As we neared Ciudad Bolívar, white-winged boats more comfortable than the wall-less dwellings along shore, each with a huge number painted on its sails, came down the light-brown river among the small floating islands it had torn off far above. The typically “Spig” city lay piled up over a knoll on the southern bank, scattered portions of it spilling over the rolling and marshy country roundabout. A few feet from shore we were ordered to halt and await a “visit,” and it was hours later that the languid, futile formalities were ended. The chief excitement in town was “the dike,” a great wall built to keep back the water from the flooded campos, now leaking until the great lagoon which always forms at the foot of the town during the rainy season was driving out the dwellers in the lower fringe of huts. Half the city had come out to see prisoners from the cárcel, under even more evil-eyed soldiers from the cuartel, strive to stop the leaks by letting cowhides over the side of the wall and tamping apathetically here and there with their clumsy tools. But it is the Venezuelan custom for jailers to steal most of the rations to which their charges are entitled, and the prisoners were in no condition to accomplish their task, even had they had any incentive to do so. I was startled to hear a voice behind me say, “I fear we all go’n’ get de wash-out, sah.”
At least it gave one a sense of not being entirely cut off from the more orderly world to hear English-speaking negroes in the streets of Ciudad Bolívar, and their presence made other foreigners less subject to constant open-mouthed scrutiny. Hackmen, chauffeurs, nurse-girls, and servants in general were commonly Guianese or West Indian negroes, so that my native tongue often sounded in my ears. The rest of the population was that of almost all Spanish-American cities,—few pure whites and fewer full Indians, but every possible mixture of the two, with a goodly dash of African blood thrown in to complete the catastrophe.
Whatever beauty Ciudad Bolívar has is indoors. No green lawns or flower-gardens cheer the eye of the passer-by, though now and then a glimpse through a doorway along the deadly line of dirty stucco walls reveals a patio filled with blossoms and tropical shrubbery, with perhaps a fountain. Even inside is no patch of Eden. Parrots, as well as all domestic fowls, contest the average patio with dogs, pigs, naked urchins, and adults. It is in conformity with his other cruelties to dumb brutes, his total lack of compassion, that the keeping of caged animals is an inherent trait of the South American. Back of the city lies an extensive swamp from which come great numbers of mosquitoes, the same swamp that the people were struggling so energetically to have their jailbirds hold in check. It is often hot by day, but at night a cool breeze sweeps in from the broad Orinoco and the town casts off its torpor. Lights spring up, gaudily dressed and heavily powdered women lean on their elbows behind the heavy wooden window-bars, the band plays along the waterfront Alameda, the streets are filled with a roving crowd of carnal-minded men and boys, and Ciudad Bolívar seems for a space almost a wide-awake city.
The Venezuelans refused to take my proposed walk across the country seriously, so that it was doubly difficult to get trustworthy information. The llanos were said to be flooded at that season, and the overland journey to Caracas was reputed to be 180 leagues, a mere 540 miles! I dared not send myself forth on any such unnecessary stroll as that, for I had solemnly sworn to be home at all costs within four years of my departure, and it was already the end of July. But at least I could tramp straight across to the Atlantic, and find swifter means of transportation to La Guayra and Caracas. There were worse stories of the dangers of a lone “gringo” wandering through Venezuela than in any other South American country. Revolutionists had for months infested the very territory in which I proposed to risk my life—but I remembered the tale of the Venezuelan colonel sent with his regiment to wage battle over the range, who came hurrying back at the head of his troops, to report, “My general, just over the summit we met two drunken Americans, and they would not let us pass!” Besides, the war in Europe had made it difficult for bandits and revolutionists to get arms and ammunition. “But at least,” cried the natives, “you must have a mule and a saddle!” and a kind man offered to sell me such an outfit, “all ready to mount”—for a thousand bolívares! True, a bolívar is no more than a franc, but a thousand of them was more than I was depending upon to set me down in one of our north central states.
An Indian family at eastern Venezuela
Lopez, the hammock-buyer, and the charm he always wears on his travels
A Venezuelan landscape