VII.
As we rush along down, nearing the Great Mother’s mighty limbs, we pass drooping arbours of Bucari, another flowering tree of wonderful splendour, each flower like a glorious wax Cattleya, and millions of them at a glance. Just then, as the blaze of beauty dazzles our eyes, two brilliantly green parrots, frightened by the noisy interloper, take flight from under their beauteous canopy, and wing their way in yellow, green, and red vibrations through the scintillating landscape. We are now flying along on a level stretch, in a high, rich valley, full of luscious fruits and ripening harvests, and before the mountain opens to receive us into one of its deep tunnels, we see large fields of a low bush, growing quite in the nature of young coffee, with much the same size and general appearance; without, however, the customary shade-trees. Our friend from Colombo explained that it is tapioca; and off beyond, in this next, white-walled hacienda (what a world of dreams and romance of the land of siempre mañana comes to one in that combination of ordinary vowels and consonants—“hacienda”!), in the Hacienda Las Palomas,—or was it the Hacienda La Sierra or La Mata, or Guaracarima?—the natives gather from the green river valleys, maize and beans and yucca, in the language of the country, “frutas menores;” but more abundantly than all else, are gathered the coffee and the sugar in vast crops year by year.
Westward from the summit the River Tuy plays hide-and-seek with us for many a mile, darting, hurrying, beckoning, charming us, with a desire to loiter when she loiters, to leap through the cliffs with her joy, to rest under flower-spread arbours in sleepy towns with her, to dissolve ourselves at last into the deep earth as she does. Finally we see her no more, but now the larger Aragua, flowing toward the Lake of Valencia, reaches out a bold hand, and we follow the new pathfinder where she commands.
One last look into the shadowy depths before we drop to the plains. It is only a glimpse, for the passing is so swift that the eye cannot reach its entirety of beauty; but that glimpse is like the shadow of a great rock,—a lasting memory. A bird slowly sways in mighty, circling sweeps, poised upon the ether, between two green-robed mountain priests—a great bird against the hazy mountain deep, swaying, calm, eternally sure of its strength. Was there a hand outstretched beneath in the far, disappearing morning which brought the ecstasy into the soul of that lonely wanderer?
We leave the tunnels, the endless bridges, the heights, and drop down rapidly into the valley, where the heat begins and the dust flies. We follow the Aragua until she brings us to the Lake of Valencia, a long, rambling, shallow lake, much like some of our own Northern lakes, and, at the first opportunity (I think it was at Maracay), we leave the train, and stand under the wide doors of the freight depot, with the natives lying around half-asleep on sacks of coffee, and try to catch a whiff of refreshing coolness from the lake. More German flags; they are very interesting, but why should a party of Americans be so honoured? For the German officers had gone back to the ship to do the polite to General Castro. But the halt here was for a few minutes only; and we go on, down through the hot little city of Valencia into greater heat, and for a time into greater and more glorious vegetation.
It was a curious sight,—the piles of compressed coal dust made into blocks,—“briquettes,”—eight to ten inches square, each stamped “Cardiff, Wales,” piled in high, orderly heaps at each station; greater supplies of which we found, as we left the timber for the low country. But I must not give the impression that the low country is untimbered; far from it. As we leave the higher levels and start the final sharp descent toward the coast on the cog-road,—a curious device in railroading to overcome the danger of such steep inclines,—we can give no conception of the forest growth through which we pass. The air is hot and still; the trees stand in their eternal beauty, in their myriads of blossoms, in their vivid colourings, with deep festoons of moss and interweaving vines in motionless repose. They seem to exhale heat and silence and darkness, even under the blaze of a still, white sun; they tell only of night in the tangled growth of nature triumphant. It might have been at Nagua-Nagua, if not there it was very near there, that the springs of water, boiling out of the earth, were hot and sulphurous, and, as we were about to move on in our roomy coach, along came the much-talked of Special, with its crowded passengers looking jaded and worn and cross, more, I imagine, from the incessant clatter of tongues than from the asperity of the Southern sun. On, on, nearer to the sea, to where the palms grow. There had been cocoanut and royal palms before,—yes, from Haïti through all the islands we had seen them, but here they attain their most perfect grandeur and glory. We came upon them not singly, in isolated groups of conservative aristocracy, but in companies and regiments, miles of them, arranged by the masterful hand of Nature, now in mighty groups apart, like a conference of plumed generals, and then again in battalions of tall grenadiers on silent dress parade. Their light lofty trunks gave back from the sun a dull, grayish white pallor. They were still and grand, and unspeakably beautiful.
The heat seems to grow more intense as the sun sinks lower in the heavens, and we drop down almost to the level of the ocean. The dust becomes more blinding, and the palms disappear, and all things prickly and unapproachably dry and forbidding, shadeless and impenetrable, take their place, and change the picture from one of tropical life to tropical death.
Long wastes of white sand spread over the desolate landscape, relieved by not one sprig of comely green or welcome shade, with great mounds and masses of gigantic and distorted cacti, more impassable than any man-made barricade. They fitted in well with the heat and the dust, and the long, low sun-rays, shooting in upon us their streaming floods of white light; and then, just as I began to think the croakers might have been right for once—there came a shout from the Doctor, from the Boston friend, from us all; and Daddy, who was on the other side of the car, jumps over to my seat and bends over my shoulder just in time to catch sight of the sea—el Mar Caribe—before a bristling bank of cacti shut it for the time from view. The Caribbean Sea—blue, far-reaching, sweetly cool, washing the feet of the great, good Mother;—we longed to plunge into the surf, and wash away the dust and heat and all unrest. The sight of the great sea so near us, and our trim ship at anchor in the harbour of Puerto Cabello, and the prospect of seeing the little girls, from whom we had been separated by so many hours and miles, gives us a deep joy. The day had been covered by the hand of God from dawn to setting, and to the end of time there shall no greater beauty meet our souls.
Then through the sleepy streets of hot old Puerto Cabello we wander to where a boat waits us by the rotting quay at the river’s mouth. Two darling faces find our wistful searchings as we near the ship, and four sweet arms accompanied by kisses fairly weigh us down as we reach the deck.
“Oh, Mother! Just think of it, we shook hands with President Castro!”