V.
During the conversation with our South American friends, we had reached the end of the plateau, and the descent began into the great valley below. It was not until we reached that point that we realised the wonder of this Venezuelan railroad, or that we understood the reason of its being called the “Great Venezuelan Railway”—Gran Ferrocarril de Venezuela. Like the greater portion of all the business enterprises in South America and the West Indies, the railroad was built by Germans. Krupp, of gun fame, was named as the head of the company, and too much cannot be said of the courage and skill of men who undertook to build a road under such difficulties. There are railways of difficult construction all over the world, indeed, but never, in our experience, were we more impressed with the magnitude of an undertaking than we were with the construction of this masterful road; though one might well criticise the business judgment of men who would thus put millions of dollars into an enterprise that apparently can never be self-supporting. Think of it, eighty-seven tunnels through rocky mountain spurs, one hundred and twenty heavy steel bridges between Caracas and Valencia, miles of rock-cutting and costly filling, and all this to carry a handful of passengers and a few tons of freight each day—altogether not enough to load one of our “mixed trains” in the States!
It follows where cataracts leap a thousand feet, where rivers boil in thundering roar over mighty rocks; it cuts the mountain top asunder and dashes through the rock-hewn lap of earth; it drops down through the tops of giant trees, and robs the morning of her mist; it mingles with the clouds, and anon kisses the feet of the ocean—but it doesn’t pay dividends.
From its heights, the earth stretches out in wonderful ridges of gigantic proportion; geography becomes real, a fact, seen in the great perspective. The air is so clear that the eye seems to have new power of vision to reach to the uttermost end of the earth; the eye imparts to the soul its larger horizon, and a great leap of joy carries the spirit into the infinite room of creation, into the infinite grandeur of created things, and the spirit grows and feels its small estimate of God’s earth expanding into a newer, grander conception of creation. Mountain ridges sweep through tremendous space, one upon another, and at their base, thousands of feet below, a green pillow of sugar-cane invites the head and heart to quiescence. No word “green” can ever bring back the quivering, transparent green of those young cane-fields, far below in the valleys, watered by the careful hand of man in thousands of tiny streams of irrigation.