Part 17

Above the city, among the rocks, are the ruins of old Spanish forts which have been the scenes of the most terrific conflicts, and the ravines have run with blood from the carnage until the sea has been as red as a sunset. In the days of the buccaneers La Guayra was a favorite place for fighting, and there being no harbor, the pirate kings were always cruising after the galleons which came there to load with treasures for the King of Spain. Upon the top of a high bluff overlooking the town is an immense castle, which was at one time the residence of the Captain-general of the Spanish colonies, and is haunted by all sorts of legends and romantic traditions. It is now in ruins, and the underground tunnel which formerly connected it with the Military Barracks, four miles away, has caved in at many places.

To readers of that remarkable novel, “Westward, Ho!” by Charles Kingsley, this castle has a romantic interest, as it was here where the Rose of Devon was carried by her Spanish lover, and where she was sought and found by Aymas and Frank Leigh. But things are different nowadays. The great American house of Boulton, Bliss & Dallett have their headquarters there, control the trade, send vessels to New York every ten days without molestation laden with coffee, and the only blood that flows is shed by the fleas.

I have thus far neglected to give due credit to the tropical flea, to whose industry, enterprise, and assiduous solicitude all travellers in Spanish-America are indebted for a great deal of diversion. At first his attentions are somewhat annoying, and there is a general disposition to conceal acquaintance with him; but when every man, woman, and child in a company is constantly scratching, it becomes difficult to ignore conditions that are common and conspicuous, and everybody admits, first with blushes and then with brazen shamelessness, that he’s got ’em. There is no use of trying to conceal the fact. They are as common and as plenty as flies in the basement kitchen of a city boarding-house, and the Venezuela coat-of-arms would more truly represent the condition of the country if it showed a man vainly trying to scratch in seven places at once instead of a wild horse dashing over the pampas. They are little black insects, which will get into your clothing in the most unaccountable manner. You find them in your shoes and under your shirt-collar; you wake up in the night and think you have somehow wandered into a plantation of nettles; or, when you become a little more accustomed to it, dream regularly that you are lying on the prickly side of a cactus. To rub the flesh with brandy does some good, but the better way is to grin and bear it. The pests are bad enough in Mexico; they are worse in the West Indies; but in Venezuela--the less said the better.

Between La Guayra and Caracas rises a mountain called La Silla (The Saddle), from the shape of its summit, eight thousand six hundred feet above the sea, and there are three roads between the two cities. The shortest is a trail nine miles long, through a ravine, which was used by the Indians at the time of the discovery by Columbus, but it is impassable for quadrupeds, and dangerous for any but expert and experienced mountaineers. Then there is an old wagon-road, steep and rough, for twenty-two miles, which was constructed by the Spaniards after the Conquest. The third is a tramway, narrow gauge, built along shelves which have been excavated in the side of the mountains by English engineers and English capital. The train goes slowly, and there is almost always a track-walker with a spade upon his shoulder in sight. It would not do to run up or down the grades in the night, or at a speed greater than ten miles an hour; hence it requires two hours and a half to make the journey, than which there is no more interesting in the world. The grade averages one hundred and ninety-seven feet to the mile, the highest altitude passed being four thousand six hundred feet; and one does not know which to admire the most--the difficulties nature has placed in the way of man, or the manner in which man has overcome them.

Humboldt, who came up the wagon-road, which runs almost parallel with the tramway for most of the distance, said that the only mountain scenery which equals it is that of the Island of Teneriffe, where a fragment of the alpine grandeur rises from the bosom of the sea. But one can scarcely imagine a picture more imposing or impressive than is represented here. Almost under the equator, with the ocean continually in view, and the mountains rising into the clouds all around you, the little engine puffs and pants like a restless stallion as it climbs around in the crevice that has been dug for the track. The road is solidly constructed, as English railways always are, has all the modern appliances for safety, and has been running so far without an accident; but if anything should break, if the engineer should lose control of the train for an instant, there would be no need of an inquest--there would be nothing for a coroner’s jury to sit upon.

Two hundred and fifty years ago that king of buccaneers, Sir Francis Drake, paid a visit to Caracas under circumstances worthy of notice. It was before the forts had been built around La Guayra; in fact, it was owing to the adventure of Sir Francis that the Spaniards put them there. This Mr. Drake, as all know who are familiar with the doings of Queen Elizabeth’s time, was a Britain bold, and had a little affair with the Spanish Armada. Having disposed of the enemies of the virgin Queen in the waters around home, he started

out on a cruise for gold and glory, with “Westward, Ho!” inscribed upon the pennant that flew at the royal top-gallant of his main-mast. Mr. Drake was a gentleman of great valor, and his antipathy to the Spaniards and Catholics was pronounced. He started out from Plymouth with a gallant fleet, and when he came across a Spanish galleon or a Spanish town in the colonies he “went for it then and there.” The Rev. Charles Kingsley has described the voyage, which continued around the globe, in a most fascinating manner. He followed in the wake of Sir Francis two hundred years after, and his descriptions of South American scenes and scenery are unsurpassed.

Drake’s capture of Caracas was considered the boldest of all his achievements. It was in 1595 that he stood in with his squadron at La Guayra, and the inhabitants, when they realized the presence of the man who had devastated the West Indies, abandoned their homes and fled to the mountains, carrying the news of the arrival of the terrible Englishman. The Alcaldes of Caracas assembled all the men in the country who could carry arms, from the ages of sixteen to seventy, and marched down the wagon-road along which the railway runs, to stay the invader. Half way down they prepared an ambush and lay in wait to annihilate him. Drake landed at La Guayra with seventy men, captured a fellow named Villalpando, who, by gifts of treasure, agreed to guide him up the old, dangerous, and abandoned Indian trail. So, while the gallant Alcaldes with all the men of Caracas were marching down one road Sir Francis was marching up another, which they thought he would not dare to climb. Neither met an enemy, and while the Spaniards were lying in ambush Sir Francis was hanging the traitorous Villalpando in what is now the Plaza Bolivar, drinking the wine from the Spanish cellars, ravishing the women, and plundering the houses of the citizens. But one old hidalgo, named Alonzo de Ledeoma, who remained behind, denounced the invaders from the threshold of his plundered house, declared them to be cravens, and dared the bravest of the Englishmen to meet him in single combat. Sir Francis and his crew jeered at the brave old man, and told him to send for his fellow-citizens who had gone down the mountain-road; but he insisted on fighting them alone, and was accommodated. They killed him as tenderly as they could, set fire to the city, and then, laden with all the portable property of value in Caracas, marched down the ravine to La Guayra again, and sailed away with a million dollars’ worth of treasure, captured without the loss of a single man.

The city of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, as well as its metropolis, and according to geographies one of the most delightful places of residence in the world, lies in a narrow valley between two high ranges of mountains, which lift their heads nearly nine thousand feet on one side, and something over six thousand on the other. To one standing in the centre of the city it seems to be entirely surrounded by peaks, to lie in a pocket or deep depression; but from the top of “Calvary,” a hill which used to be a cemetery, but is now a park, one can see two roads that lead out, two passes through the mountains whence the river comes and whither it flows. The natural beauties of the place are very marked, and make it plain why Venezuelans are proud of their chief city. There is an old gentleman at Caracas, Mr. Middleton by name, who for over fifty years has been in the diplomatic service of Great Britain. He has served at Paris, at Madrid, at Mexico, at Buenos Ayres, at Brazil, and his last station was as Minister to Venezuela. When the age came which required him to be placed upon the retired list he would not go back to England, but wished to remain there, where, he says, it is but a step to Paradise. “I have been here since 1869,” he remarked; “I have seen this country in war and in peace, and have experienced two earthquakes, the last of which killed three hundred people, but there is no place on earth possessing so many natural and climatic attractions. All I ask is to end my days in this eternal spring.”

But, speaking of earthquakes, Caracas is a favorite place for them. The town was entirely destroyed in 1812, and more or less of it has been shaken down at intervals since. The residents are quite sensitive on the subject, and insist that more lives are lost in the United States by fires and cyclones and railroad accidents than in Venezuela by earthquakes. They talk of the great fires in Boston and Chicago as being infinitely more to be dreaded than the earthquake of 1812, which shook every building from its foundation, and buried twenty thousand people in the ruins. There is no doubt a constant danger from volcanic fires, but the people are not subjected to some of the ills we are heir to.

The present Government, under the inspiration of Guzman Blanco, is making earnest efforts to secure immigrants, and is offering the most alluring inducements to settlers upon the public lands. Venezuela is not thickly populated. It has more territory than France, Spain, and Portugal together, and is about one-seventh as large as the United States. The population in 1884 was 2,121,000, with only a slight increase for ten years. The country could sustain a population of 100,000,000, for the soil is exceedingly rich, and produces two crops a year without fertilization or irrigation.

There are three zones, three climates within the limits of Venezuela--from cold too intense to be endured by man to the greatest degree of heat known to the earth’s surface. Although the capital is only ten degrees north of the equator, the temperature is delightful, and it is easy to realize the truth of the statement that Caracas enjoys a perpetual spring. The thermometer, which stands about sixty degrees at midnight, rises to seventy-five or eighty at noon, but there is always a fresh breeze blowing either from the ocean or from the snow-capped Andes to the south-west.

There was no printing-press in Venezuela until after the triumph of Bolivar, and the colonies were not encouraged in the arts or the sciences or any form of industry. The most profitable crops of sugar and coffee were kept a monopoly for the crown of Spain, and the people found it to their advantage to produce no more than they needed for their own sustenance, as every ounce of surplus was seized by the Government. Then, after independence was established, the rulers of the country imitated their former oppressors and kept the people down, robbing them in every possible way, until revolution after revolution was the result, and local wars followed each other so rapidly that the country was deluged with blood. Discontent was universal, and discontent always results in conspiracies and revolutions. Bolivar the Liberator (pronounced Bo-leè-var), the Washington of the country, was driven into exile, and died in poverty in a neighboring country. But Bolivar is honored there now, and the public

veneration is even greater, if possible, than that shown for Washington and Lincoln in the United States. He died of a broken heart in Santa Marta, Colombia, and was originally buried there, but ten years after his death Paez, the man who overthrew the Liberator and drove him into exile, thought it would be a popular thing to bring his bones home. This was done with great ceremony, and they were buried in the cathedral fronting Plaza Bolivar, upon which his equestrian statue stands. But his heart is in Colombia still. It was removed from the body, and remains in an urn in the Santa Marta cathedral.

In the museum of the University, in a beautiful room kept as sacred as the Holiest of Holies, is a collection of relics as precious to the people as fragments of the true cross. There are Bolivar’s clothing, his saddle, his spurs, his boots, and books, and every little memento of him that could be gathered up, including the coffin in which his remains were originally buried. There are paintings representing his past achievements on earth and his present glory in heaven, where he is surrounded by cherubim and seraphim covering his head with laurels. The most precious of all the relics is a portrait of Washington, sent to Bolivar in 1828 by George Washington Parke Custis, with this inscription: “This picture of the Liberator of North America is sent by his adopted son to him who acquired equal glory in South America.”

When Guzman Blanco turned an old cathedral into a pantheon for the burial of distinguished dead, the remains of Bolivar were for a third time removed, and finally deposited in a beautiful marble tomb. Upon it is a statue of the hero, represented as standing with a military cloak around him--a noble and dignified face. On one side is a statue of “Plenty,” scattering corn from a tray; on the other a representation of “Justice.” The inscription on the monument is:

SIMON BOLIVAR.

Cineres hic condit; honorat grata et memor patria.

1852.

There is another, an equestrian statue to Bolivar, in the centre of the city, surrounded by a park called by his name, upon which fronts “The Yellow House,” as the residence of the President is called, and several of the Federal palaces. The standard coin of the country is called by his name, and is of a value equal to the franc of France. The coins and paper-money bear his portrait as well as his name, and a pathetic attempt is made by the people to show after his death the gratitude they should have paid to the starving exile.

Not far from the statue of Bolivar stands a heroic figure in bronze, with no inscription upon its pedestal but the name “Washington.” It was erected to celebrate the centenary of Bolivar’s birth, and its dedication was accompanied by a ceremony which has never been equalled in magnificence on the southern continent--a tribute to the man who “filled one world with his benefits and all worlds with his name.” There are shops and stores, hotels and streets named after Washington, and his memory is reverenced as much as at home. But this people, so instinctively republican, so patriotic and appreciative of freedom, never knew what liberty was until within the last ten years. Since then the priests have been dethroned and the schools have been made free.

Guzman Blanco may be a tyrant, but he has produced results which are blessing the people. Until he became President the Church ruled the people as it formerly ruled Mexico, but, like Juarez in the latter country, he went to radical and excessive measures to overthrow its tyranny. He confiscated Church property, drove out the nuns and Jesuits, seized the convents, turned them into hospitals and schools, and made the most venerable monastery a pest-house for lepers and small-pox. He deprived the Church of the right to hold or acquire property, seized the cemeteries, and opened them to the burial of the dead of whatever faith. He even went so far as to expel the archbishop because the latter refused to sing a Te Deum when a monument to the man who did all this was erected. With such audacity and by such means has Guzman Blanco deprived the Church of its former power and prestige. His opponents, like those of Juarez and Diaz in Mexico, are chiefly Churchmen (Bourbons), but as he exercises no mercy when his will is violated, they are in a state of the most abject submission.

The schools of Venezuela are supported by the Federal Government from the revenues of the Post-office and a trade license system. Formerly the mails now handled by the railroads were carried by Indian runners over the mountains from the coast, and so from Caracas inland still farther, as is the case yet where there are no railroads. A runner carries a package weighing about sixteen pounds strapped upon his back. His clothing is sufficient, as he leaves a city, to preserve the last requirement of decency. When he gets alone, however, he deposits his fig-leaf in some convenient place, and rapidly “walks in maiden meditation, garment free,” until he approaches his destination, when he finds the uniform belonging to that end of the post-route, and dons it for remaining courtesies. These runners are faithful, prompt, serviceable, and of great endurance.

At the post-office you can get two sorts of stamps. The proceeds from foreign postage go into the general treasury. Another stamp is used for local postage, for letters addressed to persons within the town or State, and is required upon commercial paper, upon all deeds, mortgages, leases, contracts, notes, receipts, certificates, etc. The proceeds of its sale are devoted to the support of the schools, which are free to all, but are usually attended by the children of the lower classes. The negroes are particularly eager to learn, and the average attendance of the blacks is very much greater than that of white children, and out of proportion of the population. The ratio of illiteracy is greater among the whites than among the negroes, and people are beginning to complain that servants and laborers are being spoiled by education.

There is a Telephone Exchange, with four hundred and seventy-five subscribers, with branch lines to La Guayra and other cities. The instrument is very popular in all the tropical countries, where any method by which physical exertion may be avoided receives both public and private approbation. The Spaniard shouts “_Oyez, oyez!_” (Hear ye, hear ye!) when he goes to the telephone, the same words that are used by bailiffs to open courts of law in the United States, and it sounds quite odd not to hear the familiar “Holloa!” after the bell jingles. The telephone is extensively used in private houses; and as the etiquette of the country prohibits ladies from shopping or going upon the streets without an escort, they find Mr. Bell’s invention a great convenience. They visit with their friends and gossip over the wire, order their meats and groceries from the market, and direct the storekeepers to send up samples of the goods they want to buy. The electric light is quite common also, the Opera-house being illuminated by it, as well as the President’s palace, or “Yellow House,” as it is called, in imitation of our President’s mansion at Washington, and other public buildings. The Opera-house is subsidized by the Government during the season. There is always a good company here. Performances are given twice a week, and the subsidy received by the present management is forty thousand dollars for the season, with free use of the house and scenery, which belongs to the Government. We attended a presentation of “Robert le Diable,” and it was as well rendered as the average operatic performance in the United States. The theatre is a magnificent building of stone, standing in a plaza or park; and although the interior is rather bare of decorations, and the attempt to secure the greatest amount of coolness gives it a barn-like air, in its equipments and arrangement the house is equal to any in New York. The attendance was rather small, or looked so in the great auditorium, which seats two thousand five hundred people, and the President, who is said to be a constant devotee of the opera, was absent.

When Guzman Blanco drove out the nuns and monks he made good use of their property. One monstrous Carmelite monastery, covering an entire block, was confiscated, remodelled, and turned into a university, which is supported by the Government and attended by the youth of Venezuela professionally inclined. Science, law, medicine, and all the ologies but theology are taught here, and the schools are well managed and of a high grade. Attached to the university is a public library and museum, under the care of Professor Ernst, a distinguished German scientist. This institution is supported by the revenues of a coffee plantation confiscated from the monks and now belonging to the Government.

Across a small park from the university, in which stands the inevitable statue of Guzman Blanco, is what is known as the “Palacio Federal,” bearing the inevitable marble tablet to keep before the minds of the people that it was erected by that “illustrious American.” It is the largest, handsomest, and most useless building in Caracas, and one of the finest in South America. Like all the rest of the improvements it stands upon confiscated ground, where once was a convent, the oldest and largest in the country, whose massive walls were stanch enough to endure the great earthquake of 1812. Guzman had a great time pulling it down, but he is a man of enormous will and energy, and when he resolves upon anything it is as good as done.

The Palacio Federal is the Capitol of Venezuela. It covers an entire square of about two acres, built around a circular park in which are fountains, statuary, and beautiful flowers, and which is reached by grand archways on either side. Owing to an earthquake tendency in these parts the buildings in Caracas are never more than two stories high, and