It follows where cataracts leap a thousand feet, where rivers boil in thundering roar over mighty rocks; it cuts the mountain top asunder and dashes through the rock-hewn lap of earth; it drops down through the tops of giant trees, and robs the morning of her mist; it mingles with the clouds, and anon kisses the feet of the ocean—but it doesn’t pay dividends.
From its heights, the earth stretches out in wonderful ridges of gigantic proportion; geography becomes real, a fact, seen in the great perspective. The air is so clear that the eye seems to have new power of vision to reach to the uttermost end of the earth; the eye imparts to the soul its larger horizon, and a great leap of joy carries the spirit into the infinite room of creation, into the infinite grandeur of created things, and the spirit grows and feels its small estimate of God’s earth expanding into a newer, grander conception of creation. Mountain ridges sweep through tremendous space, one upon another, and at their base, thousands of feet below, a green pillow of sugar-cane invites the head and heart to quiescence. No word “green” can ever bring back the quivering, transparent green of those young cane-fields, far below in the valleys, watered by the careful hand of man in thousands of tiny streams of irrigation.
VI.
The morning was just what it should be in spite of the croakers, and the immensity of nature had imparted to our spirits much of her buoyancy; so when the train came to a halt, we jumped with alacrity from the little coach, and sought among the people for the human interest, which was as ever very great. The route was dotted with charming stations, each one flying a German and Venezuelan flag in delightful amity—for the Germans impress the South American first with their greatness and then with their friendliness; the mailed hand is shown only as the last resort.
Here were stations green and beflowered, in sweet good order, with fountains and running streams, and booths where we bought ginger cookies and Albert biscuit and cervesa Inglesa and all sorts of fruit; and back of the stations, hints of quaint old churches with distant bells, and gathering about the mother church, blue and white and yellow glimpses of queer old houses. And oh! the colour! The flowering trees! What artist could ever reach the delicacy of the Maria tree, one mass of living pearls. Its branches so full of flower that there seemed to be no room for leaf; the branch only there by sufferance. At La Victoria, where we stop for luncheon, in a curious little café under a confident German flag, our family interpreter disappears, and in a few minutes returns in the likeness of a Thracian god, bedecked with garlands, pink and white. He covers my lap with rarest blossoms, gives them to one and all, and brings into the dusty coach a fragrance of Elysium. I long to keep the flowers for ever; I long to hold that colour in such security that it can never escape; I long to enclose that essence in some secret shrine for ever. And shall I say I have not?
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.