When we leave the Venezuelan capital and travel over the wide territory of the Republic, we find it is one of the most sparsely populated of the Spanish American nations. Conditions in internal development and social life are very much like those of Colombia, with highlands and lowlands, river and forest, cultivated plain and smiling valley, malarial districts and dreary uplands. We find the rudest Indian villages and the most pleasing towns: the most ignorant and backward Indian folk, the more docile and industrious Christianized labouring class, and the highly educated, sensitive and oligarchical upper class.
Again, we find the same variety of climate, products and the gifts of Nature in general. We see great plantations of coffee, especially in that fertile region of Maracaibo, which Colombia in part enjoys, and which gives its name to the superior berry there produced for export. We see broad estates, in their thousands, devoted to the production of the cacao, or chocolate, and similar areas over which waves the succulent and vivid green sugar-cane, whereon sugar is produced often by old-fashioned methods. These products yield returns so excellent that the growing of cotton, on the vast lands suitable thereto, are in large degree neglected, and must be regarded as an asset for the future, whenever local labour may become better organized or more plentiful.
Agriculture in this varied Republic, as in its neighbour, Colombia, has been kept backward by the same lack of labour, largely a punishment for the decimation of the labouring folk in the civil and other wars that have so often laid waste both man and land.
Maracaibo, lake and district, of which we have made mention, is in some respects a curious region. Let us look at the map. We remark a great indent on the coast of the Spanish Main. It is the Gulf of Venezuela, continuing far inland to what is termed Lake Maracaibo. The gulf is partly closed by the curious Goajira Peninsula.
From the appearance of the dwellings of the Indian on this lake-shore, the name of Venezuela, or "Little Venice," was given to the mainland here; the lake-dwellings are built on piles driven into the water. When the first Spaniards visited the coast, under Alonzo de Ojeada—on board with him was Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine who gave his name to America—they were struck by the curious appearance of the Indian settlements, and from so accidental a circumstance was the region baptized. The same type of dwelling still characterizes the lake, and were it not for the busy and important town of Maracaibo, the traveller might almost fancy himself back in the sixteenth century, coasting with the early explorers.
Indeed, as far as the Indians of the peninsula are concerned, we might still be in these early times, for these sturdy descendants of the Caribs, whom the Spaniards came to dread, have maintained their independence to this day, and although they trade with the white folk, resist all attempts at governmental control. This is a curious circumstance upon the coast, which was the first part of South America to be discovered, although it might be conceivable in the far interior—especially in view of the proximity of the busy and populous city on the lake, a port of greater importance than La Guayra in some respects, full of modern life and trade. Maracaibo was at one time one of the principal educational centres of South America. Unfortunately the bar at the mouth of the harbour unfits the place for the entry of large vessels.
In this district lie the important petroleum fields, which have been made the seat of recent enterprise for the production of that coveted oil of commerce.