A COUNTRY WITH A THOUSAND RIVERS--VENEZUELA
Years ago two miners worked together for months and finally came to know
each other as Tom and Jack. One day Tom was not well and could not do
much but watch Jack dig. After noting some movements of the body that
seemed familiar he said: "Jack, where did you come from?" The two men
sat down and talked of boyhood days and found that they were born in the
same community and had played together when they were small boys. Here
they had worked together for months without knowing that they were
neighbors; they actually got up and shook hands with each other.
Venezuela is our nearest neighbor to the south. This country is nearer
to Florida than New Orleans is to New York and yet we have lived side by
side for four hundred years and hardly knew we were neighbors. We might
have been friends and greatly assisted each other all these years. Is it
not about time we were getting acquainted and shaking hands with each
other?
It is surprising to know that Venezuela is as large as Maine, New
Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, the two Virginias, North and South
Carolina and Georgia combined. It is a country that has a thousand
rivers. In some parts of it you can travel for days in regions where as
yet no white man has ever set his foot. One writer says that of all the
countries in the world Venezuela is the one for which God has done the
most and man has done the least.
This great country has been called the hunting ground of South America.
This is not so much because of the abundance of game, although all kinds
of wild animals are plentiful; it has been given this appellation
because of its unstable government. Its treasury has been looted again
and again. Even the president of Venezuela was for years a criminal. He
robbed merchants of other countries who tried to do business with his
government. He imprisoned those who refused to assist him and ran things
in a high-handed way. Business firms of other lands found this out and
did not care to do business with such a country or help develop its
resources in any way.
We are not ashamed of our revolution in 1776 for its purpose was to gain
our independence. During the past seventy or eighty years Venezuela has
had more than a half hundred revolutions but generally they were gotten
up to give an excuse for pillage and robbery rather than to make a
better country or government. Things are better now, however, and a new
day is dawning for these unhappy people.
The main port or entrance to this country is La Guaira and sailors say
it is about the worst port to enter in the world. This port city
contains about fifteen thousand people and has but a single street. The
high mountains are so near the sea that there is only a narrow strip of
land at the foot and on this narrow strip the city is built. The sea is
nearly always rough and the weather always hot. How people can endure
such extreme heat all the time is a mystery.
All along this coast strip of Venezuela are plantations generally
covered with cocoa trees. From the beans of this tree are made cocoa and
chocolate. Coffee is also a staple crop. At the piers will be noticed
bags of coffee and cocoa beans, great quantities of rubber and piles of
hides. As we are nearer to them than other foreign countries we now use
much of their products. The population of this great country is only a
little more than that of the state of Iowa.
Back only six or eight miles, in a direct line, from La Guaira and the
blue waters of the Caribbean sea, high up in the mountains is a great
valley in which is located the capital city of Venezuela. This city,
Caracas, is about as large as Sioux City, Iowa, but to get to it is some
job. It is only about twenty-five miles by rail and this railroad was
about as difficult to build as any of our mountain railroads. The tracks
cling to the mountain sides almost like vines cling to brick walls, and
the curves are so short that one riding in the end coach can nearly
reach the engineer. One can look hundreds of feet into caverns and
gorges that seem almost like the bottomless pit.
Venezuela got its name from Venice, Italy, in the following way. One of
the earliest explorers sailing along the coast saw the Indian villages
built on piles in the water along the shore and was reminded of the
Italian city and called the country Venezuela, which means "little
Venice."
Here lived Las Casas, a priest who was the Indian's greatest champion in
the early days and who is said to be the father of African Slavery in
the new world. It was he who suggested that negroes be imported to labor
in the fields and mines that the Indians might have an easier time.
Brought from Africa to work that the Indians might rest, these black
people became the slaves of all.
Venezuela was the birthplace of the great Simon Bolivar and other
patriots who were fired with enthusiasm against Spanish oppression and
literally gave their lives that the colonies might be free. Even the
coins of the old days were stamped with Bolivar's name and everywhere he
is revered as the George Washington of that country.
In one of the large museums is a room in which are kept the great
liberator's clothing, saddle, boots and spears and these things are as
sacred to them as the Ark of the Covenant was to the Jews. In this same
room is a portrait of Washington upon which is the inscription: "This
picture of the liberator of North America is sent by his adopted son to
him who acquired equal glory in South America."
Through this country runs one of the world's greatest rivers, the
Orinoco, which with its tributaries furnishes more than four thousand
miles of navigable rivers. This great river system drains a territory of
three hundred and sixty thousand square miles.
It is rather strange that in this country with lovely and productive
valleys whose irrigated orchards and gardens make a regular paradise,
that the farming classes should be poor and ignorant, without ambition
or education and be satisfied to live in comfortless, tumble-down huts
without furniture or any of the improvements that make life worth
living. But such is the case. Here where there are millions of coffee
trees, fields of sugar cane and orchards of oranges, lemons and all
kinds of tropical fruit, where the farmer could be happiest, he is
about the most miserable creature that could be found. In his miserable
home he has no lamp or candle, no books or papers of any sort.
While Venezuela is rich in mines and forests, grain and livestock,
coffee and rubber, dyes and medicines, gold and copper, lead and coal,
to say nothing of tropical fruits and vegetables, she has another
product that makes her known the world around. This is asphalt, or
mineral pitch as it is sometimes called. This makes the smoothest street
paving of any material known. It is also used extensively for calking
vessels, making waterproof roofs, lining cold storage plants, making
varnishes as well as shoe blacking as well as in a hundred other ways.
At the mouth of the Orinoco river is the Island of Trinidad upon which
is the famous pitch lake. This is the most noted deposit of asphalt
known. This lake is a mile and a half across and looks, from a distance,
like a pond surrounded with trees. Nearing it, however, one soon
discovers that it contains anything but water.
This material is of a dark green color and at the border is hard and
strong enough to bear quite a heavy weight, but near the center it is
almost like a boiling mass. The asphalt is dug from the edges of the
lake, loaded on carts, hauled to the port and from there shipped to
nearly every country on the globe. Two hundred thousand tons per year
have been taken from the lake and yet there is no hole to be seen. Negro
workmen dig it to the depth of a couple of feet and in a week or so the
hole is level with the top again.
The government of Trinidad has leased the asphalt lake to an American
company and the income amounts to nearly a quarter of a million dollars
per year. Nobody knows how deep the asphalt bed is for borings have been
made a hundred feet or more deep and there was no bottom. The heat is
intense all around this lake.
About fifty miles from the coast in Venezuela there is another asphalt
lake and the material in it is of finer quality than at Trinidad, but it
is hard to reach. Some believe that the two deposits are connected by a
subterranean passage and supplied from the same source. It was from this
inland lake of asphalt that the material was procured to protect the New
York subway tunnels from moisture, so it is said.
In the central part of Venezuela are the llanos which are said to be
about the best pasture lands in the world. The chief industry here is
cattle raising. More than two million head of cattle feed, upon these
llanos, but they are capable of feeding many times that number.
One reason why the people of this country have no ambition to lay up for
the future or even get large herds of cattle has been because of the
numerous revolutions of the past. Every time they have succeeded in
getting large herds of cattle or stores of grain a revolution would come
and their property be seized and often destroyed.
No people can be prosperous and happy without a stable government,
schools and colleges and the influences that are uplifting. This is the
great need of many of the countries of South America today. Just here it
is well for the farmers of this country to congratulate themselves. The
writer of these lines has traveled nearly all over the world and having
been a farmer all his early life it is only natural that he would try
to study the problems of the farmers in all lands.
It is therefore with pride that one can say that considering all the
complex problems with which the American farmer has to grapple, he is a
hundred times better off than his brother farmers in any country in the
world. He is more independent, has more privileges, more opportunities
for making the most of life, has higher ideals, and lives better than
the tillers of the soil in any other country on earth.