Part 11

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Admiral Meade’s squadron touched at La Guayra while we were at the capital, the squadron visiting the port at that time in obedience to the schedule already laid out for it in Washington some months previous, just as a theatrical company plays a week’s stand at the time and at the place arranged for it in advance by its agent, but the Venezuelans did not consider this, and believed that the squadron had been sent there to intimidate the British and to frighten the French and German men-of-war which were then expected in port to convey their dismissed ministers back to their own countries. One of the most intelligent men that I met in Caracas, and one closely connected with the Foreign Office, told me he had been to La Guayra to see our squadron, and that the admiral had placed his ships of war in the harbor in such a position that at a word he could blow the French and German boats out of the water. I suggested to one Venezuelan that there were other ways of dismissing foreign ministers than that of telling them to pack up and get out of the country in a week, and that I did not think the Monroe Doctrine meant that South-American republics could affront foreign nations with impunity. He answered me by saying that the United States had aided Mexico when Maximilian tried to found an empire in that country, and he could not see that the cases were not exactly similar.

They will, however, probably understand better what the Monroe Doctrine really is before their boundary dispute with Great Britain is settled, and Great Britain will probably know more about it also, for it is possible that there never was a case when the United States needed to watch her English cousins more closely than in this international dispute over the boundary-line between Venezuela and British Guiana. If England succeeds it means a loss to Venezuela of a territory as large as the State of New York, and of gold deposits which are believed to be the richest in South America, and, what is more important, it means the entire control by the English of the mouth and four hundred miles of the Orinoco River. The question is one of historical records and maps, and nothing else. Great Britain fell heir to the rights formerly possessed by Holland. Venezuela obtained by conquest the lands formerly owned by Spain. The problem to be solved is to find what were the possessions of Holland and Spain, and so settle what is to-day the territory of England and Venezuela. Year after year Great Britain has pushed her way westward, until she has advanced her claims over a territory of forty thousand square miles, and has included Barima Point at the entrance to the Orinoco. She has refused positively, through Lord Salisbury, to recede or to arbitrate, and it is impossible for any one at this writing to foretell what the outcome will be. If the Monroe Doctrine does not apply in this case, it has never meant anything in the past, and will not mean much in the future.

Personally, although the original Monroe Doctrine distinctly designates “this hemisphere,” and not merely this continent, I cannot think the principle of this doctrine should be applied in this instance. For if it does apply, it could be extended to other disputes much farther south, and we might have every republic in South America calling on us for aid in matters which could in no possible way affect either the honor or the prosperity of our country.

In any event the Monroe Doctrine is distinctly a selfish one, so far, at least, as all rules for self-preservation must be selfish, and I should prefer to think that we are interfering in behalf of Venezuela, not because we ourselves are threatened by the encroachments of Great Britain, but because we cannot stand by and see a weak power put upon by one of the greatest. It may be true, as the foreign powers have pointed out, that the aggressions of Great Britain are none of our business, but as we have made them our business, it concerns no one except Great Britain and ourselves, and now having failed to avoid the entrance to a quarrel, and being in, we must bear ourselves so that the enemy may beware of us, and see that we issue forth again with honor, and without having stooped to the sin of war.

Caracas was the last city we visited on our tour, and perhaps it is just as well that this was so, for had we gone there in the first place we might have been in Caracas still. It is easy to understand why it is attractive. While you were slipping on icy pavements and drinking in pneumonia and the grippe, and while the air was filled with flying particles of ice and snow, and the fog-bound tugs on the East River were shrieking and screeching to each other all through the night, we were sitting out-of-doors in the Plaza de Bolivar, looking up at the big statue on its black marble pedestal, under the shade of green palms and in the moonlight, with a band of fifty pieces playing Spanish music, and hundreds of officers in gold uniforms, and pretty women with no covering to their heads but a lace mantilla, circling past in an endless chain of color and laughter and movement. Back of us beyond the trees the cafés sent out through their open fronts the noise of tinkling glasses and the click of the billiard-balls and a flood of colored light, and beyond us on the other side rose the towers and broad façade of the cathedral, white and ghostly in the moonlight, and with a single light swinging in the darkness through the open door.

In the opinion of three foreigners, Caracas deserves her title of the Paris of South America; and there was only one other title that appealed to us more as we saw the shores of La Guayra sink into the ocean behind us and her cloud-wrapped mountains disappear, and that, it is not necessary to explain, was “the Paris of North America,” which stretches from Bowling Green to High Bridge.

THE END

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=Venezuela=: A Land where it’s always Summer. By WILLIAM ELEROY CURTIS. Post 8vo, Cloth. (_In Press._)

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