“Most assuredly,” I replied. “This is my property. You have no right to invade it, for I have violated no law of Venezuela. If you enter on it I will fire on you.”
“But,” he almost shouted, as he waved his arms excitedly toward his enervated patriots, “my men are here to enforce my orders. You would be insane to resist. You do not know the Venezuelan Army, sir.”
“You are mistaken,” I told him. “I do know the Venezuelan Army. It is you who is ignorant. You do not know my army. It is because I know both that I have no fear. You have not a shadow of right for seeking to arrest me and your blood will be on your own head if you advance.”
With this declaration which, in keeping with the comic opera custom of the country, was delivered with all of the dramatic effect I could throw into it, in order that it might carry greater weight, I retired to the house.
The General could see my rifle pits, but he did not know how many men they held nor how well those men could shoot. After a short consultation with his staff he gave the order to advance, while he bravely directed operations from the rear. As his men crossed the line we fired, and eight of them fell. They continued to advance and we fired again, dropping nine more of them, while several others were hit. That was too much for them and they broke and ran, leaving seven dead and ten badly wounded. They did not fire a shot, perhaps because our men were so well concealed that Venezuelan marksmanship would have accomplished nothing against them. The General and his staff returned in an hour and asked permission to remove the fallen warriors. After burying their dead they returned to their steamer and went on up the river. In three or four days they came back, with their force slightly increased, and the General again called on me to surrender, under penalty of being arrested as a disturbing factor. I gave him the same reply as before and after thinking it over for a while he marched his troops away again.
That little encounter produced pronounced respect for the Americans among Castro’s soldiers and they did not give us much trouble afterward, though they continued to annoy us for a time. With the establishment of the blockade of Venezuelan ports by the allies—England, Germany, and Italy—in the latter part of 1902, and the signing of the peace protocols at Washington early in the following year, there came a cessation of hostilities against us. So far as driving us off the concession was concerned, Castro seemed to have given up the fight, but on account of the disturbed condition of the country and the fact that the government was known to be inimical to us, it was impossible to do anything of consequence toward the development of the property. This enforced idleness eventually became intolerable and early in 1906, the company in the meantime having sent one of its officers to Caracas to protect its interests, I returned to New York, after having held the fort for ten years. I came back much poorer in pocket, but with a fund of information regarding Venezuela and its people.
I have been in every country in South America and have studied all of them and there is no possibility of doubt that Venezuela is beyond comparison the richest in its natural resources. With the setting up of a firm and civilized government, which must come in the end, under an American protectorate if by no other means, all of the fairy stories that were told of it centuries ago will come true, and its development will eclipse all of the dreams that have been realized in our own country. It is a strange fact that Cumana in Venezuela (their respective names then being New Toledo and New Grenada), which was the first European settlement in South America of which there is authentic record, was founded one hundred years, less one, before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. In each case there was a fervent prayer for divine aid in establishing a Christian colony and building up a great country. Why one prayer was answered and the other was not is a matter I will not attempt to explain.
Like her West Indian neighbors, of which beautiful isles Americans now know so little, but of which they will know much more when their flag flies over all of them, as it must within the life of the present generation, Venezuela has been treated most bountifully by nature and most brutally by man. Cursed they all may have been by the seas of innocent blood in which they were barbarously bathed during their extended infancy and their prolonged childhood, from which they have not yet emerged. It seems that all the powers of darkness have conspired to retard their growth and hold them slaves to savagery. Accustomed from the days of the Spanish conquistadores, and the pirates who followed them, to being plundered and persecuted in every way that the mercenary mind of man could devise, the Venezuelanos have grown so hardened to turmoil and torture that it has become second nature to them to live in an atmosphere which generates riot and robbery. Their blood is an unholy mixture of Indian, Carib, and Spanish, with other and more recent strains of all sorts. They are the most inconsequential, emotional, ungrateful, and treacherous people on the face of the earth—and yet I love them. The ambition of their leaders runs only to graft, while the underlings yearn for war as a child cries for a plaything. At the behest of some self-constituted chieftain, who has strutted in front of a mirror until he imagines himself a second Simon Bolivar, they rise in rebellion, because it gives them a chance to prey on the country, and, if their revolt is successful, to continue and extend their preying. But some day a real man will rise up among them and lead them out of their blackness and butchery into peace and prosperity, and Venezuela, with her wild wastes of wealth, will become great beyond the imaginings of her discoverers.
This is not the full story of my life but it tells of some of the incidents which I have enjoyed the most. My best fight was with old Moy Sen, the pirate king, in the China Sea, and my closest call was when I was sentenced to be shot at sunrise in Santo Domingo. These events supplied the most delightful feasts of the excitement which my nature has ever craved, yet I have lived well, in that respect, all along. I have no disappointments and no regrets, except that this existence is too short. If I had my life to live over again it would be lived in the same way, though, I would hope, with a still greater share of excitement, because it was for just such a life that I was created. What the purpose of it was I neither know nor care, nor am I in the least concerned as to what my destiny next holds in store for me. I hope, however, that in some land with opportunity for wide activity, I will be reincarnated as a filibuster and a buccaneer, and that I will so continue until my identity is merged into a composite mass of kindred souls.
THE END