IN VENEZUELA. CARACAS
I.
The choice lay between a luncheon on board our vessel down in the hot
harbour of La Guayra, with President Cipriano Castro and his suite
invited as guests of honour by the German officers, or an added day in
Caracas; and then a glimpse of South America on our way by Valencia to
Puerto Cabello, where we would again take ship. The question was
well-discussed, _pro_ and _con_, and finally decided in favour of
Venezuela, the country _versus_ Castro, its dictator. After all, General
Castro was not so very different from the other Venezuelans all about
us, except in that great element, his personal success for the time
being; and then you know we did see his alpaca coat and the back of his
chair, and we heard his voice in the council-chamber,--at least we
thought we did,--and that really ought to be enough to satisfy any one.
In a way, we did feel satisfied, and yet there was a lingering
inclination toward that luncheon. It might be that, for once, the great
man would look, act, appear just a little different from the every-day
sort. It was only a remnant of the everlasting hope for a perfect
adjustment of mind and body,--that futile phantasmagoria which would
make the great man great in all things. And to give up and leave Castro
in a common, every-day alpaca coat,--and only the back of it at
that,--when we might see him in gold lace and gorgeous uniform, well, it
was too bad; but then old common sense comes lumbering along and spoils
the whole thing, and tells us it's no use, no use at all, mourning over
the impossible; he's only a man, and a little man at that, and there are
plenty of fine men all over the world, and there's only one South
America; and so and so on, until the balance weighs so heavily against
the Castro faction that, when the time came to take the train for La
Guayra, we divided the party, sent the little girls back to the ship
with our friends, and turned ourselves loose upon the sunny streets of
Caracas.
II.
We had no guide-book, no one told us what to do, no one seemed to know
what we ought to do; so, freed from all restraint, we had the delightful
sensation of unlimited liberty.
It was Ash Wednesday and the church-bells rang incessantly. We took to
the left, passing the Cathedral, whose black shades enveloped one after
another of the faithful, and kept straight on, to where the women in
white frocks and lace mantillas, and the black serving-girls with
baskets, and the small boys, and trains of burros were streaming down in
the direction of the market. Most naturally we join the procession, now
in the street, with the cabs and carriers of all sorts of things, and
now jostling in among the people on the narrow sidewalk of the shady
side.
We have no intention of telling about the flies and the smells and the
dirt. They were all there and can easily be pictured, and we really have
no intention of staying but a moment in the market, for we have seen so
many before; but once a part of the big throng of buyers and sellers;
once fairly free from the South Americans who insist upon speaking
English, once free to use our own laboriously acquired Spanish, we stay
on and on, buy and eat all sorts of curious fruit, until we fear for the
consequences, and are delightfully uncomfortable and happy.
It was a surprise to find in Caracas a market which surpassed in
varieties and quantities any other place we had ever seen.
Caracas, with its abortive palms, its dusty, dried-up appearance, gave
one the impression of unproductiveness; and the dinner of the night
before, with meat, meat, meat,--an exaggerated Trinidadian affair--led
us to expect anything but fresh, sweet, delectable fruits; but here they
were in masses! We had searched every port for pineapples, and these
were the first ones we had found which answered to our ideals formed
years ago by the pineapples of Amatlan and Southeastern Mexico. And such
dear little thin-skinned refreshing limes! I wonder why they are not
exported more freely in place of the big, thick-coated lemons? I suppose
the impression prevails that the American wants everything on a big
scale, so he gets the big lemon in place of the dainty aromatic lime.
There we found in great abundance all the fruits with which we had grown
familiar on the islands, but more surprising, the fruits of the
temperate regions as well. There were some queer kinds of melons, too.
We tried them, of course; we tried everything, buying here a slice of
pineapple for _dos centavos_, and over at another stall a _medio's_
worth of mangoes; then we take up a piece of a curious fruit and examine
it rather suspiciously. Its meat is yellow and covered with little black
seeds, just the size and appearance of capers, and when one eats it, the
seed is the only element of flavour. It has so exactly the taste of
water-cress that one needs to use considerable will-power to believe it
is a melon, and not a salad.
Here were grapes, both white and black, and sweet and sour lemons, and
all sizes of oranges. There were peaches and apricots, and curious
little apples, about the size of a small crab-apple; and delicious
little Alpine strawberries from away up in the Andes, and then there
were in every stall mangoes, and sapodillas, and granaditas, and
pineapples sweet as honey and luscious, and curious aguacotes and
zapotas and many unknown fruits--besides the ever-present cocoanut.
And vegetables! I only wish we could tell you the names of all the
aromatic herbs and green stuffs spread out to tempt us. But there was
one thing we did recognise at first sight: the beans--nine different
varieties in one stall and maybe as many more in another--"_frijoles de
todas clases_," the market-woman announced for our encouragement. A
procession of bulging baskets crowds us along out of the market, and we
move on to make room for a stream of empty baskets coming from the
opposite direction.
III.
We take a straightaway course down toward the ever-beautiful curves of a
massive old church, some blocks off, and on the way, with the wanderer's
prerogative, step into the open door of a fine modern building,
apparently a bank. The Spanish Student walks up to a grilled window in
the court to get an American gold piece changed into Venezuelan
bolivars and is at once invited to enter. The president and
vice-president of the bank were at conference in a finely appointed,
spacious office, and as we appeared, both greeted us most cordially and
addressed us in perfect English. The weather started the ball of
conversation rolling, and from that we chatted on about the voyage, and
the islands, and all sorts of things; and then the men launched into a
discussion of the political situation, and from that to the power
Germany was acquiring in a mercantile way in their country. And they
told us how the Germans came there with their families, and taught their
children from babyhood the language and customs of the South Americans,
at the same time holding firmly their grasp of the mother tongue and the
thrifty business methods of their home concerns. Thus given from infancy
this advantage of a thorough knowledge of the language and customs of
the country, they acquire a prestige with which no amount of ability in
a foreigner can compete should he be less ably equipped. How dangerous
to America is becoming this Teutonic power and prestige we do not
realise, for who can fathom the ambition and persistency of the Kaiser
and his subjects in South America--Germans all, though thousands of
miles from Berlin?
I could but admire the facility and ease with which these South American
men of affairs expressed themselves in English, and I thought, how few
there were of us who could thus readily express ourselves in Spanish. It
came to me forcibly that the American who is truly far-sighted, is the
one who is acquiring, and having his children acquire, a good speaking
knowledge of Spanish; for the time is surely coming when our need of
Spanish will be far greater than to-day. The time is coming, if we guard
our interests aright, when these South Americans will look to the North
for a closer bond than now exists, and when that time does come, the man
most potent in the new relation will be he who can, by a knowledge of
the language, customs, and habits, place himself in perfect sympathy
with his South American brothers. And we must remember, too, that we are
dealing with men whose education is based upon the time-honoured culture
of an old world, men of attainment, of polish and policy, of strength
and power; however much that power may be at times misguided, there is
latent great force and adaptability.
The South American is a man of marked and strong mental ability, and is
already--and for that matter has for years been--modelling his laws
after those of his more fortunate younger brother of the Northern
continent. It is not in proper law and forms of government that he
lacks, but in their proper enforcement, and back of all in the muzzling
of that healthy public interest that would demand their enforcement.
However much he fails in government, the time when his country will be
dispassionately ruled by fixed and just legislation is hoped for by such
men as the officers of this bank. For how can the country's business go
on amid the turmoil of ever-impending revolution?
These West Indian Islands and South America, combined, have been used by
all nations who have profited by their marvellous productiveness merely
for what can be gotten out of them through one resource and another;
even North Americans themselves are not above reproach in their quarrels
over the Venezuelan Pitch Lake concessions, which was then a subject of
keen interest. But in spite of the fact that some Americans have been
feathering their nests from this foreign down, still I believe that our
people will eventually lead the world in true philanthropy,--the
philanthropy of development and honest business methods, and that ours
should be the hand that brings to the South American the solution of his
great difficulties; directed not to annexation of these Southern lands,
but to helping in the evolution of a stable, self-respecting independent
government.
South America is waiting for the great hand, for the great liberator of
the land from the faults and follies of its own sons, and when he comes
he will find a country rich to overflowing in unrealised possibilities.
The curse of these countries seems to be in the love of the Spanish
American for political intrigue, which periodically bears fruit in the
bogus political "liberator," throbbing with meretricious and
self-seeking ambition which he bombastically labels "Patriotism."
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL AND PLAZA
Caracas, Venezuela
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]
If you had stood face to face with two such well-poised types of
conservative South Americans as we met that morning, I feel sure that
you, too, might hope for a great future for this country, could it but
be represented and led by its best men.
IV.
With courteous good wishes, we left the señors' pleasant company, and
went on, still in the direction of a church-tower. The shops were far
from interesting, much like others down in the islands, with the
exception of a chocolate-shop, which we found to be the sales office of
a factory where a great deal of prepared chocolate is made, for Caracas
is a great chocolate market. After we had filled our pockets with all we
could carry, of chocolate blocks and chocolate fishes and chocolate
dolls, we started on again, munching the chocolate as we went, until we
came at last to the Cathedral, which was in a state of mortar and lime
and scaffolding, due to having the cracks from last October's earthquake
doctored up in the same matter-of-fact way that we clean house in the
spring.
Well, we were glad at last to have seen the inside of the Cathedral, for
even without the suggestion of a guide-book, we had in a sort of way
felt that we ought to do so; such a slave of "Ought" does the traveller
become, in spite of utmost precaution.
By this time the sun was nearing noon, and we naturally turned in the
direction of the _Gran Hotel de Venezuela_ as the only available place
in which to rest; that is, I thought it was the only available place,
but the Spanish Student knew better. How he knew, or when he had
experimented, he would not say, nor could the truth be forced or dragged
from him, as he walked on toward the _Gran Hotel de Venezuela_; but I
had a suspicion, from the decided click to his step, and a lurking joy
in his eye, that he had forsaken the Gran Hotel de Venezuela; that he
had discovered a new Arcadia, and, oh! it was so delightful to feel that
it was not the _Gran Hotel de Venezuela_. Then he stopped at a
lattice,--I am sure there wasn't a door in the house--at the lattice of
an enticing _Dulceria_, and we sat down where it was cool and quiet, and
I waited to see what would happen. _El propietorio_ appears. At once, at
the sight of the Spanish Student, the señor smiles, and disappears. They
had met before. The señor enters once more,--for we are not to be left
to an ordinary waiter,--this time with two tall glasses,--very tall,
thin glasses.
If you could only have felt the fatigue of that moment! We had tramped
about three hours, under the high, white sun, with the drowsy spell of
noon creeping stealthily over the city, and even over the insatiable
tourist; if you could have been with us to have seen the two tall
glasses, filled to the brim, placed on the table by mine host himself,
you, too, would have concluded that it was no small matter to be thus
refreshed. It looked like lemonade, and yet it didn't, and it
tasted,--well there's no other explanation possible; it was bewitched.
Mine host had crossed his heart, looked twice over his right shoulder,
turned three times on his left toe, and then pronounced the spell.
One taste convinced me that it took a lot of things to make that
lemonade,--a lot of things besides limes and water, and whatever that
lot of things was, it was the finest combination I had ever known. Mine
host pronounced it lemonade; so did the Spanish Student, though I heard
him suggest "_un poquito de Rom Imperial_" to the señor. With one taste,
all fatigue took wings, everything took wings. The bent-wood table
capered off with the bent-wood chair, and the long, fly-specked mirror
cavorted from side to side with the parrot-cage. Everything was lovely
and undulatory, and life was one long oblivion of the red-headed
housekeeper at the _Gran Hotel de Venezuela_.
He, the one opposite, leaned back and looked amused and satisfied, and
said: "There's more coming."
"What, more lemonade?"
"No, not more lemonade, but more of something else."
And then it came. Again two tall glasses of a delicious rose-coloured
ice, made of fresh wild strawberries, gathered that morning among the
glistening dew of the Andes. In the centre of the ice, like the rakish
masts of a fairy's ship, two richly browned, delicate tubes of sweetened
pastry bore the ensign of our feast.
They reminded me of the lamplighters we children used to make at a
penny a hundred, on winter evenings by the crackling coal fire.
You remember? Or have you never had the fun?
You take a bit of paper an inch wide and twelve inches long, wet your
finger, give a queer kind of twist to one corner and up it rolls, in a
long, neat shape. Double it over at the end, and there you are.
Sometimes it unwinds, and then it is exactly like the confectioner's
roll in Caracas, only white instead of a rich, luscious brown.
From that moment on, all other attractions of Caracas, the University,
the _Casa Amarilla_, the Pantheon, palled in attraction before that
_Dulceria_. It became to us, and to every one we met, the loadstone of
Caracas. To taste of an ice made from berries picked among the valleys
of the Andes is no small matter, and to quaff a lemonade which, without
suspicion, could still fashion wings at least as lasting as those of
Icarus of old, is also no small matter, and may we not be forgiven and
no questions asked if we confess to more than one return to the
_Dulceria_ shop just across the Plaza in Caracas?
V.
Four o'clock was the hour appointed for the coming together of our
diminished party, and until then the _Gran Hotel de Venezuela_ was
supposed to hold me in its ancient decrepitude, and it did hold me until
about three o'clock; when the bells set up such a clanging, and were so
zealous to get me up and out of bed and into their mid-afternoon
vespers, that I finally yielded to their summons, and, making a hasty
toilet, stole down the creaking stairs and out into the streets.
No Northern city at midnight is more soundly asleep than the tropical
town in mid-afternoon. The heavy white blinds are down, the green
lattices closed tightly, awnings dropped close before the shop-doors;
while the cabby and his horse, on guard near the Plaza, doze in willing
slumber. The market is empty, the little donkeys are long since browsing
upon the green slopes of the foot-hills; the street criers are still,
the whole world seems dead asleep, and, as I slipped along toward the
Cathedral, the drowsy chanting of priests' voices was the only sound
which broke the quiescence of that delicious afternoon. For delicious
it was, in truth. All of God's part was in its perfectness. The air was
sweetly cool and refreshing, with a flavour of mountain ozone mingled
with the sunlight, and, as I came to a cross street, looking up the long
narrow, white reach to the foot-hills, it was with a bit of imagining,
like a glimpse through the tube of a huge kaleidoscope, with the green
and purple and blue and yellow mountains an ever-changing vista of
resplendent colour in the vanishing distance.
The priests' voices called out again, and I entered the high-domed,
sweet place of worship. The chancel and altar were being repaired, so it
was in the oblong nave that the priests, white-robed, rich with lace and
embroidery, sat in ancient carved chairs, saying in responsive chants
the words decreed for Ash Wednesday. The priests were old, and some were
very feeble, and it seemed at times an effort for them to rise when the
service demanded. A number of young men, of lesser dignity, assisted,
and two little acolytes in red sat quite at the end of the row of
priests. Still the chanting goes on and on, and the voices are
monotonously sleepy, and long drifts of mellow, shaded light drop down
on the white robes, and one of the priests yawns, and the little acolyte
nods, and then goes fast asleep; and up overhead the lofty dome reëchoes
the somnolent voices, and I hear the old bells telling me about four
o'clock, but they seem very indistinct and sleepy and uninterested. And
I feel sleepy and nod, and wonder if it's the priests' voices or the
bells that put everybody to sleep, and I forget all about four o'clock
until a workman way down near the altar, perched on a high ladder,
mending more cracks, knocks off a piece of plaster, and I start and look
around, then tiptoe out; while the bells tell me that the quarter-hour
is gone with the rest of the day.
VI.
Caracas is responsible for a decided turning about from some of my
former estimates of the Spanish character. It is not necessary to say
just exactly what these preconceived opinions were, but they were there,
and as I supposed, a fixture. In the children's neighbourhood brawls, I
have noticed frequently that, whenever vengeance was to be meted upon
some offending head, he was called by one and all, "a Spaniard." That
was enough to arouse all the wrath of his youthful spirit into
rebellion, and until the word was recalled, war reigned. This of course
is largely since our late trouble with Spain. I shall not say that the
use of the word exactly represented my state of mind toward the South
Americans, but, in spite of the many pleasant experiences of years gone
by in Mexico, I shall confess to a somewhat allied feeling with regard
to that name, and to all people who are in any way affiliated with the
race, and I dare say that something of this same prejudice has existed
among our people at large for some time, and not altogether without
cause.
To have that impression partially removed was one of the results of an
evening spent at the opera in Caracas, where General Cipriano Castro had
arranged an especially fine performance to be given in honour of the
North Americans then visiting his republic. The opera-house was
decorated in our nation's colours, intertwined with the yellow, red, and
blue of Venezuela, and every seat not taken by our party was occupied by
the representative citizens of Caracas. The performance--a light, comic
opera--was of excellent standard, and passed off with great applause.
Much as we enjoyed the music, the Venezuelans themselves were our
greatest object of interest.
The house was apportioned in the usual foreign style, with two tiers of
boxes circling on either side from the President's box in the rear
centre. The women, as usual, occupied the front seats in the boxes, and
were thus in a position to be seen and observed very closely. And
never--I make no exception, no exception whatever--have I seen such
modest, womanly appearing women as were present at the opera that night.
They did not giggle nor stare nor flirt. They were richly, beautifully,
becomingly gowned, but, although arrayed with a desire to please, they
were as modest and unassuming as a lot of little girls at a doll's
tea-party. Their eyes no sooner met yours than they dropped,--not
affectedly, but naturally, naïvely,--and it was impossible to refrain
from forming an opinion of the conditions of society from the faces and
actions of these women.
Women make society what it is; they make it right, high, true, and
pure; they make it wrong, low, false, and vile, and the general
appearance and actions of the women of a country, studied by an observer
of human nature, will tell more truthfully the moral condition of a
people than any book ever written.
Whatever faults the Spaniard may have bequeathed to his descendants;
whatever his failings in government and kindred problems, the women,
these beautiful women of Caracas, made us feel that they had set for
themselves high standards of morality; that the social life was away
beyond the level we had expected; that the family--the wife--is a sacred
trust given the man to protect in honour and virtue so long as he lives.
There is, no doubt, much to be said against the rigid life of seclusion
led by the Spanish women, but there is this to be said in its favour: it
has created a race of men who honour and respect their homes, a race of
men whose attitude toward women is universally respectful and
deferential. With all our stiff-necked New England self-sufficiency, we
have yet much to learn, we women of the North, and let it not be beneath
our dignity to remember that the South American women have some lessons
learned which we have yet to master; and perhaps there are none who
could teach us more gently or more effectively than the modest, womanly
women of Caracas.