IN VENEZUELA. CARACAS TO PUERTO CABELLO
I.
And now we are at the railway station, headed for Valencia and Puerto
Cabello, still determined to continue unguided back to the coast.
There was to me something so extraordinary in the thought that, for
once, we were really to get ahead of the professional guides, that it
required repeated and oft repeated assurances to at least one of the
women of our circle from the kindly official at the railway station, to
relieve all doubts as to the wisdom of our plans. Of course, the men of
our party had no doubts, at least, none were expressed; and yet some of
us, particularly the writer, could hardly believe that the train we were
to take would carry us on through Valencia, past the lovely Lake of
Valencia down to Puerto Cabello, a half-hour in advance of the Special
Train with the Special Courier; that we would be a half-hour earlier at
luncheon in the mountains, and a half an hour earlier that evening in
reaching Puerto Cabello; and this latter would be no small consideration
after a long, hot ride from mountain-top to sandy beach.
But this was to be the case, so the official informed us, not only in
Spanish, but in French, and very perfect French, too--for not
understanding Spanish, we women of course had to hear it all over again
in French; so we left the party, and boarded the regular morning train
for Valencia, amidst the warnings of many, the doubts of all the timid
ones, and the envy of a few jollier spirits. What would become of us, if
this train should make up its mind not to go through to Puerto Cabello,
and drop us at La Victoria, or San Joaquin perhaps; and what if the
much-lauded Special should after all fly on and leave us in the
mountains, high and dry, a half-day's journey to Puerto Cabello, with no
means of reaching the ship on sailing-time; and what if our pretty boat
should sail away to God's country, and leave us literally stranded,
marooned for weeks, on the sun-blighted beach of Puerto Cabello,
waiting for a ship?
[Illustration: A HOUSE BESIDE THE SEA
Puerto Cabello, Venezuela]
A thousand "ifs" are flung at us, but there stands the big, handsome
South American railway official, with a rose in his buttonhole, patent
leathers on his feet, and a smile on his face, and visible support in
every attitude of his fine body; so we settle down, reassured, and look
around to count heads, and we check off--all but one, the Doctor,--he is
not at the station. Where is he? Where is the Doctor? He has sworn to
stand by us to the end; in fact had been one of the prime movers in this
venture, and here we are ready to start, even the men are aboard the
funny little train, and the Doctor not in sight.
Ten anxious heads lean out from ten abbreviated windows; ten distressed
voices ask in all available tongues, "Where is the Doctor?" We ask the
official--the one with the rose--if he has seen one called the Doctor,
with bland, smiling face, round and jovial; blue eyes, light hair,
walking with a confident, easy swing, wearing a linen suit and East
Indian pith helmet. No one answering that description had come to the
station. Fully half an hour before we left the _Gran Hotel de
Venezuela_, the Doctor had taken a cab, so that there should be no doubt
or question as to his being on time; for the Doctor was an orderly man,
of decided opinions and exact habits. He was never known to be late at
an appointment. He had with him the free untrammelled air of the
unmarried man. He had neither wife to detain, nor sweetheart to beguile
him. He was a free-lance, and yet here it was, a moment before the time
for departure, and the Doctor nowhere to be seen.
The train shivers, quivers, gives a bump or so, squeaks out a funny
foreign whistle, and we are moving out of Caracas. Ten of us instead of
eleven. Ten much troubled wanderers, thinking and wondering a very great
deal. We pass the curious little chapel upon the hill, with its five
disjointed little steeples, looking as if one more quake of the grand
old Mother would topple them all over for good; pass the low _adobe_
huts on the outskirts of the city, and then catch a last glimpse of the
Cathedral and its dear old bells, and the trees about the Square of
Bolivar; and are almost into the rich country, outlaying the great
city. But where is the Doctor! Had he been beguiled or waylaid, or had
he waited for one too many a sip of the unforgettable lemonade; or had
he gone to sleep with the priests under the magic of the old bells?
No, nothing seemed to fit in just right. The Doctor had reached years of
discretion, he knew the wiles of women, and, as for being waylaid, that
was hardly possible, for he always carried his chest high; and, as for
the priests,--no, it was not the priests, for the Doctor had paid his
respect to the Cathedral the day before. Hadn't we seen his white hat
disappear under the big, open doorway as we were on the way to market?
But the lemonade,--there was the hitch; he might have longed for one
more glimpse of the _Dulceria_, and the tall glass and the indescribable
nectar,--_con un poquito de Rom Imperial_,--yes, he might have done so,
any normal being might have done so, and that must be the whole trouble;
then, just as we had decided on the lemonade, we stop at Palo-Grande,
out in the gardens beyond the town, and into the car rushed a red-faced,
very mad American, with satchels and luggage and souvenirs in his hands,
and rage upon his face,--the Doctor; none more--none less,--the lost
wanderer!
If any one was ever welcome, he was. We figuratively threw our arms
about him, and wept with joy at the return of our long-lost brother. The
Doctor's face was a study. From despair, it changed to delight, and he
flung himself into a seat, too happy to speak. But the Doctor was not
slow in giving us an explanation. He had been experimenting on some very
choice, newly acquired Spanish. That was the trouble, and instead of
taking him to the city station, the cabby, probably anxious for a good
fare, had driven about five miles to the first way-station on the road.
I did not think the Doctor could ever have been disconcerted under any
circumstances, but he was as thoroughly scared as one has need to be and
live; and for the rest of the day, every few minutes, he would break out
with some forceful expression about fool Americans who couldn't speak
Spanish and fool Spaniards who couldn't speak English. We all then and
there decided that we would learn Spanish or die. One or the other we
are sure to do.
II.
It is a difficult matter to engage the Doctor in either scenery or
conversation, and, in spite of all the wonders in which we find
ourselves, as the plucky little train hurries along, it is a sort of
laugh and jollification all the way with the Doctor.
I shall never forget the willows at the station where our Doctor
appeared. They were so exquisitely graceful and beautiful. They were
tall, with somewhat of the habits of the Lombardy poplar, close-limbed,
sinewy, and with the plumy grace of a bunch of feathers, bending,
bowing, whirling, swishing, in the cool mountain air, and I shall always
think of them as the Doctor's willows; for just as his frightened face
popped into the door, in the twinkling of an eye, I glanced out of the
window, and there stood that row of tall willows, like coy, young
maidens, bowing their gentle heads in graceful congratulation. The
Doctor's willow was to me one of the rarest, sweetest trees of that
wonderful day of trees, of that wonderful world of trees, of that
wonderful land of infinite beauties, known only to those whose eyes have
touched the vibration of their being. This willow, modest, unassuming
as it is, so unlikely to attract attention, without flower or colour,
other than the richest green that sunshine ever bestowed upon a leaf,
was in its way as exquisite as a dream of lace and dew-drops, as tender
as the sound of a lute, as sweetly sinuous as the drop of a violet's
head; and the mountain air, filtering through the thin, arrow-like
leaves, was music fit for gods,--not men.
But the Doctor would not look at the willows, nor at the tall
grass--tall--tall--tall--following along the bed of a limpid stream--the
Guaira--tumbling along over pools and rocks and mossy beds; grasses so
high that even Jack's famous giants must needs stand on tiptoe to peep
over the top; grass twenty to thirty feet high, with feathery plumes
gracing the tall spires in masses of waving beauty. He would not see the
beauty of the picture that the Great Mother showed us, for he was still
in a dazed state of combined bewilderment, anger, and joy, and you know
it takes time to find one's feet after such an experience.
But did I tell you how as usual bravery was rewarded? When we boarded
the train, we noticed our coach was unusually fine for a Venezuelan
railway, and we wondered at it. Later the conductor explained that it
was the private car of the general manager, all the common coaches being
taken up to complete the Special Train; and so the Doctor was at last
content.
III.
Speeding along over the lordly plateau beyond Caracas, through a country
where the faintest effort on the part of man to cultivate the earth, the
least scratch with the hoe, meets with more than abundant response,
where, even in the high mountain altitude, sweet fields of cane and
coffee bring restful green and delicious shades in the ever-pervading
sunlight, we were entertained by some of the party, who were prophesying
a hard day and a hot day with a relish which was quite enviable. Why is
it that there must always be those who are constantly anticipating hot
weather? It seems to be out of the question to escape them; they either
predict that it will be, must be, unbearably hot, or unbearably cold,
according to the latitude in which they happen to be found. There seems
to be no way of getting along comfortably with the present. So we
listened while dire forebodings were omened for Valencia, and worse for
Puerto Cabello.
In the meantime one of our friends,--Mrs. M---- from Boston,--was
suffering with a severe headache, and the Doctor, who had been in the
seat ahead of us, was asked if, in that small, black, professional-looking
valise, there was not something to relieve her pain. And then the Doctor
broke forth once more:
"There's no use. I can't stand this any longer. I was called up last
night for the sick man in the after-deck stateroom; after each port I am
asked to prescribe for men suffering from swizzle jags, and I'm routed
out at all hours, and buttonholed by nervous women I don't know. I wish
I could help Mrs. M----; nothing would make me happier. But to tell the
truth, I'm not a doctor. I am only a plain business man--a manufacturer.
Somehow, when the passenger-list was made up, I was put in as 'Doctor
S----' and the list was printed and circulated before I knew of my
title. Then every one called me 'Doctor,' and it was such an easy name
to catch that I thought I'd just let it go, and I've been 'Doctor' to
every one ever since; but when it comes to setting a leg or curing a
headache, I must put an end to it."
But the name had become fixed. It was there to stay, so the Doctor was
the "Doctor" in spite of his lack of diploma, and, in one sense, by his
good cheer, his readiness to join in fun, his stock of good stories, and
his consideration for others, he was quite as beneficial to our
sometimes weary selves, as if he carried his pockets full of bitter
tonic and invigorating elixirs.
IV.
In front of us sat the Doctor; back of us sat a young South American
from "up country," with whom we entered into conversation, and from whom
we learned much to confirm our rapidly forming opinions of his great
country--Venezuela. He spoke English well, having been educated
partially in England, partially in New York. He came from the Province
of Colombo, to me a very indefinite, remotely hidden-away place
somewhere in the Andes, accessible only by two or three days' journey
from Caracas, partly by mule and partly by boat up the Maracaibo River.
By the way, we are told that Colombo is the native state of that peppery
little dictator--the present President Castro.
This South American gentleman had been sent to Caracas to interview
Castro and his ministers with regard to a loan of twenty thousand
dollars in horses, cattle, and provisions made during the last
revolution to the faction which had placed Castro in power; the
transaction had evidently been dignified by the soothing name of "a
loan" because the quondam cowboy leader Castro had ended as a
self-elected President. Just what our fellow traveller's success had
been, we were unable to learn or he to tell, for this same General
Castro is a wily bird and keeps many an honest Venezuelan guessing. He
told us what we already knew,--that Venezuela needs peace--peace--peace,
and that, until she is assured of peace, her great hands must be idle.
We needed no words to assure us of her greatness. It was there before
us. The idle hands were clasping rich harvests unsown, rich treasures in
gold and silver glittered upon her fingers, and following the sweep of
her green mantle, there was a race of warm-hearted children, within
whose being there was the making of great men and women. But there must
be peace. For, when there is war, her great men go to the front, her
brave men are killed; but in some unfortunate way her political schemers
and professional revolutionists survive, and are always ready to make
new trouble. "He who fights and runs away will live to fight another
day."
And so they run away--the unsuccessful ones--to Curaçao, to Paris, or to
some of the neighbouring South American states, but their dirty shadows
ever hang imminent on the horizon.
V.
During the conversation with our South American friends, we had reached
the end of the plateau, and the descent began into the great valley
below. It was not until we reached that point that we realised the
wonder of this Venezuelan railroad, or that we understood the reason of
its being called the "Great Venezuelan Railway"--_Gran Ferrocarril de
Venezuela_. Like the greater portion of all the business enterprises in
South America and the West Indies, the railroad was built by Germans.
Krupp, of gun fame, was named as the head of the company, and too much
cannot be said of the courage and skill of men who undertook to build a
road under such difficulties. There are railways of difficult
construction all over the world, indeed, but never, in our experience,
were we more impressed with the magnitude of an undertaking than we were
with the construction of this masterful road; though one might well
criticise the business judgment of men who would thus put millions of
dollars into an enterprise that apparently can never be self-supporting.
Think of it, eighty-seven tunnels through rocky mountain spurs, one
hundred and twenty heavy steel bridges between Caracas and Valencia,
miles of rock-cutting and costly filling, and all this to carry a
handful of passengers and a few tons of freight each day--altogether not
enough to load one of our "mixed trains" in the States!
It follows where cataracts leap a thousand feet, where rivers boil in
thundering roar over mighty rocks; it cuts the mountain top asunder and
dashes through the rock-hewn lap of earth; it drops down through the
tops of giant trees, and robs the morning of her mist; it mingles with
the clouds, and anon kisses the feet of the ocean--but it doesn't pay
dividends.
From its heights, the earth stretches out in wonderful ridges of
gigantic proportion; geography becomes real, a fact, seen in the great
perspective. The air is so clear that the eye seems to have new power of
vision to reach to the uttermost end of the earth; the eye imparts to
the soul its larger horizon, and a great leap of joy carries the spirit
into the infinite room of creation, into the infinite grandeur of
created things, and the spirit grows and feels its small estimate of
God's earth expanding into a newer, grander conception of creation.
Mountain ridges sweep through tremendous space, one upon another, and at
their base, thousands of feet below, a green pillow of sugar-cane
invites the head and heart to quiescence. No word "green" can ever bring
back the quivering, transparent green of those young cane-fields, far
below in the valleys, watered by the careful hand of man in thousands
of tiny streams of irrigation.
VI.
The morning was just what it should be in spite of the croakers, and the
immensity of nature had imparted to our spirits much of her buoyancy; so
when the train came to a halt, we jumped with alacrity from the little
coach, and sought among the people for the human interest, which was as
ever very great. The route was dotted with charming stations, each one
flying a German and Venezuelan flag in delightful amity--for the Germans
impress the South American first with their greatness and then with
their friendliness; the mailed hand is shown only as the last resort.
Here were stations green and beflowered, in sweet good order, with
fountains and running streams, and booths where we bought ginger cookies
and Albert biscuit and _cervesa Inglesa_ and all sorts of fruit; and
back of the stations, hints of quaint old churches with distant bells,
and gathering about the mother church, blue and white and yellow
glimpses of queer old houses. And oh! the colour! The flowering trees!
What artist could ever reach the delicacy of the _Maria_ tree, one mass
of living pearls. Its branches so full of flower that there seemed to be
no room for leaf; the branch only there by sufferance. At La Victoria,
where we stop for luncheon, in a curious little café under a confident
German flag, our family interpreter disappears, and in a few minutes
returns in the likeness of a Thracian god, bedecked with garlands, pink
and white. He covers my lap with rarest blossoms, gives them to one and
all, and brings into the dusty coach a fragrance of Elysium. I long to
keep the flowers for ever; I long to hold that colour in such security
that it can never escape; I long to enclose that essence in some secret
shrine for ever. And shall I say I have not?
VII.
As we rush along down, nearing the Great Mother's mighty limbs, we pass
drooping arbours of _Bucari_, another flowering tree of wonderful
splendour, each flower like a glorious wax _Cattleya_, and millions of
them at a glance. Just then, as the blaze of beauty dazzles our eyes,
two brilliantly green parrots, frightened by the noisy interloper, take
flight from under their beauteous canopy, and wing their way in yellow,
green, and red vibrations through the scintillating landscape. We are
now flying along on a level stretch, in a high, rich valley, full of
luscious fruits and ripening harvests, and before the mountain opens to
receive us into one of its deep tunnels, we see large fields of a low
bush, growing quite in the nature of young coffee, with much the same
size and general appearance; without, however, the customary
shade-trees. Our friend from Colombo explained that it is tapioca; and
off beyond, in this next, white-walled _hacienda_ (what a world of
dreams and romance of the land of _siempre mañana_ comes to one in that
combination of ordinary vowels and consonants--"_hacienda_"!), in the
_Hacienda Las Palomas_,--or was it the _Hacienda La Sierra_ or _La
Mata_, or _Guaracarima_?--the natives gather from the green river
valleys, maize and beans and yucca, in the language of the country,
"_frutas menores_;" but more abundantly than all else, are gathered the
coffee and the sugar in vast crops year by year.
Westward from the summit the River Tuy plays hide-and-seek with us for
many a mile, darting, hurrying, beckoning, charming us, with a desire to
loiter when she loiters, to leap through the cliffs with her joy, to
rest under flower-spread arbours in sleepy towns with her, to dissolve
ourselves at last into the deep earth as she does. Finally we see her no
more, but now the larger Aragua, flowing toward the Lake of Valencia,
reaches out a bold hand, and we follow the new pathfinder where she
commands.
One last look into the shadowy depths before we drop to the plains. It
is only a glimpse, for the passing is so swift that the eye cannot reach
its entirety of beauty; but that glimpse is like the shadow of a great
rock,--a lasting memory. A bird slowly sways in mighty, circling sweeps,
poised upon the ether, between two green-robed mountain priests--a great
bird against the hazy mountain deep, swaying, calm, eternally sure of
its strength. Was there a hand outstretched beneath in the far,
disappearing morning which brought the ecstasy into the soul of that
lonely wanderer?
We leave the tunnels, the endless bridges, the heights, and drop down
rapidly into the valley, where the heat begins and the dust flies. We
follow the Aragua until she brings us to the Lake of Valencia, a long,
rambling, shallow lake, much like some of our own Northern lakes, and,
at the first opportunity (I think it was at Maracay), we leave the
train, and stand under the wide doors of the freight depot, with the
natives lying around half-asleep on sacks of coffee, and try to catch a
whiff of refreshing coolness from the lake. More German flags; they are
very interesting, but why should a party of Americans be so honoured?
For the German officers had gone back to the ship to do the polite to
General Castro. But the halt here was for a few minutes only; and we go
on, down through the hot little city of Valencia into greater heat, and
for a time into greater and more glorious vegetation.
It was a curious sight,--the piles of compressed coal dust made into
blocks,--"briquettes,"--eight to ten inches square, each stamped
"Cardiff, Wales," piled in high, orderly heaps at each station; greater
supplies of which we found, as we left the timber for the low country.
But I must not give the impression that the low country is untimbered;
far from it. As we leave the higher levels and start the final sharp
descent toward the coast on the cog-road,--a curious device in
railroading to overcome the danger of such steep inclines,--we can give
no conception of the forest growth through which we pass. The air is hot
and still; the trees stand in their eternal beauty, in their myriads of
blossoms, in their vivid colourings, with deep festoons of moss and
interweaving vines in motionless repose. They seem to exhale heat and
silence and darkness, even under the blaze of a still, white sun; they
tell only of night in the tangled growth of nature triumphant. It might
have been at Nagua-Nagua, if not there it was very near there, that the
springs of water, boiling out of the earth, were hot and sulphurous,
and, as we were about to move on in our roomy coach, along came the
much-talked of Special, with its crowded passengers looking jaded and
worn and cross, more, I imagine, from the incessant clatter of tongues
than from the asperity of the Southern sun. On, on, nearer to the sea,
to where the palms grow. There had been cocoanut and royal palms
before,--yes, from Haïti through all the islands we had seen them, but
here they attain their most perfect grandeur and glory. We came upon
them not singly, in isolated groups of conservative aristocracy, but in
companies and regiments, miles of them, arranged by the masterful hand
of Nature, now in mighty groups apart, like a conference of plumed
generals, and then again in battalions of tall grenadiers on silent
dress parade. Their light lofty trunks gave back from the sun a dull,
grayish white pallor. They were still and grand, and unspeakably
beautiful.
The heat seems to grow more intense as the sun sinks lower in the
heavens, and we drop down almost to the level of the ocean. The dust
becomes more blinding, and the palms disappear, and all things prickly
and unapproachably dry and forbidding, shadeless and impenetrable, take
their place, and change the picture from one of tropical life to
tropical death.
[Illustration: A SOUTH AMERICAN STREET
Puerto Cabello, Venezuela
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]
Long wastes of white sand spread over the desolate landscape, relieved
by not one sprig of comely green or welcome shade, with great mounds and
masses of gigantic and distorted cacti, more impassable than any
man-made barricade. They fitted in well with the heat and the dust, and
the long, low sun-rays, shooting in upon us their streaming floods of
white light; and then, just as I began to think the croakers might have
been right for once--there came a shout from the Doctor, from the Boston
friend, from us all; and Daddy, who was on the other side of the car,
jumps over to my seat and bends over my shoulder just in time to catch
sight of the sea--_el Mar Caribe_--before a bristling bank of cacti shut
it for the time from view. The Caribbean Sea--blue, far-reaching,
sweetly cool, washing the feet of the great, good Mother;--we longed to
plunge into the surf, and wash away the dust and heat and all unrest.
The sight of the great sea so near us, and our trim ship at anchor in
the harbour of Puerto Cabello, and the prospect of seeing the little
girls, from whom we had been separated by so many hours and miles, gives
us a deep joy. The day had been covered by the hand of God from dawn to
setting, and to the end of time there shall no greater beauty meet our
souls.
Then through the sleepy streets of hot old Puerto Cabello we wander to
where a boat waits us by the rotting quay at the river's mouth. Two
darling faces find our wistful searchings as we near the ship, and four
sweet arms accompanied by kisses fairly weigh us down as we reach the
deck.
"Oh, Mother! Just think of it, we shook hands with President Castro!"