Lindon Wallace Bates - The Path of The Conquistadores, Trinidad and Venezuelan Guiana (1912)

SIMON BOLIVAR, "EL LIBERTADOR
FROM A PAINTING BY FRANCIS

M. DREXEI-
THE PATH OF THE

CONQUISTADORES
TRINIDAD AND VENEZUELAN
GUIANA
BY
LINDON BATES,
JR
ETC.
AUTHOR OF "THE RUSSIAN ROAD TO CHINA,"
WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

1912
CONTENTS
I.
THE CONQUISTADORES
TRINIDAD
.
....
.
.
PAGE.
II.
50
III.
THE
SERPENT'S
MOUTH
IV.
UP THE ORINOCO
V. VI.
VII.
THE
CITY OF BOLIVAR
.... ....
.
-97
135,
i8&
223,
ON THE LLANOS
THE "DELTA"
INDEX
,
.
'
.....
. .
.275,
303
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SIMON BOLIVAR,
"EL LIBERTADOR"
Francis M. Drexel.
Frontispiece
From a painting by Duncan Emmet.
By
permission of Mrs. John
FACING PAGB
RALEIGH'S ATTACK ON PORT-OF-SPAIN

From an
old engraving.
.18
CELEBRATION OF THE HUNDREDTH

OF
ANNIVERSARY
VENEZUELA'S
. .
INDEPENDENCE AT CIUDAD
. .
BOLIVAR
-34
250603
The
THE
Path of the Conquistadores

FACING PAGE
.
DRAGON'S MOUTH AND MADAME TETTERON'S

. .
TOOTH
.52
70
VILLA NEAR PORT-OF-SPAIN
TRINIDAD NEGROES
THE SWEETMEAT SELLER

INDIGENOUS CRICKET
.
-74 -76 .80

.
QUEEN'S PARK
80
STREET
IN
SAN FERNANDO
IN
.84
.
A MUD
VOLCANO
THE OIL REGION

. .
. .
90
THE ASPHALT LAKE
CLIFFS NEAR CEDROS POINT
THE
SERPENT'S FANGS
.
.... ....
.
.92
124 130
ALONG THE ORINOCO
.144
.
ABORIGINAL GUARANO INDIANS
148 158
THE LAUNDRY WOMEN

MONKEY STEAKS
STREET SCENE
IN
.....
. . . .
OF BARRANCAS
168
SAN FELIX
.176
.
CALLE DE ORINOCO, CIUDAD BOLIVAR
190
BELLE OF BOLIVAR
206
List of Illustrations
FACING PAGE
THE CATHEDRAL, CIUDAD BOLIVAR

U
.214
.
BUEN MULA"
226
PRIMITIVE TRANSPORTATION
"THE DELTA"
MAP
. .
...
236
292
At end
vii
THE PATH
OF THE CONQUISTADORES
I
THE CONQUISTADORES
O IX
battered caravels were slowly nearing the coast of South America.
Their planking, warped and parched by weeks of sailing beneath the torrid sun,
showed gaping seams. weeds trailed from their

in
Long
sides.
strings
of
They were
momentary danger of sinking from their leaks. None had more than one cask of
water.
v
On
the narrow poop-deck of the largest
vessel
stood a
tall,
gaunt, lonely figure.
His long white hair hung lankly down.
The
His

eyes were
bloodshot
from
endless
His painful movements witwatching. nessed the rackings of gout. His harsh
features
the anxiety which his iron resolution would hide from his men.
betrayed
the
It
was
last
day
of
July,
1489.
Weeks
of sailing, of hardship, of waiting,
of hope deferred, had told on commander and crew. The latter were in a state of
mutinous panic. Hungrily the Admiral peered ahead over the tropic sea.
Suddenly a
aloud,
to the
"
sailor at the
!
masthead cried
Land
land
"
!
The crew crowded

the
rail.
Dimly, in the distance, on the
port quarter, appeared three mountains.

"
summits
"
!
of
Change the course

caravels
put in
ordered
the Admiral.
The
it
headed inshore.
swung slowly around and As the fleet drew nearer

the
three
was
seen that
peaks were
united upon one base. " " miracle exclaimed
one
of
the
The Conquistadores
sailors.
"
To-day
is
Trinity Sunday, and
yonder is the Trinity." " Trinidad we shall call this land," said the Admiral.
evening the vessels were close to The men on the decks of the shore.
By
caravels
could
see
huts
nestled
among
the palms and people moving on the beach. "It is fresh and green as the gardens
of
Valencia
in
the
month
of
March,"
exclaimed one of the

the
men
joyfully.
Island of Skirting Trinidad, the vessels reached the entrance

of the
to the
shore
Gulf of Paria.
be
Across the
the
strait
could
"
dimly descried of South America.
mainland
Out with the anchors," called the commander. "This current is making a
roaring noise like the sound of breakers against the rocks."
The
the
ships hove to Point of Arenal.
and anchored
off
The
perilous pas-
sage between the island and the continent,

3
The Path
"The
tired
of the Conquistadores
The
ate
their
Serpent's Mouth," lay ahead.

sailors
mouldy
slept.
biscuit
and
scanty meal of then, wearied out,

on.
Columbus watched
In the dead of night," he later wrote to Ferdinand of Spain, "while I was on deck
"
heard an awful roaring that came from I stopped the south towards the ship. to observe what it might be, and I saw
I
the
sea
rolling
from west to east
like a
mountain as high as the ship. To this day I have a vivid recollection of the
dread
I
then
felt
lest
the
ship
might
founder under the
force
of that tremen-
dous
sea.
But
it
passed by, and on the
following day it pleased the Lord to give us a favourable wind, and I passed
inward
through
that
Strait,
and
the
soon
came to still water. which was drawn
In
fact,
some water
sea
up
from
proved to be fresh." Over waves darkened with
down by
4
the mighty
brought Orinoco from the
silt
The
distant
Conquistadores
Andes, the Admiral sailed into the Gulf of Paria. He landed on the
western
coast
of Trinidad
and renewed
the
his stock of fresh water.
Then through
northern passage, the Dragon's Mouth, he sailed to the Island of Margarita. Indians
were
fishing
his
here.
sailors
The Admiral
to
sent
some of
ships.
get
food for the
and delight the men found that the natives were diving
their surprise
To
for oysters
which contained
pearls.
The
Indian
to
women who came
out in coriaras
ship were festooned with gems. Sailors were sent on shore. One of
the
them exchanged an earthenware plate for four strings of pearls. The cacique of the
island gave the visitors heaping handfuls.
11
Men,
we have
in
reached
the
richest
country
the
world,"
exclaimed
the
Discoverer.
of the Conquistadores, and the fatality that followed them one
the
first
So came
all
and
found in him
its earliest
victim.
5
The Path of the

Spain
at
Conquistadores
to
Even while Columbus was opening

the
untold
wealth
at
of
the
New
World, intriguers
his
Court were tearing

King. the bulk
favour with the

of
secreting
He was
of
the
accused
treasure due to the Sovereign, of trying to keep for himself the Pearl Island, of plotting to
Ferdinand
destroy sent a
all
other
Spaniards.
secretly
judge,
an
enemy, to investigate. Columbus saw the documents which might have evidenced
his
good
faith
confiscated,
the
treasure
ready for transportation to Spain seized. In crowning indignity, he and his brother
were
put
into
irons
and
sent
home.
The
vessel's captain
would have released
the Admiral's bonds on the way. Proudly Columbus refused to have the irons
removed save by the royal

the
vessel
order.
When
reached
Cadiz,
Ferdinand
But reparation he could. ever after the Discoverer kept the fetters
in
made what
his
chamber,
and
directed
that
at
The Conquistadores
his
death
they should
be
buried
with
him.
In the wake of Columbus came
by year a swarm
of
adventurers
year seek-
ing the fabled wealth of the Indies. In their turn they found gold ornaments, of pearls, and emeralds in possession
the the
Indians.
Alonzo de Ojeda reached Bay of Maracaibo and named the

built
land Venezuela, because the huts of the

natives,
on
piles,
reminded him of
Places
the
Queen of the
Adriatic.
on
the Island of Trinidad, in Margarita, and the mainland of South America were
precariously occupied by Spaniards,
first
who
trafficked with, then oppressed, then
enslaved the natives.

graphically described the conditions of this period of ruthless
None have more

than
conquest
the
Dominican
Friar,
Bartholomew de Las Casas, writing

years after the discovery. " In the yeere 1526,
the
forty
King our
7
The Path
Soveraigne, being induced by Sinister informations and perswasions damageable to the State, as the Spaniards have
alwaies pained themselves to concele from
damages and dishonours which God and the Soules of men, and
his Majestie the his
State
doth
receive
in
the
Indies,
granted a great Realme, greater than all Spaine, Venezuela, with the government
and
entire
jurisdiction,
unto
certain
Dutch
Merchants,
the
Welzers
of
Augsburg. " These same entering the country with three hundred men, they found the people very amiable, and meeke as Lambes, as
they are
until
all
in those parts of the
Indies
Spaniards doe outrage These have leyd desolate a most

the
them.
fertile
land
full
of people.
They have
slayne and
wholly
nations,
discomfited so farre
and divers great forth as to abolish the
languages wont to be spoken.

slayne, 8
They have
to
hell
destroyed,
and
sent
by
The
divers
Conquistadores
cruelties
I
and strange manners of
and ungodlinesses more

"
suppose than
four or five millions of souls.
of Trinitie, which joyneth with the firme land of the Coast of Paria the
On
He
and where the people are the best disposed and most inclined to vertue, in their kind,
of
all
the Indians, there went a Captaine

in the yeere
Rover
sixty
or
1510 accompanied with seventie other pettie Theeves.

received
The
Indians
them
as
their
oune bowels and babes.

builded
a
pers waded
The Spaniards
and
great house of timber the Indians to enter.
Then
laying hands on their swords they began to threaten the Indians, naked as they
them if theye did stirre, and then bound them. And those which There fled, they hewed them in pieces. were an hundred and forescore persons of them which they had bound. They got them to the He of St. John, where they
were,
to
kill
sold
the one
moitie,
and thence
to
the
The
He
of

Hispaniola, where
they
sold
the
other moitie.
reprehended the captain for this notable treason he made an answer:

I
"As
"
'
Sir,
quiet yourself
for
that
to
matter.
So have they commanded me

given
father
do and
me
instruction.
But
never found
this
nor
mother
save
in
He
of
Trinitie in respect of the friendly courtesy
the Indians
showed me/
"They have
all
this
singled out at times from which was very well coast,

It
peopled, above two millions of souls.

is
a tried case that, of Indians so robbed,
For they cast the third part into the sea. they prepare but a very small deal of
sustenance
die for
is
and
water.
Wherefore
to cast
they
hunger and
thirst,
and then there
none other remedie but

did
them
over the Boord into the sea.
And
verily a
man among them

the
He
10
of
Lucayos
there
me, that from unto the He of

tell
Hispaniola
trended
ship
all
The
alongst,
Conquistadores
that
it
without
had
either
compasse or Mariner's Card, being guided onely by the tracks of dead Indians'
carkasses floating
upon the
seas.
which tyrannic exercise over the Indians

cruellest
"The
the
is
Spanish one of the
things
that
in
is
in
the
World.
There
is
no
hell
this
life
nor other
that
desperate state in be compared unto
this
it."
World
may
Again and again the Indians
rebelled.
With hideous cruelties they tortured the Spaniards who fell into their hands, pouring molten gold down their throats,
crying,
the
"Eat! arms and
eat gold, Christian!"
But
discipline of the Spaniards
were in the end always victorious. The behaviour of the Friars during
this
period
is
of
their
everlasting
credit
to
them
in
and
to
Church.
Massacred
natives,
numbers
by
the
infuriated
who could not differentiate between monks and the savage oppressors
ii
the
of
The
the the

race,
same
scorned
and bullied by
best
to
alleviate
soldiers
and the adventurers, these

did
the
their
devoted
the
lot
men
of
the
at
Indians.
Las
the
Casas
reached
pleaded,
Emperor
first
Charles
in
vain,
V, and cause of
Christianity.
Father
Roderic
Minaia
appealed to the Pope, who loosed the thunders of a Bull upon the oppressors.
mandate, the Charles Friars V, approached again who was at last persuaded to send an
with
the
Armed
papal
honest
latter's
man
all
to
investigate.
Upon
at
the
report,
he
decreed
once
the
Despite the seriousness of the blow to Spanish industries in the
freedom of
Indian slaves.
New World
and the protests

fair
of his
officials, it
was executed with a
degree of loyalty. The lot of the Indians was never again quite what it had been before.
During the
half century after
the dis-
covery the Spaniards had been mostly on As time went islands or near the coast.
12
The
of the interior.
Conquistadores
tribes
on they came into touch with the
The conquests
Granada
man.
in the
of Mexico, Peru, and
New
in turn
poured millions of money
into Spain, firing the imagination of every
The
idea of a great civilized nation interior of South America, richer
than any yet conquered, started from the legends of the Indians. Their statement
that gold
came from far inland fructified Thus readily in minds fallow to marvels. sprouted and grew with tropic luxuriance
In his
letter
the belief in El Dorado.
Bempo, the chronicler Oviedo records clearly and as

to
Cardinal
"
actual fact the existence of
A great
King,
bruited in those lands, covered with golden
powder, in such fashion that from head to foot he was like a figure of gold, graven
by the hand of a rare artificer. The gold is stuck to his body by an aromatic resin. But since this would irk him as he slept, every night the King bathes and every
13
The Path of the
Conquistadores
morning once more is he gilded, which shows that the Kingdom of El Dorado
is
marvellously rich in mines."
Manoa," on the shores great city, of a lake called Parime, palaces with columns of massive gold, soldiers "armados
de piecas y joyas de oro,"
the details
filling
"
endless were
the
in
the picture of
realm of the Gilded Man.
Rumour was
precise
about everything
save the location of the city of Manoa. Some tales placed it at the foot of the
Andes, in the highlands of Peru or New Granada. Some in Guiana, far up the Caroni River, which joins the Orinoco just
before the latter spreads out into the great When the Andes region had been delta.
crossed,
so often and
so fruitlessly,
the
hopes of the goldseekers turned and still clung to the location on the Caroni of
which Milton wrote
"Guiana, whose great city Geryon's sons Call El Dorado."
14
The
definitely
Conquistadores
of
The famous map

in
Hondius showed
huge lake of
Guiana
the
Parime and the Golden City of Manoa on its border. The first expedition up the Orinoco was
that of
Diego de Ordez.
He was
one of
the Conquistadores of Mexico, granted the arms the right to bear on his coat of
Burning Mountain of Popocatapetl. He was named Adelantado of all the country he could conquer between the Amazon
and the Welzers' concession
In his venture he saw
as a man's
fist."
in Venezuela.
emeralds as big Far up the Orinoco he
"
heard of "a mighty king with one eye, and animals like deer that are ridden as horses."
Along the
saw natives who anointed themselves with turtle fat and

Caura
he
powdered themselves with glittering mica. His trip gave a considerable impetus to the belief that here at last was to be found
El Dorado.
Next came, with a great expedition of

15
The Path of the Conquistadores

two thousand, Don Antonio de Berrio y
Oruna, son-in-law of the Conquistador of New Granada, Ximinez de Quesada.
Landowners
estates
to
in
Spain sold
their
family
accompany him. Ten secular ecclesiastics and twelve Observantin monks

joined
the adventurer.
The cacique
of
Marequita, which bordered the Orinoco near where San Felix now stands, came to
Cumana at about
the
same time with a mass
This event of golden images to trade. and the story of one Juan Martinez, who
had been captured by Indians on the expedition of Ordez and had been
said that he
taken
from
town
"
to
town
until he
had
actually reached
City of
Manoa"
the Imperial and Golden and had seen the " Inca of
Guiana," inflamed the party to the highest

point.
De
Berrio's
expedition
started
from Marequita southward into Paragua. men of the two thousand Thirty
ultimately
retired,
straggled
back.
De
Berrio
crushed and bankrupt in every-
16
The
Conquistadores
to
thing save hope,
Trinidad,
and made
his headquarters in Port of Spain.
Here, in 1594, there appeared an Englishman, Captain Widdhon, who landed
and made many
inquiries,
to
suspicion of the Governor. sailors disappeared in Trinidad.
the great Eight of his
Captain
Widdhon
come.
Raleigh.
left
as mysteriously as he
had
He was
22,
the scout for Sir Walter
On March
force,
1595, with an imposing
Elizabeth's
favourite
himself cast
anchor outside of Port of Spain. Should he attack the Spaniards, breaking his
Queen's peace,
serious
or
sail
on
Long and
his officers. "
was the discussion with

his decision.
Then he took
To
depart
four hundred or five hundred miles from
my
ships and leave a garrison in my back, interested in the same enterprise, which
daily
expected
supplies
from
Spain,
should savour very much of an ass." ordered an immediate attack.

c
17
He
The
On
the excuse that the eight missing sailors had been murdered by the Spaniards
Raleigh
surprised
its
Port
of
Spain
and
Then, sending Captain Colfield with sixty men and following himself with forty, he marched to
slaughtered
garrison.
St.
Joseph, stormed
it,
and captured the
Governor, de Berrio.
The
latter
was
carried
up the Orinoco
in
the hope that he might be able to supply information. This first expedition of Raleigh's was, however, an utter failure.
The falls
up
its
of the Caroni prevented a passage stream. The tropic jungle was im-
penetrable.
Raleigh returned to Trinidad,
released de Berrio, and sailed sadly home.
De Berrio moved over to San Thome, now Los Castillos, on the Orinoco, and
established
settlement
another march inland.
preparatory to Shortly afterwards
he died, worn out with hardship, defeat,
and disappointment.
18
Twice more Raleigh one in 1596, under sent out expeditions
The
Lawrence
Despite
Conquistadores
1597.
sneer,
Keymis, another in Von Humboldt's polite

actually
find
Raleigh did
a great gold
region, as the millions taken of late years
from the Callao mine
attest.
Rather too
imaginatively, however, return

:
he wrote, on his
in
"
Every mountain, every stone

of
the
the the the
forests
Orinoco
it
shines
like
it is
If precious metals. mother of gold."
be not gold,
Meanwhile word was constantly

to
carried
Europe
of
the
left
riches
of
Guiana.
Francis
Sparry,
behind
on
Sir
Walter's expedition, captured by Spaniards and taken through much of Guiana,

drifted
back to England.
"
"In the province of Guiana," he testified, is much natural and fine gold, which
I
runneth between the stones like veines.
Of which gold
the Spaniard
had some
a
store,
it.
but
now
sell
is is
the better for

place where
"Camalaha
they
19
The
a

at certain times, in the
Women
Faire.
manner of
is
In
this
faire,
I
which
to the
south of Orinoco,
bought eight young women, the eldest whereof I thinke never saw eighteene yeeres, fore one red-hafted
knife which
in
England
cost
mee one
away
!
I halfe-pennie. gave these to certain Salvages which were
Women
my
friends."
An
alluring prospect for the adventurous To Raleigh the Gilded Man still beckoned.
In 1617, in person, he led a final search for Manoa. It was a last and a desperate gamble. Once more he was to beard the
King
profit
of Spain.
James stood ready
to
by success or to disavow failure. On New Years Day, 1618, Raleigh's men under Keymis landed at San Thomd
A brave
and wary Spaniard, Geronimo de Grados, laid an ambuscade for the English, who had intended to land merely, and
not attack until next day.
says Raleigh, "were so amazed as had not the Captains
20
"The common
sort,"
The
Conquistadores
and some other valiant gentlemen made a head and encouraged the rest, they had
all
been broken and cut to pieces."
The Spaniards,
ment,
a
fell
a sharp engageback, and were reinforced by

after
new band,
Governor.
by Diego Palomegue, the Young Walter Raleigh, son of

led
rallied
the Admiral,
the
English.
He
was shot by an arquebuse ball, and, as he stood reeling, was felled with the butt-end
of a gun.
"
Go on may
:
the Lord have mercy on

"
!
me and
to
prosper your enterprise
he cried
Keymis.
the
These were
his last words.

at last
;
The Spaniards were broken

refuge,
their
monastery of St. Francis, was stormed, and Raleigh's men sailed up

the Orinoco as far as the Narrows, where
Ciudad Bolivar now stands.
Sir Walter
landed at Soledad, climbed the hill, looked over the Orinoco stretching away into the west like a silver ribbon, and then
turned back.
21

Keymis
failure
committed
this
suicide
after
the
of
expedition.
Sir
29,
Walter
1618.
was
executed
on
October
King James wavered, but the Spanish King was insistent upon his enemy's death. "Tis a sharp medicine, but a
sound cure
said as he
for
felt
all
diseases," Sir
Walter
on the
Spain
continent.
the axe's edge. strengthened her grip
fighting attacked
pirates
She gradually worked inland, and conquering the Indians,

herself
at
sea by adventurous
and admirals.
Her dominion
again,
in
Venezuela
was
never
however,
seriously challenged by a European foe. With Trinidad the history was different.
The
island
was
surprised
"
in
1640 by
"
;
the Dutch,
who
found
no booty
in
1672 by Sir Tobias Bridges, who came over from Barbados to assault it. In
French under the Marquis de Maintenon, aided by some pirates from Tortuga, made a landing and carried away
1677 the
22
The Conquistadores
plunder a hundred thousand "piecesIn 1687 the Carib Indians reof-eight."
as
murdering the Governor and most In 1690 of the whites on the island. Levassor de la Touche, and in 1716
volted,
Blackbeard
Trinidad.
Tench
Small
the
pirate,
attacked
in
1773 only 162 male adult whites were recorded

as living
wonder that
on the
island.
French resident of Grenada, M. de

1778, the real
Saint-Laurent, became, in
founder of Trinidad.
So impressed was
he with
its fertility
area of land, drew or
that he bought a large up a Bill of Rights,
got it approved by Spain in 1783, and secured the appointment of

Cedula,
an excellent Governor, Chacon.

In
five years the
Don
Jos6 Maria
population jumped to
settlers
10,422,
mostly
French
from
neighbouring West India Islands. Toussaint TOuverture's rebellion of 1793 in Haiti added another set of French
the
23

refugees,
and
in
1795
still
others
came from
the
West
India Islands,
newly captured
by the
British.
In 1797 a British fleet sailed through the Dragon's Mouth with twenty vessels
and seven thousand men

Trinidad.
so
for the conquest of
Sir Ralph Abercrombie's force
overwhelmingly exceeded Governor Chacon's that the latter burned his ships
and
surrendered without firing a shot. Colonel Thomas Picton was left behind as
Governor.
Whip
into the
in
hand,
Picton
stalked
grimly
easygoing administrative offices In front of the Government of the island.
House stood
his gallows for grafters.
The
road-contractors trembled for his grim unheralded visits. The cowed thieves feared
his police hardly less than his police feared
their iron taskmaster.
population
in-
creased from 17,000 in 1793 to 29,000 in 1803 witnessed the order and prosperity
which his man-of-war discipline produced.

24
The
malfeasance
Conquistadores
for
His reward was an impeachment

in
office.
Acquitted,
but
suspicion as bitterly unjust as history has ever recorded, Picton left to fight through the Peninsular
of
under a cloud
War
with
Wellington,
and
to
perish
gloriously at
Waterloo
at the
head of the
"thin redjine" of three thousand which thousand D'Erlon's sixteen repulsed

charging grenadiers.
"Victory," with a lean, one-eyed Admiral on her deck, sailed by in She was flagship of thirteen British 1805.
frigate
The
men-of-war that had hounded twenty-eight French and Spanish vessels from the
Mediterranean
to
the
Caribbean.
The
inhabitants of Port of Spain, taking his

fleet
for
arms.
to
got under But the Admiral sailed out anew
an invading enemy,
Martinique and back again across the

still
Atlantic,
fleet.
wolfishly pursuing the allied

it
He met
at
Trafalgar."^*
last
Thus passed
the
of
the
English
25
The Path
conquerors, leaving Trinidad to grow into the ways of peace. Venezuela had
not
the
good
still
fortune
of
the
island.
She had
years.
to live through tempestuous
In the latter part of March, 1817, a score of horsemen were riding towards An-
gostura from the northern sea-coast, some
on mules, some on mangy horses. Most were sallow-skinned Creoles clad in civilian dress, sombrero on head, sword and pistol
a few wore dingy uniforms. One, a gigantic negro, bore the insignia of an officer of the Black Republic of Haiti.
at the belt
;
Two, military of bearing, keen of

diers
eye,
had
the weather-worn red of the British Grena;
half
dozen
rode
barefoot
ragged
ponchos
behind
peons in with the
sumpter burros.
slight figure in faded blue regimentals
faced
with
red
led
the
band.
Only
His thirty-four years old, he looked fifty. dark and wrinkled face was drawn and
26
The
puckered.
bitterest
Conquistadores
had
left
Hardship, dissipation, and the
disappointment
their
marks.
Born of a noble and wealthy Caracas family, he had been sent to Europe at the age of sixteen. He had visited France,
then under the Consulate,
the recent revolution
;
still
vibrant with
beaten at
against
he had played and tennis the Prince of the Asturias,

of Spain in a duel to the death for the
as Ferdinand
whom
now
of
VII
he was
freedom
South
America.
He
had
married at the age of nineteen and been widowed within the year. He had returned to Paris and broken his health in
wild living. At Rome he had refused to kiss the Cross on Pius VII's shoe. He
had returned to Caracas and had taken

part in the Junta
which drove out Emperan,
the
Spanish Captain-General, forced the establishment of a National Congress, and

drafted the declaration of Rights of April celebrated now as the Vene19, 1810
27
The Path of the

zuelan national
Conquistadores He had gone to holiday.

had
brought back the banished General Miranda. He had with
England
and
his
"Societa
Patriotica"
secured
the
Declaration of
1811.
He
Independence of July 5, had against the fought
Royalists,
and
fled
overwhelmingly beaten, to Cartagena. He had returned
been
while Spain was in the throes of conflict with Napoleon, and entered Caracas amid
delirious
enthusiasm in a chariot
before
"
which
El strewed roses, hailing him Libertador." He had been defeated once

girls
more
and
had been obliged
to
flee
to
Jamaica.
A negro spy, hired
to assassinate
him, had killed his secretary by mistake. Now at length, by the aid of a Dutch ship-
owner and the President of the Negro Republic of Haiti, he had been enabled to
come back on this final attempt at South American liberation. "A monkey "(" Mono") he was once nicknamed, and not unlike a monkey he seemed
28
The Conquistadores
with his thin
face.
little
body and
his wrinkled
But one look from
his dark brooding
eyes told of the fiery, unconquerable soul The that burned in the slight frame.
man was Simon

in 1817,
Bolivar, the
of Spanish America.
Washington On this March day

little
heading his tattered
cavalcade,
he was passing through the anguish of his

Valley Forge. The sky behind was reddened with the
fires
of Barcelona.
left
The
four hundred de-
voted troops
to hold
the
Franciscan
monastery had been butchered to a man, and the Spaniards were giving the city to
the
sack.
One thousand
of the
towns-
people had been massacred,

altar
some on the
steps.
Women
and children were

streets.
being hunted through the
Dogs
of the
roamed the by-ways eating

neglected bodies.
their
fill
Nor was Barcelona

town that
had
given
alone.
Town
after
the
Revolutionist
harbour had fallen to the Royalists and

29
The Path of the

had
suffered
Conquistadores
fate.
Boves, the butcher, condemned as a "ladron del mar/' a renegade Revolutionist leading a band
like
of desperadoes which the Spaniards them" selves nicknamed " The Corps of Hell " " for the Rosete, with his branding-iron foreheads of Republicans Morales, whom " even Boves had called " Atrocious these
;
were
fell
all in
the
left
the pay of Spain. town of Acumare.
Before them
Its
streets
were
a shambles of the dead and the
Old men, women, and children lay dying. with the rest. Valencia surrendered upon
the oath of Boves, sworn in the presence of the Holy Sacrament, to respect the
lives
of everybody, yet as
soon as arms
the
had
been
surrendered,
Governor,
ninety of the leading citizens, sixty-four officers, and three hundred and ten troops Caracas surrendered were slaughtered.
Boves on similar terms, which were Boves issued an order similarly observed.
to
that
any who had conspired against Spain

30
The
should
be
Conquistadores
and
the
shot
slaughter
re-
commenced.
Aragua
thousand
was stormed
and
some
three
townspeople were
massacred.
Now
were
Barcelona, the last of Venezuela's

cities,
northern
left
had
fallen,
and
all
that
to
follow
Bolivar were fifteen
officers
and a few peons as their servants. Help from abroad there was almost none. President Madison had issued an order
forbidding any aid from United States citizens to the struggling Revolutionists. Great Britain stood apathetically by her
ally,
The feeble little Negro Spain. Republic of Haiti alone had lent support in men and money, asking in return only
Bolivar's promise,
which he loyally kept,
to give
freedom to the slaves of Venezuela.

piti-
In the Colonies themselves even,

fully
few were his sympathizers. The white population in Venezuela, but two hundred
thousand in number, was practically the only element in the country interested in
The Path of the
Conquistadores
any way in the outcome of the struggle. These native-born Creoles, tyrannized over
by the arbitrary power of the Viceroys and Spanish officials, excluded from office and emolument, while their trade and manufacturing were
laws,
garrotted
by
prohibitive
general dissatisfied with Spanish misrule, but were averse to the
were
in
fearful
sacrifice
which resistance
found
a
entailed.
The King had

permission
to
refused to the Venezuelans
University
in
Maracaibo, because, in the opinion of his "it was unsuitable to promote Fiscal,
learning in Southern America, where the inhabitants appeared destined by nature to
work in the mines." The making of wine and oil, the growth of almonds or grapes,
the the
manufacture
outside
port,
of
cloth,
trade
with
world
other
or
even
with
Spanish
the
than
Seville,
any were
prohibited.
Oppressed
whites
native
by these abuses, refrained from still

to Bolivar.
rallying in
32
any great number
The
The
race
Conquistadores
two hundred and seven
Indians,
in
thousand
number, stigmatized as "a of monkeys, filled with vice and
ignorance, automatons unworthy of repre" the senting or of being represented

;
negro slaves, sixty thousand in number, and the mixed bloods, forty-three thousand
souls in
all,
though
their grievances
were
far greater
than those of the native whites,
for the
most part simply followed as they
were led or paid.

a small portion of the Creole population as its support, the Revolution was imperilled he ^rly by the insatiable
vanities
With but
and jealou ies of the rival The Libertador had heard ring in
the cry of the
leaders.
his ears
mob
at Guiria,
"
Down
with
Bolivar
Would
effort
up with Marino and Bermudez!" Was this liberty never come?

Bolivar at the front
his
river of blood all that the years of devoted
were to bring ?
of his twenty
men hung
head
in the
agony of defeat and

D
failure.
33

' '
Halt,
riders
halt!"
;
whispered one
"
of
the
suddenly
the
what
is
that
glitter
beyond
trees?"
to the right of the party.
A horse neighed
"An
first
ambuscade!"
cried
hoarsely the
of the red-coated officers.

figure of Bolivar stiffened,
The drooping
the
dark eyes flashed, he turned in his saddle. Then in a voice of thunder he cried
:
"
Columns extend
flanks."
right
and
left
Attack
on both
It
was an order
to an imaginary
force
behind.
The
officers of his escort repeated
the order and rode forward, discharging

their
pistols.
The
ambuscade
melted
away.
a Spaniards, inferring superior force, had taken flight. The insurgent party continued south-
The
ward.
marched, here and there wild llaneros and peons were drafted in by
it
As
payment, promise, or impressment. With a force swelled to some hundreds, Bolivar

reached
34
the
Orinoco.
In
the
city
of
*<*
'
-.
:*::
',
'
.*: *
01 py
o
^.^
^
w
c<
P
fe
t)
33
a H
ffi
fe
o
1 M
S5
s g
The Conquistadores
Angostura,
to
be
later
renamed
in
his
honour Ciudad Bolivar, he surprised and

blockaded the feeble Spanish garrison. Piar, the mulatto chief of a band of
Republican cut-throats who had combined patriotism with profit by seizing the
persons
Friars
Bolivar.
and property of the

along
the
Capuchin
joined
Caroni,
now
The latter sent him to attack San Felix. The bloodthirsty but efficient
defeated the Spanish garrison and took prisoner the Governor, seventyhalf-breed
five
officers,
and two hundred men,
all
of
he remorselessly slaughtered. Fearing now lest the monks whom Piar
whom
had captured would embarrass his movements, Bolivar sent a message to one of
the mulatto's officers in charge, saying " the to Transport prisoners
:
La
Divina Pastora."
The
thus
officer,
not knowing
of the
town
named, and supposing that he was to send the monks to "the Divine
35
The Path
Shepherdess"
sacred
in
heaven,
forthwith
mas-
them all. Neither of these atroOf such deeds was cities was punished. Murder marched alike with the war. Royalist and Revolutionist. On July i yth the weak Spanish forces abandoned Angostura and Los Castillos.
The Orinoco was

Revolutionists.
in the possession of the
Bolivar's joy
was
intense.
The
capture
of
Angostura marked
the
turning-point in this struggle, as the capture of Trenton had signalled the turn of the tide for Washington.
few days after the capture of Angos-
tura, Bolivar's staff
met
in the thick-walled
house which lodged the Libertador. The members of his provisional Cabinet were
there
son,
Zea, Martinez, Brion, Colonel Wil-
commander
of the
"
Red Hussars,"
the English Dr. Moore. map lay on the table before them,
blue
pins
locating the
Royalist
troops.
These
36
occupied
Cartagena,
Valencia,
The
Caracas,
Conquistadores
the cities
all
Barcelona,
along
the north coast.
few red pins showed

:
the scattered centres of the Revolutionists
Santander in
New
the
Granada
Marino and
opposite
Bermudez
Trinidad
garita.
11
;
on
north-east,
Arismendi on the Island of Marto be the next
What was
propose that
move ?
stay here and meet the troops sent against us/' suggested Zea.
1
we
Colonel Wilson objected. "

will beat
The Spaniards Marino and Bermudez one after

overwhelm
us."
is
the other and then

" "
The Colonel
right," insisted Bolivar.
We must
"
strike while they are separated."
Join Bermudez and Marino in the north" march westeast," counselled Martinez
;
ward along the coast and attack Morillo. He had only seven hundred Spaniards on
the island
when he
attacked Arismendi."
"
Bolivar shook his head.

alone than with them.
Better fight
will sacrifice
They
me, the Republic, and

their vanity
anything
else
to
and love of power.
You know
37
Conquistadores how Bermudez drew his sword on me at

Guiria and the plots to
kill
The Path of the
me."
There was silence

fate of
for
moment
the
Spanish South America hung on the decision. A rattle of hoofs sounded outside.
"
rough voice demanded admission. would see General Bolivar I come

;
from
figure. "
Uncle Paez,"
called
the
mounted
Bring him here," said Bolivar.

half-breed llanero, barefooted, clad in
A
dirty
cotton shirt and trousers, his
head
through a great blue shambled in before the Council.

thrust
"
poncho,
the
Which
is
Bolivar?"
he
asked;
was pointed out, and the llanero approached and put his hand familiarly
leader
on the
officer's
shoulder
the undisciplined
plainsman's greeting. " Uncle Paez sends

that
me
to
you
to tell
unconquered Bravos de Apure, with a thousand llaneros, will ride with

the
you against the Spaniard."

38
The
each other.
Conquistadores
of the Council
The members
looked at
Paez with his vaqueros, roving over the boundless plains of the interior,
from which
for
four years
he had been
harrying the Spanish outposts, was hardly known to most of these Caracefios and
Margaritans, though Bolivar had heard of
his exploits in
New
the
Granada.
"
Bolivar seized
map.
Where
is
Paez?" he
"
cried.
By
the
Apure, near San Fernando,"
said the peon.
In a flash the Libertador's mind was
made
41
up.
He
turned to the llanero

I
Ride to General Paez and say

rose to his feet
march
to the
to join him."
He
map.
and pointed
We
the
"See, senores, here lies our route. hold in Angostura the gateway to
Orinoco.
there
As
is
far
as
Santa
to
F6 de
us
Bogota
no
force
oppose
We
along the line of the Orinoco and Apure. are in the rear of the enemy, whose
39
The Path
strength
is
Here we
raise
in the coast towns.
have
cattle
and horses.
Here we can
who care not for whom they fight and who are for us now that Boves is gone. If beaten, we
recruits
from the
llaneros,
can retreat like Tartars to the immeasurable

plains.
We
will
march
join
Paez"
he hesitated.
to "
Apure and
Morillo will
come down thus from We will meet him"
the North in haste.

his
finger
halted,
then pointed to the plain near Calabozo,
"we
will
meet him
here.
Now
is
our forces and organize.

grapple."
This
gather the death-
Recruits flocked to Bolivar's standard.
To
pay them he confiscated the property of all Spaniards. The blood-stained Piar, found
plotting against
Bolivar,
as
Lee against
Washington, was more summarily treated. He was shot and his force was attached to
Bolivar's
own.
With
two
thousand
infantry and one thousand cavalry the leader started from Angostura on the 3ist
40
The
Conquistadores
December, 1817, up the Orinoco. Bolivar was joined on the way by his fugitive lieutenant, Zaraza, and a remnant of men.
On
January 3ist, he united with General Paez and added one thousand cavalry and
two
army.
hundred
and
fifty
infantry to
his
Together they marched against Morillo. At El Dimante the Apure River barred
their
way.
If
it
sudden
attack
were not passed their be on Morillo would
checked, and the Spaniard could rally his forces. Moored to the opposite bank was
Spanish gunboat, three flat-bottomed Bolivar several canoes. flecheras, and
paced up and down nervously. "You have brought me here, General " Paez how will you get me across ? he
;
asked querulously.
"
On
those flecheras over there,"
said
Paez nonchalantly.
Bolivar looked after
him
in
amazement.
Paez had already gone to his llaneros.
The Path of the

"We
must
children," he cried
"
;
Conquistadores
those
will
"
have
flecheras,
who
come with
Uncle Paez and capture them ? " Choose whom you want, Uncle," was
the answering shout. Fifty llaneros he picked out.
back, lance
in
On
horsethe
hand,
stream and
swam
they entered into the current.
Two
men were
below
as
seized
by caimans and dragged

force
Bolivar's
breathlessly
watched them.
the
flecheras
The
and
forty-eight
reached
the
the
gunboat,
Spaniards too surprised to resist seriously. In a tumult of triumph the boats were
sailed across the river.
On
February
i2th,
Bolivar
Morillo
appeared before the surprised The small near Calabozo.

an<
Spanish force was attacked, beaten, massacred without quarter.
Then
the the
the fortunes of war turned against He was driven back to Libertador.
Orinoco.
to
But
in
reinforcements
had
begun
42
come
now
that he held firmly
The
Conquistadores
the great river artery. Several hundred An Irish blacks from Haiti joined him.
Legion
came,
commanded
by
"
General
"
Devereux, and a British officer, English by name, one of Wellington's trusted sub-
equipment and shipment of twelve hundred good troops. Most of these were soldiers of fortune,
ordinates, arranged for the
veterans
left
without congenial occupation
at the close of the
Napoleonic wars.
the
Notable
Francis
among
Drexel,
volunteers
was
an
with
M.
of Philadelphia,
Austrian portrait painter,

Bolivar's backing,
who
later,
was
to
found the great
banking house of which John Pierpont
Morgan is now the head. By the end of 1818 Bolivar had won out
sufficiently to issue a call for the
Congress
of
to
meet on January i, 1819, frame a Republican form of government
Angostura
to
and replace the military dictatorship. The magnificent dream of the Libertador
now
took shape.
It
was
to erect
upon the
43
The Path of the
Conquistadores
ruins of Spanish power a great centralized Republic, extending from the Atlantic to the
Pacific,
from the Caribbean Sea to

of
the
the
valley
Amazon, covering all of Northern South America. Against the
party that desired to carve up this vast territory into a number of small sovereign States loosely confederated, Bolivar threw
the
whole weight of his vast

:
influence.
"
I have pleaded before the Congress been obliged to beg you to adopt centraliza-
He
tion
and the union of
all
the States in a
Republic one and indivisible."
The Congress wavered and then

with Bolivar.
Republic,
sided
There was decreed a unified
including what are now the Republics of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. Of this Empire, named Greater
Colombia,
President.
Bolivar
was
the
chosen the
first
The
was yet
44
ideal
of
Libertador
this
first
had
triumphed.
But the bulk of
domain
assault
to be conquered.
The
The
north-west, in
Conquistadores
in the
was planned against the Spaniards
New
Granada.
resistance
Here the flames of

whose
had been
Bolivar's
kept alight by General
Santander, with
the
ragged band it was immediate purpose to unite. middle of

June,
1819,
this
By
preliminary
move had been successfully taken. But the Andes had yet to be crossed, and at the worst time of the year. The passage
of the
Cordilleras
with
a tattered and
steadily diminishing handful of famished
men was an
act of desperate courage.
It
meant four weeks of weary climbing over snow-capped peaks and through freezing
torrents.
The road
wretches was marked

of those
sierras.
traversed by the poor by crosses in memory
perished in the snow But beyond these awful mounthe

its
who had
tains
lay
smiling
plains
of
New
Granada, and
populace was friendly to

recognized rules of the
45
the Patriot cause.
Disregarding
all
The Path of the

game
to
Conquistadores
who was
across
in terrible
of war, Bolivar,
need of provisions and arms, determined

leave
the
enemy
his
line
of the
communications and make
direct for
important town of Tunja. It was taking a risk, but a necessary risk, and one that
was
For
completely justified
Barriero,
by
the
result.
the
Spanish general, con-
ceiving that he must fight for the defence of Tunja, gave Bolivar battle at Boyaea and was utterly routed. Barriero broke
sword across his knee and surrendered, with many officers and some sixteen
his
hundred men.
The
Patriot
army had
to
mourn
and
the
loss
of only
thirteen
killed
fifty-three
wounded.
Everywhere now Bolivar was victorious. He marched to Bogota, from which Samano, the Spanish Viceroy, fled.
Returning eastward, he fought the desperate battle of Carabobo, which finally freed Venezuela from the Spanish yoke.
The
46
dogged
heroism
of
the
British
The
Conquistadores
its
Legion, which lost a third of
men and
saved the
-
two commanders
day.
in succession,
Bolivar rode past their shattered " Sal ranks that night he hailed them
As
vadores de mi patria." All of its survivors were made on the field of battle members
of the
"
Order of Liberators."
On
into
Peru went Bolivar, proclaimed
On the field Dictator by the inhabitants. of Ayacucho, while the Dictator was absent,
his second
in
command, General
last great battle in
Sucre,
fought and won a

the Spanish
which
army was completely routed and dispersed. The ground for miles was
strewn
with the
silver
helmets
of
the
Spanish hussars.
Ayacucho, the
death-blow to
Spanish
power
in
South America, was the culminat-
Dictator of ing point of Bolivar's career. Peru, President of Greater Colombia,
Organizer of the new State of Bolivia, his authority extended over a territory
two-thirds as large as Europe.
He
47
had
The Path
indignantly
rejected
all
suggestions
for
monarchy and a personal dynasty. As the Libertador he had fought to free, not to enslave. For one brief moment as splendid a vision as man has ever cherished was real
the great South American Republic. Almost in an hour the whole structure
Against him rose the generals had shared his glory, Santander in
fell.
who
New
Granada, Paez in Venezuela.

satisfied,
Sucre, dis-
abandoned
the
Bolivia.
Peru dedictatorship.
manded
Bolivar's
end
of
the
ungrateful
fellow-countrymen
cried out against his inordinate ambition.
home was made to

In his
city
of Caracas an
attempt
assassinate him.
all
Attacked on
sides
by those
whom
he had befriended and raised to power, Bolivar resigned from the Presidency and
Even here Cartagena. enmity of jealous hate hounded him.

retired
to
the
He
prepared to leave South America for a But refuge in the West India Islands.
48
The
Conquistadores
sail
before he could
the
end had come.
Exhausted by the terrible exertions of his life of warfare, broken in spirit, bankrupt in hope, he died in December, 1830, at the So little had he age of forty-seven.
personally profited by his supreme position that he had to be buried at the expense
of his friends.
Thus ended
tadores
who
the long line of Conquisbattled for Trinidad and
Guiana.
bitterness
glory.
irons,
For each was the draught of after all his heroism and all his
carried back to Spain in
Columbus
Berrio dead of disappointment, Raleigh executed by his treacherous King, Picton brought to trial for peculation,
De
Nelson
last
falling for a nation that refused his
dying despised and penniless in the country he had freed, tragedy, grim and relentless, had marched
prayer,
Bolivar
side
by side with the Conquistadores.
49
II
TRINIDAD
HPHE
green slopes of Tobago, where the shipwreck of the real Alexander

"
Selkirk inspired the of Defoe, have been
Robinson Crusoe"
left
behind in the
dark mists of the Caribbean.
Ahead
lies
a shadowy range of mountain peaks, growing every moment more clear as the dawn
lights
up
rush
hills
their densely
outlines the trees that
wooded sides and crown their crests.

heralds
the
sun.
A
The
of
to
crimson
the east slowly separate as the steamer forges on, and a narrow strait,
the Dragon's Mouth, opens out.
distance,
to
In the
starboard,
stretch
Venezuela
and the South American mainland.

50
The
Trinidad
island
of
Trinidad,
now
close
at
hand,
lies to port.
dazzling brilliance of the tropic sunrise sows the dark sea with glittering flame points. go always nearer to
The
We
the
land.
the
"
Boco
Suddenly a narrow passage, de Monos, appears, bending

to
"
sharply
the
left.
Into
it
the
this
Marrowijne
turns.
Through
channel the tidal current sweeps with a force that has piled many a ship upon
the
The impending cliffs. Dutch captain and the first

The crew stand
red-bearded
officer
keep
their
anxious watch, one on each side of the

bridge.
stations.
alert
at
Gaunt black crags pierced by wavehewn caverns, festooned with vines which
droop
to
the water's
edge,
threaten
on
either hand.
Madame
Tetteron's Tooth, a
jagged rock, rises close to the channel. Multitudes of birds swarm out from the
little
island
to
the
right
and
surround
The Path of the

the
Conquistadores
ship with raucous cries. pelican, resting on the water, takes alarm, awk-
wardly
rises
a stone' s-throw distant, and
flaps heavily
away.
few moments
the strait protected

into
and we are through and into the placid calm of the

bay.
;
The ocean
the
swells
sink
ripples
tension
stations
of
the
crew
into
standing at their
slackens
the relief of a voyage virtually finished. Captain Drijver leaves the bridge. are at anchor before Port of
"We
Spain
in
an
hour,"
he
calls
to
Miss
Graham, a Trinidadian returning from a An irrepressible young visit to Canada.

American,
stay
in
who
is
slated for a six months'
a coast
town
of
Venezuela as
manager of a magnesite quarry, comes up, camera in hand. "The Royal Dutch Line is all right, Captain," he exclaims, "but I am not
going past Hatteras by sea again. going back by land."
52
I'm
Trinidad
The seriously-minded English
Colonial,
"
" at home returning from two months to his general merchandise establishment,
the
"
Caledonian
solemnly
to
Stores"
undertakes
of
to
Port
of
Spain,
instruct
him
" at
as
the impracticability of going
overland from Venezuela to
New
York.
You
all,"
won't want to leave the tropics volunteers Grath, late serjeant of

Constabulary, bound
the Philippine
for the
now
Barber Asphalt Company works at " I Pitch Lake. spent just one winter
in the North,
and then
applied
every-
where
for a position that

it
would take
with
is
me
ex-
back to where
was warm."
agrees
it
Miss
serjeant,
Graham
the
but says that

"
good
to get
North sometimes,
a
bit."
to thicken one's blood
from
the
The six tank-builders imported Oklahoma look apathetically at

they are to spend the
shore where
next year constructing steel storage-reservoirs for an Oil Fields Corporation.

53

Glittering green areas of coco-nut palms
nestling at the foot of the hill-sides stand out among the variegated tones of the trees
on
the
the
slopes
of
;
the
vessel
skirts
peninsula which red-andbright
white roof peeps out from the midst of a banana plantation flocks of gulls,
;
and pelicans pass a dory driven forward by a swarthy crew creeps along
fishers,
;
the coast
myriads of milky
jellyfish float
whose glassy surface is broken from time to time by the rush of

in the still water,
a shoal of
little
fish
pursued by sharks,
whose triangular
fins sail
is
menacingly
laid
past.
The
the
golf
course
still
out on
six
deck,
where,
during
Captain
the
from
held
New
the
York,
days Drijver has
against all comers, victorious because of his matchless science in

field
" sending the discs into the Marrowijne's
"
But now it is deserted. scuppers. the last meal before landing the
For
gong
makes
54
its
announcement, and we descend.
Trinidad
The
ship's
irrepressible
American opens rather

final
early in
the day his champagne, as
bottle
of the
a finishing luxury
before his six months* exile.
Grath
tells
a last story about a rheumatic cripple in the Philippines, cured by the appearance of a
Moro with
a three-foot creese,
en-
deavouring to obtain a pass into Paradise by the slaughter of so convenient an

infidel.
Brown, boss of the tank-building
gang, mourns silently the three men who deserted on the last jovial night in New York after he had paid their passage from
Oklahoma.
The
his
bearded
Dutch
mate,
sitting stiffly at table in his white tropical
uniform,
pays
parting
addresses
to
Miss Graham.
It is
a hurried meal, for

hills
we
are skirt-
ing
port.
the
of
Trinidad
and nearing
Tiny islands appear, with houses perched on them as on the Thousand

Isles
of the
all
St.
sail
Lawrence.
set,
sloop
is
overtaken,
moving with the

55
The Path of the

breath
of
Conquistadores
is
wind
that
stirring.
The
masts and stacks of larger ships are seen in the distance, and a steeple rises on the
shore.
The roadstead comes
into
view,
finally, with white houses amid green verdure and grey docks and the crowded
and
sailing-ships
in
front,
there
is
unveiled
the city of Port of Spain. The Captain looks intently through his binoculars and turns around to us.
"The bubonic plague

he says.
"
is
in
Trinidad,"
Holy smoke
"
!
ejaculates
one of the
tank crew.
Brown and
silence. "
the drillers look disconso-
lately at the shore.
There
is
a moment's
Oh,
there's
nothing alarming in the
plague," drawls Miss

ally.
Graham
phlegmatic-
"We
only however."
"
are always having cases here one or two among the natives,
" but Yes," says the English resident,
56
Trinidad
it
means quarantine. Jamaica wants to hurt our trade and puts up quarantine,
and then the States quarantine Panama and you have to play hide and seek
from port to port until you can find one where they will let you in and from which you can start for your destination.
I
knew some Venezuelans who had

a
ship to Grenada,
to
take
to
from Grenada
from Jamaica back to Venezuela to go the hundred miles from Puerto Cabello to Caracas."
Jamaica,
and
"The worst
that
can
happen
is
that
they do not allow you to return to the

States," says Captain Drijver consolingly.
A
"
swarm
of
row-boats
nears
the
Marrowijne." Two heavy lighters bear down on her quarter, great brown lateen
sails
spread negroes in dilapidated shirts and abbreviated trousers help the sails
:
with long sweeps. A launch comes puffing out with sundry

officials
clad
in
white,
escorted
by two
57

well-set-up negroes in dark blue uniforms and black straw hats bearing on the bands
Trinidad Constabulary." The mail-bags are taken up and piled on deck, together
with the passengers' trunks and bundles.
sit long delay now occurs. idly about with belongings heaped around us and wait and look at the docks and
"
We
the shipping and the water.
At
last the
word
is
given.
baggage go down the launch, and we steam ashore.
Passengers, bags, and the steps alongside into
The landing
A
as
crowded with people. horde of avid porters jump on board

is
we touch and
find.
seize
all
the
they can
Three
girls
luggage are on the
dock to greet Miss Graham, a little dark Venezuelan to meet the American, an
agent of the Oil Fields
Company
all
to guide
Brown and
for
the tank-builders to the train
New
Brighton.
We
and
jostle
into
the
custom-house
assemble
our
baggage on the long

58
tables.
Trinidad
Sleepily
half-breed
If
around
in the bags.
pokes one admits having

until a licence
official
fire-arms they
is
go into bond
is
secured.
All
over in five minutes,
and you are

is
free of Trinidad.
The gateway from

blocked
the
custom-house
by
disorderly
mass
of
hackmen, negro vociferating strangely clad in raiments ranging from

riotously
antique liveries to brown overalls, with battered top-hats or straw sombreros on their heads. perched indifferently
From them you

uniformed
are rescued
by a neatly-
half-breed
chauffeur.
Your
luggage is crowded onto his machine, which gradually works clear of the dock
and into Marine Square, simmering beneath the morning sun. hundred-foot strip of lawn with trees
planted haphazard along it runs between the roadways on either side. pass the colonnaded stores of the Trinidad
We
merchants, the shipping companies'
offices,
59

the
the
quaintly
called
Ice
chairs Union Club with its on the terrace, and farther up the Roman
House row of
Hotel,
Catholic Cathedral.
Into
turns.
Frederick Street
the
automobile
The whole
narrow
roadway
of
is
glutted with
a motley trim
swarm
in
manyragged
toned humanity.
of
garb,
Negroes
every sort
to
from
khaki
overalls, clean-looking English businessmen in white linen and pith helmets,
dark Venezuelans with wide
sombreros,
sallow octoroons, and here and there an
East Indian coolie

baned, barelegged.
entrances.
at a Paris
in flowing white, tur-
Clerks crowd the shop Goods heap the side-walks as
bazaar.
few blocks farther
the crowd has thinned, and the shops are smaller and less pretentious. The chauffeur
lets
out an unearthly shriek from the horn

aside,
two natives jump

Trinidad
there
is
is
and away we
go.
new
to
automobiles,
and
no speed
limit.
naively un-
60
Trinidad
feeling
editorial
"
in
the
"
Gazette
of
once bemoaned
of Spain the coolies' habit of

the road
Port
walking in the
it
middle
because
so unpleasant for automobiling tourists to be obliged to run over The streak across Port of Spain people.
is
which the automobile now makes

the nightmare of a speed maniac.
is
like
Stone houses with jealous white walls, over which peer great masses of red
and purple
shops,
flowers,
airy
wooden cottages
boys
embedded coquettishly
native carts,
bicycles,
in verdure, corner
messenger
coolie
in
on
groups of negro
graceful
if
women walking
girls
all
three
abreast,
dart by as
jerked
cricket
from
front
is
of
your eyes.
before
hit
passed can see whether the ball is you The level savanna at or missed.
hills,
match
the base of the
with
is
its
race-course
and
football
fields,
skirted,
and the
motor shoots through the palm-bordered entrance to the Queen's Park Hotel.
61
The
the

is
Here
of
rest.
It
is
the antithesis
to
bustle of the port and the delirium the drive. An old darky in faded
"
livery,
Methuselah,"
you.
totters
out
and
in Coolly-clad figures rocking-chairs on the porch meditatively absorb their drinks without even doing
at
that.
looks
you
After a time, a clerk appears and while later a sign the register.
black boy comes and lifts your luggage from the motor. After a little longer interval the manager has reached the
you for a long, slow, rambling walk which leads at length to

point
of
taking
the
It
room
is
that
is
reserved.
a huge chamber half as large as a tennis-court. wicker couch, two big cane arm-chairs, two tables, a gigantic
bed and a chest of drawers constitute the

furniture.
The
doors, the window-shades,
and the walls

ceiling
for
two
feet
down from
the
are
lattice-work,
winds that blow.

62
open to all the door in front opens
Trinidad
into
the the
garden
courtyard
facing
the
Savanna.
white
In
behind,
tame
the palms and a parrot and toucan screech to each other

egrets step daintily
among
from adjoining cages.
On
one side
is
row of sheds containing huge bath-tubs.
The
board.
hotel regime
Coffee
at
is
printed on a noticeat seven, breakfast at

is
eleven, tea
four,
and dinner
at seven.
In
effect,
you
are
off
basis,
staving
put on a two-meal mid-afternoon pangs
with tea and

at twelve,
toast.
As
breakfast
is
is
over
which hour
it
already rapidly
to
to
nearing,
seems
the
desirable
indulge
justify
now,
calling
meal lunch,
eating at this time.
So you go out on
the
veranda, which serves as a dining-room. Black waiters dressed in white serve

you,
with
quarter-hour
waits
between
courses,
and there are brought the multitudinous dishes of a meal, which begins
with hominy and progresses through the
stock
British
stand-bys
of
bacon
63
and
The
eggs

and
liver
and bacon.
:
Indigenous
additions
strangely
follow
fried
plantains
and
named
fish
whose consumption,
according to the legend, will bring you back to Trinidad without fail. When
fruits
are
reached
you
with
explore
their
new
kingdom,
seed
;
mangoes
bananas
little
three
stringy inches long,
with
a flavour
;
never found in varieties

;
sourshipped North juicy star-apples saps with prickly green exterior and
creamy paste inside sapadillas, in appearance brown and like a spherical potato, but
;
It inside granular with sugary sweetness. is a wonderful collection. are they
Why
not exported sabe ?

It
is
in
cold
storage?
$Quidn
One
feels
long function, this breakfast. as if he had accomplished an
important act when he joins the rest on
None the rocking-chairs of the portico. but the heaviest of black Havana cigars seem appropriate, or at least none are
64
Trinidad
procurable.
You
with
at
idly
watch a company
of
energetic
of
negroes
couple
Englishmen
Savanna.
cricket
practice
on
the
feed,
Farther off
some
cattle
strange humped beasts, zebu imported from India with the indentured coolies. Horses
are
being exercised for the
forthcoming
races
on the track beyond the zebu.
Magnificent trees are scattered here and there, gigantic spreading samans, ban-
yans
ball
with
trees
their
myriad
roots,
cannon-
bearing spherical black pods. In front of the houses that face the park
like
stand,
sentinels,
rows of towering
palms. Splashes of vivid colour show here and there amidst the green the poinsettia's flaming scarlet, the beroyal
:
gonia's
flowers.
purple, the white of the matapile
the heat grows, the cricketers cease their laborious play. The portico chairs
are largely deserted.
It is hot, let
As
no one
doubt
F
this.
It is
time for the siesta and

65
The
the bath which prepares you for a fresh start in the late afternoon.
At
clean,
stir
four o'clock, the world the
refreshed, rested,
and
is
reappears.
There
Englishmen on horseback ride up. Ladies in white come out and make tea for linen-clad
visitors.
around
veranda.
Carriages,
at
first
few but
soon a stream, pass by. A brougham with an ancient negro on the box stops before the hotel door,
Methuselah potters over to give you a note. It is an invitation to drive from

Mrs. Farrell, wife of the manager of one of the oil companies. You climb into the
carriage
dence.
in
your hostess's resiBig rambling houses embowered

line the short
and
set out for
gardens
way.
A row
of
towering palms marks the Farrell land. In their yard a tame deer looks questioningly at you. The whole front of house is a big broad veranda, with
the
tall
white pillars supporting the

66
roof.
Trinidad
"
We
"
all
drive in the cool of the after-
noon," says Mrs. Farrell,
who
is
awaiting
It is the most important function you. in the day." enter the carriage, drive out of the
We
grounds and
swing into the procession

not get observes
that flows past the gateway. " Most of the ladies here do
dressed
until afternoon," she " Mother Hubbards presently.

slippers,
and carpet
point you
you know.
Now
I will
out the lions."
dark middle-aged
girl
man
with
a very
pretty
beside
ceremoniously.
his
him passes and bows "That is Mr. Siegert and

his
daughter
place
is
beside
the
" He Queen's Park," says Mrs. Farrell. was a Venezuelan, but the revolutions
drove him out.
He came
here with
his
family and makes the Angostura bitters which the monks used to brew."
brougham with a fine pair of bays " The Sandersons," says your goes by.
67
The Path
hostess.
"
of the Conquistadores He is an American. His

monopoly of Venezuela
father got the flour
and the family has still an interest in it. He married a Venezuelan and lives here
most of the time.
They have
that
big
white house by the College." solitary bearded man driving a dog-
cart passes.
"
That
is
Graham, the
richest
is
man
in
Trinidad.
too.
They say he
the
shrewdest
has a grant of Crown land planted with coco-nuts and cocoa. He has plantations all over the island."
He
On
in "
the piazza of a big house with palms front she points out Benoit Tomasi.
is
He
a Corsican,
who came
to
Venezuela
without a penny. He traded and built up a big business along the Orinoco.
His nephew runs
it
now and he
lives here.
is
He owns
the Callao Mine, but there
lawsuit on and he can get nothing from it. " You have a letter for Mr. Robertson,
have you
not
That
is
his
automobile
just turning in." 68
Trinidad
You mention
"
that
you have received an
invitation to dine with
him
to-night.
He is as very interesting. Scotch as if he had only been out of

is
He
the old country a fortnight, but his family has been here for two generations. His
father
ago
in
came from Scotland fifty years and started a mercantile house
Demerara.
The
of
son
the
conducts
firm
;
the
Trinidad
branch
but
he
keeps up his family connexion Scotland and goes back every His wife is there now."
with
year.
bearded
man
of
distinguished ap-
from the promenade. pearance " Baron Spejo, a Spaniard," says Mrs.
salutes us
Farrell
;
"and yonder," nodding forward

on horseback,
to a typically British figure

"
is
Major Bridges, of the Constabulary. He has seen service in Egypt and South Africa was sent here after the Boer War.
There
Gracia.
beyond
are
Sefior
nice
and
Sefiora
They
are
people,
but
69
it
The
is

negro
so.
whispered that they are touched It may not be blood, you know.
is
It
fashionable
for gossip here to blacken
skins as well as reputations." leave the Savanna drive
We
and
its
promenaders and turn to the left into the Maraval road, past a straggling negro
settlement and into a
the
hills.
wooded
in
valley under
The road runs between huge

bamboos,
like a
clumps
birds
flit
of
shading the way

of the
many places tunnel. Humming"
here and there, the sacred

extinct
lere
"
now
Carib
Indians
who
air,
welcomed the old Conquistadores.
A
of
of
delightful
coolness
fills
the
scented
with the
odour of a multitude
contrast
to
flowers.
The
is
the
blaze
midday
luxuriously appreciated.
We
the
turn as
dusk comes on.

take
sedate
horses
us
Slowly back to
town.
spell
peace of nature casts its over the dying day. As darkness

quickly,
The
gathers
70
bats
begin to dart and
Trinidad
circle
the
"
is
The chirp of insects, alongside. cry of night-birds, the mournful

sloth,
O-poor-me-one," which the negroes say

the call of the
sound from the
thickets.
cottages town ahead.
Light after light springs out from along the road and from the
It is
dark when the horses
hoofs rattle on the gravel of the Farrell
driveway. It takes some speedy dressing to make Mr. Robertson's dinner on schedule time.
Even here in bosomed rampart

the
coat
dress-suit,
is
the
tropics
that
stiff-
of British respectability,
requisite.
is
is
dinner
permissible, but that
the ultimate
concession.
Mr.
Robertson
sends
his
machine to take you to his house, which is one of those facing the Savanna.
As you
another
enter the host
is
talking with
guest,
Mr.
George
the
to
Stevenson,
Mining Engineer, Member of the British

Institute,
fields,
fresh
from
here
Galician
oil-
called
examine
some

Trinidad
oil
prospect.
Soon
after
appear
cocoa-planter Frothingharn, a with large estates in the middle of the
George
nephew of the host, fresh from the old country and being broken in at Robertson's stores, and Major Albert
island, a
Bridges, of the Constabulary. are introduced to the
We
renowned
"green swizzle''
cent tinge
fills
a liquid whose transluthe bottom of the glass, the
green shading gradually into the dark red of bitters near the surface. Gin, lime, and
soda have entered into

star-shaped twirled within it.
action
the
making, and has been swizzle-stick

its
Its taste is
unique
its
suamter in modo, fortiter in re. Green swizzles have a marked effect
on people's conversational ability. Stevenson recounts stories of his start in the

Indian
Willcox,
Civil Service
under Sir William

engineer,
the
famous
the
whose
across
genius
72
threw
Assuan
Dam
the full current of the Nile and redeemed
Trinidad
a kingdom
cultivation.
of waste
"
land for
Egyptian
The most
religious
man
ever knew," adds
not even
the engineer; swear when the berm
"he did
of one
of our irrigation canals gave way." " He never had to unravel a lawsuit
between two time-expired East Indians,"

says Major Bridges.
"
He
never tried to
make
cocoa-plant-
ing
pay wdth
negro
"
labour,"
grumbles
are
for
Frothingham. worth a penny.

coolies there
in
Those
If
it
negroes weren't
not
the
would not be a white planter Trinidad. It is bad enough as it is."

are
"
"Cocoa-men
says
to
always
grumbling,"
the
host.
How
by
would
you
like
have had sugar and to have seen your
values
wiped
out
foreign
beet-root
subsidies?
Why, you
cocoa people
all
and
"
1
the coco-nut growers are
capitalists
Frothingham does
say,
not
have much to
for
in
fact
he has not suffered in
the sale of cocoa.
"We
have done well

73
The Path of the

in cocoa
is
Conquistadores
but that
displacing
is
for
the
Paris market,
chocolate
only because
for
coffee
the
French
petit
ddjeuner"
he admits grudgingly. The nephew breaks in:
"You
uses
planters
for
should
your encourage Advertise and make anointing product. the body fashionable, as it used to be in
new
Rome.
oil."
That
will help sell
your coco-nut
Can't you arrange that they use crude petroleum as well ? Our industry needs " observes the engineer. encouraging too,
"
"We
as
fuel
need
for
all
the
"
oil
you can pump

declares
is
our
battleships,"
Major Bridges.
producing
district
Trinidad
the one oilflag.
under the British

shifting
These
fields
are
the
whole
Since these balance of political power. and others in Venezuela were discovered
the
German Government has been making
soundings all around Margarita Island, which they say the Kaiser is trying to get
74
Trinidad
as a naval station.
It is
generally believed
here that the British Admiralty is planning to beat them out by establishing a huge
naval base at Port of Spain. Fortifying the
Mouth and Cedros Point overlooking the Serpent's Mouth will enable us to command both entrances to the Gulf of Paria. Then we will control
islands at the Dragon's
the trade route from
and
to the east
Europe to Panama, coast of South America."
"They
is
say the Standard Oil
Company
trying to get control of the field already,"
comments Frothingham.
"Well,
the host.
eil
is
here
all
right,"
asserts
"The
one
shipped
barrel
Pitch Lake people have tank-steamer full and are
building sixteen
tanks.
big
thirty-five-thousand-
And
they
don't
usually
except what they give for revolutions in Venezuela."
spend any money foolishly
"We
the
aren't
like
Venezuela,"
says
Major virtuously. "There is one good
thing
about
75

Venezuela,"
twinkle
aren't
in
says
his
Mr. Robertson, with a

"
eye.
All
the
officials
sent
from
there
the
gets
old
country.
native over
chance
than
someschool
times for something higher commissioner."
The Major
"
takes his host's remark very
seriously.
But
here,
you
can't
have
self-
government
with your population.
You
them
have
two
hundred
in
and
are
eighty
thousand
are
people
Trinidad.
Half of
coolies,
negroes,
third
and the whites are of every nation and every tribe on this terrestrial ball."
"You
Toussaint
over a
remember
the
story
of
how
salt
1'Ouverture
sprinkled
dirt
handful of black
and said
'Voila les blancs,'

ful together,
'
then shook the hand'
Ou
opened his hand, and asked Trinidad would sont les blancs ?
Haiti
in
be
like
ten years
if
we gave
you
Home
76
Rule."
"Well," says Mr. Robertson, turning to
Trinidad
you and speaking in his broadest Scotch, " we'll forgie them in Lunnon if they'll
send no more like yon wastrel."
Everybody laughs at the Major, and then we pour him a drink of Scotch to
him up. The talk drifts to The engineer has

cheer
the lower castes
the indentured coolies.
studied
their
social
system while in India.

each
India.
priests
"All here are of
sudras," he says,
"and
goes
down one degree by leaving It will take many payments to the when they return to procure
return
at all,"
redemption." " Many of them don't
comments Robertson.
"
have a lawsuit
with a time-expired coolie freeholder about a road. They are the worst people for
going to law you ever saw." " I should think they were,"
adds
Frothingham,
are
"except when their wives
too attractive to their friends.
Then
77
they slice the
woman up
with a machete
The Path of the
Conquistadores
and send the man a piece of her as a But everything else they go to law gift.
about.
San
There was a case up before the Fernando Police Court last week.
labourer
free
named
Bo
Hall
Jawan,
estate,
belonging to our
Harmony
came
blue
to
the
with his
Government Savings Bank wife Jugdeah, making the air
with
Hindu
expletives.
The
woman had
her
to
own
draw
deposited some money in name and the husband wanted

*
you don't give me the money I will bring Mahabit Maharaj (the Governor) and the police,' he shouted.
it.
If
away, but the coolie made a tackle and got her by the
Jugdeah
leg.
tried
to
run
De
la
Rosa, the cashier,
is
hot-
tempered
for
chap
and
he
threw the
man
downstairs.
assault,
The
coolie
summoned him
wife proceeded to perjure herself by saying that she and her husband had tiptoed in, hand-in-
and the
hand,
78
and
had
asked
for
her
money
Trinidad
together in a dulcet
voice.
De
la
Rosa
fine.
got
off,
but
is
it
cost
him a pound
The judge
a negro, and he gives it to the whites a little extra when a case
comes up to him." We end dinner

beat
with
coffee
and
the
at in
cashew nuts, and go out to watch

engineer
billiards
the
cocoa-planter
on
huge
English
table
palm room. At midnight the party breaks up, and as the automobile whirls
the
back to the
fully
hotel,
among
the
wonderbe
seen
bright
constellations
can
the Southern Cross, upright
high above
is
the horizon.
A
the
fortnight's stay in
Port of Spain
are put
well worth the time.
Union Club
business
at
in
up at Marine Square, where

gather
for
You
the
men
to
breakfast,
and
the
Queen's
Park
be
"
Club,
which
declares
social."
itself
sporting
and
negro
explore the recesses of the You visit the nurseries quarter.

79
You
The Path
where
seeds
and
shoots
from
all
over
the world are experimented with, to test

their adaptability to Trinidad,
and where
indigenous
cocoa,
coffee
plants,
balata
gum,
bananas,
may
be useful
oranges, everything that to the Colony, is being
You can order grafted and developed. khaki or white linen suits made at an
English
tailor's for
price as five
some such ridiculous dollars, and buy American
watches and sewing-machines at about a quarter less than in the States.
open the doors to a quaint world of English officials sent out from
letters
Your
the old country to this London-governed
Crown
exiles,
Colony.
You
meet
Venezuelan
like
fled
some long-established, Siegerts, some only recently

the
Gulf,
the
from
across
with
their
property
of
;
confiscated
and bitterness
in their hearts.
You
tired
find
American
managers
the
re-
asphalt
petroleum companies Corsican traders grown rich
and
on
80
>**
QUEEN'S PARK
INDIGENOUS CRICKET
Trinidad
export; English and Scotch merchants and old French families dating from the time of the negro insurrection
the
balata
in
Haiti.
tints
and
veritable kaleidoscope shades are the assemblages
of
at
the
of
Government
negro
Palace,
where the wives

rub elbows
with
magistrates
Colonial planters and English officials. To see the rest of the island, a motor
trip
is
the
best
method.
Trinidad
is
is
only 50 miles square, and
splendid roads. The the oil companies, Mr. David Jefferson, an
crossed by manager of one of

his car at
American from Alabama, puts

our disposal. an early start
as
A
is
day
is
selected,
and as
of the
desirable,
in
so as to ride
much
as
possible
the cool
day, seven
for
morning is set the time of departure. The machine
o'clock in the
appears promptly with a smart-looking negro chauffeur at the wheel. Fixed on

the front of the radiator
is
a bedraggled
81
Teddy
G
Bear.
The
"A
u
queer conceit," you remark. That isn't a fancy," is the answer;

hit the native settlement."
later
"wait until we
few
moments
of low
we
are
in
the
region
mud
From
huts
and
streets
so
crowded that the horn

continuously.
must be blown
every side run up piccaninnies, some clad in a shirt, some a smile. in a wisp of rag, some in
accord
With one
they
shriek
for
joy,
dance up and down, point to each other,
and a good half of

same.
"
their parents
"
!
do the
"You
they cry. see!" says Mr. Jefferson; "they

!
Monkee
monkee
don't pay any attention to the automobile, they are so interested in the Teddy
Bear.
can run over a dozen assorted

dogs,
pigs,
chickens,
and
ducks,
of
and
when
come
back,
instead
heaving
rocks at
We
our
me, they shout at the bear." shoot on with the echo ringing in
"
ears,
Monkee
monkee
"
1
An
82
East
Indian
settlement
appears
Trinidad
now, and the coolie children do exactly
as
the
negro piccaninnies did, shouting

their
while
elders
stare
fixedly
at
the
Teddy.
pass a tall figure of a man with ample robes and a caste mark on his forehead who does not deign to notice
We
us
their
Hindu
faces
priest.
Coolie
women,
silken
half
covered
with
shawls and their arms laden with silver

bangles,
shillings
hammered out from

which
family,
represent
glide
the English the savings
of
the
What
figures,
a contrast are
in
by. gracefully their lithe slender
gracefully
draped
robes,
to
those
of
the
negro
ready-made
shapelessly
skirts
women, in and bodices,

together,
cheap
bundled
who, waddle
coolie
clumsily
girls
along!
really
Some
beautiful,
of
the
are
though
they
invariably spoil the effect by a nose-ring. drawn by a span of zebu cart
with
half
dozen
bare-legged
coolies
83
The Path of the

sitting
Conquistadores
Farther
on hard planks passes.
along, beside a small stream rest a yoke of water buffalo. Little nondescript dogs,
looking like degenerate fox-terriers, run out and snap at the whirring wheels.
Four coolies appear walking abreast and carrying a big magenta flag. They Their scatter to left and right as we pass.
usually snowy white shirts and streaked with purple, as
are
if
stained
a tub of
dye had
fallen
on them.
those
colours
"They throw
on
each
other at the feasts," explains Mr. Jefferson above the whir of the wheels.
The suburbs
for six miles.
of Port of Spain extend
Almost
all
the'
way along
houses,
the road there are
little
adobe
sometimes those of
those
races
negroes,
sometimes
these
live
of coolies,
for
though
they
two
side
disdain
each
other
by
side.
Each
84
has
comfortable
feeling
of
free
superiority, the negro because
he
is
Trinidad
to loaf while the coolie is indentured
five
for
years,
the
coolie
because
of
his
traditions of ancient
civilization
and the
every Indian down to the lowest clings, even here on the other side of the world.
pride of
caste,
to
which
sugar-cane plantation is reached, extending for miles in every direction.
on a narrow-gauge track high puffs near by, hidden amid the Farther on coolies with machetes cane.
locomotive
in
hand are cutting

into
stalks,
which others
to
load
cars, piling
them
height.
Miles
of cane-brake
great flank the
beautifully
The
smooth and well-kept roads. more hilly. ground becomes
Cocoa plantations begin, straight files of small cocoa-trees shaded by immortelles, with dark alleys between the rows. The
ripening
purple,
pods,
green,
yellow, red,
and
sprout in queer fashion directly from the trunk or from thick branches.
After a two-hour
run San
Fernando
35
The Path of the

is
Conquistadores
reached, with
its
statue of the crucified
Christ overlooking the market-place of the coolies. half-dozen miles beyond this
is
the
entrance
to
the
trail
Government's
into the forest
for
Forest Reserve.
impassable, automobile.
a
is
The
unfortunately,
start in
the
We
on foot through
small
cocoa
who chased Crown

coolie
plantation owned by a has served his time and purland.
Beyond
can
the forest begins. Nothing describe the feeling of one's own

it
insignificance which
the
monster trunks
trail
that
flank
is
the
narrow
inspire.
an ant beneath these giants. The weirdly colossal forests which Gustave Dor drew to illustrate Chateaubriand's
"Atala," with
One
pygmy
figures
wandering
beneath the overwhelming majesty of the
woods, are here a reality. Mora trees, 80 feet to 120 feet high, tower up on either hand. Cedars rise 60 feet to
virgin
80
feet
tall.
Balatd
rubber trees shoot
86
Trinidad
up ioo
feet,
with the scars of the rubber
tappings
on them.
Here and there are
specimens whose boles grow in the shape of narrow buttresses and cover at the
From bottom an area 40 feet square. the tall hardwoods hang tenuous vines,
We plummet. toil through the heavy clay, around trunks and over logs, drenched with perspiration,
dropping
straight
as
oppressed by the dank heat.
Here are hardwoods that nobody ever heard of up North, which ought to be
marketed," Jefferson remarks.
"
commercial," you tell him, and climb back into the automobile.
Disgracefully
"
Frequent villages of coolies and negroes

along the way, and long stretches of cocoa plantation. Now and then we pass
lie
a neat stucco constabulary station. Amid the multitudes of natives an occasional
white overseer
driving by in his As we get towards the Atlantic buggycoast the road narrows and the jungle
is
seen
87
The
takes

the
place
of
feet
cultivated
lands.
Dense
the
thickets
30
high, with
their heads
in
occa-
sional big trees lifting
above
either
other
vegetation, close
is
on
and
roofs
hand.
hilly.
The ground
At
more
more
of a
length, after a stretch
of coco-
nut
palms, there appear the
straggly settlement of poor-looking houses, the village of Mayaro, in the south-east
corner of the island.
Twelve miles of drive along the beach

will
take
us
to
the
Guayaguayare
oil-
fields,
where the production of petroleum
must leave has been recently started. the car, which cannot negotiate the heavy sands, but a good mule and buggy are
loaned
We
While waiting for low tide, we lunch upon tinned goods and biscuit bought from a Chinaman who
us
for
the
trip.
keeps a general store. All around coconut trees are growing, the nuts hanging
a few feet overhead.
try,
We
will
ask for one to

"
but not
88
man
budge.
They
Trinidad
belong to George Grant," is the explanation. It is a commentary on the rigidity
and the enforcement of the law
here.
At
start
length,
when
close
to
ebb-tide,
we
along a beach. Mile after mile of unfenced coco-nut plantations, the palms
rooted
in
the
barren
sand,
border the
sea-shore.
one occupied look out towards the Atlantic.

pink and
lie
few houses of negroes and by a white superintendent

Beautiful
on
purple Portuguese men-of-war the beach. The dry ones burst
with a loud pop when a wheel crushes over them. A negro boy walks along in the shoal water, throwing a net from time
to
time
and
bringing
back
the
small
bulge-eyed fishes which swim along the margin of the land to avoid the bigger
fish
in
the
deeper
water.
solitary
pelican skims the
sea,
making
occasional
dives into the breakers.
Here along the shore, with the trade wind blowing in, it is cool even in mid89

afternoon.
But
where
the
road
cuts
through the forest the heat is oppressive. We ford two shallow river-mouths with
tangles of mangrove in fresh water meets salt.
the
area where
The coco-nut
groves give place to forested hills and the distorted and broken strata of clay and
sand show up on the
along the sea. At length appears a row of houses set

cliffs
up on
stilts
15 feet in the
air,
the quarters
oil
company. The local manager comes down to meet us, and we climb the stairs and enter the
mosquito proof magazines, and
that
-
of the white
workmen
of the
portico,
where
pipes,
great
easy-chairs
certain
show
when
is
off
duty
elemental
comforts are not lacking.
Dinner
a
due as we
sit
arrive,
and
after
wash we
down
to
the
manager's
speci-
mess.
After dinner
some
bottled
mens
the
of the deadly coral snake found on works are proudly exhibited.
We
dip into
some ancient
"
Strand Magazines"
90
'
:.
Trinidad
on the veranda and smoke our pipes and
talk looking out
upon the quiet ocean.
morning we take a handcar propelled by four negroes and go up the

In
the
Row narrow-gauge track to the wells. after row of spare bits and casing-elevators
lie
Farther
boilers
neatly ranged in the store-room. on are the derricks with their

feet
100
distant, so that
in
fire.
case
of a gusher the oil will not take
6o-foot
stream of
oil
shot up from one
of the wells of
the
oil
near by recently, and most was lost at sea before the
flow could be stopped. Within the derrick-shed
an
engine
turns a g-foot bull-wheel, driving up and down a walking beam like that on a
Mississippi steamer.
The
the
drill-hole, lined
with pipe 8 inches in diameter, goes

i,
down
and
800
feet
through
layers
(clay
sandstone) of the oil bearing anticline. At the bottom of the well, attached to the
walking beam by a 2-inch hemp cable

91
The
tail.

drilling bit,
it
works the
shaped
like a fish's
the jar or link which brings the bit up with a jerk when the beam is being raised. This " string of
is
Above
tools
"
churns down
clay into the oil
through rock and sands. Some hundreds

fully
of feet
away a
for oil.
well
Still
pumped
is
being farther off another

out
dug
is
having the water and the sand, pul-
verized
by
the
bit,
baled
so
that
drilling can
recommence.
take a trip on foot to a place close at hand where natural gas rises from the
We
ground
and
is
can
a
be
little
lit
by
match.
Farther on
driblet of black oil
brook running a instead of water from
some spring
In places black ledges of pitch, soft in the hot A small mud sun, give under the feet.
in
the hill-side.
volcano
The
near by. forest with its great trees, screeching

is
parakeets and buzzing insects, is all about. The return trip along the sands brings
92
Trinidad
us back to
Mayaro
of
at
about noon, after

the
cliffs.
long
nearly
stretches
catches
wading, for us under the

the
tide
long
to
run
in
automobile
the
celebrated
Asphalt
its
brings us The Lake.
straggling village at
ordinary spectacle. twisted out of plumb.
edge is an extraNot a house but is
The land
is
the
source of never-ending litigation, because the slowly shifting currents of the pitch
a few years move yards and gardens on to other men's property, distort boundaries into every possible shape,
bottom
in
carry
landmarks a hundred yards away.
Some
natives are doing a little desultory digging here before the territory of the
Asphalt Company begins. boo across the road marks
A
its
green bam-
boundary.
There
shiftlessness
ends
and
system
Well-built mosquito-proof barbegins. racks for the workmen, with shower-baths
and
grace the bare hill. long pier extends far out to sea and
clothes-racks,
93
The Path of the

the
piles
Conquistadores
over
houses of the
alongside,
officers are built
swept
by every
breeze.
On
a cable-way to the ship waiting off the pier-end goes a slow line of big steel
buckets,
and negroes stand sending the
asphalt contents
down
a chute into the hold.
The manager
clad in khaki
of the lake, Mr. Procter,
and riding gaiters, welcomes us with strange drinks and Cuban cigars
on his swaying house above the waters We lunch with him of the Gulf of Paria. and his engineers. After a chat we follow
back the half-mile-long cable- way to the lake. The abomination of desolation is this
lake.
In
spots
palm
killed
by
the
few asphalt droops disconsolately. tufts of grass have secured a footing in But for the rest it is a solid mass places.
of
evil-smelling pitch, with pools of water here and there in which
black,
dull,
Against any parboiled fishes. of the hot spots in the world, bar none,
little
swim
this can be backed.
The
tropic
sun beats
94
Trinidad
asphalt reflects it back like the entrance of a furnace. One's feet
;
down
the black
are
unbearably hot through the heavy leather and one sinks if he stands still
a
for
moment.
hundred
and
fifty
degrees have been recorded on the lake. wicked-looking black snake six feet
long
glides
into
the
bushes
near
the
margin of the lake. It has been sunning itself on the asphalt. No wonder the
serpents are supposed to be creatures of the
devil.
As
for
ourself,
fifteen
minutes'
away every bit of vitality we can summon. Not enough interest is left in life to inquire what the negroes hewing
stay takes
with mattocks at the asphalt receive in wages. They earn the pay, whatever it is.
There
is
no mechanical way yet discovered
by which the stuff can be dug. Hour after hour these negroes hack out, with a few
blows of the mattock, the brittle pitch, which flakes away in pieces a foot square.
They
lift
the burden to their heads

95
and

dump
up
"
it
into the steel buckets,
which
start
fill
their slow
way
to the ship.
The
holes
in a few
days with new pitch. The lake is ninety to one hundred

in
it
acres
"
extent
is
but
now," says Mr. Procter, gradually shrinking with the
removal of such large quantities.
A good
its
percentage of the asphalt pavement in the
world comes from this one lake and

logical
geo-
complement in Venezuela. We leased it under a forty-seven year contract
with the Trinidad Government, to which nearly $250,000 a year has been paid in
royalties.
Such
is
mining
is
the
nearest of
thing there
the ground.'*
"
to digging
money out
is
Yes, but your Asphalt Trust

to "
it,"
wel-
come
take
If I had says Mr. Jefferson. a thousand a day to dig pitch I would not
it."
We drink
bottle,
all
the iced tea in the
Thermos
when we
it
and turn
96
get back to the machine, loose for Port of Spain.
Ill
THE SERPENT'S MOUTH

proposed trip across the Gulf, up the Orinoco and into the interior of
Venezuela along the path of the Seekers for El Dorado evokes a most alarming
chaos of varying advice.
Major Bridges, of the Constabulary, who has never been out of Trinidad and has a
Saxon prejudice against everything Latin and lawless, roundly declares that Venezuela is a " no man's land'* where
truly
murder
"
I
I
is
commoner than soap and
water.
have never been in the
vile country,
but
heard that for shooting a
man
over there
the judge fines the guilty party only forty

dollars."
Baron Caratoni, who has a rubber conH 97
The
sell,

he wants to
no, they don't
cession in Venezuela which

protests volubly.
"No,
shoot
other.
strangers
they
only
shoot
each
It is perfectly safe for
Jefferson, of the oil fields,
a stranger." tells that the
Sunday previous seven men employed at the Pitch Lake had gone over to Venezuela
in
a sail-boat.
They had been

"
all
thrown
into prison as revolutionaries yet been released.

jail
and had not

keep you in
They
will
for
months and you

he warns.
exiled
in
will get the yellow
fever,"
Castro regime, now the possessor of a timber concession upon the Caroni granted by the new
Carrera,
the
Government, relates how in the old days he was incarcerated for carrying an entirely
innocent letter which a friend had given
him
to
post.
He was
arrested
on the
pretence
that
Government
"contraband."
letters was a carrying function and letters were
"They used
to
do that
in the old times,
The
but not
"
Serpent's
Mouth
No
exile avers.
now under
President Gomez.
one has any trouble now," the
Beastly country, just the same," insists " Robertson, the merchant. They have
an extra customs tax 'of 30 per cent, on all goods which come from Trinidad.
Castro put
it it
on and Gomez does not take
off."
can never get your guns in, any"The way," cautions the cocoa-grower. Minister of the Interior is the only man has the right to issue permits for firearms, and he always refuses to do so.
"
You
who
They
are
so afraid of revolutions."
is
Evidently Venezuela
country.
Also,
all
this
an interesting advice is worth
You sit back and ponder as considering. the critics one and all leave the hotel.
Mr. Jefferson turns as he goes: "Over there is a man who can tell you enough about the Orinoco. He is just back from
Ciudad Bolivar."
Talking with a couple of dusky-hued
99
The Path of the

Spanish
belles
Conquistadores
the
portico
on
of
the
a linen-clad figure topped by a sweeping white sombrero. " For Introduce me," you suggest.
sits
Queen's Park Hotel
some reason
silent
Jefferson
hesitates.
He
is
a long, dubious minute.
Then he
laughs lightly and shrugs his shoulders. " If you insist," he says, and walks across.
"
Mr.
Fitzgerald!"
carelessly.
The
latter
turns
around
"Hullo, Jeff! How's the boy?" he snaps with a regular Yankee twang. The introduction follows. A few general remarks
are
interchanged,
then
we
can
settle
to
our
theme.
1 '
His roving grey eyes meet yours.

I tell
Venezuela! sure
"
!
you about
order.
Venezuela
He
signals
a waiter with
his rattan cane
and gives a repeat
After the chaos of contrary advice from

insular
Englishmen and Venezuelan prosell
moters anxious to
it
is
rubber plantations, like the turning on of a searchlight

this type of fellow-countryman.
to
meet
100
The
You
fire
Serpent's
in
Mouth
and
direct
some
specific
people shoot each other habitually " over there ?
questions. "
Do
"Only when they

"
get excited."
This seems perfectly satisfactory. How about the men that went across
from
"
New
Brighton and got caught by

"
?
the gunboat
got pinched. They didn't take out any papers or pass the You'll be jugged anycustom-house.
Why,
sure, they
where
house
you enter that way. Get the permit and go in through the customif
then
it
is
like sliding off a log."
"Well, how about confiscating your cent, taxes and such rifles, and 30 per
things?"
"Why,
if
nothing to Venezuela ever had started in Trinidad, and half the merchants here have divvied
you are on the level there is it. But every revolution
up with
the
smugglers.
That old fox

101
The
Castro
per

figured
out
that
an
extra
30
cent,
duty
would
square
things,
and
the
dope was about right. Gomez, new President, seems to think so,
his
anyway."
no trouble about going up the Orinoco and into the interior?" " Never a bit," says Fitzgerald. "The
there
is
"Then
Venezuelans
are
the
real
goods
dead
game
"
sports
and no
limit."
That
to
settles it,"
going
" I am you remark. Ciudad Bolivar to-morrow on
the 'Delta.'"
Fitzgerald thinks a moment and sizes " you up with a sidelong glance. Say,
I'm off for there myself to-morrow on launch come along with me."
;
my
You sweep
him
in turn
;
a scrutinizing glance over thinking a moment, too, you
recall
Jefferson's
shrug wherein he shook
off all responsibility. "
Then you
you shake.
accept.
Done," and on
1
it
You
02
agree to dine together at the hotel
The
that
Serpent's
Mouth
evening and talk over ways and means. Meanwhile you start out alone
to
assemble your personal

is
outfit.
The
meet.
Spanish Baron
"
the
first
man you
gleefully.
All
is
decided,"
"Ah,
'
so
you say monsieur is
going
on
the
Delta '?"
11
But
no,
!
upon the launch of Monsieur

"
Fitzgerald The Baron's
face
"
goes
pale.
That
tons
;
Why, it is only of two you do not know what it is to the Straits, the Serpent's Mouth
launch
!
cross
it
is
to die."
The Venezuelan
up the
11
exile,
Carrera,
comes
hotel steps.
is
He
going up the Orinoco on Fitzlaunch," appeals the Baron.

let
gerald's
little
"Cest
se suicider
him ask
Vicetella,
of the Navigation
Company."
Carrera tactfully shrugs his shoulders and says nothing. But a moment later
he draws you to one
side.
103
The Path of the

"
Conquistadores
is
Fitzgerald you don't know, but he mixed up in all sorts of things.

filibuster,
of Jack Boynton. partner It was he ran in the guns for Matas's revolution, packed in barrels of lard/'
On
the
the streets
you
meet
"
Robertson,
it
British
merchant.
Seriously,
is
very, very dangerous passing the Serpent's
Mouth, and Fitzgerald

less.
is
absolutely reckin all
He's the only

to
man
Trinidad
mad enough
Scott,
superintendent of the oilfields company, three
go on a trip the young American
like that."
field
years out of Princeton, who has been listening to the divers woes and alarms,
grins at the
too."
last.
"
wish
were going
We
a
list
meet Fitzgerald
of supplies.
It
at dinner
and
start
and
goes on
as
down
begins with flour through such stock

milk,
provisions
beans,
condensed
stuff,
baked
and
canned
ad
lib.
The
a big
tropic specialities
Fitzgerald adds:
104
The
mosquito bar
a box of
"
"
Serpent's
for the
Mouth
whole back of the
boat, a basket of limes,
cashew nuts, and

a series
oranges. which elicit remarks.
Now come
Half a dozen hams."

Isn't
that
rather
a
ask.
mouthful for a
fortnight's trip?"
you
"Oh, they
dente,
are a present for
El PresiState
of
the
Governor
of
the
Bolivar." "
"
Put down one case of champagne." Are you going to swim up an Orinoco
or
of
fizz,
do you nourish the crew on

"
?
champagne
asks Scott.
It
"Oh
officials
no.
goes as presents to the
Aduana the Custom House, you know. Put down a ten-pound

of
the
for
box of chocolates
officials
the wives of the
of the Aduana.
Add
a case of
beer."
"Who
"
is
this for
us?" you
inquire.
little
No, for the Jefes Civiles in the towns the mayors, you know.
Put
105
The Path of the

down
the
"
five
Conquistadores
Havana
cigars
for
boxes of
Commandantes."
forgotten the wives of the Commandantes and the Jefes," suggests

Scott. "
You have
Good
am
put
glad you reminded me,"
says Fitzgerald.
"Add candy
in jars for
them.
of
Now
rum
for the
down two dozen bottles minorJCustom House people

;
and the boatmen

without rum."
they can't get along
This completes the

the
list
bill,
away.
Fitzgerald
and you put gives a most
improper wink and sighs luxuriously, for dinner has been completed and we are sitting on the hotel piazza sipping bad
coffee
and smoking good
cigars.
Across
the road are the telephone lines of the city. " Did any one ever tell you how the
telephone in Trinidad came to be put up?" asks Fitzgerald meditatively. You have not heard, and neither has
first
Scott.
106
The
"
Serpent's
mine
Mouth
I
friend of
whom
:
will
not
managed it," he goes on medita" A certain It was this way tively. President of one of the South American
Republics wanted a police telephone put in at his capitol. The price to be paid was
twenty-five
name
thousand
dollars.
The
tele-
phone was to cost about eight thousand, and five people were to split up the
balance.
We
got a
first
payment of
silver,
six
thousand
dollars, all
in
from the
National Treasury, and carried it away in a cart. The President of course got
his rake-off in a separate
bag, which
we
sent around
"
first.
Then the four others sat down, two of them Cabinet Ministers, to slice up their melon. It was a sight to see the
Minister of Frumento,
ing
"
is,
who was
his
fat,
puff-
and
perspiring
in
shirtsleeves
that night
making
is
piles of the pesos.
But that
all
the
my
friend
got.
money we that The President was

107
The Path of the

killed
Conquistadores
in.
and a new President came

secretary called on
said.
Not
built
long
after, his
my friend.
'"Look/ he
the telephones
tracted.'
'You have not
He
which you have conthought we would give up.

for
But
my
friend,
who had
ordered the
tele-
phones on credit, figured out that there were pickings on what was left, so he
said
' :
will carry out the contract
give
re-
me
"
the
thirteen
thousand
dollars
maining.'
The
President's secretary reversed his

fast,
engines
for the
'
money
left.
Government had no He Not that No, no

'
thought awhile, then said

favour to you
celled
I
a great will get the contract can:
'
As
for nothing.'
My
So
friend
let it
go.
There was not enough

the
left
in the deal for
new
President.
the contract
was
cancelled and the telephones were brought
over and put up here in Trinidad." Methuselah comes to tell Scott
that
one of his
1
foremen has called him up
08
The
Serpent's
Mouth
from San Fernando to ask about a drilling bit that is being rethreaded in the Govern-
ment
He
iron foundry here in Port of Spain. goes out to reply, and we muse
upon the devious ways by which progress

comes.
11
got its police telegraph," Fitzgerald remarks. go next day to the Venezuelan
city
But
that
other
never
We
Consul,
who
has been appointed only three
days. "They've bounced the Consuls four times in the last year," whispers Fitzgerald.
We
and
ance, "
sign enrol
first
many
at
papers for clearthe Consulate as

respectively
captain and the gasolene
officer
'
of
launch
Geraldo,'
2^ tons
burden, 24 feet long, crew of two, laden with ship's supplies."
The inwardness
this
:
of the
is
A
"
passenger
proceeding is forbidden by the
most stringent possible law from landing in Venezuela at any spot where there is
not a
puerto habiltado," or licensed port

109
The Path of the

with a custom-house.
of
these piiertos
Conquistadores
There
is
not one
between
the
Orinoco
miles
at
is
mouth and
up.
Ciudad
Bolivar,
for
400
A
of
to
passenger
the
Pedernales,
the
river,
one
mouths
to
of
bound
go
Ciudad Bolivar without
touching foot to ground, pass the customs, and then come back. To disobey means
arrest, jail,
fines,
and endless trouble
to
the diplomatic representatives of whichsoever foreign Government has to dig the But the officer of a vessel culprit out.
is
a bird of
another colour.
It
is
not
only his pleasure but his duty to land
and present his papers and his compliments to the Commandantes and other
officials
on the way up.

is
And what Com-
such a particularist in the law of Caracas as to prevent his amigos, once landed, from taking a stroll or getting
a shot at some alligators
mandante
Many
are
in
Voyez vous ? prominent citizens of Venezuela

?
the
Consulate of Port of Spain,
no
The
Three or
of
Serpent's
four
Mouth
onerous
have
rubber
the
duty
the
six-
putting clearance papers,

teen
dollars
for
stamp charging some

labours.
to
on
their
Other
patriots
are
on
hand
hold converse
cigarettes,
with
the
Consul and
smoke
while the talk over the sizzling politics of the home country goes back and forth.
General
Desham, President of the State

is
of Miranda, said to be the best revolver
shot in Venezuela,
here.
He
has several
Car-
mining concessions in rera, the rubber man,

Spanish Baron.
club-house.
his
is
pocket.
here,
and the
is
The Consulate
all
like a
Very courteous they

letters
are,
giving us
river
to
their
friends
up the
libitum.
and
the
offering
cigarettes
ad
After an
reach
hour
we
break
away
and
launch.
The wharf-boys have loaded of the Custom House dock with

tain of supplies.
It
is
the
side
moun-
a miracle
how in
so
The Path of the

much
go
are
aft,
Conquistadores
of
it
lockers.
away in the little The beer and champagne bottles

which
of
gets stored
bereft of their straw covers,
strewn about the water in front
the
Custom House
Flour,
like
fallen
leaves in
autumn.
cans
of
baking-powder,
potted
hams,
tins
beans,
meats,
of
into
biscuit
these and
many more go
drawers.
the side lockers

oil
Engineand carbide are tucked away forward. Your modest bag of clothes has to stand
and
on deck behind the engine, the pneumatic mattress and the cartridge box alongside
it.
When
at
last
the
"Geraldo"
is
fully
.
laden, with a mountain of cargo on the midships deck because it cannot be
stowed, the launch
At pulled by two
loaded.
looks seriously overthat moment a big row-boat,
negroes, comes alongside. Its entire stern is laden with red wooden
boxes
tins
sixteen
112
gasolene containing ten-gallon of them. To your horror
The
you
Serpent's
Mouth
find that Fitzgerald proposes to load
these too into the "Geraldo."
There
is
nothing for
it,
however.
Fuel
must be provided and gasolene must be It is passed aboard while you carried.
stand
launch,
engines,
aghast.
The whole
small
as
floor
of
the the
seats
save a
is
space
beside
the
piled
high
as
with gasolene tins and other goods. The Custom House authorities will not let
gasolene be loaded even from the dock. The launch has become a very floating
powder-magazine.
With many
and perch on
that
misgivings, you climb in the cargo. The two boys

let
compose the crew

you
are
off.
go the moorings
careful
in
and
"
Be
the
Serpent's Mouth," calls Captain Hunt, of the Customs. He shakes his head and
goes back into his office on the dock. have started. Will we arrive?
We
The two boys

as
casually light
up
cigarettes
pile
they
i
sit
on
the
forward
of
113
The Path of the
Conquistadores
gasolene tins, but they throw them overboard in double-quick time on order of the The frightfully overfirst-officer.
loaded
boat,
flat-bottomed,
of
the
Q-inch
draught, ploughs through water in the lee of the land without too
smooth
much
labour.
But a half mile out the
waves are choppy. The exhaust is partly submerged and the gases puff and snort
in
protest as the seas block their outlet.
An
explosive back-fire from time to time barks a sinister warning.
You
a while.
sit
on the cushions and worry

Usually a launch-owner,
if
for
he
does not mind his

his property.
It
own
life,
is
careful of
takes not
much seaman-
ship to tell you that to go a mile in a boat so loaded is a nice juicy risk, let crossing the Gulf of Paria and passing the reefs of the Serpent's Mouth. There doesn't seem, however, to be any
alone
practical
way
of backing out now.
Fitzgerald
114
appears
himself
to
realize
The
for the
first
Serpent's
Mouth
it
time what sort of trip
is
he has so insouciantly proposed. He is You learn a little nervous and voluble.

for the first
that
this
is
time with a touch of dismay a new launch and that his
former trips up the
Orinoco have been

"
made
"
in the 2oo-foot
Delta."
Is there a
;
"
Yes, yes But a lengthy search

it.
chart?" you ask. I have one," he says.

fails
It
is
or
produce has gone overboard or been left, buried hopelessly in the inextricable
of luggage. the engine
to
mound
Now
land,
"
stops,
a
in
mile
the
from
and we toss about
trough
of the waves.
Joe,
come
back and
turn
this
fly-
wheel," orders Fitzgerald. Joe, a boy of eighteen,
jet
black,
to
shambles
astern.
He
has
forgotten
throw away a new cigarette he has been smoking on the sly, up forward, hidden
by the gasolene
tins.
In
a sulky, half-
"5
The Path of the
Conquistadores
hearted way, his second cigarette having gone the way of the first, Joe turns the
flywheel.
Not an
it
explosion, not a
buzz.
again and again and then a few more times. Not a spark.
turns
"
He
Something must be wrong," says
gerald.
Nobody
it
contradicts
him.
Fitz"
I
think
is
the the
spark-plug,"
spark-plug.
there.
he
adds.
He
unscrews
to be
Nothing
seems
"
wrong
you
Joe turns the
wheel some more.

Charlie,
come
and
turn
Charlie
the
is
wheel
"
!
shouts
Fitzgerald.
about seventeen years old, a mixture of Chinese, negro and white in an unknown
ratio.
His arms are skinny, and he

strong than Joe,
wharf-rat.
is
far
less
who
is
an able-
bodied
at the
wheel
is
performance not a success. Joe has

hours
of
this
Charlie's
to try again.
It
takes
three
to
run
down
the trouble.
We
are so loaded in
tins,
the bow, 116
by the gasolene
that
the
The
tank
is
Serpent's
feed
tins
Mouth
into
aft,
too low to
several
the engine.
We
as again.
move
the
and
get
just
sun
goes
down we
started
You
bad
of
Things are too stop worrying. You dig out a tin to think about. and
sardines
some
crackers,
and,
reclining on the luggage, make a scratch meal. Joe takes the helm and is told
to
steer
for
the
Southern Cross.
Fitz-
gerald comes astern, joins in the crackers and sardines, and digs out some liquids
as well.
The sun goes down and
the
stars .pome out over the waste of waters.
a wonderfully beautiful night and the sea is dead calm. The engine throbs
It
is
away regularly the troubles of the start seem to have been all smoothed away.
:
Fitzgerald
gets
out
from somewhere
can
and
al
mouth-organ wheezes complac-
ently a medley of Venezuelan

airs
and Ameri-
* Gloria
Peublo,"
"The
Swanee
River,"
"La
Paloma."
117
He
The Path
who
:
sings an ancient ditty about a girl declares to her lover

"
My
father
was a Spanish merchant,

*
And the day he sailed away, He bade that I should answer No, To whatever you should say."
sir,'
The
promptly asks if she would refuse him if he offered his

resourceful
lover
"
hand.
all
She answers
is
No,
sir,"
and they
doubt-
live
happy ever afterwards.

entertaining.
Fitzgerald
less
feels
He
a
twinges
from
conscience
somewhat battered by ten around South America,

himself to
of starting
years'
for
knocking
he
exerts
make you
and
the
forget
the
troubles
overloaded
are
"
powderreclining
magazine on which you and Jamaica smoking
Tropicals."
Helped out by a ball-bearing imagination and a few drinks, his memoirs become
truly
worth
in
their
cost.
filibuster,
captain
118
the
United States Army, a
The
Serpent's
Mouth
police chief in Peru, a lobbyist in Caracas,
a circus proprietor in Ecuador, an official photographer in Panama, exhibitor of the
Edison phonographs along the west coast, which cleaned him up two hundred
first
thousand
in
year,
fugitive
riding
200 miles and holding up passers-by for fourteen horses in escaping from an outraged
Government
artist
in
Chili,
fashionable
photographic
of
Ciudad
Bolivar
and the representative of large capitalists who are on the point of investing in railroads, rubber, timber, et
this is
officer,
al.,
in
Venezuela
our interesting host and superior Fitzgerald, of the launch "Geraldo."

for a while in silence.
We
smoke
"Did you
ever
read
Lord
a
Byron's
poetry?" he asks. You allow that you have acquaintance with Byron.
"
I
bowing
think
that
'
Don Juan
'
poem
duces
was
the greatest ever written." He prois
volume
evidently
bound
by a
119
The

is
Spaniard, since Byron
"
Vyron." Most Venezuelans pronounce the words beginning with v, such as "vaca," cow, " as if the v were b baca." So the
spelled
Spanish bookbinder assumed that Byron should be Vyron. Long sections of " Don Juan" regale you now, read beneath the
swinging
Fitzgerald shuts the book regretfully. " I used to write poems," he says mus"
lantern.
At
last
ingly.
Here
is
one which
wrote in
Cuba
"Roll on, roll on, ye wheels of steel, You bear us on to woe or weal,
You bring the bitter and the sweet, The flowers and the sugar beet. Some are carried for commercial use, Yon sugar-mill will use the juice To start the smiles of your sweetheart And ease the sorrow when you part."
"
Can't
we make
"
the last a
little
clearer?"
you suggest.
Does the sugar-juice get
made- into sweets or

the thing to offer a 120
rum ?
It really isn't
young lady
rum."
The
"
It
is
Serpent's
"
Mouth
says
Fitzwill
candy,
of course,"
indignantly. gerald understand."
Everybody
The launch plugs away

and
at
into the night,
length you fall into an uneasy Shortly before sleep on the cushions. dawn you wake. There is a sound of
voices.
Joe
is
an
insolent
explaining something in drawl and Fitzgerald is
swearing in an eminently capable manner. Land is nowhere to be seen. Fitzgerald

" This damn turns indignantly to you. fool boy has steered us into the middle
of
Gulf of Paria instead of going south along the coast. We ought to be

the
Cedros Point now, and Heaven knows where we are."

at
We
officers
set
a course due west to get into
touch with
Trinidad
it
again.
to
The
ship's
judge
best
take the wheel
About nine o'clock personally this time. land is sighted. On going closer in, the long pier of the Asphalt Company and
121
The Path of the

their boats at
Conquistadores
anchor are seen.
We
down
are
only to San Fernando, half-way

island,
the
instead of
being at the extreme

expected so as to morning
at
south-west point, which

to
strike in
we had
the early
cross
the
Serpent's
Mouth
flood-tide,
when
the ocean pushes back the Orinoco current and carries one into the river mouth.
This
is
exasperating,
it
but
there
is
nothing for
but to eat more biscuits

steer south again.
and sardines and

like
We
him
give the wheel to Charlie, watching
hawks, however, and go back to the cushions in the stern.

never told you how I joined the " U.S. Army, did I ? inquires Fitzgerald.
I
"
"You
"
did not."
it
Well,
was
Spanish
War
way. When the broke out I was putting

this
up
as
a telephone line in Barbados. Just soon as I heard that the Americans
had occupied Porto Rico I dropped everything and jumped on board a sailing122
The
vessel.
Serpent's Mouth When we got to Porto Rico

would not
let
young
lieutenant
me
'
land
on account of the blockade.

this note to the General,'
'
Take and wrote on

I said,
An American who speaks a slip of paper, Spanish as good as he does English isn't
allowed to land.'
In an hour they had
me on
the
shore and
made me
interpreter for
I
General
Now, you know,
am
an
engineer."
to believe.
This you are quite prepared
"And
it
was not long before
they put me in charge of the port works, to handle all the workmen that loaded
and
unloaded.
The
General
said
he
a
wanted
captain's
me
regular,
so they gave
in
me
commission
the 6gth
New
York Volunteers. I liked the job. Everything was mixed up, and I was drawing two salaries one from the United States
as captain,
and one from the Provisional

of
the
for
Government
regular
island.
had
contract
I
Engineer, and
serving as Port held the men to their

123
The Path of the

work.
get
Conquistadores
One
and
I
me
superiors had tried to to sign a contract which was half
of
my
graft,
I
blocked
it
and got him
fired.
am
for graft every time here in

after
South
America when you're

it
something, but
ain't right "
when you're in our service. Then a new General came, and he
began sniffing around. I had a trucking business on the side, and he asked about
this
business.
as
Can't a
'
man
said.
invest
his
money
he likes
Soon he
got fussy about my salaries, and tried to I stop one of them. got pretty sore at I had a contract for a year, and I this.
made him come

and
all
across.
Then
resigned,
the
men went on
strike
because
they liked me. " In three days he was around begging me to come back. In time I relented and
said
would straighten out his strike for him, so I went down with a couple of kegs of beer and gave the dockers a
I
talk.
told
them
that the
new man was
124
:*
**.:':: %
The
Serpent's
Mouth
a better fellow than he seemed, and they must do right by him. I told them I
was
tired
of
the
job
and
could
make
The old General offered money. me a commission in the Regulars if I would go to the Philippines with him.
more
But a tornado had struck Porto Rico, and there was a lot of contract work to be done on the island, so I resigned I wish
;
sometimes
had stayed
in
the service."
Being a
little
downcast, he gets out the

off
mouth-organ again. In due time we are

that
long,
narrow
neck
Cedros Point, of land which
pointed to the Conquistadores the way to the Orinoco and El Dorado. Venezuela
not in sight we pass the point and enter the Serpent's Mouth. The tide-race
is
;
of which
Spain
is
Columbus wrote marked only by
to the
ripples.
King
of
The
swell of the sea in
long,
smooth
waves over which we glide presently grips " the Geraldo." The wind is astern, and
125
The Path
we
steer
All of a sudden the
faces
dead south.
boat turns completely around and Trinidad. Joe is at the wheel.
"What
Fitzgerald.
it
are "
you doing there?" howls
Drop
the wheel
"
!
He
takes
have not gone a hundred yards before the boat does the same thing
himself. again.
We
The
has
tiller
is
helpless.
Some
about
whirlpool
bodily,
swung
the
boat
though only a little swirl on the surface shows the whirlpool's location. No
harm done, but it jerks one's nerves a little. The wind freshens measurably. White
caps
are
on the waves.
hoarsely,
is
still
Gulls
poise
fly
by,
shrieking
or
alongside.
The wind
astern.
Up
ahead
now looms
"
solitary rock,
the Sentinel
El Soldado."
Sharp and
one of the
menacing
of
it,
it
stands.
are
We
steer to seaward
for
as
we
making
eastern outlets of the river and the

is
wind
has
favouring us.
But
126
is
the
wind favouring us
It
The
changed, and
Serpent's
is
Mouth
blowing every moment more heavily in towards Soldado from the sea on our beam. The tide is going the
same way
always towards Soldado.
We
have passed this to starboard now, and can see a line of breakers to leeward
where a mile-long row of jagged rocks

runs shoreward.
"
It
not
lucky that blighted engine has " balked again," you remark.
is
We
if
would be on the rocks

it
in
ten minutes
did."
Hardly are
the
words
spoken
before the engine gives a couple of gasps, starts convulsively again, gives a last dull
explosion,
and
a
stops.
lot
One does
such a time.
of quick
thinking at
boat goes to pieces on those reefs to leeward, can we swim

If the
athwart the current to Soldado, or will we be swept past it and have to
swim the six miles we climb Soldado's

do reach
it?
to
Venezuela?
sides
steep
Can if we
off
Will we be picked
en
127
The Path
route
shark?
the
by a
them.
water
to
is
alive
with
Will
we have
wait
fortnight without water for a boat to take us off if we do get to the rock ? Fitzfriend gerald fiddles with his engine. has given you a pneumatic mattress. This
will
to
make a good life-preserver if you have swim to Venezuela. You blow it up,
it
put
in the stern,
and look
hundred
had not
tide
at the rocks.
We
the
are
a bare
!
yards
from
the breakers
We
the
here.
rapidity of
it
figured six miles
on
an
the
line
hour
You jump to The anchor and heave it over.

runs
runs through your fingers you cannot fasten it to a
last
so
cleat.
fast
that
In the
six feet of line

tiller
around the
the
you catch it braced and make it fast. But

slow
anchor
can
barely
down
the
speed of drifting. You get the mattress ready and stand oar in hand to push
past
between the
128
reefs
if
it
is
possible.
Joe and Charlie watch
stupidly at
the
The
bow.
quickly
that
Serpent's
has
their
Mouth
happened
so
Everything
has
not
apparatus
low-geared thinking had time to work.
Fitzgerald stands grimly by his engine. Not a word is said. Then ten feet away
appears
of the
a wave-lashed
partly
rock
in
advance
submerged
reefs.
The
launch has drifted to the northward, and

rest higher than the which you had not seen. It is right at hand. "This ends it," you think, standthis
is
spur
ing on the stern, mattress in hand. main emotion you have is of

disgust at the whole proceeding. The current boils around the
the
rock.
The
utter
end
of
But
to
your paralysed aston-
ishment, instead of crashing into it the boat is swirled around its point. The
anchor-rope has caught

dential point
on some provi-
back-water
and we swing into the slack behind safe for a moment.
You
at
look stupidly at the rock, astounded not being battered against it. Fitz-
129
The Path of the
Conquistadores
gerald shows real clean grit and presence of mind. He gives his engine a turn,
and
in
this
smooth water
and
stops.
it
expiring
kicks
makes two But these
two are enough

of
the
spur.
poles.
to bring us to the lee side
Joe
is
is
grapple it with pike pushed ashore with the end

line,
We
of
the anchor-rope and a big fish
doubled,
heaved over and made
fast
to a jagged point of rock.
We
are safe.
The two boys

the
stare
row of
reefs.
stupidly back at You look to the
lashings.
glances
locker.
Fitzgerald takes a deep breath, around, and then makes for the
He
entertainofficial champagne, ment, and as the launch heaves giddily
gets out sacred to
bottle
of the
with the swell, in the
lee of
the rock
all
hands take a drink.

After a council of war
it
seems best to
stay here until the tide changes or the wind dies down. The engine is doctored
up
until
it
is
apparently in perfect order.
130
The
The
Serpent's
Mouth
boys, with oars and pike poles, hold the boat from battering against the spur.
We
bathe in pools on the rock, not venturing into the sea alongside beofficers
cause the sharks are reputed to like white meat. Around the line of reefs the peli-
cans and gulls are fishing. At about four o'clock we cast off from
the rock that gave us shelter. for the main channel towards
to avoid the line of reefs.
We
make
still
Trinidad
tide
The
flows westward, but
be ebb shortly,
we figure that it will and we must make land

is
by
nightfall.
Soldado
on our
as
lee
now.
We
it
steer
fast
so as to get from in front of
as
and as
straight
!
possible.
The engine The boys
stops again take the oars and try to pull us out of the danger zone. But the heavy
boat makes no way.

closer to
Down
Soldado we go. of gulls and water-birds that take alarm and fly out till the
every moment, The multitudes

rest
air is
on
it
dark
The Path of the

with them.
Conquistadores
You
Two
is
hundred yards from the

started once more.
crag the engine
grasp the
tiller,
look back so as to take the
shortest line past Soldado and the launch wears clear of it a hundred yards away.
The
the
is
reefs
are
all
to
windward
Venezuelan coast ahead.

right
to
now, The wind
make
boat
the
Pedernales or the
Vagre mouth.
As
gets
the
heads
inland
the water
It is
a lighter and
lighter
brown.
evidently shoaling. nest of submerged
Sandbanks
rocks
lying
and
here,
is
Joe hastily your memory of the chart. heads out to sea and for a spell we
go
parallel
to
the
coast.
The waves
strike
our
quarter
mountains of water.
If
huge white-capped one of them hits

swim.
the boat right and fills it, we This situation is intolerable.
We
may
To stay out be swamped any moment. six miles from land in this weather is
as
risky
132
as
the
hazard
of
the
rocks.
The
"We've got
Serpent's
to get in,"
Mouth
you say
at
last,
and take the helm.
Straight for the supposed location of the Pedernales passage, with the wind nearly astern, you steer,
taking
lifted
the
chance
of the
reef
and
of
shoal,
now high on
crests
great
following waves, the boat leaping forward, buried now deep in their trough.
Joe is sent time to time.
to
heave
has
his
the
lead
from
this
well.
:
He
picked
up
knack
and
"
:
does
job
fairly
sir."
Heave "Four
and a
Five
fathoms,
sir."
Heave
"
fathoms,
half,
sir."
Heave:
two
Three
half
We
are
down
to
is
and
a a
fathoms,
the
water
yellow,
rock
spouts to port, the sweep of the waves hurls us up and down like a cork, but
keep straight on. The coast of Venezuela gets more and more distinct a long green wall of mangrove trees. Ahead is a break in their green expanse
we
for
which we are
steering.
The sun
is
The Path
nearly
down.
the
We
trees
get
almost
see
to
the
break in
we
the
smooth
water beyond them.
Right
river,
edge where sea meets the water is churned into a tempest

at
the
of short,
sharp waves.
are
We
like
sweep into
a rat
in
them
and
shaken
for a
hundred yards. Then, just as the sun goes down, we glide behind
terrier's
mouth
the trees into the peace of the Orinoco. For half an hour we ascend the river
between the
denly
the
silent
forests.
rudder-wire
Then sudworn snaps,
through.
We
aft
cannot
use the wheel, so
you
tiller
go
and
steer
by pushing the
!
with your feet. Lucky this mishap also did not befall us an hour earlier
The
night
falls
with
its
usual rapidity in
the tropics.
We
see a
glimmering
light
ashore, some dimly outlined machinery. We make for it and tie up to the bank.
"We
have thrown dice with the Devil

out/' says Fitzgerald.
and won
IV
UP THE ORINOCO
A
^~^
SHADOWY
us.
figure
"
Who's
there
" ?
appears above a voice calls.
We
stumble
up the
bank and onto a
crumbling concrete platform with a rusted iron framework built above it and scraps
of
the
broken
machinery
light
underfoot.
Into
uncertain
well-built
in
of the lantern comes
clad
and almost white mulatto, a ragged shirt, trousers, and a

straw hat.
"
broad-brimmed
11
He
;
reaches
"
out to shake our hands.
You Trinidad men

too."
he asks
am
Englishman,
big negro and a little Venezuelan mestizo appear from the darkness. They
talk together in Spanish.
The Path of the
Conquistadores
The boys work stolidly at the pumps, Dead for we have shipped much water.
tired,
you
sit
on the bank
to
waiting for
this
necessary task
finish.
half-
dozen mosquitoes appear and you brush
them away.
feel
But now
it is
a score that are
assailing you, every
moment more.
You
The The
so
the stings in a dozen places at once. swarm is around you like a cloud.
natives, bitten themselves
but not
badly,
do
not
at
first
notice
our
martyrdom.
it
The Trinidad boy

grins broadly.
perceives
first.
He
I
"
Mosquito
"
very
bad one
fire
here,"
he
He you." scrapes together an armful of dried grass and lights it in the lee of an engine
says.
making
for
which
is
falling
full
to
pieces
from
rust.
Standing
quitoes
are
smoke the mosnot so bad. We ask him

in
the
how he
"
I
bears them.
I
must,
watchman
I
here.
They
being very bad, but

136
used to them."
Up
"What
"
is
the Orinoco
your name?"
Tom." For a while, with streaming

in
eyes,
is
we
in
stand
"
the smudge.
Tom
lost
thought.
Have you gun?" he We say that we have.

"
presently asks.
that
Will you shoot

?
me
"
tiger
come
dig
in
into building nights
We
get
back to the
boats
and
out our
rifles
and an
electric
flash-lamp.
Machete
in
one hand and flash-lamp

guides the
boilers,
the other,
Tom
Old
all
way through
overgrown A hundred
high grass.
engines, lathes,
dump
cars,
rusted
and
the ground. yards from the bank stands the skeleton of a steel building.
litter
with vines,
says Tom, pointing to " a shelf high up on the rafters. At night tiger come under."
I sleep,"
"There
We
go
for
ramshackle
a quarter of a mile up a narrow - gauge track, over
The
night,

Stiflingly
swampy ground.
hot
is
the
us.
and the sweat streams down and
We
"
reach at length a second building.
Here
tiger
walk,"
Tom
points
flash
to
some
tracks on the ground.
We
the light around but see no jaguar. The mosquitoes are worse every
stant.
in-
On
each
exposed
bit
of
skin
light the insect pests.
They
or
bite
the khaki.
Tom's
shirt is grey
through with them.
No
can
slapping with hand
handkerchief
keep
their
them
away.
In
hundred
spots
The
them
for
poisoned needles pierce you. You breathe swarm blinds you.

in
by mouth and by nose.

is
Never
an instant
there
peace.
choked, tortured,
to
maddened.
as
if
You are You have

supreme
grip
yourself
for
struggle to keep from

pede.
a shrieking stam-
Almost on a run we hasten back to the and start a smudge, and first building
as
the dense
138
black cloud
of
smoke
rolls
Up
"
the Orinoco
bites
up around you and the like a reprieve from hell.

Tiger
stop
it
is
says and rolls a big gear-wheel into the

later,"
come
here
"
Tom, smoke
for
you
to sit on.
cook dinner."
Into a tin goes a most uninviting and scraggy piece of meat, then plantains and
onions,
sliced
is
with
the
machete.
fire.
This
In anFitz-
mixture
other gerald
boiled
over the
is
tin,
black coffee
brewed.
boat
;
goes
back
it.
to
the
he will
have none of
hurt Tom's
You do
not want to
feelings,
for he has
been as
courteous as a grandee, and the tiger is, he asserts, due around. So you try his
soup and some of the

of cassava bread.
with a piece The hot coffee is not

coffee
so very bad. The cassava bread looks like a flat bath sponge and tastes as it looks.
The fire dies down. The mosquitoes come back in swarms, the jaguar does not come. At last you too retreat to the
boat.
Fitzgerald
is
wideawake, fighting
The Path of the

mosquitoes.
language. You crawl
Conquistadores
Rabelais would blush at his
beneath the mosquito bar,
dead
bites.
tired,
It
is
and
not
fall
asleep
long,
despite
the
;
for
however
in
three or four hours

is full
of the pests,
you wake. The net who have either found
meshes passable or have located an entrance underneath. Your hands and

the
even
your
body,
are
covered
by the
their
thick
stings.
khaki cloth,
raw with
Only the
gerald
is
utter exhaustion of the last

all.
two
days enabled you to sleep at

already up
Fitz-
and seated
the
by a
of [the
smudge.
Haggard
in
grey
morning, with bleeding face and hands, he looks as one newly carried from the
torture-chamber.
At
green
last
the
sun comes out over the
forest,
besiege us.
and the mosquitoes no longer We are on the border of a
wide pitch deposit covering several acres. Evidently extensive works to dig and
140
Up
remove
this
the Orinoco
were started, a great plantequipment bought, and then the whole of It is a battlefield thing abandoned.
industrial
defeat.
Only
Tom
is
left
to
watch
for a shilling a
day the shattered

into
machinery.
He
strips
and
dives
the water
"
from the
concrete landing-stage.
Not
shark here," he calls. change our clothes.

to
We
pair
all
bathe and
The world begins

of parrots
fly
look
better.
woods behind with their loud shrieks. Far overhead goes a flock of Gulls and divers skim by. scarlet ibises.
from the
An
snowy-white against the green mangroves, perches on the opposite riveregret,
bank.
We
in
up ship and repack, getting somewhat better shape. By eight

clean
o'clock
we
are
ready,
and
after
leaving
some
for
eatables
Tom
and drinkables as a present and his friends, we start on

141
our belated way.
The Path of the

Pedernales
is
Conquistadores
off.
about a mile
We
straggly row of about twenty low-thatched adobe houses, with a few dugout canoes moored to stakes
sight
its
soon
in
front,
and
on
begin
a
the
to
steer
shoreward.
stones
We
land
pile
of
and
whole
scramble
population
up
is
bank.
The
on hand
a slovenly outfit
showing
Spaniard.
all
combinations
possible permutations of Indian, negro,
and
and
One
of these,
little
cleaner
rest,
is
and more authoritative than the

pointed out as the Commandante. Now comes the crucial time.
are
How
we
to
be received
arrest
for
We
are already
having landed last night on unauthorized Venezuelan terriAnd our future halts on the way tory.
liable
to
up
the
Orinoco
clearance
depend
papers fact that we come from a foreign port. in has the any event Fitzgerald assurance of an army mule. He makes
142
domestic
getting despite the
on
Up
for
the Orinoco
grasps his a candidate
"
Commandante and hand with the warmth of

the
for "
Congress
in a close district. dias,

!
esta amigo, com' He starts to tell in dramatic Spanish the perils we encountered at Soldado.
Buenos
While the Commandante's mind

kept
occupied,
Joe,
is
thus
well-coached
before-
hand,
has
appeared
with
glasses.
bottle
of
whisky
and
some
We
have
edged up to the official headquarters by this time, and with expansive gestures
have invited
drink.
and sundry to have a At the same time our clearance

all
papers are handed to the Commandante. get rid of two bottles of whisky
We
at
Pedernales,
of
and,
after
wringing
extracted
the
leave
hand
an
every
male
inhabitant,
with a
paper,
artistically
is
from
not authorized by any law under the sun to give such a docuofficial
who
ment,
the
permitting us to way up the river.
make
stops
on
Fitzgerald,
by
H3
The Path
elaborating upon your letters to the Presidente and adding his own blarney, has
bluffed
the
licence out
of the
Commansay
as
dante.
"
Very well done,

boat
Fitz,"
you
the
chugs
out.
And
Fitzgerald
winks.
To go up
the Orinoco
by the Peder-
nales passage we have been told to enter the first opening on the port side after
see this passing a near-by point. cano, but it looks too narrow to be the
real
We
one.
So we keep on going and

bay
with
rather
enter a
seas.
broad
choppy
After a couple of miles of this we enter a wider passage, which turns out
the rarely traversed of the Orinoco.
to be
Vagre mouth
like
The
All
mangrove-trees
to
are
wall
river.
on either side of the broad
still
seem
have
reached
;
standard
the labyrinthic height above water-level network of their roots drops from the
144
'.
Up
branches
to
the Orinoco
the
water.
It
is
like
phalanx of gigantic spiders, standing in the still water with their black legs interlocked and bearing a burden of towering
foliage
on
their backs.
No more
devised.
impene-
trable
wall
could
be
birds,
Nothing
can
but
monkeys,
and
crabs
possibly penetrate Of these there is
a
the
mangrove swamp.
greatest
possible
number.
Birds
are
everywhere.
Big
white and grey cranes are all along the river. Fishers of every kind dive down
beside
of
the
boat.
Ibises
rise
in
a flock
scarlet.
The
under
"croaking
age,
hoatzins,"
relics of
the
reptilian
with fingers
strange birds their feathers, shriek

to bough.
and
flop
awkwardly from bough
We
shoot some, for they are as big as But they pullets and look good to eat. smell badly and are tough as mangrove
stems.
Even
than
a
Charlie
and
Joe
us
decline
them.
Less
L
day
gets
past
145
the
The Path of the
Conquistadores
mangrove swamp. These trees still occur, but there is no longer the solid wall of them. Land high and dry has begun,
jungle with
every
kind of tree
cedar,
banana,
grass,
bamboo,
creepers
loops.
mora,
ten-foot
and vines swinging in matted We shoot two males of the big

monkey,
sitting
red howling
on a bare
branch, and though the tree out of which is but 20 feet from the they fall
water's
edge,
it
takes
two hours
to find
a spot at which to make a landing, get up the steep clay bank, and cut with
machetes a way in, and we can only get one of the monkeys.
Further along we find a landing-place where balata cutters have come.
land
We
hunger with cold victuals and coffee. Two manatees poke their noses up out of the river from time to time and snort. One never sees more
ease
and
our
than
the
nose of a
instant.
sea-cow,
and that
only for an
146
fresh-water por-
Up
poise
in
the Orinoco
More monkeys are jumps up. the woods behind, but we let them
trip
It
is
alone.
The
ful.
from Pedernales
entirely
is
delight-
cool
and comfortable
at
midday. The thermometer under the awning does

not
in
the
moving
boat
even
show over 85.

a
We
anchor at sun-
set in
a shallow place
amid stream and

is
not
at
It mosquito appears. night about 68, and even
cool
little
chilly
towards morning.
the trade
breeze
from
gently
is
the
sea
wind
blows
astern.
The murmur
of the forest
on
either side.
From
is
time to time the snort
of a manatee breaks the stillness, but for

the rest
all
quiet.
As on river we
tions
the
morrow we go on up
the
pass infrequent banana plantakept by mestizos and Guarano
Indians.
from
native dugout passes silently time to time. These Indians are

little
curious
people,
hardly
averaging
The Path of the

5
feet high.
Conquistadores
at
We
stop
some
of their
landing-places. In one of the
palm-thatched
shelters
open on all sides to the wind are half a dozen women and children. They speak no Spanish and seem to take no interest
whatever in
anything.
dozen wicker
baskets of different shapes and sizes hold their one of these belongings. With
baskets,
feet
they
make
and very slender, roots Tuberous cassava.

long
looking like elongated sweet potatoes, taken from a tree which is of the same
family
first
as
the
Ceara
rubber
plant,
are
peeled
and washed.
grated on a kerosene tin holes punched in k with a

gratings
are
Next they are which has had

nail.
The
long
thrown
into
the
narrow basket and squeezed. Stones are put upon it and everybody climbs onto
The the stones to help out the process. compression is to get rid of the juice,
which
148
contains
poisonous
hydrocyanic
Up
acid.
the Orinoco
of meal remaining are cakes about 2 feet in
The lumps
in
flat
baked
diameter.
Bread from a deadly poison!

of
number
this
children
are
running
little
about in
encampment.
"
One
in
boy has several scars scored

lines
parallel
down
his
his heel.
Caiman
all
(crocodile),"
says
mother
after
our
repeated
questions.
The
children
have prothis
;
truding because
stomachs.
they
Some
the
say
is
have
rickets
some,
because they eat water, a combination which bloats them

others, that
it
cassava bread and drink

;
is
because the babies are
not swaddled after they are born.
Take
your choice.
The woods
thin
out in places as
we
met
ascend the Orinoco.
Sandbars on which an
shoot several, which
occasional crocodile suns himself are
here and there.
We
squirm back into the water.
In one place
we
up a carlo that leads nowhere, and have to come back and try again through
get
149

a narrow gap down which the river races at a good 7 miles an hour so strong a current that we can hardly make head-
run aground badly in a wide place, and have to go overboard, in deadly fear of alligators and sting-rays, and
way.
We
push
off.
At
we
passing a big island, are out of the Delta and enter the
length, after
Orinoco proper. We are running short of gasolene, but Fitzgerald knows of a Corsican woodcutter a few miles up
stream
after
who can supply some. leaving the Delta we reach

on
high
Shortly a town
situated
meaning the
Barrancas, ground Sandbanks and tie up

the
alongside one of the war-vessels of
Venezuelan Navy. This vessel is fully 35
feet
long.
Her
Captain is asleep in his hammock, with do one bare foot sticking through.
We
but get out a bottle of now beer so as to have it available.
not wake him,
We
150
Up
get the
selves,
the Orinoco
"
"
Geraldo
in
order,
clean
our-
change into some fresh linen, climb up on to the deck of the man-ofwar,
and order
its
cocinero
to boil
our
coffee.
In good time El Capitan wakes and we The process is like introduce ourselves.
the old nursery
"
rhyme about
the kitty
You And
"
pet her and stroke her and feed her with food, kitty will love you because you are good."
Will El Capitan sample some Trinidad beer?"
El Capitan will "con mucho gusto." El Capitan finds the beer drinkable and
the
his
cigars
smokable.
He
El
accompanies
beer drink-
amigos
the
up
to
Commandante.
El Commandante finds the

able,
good, and the clearance He returns with papers in perfect order. us to the war-vessel for dinner.
cigars
El Capitan
is
a mighty
man
of valour.
choleric
He
has
curly yellow hair
and
The
blue
Path of the Conquistadores He possesses a sword a yard eyes.
and a half long. A dozen Mauser rifles to arm the crew are piled in the wardHis is an robe among his soiled linen.
important
post,
for
the
boat
dominates
of
all
this part of the river, to the terror
smugglers, except, of course, such as be amigos.
may
He
tells
mellows as the meal progresses, and of an arrest he made when he was
a policeman on land before he a ruler in the Presidente's navee.
became
"You know
San
at
the road from Paragua to
Felix," he starts.
out on the llanos

a woman's a
was once riding that way, and I stopped

I
"
house to drink
insisting
coffee.
heard
pedlar
that
she buy
something which she did not want to buy. I went in and he became polite and left.
was a Turk by which El Capitan probably means an Armenian. " Next I drank coffee and went on. day I was near there, and I noticed
I
noticed that he
"
152
Up
vultures
the Orinoco
wheeling around.
I
When
see
zamuros
and
I
always go look what is dead, found a Turkish woman and girl,

to
not long dead, with their eyes picked out.

I
went away and sent somebody

"
bury
I
them.
Now when
came
there,
to
San
I
Felix,
went into the inn
and
saw
that
same Turk eating dinner. When he saw me he went to his room without finish'That is queer,' I thought, and ing.
waited for him to come out.
to the landlord, to see him.'
I '
then said
I
Go
tell
the
Turk
want
The Turk
went
to
told the posadero,
am "So
sick
I
and cannot come.'

the
door
and
said,
Open, or I shoot you through the door." He did not open, so I kicked in the door and arrested him. 'You murdered that
'
woman and
shoot.' "
girl,'
said.
'
Confess, or
So he confessed. I sent word to the Jefe Civil to know what to do with him. The Turk offered
The
He

to his
much money and begged

said
be
let
off.
the
woman was
wife
and
;
they had quarrelled. But I would not word came to take him to Bolivar and
shoot
"
I
him
if
he tried to escape.
took a sergeant and two started for Bolivar. A mile

sergeant told the
men and
out
the
Turk to get down and Then he shot him tighten his saddle. One of the soldiers through the head. had a shovel, so we buried him and went
back.
That
if
is
what
to
is
meant by 'shoot
him
he
in
tries
escape.'
They were
me."
beer.
content
Bolivar
and
promoted
inspired
to
He
a
takes a gulp of the

is
warm
The Commandante
tale.
tell
"
One day when

I
was
stationed
at
was riding along the bank in the dusk, with the river below me, when I heard a I slid off my mule and groan.
Apure,
drew
my
revolver.
I
On my
down
hands
and
knees then
crawled
until I could
Up
see
the Orinoco
of a man's
?
the outline
'
outstretched
'
figure.
all
Esta Usted bueno

?
')
('
Are you
right
called out.
heard only a
I
groan.
asked again.
'
'Agua, agua,' the
man
the
called back,
die of thirst.'
came
down and saw he had been

neck.
I
I
shot behind
had a
flask
I
of white rum,
which
offered.
Then
went cautiously
in
to the river
and got water

tree
'
my
and
sombrero.
I
He
1
drank
it
in great gulps,
propped
:
him against a
Who
shot
it
wrote
you down.
and questioned him and I Lorenzo,'

'
Then
he
told
how
Lorenzo was jealous of him and coming back from a dance had shot him. I
dragged the wounded man to the road. After a time a mule-train came by. We
tied a blanket
him,
still
between two poles and put groaning, on to the stretcher

to town.
and took him 10 miles
He
died
a few days after. Lorenzo was identified by what I had written down and had to
go
to prison for a year."
The Path of the

Far
be
it
Conquistadores
Fitzgerald
to
from
be
stumped in such a competition. " While I was Prefect of Police

"
at
there Maragoto, in Peru," he began, occurred the murder of a very wealthy and important cattle-raiser named Rodri-
guez who had an estate a little distance from the city. In every way we tried to
find the murderers, but could not. " year later a man loafing in
the
market-place noticed two
foreign-looking
pass. they went by, one pointed out half a dozen blackbirds and remarked
men
As
to
the
'
other,
There
second
are
Rodriguez's
witnesses.'
The
'
man
laughed
Now Yes, there they still are.' Rodriguez was so important a man that he who heard the two became suspicious,
and
said,
and came and

I
I
told
'
me what had
passed.
said at once,
Those are the murderers.'
sent
and had
cells
separate
them arrested, kept in and lashed, until they
explained their words.

156
They
finally con-
Up
fessed.
the Orinoco
of
They had robbed Rodriguez

dollars
two
thousand
and
then
had
had begged for his but they feared he would tell the life, Before he died tale, and so killed him. a flock of blackbirds passed over, and he
murdered him.
He
lifted
his hands, saying
'
:
You
blackbirds
are witnesses
of
my
death.
See that
am
The Italians had gone to revenged.' Italy for a year, had spent the money,
to
and returned
witnesses
of
be
discovered
I
Rodriguez.
by the had them

the
shot next day." "Que maravilla!" exclaims
Com-
mandante.
"Es "Yo
posible?" asks El Capitan. a Usted que es le aseguro
la
verdad, palabra de caballero," says Fitzgerald without the quiver of an eyelid "on his faith as a cavalier 1"
The
through
leave
veracious
dinner.
tales
carry
us
well
We
go on shore and
clothes
some
soiled
with
'57
the
The Path of the

women washing
From
water.
in
Conquistadores
There are
halt their
the river.
no caiman so near El Capitan's Mausers.

time to time the
women
in
labour and
swim around
are
the shallow
They
the
only
is
people
in
Barrancas
the
eye,
who, so far as do a stroke of
visible to
work.
We
walk around and inspect the town. It is like Pedernales, a row of adobe houses,
the rough
beams
to the
inside
last
smoke-begrimed
and crude
in at
degree.
We
stop
a
the
one
place
of
entertainment
which
pool
the
town
affords
and watch
French
the
game on an
return
ancient
to
table.
We
A
presently
war-vessel
and shoot
at bottles
and turkey buzzards

to either.
without doing
little
much harm
gasolene
friend.
launch
"
stream rapidly nearing

Fitzgerald's
"
!
appears up town. This is
Hey,
Mattey,
Mattey and El Capitan cry in unison, " Mattey, " The launch comes alongside. Mattey
!
he shouts, and El
Commandante
158
Up
Two
jfrail
the Orinoco
Indian boys
small
about twelve
of the
years old are seated at

cockleshell.
the front
They
make
good
up.
[landing and Mattey himself climbs
;He
is
little
wizened Corsican,
rapid
fiery of
temper
and
of
speech.
He
is
[engaged in getting out timber on General JDesham's concession. Just at present he

is
cutting
telegraph-poles
electric-light
for
at
the
Pre-
tsidente's
i
Mattey is down now " ;due on the Delta,"
plant to see
Bolivar,
some people
which arrives the
from Trinidad. to-morrow day after " (" Bien stire he can and will supply us
lavith
enough gasolene
enough
to
go
to
San
Felix,
[perhaps
to get us to
this
is
Bolivar.
Being relieved on
sider dinner.
Ithat
I
score,
we
con-
What
our horror to find
while drinks, Worcester sauce, pepper,
baking-powder and vinegar abound, there are no tinned meats or fish or beans left.
Somebody with an enormous

been stealing.
It
appetite has
does not take long to
The Path of the

light
Conquistadores
charge
of
the
on Joe,
who had
keys to the lockers and lost them so that nothing could be locked up.
A
"
"
"
council of
war
is
held.
Shoot him," says El Commandante. Nobody will mind," adds El Capitan.
Throw him
is
overboard,"
for
"
says
'
Mattey.
"
'
Fitzgerald
him
Send marooning." back to Trinidad by the Delta,'

a
is
you suggest. Pending motion to whale him

carried
decision,
and executed.
of
We
unanimously go ashore and

price
buy
provisions
enormous
and
the
dubious pedigree.
Next
"
morning, while waiting
for
Mattey suggests that we drop down and call on the Germans who are.
Delta,"
putting
to
their
up
meat-extract
factory
jusfcj
beyond Barrancas.
We
take the launch
German
a
landing and find a big blond with a gang of men fishing out
car that has fallen into the river.
dump
160
We
follow the track a short distance in-
Up
land.
the Orinoco
Concrete buildings are in course of
them is a very cosy wooden house, of the most welcome

construction.
Beyond
contrast to the crazy shacks of Barrancas ^and Pedernales.
remarkably
good-looking
German
hausfrau appears for a moment, and a bare-legged blond boy comes around the
corner
looking like a youngster fresh from the beach of Scheporch,
of
the
Mr. Max Dude, the manager, veningen. hurries out and gathers us in. are invited to the forthcoming meal breakfast
We
or lunch, whichever one chooses to call
it.
The Dude family has come from some

place near the border-line
between Brazil
and
heard
Bolivia
of.
place
that
nobody ever
"It took
get back to
five
changes of steamers to
I
Hamburg," says Frau Dude

"
plaintively,
but
got
first
prize for
my
did
hat with the aigrette plumes

get home."
when
161
The

is
The meal
cooked.
"
Frau
echt Deutsch," and finely Dude explains that she
holds the whip over the cook personally or nothing would ever be right.
Herr Dude
thusian law.
"
is
banking
is
on
the
Mal-
Where
the world to get
meat
in the next fifty years ?

is
The United
States
raising
own
use.
barely enough for its Australia Argentina and
supply England now. Prices are always Venerising, and there is never enough.
zuela
is
it
the
is
and
only great cattle area left, have almost untouched.
We
moved up
steamers
here and
settled
where ocean
can
ship
come and
We
can't
much
tap Venezuela. beef yet, but we
begin and get the start for the future. After a while we will have here places
like
Armours', and these will be German/ " The " Delta is due at four o'clock, and
watch the stays for only an hour. Herr Dude disdains the clock anxiously.
it
We
"
Delta";
162
he
bets
Mattey
bottle
of
Up
the Orinoco
champagne she won't be in that night. But about six she appears. We make an engagement for dinner at seven to pay bets, and hurry for our launch. Hon. Robert Henderson, United States Consul at Ciudad Bolivar, Henry Wadsworth, a
young American engineer coming

the Presidente's electric
down
plant,
to put in
and an assortment of Venezuelan

are
beauties
Fitzgerald lines the officers up at the bar to see if he can

jolly
on
board.
them
off
is
into
breaking
his
It
the
law
and
putting
some of
own gasolene
which
on board.
does not work this
time, so
we have to fall back on Mattey. Later we go up with the timber-cutter

his
to
bachelor
The house has

appearance as the
in
quarters in Barrancas. the same tumble-down

rest.
The
rear half
is
Mattey lives in the first two rooms, which are furnished with a table, a hammock, and a barrel of gasolene. We
ruins.
load
some of our empty
cans,
take a cup
163

of very good coffee, and then to the German's.
It is
start
back
a wild
night at Dude's.
We
are
the only even partly-civilized people
whom
as
they have seen for months.

is
Frau Dude
Gallic salt
charming,
Fitzgerald
erudition.
entertaining
real
ever,
and Mattey shows
and surprising
his, "
remark of
characterizing work in Venezuela as a filling of the jars of the Danaides,"

startlingly in our environment.
comes
When
pounds
the
"
Delta
"
bet has been
paid
two or three times

addition to his
Fitzgerald proto the unsuspecting Teuton the
over,
gang of labourers of one able-bodied wharf-rat named Joe, strong,

courageous, accustomed to turning heavy
flywheels.
assents Herr Dude Gewiss, gewiss willingly, for labour is hard to get up
!
"
"
here.
This seems hardly
fair to
the host, so
you intimate, as
164
tactfully as possible, lest
Up
is
the Orinoco
he back out of the bargain, that the aforesaid Joe, while possessing many virtues,
not likely to achieve nervous breakdown by reason of too great industry and has
a remarkable appetite for goods left unlocked.
"
rum and canned

says Herr Dude.
Der Schweinhund Never mind, he can't

1
"
"
steal
my
donkey-
engine.
The cook
will
I
give him plenty

take him."
up.
bananas and cassava.
is
Fairly late the party breaks left like Dido on the bank.
Joe
capto
The
tain is able to navigate the
"Geraldo"
Mattey's lumber-camp, a mile up stream on the right bank.

camp-fires are burning when we "'The arrive, but not a soul is to be seen.
The
Indians don't
says,
know
"
;
the
launch,"
Mattey
are a laughing commission." This seems rather an ex-
they think
we
treme view to take regarding government by commission, but Mattey explains Taxes have been imposed upon the
: *
165
The

which
they
can't
Indians
pay.
Then
them
to
commissions
come
and
seize
work off the taxes. So the men take the woods when an official appears."
Mattey shouts
lustily into the
to
darkness
of the night, calling certain names. The camp consists of a dozen shelters
of palm
trees
thatch,
each built between two

stretched
in
and
having a hammock
Fires
to
underneath.
are
alight
three
or four places
quitoes.
drive
The head
on
a
away the mosof a huge fish is

of
saplings.
it,
roasting
framework
in
We
red
sample a piece of
berries
and also the

on
the
lying
gourd
ground.
Some
sharp eyes eventually recognize
Mattey and the Indians hear his shouts and come back a half-dozen men and
as
many women and

clothes.
children.
Some
of
them wear
hammocks.
1
They go
tranquilly
to their fires
and presently to their little By and by Mattey climbs
66
Up
bar,
the Orinoco
down
the mosquito
into his, after pulling
and we go back
to the. boat.
Charlie has fixed up our mosquito net. But here you, taking as a proven premise
that
the net
is
no good
for
keeping out
mosquitoes, try a new method for beatNo one ever heard of a turtle ing them.
being troubled by mosquitoes
obviously
you must adopt

inflated
his
mattress
Now the system. that so nearly saw
service as a life-preserver is covered with
a case of heavy canvas. Taking out the rubber air-mattress there is left a canvas
bag 7
feet long,
wriggle into. cover all your

"
I
and just wide enough to You crawl inside this and

head
except
your
nose
with a bath towel.

don't see
how you
can stand
it,"
says
Fitzgerald, getting under his mosquito net. Turkish bath is better to sleep in
"A
than a menagerie," you retort from the depths of the bath towel.
It
works
like
a charm.
Breathing
167
is
Up
observed in
administration.
the Orinoco
under a
New York
the
Tammany
camp, one of Mattey's Guaranos skins our monkey. This and

in
Back
the
dove
we
eat.
The Indians make

crane.
away with the hawk and the

Charlie
mentality
"
I
unsuspected sentidevelops about sampling the monkey.

if
eat
him
you
do,
sir,"
he
finally
says
plaintively.
very large Charlie disposing of his
The monkey is not and we consume most of it,

full
share once
little
he has started.
Except
for
being a
a
tough the
In
the
coriara
flesh is
very good. afternoon we take
and paddle up a little is only 30 feet wide where it joins the Orinoco, but which widens beyond to
200
diles
feet.
dugout river which
There should have been crocoin
here
numbers,
but
at
cleaned out,
we
learn,
they were the rate of
two hundred a night by some Swedish

pot-hunters a while ago.
169
The
We

shoot four divers, but can
recover
only one.
bottom.
They disappear permanently when wounded, apparently clinging to the
Some
inland
distance
up
the
this
river
we
strike
towards
savanna.
For
we go through woods without underbrush. Then there is a

quarter of a mile
treeless
as
place with sabre-grass as high the head. dense hot moist jungle
follows, impassable
are
stretch
following. of grass,
save by the trail we Then comes a half-mile

waist-high.
Another
group of chapparal-trees appears, looking

like a
gnarled orchard, the trunks spaced

to
40
feet
60
feet
done.
plains
Finally of coarse grass

high.
;
apart as if artificially comes the savanna, or
6 inches
isolated
to
12
inches
few
thickets
show up here
distance.
the mountains are in the
herd
of
wild
cattle
is
browsing on a distant stretch of llanos, but the binoculars show no game in sight.
170
Up
The sun
the
is
the Orinoco
so
blistering,
we
paddle down and start up the Orinoco once more.

coriara,
get back to to the launch,
We
Los
in
pass the battlemented
heights
of
where young Raleigh fell the assault of San Thom6, and arrive
Castillos,
next day late at
San
Felix.
This
is
the
most pretentious place yet. The town stands on the top of a high bank, where a column of mottled stone commemorates
some forgotten
general.
herd of
fine-
looking beeves is grazing on the slope. Burros loaded with balata, just in from
the
rubber
of
forests,
relieved
prairie
their
waiting to be burdens. four-mule
stand
schooner jingles past on the road to the Callao mining district, 100 miles
away. After
the
usual
Commandante we
Colon.
proceedings with the go up to the Hotel
kept by a Corsican, immiPictures grated only four months ago. of Napoleon deck his walls. slovenly
This
is
171
The

but equally slovenly and a stark-naked baby comis
wife, a good-looking,
belle-s&ur,
plete his family.
A travelling theatrical
with
Rios,
"
them.
It
troupe consists of
stopping
los
M. de
master
Prestidigitateur Oriental Blak Arts,''
and
of
and Miss Judhit,
singer and puppet-manipulator. The Professor is clean-shaven and very thin. He wears a skin-tight brown pepper-and-
Miss Judhit is tall, gaunt, and She wears angular, and has dark eyes. a red gauze waist, and keeps a tame
salt suit.
parakeet
on
the
tree
in
the
courtyard. aspect
An
English engineer down from the mines
of
is
doleful
on hand.
He
smokes a pipe constantly and never says An elderly local a word to anybody.
financial
prejudice against a bearded Corsican merchant from shaving, Callao, and a young Spanish-German,
light
with
son of a big merchant in Bolivar, complete the quota of guests. 172
Up
We
get
the Orinoco
rather
good
dinner
at
the Hotel Colon.
Fitzgerald considers it due to Lord Byron to make violent love

to
Miss Judhit, which does not

de los Rios.
in
the
least trouble Professor
They
that
are to give a
is,
performance to-night
probably.
The
Professor fears
that
everybody will be down on the riverbank to watch the " Delta," now due from
Ciudad Bolivar.
We
town
thing.
encourage
him and
offer
helpful
suggestions.
in
procession through the costume would be the proper

the
"
!
"Only
"
priest
is
allowed
to
have
processions
The
the Professor says listlessly. priest can't have them here," cuts
in the Corsican
merchant.
"
They threw
the last
"
padre
into the river."
that does not help me," protests the Professor.
But
"Hire men
to
go down
'
to
the bank
and, as soon as the
Delta
'
leaves, shout
The
*
Let us go to the performance of Pro" fessor de los Rios,' suggests Fitzgerald. He shakes his head dolefully. " But
out,
we can
on an
let
off fireworks,'
he adds, as
the
if
inspiration.
When
"
nine o'clock comes,

"
billed,
perfor-
mance being
a las 8 y media en
punto sharp, we help set off fire-crackers and sky-rockets in the hotel courtyard.
Nobody bothers about the sparks which fly down onto the thatched roofs of the
town.
In
people,
the
next
hour
half
or
so,
some
fifty
a
in,
good
of
them
children,
slouch
We, who
Patrons
chairs
in
its
bringing their own chairs. rank as Charter Members and
of the Arts,
the
front
pre-empt
row. a
The
bench
rockingorchestra
takes
place
on
near
the
curtain.
orchestra consists of a leader, Big Guitar, a Trinidad mulatto in grey overalls
The
and
undershirt
Big
Mandolin,
Up
Zambo
yellow shoes
linen
Little
the Orinoco
combination, in
or Negro-Indian
with
needle-shaped yellow a or Guitar, mestizo,
Spanish-Indian half-breed, in blue overalls with a red bandana neckcloth Man;
dolin, a full-blooded Indian with
a sailor
police
cap
force,
and
in
brown
trousers.
The
a dusky undershirt, beats back the children with the flat of his sabre.
The
overture
is
a local danza
los
air.
Professor
de
Rios
finally
appears
in blue dress-coat
and knee trousers and
the
He borrows a performance begins. handkerchief from a lady, and while a
of expectation surges through the crowd, he cuts a hole in it. One peon
thrill
wants to be shown
the original.
if
this
handkerchief
is
Professor angrily protests and aims a pistol at the interloper,
The
who cows down behind the man in front. The people on the line of fire edge to one
side.
There
is
gasp
of
horror
and
fires.
everybody ducks as the Professor
The
But

part of the show.
intact
in
it is all
The handlittle
kerchief descends
pararelief
chute from the ceiling.
Immense
and thunderous applause from the rather nervous audience. Bows from the Professor
and music by the
orchestra.
A
the
long entr'acte follows, during which row of piccaninnies look with open
at the ceiling
mouth
fell.
whence the parachute

is
The
Professor
not
crowding
little
attractions.
He
to
opens the curtain a

Fitzgerald,
"
and beckons
back
there
who goes
in
behind the scenes.

grinning.
The captain is soon The Professor says
only two pesos. These people have sneaked in from be-
have
been
paid
hind."
Fitzgerald
gets the pot lord with an
makes himself a
up
to five pesos.
collecting
agent, and by the help of a dollar of yours
The
is
land-
improvised bar thriving trade, meanwhile.
doing a
sing a
Miss Judhit comes on now

176
to
Up
the Orinoco
song. Big Guitar is to accompany her. After jockeying for a start they get away,
but something goes wrong. The impassioned ditty dies down and Miss Judhit You can glares wickedly at Big Guitar.
imagine the Duchess of Alice in Wonderland" ordering " Off with his head!"
"
They
wilts
try
again.
Poor
acid
trails
Big
Guitar
is
flustered
by
his
previous
failure
and
the
beneath
the
air
frown
off
of
senorita.
The
in
doleful
discords.
mutters
Miss Judhit stamps her foot, a "Caramba!" and flees from
the stage.
The
is
Professor
nervously
comes
for-
ward and explains that the accompanist

inexperienced, but that he himself will do the wonderful lost-coin trick. Miss
Judhit holds the glass,
glaring
now and
again at the unlucky Big Guitar, between her professional smiles at the audience.
The
in
coin
is
of course miraculously found

ear,
a N
negro boy's
much
to
his
I
sur-
77
The
prise

and that of
ends.
his friends.
With
this
the
show
After due felicitations to

sleepily
the troupe
river,
we stumble
back to the
and out to bed, via a plank and a schooner to which we have tied.
We
inspect next day the
falls
of the
Caroni, set in
the
tropic
forest,
one of
" the most beautiful sights possible that wonderful breach of waters," Raleigh
described
it.
We
his
take
the
Commanand
the
dante
and
the
guitar
along
Spanish-German youth.
On
way we break a
mirror,
and
return to find that our gasolene will not take us to Bolivar and that the reserve
" Delta" supply expected on the returning has not come. A telegram says it is on Five days' the way in a sailing vessel.
dead
loss,
waiting at San
Felix,
is
the
significance of this. It cannot be borne.
Several
the
sailing-
vessels
are
at
anchor before
to
town.
You send word

178
the
captain
of each
Up
that
the Orinoco
will receive
any one
the large
at
sum
of five pesos
who
will
sail
once and
take you
is
to Bolivar.
Only one captain

he
is
willing to negotiate
sailing next
day anyway. This officer sends back word that he

will consider the offer,
which
is
not very
to
promising, so Just as the

Charlie comes
we
all
go ashore
is
for lunch.
meal
about
"
begin
The captain up panting. You sail-boat say he go Bolivar now." take precipitate leave of Fitzgerald, and
start for the river. "
I'll
meet you
at
Mannoni's Hotel,"
the
coriara
he
calls.
You
jump
into
which
serves as tender, hurriedly load in two tins of sardines, a piece of cheese and a can
of corn, and
Dios."
climb aboard the " Hijo de

is
The boat
auxiliary
sloop,
lateen
in
sail
rigged with an which is used as a

before
spinnaker
running
the
wind.
179
The
A
microscopic cabin like a well lies just forward of the tiller. One coriara is
towed
smaller dugout is lying on the deck, which is covered with a mess of disordered ropes and blocks.
astern,
red,
another
The
blue,
its
and yellow
is
flag of
Vene-
zuela with
seven stars
a
floats at the peak.
The
captain
thin,
hawk-nosed
a
mestizo in an undershirt and once white

trousers.
The
first
officer
is
tough-
looking indeterminate who stands by the villainous set of three deckers, helm.
including the dirtiest cocinero that ever maltreated victuals, complete the crew.
The
girls,
other passengers
all
are
four Indian
smoking cigars, three naked The girls' children and one Zambo peon. baggage consists of a bunch of bananas, some pieces of cactus, a parrot tied by one leg, and a puppy.
The
trade
vessel gets under
way with a good

sit
wind behind
at
about half past one
on Sunday.
1
The
captain gives you, to
80
Up
upon,
mast,
the Orinoco
tarpaulin against shade of the sail.
a
in
heap
the
of
the
The
cocinero lights a fire of faggots in
a big
wooden
box with
coffee,
sand
is
in
its
bottom,
and brews
passed around. The ladies puff at their cigars. One of the children, apparently not over three
years old, picks sucks at it.
which
up
his mother's stub
and
We
ably
read and
smoke and look stupidly

and wriggle uncomfort-
at the landscape,
all
through the long afternoon. The cook makes up a dinner consisting of

coffee, boiled rice,
cassava bread, and the

this
stringiest
leather.
and toughest beef
side of
Presently the passengers compose themThe Indians lie wedged selves to sleep.
like
sardines
on the roof of the cabin.

;
You
are just behind the mast the comes and curls up beside you.
puppy
All through the early part of the night the captain, the mate, and the Zambo
181
The

at
top of their voices. Occasionally they shriek in falsetto. The discussion seems to be about an infini-
peon argue
the
tesimal
fully
sum
of
money.
You
doze
fit-
through it, while with a strong wind behind the boat is ploughing its
way up
stream.
is
Suddenly there
of feet
chorus of
cries,
stamping rattling of ropes. The boom swings over in a jibe. The throat halyards of the lateen sail part,
and
and
comes down with a bang, knocking one of the crew into the river. The
it
night
reigns.
is
pitch dark
After
confusion of the pit you have been walked

;
over, the
dog stepped
generally,
on,
and everything
bedevilled
and we
things are fixed up go on again, the castaway climb-
ing back complacently. With malicious frequency
now
find
the
boom swings
head
in
across,
and you
your
the scuppers, your feet high up to windward, and have to crawl around.
182
Up
About one
in
the Orinoco
the
morning the night is so dark that the mate does not dare sail any more for fear of the rocks, and he
drops anchor. The negro passenger comes and sleeps beside you, the captain climbs
into the
dugout on deck, the mate curls

tiller.
up by
his
Before daybreak you awake, stiff from the hard deck. The parrot is screeching and there is a flat calm. The cook
makes more
arises.
coffee
and passes
little
it
around.
In a couple of hours a
puffy breeze
We
river.
lift
anchor and crawl slowly
up the
noon
Until about three o'clock in the afterthis
weather continues and we adsnail's pace.
vance at a
The sun
is
like
the opening of a furnace, beating down from above. The only shade is forward
of the mast, where there
is
no room
the
to sit
and where and

its
the
filth
of
cook-stove
smell are worse almost than the
torrid sun,
which continues to glare down

183
The
on
us
savagely all through the day. The captain has an old umbrella, under which he reads a Spanish edition of
Dumas'
the
"
Deux
Diane."
The Indians and

the
crew are
used
to
climate
and
roast stoically.
quite unheralded, a swirl of dust appears on a sandbank of the left shore a mile away.
"
In the middle of the afternoon,
Chubasco
"
!
pointing to
cries "
it.
the
mate
excitedly,
Chubasco"!
One
of the
dangerous storms peculiar to the Orinoco is upon us. The captain shouts an order
and
crew jump to their lower everything but the jib.

the
that
stirs,
all
feet
and
for
Save
dust-whirl
in
the
is
distance
like glass.
nothing
and the water

a
Then
in
moment comes
a rush of wind.
The
lightning flashes, dark clouds appear from nowhere and pour down a deluge
of rain.
The passengers
;
get
under
tarit
paulins and cower

it
the sailors take

in a
as
comes and are drenched

184
moment.
Up
down.
the Orinoco
the
out.
In half an hour
storm
Sail
is
has died
hoisted,
You
crawl
and
we
is
parted halyard reach the spot where the negro peon
with
only
another
to land.
is
His
coriara,
which was towed
brought alongside and loaded with bananas and sugar-cane from the
astern,
hold.
With
as
praiseworthy
dexterity
the
crew
cane
steal several
they passenger counts out some

captain and pushes
off.
bananas and pieces of pass these down. The
money
but
to the
Night comes on
again,
afar
off
is
we
rain
see
the
lights of
Bolivar.
There
drizzle
almost
is
no
wind.
falling.
A slight We go up a
At
last
of
dangerous
anchor
:
channel with rocks like a manatee's back,

close alongside.
we
cast
before the town.
It is half
have been thirty-six

Felix.
we hours out from San

past one
you could stand anything save staying on the "Hijo de Dios" another
feel
You
that
185
The
night.
it
Luggage cannot be landed, because But must pass the custom-house.

in
bedraggled khaki, can land if fancy moves. The dugout takes you to a bank so steep that you have to use
you,
hands and knees to scramble up. Covered with sand and dirt, which stick to your wet clothes, you reach the parapet and
start
to
find
a hotel.
The
street
is
lamps
sight.
are
burning, but not a soul

little
in
way down you meet
a drunken
sailor.
He
can
hardly
is
less talk.
Farther on
navigate, much a boyish sentry

;
with a long Mauser musket

leaves
his
he politely
"Gran" You push in through the door and try to wake a negro boy asleep in a hammock.
post and guides you to the Hotel.
No He
idea whatever can penetrate his head. falls into a doze as he stands. At
length a mulatto
"
woman
rooms
with a candle
appears.
No
go
rooms
1
"
!
she says hospitably.
no away Arguments
86
Up
avail
is
the Orinoco
Besides,
as
nothing.
little
the the
stone
"
floor
as
inviting
Hijo
de
Dios" deck.
Out
and
the cold world you stumble into the market

into
go again and the

the
says,
finally,
Barracks.
south.
"
An
Hotel
old
woman
turns to
I"
Espana esa
she
it
pointing.
You
stalk over, find

in another
and wake a mestizo

In
this
hammock.
establishment they are used to parties arriving late and in a battered state. The mestizo leads you upstairs
and you thread your way between other hammocks to where he opens the door
of
bare,
brick-floored
room with
It
chair
and a cot constructed of
sailcloth
stretched
upon a frame.
Calypso's
Isle,
has the sem-
blance of a bed.
cast
Feeling
to
on
Ulysses without any

the cot
like
Calypso,
fall
you drop on into a dead sleep.
and
187
V
THE CITY OF BOLIVAR
A T
^ *
six
o'clock
toilet
you wake, make such as is possible under the
circumstances, and breakfast at the hotel.
As you have
de
best to
a letter to the Administrator;!
Aduana, General
present
it
Navarro,
it
seems
your armament General Navarro

"
before trying to bring ashore.

is
the soul of courtesy
" We hean Expect a while," he says. from Trinidad that you were coming You " expect" a while, chatting an
!
smoking
his cigarettes.
to
agreeably surprised
Presently you an be told that you
belongings
are below,
ready to be take
a
away.
goods,
188
He
and
has
sent
man
to get
you
has
passed
them
throug
The
City of Bolivar
without a look or charge. peon whom he designates as your porter is directed

to take
kept
your luggage to the Hotel Cyrnos, by Mannoni, late of Corsica, and
thither
you duly
follow.
The
city of Bolivar looks far less
weird
in the daylight
than
it
did
in the night.
tree-shaded walk along the bank where the band plays in the afternoon stretches
in
front
of
the
Calle
de Orinoco, the
main business
street.
The
:
river
sweeps
for
by
the
below with
shores
rapid
current,
the
sharply here, giving " .!name of Angostura"
town
the
its
converge former
Narrows.
big rounded mid-stream.
rock breasts the current in
The business houses
are
solidly built,
many with
the
"
lofty
galleries projecting over
sidewalk.
porters,
The American flour imDalton & Co., who have a

of
this
monopoly
steamer
business,
their
face
the
landing
with
big
arched
189
The
City of Bolivar
Farther along is the office and house of ;he President of the State of Bolivar
\ristides
Telleria
for
whom
cut
is
the
tele-
are jraph-poles riend Mattey.
being
by
your
crowd
outside his
loor talking with
his private sentry
and
a
vaiting for an audience.
Beyond
this
narrow
its
street
with
lowing gutter down he steep hill.
middle leads up
begin,
We
over
the
mmpy
)n
cobble-stones,
side
a laborious
climb.
each
or
are
solid
ne
two
stories
square houses, high, with barred
/indows and a wide doorway. Absolutely nlike Trinidad, with its wooden buildigs embowered in palms and flowers re these white, yellow, and slate-coloured
ouses in
<ther,
solid
blocks
one against
the
barred and shuttered like prisons. At intervals you get a glimpse through
a
doorway and see the central courtyard

fountain
nth
playing or a burro sanding ready saddled beneath the arch191
The
way.
barred,

At
the
window
of one house, iron-
provided with
curtains, a girl is
neither glass nor sewing. These Bolivar
buildings are like the villas uncovered at Pompeii, of frowning exteriors and smiling
courts, into
whose brightness the
living-
rooms open through big doorways. At length Mannoni's Hotel is reached.
The
brother of the
finished
his
proprietor,
who
has
recently
time in the French

to
Army, and threatens

he
"
go back because,
pretty
says,
There are not enough
girls in
Bolivar," leads the
way
to a perairy
fectly clean
room looking out on an

Three
palm-planted courtyard. baths are just around the corner.
shower-
You
at
are just in
time for the half-past

tables
eleven meal.
There are two main

in
Mannoni's
the
the breeze-swept
room
between
quiet,
One, serious, courtyards. heavy, is the Anglo-Saxon table,
where they put German drummers and

stray English travellers.
192
The
other
is the
The
City of Bolivar
Latin table, where Corsicans and Spanish flourish, where M. Mannoni himself sits
and where another M. Mattey lays down This table is the law amid difficulties.
in
constant
state
of
effervescence,
of
explosions,
of vivid
words
and
far-
flung gestures.
to S.
By
virtue of your letter
Jos
Aquatella,
you
are
seated
here.
As you
Mannoni
revolver,
enter a great discussion is on. has just exhibited an ancient
with
the
proud statement that

it
his great-grandfather carried

fight against the "
in Paoli's
Genoese.
Mais,
c'est
impossible/'
M. Mattey
is
"
affirming.
Revolvers were not invented
until fifty years ago."
Henderson, the veteran United States Consul, from a small table

3f his
Mr.
Robert
Latin,
own midway between Saxon and stands by M. Mattey. "We did

such
as
lot
have cartridges
that
would
Civil
nto
o
revolver until
the
go War.
193
The

teeth were enlisted
Only men with good
because they had to bite off the cartridges." Here a Corsican from San Felix breaks
in
with
the statement
"
:
know Manall
noni's
men
family in Corsica, and were hunters and soldiers.
the
So
the
revolver
must have come from

the
;
his great-
grandfather."
"The Germans had
first
cartridges
that is why they with their needle-guns beat us in 1870," says M. Mattey.
The argument
detached
is
still
going
the
on
in
fragments
when
divers
to
merchants leave the table to go down

their business.
An
little,
envoy from General weazened Venezuelan
Navarro,
official,
a
ar-
rives "
somewhat
later
in
the
afternoon.
to
his
The
Presidente
invites
you
house
at four o'clock,
and
I,
who manage
various
hotel
languages, will
and
purport
accompany
of
his
meet you at the This is you."
the
message.
You
are
194
The
tempted
to
City of Bolivar
"
"
suggest
refrain.
mangle
for
manage, but
In the interim you visit the Consulate Mr. Robert the of United States.
Henderson supplies you with American papers only a month or so old and
mangoes, grown on his brother's estate, which taste like peaches. Just outside the Consulate windows,
some
grafted
sunlight of the river-bank, the American electrical Wadsworth,

in
the
hot
engineer,
is
who came up on
a
the
"
Delta,"
superintending
gang
a
of the
of
twenty
of
stevedores,
busy
flywheel
hauling
section
the
great
Presidente's
idlers
electric-light
plant.
Many
are
looking on. The scene presents a picture of peace " beneath the hot sun. You should have
seen
the
plaza
is
yonder
in
when General
was
the
Castro,"
"
I
Matos,
in
who
now
the Cabinet,
insurrection
against
dreamily.
Consul
observes
did
not
The
think

I
ought
to
leave
the
post,
so
here. Two men were behind stayed each of those trees firing across the river at Soledad, where the Government troops
were.
We
was
had these windows barricaded

anything
to
with sacks of flour and balata
we
could
firing
get so continuous you
turn
bullet.
The
not
could
hear the separate shots. It was a grinding roar like a coffee-mill.
"They
he
charge
fight,
tell
I
continues.
"
you, like devils/' saw the insurrectos

troops,
the
Government
machete
against rifles. They came round that corner too quick and close for the regulars to kill. The revolutionists were splitting
heads
fifty
like
coco-nuts.
One hundred and

Don't
men
killed out in front there.

tell
let
any one
a joke.
Two
you these Revolutions are thousand men killed out of

is
what they did here. The cemetery of La Trinidad, where the insurgents of the town were attacked
seven thousand engaged
196
The
City of Bolivar
by Castro's men, was simply heaped with bodies. Go and look at that lamp-post
over
by
Wadsworth
before
you
it
leave.
Those holes are from Mauser
bullets."
Wadsworth has
and tackle
wheel.
post,
hitched
to
a block
to give a purchase for his flystroll
You
across.
in
In the lampdiameter,
there
some 4
twenty-two
inches
holes.
are
In a telegraph-
pole farther along there are thirteen.

"
What's up?" asks Wadsworth.

tell
You
"
him
that
you are looking
at
the bullet-holes.
"I saw them, and thought somebody had done it with a He wipes his forehead and pick." observes cynically: "I'm glad the army
I
Gee
"
he says
is
good
for fighting.
They
sent part of
it
down to the men

engage
dollars a
help pull up this machinery and weren't worth a whoop. I had to

these
stevedores,
who
get
two
Army.
day instead of eight cents, like the Gee but I'm having a time with
I
197
The

They
told
I
this little plant.
me
the founda-
tions were all ready
and
up the machinery. When found they had made the concrete without gravel and the holes for the engine bedplate
only had to set I got here I
were 8 inches out of

isn't
it
true.
And
as
slow!
This
say
;
the
land of manana,
they
is
the land of
pasado manana
the day after to-morrow."
about time to go to the Presidente, so you return to the hotel and wait for
It is
your
escort.
He comes
seat
soon,
takes
refreshment with you, and then leads the
way
to
the
of
government.
The
sentry presents arms and a black servant in civilian clothes takes in your card.
You
are
ushered
the
into
parlour
over-
beautiful market-place. jaguar rug on the floor, dainty Parisian furniture, and a few engravings are its
looking
furnishing.
Almost immediately comes

looking
198
in
a fine-
man
of about forty, with a deter-
The
movement.
"
City of Bolivar
in
mined-looking jaw and energy
every
His Excellency General Aristides Tel-
leria,"
says your guide, introducing you. "Sea Usted bien venido," he remarks.
"We
ling
do not get many Americans

for
travelis
pleasure
here.
The senor
welcome guest."
You
tesies
express
appreciation
of the cour-
the
extended by the Custom House and officials up the river, to which he
responds by a deprecatory shrug. asks about the hunting on the way.

"
I
He
have hunted
all
around
my own
here.
estates in Coro," he says,
"but not
This State of Bolivar
is
as large as France,
and
it
You
about
'
keeps one somewhat occupied." mention having seen his telegraph-
poles in process of delivery,
and he asks
ready
for
how
many
are
lying
shipment.
and the roads are just a beginning," he comments. "We need

electric light
The
199
The
so

here
sewers,
much
pull.
a railroad into
good waterworks, But it is a the interior.

is
long
There
for a
so
little
population,
and save
few merchants the people

incidentally that
are so poor."
You remark
you have
seen the river and hope to see something of the interior. Rather to your surprise
he says at once, " I will arrange it," and adds the Castilian formula to the effect
that his house
is
"
yours
mismo que
si
estuviera in
Haga Usted lo su casa." You

leave.
pay your respects and presently
Passing up the street, you step in upon Senor Jos Aquatella, who takes you to
the Club
Union Commercial.
sit
He
orders
together on the broad portico overlooking the Calle de Orinoco and the river.
two lemonades, and you
"Sans
cellent
blague, the Presidente
is
an ex-
" He is one of the man," he says. best Governors we have ever had, always working to improve the roads and to en-
200
The
City of Bolivar
Presidente can courage cattle-breeding. do much. He is a Satrap, supreme over

!
the entire State.
If the
other Governors
were
like
our General
and would
this
help,
i!
much The
could
be done with
country.
sleeping riches here are beyond belief. are simply pecking at the
We
edges.
Nobody knows what

Guiana
officials just
is
in
the
interior of this
district.
But so
many
milk the cow!
Et
la
vache, c'est nous."
We
river.
sip the "
lemonade and look

mind,"
stands
city.
at the
Never
still
he
finally
says.
"
Bolivar
up
above
there
watching over the

look at him."
Let us go and
late
hill
In the cool
of the
afternoon
to
its
we
the
climb the
jl
cobble-paved
in
sumand
and
mit,
j
where
the
square
beside
cathedral,
!
surrounded
by
palms
flowers, stands the statue of Bolivar
the effigies
of the
four
Republics
made
from
the
land
he
won
Venezuela,
201
The
worn
ingly

Bolivia,
Colombia,
and Peru.
The
thin
features of El Libertador look brood-
the city in which he was elected President of Greater Colombia, and
down over
from which he started the great winter march across the Andes to break the back-
bone of Spanish rule on the continent. We go down to Mannoni's for dinner.
One by one
the guests stroll
in.
Wads-
worth comes back and changes from his Mr. Henderkhaki to a shirt and collar.
son appears, then two then three Corsican
German drummers,
traders
and
an
English
tourist
whom
his
nothing
pleases.
M.
with
Mattey
a
is
and
nephew
arrived.
to
enter
young Cuban
expounding
just
M.
Mattey
"
him volubly
"
ici
il
the merits of the city.
Voyez vous," he
la
declares,
I
n'y
a pas de
fivre.
have
lived
I
here
ill
sixteen years,
and the only time
was
was once when I got very angry at a man. Un accs de rage me rendait malade. Of
202
The
course,
it
City of Bolivar
hot at
112
in
is
this
time,
but not
very
day.
it
92
to
the
middle of the
is
The average temperature

fairly cool generally
80, and
is
by night."
The gong sounds

u
for
seven o'clock.
Allons diner," says Mannoni. "You should say 'Allons souper," observes M. Mattey, correcting him.
Mannoni
his
is
wounded
to the quick that
language and the regime of his establishment should be so questioned. He " diner" and nothing declares that it is
else.
is
The rest of the table at which he now officiating is behind him. Mattey
But
if
adroitly shifts his ground.
you took your next meal at four o'clock in the morning, it would be
dejeuner,
"
and
you
would
have had no
souper."
This
possible
puzzles
Mannoni
a repast
sadly.
is
Every
hour
title
for
imagined,
and
says
its
all
discussed.
Sefior Aquatella
depends upon whether you wear

203
The
M. Tomasi opines that it is decided by whether you go to sleep before or after. M. Vicentini believes that
a dress-suit.
you take white coffee the meal is breakManfast, and black coffee it is supper.
if
appealed to as a soldier. He replies that in barracks every meal is " called a pail of slops," which the guests
is
noni's brother
take as a point scored on
Mannoni,
at
which they laugh uproariously. This question gets no nearer settlement

than
did
the
revolver
problem.
stroll
After
dinner most of the residents
down
to the club for billiards, cards, or to talk

politics.
The
others
sit
and smoke around
the courtyard, and drops off to bed.
very early everybody
When
"
El Luchador," the daily paper

is
of Bolivar,
brought around, the wave of

is
discussion waxes hot, although it most innocuous sheet ever printed.

half the paper
is
the
About
and third
204
given up to first, second, advertisements of balata-con-
The
cession
City of Bolivar
official
claims,
pronunciamientos
regarding cattle in the city limits, thatch on houses, and such technical details.
Among
the advertisements the familiar
Allcock's porous plaster spreads its sticky " Pildoras." lure, flanked by many sorts of
A woman
powder
his
in
wood-cut begs her husband,

glass, to put a certain
whose hand clasps a

into
his
for
coffee.
This
appetite
drinking,
which
will "
kill
is
vice
and
will ruin
Diaz
announces
One Dr. us." " cultivated to

"
Diaz y
society
is
and
to the public in general
that he
a " Cirujano Dentista de la Illustre UniSome versidad Central de Venezuela."
eminently safe and sane leading articles on the Bolivian Medical Congress, the
celebration of the 5th of July, the Cattle
Pest,
the
"
Labor Noble" of the
office-
holders,
and a few foreign cables constitute
the reading matter.
Fitzgerald appears a few days after your arrival. He has measured the Falls of
205
The

has come to the conclusior
the power for an inland railPending an application for a powei
is
is
Caroni, and
that here
road.
plant and railway concession, he
goin^
back to Trinidad on some mysterious bui
pressing business. After a day's stay h( " leaves by the Delta," promising to meel
you
at
Port of Spain.
You
M.
gradually peddle off your letters Jules Tomasi, the Corsican wine-
merchant, puts you up indefinitely at the Club Union Commercial, of which Senoi
Josd
Aquatella
is
President
and
Mannoni
is
Secretary.
M. Santos
Palazz:
at his
desk in the big warehouse,

lie
when
H(
balata, hides, machetes, wines,
rum, tools
and saddlery
is
in picturesque piles.
a splendidly set-up man of about thirtyfive, clean-shaven, save for a moustache
a keen sportsman, President of th< local Gun Club and of an incipient Yachl
is
He
Club, and owner of the stallion which

the last two years has 206
foi
won
the Bolivar races
m
A BELLE OF BOLIVAR
The
He
City of Bolivar
to
takes you up
his
residence
in
the Calle de Constitucion, to meet Senora

Palazzi.
Their home
of
is
on the
second
story
an
old,
hill
thick-walled
house,
the
up the
Spanish In near Mannoni's.
hall-way beside the courtyard are a dozen deer-horns, trophies of bygone

hunts.
Light mahogany furniture is in A gilt cabinet for little curios the rooms.
contains nuggets, carved ivories, and
silver.
Dutch
Senora Palazzi, a slight vivacious Caralatest Parisian mode, cefia, clad in the English and French greets you here.
she
speaks perfectly,
thanks
to
at
French
governesses and
Convent, touch with plays, Jersey. books, and events as recent as the mails
two years
is
New
She
in
allow.
In a dog-cart drawn by her husband's racing stallion she drives you to see the
11
Morechales,"
the
outskirts
or
of
country places around

Bolivar.
The low
207
cot-
The
tages are surrounded by grounds luxuriant in vegetation and abounding in all manner of fruit trees. It is a beautiful
drive in
the cool
of the
afternoon, with
only occasional
cross the road.
bumps where watercourses

Half a dozen vehicles are
with the wealth and
on the way,
filled
beauty of Bolivar.
We
drive
to
Mara-
quita and return to the Palazzis' suburban tract, where they expect soon to build a
house.
At present only
the
stables
for
three
racing horses and the kennels for a dozen Curious dogs tiger-dogs are completed.
are
these,
descendants from the hounds
brought over by the Spaniards. They resemble those which one sees in old
tapestries,
grey-brindled
with
grey-blue
They slanting eyes. but breed fairly true.

monious meal
they
will.
have no pedigree,
is
Dinner with the Palazzis

to
an uncere-
which friends come as

repasts,
At one of these
where
208
The
City of Bolivar
you and a young Venezuelan are guests, Senor Palazzi tells of an expedition he
has in view to look for buried treasure.
"
This
city,
you know, was one of the
last that
was held by the Spaniards during
the
of Independence. All the monks from round about and the wealthy landofficials
War
owners and the

brought
their
fled to
it.
Some
when
houses
left
possessions,
city,
and
Bolivar entered the
buried them here.

father's
tenant in one of
street
my
up the
found a treasure and
the country a rich man.
All these houses
were built by the Spaniards and have walls 3 feet thick, with secret closets and floors.
the country. Eight million pesos' worth of gold is said
'
Many
buried
money
in
to have been interred at the old
monastery
of
left
San
Seraphine.
When
the
monks
they gave their Indians a basket of corn, and told them to throw away a grain each day. If no one had come when the corn was gone they were to dig up the
p
209
The

and
throw
it
treasure
in
the
Caroni.
the plan the cave
Years ago a
of the
monk came with He found hiding-place.

mouldering
chests.
and
the
But
the
treasure
was gone
the Indians had kept
only a week ago some peons on an estate of ours found a cave with a
bricked up. They started to break the door down, but got frightened I have planned to go there of ghosts.
their word. "
Now
doorway
to
it,
and
enter.
We
am
may
find
nothing
we
to for
People don't go the trouble of bricking up a doorway
may
find a treasure.
I nothing. of ghosts."
afraid of snakes, but
not
"The mention
the
of
Venezuelan, veracious tale about

estate
your ghosts," says "reminds me of a

a
peon
near
our
a
who met
are
veiled
figure
on
lonely road.
"'Who
tremblingly. 210
you?'
said
the
peon
The
"
'
City of Bolivar
devil,'
am
the
voice
answered
in
sepulchral
"
'
tones.
The peon
I
walked
up and held out

'
his hand.
Embrace me, amigo.

"
married your
sister.
Senor Palazzi smiles broadly

Palazzi
is
Senora
little
piqued.
"A
says.
disgracefully
"
I
will tell
It
is
ungallant story," she you a better one, and
true, too.
about a
years
young
old,
I
girl,
Caracena,
sixteen
who
will
lived
with her grandmother.

the
real
will
not give
names,
will
though you
call
know
be-
them.
We
the
girl
Senorita
Dolores
Blanco.
The grandmother
family
longed to an old Caracas
which
had some
fine rare port,
dating from the
time of the Spaniards.
The good dame
would let no one stingy and partake of the closely guarded treasure.
"
was
One day
hot
Dolores,
coming from the

found
the
garden,
and
tired,
cave
a
door
unlocked
and
was seized
with
211
The
desire

to
grandmother's vintage. Noticing in the corner an old dust-covered bottle which had once been
opened,
sample
her
she drew
its
the
cork and
poured
some of
hearing
contents into a glass. Then, footsteps, she gulped it down
precipitately. "
At once a sickening nausea came over her. Her lips blanched, her eyes became glazed, and her face took on an ashen hue. The grandmother, who had come
in,
snatched up the empty bottle.

'
It
was
bed
marked
"
Death
to
Vermin
carried
'
Dolores
was
hastily
to
and a doctor was summoned.

great
life.
Only with
save
her
efforts
he was
able
to
she was out of danger, the family group around her bed plied her with questions.
at last
"When
"
'
Why
'
asked
"
did you drink the poison,' they did you want to die ?
'
Dolores,
212
too exhausted
for
argument
The
City of Bolivar
pilfering,
and adverse to confessing her just nodded weakly, 'Si, si/

"
'
She
is in
love/ said the grandmother

*
dogmatically.
Who
'
is
it ?
"The
was
tired
girl
felt
lost
and
baffled.
She
and confused and was becom-
ing overwhelmed by the people around. Her grandmother leaned over, insisting
1
Tell us
who
:
it
*
is,'
and
shall
her
mother
comforted her
You
marry him.
Do
not be troubled.'
"The poor girl " I know who

'
could say nothing. it is,' said the grandGarcia.

Is
it
mother.
It
is
Juan
not
he?'
"
"
The
*
girl
moved
uneasily.
twice,'
But she has seen him hardly

is
protested the mother.
"'That
enough
to
do the
'Well,
mischief,'
said the grandmother.
we cannot
have her killing herself this way. I will add fifty thousand pesos to her dot and
in three
months she
shall
marry
him.'
213
The
"
Juan Garcia's surprise when he learned that Sefiorita Dolores Blanco had tried
to poison herself because of
great.
him was very
he had thought it over, had looked at himself in the glass, twirled

after
But
moustache and pulled down his he had to admit the girl's good taste.
his
"
'
tie,
After all/ he meditated,

to
tire
'
ning This senorita
of
is
the
life
beginof a bachelor.
am
pretty,
is
her
family
is
of
the best, and the dot
muy
'
conveniente.
Why
not
make her happy
to her parents,
who
proposed did not even consult
He
Dolores before giving their consent. " Senorita Dolores Blanco became Senora
have lived happily ever The story leaked out, and though after. the family denies it, every one in Caracas
Garcia,
.they
and
knows
Late
strange
it
is
true."
in
the
evening,
that
pondering
are
the
in
marriages
made
heaven, you wander back to
Mannoni's.
You
are
still
early
enough
to
watch a half
214
The
City of Bolivar
a dozen less startling, but perhaps equally

romantic, courtships arranging themselves through the bars of the houses along
the
hill.
The Acaddmie Franchise
is
under diseven
cussion at breakfast next morning.
"The Academicians
can't
finish
a dictionary," says one of the Latin table. that Mattey declares "quand
mme"
men
they are the greatest body of world.
in the
Academy refused Fulton's steamboat when Napoleon referred it to

the
"But
them," observes our Consul.
This reminds Vicentini of a picture of Napoleon at St. Helena. He is watching

a
steamboat on the horizon and smites
his head, saying,

I
"Si
").
j'avais cru!"
("Had
table
only believed
Wads worth comes
in
to
the
"The foundation immensely pleased. builder was going to hold up our whole
installation with his
delays.
The
Presi215
The

down himself
dente came
to-day and cut He has put away a mile of red tape. You the fear of God into the contractor.
ought to see the men working now. I think he said he'd hang somebody if the job was not done on time."
The Cuban friend of Mattey's is giving some lurid details of the United States
intervention
there.
"Why,
for
five
the
whole
trouble
dollars,"
was
started
;
thousand
for
I
he says
it.
"I know,
got
some of
dollars
in
Cuba had twenty
million
her treasury and the Yankees wanted that. They spent the money on
framing up deals with the conand then they evacuated the tractors,
roads,
country.
It
was
all
nonsense about the

the
negroes or the Liberals stirring up row.
did not fight a battle; just marched around and burned farmers' barns," he
"We
had two hundred men, not over ten armed, and we wanted to pass
continues
;
"
216
The
the
City of Bolivar
Government post near Caballo. So I sent word to the captain that I was going to attack the town and ordered him to
send away the women.
He drew
in
his
It was outposts and I was able to pass. But that revolution a good joke on him.
was una representation dramatical The Commandante of Bolivar, El Senor

Coronel
Pilar
Para,
invites
you
to
go
shooting with him along a lagoon across

the river.
It
is
Wood-pigeon
are the objective.
a real test of shooting to get these birds in the instant before they dive down
into the
brush.
The
difficulties of
wing
El
shooting,
however,
do
not
trouble
Senor Coronel.
have
He
sneaks up to a dis-
tance of about ten yards

it
and
lets
them
sitting.
Then he
turns around
boy goes into the brush for the mangled remains. Twelve pigeons and two parrots are the bag before it gets
grins, while a
and
too hot for comfort and
we
return.
At dinner
that
night Senor Vicentini

217
The
asks
you know a certain French paper. In a passing way, you allow.

if
"They are blagueurs" he says; "last month they showed a picture of the
Calle
Babilonia here in Bolivar with the
rebels of Matos's revolution,

*
and
'
labelled
it
Mexican insurgents at Juarez.' " Did you ever hear of how Palazzi
saved us from starvation in that Revolution?" asks M. Mattey.
"Was
you
"
Si,
that
Senor
Santos
Palazzi?"
ask.
si
;
Santos
Palazzi,
whom
"
;
you
know," says Senor Vicentini.

"
Bien," continues
M. Mattey
But
the in-
surgents
for nearly
Matos's
men
had held
this city
two
years.
after the big
battle
which Castro won, the Government troops came closer and closer in. They
raided the
country behind, where we got our provisions. They blockaded the river
with their gunboats. Save a few who had depots, we could get no food except some
218
The
fish
City of Bolivar
from the Orinoco or some mangoes from Marequita. Many were on the point
11
of starvation."
En
It
effet
c'6tait
affreux,"
exclaims
Sefior
"
has been listening. was at this time that Palazzi said

Aquatella,
who
he would bring food.

him, for
Nobody
Palazzi
believed
we knew
covered
that Castro
was everygot
where
coriara,
victorious.
it
But
over
with
green
branches, and on a night when there was no moon started down stream with two
peons.
In the night they paddled. day they hid in canos or under overAt San Felix was the hanging trees.
"Only
at
gunboat.
They stole past close to the bank, like a shadow between the beams of the searchlight. It was to stand
file
against a wall with a

if
of
men
it
in front
he were caught. "After passing San
Felix
to
so bad.
He
got
down
was not the mouth of

219
The
the

and was
its
'
Orinoco
picked up by an
American
haps
us
it
cruiser
name
forget
per-
was the
Gloucester.'
Any
to
way,
the American
permit captain to be starved. He had the 'Apure

it
refused
loaded up with food and started with

to relieve us.
"At Los
Castillos,
the
commander
'
of
the fort was going to fire on the Apure.' But the American captain trained his
cannon and sent word that on the

shot he would blow the fort into
pieces.
first
little
fire.
So
Castro's
men
bien,
did
not
"
And we
"
got food."
gotitait
Et $a
parbleu
adds
Senor Vicentini.
Presidente has sent a request for you to come at four o'clock to his house.
The
very dark Venezuelan gentleman with a thin eagle nose and a full beard is
tall,
there
Senor Ygnacio Alvarado.

introduces
Genera
an-
Telleria
you. nounces the purport of his 220
Then he summons.
The
invite
City of Bolivar
so
The senor has been

you you
so.
good
as
to
to his estate at
San
Jose, so
that
may
see
something
of
the
interior
of Guiana.
He
is
leaving in a
day or
Would you
like to
go?
You
are rather taken aback.
The Pre-
sidente has manifestly issued to this grave
senor a royal request that you be invited.
Of
course, however,
you
will
It is
to accept the kindness. to miss.
be delighted not a chance
The Presidente asks about your
outfit
a poncho, a mosquito bar, a hammock? " Give me the pleasure of being allowed
to
attend
to
the
equipment
road,"
and
says
to
the
provisions
for
the
Senor
Alvarado
Dr
in quiet dignity.
"How
'
about a horse?" asks Telleria.
Perhaps for the comfort of the trip " a mule is better," says Alvarado. I can
get one from Montez."
3I
Then says General Telleria. he turns to you. "You are in the best
!
"
Good
"
221
The
11
of hands with
my friend,"
he says cordially.
meet Dr. Velazquez, a great hunter, one of the finest examples of an owner. estate intelligent and educated
will
Vou
a good time and drop in to see me " upon the return. Adios, hasta la vista
Have
Rather shakes your hand warmly. consciencebewildered and decidedly stricken at being thus imposed upon the
hospitality
He
of
his
personal
friends,
you
for
take
the
your departure to
trip.
make ready
222
VI
ON THE LLANOS
SENOR to the
tion.
ALVARADO accompanies you

hotel to
is
work out the expeditraditional
He
the
Spanish
gentleman, grave,
of punctilious
fuller
dignified,
soft-spoken,
courtesy.
He
You
explains in
detail
the
expedition
which
are to
El
go some seventy Jose, miles southward on the Garapo River, in the heart of the plains. There you will hunt and be shown the life of the Venezuelan ranch-owners. Food is to be
to
Presidente has arranged.

his
estate at
San
carried packed
on a burro
for the stretches
where no supplies are obtainable. " But most of the people along the road
are relatives of mine," adds Sefior Alvarado.
223
The Path of the

He
Conquistadores
The
j
asks to see your equipment.
rubber poncho he condemns at once. It is too small, and you must have something warm.
"
I
will
Your mosquito
net,
get you a covija" on the other hand,
has meshes which are too large. " It must be very fine, like a lady's "It must fit well over veil," he says.
the
I hammock. will The hammock sort."
get that
the
right
you
have
acquired at Mannoni's he thinks will do. " Everybody sleeps in hammocks out
on the
llanos,"
he remarks.
The mule is the next quest. We go down the Calle de Constitution to the
Calle
Babilonia
and
of
enter
the
general
merchandise store
Guilelmo
in
Montez.
a
The
proprietor
is
wedged
corner
He has tobacco, behind a high desk. canned goods, blankets, balata, machetes,
cheeses, everything that one can think of.
He
dumpling, tanned nearly to the black of a negro, and with

is
round
as
224
On
his
idol.
the Llanos
looks
like
broad
smile
an
ebony
is
Yes, he has a
"buen mula."
It
in
the courtyard behind,
look
at
it.
and we go out to capuchin monkey on the
veranda
roof,
chained
by
his
middle,
reaches for your hat as you pass, and a guinea-cock jumps to one side.
The mule
right,
is
save for
brought out and looks all a saddle gall, which you
object to. "
importa," says " shaking a long finger, try him."
No
Senor
I will
Alvarado,
it.
fix
You
couple of black boys go to get the It takes two of them to saddlery. bring
it.
Really,
to
it
is
on
a
that
little
appalling what is put beast. First comes a

folded
Blanket,
carefully
so as
to
leave
Then depression along the spine. bllows a piece of sacking with a hole
it
cut in
over the sore.
Next an
oilskin,
stuffed with straw
on the under
side,
and
225
The

Then
a leather
reinforced over the withers.
saddle-cloth with
in.
coloured patterns sewn Last, the big embroidered saddle with
pockets and jingling rings on all sides. It is covered with some yellow upholstery which looks like a bath towel.
Alvarado smiles with pleasure as

latter is
the
cinched tight.
will
"We
each
put the saddlebags one on

covija
sit
it,
side,
and strap the
behind.
on,
The mosquito net you can we will put a surcingle over make the riding softer."
and
will
which
you were on a miniature No wonder Eiffel Tower as you mount. His poor the mule looks discouraged.
feel as if
You
thin neck
and wabbly ears are
far
below
With the ferocious curb loose, you you. take a turn around the block and come
back.
The
saddle sore has
not
rubbed
and the mule goes

gait.
at a very comfortable
Montez swears
226
it
is
strong enough
for
On
any
trip,
the Llanos
head
:
and Alvarado nods his

the
at
"Buen mulal" You return to

to
hotel
and
arrange
leave next
day
four o'clock in the
afternoon.
Some laundry work would be

so the
desirable,
boy
is
called.
"Only a Chinaman
quick," he says.
can
do
him
so
You summon
and put
for
it
the
official
head Celestial
to him.
He
thinks a moment,
half
in
past
this
three
order
next day is a rush land of pasado manana.
The Mongolian, however, here as everywhere in the world, is equal to profitable business. Finally, he agrees to deliver.
During your
you
hear
last
dinner at Mannoni's
discussion,
another
regarding
the time of the steamer run
from Ciudad
from two
Bolivar to Cayenne.
to five days,
It varies
according to Senor Aquatella
and M. Vicentini respectively.
Wadsworth,
too, gives
you his
last
ad-
227
The Path of the

"
Conquistadores
:
monitions regarding the Spanish language
everything masculine, and don't bother about tenses and things. People
will
Make
look
surprised,
but
still
they will
understand."
You
eat another
of
Mr.
Henderson's
mangoes, and go out into the court and smoke.
At
for
four o'clock
Senor Alvarado comes
you at Mannoni's. He is dressed in black and wears a wide brown plush

sombrero and black leggings. a peon with his steed, and
Outside
the
"
is
buen
mula"
for
yourself.
The Chinaman has
kept his word. Presently you are ready, with some spare linen packed in a saddlebag, your
rifle in
its sling,
and binoculars
handy. The hotel turns out to see you climb on to the lofty peaked saddle, towering above the cobbled hill.
mule,
and
start
up the
Along the steep road, bordered by the pale blue and yellow stucco houses with
228
On
their
the Llanos
windows, in front of the white cathedral and the brooding statue

barred
of Bolivar,
we
go, the
mules picking their
way daintily among the cobble stones. Through the Plaza Miranda on the top
of the
hill
the
hoofs clatter.
We
pass
the Infantry Barracks, then take the steep slope, and draw in under the shadow
Spanish monastery, with its sentry-boxes on the wall. We skirt the

of the old
cemetery of La Trinidad, leaving ruined Spanish fort which guarded height to our left.
"
the the
There Bolivar stood," says Alvarado, "just before he entered Angostura to be
named
President.
There
he
chose
the
colours of the flag for Greater Colombia. It had been raining, and the sun came out
over the city as El Libertador's force came onto the crest.

"
'
What
better flag/ he exclaimed, 'can
we have than
the colour of the heavens
with the rainbow aglow?*
That
is
why
229
The
the
great

that
nations
were
made from
his
Republic have such bright colours
on
their banners."
enter a road leading between suburban country houses. One cottage has
We
over
its
door the
name
"
San
Buena-
ventura."
A
in
peon here salutes our host. He reins his mule for a moment, and each man
puts his hand on the other's shoulder. " Buenos dias, amigo," says Alvarado.
Three or four other friends come up while we stand and are greeted in this
way.
Alvarado
the people in
knows a good half of the streets as we pass along,

he has
and
for
each one, high or low,
this affectionate salutation.
The road broadens out

a succession of
trails
presently into
with grass between, and we pass woods and thickets of middlehours After about two trees. sized
of
riding
we meet a
hails
band
of
peons,
whom
230
Alvarado
and from
whom
On
he
asks
a
Sarto.
the Llanos
Dr.
takes
One down
question regarding of them turns back

the
and
bars of
hundred yards ahead.
We
a gate a few enter grounds
with small mango-trees and cedars planted here and there, a neat row of stones circling
each trunk.
a long, low stucco building whose roof-thatch covers a veranda which
In front
is
runs completely around

"
it.
nephew of mine, Dr.
Sarto,
lives
here," says Alvarado.
We hand
who
us.
our mules over to some boys run to our service and enter the
gallery.
Two
ladies
come out
to
meet
For a
and
moment one
risen
they have just

siesta
suspects that from a surprised
have
been caught in rather

they are loose white frocks.
for
disordered
robes-de-nuit,
dressed in shapeless But this proves to be the regular housedress of the wives and sisters of country
estate owners.
231
The
The

ladies
conduct us
is
to
the end of
the veranda, which
of the house. of a ship,

is
the reception-room Canvas, reefed like the sail
stretched under the thatch,
ready to be
let
down
in case of rain.
The
whose
walls of the house are of adobe,

paint,
once white,
is
much
flaked
away
faded
and
is
scarred with nail-holes.
Two
engravings hang on the side wall, and these, with a table and some rockingchairs,
painted
black,
constitute
the
furnishings.
This family
is
one of the comfortable
Dr. Sarto bourgeoisie of Ciudad Bolivar. owns a pharmacy, and rides out home
after a
is
few hours in town each day.
He
a physician, and while speaking Spanish only, he reads French medical books with-
out
difficulty.
His
wife,
who
has refined features and
a pleasant address, speaks the remnants of French and English. She once had a fair
knowledge of both languages, but long

232
iso-
On
lation
the Llanos
its
from the world and

it
interests has
buried
and her other

but
possibilities.
Her
five children are
cared
for,
sturdy-looking and well Madame Sarto is sallow,
careworn, and ailing. The Doctoj himself

presently on
built,
comes
home
a well-
mule-back.
He
is
strong-looking man of about forty, more of the German than the Spanish
type.
He
takes us for a stroll around the
gardens while dinner is being prepared. In a corral made of crooked posts from
the chapparal-trees there are half a dozen
rather
is
skinny-looking cows.
Farther on
plantation which the Doctor has started, with a couple of tentative irriga-
little
tion ditches.
The yuma-tree, from whose

is
roots
fruits,
cassava
made, bananas, bread-
and other plants are growing. A cashew-tree, whose fruit is edible though not very good, but whose nut, growing
outside
the
fruit,
is
really
excellent,
is
flourishing
behind
the
house.
233
The
The
knock
Just

run ahead of us with sticks to
off
children
mangoes.
nightfall
at
we
sit
down on
the
veranda to eat la comida.

with
rice is the pikce
Boiled beef
de resistance, a sort
of Yorkshire pudding,
of plantains, eggs, and milk, accompanying the meat. Wine and beer are on the table, and are
liberally taken.
made
crowd of
little
negro
of the
the
children
and
women
house,
who hover
dependents habitually about
kitchen and the servants' quarters, pass the One expects plates and serve the repast.
every minute to see them fall over each other and make a general cataclysm, but they graze adventures and deliver the
viands
safely.
The dinner
scene
is
suddenly enlivened
by a shriek from one of these boys, who has just missed stepping on a scorpion
with
kill
his
bare
feet.
We
to
get
up
it
and
with
the insect
by stamping
on
boots,
then go back
some
excellent
234
On
the Llanos
preserves called "papoi," served with a white cheese which flakes away like an
onion
"quesa a manos,"
retire after
it
is
called.
We
Dr.
dinner to the other end

cigarettes.
of the veranda for coffee and
we
the
lamp, and Outside puff a few minutes in silence.
Sarto
lights an acetylene
and you settle for an evening of quiet comfort. But Alvarado

rises slowly,
moon
does not give us
much
indulgence.
"This
is
just
the time to travel," he
says; "the mules go best by night." So the mules are brought around and
we
take leave of the Doctor's household.
Two
They
peons on horseback join

drive before
us
now.
them a
little
burro with
a box of provisions slung on each side of his back. To the tail of one peon's horse is moored a spare mule. The burro runs
free,
and when the front
rider has nothing
better to
do he gives the animal a slash
with his whip. and into the night.
We
go out of the gate

235
The
A
is

is
good moon
shining, but the
sky
see
so overcast that
one can
barely
the path ahead.

ever,
Alvarado goes on, how-
without hesitation.
The
forest has
thinned, and
road,
file.
we
follow
now an
irregular
now
cattle-paths,
riding in
Indian
trails
Twice Alvarado deserts these

and
altogether,
for a mile or so cuts across
a wide
savanna of bunch grass, where shadowy cattle, stunted bushes, and chapparal-trees appear from time to time in
the wide expanse of grass.
Two
are
labouring
feet
ox-teams
a
of
six
cart
yoke
with
passed,
drawing
high
the
wheels set 7
cattle.
apart.
Peons walking
unwilling
alongside are goading on
After about three hours of silent riding the dim outlines of a house and a corral
up and dismount. The peons unload the animals and go off to picket them where they can graze.
loom ahead.
ride
We
We
enter without ceremony a large

236
dim
On
"
the Llanos
room and sling our hammocks from the beams which support the roof.
No
mosquitoes here," says Alvarado
"do not None

stir.
get out your net." of the inhabitants of the house
After removing gaiters, shoes, and coat, you take wearily to the hammock.
Towards morning you open one eye and

reach for the woollen covija.
chilly.
It is actually
good,
Soon, however, you are awake for though the sun has just risen.
are
Cocks
cows
crowing,
parrots
screeching,
lowing somewhere people moving about and look around and finally get
outside,
talking.
and
You
up.
You
are in a big
room with
the thatch of
the roof rising to
an acute angle above
your head.
away
the doorway this is cut like a bang on a child's forehead, but

its
At
length the roofing comes down shaggily to within about 5 feet of the ground. The stalks of the
along the rest of
palms used
in thatching are laid in regular
237
The
ranks over beams and are held together with fibres. Not a nail is used. The
sapling lattice framework forming the sides of this big central room leave it open to every breath of air. The kitchen, at one
end,
is
roof
enclosed up to 2 feet under the with wattle and thatch, and the
owner's bedroom at the end of the casa

opposite the kitchen is completely enclosed The floors are of clay, in the same way.
stamped hard and irregularly laid, giving mountains and valleys an miniature
ideal battle-field for a child's lead soldiers.
Of
furniture, there are in the centre
room
only a table and a chair, hammocks in the bedroom, in the kitchen a few pots, a
wooden trough, and a

walls of
coffee-can.
On
the
living-room a couple of muzzle-loading guns, a machete, and some

the
old saddlery complete the inventory. The owner, Pedro Cristine Praga,
of
mixed Indian and
Spanish blood,
is
typical small proprietor.
He
is
slenderly
238
On
built,
the Llanos
much
older-look-
with a heavy moustache and side
whiskers.
His wife
about
is
ing and
daughter,
the
shows the wear of work.

seventeen,
eyes.
is
His
quite are
comely, with
also
great dark
"
So
and
two
half-grown boys
the
two
little
muchachos,"
shuffle
Juan
in
and
their
Anastasia.
The
sandals
Coffee
several
women
is
about
alpargatas
made
times
preparing breakfast. by pouring hot water a coffee-bag. through
Some
from
cheese and cassava bread are laid
out for us.

the
Fried eggs and milk fresh cow complete the repast.
After breakfast the girl goes to a bunch of dried tobacco leaves in a corner,
rolls
herself
a
to
cigar,
and
lights
up.
also.
You
It
is
get
her
make you
one
but
is
shaped like a diseased not bad to smoke.

a
short
stay
cheroot,
After
the
animals
are
brought up and we mount and go on,

239
The
so as

to
it
travel
is
still
as
much
as
possible
while
fairly
cool.
We
Down
are
on
elevated
plateau
precipitous gullies, sides are dark red.
now, seared by whose coarsely sanded

in
these
arroyos the thickets grow together into a jungle of trees, creepers, bamboo, and
cactus.
The water
tion all along its
brings dense vegetapath, while on the flat

is
sandy plateau nothing distances save bunch

gnarled chapparal-trees.
this
met
for
long
the
grass
travel
and
mile
Through
mile,
we
after
among
stone
paths following dubious-looking The red sandthe bunch grass.
formation
and
with
sharp
peaks
and
of
gullies give place to occasional ledges
granite,
strewn
boulders,
thickets
rocks.
tufted.
growing up
at times
is
around
coarse
the
The The
grass
cattle
very
and
and small.
we sometimes pass Towards noon the
are thin
heat has
become
240
intense.
On
"
the Llanos
calor,"
Hace mucho
are
you gasp.
"We
says
near the place for a halt/'

consolingly.
lash the burro along behind
Alvarado
The peons
us,
and the mules need to be encouraged with the barbed espuelas every few feet.
At
brown adobe house, with a small banana plantation behind, appears

last
out
slide
in
the
bare llanos.
We
ride
up,
our mules, and walk into the centre room, while the peons unload the
off
animals and bring in the provisions. This house is built on the same plan
as that of the peasant proprietor of last
open lattice-work is plastered over with adobe and everything is shut in and correspondingly
night,
save
that
the
dark and
little
stuffy.
We
are
welcomed by a
old
crinkly-haired
Zambo woman
and
nearly
his
wearing
blind.
smoked
Alvarado
spectacles
greets
her
with
to
usual
courtesy
kitchen,
where
guides her she and another
and
the
woman
241
The
prepare coffee. About half an hour later lunch is ready. It consists of a big
meat stew,
in
which plantains, a yellow
vegetable with a green skin like a frog's, a white fibrous vegetable looking like a
potato,
and
together.
some rice swim round Cheese, more coffee, and some

round
out
this
of our
repast
preserved milk el almnerzo.
Chickens in numbers are running about underfoot, including one curious breed
called "grifo," the black feathers of
stick out at right angles.
which
also
There
is
a sort of white bird,
like
longer and thinner, and sun-bittern which catches and eats
a pullet, but a big-headed

flies.
We
lower,
hang up our hammocks and

sit
preis
pare to
under cover until the sun

it
for
is
now
torrid outside,
and
hot even under the cover of the house.
Alvarado stretches himself out

ably and talks. "This road to
242
comfort-
San Jos
is
safe enough,"
On
he says
tions,
the Llanos
all
"
;
here
are friends
and
rela-
our family and the Perez and the Velazquez have been on the land for
for
centuries,
bad
but beyond, in Paragua, it is un pais malo. Once I went far into

to look
at
Paragua
some
balata forests.
I
The
place
had a bad name, but
knew
of the wealth people get with balata.
man who had been there offered to guide me an Indian with a big machete-scar. Nobody in San Jose knew him, but I
hired
him,
got
for
the
mules, and started.
We
I
travelled
two weeks.
at
Then one
eat.
day we stopped
noticed that
little
rancho to
the guide said something secretly to the man of the house, whose looks I did not like.
"A
little
farther
looking to right his hat with his hand.
saw my Indian and left and touching

on
I
We
through a very thick forest, suspicious in an instant.

revolver
were going and I became

I
drew
243
my
and aimed
at
him.
The
"
*

your
said.
'
Call
I
friend
who
is
in
those
bushes/
"
He
called
Ramon/ and
lasso
in
the
man
I
came out with a

to tie "
rob,
his
hand.
aimed the revolver, and told
my
Indian
him
to a tree. to
Their scheme was
lasso
me and
tra-
and
probably
kill
me.
Many
vellers
I
had disappeared in Paragua. But was in a bad position, for I did not
know
the way, and the nearest town was 40 miles. So I rode with the guide in
front of
for
me and
miles.
tied
the
pistol
I
at
his
back
the
30
I
road.
Then him to
was
could
see
tree with
many
knots and rode on quickly.
"The
Jefe Civil
in
the town, and
he sent and got the Indian. fessed he had meant to rob
He
me,
con-
and
they found that he had murdered other travellers. So they shot him and his
partner.
It
is
was
all
close
escape.
in
But
of
here
it
right,
save
time
244
On
revolution,
all
the Llanos
thieves
when
and
soldiers are
about."
slap at the flies
We
and wait
for the
heat to diminish.
About four
o'clock the
start off
mules are brought out and we
once again. It is still chokingly hot, and the miles of savanna spread out un-
Now and then brokenly in the glare. granite rocks and thickets are passed, and far ahead a mountain range, the Parida,
dimly outlined. A few birds are flying among the rare On one bush is perched an chapparal.
is
oripopa, a sort of small

that
vulture, so
tame
away, and an occasional zamuro, or turkey-buzzard, wheels in the sun far overhead.
it
we pass
30
feet
Clouds of the purest white, in great rolls like mountains of billowy cotton, are
heaped in the pale blue of the sky.
are distant,
Some
one
some seem so
lower.
It
close that
could almost touch them.
lower
and
The sun sinks tinges now the

245
The
under side of the clouds, and flushes to deepest crimson the whole mass along the
western horizon.
On
the east a thunder-
storm
grey.
is
brewing, and the clouds are ironin paler reflex, the splendour
steals
Now,
of the west
far-off
over them too.

like
The
band
few
shower shows
a broad
of rose, while north and south the clouds
every
moment become
darker.
minutes longer the glory of the sunset lasts. Then almost at once, like a curtain,
falls
the night. With the last
light
of the
dying day
we
ford a river bordered

trees
green
and
the
by great darkpalms, skirt a banana
plantation, pass
and
enter
a chapparal-trunk corral grounds of Sefior Ber-
mudez, a cousin of Alvarado. Senor Bermudez, driven out by an early Venezuelan revolution, was for many years
a resident
of
Trinidad.
But there he
estate.
met business
returned
246
reverses, so he has recently
and
bought
this
The
On
senor
the Llanos
wife
is
and
his
welcome
duplicate
it
us
of
to
home
Sarto's,
which
save
Dr.
poorly equipped. The peasant's rough plenty of Life is evidently yesterday is absent here. a hard struggle for the old man and his
wife and two
that
is
more
grown daughters.
of
He
has,
however,
pitality,
the tradition
Spanish
for the
hos-
and
offers his
best entertainment
and a corner of the porch mocks.
ham-
Senor Bermudez has a sample of tobacco from a valley some distance to the westwards which he believes to be as good as the best Cuban. It takes more of an
expert than
11
you are to pass judgment. had some cigars made," he recounts,

I
"and got a Partagas band put around

them.
who
good
is
gave a box to Senor Antonella, one of the gourmets of Port of
Spain, and he said they were particularly

cigars.
He was
very angry when

247
we
told
him they came from Venezuela,
The
but

had
to
he
allow
they
were
fine
smoking."
We
on
It
are
lit
in
to
flickering candle.
dinner by a single The poor light throws
shadows of gigantic gestures and heads with enormous features.

to the dark walls
is
weirdly fascinating.
his
to
From
the
time to
little
time,
when some one turning a

profile
presents
trembling
lifts
someyellow flame, thing like a pronged pitchfork up to a

a huge
hand
mouth which opens

monster.
It is
the gullet of a an eerie dinner, and, as we

like
have been many hours in the saddle, you soon accept the hospitality of the rafters.
You
come
sleep,
however,
with
certain
difficulty.
Two
geese, early in the night,

rail
to roost
on the
near your head,

general before
and hiss
to the world
in
finally retiring.
pig makes an investi-
Sundry chickens, gation of your shoes. which should have roosted long ago, come
in
clucking anxiously.
248
Cocks
crow
to
On
the
the Llanos
the stars
all
moon and
through the
the
corral
night.
An
uneasy
are
cow
"
in
near by utters a periodic
moo."
At dawn you
by Alvarado.
definitely
awakened
You
find everything packed
but your hammock. One of Senor Bermudez's daughters has a cup of black
coffee
ready,
and you are very soon
in
the saddle.
"Adios, sefior," the ladies call to you. Alvarado and Sefior Bermudez touch
hands
starts.
to
shoulders
and
our
cavalcade
"We
The
will breakfast at
San
Jose," says
Alvarado.
llanos
become more
the
rolling as
we
advance
and
rocky
thickets
more
numerous.
is
It grass seems better. dense, and in some places it has lost
The
clumpy character and is all one swaying sward, "como un mar de yarbas,"
its
like
Humboldt's "sea of grass." We pass many little watercourses, whose presence

249
The

way
off
can be discovered a long

occasional lagoon
is
by the palm-trees which follow them down. An

seen.
is
We
skirt
one
the
whose
soft
border
churned
by
cattle into a
bumpy
is
is
morass,
solitary
white crane
palm glade
standing sentry over it. left behind and a boulder-
covered hill-slope.
The Parida Mountain
Range is nearing us ahead. "This is my land," says Alvarado, and

his
eyes
light
with
the
pleasure
of
home-coming.
We
the
ride
a couple of miles farther to

trail
where the
burro
divides.
The peons and

Alvarado
dis-
are
behind.
mounts and
tree across "
lays twigs
from a chapparaltrails.
one of the
Thus
the peons will
know which
on
a
path
to take/' he explains.
A
into
half
hour
farther
we descend
cattle-pond
hollow and
reach
with lofty trees around it. Beyond, we climb back onto the upland.
250
On
"
the Llanos
Nearly there," calls our host eagerly. A barbed-wire fence appears presently,
and
this
we
of
skirt for another mile.
Then
a clump
arises,
and a chapparal-wood
house.
lets
big dark-green mango-trees corral, and a
long, low, thatched
forward and
ride in.
boy runs down the bars and we

much-tanned
strong-looking,
youth
of about eighteen
comes up and
he
is
affection-
ately salutes Alvarado. "
My
son
Carlos,"
introduced.
We walk
Two
up
to the entrance of the portico.
ladies
with
sallow
waxen
com-
plexions in the
less dresses
now
familiar white shape-
appear from inside. One is Senora Alvarado, the other an orphan girl
into
they have taken without any bond of

obligation.
whom
the family relationship or
Carlos
tells
you that he has

in
spent
two years
at
school
Trinidad.
rest
He
speaks some
English.
The
of
the family
know only
Spanish.
25 1
The

breakfast
is
prepared Alvarado gets out the gifts which he has bought in Bolivar for his family. There
are
While
being
boxes
of
scented
soap
for
Senora
Alvarado, a brooch for the girl, a pair of knitted blue socks for the two-year-old baby, a tin trumpet for the six-year-old
muchacha, and a new necktie
for Carlos.
The
recipients are all delighted,

is
and every-
thing
coffee
spread out on the table.

in
fried
The almuerzo comes on

with
fresh
due timeeggs,
milk,
are
and
cassava bread.
You
the
not deficient in
to
appetite nor are in the heat of

fast.
you averse
day,
siesta,
after
breakthe
The hammocks
in
are
hung on
porch.
Lying
them
lazily,
you can follow
the parrots screaming in the mango-tree Half a dozen vultures are overhead.
perched
on
the
stockade
of
the corral,
watching a sick calf with sinister patience. A peacock, with much whirring of plumes,
252
On
is
the Llanos
displaying his charms to an absolutely indifferent white pullet, while the neglected
pea-hen,
with
one fledgling,
is
quietly
picking up a living for the family in another portion of the garden. Down by the kitchen to the left a sow, followed by
half a dozen pink pigs, is rooting beneath
a lime-tree.
in
flock of blackbirds wheels
the sky and passes. Guinea-fowl and chickens wander up and down the piazza.
tiger-dog
comes and pokes
his
nose
your hand. A white turkey gobbles in emulation of the peacock. On the adobe railing in front of you
into
is
a row of saddles,
while bridles,
sur-
cingles
posts.
and straps are
hanging on the
is
The
wall behind
pasted up with
lithographs of girls' heads, amid which is a cartoon of a man who

advertising
sold
for
on
credit
when he should have

religious
sold
cash.
calendar,
to
the
names of the Saints
whom
giving each
day
in the year is sacred, occupies a
promi253
The
nent place, and chromos of the Venezuelan Presidents "dado" the gallery. Close
beside the
hammock
are slung big gourds
that hold a reserve of drinking-water and
a porous jug which, being always damp, keeps cold a supply for immediate require-
ments.
Just
under
the
thatch
are
suspended the skulls of eleven jaguars

shot in the
neighbourhood of the ranch. At about the end of the siesta a well-
set-up figure in white rides up to the yard He is welcomed by the family and gate. introduced to you Dr. Eduardo Velazquez,
the senor to
whom
the
Presidente
has given you a note. The Doctor is about thirty years old, and is tanned a dark brown by constant
heavy mousriding in the torrid sun. his air tache covers strong white teeth
;
is alert
and keen.
He
has studied mediParis, but
cine for
two years in
on the
to
death of his father last year came out He is manage the family estates.
254
On
measure
to
the Llanos
in a large
nephew of Alvarado, and, owing

his
business
capacity,
has
ranch
assumed the management

also.
of
his
by the hand of friends passing from Bolivar the French medical and the Caracas " Heraldo." journals
receives
He
Medicine he practises to some extent still, but mostly on the farm animals, which
assuredly need it. go out to look at a small herd of
We
horses that his peons have driven in from the savanna. Carlos brings along a bottle of some brown creosote tincture. Horse
after horse
has to be treated in the ears

for
and
groin
"garrapata,"
little
ticks
which fatten on blood, swell to a full quarter of an inch or more, and burst, distributing a numberless progeny which
have grown within
their
body.
colt
has some bone disease that prevents it from rising to its feet. One mare has a
cancer which the Doctor has unsuccessfully
operated
upon.
Others
have raw sores

255
The
in

Truly the cattleman's
is
life
here and there.
not easy. The River Carapo is a mile away from the house. swim is suggested by
Venezuela
Carlos.
Our
steeds
are
saddled
and
brought around, and we ride down to a gap in the thickets which line the river,
where a gravel beach stretches just below

a deep pool.
"
There are no crocodiles
here, but some-
times
we
The
get electric eels," you are told. sport is so refreshing that the after-
noon passes all too soon. As the shadows are lengthening, you
ride back to the
trees,
house among the mangoas cool and comfortable as if you
were on the plains of the Dakotas rather than nine degrees north of the Equator.
Indeed,
it
would seem that the heat of
the
Tropics
pictured.
is
by no means the terror it is Unless one is in a hot and

on a pitch
lake,
stuffy room, or
city
or in a
is
where the buildings absorb

256
heat, he
On
the Llanos
save
comfortable everywhere direct rays of the sun.
under
at
the
And
no time
do you find it worse than some of the bad days in New York. The Torrid differs
from the Temperate Zone not so much in having a greater extreme of heat, as in having warm weather all the year round.
The nights
the woollen
are cool,
and here
at
San Jose
comja
is
needed always before
morning. The household at Alvarado's rises at
dawn.
first
The milking
of the cows
is
the
duty.
chorus comes from them

in the mists of the early
is
and their calves

day.
"
The sound
like the
groaning of
de
a great suffering host.
Comme
le
champs de
bataille
Wa-
gram, dans
derniere acte de 1'Aiglon," Velazquez expresses it. The calves are kept in one pen, the cows in another.
la
As each cow's turn comes

calf is let join
is
to be milked her
it
her for a moment, then
pulled
s
away by main strength and held

257
The

These
cattle
until the milking is accomplished.
animals are the descendants of the
brought over by the Spaniards at the time of the Conquest. Almost no new blood
has been brought in since, and as no care has been taken in breeding, here, where
the grass is not particularly good, the cows are rangy and thin, and give but little milk.
A wild
honour
bull is to be slaughtered in your fresh meat. for Early in the
morning, after he has been driven near the house and cornered, a peon has ridden up with the raw-hide lasso fast to the
horse's
tail
and has caught the
victim.
by the many turns of the raw hide around his

horns.
He
stands
now
lashed
to a tree
At
front
savage look is in his eyes. about ten o'clock a keen - eyed,

feet
leather-skinned
vaquero lassos the bull's and throws him. Then Dr.
Velazquez with one dexterous stab cuts an artery in the throat. The ill - omened
'
258
On
buzzards
wait.
sit in
the Llanos
the trees around and coldly Without staining his white suit the
flays the
Doctor
head and one
leg,
then
leaves the rest to the vaquero
Indian.
The
ribs
and a young are slashed away and
roasted on the end of a spit over a slow The rest of the flesh fire for our dinner.
is
cut
into
strips
a half-inch
thick
and
hung on a rack to cure in the hot sun. This makes the tough desiccated beef one
gets throughout this country. M Everything we eat at San Jos6
is
raised
on
the.
ranch or near by
coffee,
sugar,
cassava bread, milk, meat, beans, mangoes,

It is bananas, plantains, tobacco. wonderful what a small area of ground
papoi,
supply an abundance of food. According to Von Humboldt, one acre of bananas will feed twenty times as many as will
will
an
acre
of
wheat,
and bananas go on
bearing year after year without cultivation. Nature here is very close at hand.
Every morning you shake out your shoes
The
lest
a scorpion has nested there. Once you find beside them a poisonous lizard, lar-
garaba.
The domestic animals
are under
your very feet. Bats fly around in the house and hang from the thatch. Rats run about under the end room where the
stores of rice
and beans and the Doctor's

are
in
medicine
blackbirds
chests
kept.
Parrots
trees
and
swarm
the
outside,
and here nest the

warning of serpents. Near the house
sol
little
birds that give
is
hill
of
those
strangely civilized communities, the para-
you trace their line of march, one rank going to the nest carrying fragments of leaves, which
ants.
feet
fall
For 200
back
over
their
bodies
as
if
the
creatures were
the sun.
shading themselves from These colonies have been com-
pared
to Sir
Thomas More's
"
or to the ideal socialism.

hill-hive
Utopia," All work in the
the big ants, nearly half an inch
long, provided with formidable jaws, 260
and
On
the
little
the Llanos
carries
no bigger than gnats. Each All are the burden it can bear.
ones,
nourished
by
the
fungus
which grows
upon the masticated leaves planted inside But the individual is nothing. the nest.
The wounded ones
are let struggle
where
they lie, the procession going on past and over them indifferently. Toil, not life, is the goal of the hill-hive, and the toil never
stops.
hunting-party is arranged to start in the afternoon of the second day and camp
near a group of hills on the edge of the savanna. Two ancient Winchesters are
at
the
casa,
and
calibre revolver.
Velazquez has a 38machete for the peon

us
who
outfit.
will
accompany
completes
the
We
ride off to the eastward with a pack

"
"
of seven
trotting behind. peros tigreros Nominally these dogs are for hunting
jaguar.
Actually,
they will chase nearly

start they
anything.
An
hour before we
261
The
kill

foot of the
at the
banana plantation
a rabbit, which is promptly consigned to the family larder.

curiously mixed one three dogs are of the true "tigrero" type, But brindled grey with slanting eyes.
is
The pack
the best
dog
off.
is
no
class at all
a black, El Negro, with in his looks and one eajr
chewed
"
There are
"
two white and

brute, small
grey
pintos
and one brown
and long like a dachshund, with hanging bloodhound ears. The pintos are just
puppies, and ever and anon they get stuck
on thorns and make the

their woes.
forest
ring with
About two hours of riding from the

casa brings
at
us to
a grove of chapparal
hill.
the foot of a rocky thicket-grown
A
is
pool
of water girded
with palm-trees
in
alongside.
We
are
decide to
The mules
picketed
camp here. some good
grazing ground. While the peon gathers wood for a fire, including a reserve supply,
262
On
which
he
the Llanos
covers
palm fronds against a rain which seems immicarefully
with
nent,
we
stretch our
hammocks between
bar,
is
the
trees.
The mosquito
far,
which has
not been unfolded so
out and drawn into place. tion against the shower, a rope
now opened As a protecis
stretched
above the
thick covija,
net,
and over
this is laid
the
which makes a miniature tent
over the hammock.
There
night,
no danger from jaguar in the surrounded as we are by dogs and

is
with the
fire
burning.
But there
is
chance that a bull

cattle-path
may come along the and give your hammock a

luck.
poke
risks,
for
good
This
is
one of the
however.
fished
Having
horn
up water by means of a
string,
at the
end of a
an equipment
which both Velazquez and the peon carry in their saddle pockets, we soon make a
meal of
coffee,
cassava,
and cheese.
The
coffee-grounds are later allowed to drain

263
The
for

so,
an hour or
and just before going
to
bed we have the second brew, called
guarapo.
It
is
The
original
brew was
cafe.
a warm, moist night, whose deep encircling shadows seem full of murmurings and of whispers.
trees
Between the high
An
above are spaces of dense blackness. odour of earth, of grasses, a scent of
woods and of dead branches, is in the Above are the fitful stars, and though air. no breeze stirs, you feel around you the
vague palpitation of
this ocean of leaves.
You
feel
lost,
at
bay,
surrounded with
dangers under this living mystery atremble everywhere. You fall asleep to this deep throb of the jungle.
morning we discuss the plan " Venedo 6 tigre deer or of campaign.

In the
"
is the first question. jaguar ? are counted for jaguar.
All votes
"
Now," says Velazquez,

tigre.
"
there are
is
two
and
it.
ways of hunting
easy,
One
safe
but
it
is
hard to find him by
264
On
The
other
is
the Llanos
difficult
and dangerous, but if there are any tigres you get them. The first method is to ride around the savanna with dogs and try to run on
very
a
a
trail.
The dogs chase

and
the
tigre
up
tree,
10 feet
you station yourself about away and shoot it in the eye. The
is
second way
their dens.
to
go
into the
montana
to
If jaguars are
in the neigh-
bourhood they will be there. You build a fire and stand in front of the hole.
They come out on

to shoot
the
"
jump and you have

los
quick.
Esta
to
llanos"
he
points
to
the level
savanna,
"y
esa el
monte" he points
hill
the jungle-covered
above.
enter
in
We
the
the
montana.
leads
The way
machete
hand,
the
peon, to cut
vines and
impassable.
fighting your
creepers where they are In a few minutes you are
through the worst jungle you have ever had to face,
way up
the
hill
bar none.
265
The
for

tangled
"
The Venezuelans have

these
creepers,
los bejucales."
a special forests of trees
word
and
Here and there

flesh.
are
trees
with
long needles like thorns

in
which break
off
the
On
the
climb you grasp branches whose upper surface is fitted with row on row of jagged
triangular teeth like a shark's, so that even a monkey cannot climb them. Sabre
with hook-shaped thorns along the edge and a fine point, grapple and pierce Others which you brush your clothes.
cacti,
into are four-sided, standing upright with
sprays of needles at the angles. rocks grow still others like

thistles,
On
the
flower.
on top with Vines sweep down from the

white
gigantic a little red

tree-
tops and overhanging rocks. They are so many entangling ropes with which you struggle like some labouring Gulliver
while tearing your hands upon hook and thorn attachments.

of
the
fish-
Clumps
stubborn
young
266
bamboo
add
their
On
spines
hard,
to
the Llanos
rest.
the
breast
the
your teeth savage resistance, and

set
You
press forward.
Boulders line the way between them you must pick a precarious way as best
;
you
fall
can.
Now
against a rock,
and again your feet stub and being entangled, you

all
in
forward, clutching desperately at reach. In places the ground is
so
steep that
knees.
you must climb on hands and The dogs will not stir from the
path you make to hunt these thickets, but follow cringing, with bleeding paws, whining as the thorns pierce them. Once,
more open place, the guide gives a cry and runs a score of Before you can understand the yards. reason, four hornets have stung you on forehead and temple. A cascabel (rattlefortunately
in
sighted by the peon, but disapWoodticks, pears quickly into the brush.
snake)
is
(garrapatas) are on your arms and neck, burrowing in. The sweat pours down
267
The

khaki
of
your forehead, and the thick your suit is drenched with it.
At
rock.
last
we
see a cavern under a great
"Tigre," whispers the peon.
Guns
ready,
we
tiptoe
up.
The peon pokes
are braced tenderly with a long stick. to receive a jaguar coming out at a
We
Our emotion is wasted, however. The dogs come and sniff: nothing is in
spring.
the den.
We
move along
all
the base of the
cliff,
poking into
the dens
heart-breaking work. lessly brave "guapo."

as well
as
we The peon
find.
is
It is
fear-
He
it
every hole and pokes in

brush.
goes up to with a stick,
He
leading the way through the is a silent, thin-faced, sinewy
of the vaquero, cowboy breed with whom Bolivar beat the Spaniards.
We
poke into holes for two days, riding across the savanna from mountain to mountain. Several
accomplish nothing.
turtles
We
with orange spots on their backs,
268
On
called
the Llanos
and an armadillo,
called
morocoi,
caracal, are all
we
and
get.
Once we
to
see the
zamuro wheeling about

ride a couple of miles
in the distance,
see
if
a jaguar has killed something
there.
hundred
buzzards,
black,
re-
pulsive, are
her,
around a cow.
is
We
examine
but there
not a wound.
Her
eyes
only have been pecked out as the first tit-bits by a white and black royal vulture,
on whose pleasure the rest wait. " Une veille vache morte d'amour," says
Velazquez disgustedly.
The peon
for the dogs,
flesh,
cuts a piece of the cow's leg
for
which shamelessly gnaw the with raw meat they are fed
decides
in the
without scruple.
The vaquero
tigres
finally
that
the
must be
here in
deep woods, rather
than
the neighbourhood of the cattle-ranges which they usually haunt. On the third day out we camp for lunch,
in
the midst of which a rain comes on.

269
The

it
pours in torrents. Everything we have is wet through. A gourd
For two hours

left
is
which was
drippings
standing to catch the coffee

to the brim.
full
The dogs
whimper and move uneasily from place to place. El Negro, knowing that his hunting ability entitles him to special privilege, comes and curls up with us
under a dripping
couija.
The
afternoon sun dries us out.
We
sight a herd of deer in a thicket and bag two. Then the dogs start something
which we run down and

ant-bear.
little
find
to be an
It
has taken to the limb of a

It
is
tree.
its
striking
claws,
its
at
El
is
Negro
with
curved
so virulently with
hissing ridiculously small
and
mouth, shaped like a horse's, that the dogs do not dare go near it. We add
it
to our bag.
Farther on, just as we have picked our way across the boulder-strewn bed of a
branch of the Carapo, the dogs

270
start
On
fox,
the Llanos
full
and
are off in
the river.
There
is
cry back across a beautiful burst for
a mile or more, in which the fox doubles
back and
is
killed a
where he
the
death,
started.
hundred yards from El Negro is first at

keep
the
tail
and
we
in
souvenir.
We
Lame
take a trip to the
land of
"
The
Senor," and add a grey-eyed, redmoustached mestizo and a piratical-looking Indian, with a great hooked machete, to
the guides force, bagging another deer on this land. sleep on the senors porch while the Indian strums his guitar and
We
the
improvises to the rattle of the maracas gourds a song about a mighty

hunting.
mestizo
At
length, after a
week of
it,
we
turn
our mules back towards San Jos6, and come trailing in about dusk, the mules
spent with fatigue and the dogs straggling
home
in single file
behind us.
After a good night's rest
we
are ready
271
The

Dr. Velazquez goes
for the next interest.
with you to the woods by the river, to point out some medicinal plants that are in local
repute.
On
the
way he
points
out the
arestin, that curious sensitive-plant
whose
leaves close as one touches
it.
After
some scrambling along
the valley
bottom he points out the Cruseta real, a tree with light-brown bark, an infusion
of which has the
same
effect
as quinine.
In Venezuela they gather the bark, boil and swallow 40 drops of the liquid it, per day. Many people who cannot take
quinine, which
this
makes them
for fever.
spotted,
use
Cruseta
believes
real
Dr. Velazis
quez
that
the
tree
not
the
Bonplandia
boldt
fever,
brewed by the old monks of Angostura, which Von Humtrifoliata,
1799 as being good for but another and unknown species.
noted in
The mora, which is like the balata, gives, when its bark is tapped, a milk which is
antiseptic
272
and good
for
ulcers.
This
is
On
The yagrumo
and drunk.
is
the Llanos
applied externally, sometimes diluted with water.

root
is
soaked in water
For hemorrhages the bark scraped and put onto the wound.
The
is
courtesy of the Alvarado household They notice that you like the exquisite.
and without a word of comment, despite the small quantity secured from the reluctant cows, two glasses are at your
fresh milk,
place every meal.
Senora Alvarado sends
a peon to a neighbour 10 miles away to get a loaf of a creamy sugar, like maple sugar, called alfondoque, for you to sample. Carlos
sees that your heavy riding-boots are un-
comfortable for use around the house, and

gets you a pair of light alpargatas. Everybody in the family joins in to help polish
up your raw and meagre Spanish. Having spent ten days at San Jos,
you plan now to return
to Bolivar.
You
be
square up indebtedness as well as

T
may
273
by giving Velazquez a pair of binoculars,
The
Alvarado a watch, and Carlos a camera and the muchacha a silver penknife. Your
hosts supply you with provisions, delegate a peon as escort, and with affectionate
farewells start
you on your outward way. Four days, after some detours and halts you nearly
to Bolivar.
six hours' to
for shooting, bring
you
forced night-march enables reach Mannoni's in time to take

sit
a shower-bath and
down
to breakfast
with the
"
rest.
I
No,
believe
that
freemasonry
is
is
anti-Christian,"
M. Mattey
it
saying as
you
"
enter.
On
the contrary,
benefit
to
is
of the greatest
at
possible
retorts
society
large,"
M.
Vicentini.
274
VII
THE "DELTA"
HTHE
may
has
got
"
"
Delta"
is
scheduled to
sail
for
Port of Spain in five days. There " be a delay, because the " Apure
stuck
on
if
sandbank
near
Pedernales, and
the
Delta"
her signals are seen, must steam over and pull
her
off.
You go around and make your

wells
to
fare-
the
Presidente,
to
giving
a
take
him
a hot
Thermos
overnight
in
bottle
keep his
coffee
and
receiving
photograph
leave
remembrance.
You
of
Santos Palazzi, getting presented with a

tiger-dog and a jaguar skin, and leaving your rifle as a partial reciprocation.
Dr.
Sartos
gives
you
comja.
It
is
275
The
really
embarrassing to know how to get square with all these kindly people. You go down with Wadsworth to see
how
thing
the
time.
his
is
engine has progressed.

ready
will
for
Everythe assembling, and
work
turns
be
is
done
on
schedule
Wadsworth
over
pleased as
Punch,
and
the
engines
to
how well they Commandante goes for

you
hunt
with
function.
show The
dove-
another
you, and this time some cranes and a young alligator are added
to the bag.
You
out
prepare for departure by getting custom papers, or rather Santos

gets
them out for you and General Navarro rushes them through.
Palazzi
The papers are a relic of the time when almost everything paid an export
duty, as gold still does. at the last a hitch, or at
in
There comes
least
halt,
getting
the
baggage
"
on
board
the
the
boat, because the
Delta," just
when
276
The "Delta"
passengers
are
expecting
to
have their
possessions embarked, goes over to Soledad to load cattle and returns only an hour before sailing-time. Charlie, whom
Fitzgerald has
left
here with his launch,
guard lest the boat slip off without one passenger or his luggage. At length the " Delta" reappears from
across the
river
mounts
and toots
her
whistle.
come to watch her off. They stream down across of the river the naked earthen bank
townsfolk
Most of the
have
to
in
the
force
water-line.
to
Friends
the
are
out
speed
is
parting
his
this
guests.
M.
Mattey
confrere,
who
escorting leaves by
Cuban
boat.
Senor Aquatella has a large shipment of The American Consul is anxious balata.
to get
some
cigars sent
dad, and has to
up from Trinicommission the Scotch

soon
line,
engineer to bring them for him.

is gang-plank across, and porters in a
The
thrown
like para-
277
The
sol

are
ants,
passing
in
with bundles
and
at
trunks
the
on heads, and coming out low entrance below-stairs.

saddlebags,
Covijas
and
swarthy
Venezuelans
owned by the bound for San
Felix are heaped in deck. Cedar chests,
one corner of the
and
their
bundles
of
palm-fibre baskets, many kinds are on

decks,
where a large family of Trinidad negroes have camped. Five the cumbersome porters carry
way
'tween
equipment
touristEnglish to the cabin saddle, top-hat-case and all indicated by the buxom Trinidad negress
of
the
is
who
all
stewardess, and seems to
manage
the men.
is
The deck
a hubbub of porters and
passengers of every shade and complexion. Some are embracing each other. Some
are talking excitedly.
More
are
looking
crowd are opening chamstolidly. pagne at the ship's bar in honour of a on
German
278
merchant
who
is
retiring
for
The "Delta"
good and leaving Venezuela one Herr An American who has been up Mtiller.
country getting hold of a balata property, and has various shadowy concessions of
taking to New York to realize upon, smokes a big Havana in company with a swarthy
problematical
cattle-rancher from the llanos near Apure.
worth which he
is
The dark-skinned
Jefe Civil of
San
Felix,
Sefior Pablo Garcia, is on the deck, standing stiffly up and ceremoniously saluting
his friends, while beside
secretary,
him
his
private
and pointed yellow shoes, sabre on thigh and Winchester in hand, listlessly smokes a
in civilian clothes
cigarillo.
warning toot and the shore-bound element makes precipitate descent to the
gang-plank.
They stand upon

the
the dock
and
third
begin
hand
to
all
and
handkerchief
waving
sacred
whistle
and
boat-leaving. the vessel starts

face
it
A
on
the wide sweep which will
down
279
The
plays

The German
"
stream.
band
on
shore
Pueblo Gloria al wheezingly Venezolano," and with the white flannels

still
waving us
their
"bon voyage," we
current,
start
down with
the
the
City
Bolivar dropping farther and farther behind, its cathedral and the old Spanish
of
fort
fading last from our lingering vision. The English tourist is first to break
He is grumbling the retrospective charm. his troubles into the ear of a fellow-countryman who
has been manager for an English syndicate interested in a mining concession near Callao.
"
Do you know what
had
to
do
to
get out of this beastly country with my luggage? I had to buy a stamped piece
of paper at the Custom House, cost 50 centimes. The inventory had to be made
out in a certain form, they told me,
but
no form was printed on the stamped paper.
young chap at the Custom said he would make out my

280
House
list
for
The "
Delta
"
But I wouldn't pay such a 5 bolivars. sum, so I went back to the hotel and had
the schedule
to
made out
there.
Then
had
which had the stampselling concession and buy a one-bolivar stamp. I took this to the Custom House, and one man pressed a rubber marker
go
to a hat-store
on the paper and another signed
it.
knew
intuitively
that
the stamp
I
should
have been cancelled and
pointed this out.

I
The second
official
said
was
right,
had happened Then penknife and stabbed the stamp. I took the document to still another place,
it.
to miss
He
they opened a
and the Commandante stamped and wrote his name upon it."
In one corner of
Civil is
it
anew
Jefe
the
deck
the
talking to the Commandante of San Felix, the jovial banjo-player who went on the excursion with you to the
Falls of the Caroni.
They
are discussing
a murder which has taken place recently It was all on near their bailiwick.
281
The
account of a stolen pig.
small farmer
to law
had some goats

acquitted.
lifted
and went
about the matter, but the thief had been

subsequently, a pig also disappeared, he took the law into his own hands, and on the report of his little
When,
daughter, loaded couple of slugs,
his
shotgun
in
with
for
a
his
lay
wait
enemy, and
"
killed him.
Too many
the
thieves
go
"
says
Commandante.
let off."
unpunished," I think the
man
should be
The
unless
Jefe Civil,
who
by
will
overruled
is
the
be the judge Presidente at
was curious how I captured murderer," says the Commandante.

It
Bolivar, "
discreetly silent.
that
"
My
mule smelled the dead man's blood as I passed the body, and next day, seeing the
farmer go into the bushes,
rather
I
than
by,
come up and speak

raised
to
me
I
as
went
it
my
suspicion.
noticed
was
near where the body was found."

282
The "Delta"
waving beside the broad, quiet river, by which one can penetrate three thousand miles into the interior.
forest is
The
The
vessel
stream.
On
cattle
is
quickly down gliding the lower deck the thicklyis
packed
sit
stamp and low.
negro
All
somewhere
strumming
is
a guitar.
down
to dinner at a long table.

at
The
your right and the retired German merchant and a negro

English engineer
balata trader at your
left.
The
latter
has
secured an
enormous
concession on rubber-trees in the interior

of Paragua, and, though he has made a fortune at the business, has gotten more now than he can handle. He is going
to
London
There
is
to
try
and make a company

discrimination
to
race,
to take over his property.
no
as
at
this
festive
board
or colour,
or
previous
condition
of
servitude.
Only
one per cent, of the Venezuelan people are

recorded as pure white, and in the most
283
The

circles
aristocratic
the black of Africa
is
mixed with the blue most

Indian,
of
Castile.
is
The
and
in-
common
of
mixture
white
the
which
the
two-thirds of
are
habitants,
mestizo,
Mulattos are
fairly
composed. common, and Zambos,

so.
negro and Indian half-breeds, less There is every possible permutation

these race mixtures.
of
The
courses
"
English
tells
engineer between the the tale of the Callao Mine.

Cali-
About 1860 some Yankees from fornia came here and began to pan
gold.
They founded the Callao Mine, and a French company was organized and
bought
along,
in
it.
company
shares.
After a few years' work the became insolvent, and, to eke
paid
tradesmen
script
redeemable
thousand pesos' worth of shares would be bought then for 50 pesos.

great vein was struck shortly after, and for years shares of 1,000 pesos pro-
The
duced 72,000 pesos.

284
One Trinidad negro
The "Delta"
boatman, who kept a cookshop, sold a few shares given him for a board bill.
to-day one Trinidad.
is
He
of
the
rich
men
of
In 1895 the main lode was lost. No reserve of money had been kept to explore
with,
"
and the company went permanently

trader,
bankrupt."
The German
is
Herr
Mtiller,
who
going back to the old country to finish his days in quiet, has been for twenty
years
in
Bolivar, starting
as
clerk
with
the
Blohm
trade
"
&
Cie.
He
has
studied
of
the
country with characteristic

is
German thoroughness.
Venezuela
a
in
country enormously
coffee,
rich,
principally
cocoa,
balata,
rubber, hides, and cattle.
Even now
the
balance of trade
is
in her favour
eighty
million dollars of exports to fifty millions

of imports.
only mile
fifty
Guiana has a population of thousand two to the square

285
over an area as large as the British
The
Isles.

These countries
are
nothing to
The llanos will they could be. support a hundred times more cattle if
only they are bred instead of neglected.
what
Our neighbour speaks

There
are
of
the
Callao.
rich
if
other
mines just as
people had the capital to work them." adjourn to a corner of the deck
We
and
light
up some
of
is
Havana
cattle
cigarettes.
The owner deck, who

him
11
the
on
to
the
lower
taking
us.
them
Trinidad
to
for sale, joins
The German puts
the problem of stocking the llanos.
talk about breeding better cattle," he says. " I know all about that busi-
You
what good does it do me if I import bulls and make an enclosure and

ness, but
breed good cattle ? They are the first ones that will be shot by the next revolution. If the cattle range wild it is harder to steal
But even thus the insurrectos got away with three hundred head from my
them.
estate last time.
286
The "Delta"
"And
tinues.
such ridiculous laws!" he con"
There
is
one that
not
kill
a cow.
How
law
you must many cows have

barbed
-
infectious diseases
and should be killed?

that
There's
another
wire
I
fences should have seven wires.
Don't
know how many

have
in
wires
my
fences should
as
well
" ?
as
those crooked
lawyers
Caracas
"And how
can
foreign
capital
come
"
into this country
and open up the mines ?
chimes in the engineer. "You ought to A hundred and fifty dollars see our costs.
To transport goods 60 miles get out of the country I have to secure a permit in San Felix and one in Bolivar
a
ton to
!
too.
The negroes down
the river have to
hand out
graft for every time they
move.
Why,
to
the carters to the Callao

1
Mine have
20 pesos a year, a tax greater than the largest sized motor-car pays in England. All our supplies have to go up
pay
to Bolivar first
and then be brought back

287
The
to

mine.
the
narrow-gauge
from
San
Felix
would
country.
Will they allow
it ?
open No.
railway out the

Fifteen
years ago a route was planned and marked on Guzman Blanco's map as 'under
construction/
start "
They say
graft
is
!
the railroad
"
must
from Bolivar.
graft,
And
he
continues.
"
Mining machinery
is
free of
duty by the
on paper. But you have to pay the Customs first and then get A miner up here a while the money back.
Code, which
ideal
ago paid four hundred dollars in duties, and before he got it back he had expended one hundred dollars for stamps and fees.
Why, up
instead
fees
at
Callao
we send telegrams
dispatch
of
letters,
because the
go dante, and he has

is
to the salary of the local
CommanIt
to be taken care of.
all
in
you spend money Venezuela, but God help you if you

"
!
right so long as
make any
"
But
288
this
Government
is
all
right,"
The "Delta"
"it is promoter safe to invest here now. Of course, the
;
protests the
American
get their little pickings for their trouble, but since Venezuela was made to
officials
give up
decision,
all
that
money
after
the
Hague
is
foreigner's
Since
Gomez
safeproperty has become President trade
has increased 15 per cent." " That is because it was nothing during Matos's Revolution and Castro's troubles,"
interrupts
the
German.
"
it is
But
true.
those
indemnities hit pretty hard,
The
whole Customs receipts are less than four million dollars, and nearly two and a
half millions
go
to the indemnities
and the
foreign debts."
"They
in either,"
"
I
will
not
let capital
be brought
traveller.
grumbles the English
had an idea there might be openings here for manufacturing, and I looked the
situation
over.
Matches
cents
you
buy
in
Venezuela for 20
dozen boxes,
of far worse quality than those in Trinidad, u 289
The

full.
and the boxes are not
At Trinidad
they cost 10 cents, and that is dear enough. But can you start a factory here ? Not
much
because a distinguished
official
in
Caracas owns stock in the match factory which makes these fosforos, whose heads
fly off
and burn your
clothes.
official
Salt sells
discount,
at Bolivar
with the largest
which, by the way, you do not get, for a cent and a fifth a pound. At Cura^oa it
quoted at three-tenths of a cent. But can you sell salt ? Not much It is a
is
!
Government monopoly. The distinguished official in Caracas owns three-fourths of

the stock in this steamer company, which has the concession for selling salt. And
this
Compania Fluvial has
the sole right
navigate the Macareo passage. Any competing line has to go up the Pedernales
to
passage and spend twelve hours longer getting to Bolivar, if, indeed, it does not
run onto the bar and stick there

'
'
like
the
Apure/
290
The "Delta
The
cattle
merchant chimes in:

like
"We
want a man
fist,
Diaz."
He
shakes his
"With a sword!" The American promoter
protests
"We
want
do not want
machetero ; we
an
administrator
capital.
himself with
who will ally The Government
would become good if capital came in and people had work. There are too many
guapos, too
"
many bravos" But how can it come?"

"Will
the
in
interrupts the
Englishman.
gentleman
distinguished
Caracas give up his salt concession and the matches or the cigarettes, or the Orinoco Navigation Company,
or the Maracaibo
capital
steamers
it
Where
can
go
When
enters, the
Govern-
ment or the revolution runs off with it. You have a mine with four hundred men. The Presidente sends word There is danger of a revolution I must have those
' :
men for my army/ What The promoter is bellicose.
can you do
291
"
?
The
"

had a railroad with two thousand
If I
men I would arm them and fight anybody who tried to take them The away, Government or revolution. Asphalt Company at Pitch Lake has its men armed and does that."
four hundred
But they got their property taken away after they had spent two hundred thousand
"
Matos beat Castro," comments the mine manager.

dollars to help
" did not "Well," says the promoter, Castro have a reason to take their lake
away?
anyway.
They
I
stole
it
in
the
I
first
place,
know, because
took part in
the revolution and
money.
but
let
great sums of British war-vessel stopped me,
we had
saw
when
the
officer
;
through line away from the Americans, too. They gave twenty-five thousand dollars to the
revolution.
me
papers he Castro took the steamer
my
The
if
Yankees
they had
would
left
have
been
all
right
politics
alone."
292
The "Delta"
The German grows
Government
is
placative
"This
It
not
is,
so
if
very
bad.
only the distinguished official you mention was not so interested in cattle. He will be in an
wouldn't be, that
important conference with foreign reprea servant comes and sentatives, when
'
says,
The
old
cow has had a

'
calf.'
Up
he jumps, and says, Excuse me/ and does not come back for three days. He is just
a cattle-man."
11
That
like,"
what the Venezuelan people "Well, I hear says the ranchman.

is
up Apure way there may be trouble any

minute."
He
lowers his voice mysteriis in
ously
is
"The Old One

"
!
Colombia,
it
said."
"
" he is all says the promoter eaten up with tumours and is in the Canary
Pish
Islands."
"Well," says the cattle man, "I have been told by our agent in Trinidad to keep my eyes and ears wide open."
293
The
"

is
There
another," adds the promoter.
"The lame one?"

"Yes,
popular
dent
the
lame
senor.
I is
The
most
man
in Venezuela.
have heard
from the inside that he
to be Presi-
when
will
there
is
the
next
trouble.
There
be
an
intervention
by the
United States and an entirely free elecwith inspectors, and he will be tion,
elected,
and he
is
an absolutely
honest
and
patriotic
man.
Twice
before
he
could have been President, by treachery, and he would not. I should like to
see the Presidente of the State of Bolivar
go higher. He is most diplomatic. says, 'The roads are my monument."

"
He
the
He made Gomez President," adds German. "You know Castro was

in
away
Paris,
and he sent word

that
to the
Cabinet
to
proclaim
motion.
'
needed his return.

offered
this
One Then
country of the Ministers

the
the
General
stood up and said,

294
Is Castro to treat us
The "Delta"
as children
who cannot run

But General
the country
And
Perez said the same.
So Castro was
Telleria
not recalled.
took
ship next day to the United States and He is a good stayed there two years.
man."
"
We
have another revolution coming

"
soon, anyway," says the cattle-man. trouble in the country is we have
One
too
many
officials,
and they change always.
Of course, it is necessary to reward those who have fought well, so what else can
be done
? I
have seen revolutions
start.
Somebody who has been driven who has influence in some State,
out,
or
will get
together a thousand or so brave fighters Other men in the district, restg^lapos.

less,
or with
'
:
a grudge,
send in to him
and say
control three
if I
hundred men.
'
They
are yours
can be Custom House
collector
of
;
hundred
Barcelona.'
San Felix,' or, I have a would be Prefect of Police of The leader is glad to get
295
The
allies

and pledges the
officials
posts.
These pro-
smaller places and rewards to their men, and thus the

spective
promise
army
gets
is
made.
To
generally
promises
foreigners the leader concessions and so
With a force and some money. cash he marches to the capital. Matos
had
sixteen
thousand
I
men
against
Castro's six thousand.

that
was with Castro

the Church of
day
in the steeple of
Ascencion.
Matos'
men
none
of
them
went
bull.
wanted
1
to die.
Castro said that morning,

soldiers
like a
win,'
"
and his regular

a
through the insurgents
mad
revolting general wins, as Castro did before he came into the Presi-
When
dency,
he marches to Caracas with his

the
backwoods, and meets a crowd of thievish lawyers, who have been
army from
Ministers, and
know
is
the
ways of
graft
and of the Government.

torious general
When
the vic-
they adroitly get

296
made Acting President, into the new Ministry,
The "Delta"
and show him how
election
to conduct a pretended
dente
before declaring Constitutional.'
himself
'
Presi-
Now
the
time
comes
his "
for the
redemption of promises to
henchmen.
Some
;
of the chiefs get their appointat
ments
and
to
once their enemies

escape
their
alive.
flee to
Trinidad
officials
take
goods.
The The
and
new men
des-
driven
perate,
lution.
out
are
crazily
angry
and ready to join the next revoslick
lawyers get to the new President, and say such and such a one is not fit to be Commandante of the proa good fighter/ they allow, a giiapo, but he is a rough neck. He cannot fill that job put in such anport.
is
'
"The
mised
'
He
other.'
So
the President tells his officer

little
who had
or he
the pledge to wait a
while,
only
else.
appoints some one and says it is temporary, or he offers something
So
the
man
waits and waits, getting

297
The
call

his
angrier and angrier, and
lieutenants
on him to
he
fulfil
his
own
promises,
which
cannot
do.
Finally he
goes
a burning heart, ripe also for the next revolution. The President seizes
the concessions and monopolies he can, to hire his own soldiers and keep himall
home with
self President.
So
it
goes.
"The country needs

concludes.
"
new
Diaz," he
Old General Guzman Blanco
was
with
like
Diaz.
the
Truly he was ridiculous statues he built to himself,

with
the
title
plastered
Illustre
over
of
'
El
Americano/
Yet he allowed no-
body to steal but himself, and the country was the most prosperous it has ever been."
The
Jefe Civil
is
near and seems to be
listening.
"Tenga ciudado," whispers moter. The conversation stops

"
the
pro-
abruptly.
Those
trees
along the bank are very

the
river
is
beautiful," says the cattle-man.
The
298
scene
along
really
The "Delta"
The water-rushes rise like magnificent. a lawn from the water's edge. Behind is
tall
grass several feet high, then stretches the irregular line of the trees.
care
The Englishman does not hears him. "Say what you proclaims, "on one side of
strait
is
who
he
please,"
ten-mile
a province as
large
as Prussia
lavishly rich in untouched natural resources,
without a mile of railway, without a decent road, without industries or anything but
the most elementary agriculture, supporting a poverty-stricken population of less than
sixty thousand.
On
the other side of the
channel
is
little
island fifty miles square
with railroads, trolleys, factories, oil-fields, roads like boulevards, supporting in peace
and prosperity two hundred and eighty thousand people. The Flag means thus
much, anyway." " Give Venezuela a
the American,
right yet."
"
fair
chance," protests
Guiana
will
come out
299
all
The
"

can
You
says the
voice.
make money here, anyway," German in a conspicuously loud

to
"The English have nothing
complain of, if they don't ship through Trinidad and have to pay the 30 per cent,
surtax.
They
sold three
million
dollars'
worth of manufactures, goods, and cottons, to Venezuela, and the Germans sold two
millions only
here.
;
the United States lose out
They
send
nothing
but
wheat,
patent medicines, and a lot of catalogues which nobody reads. They have not sense
enough
speaking
to
send
commercial
travellers
Spanish
down with
samples.
But the States buy most of the exports and send gold coin back."
In the evening
Felix,
we
see the lights of
San
and the Jefe Civil and the Commandante are rowed ashore. Later we
Barrancas,
reach
and
take
on board
of
dark-coloured
family
consisting
bearded
local
magnate, his wife, and three
senoritas.
300
The "Delta"
You go
to
bed to the sound of the
thrashing of the stern paddles and wake to the cry of the parrots screeching in
the jungle alongside.
The
vessel ploughs
northward
You
stroll
through the morning mist. around the decks, watching for
monkeys
by her
upon the bank. One of the senoritas, aided and abetted

in the trees
sister,
seems
cipient flirtation
having an inwith a young Venezuelan.

to be
You
pick up on the deck, fortuitously, a piece of paper evidently intended for him. On it is written in a delicate feminine
hand
"
3.
Sefior X.
i.
Esperame.
to
2.
Me
esperas?
Esperame pronto."
You
is
slip
it
the Venezuelan,
who
properly grateful, though a little perplexed at the selection of yourself as
intermediary.
The mangrove-trees
appear
of the Delta
mouth
by an occasional narrow cano, and here and there, rarely,

now,
pierced
301
The
the

of a
Guarano Indian's hut. The choppy water of the mouth of the Macareo passage is passed. The manthatch
pass grove coast slowly fades away. the Soldado rock with its menacing line of breakers and enter the Serpent's Mouth of sinister memories both. The hills
of Trinidad appear soon. They are clearly defined, with the regularly laid out coco-
We
nut trees of the plantations at their feet. White houses peep out between the palms. Just as the sun is sinking over the distant
hills,
Spain close beside the Royal Dutch West India Mail Steamer bound to-morrow for New York.
we
cast anchor in Port of
302
INDEX
PAGE
ABERCROMBIE, SIR RALPH, takes Trinidad for England 24 168 Aigrette gathering plumes in Venezuela " Angostura = The Narrows." See Ciudad Bolivar.
.
Congress of Angostura frames Constitution for Greater Columbia

Asphalt Lake In Trinidad At Pedernales entrance of Orinoco In Venezuela
43
.......
.
93
292
15
.140
BERRIO, DON ANTONIO DE Expeditions seeking El Dorado Captured by Raleigh Dies of disappointment
Bolivar,
.16
18 18
Simon
life
Appearance
Early " El Libertador " Battle of Calabozo Elected President of Greater Columbia Crosses the Andes
Battle of Boyaca, liberates New Grenada Battle of Carabobo, liberates Venezuela
26 28 28
42
.
44
45 46 46 47 48 49
Battle of Ayacucho, liberates Peru Abandoned by his Generals
Death
CALABOZO, Battle of, February 12, 1818 Bolivar and Paez defeat Spaniards
.42
303
The
Path of the Conquistadores PAGE

.
.
Caroni River, location of El Dorado Friars massacred Casas, Bartholomew de Las Cassava bread Manufacture of
.
.
.14
35 7 139
.148
20
171
Castillos, Los, formerly San Stormed by English
Thome
Present ruins
Chacon,
Charles
Don
Jose,
Governor of Trinidad
.
.
23
35 21
abolishes Indian slavery
.12
.
Ciudad Bolivar, formerly Angostura Reached by Raleigh Blockaded by Bolivar
Abandoned by Spaniards The modern city

During Matos's Revolution
Public improvements
. .
. .
Cocoa-growing in Trinidad Appearance of plantations Coco-nut industry in Trinidad
35 36 189 197, 219 199 73 85 54
Crown
grants
.68
73
I
Profitable industry
Columbus, Christopher Names Trinidad

Description of Serpent's Mouth Discovers pearls at Margarita Transported to Spain in chains Corsicans in Trinidad Woodcutter at Barrancas At San Felix At Ciudad Bolivar
.... .... ....
4 4
6
68
150
171
193
DORADO, EL
Origin of Legend
.
13
'
Expedition of Expedition of
Ordez de Berrio
.
.15
.
. . .
16
304
Index
PAGE
Dragon's Mouth
Appearance
...
.
Columbus passes
Nelson passes
... .......
.
.
51
FERDINAND OF ARAGON Ferdinand VII, tennis game with Bolivar

Friars
....
.
24
-4
.
.27
Befriend Indians
n
35 209
Massacred in revolution Buried treasure
GERMANY
Sounding around Margarita Securing Venezuelan meat trade
. .
74
.161
. .
GoldDiscovered in Guiana by Raleigh Buried by monks

Callao Mine
..... ....
.
.19
.
Mining
difficulties
209 284 287

24 36 43 46 76 75
Great Britain Seizes Trinidad

British officers in Bolivar's
army
33,
British
Legion
British Legion wins Battle of Government of Trinidad

.
Carabobo
. .
Greater
Naval station at Trinidad Columbia organized by Congress of

gostura
........
An-
44
8
INDIANS Before the conquest Treatment by Spaniards In Venezuela at time of Bolivar Guaranos along Orinoco
.
.....
.
9
147
.33
.
Dislike of u
Commissions
"
.
165
East Indians in Trinidad Coolie indenture system
60
.
76, 85
305
The
LLANOS
Path of the Conquistadores PAGE

.
Typical households on Transportation across
.231, 237, 241, 246
Ranch
life
on
Hunting
Medicinal plants
Parasol ants
.......
Spaniards
. .
255 255 261
272 260
14
5
MANOA,
city of
El Dorado
Margarita, Pearl Island
Discovered by Columbus Occupied by Spaniards
German
NEGROES
Labour
naval station
of, visits
7 74
Marequita, Cacique
.16
73 79 84
25
in Trinidad
......
....
. .
.
. . .
Negro judges
Negroes v. East Indians Nelson passes Trinidad
OIL
Importance of Trinidad deposits Guyaguyare field Ojeda, Alonzo de, names Venezuela Ordez, Diego de, expedition for El Dorado
Orinoco
... ....
. .
74 88
7
15
Columbus passes
Raleigh ascends
Bolivar's military base Entrance to Pedernales
. .
.
4
18
.
-34
-134 .144
145
mouth
Vagre passage Flora and fauna along

PAEZ,
"
Uncle," First President of Venezuela-
Guerilla warfare
Joined by Bolivar Captures gunboats with cavalry
38 41
. .
.
Turns against Bolivar
....
42 48
306
Index
PAGE
Port of Spain, Trinidad
Appearance from harbour

Population Society in
........
.
56 60 66
RALEIGH, SIR WALTER Seizes Trinidad Ascends Orinoco

Last expedition
17 18
Execution
........
.
20 22
Revolution in Venezuela
101, 197, 219, 292, 295

.
Robinson Crusoe shipwrecked on Tobago Island
50
SAN FELIX
Captured by Bolivar
Serpent's
35
Mouth
4
125
.
Description by Columbus " Geraldo " Passage in

Slavery Indians under Conquistadores Abolished at instance of Pope Sale of women along Orinoco
.
.
.10 .12 .20

31
Negro slavery abolished by Bolivar

Spain Occupies Trinidad and Venezuela Treatment of Indians Driven from Trinidad by English Misrule in Venezuela Rebellion in Venezuela
Atrocities of Royalists
...
.
7 8
.24
"32
29 30
TEMPERATURE
In Trinidad
65,
Up
Orinoco In Ciudad Bolivar
95 147
203
TheatreTravelling
show
at
San Felix
.173
307
The
Trinidad

.
Named by Columbus
Spanish conquest Captured by Raleigh Spanish occupation English conquest Population 1911
.
9
17
22
24 76
VENEZUELA
Named
after
Venice
.
Spanish conquest Independence declared National Government

State
Government
.
Local administration
7 8 28 280, 294, 288 199, 216 142, 152, 279, 282

.
Trade
Population
300 284
WELZERS
Granted Venezuela concession
White population Of Trinidad, 163 in 1773 Of Trinidad 1911 Of Venezuela 1817

.
Of Venezuela 1911
23 76 33 284
Woods
Of Trinidad Of the Orinoco Of the Llanos
....
86
170 272
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM
PRESS,
WOKING AND LONDON.
14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED Rv
RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 202 Main Library 642-3403 LOAN PERIOD T
re
1004?
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

Lindon Wallace Bates - The Path of The Conquistadores, Trinidad and Venezuelan Guiana (1912)

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Lindon Wallace Bates - The Path of The Conquistadores, Trinidad and Venezuelan Guiana (1912)

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SIMON BOLIVAR, "EL LIBERTADOR

FROM A PAINTING BY FRANCIS

THE PATH OF THE

AUTHOR OF "THE RUSSIAN ROAD TO CHINA,"

WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

From a painting by Duncan Emmet.

permission of Mrs. John

RALEIGH'S ATTACK ON PORT-OF-SPAIN

CELEBRATION OF THE HUNDREDTH

Path of the Conquistadores

DRAGON'S MOUTH AND MADAME TETTERON'S

VILLA NEAR PORT-OF-SPAIN

THE SWEETMEAT SELLER

-74 -76 .80

THE OIL REGION

THE ASPHALT LAKE

CLIFFS NEAR CEDROS POINT

ALONG THE ORINOCO

ABORIGINAL GUARANO INDIANS

THE LAUNDRY WOMEN

CALLE DE ORINOCO, CIUDAD BOLIVAR

THE CATHEDRAL, CIUDAD BOLIVAR

battered caravels were slowly nearing the coast of South America.

showed gaping seams. weeds trailed from their

the narrow poop-deck of the largest

gaunt, lonely figure.

His long white hair hung lankly down.

Path of the Conquistadores

of sailing, of hardship, of waiting,

The crew crowded

Dimly, in the distance, on the

port quarter, appeared three mountains.

Change the course

swung slowly around and As the fleet drew nearer

united upon one base. " " miracle exclaimed

Trinity Sunday, and

exclaimed one of the

Island of Skirting Trinidad, the vessels reached the entrance

dimly descried of South America.

ships hove to Point of Arenal.

sage between the island and the continent,

Serpent's Mouth," lay ahead.

scanty meal of then, wearied out,

from west to east

founder under the

passed by, and on the

came to still water. which was drawn

proved to be fresh." Over waves darkened with

brought Orinoco from the

his stock of fresh water.

food for the

women who came

The Path of the

Even while Columbus was opening

Court were tearing

favour with the

would have released

removed save by the royal

In the wake of Columbus came

Alonzo de Ojeda reached Bay of Maracaibo and named the

land Venezuela, because the huts of the