sentences were attacks, anonymous, of course,
on fellow-students. As the students of the University of Venezuela step
directly from college life into public life, their training is of some
interest and importance. And I am sure that the Venezuelan fathers
would do much better by their sons if they would cease to speak of
the university in awe-stricken tones as “the hot-bed of liberty,” but
would rather take away the boys’ revolvers and teach them football,
and thrash them soundly whenever they caught them soiling the walls of
their alma mater with nasty verses.
[Illustration: A CLEARING IN THE COUNTRY]
There are some beautiful drives around Caracas, out in the country
among the coffee plantations, and one to a public garden that overlooks
the city, upon which President Crespo has spent much thought and money.
But the most beautiful feature of Caracas, and one that no person who
has visited that place will ever forget, is the range of mountains
above it, which no president can improve. They are smooth and bare
of trees and of a light-green color, except in the waterways, where
there are lines of darker green, and the clouds change their aspect
continually, covering them with shadows or floating over them from
valley to valley, and hovering above a high peak like the white smoke
of a volcano.
I do not know of a place that will so well repay a visit as Caracas,
or a country that is so well worth exploring as Venezuela. To a
sportsman it is a paradise. You can shoot deer within six miles of
the Opera-house, and in six hours beyond Macuto you can kill panther,
and as many wild boars as you wish. No country in South America is
richer in such natural products as cocoa, coffee, and sugar-cane. And
in the interior there is a vast undiscovered and untouched territory
waiting for the mining engineer, the professional hunter, and the
breeder of cattle.
The government of Venezuela at the time of our visit to Caracas
was greatly troubled on account of her boundary dispute with Great
Britain, and her own somewhat hasty action in sending three foreign
ministers out of the country for daring to criticise her tardiness in
paying foreign debts and her neglect in not holding to the terms of
concessions. These difficulties, the latter of which were entirely of
her own making, were interesting to us as Americans, because the talk
on all sides showed that in the event of a serious trouble with any
foreign power Venezuela looked confidently to the United States for
aid. Now, since President Cleveland’s so-called “war” message has been
written, she is naturally even more liable to go much further than
she would dare go if she did not think the United States was back of
her. Her belief in the sympathy of our government is also based on
many friendly acts in the past: on the facts that General Miranda, the
soldier who preceded Bolivar, and who was a friend of Hamilton, Fox,
and Lafayette, first learned to hope for the independence of South
America during the battle for independence in our own country; that
when the revolution began, in 1810, it was from the United States that
Venezuela received her first war material; that two years later, when
the earthquake of 1812 destroyed twenty thousand people, the United
States Congress sent many ship-loads of flour to the survivors of the
disaster; and that as late as 1888 our Congress again showed its good
feeling by authorizing the secretary of the navy to return to Venezuela
on a ship of war the body of General Paez, who died in exile in New
York city, and by appointing a committee of congressmen and senators to
represent the government at his public funeral.
[Illustration: THE CUYUNI RIVER
With View of the English Station that was sacked by Venezuelan Troops,
and from which Inspector Barnes was taken Prisoner]
All of these expressions of good-will in the past count for something
as signs that the United States may be relied upon in the future, but
it is a question whether she will be willing to go as far as Venezuela
expects her to go. Venezuela’s hope of aid, and her conviction, which
is shared by all the Central-American republics, that the United
States is going to help her and them in the hour of need, is based
upon what they believe to be the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine
as we understand it is a very different thing from the Monroe Doctrine
as they understand it; and while their reading of it is not so
important as long as we know what it means and enforce it, there is
danger nevertheless in their way of looking at it, for, according
to their point of view, the Monroe Doctrine is expected to cover a
multitude of their sins. President Monroe said that we should “consider
any attempt on the part of foreign powers to extend their system to any
portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety, and
that we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing
those governments that had declared their independence, or controlling
in any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other
light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition to the
United States.”
He did not say that if a Central-American republic banished a British
consul, or if Venezuela told the foreign ministers to leave the country
on the next steamer, that the United States would back them up with
force of arms.