IV.
In front of us sat the Doctor; back of us sat a young South American from “up country,” with whom we entered into conversation, and from whom we learned much to confirm our rapidly forming opinions of his great country—Venezuela. He spoke English well, having been educated partially in England, partially in New York. He came from the Province of Colombo, to me a very indefinite, remotely hidden-away place somewhere in the Andes, accessible only by two or three days’ journey from Caracas, partly by mule and partly by boat up the Maracaibo River. By the way, we are told that Colombo is the native state of that peppery little dictator—the present President Castro.
This South American gentleman had been sent to Caracas to interview Castro and his ministers with regard to a loan of twenty thousand dollars in horses, cattle, and provisions made during the last revolution to the faction which had placed Castro in power; the transaction had evidently been dignified by the soothing name of “a loan” because the quondam cowboy leader Castro had ended as a self-elected President. Just what our fellow traveller’s success had been, we were unable to learn or he to tell, for this same General Castro is a wily bird and keeps many an honest Venezuelan guessing. He told us what we already knew,—that Venezuela needs peace—peace—peace, and that, until she is assured of peace, her great hands must be idle. We needed no words to assure us of her greatness. It was there before us. The idle hands were clasping rich harvests unsown, rich treasures in gold and silver glittered upon her fingers, and following the sweep of her green mantle, there was a race of warm-hearted children, within whose being there was the making of great men and women. But there must be peace. For, when there is war, her great men go to the front, her brave men are killed; but in some unfortunate way her political schemers and professional revolutionists survive, and are always ready to make new trouble. “He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day.”
And so they run away—the unsuccessful ones—to Curaçao, to Paris, or to some of the neighbouring South American states, but their dirty shadows ever hang imminent on the horizon.