"While the swallowing would have caused some bloody wars."
"Very true, but we are used to that. There has not been a time within my remembrance when there has not been a war of some form in process. Speaking of the European nations swallowing us, you may forget that we are three times as large as France or Germany, and five times as large as Italy. We are larger than any European country outside of Russia. Something of its natural features may be understood from the fact that it holds within its domain some beautiful bodies of inland water, the largest of which, Lake Maracaibo, is somewhat larger than Lake Ontario. Within the republic are over a thousand rivers, the largest of which is the Orinoco, next in size to the Amazon of the rivers of South America.
"In regard to its physical features, the country may be divided into three great zones, increasing in size according to the following order: First, the zone of agriculture; second, the zone of grazing land; last, the larger in area than both of the others, the zone of the forests. There are two seasons, the wet and the dry, called winter and summer.
"Venezuela is thinly populated, having about two and one-half millions of inhabitants. They still preserve the type of the Spanish race, which afforded them origin, though they have become largely a cosmopolitan race, due to the mixture with the natives. These have retained to a wonderful extent their primitive beauty, so the men are manly and symmetrical, the women graceful and beautiful."
"How is it about the wild horses our geographies describe as still roaming with flowing manes and foaming nostrils and llanoes and pampas?" asked Ronie.
"They disappeared before the buffalo vanished from your Western plains. I would say also of the people, instead of the wild beauties your books tell you are yet living in almost primitive simplicity, you will find, when you get to the capital, women and maidens looking quite as anxiously for the fashion sheet from Paris as her sisters in New York. We are apt to think the only civilization is that around us. How well do I remember that my first impressions were that the little space about me in which I was reared comprised the world. Gradually my vision extended, and my knowledge expanded, until I find it is a big old world, and that it holds many people."
Colonel Marchand's kindly words, and his willingness to inform his friends, put our couple very much at their ease. Ronie improved the first opportunity to speak of that matter which was frequently uppermost in his mind, the finding of his mother's photograph under such peculiar circumstances. He was unable to offer any solution of the mystery, while he showed a deep concern.
"I cannot think your mother would come to this country, even with the hope of meeting you, without first sending me word of her intentions. Of course, I should have tried and met her at La Guayra."
"You have not heard from her?"
"Not a word, though I did expect to get a letter in regard to your coming. I feel very sure the photograph must have been brought from New York by some disinterested party, who came into possession of it by accident. I cannot imagine anything else, though this is rather hard to believe."