CHAPTER XIX
A Country With a Thousand Rivers—Venezuela
Years ago two miners worked together for months and finally came to know each other as Tom and Jack. One day Tom was not well and could not do much but watch Jack dig. After noting some movements of the body that seemed familiar he said: "Jack, where did you come from?" The two men sat down and talked of boyhood days and found that they were born in the same community and had played together when they were small boys. Here they had worked together for months without knowing that they were neighbors; they actually got up and shook hands with each other.
Venezuela is our nearest neighbor to the south. This country is nearer to Florida than New Orleans is to New York and yet we have lived side by side for four hundred years and hardly knew we were neighbors. We might have been friends and greatly assisted each other all these years. Is it not about time we were getting acquainted and shaking hands with each other?
It is surprising to know that Venezuela is as large as Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, the two Virginias, North and South Carolina and Georgia combined. It is a country that has a thousand rivers. In some parts of it you can travel for days in regions where as yet no white man has ever set his foot. One writer says that of all the countries in the world Venezuela is the one for which God has done the most and man has done the least.
This great country has been called the hunting ground of South America. This is not so much because of the abundance of game, although all kinds of wild animals are plentiful; it has been given this appellation because of its unstable government. Its treasury has been looted again and again. Even the president of Venezuela was for years a criminal. He robbed merchants of other countries who tried to do business with his government. He imprisoned those who refused to assist him and ran things in a high-handed way. Business firms of other lands found this out and did not care to do business with such a country or help develop its resources in any way.
We are not ashamed of our revolution in 1776 for its purpose was to gain our independence. During the past seventy or eighty years Venezuela has had more than a half hundred revolutions but generally they were gotten up to give an excuse for pillage and robbery rather than to make a better country or government. Things are better now, however, and a new day is dawning for these unhappy people.
The main port or entrance to this country is La Guaira and sailors say it is about the worst port to enter in the world. This port city contains about fifteen thousand people and has but a single street. The high mountains are so near the sea that there is only a narrow strip of land at the foot and on this narrow strip the city is built. The sea is nearly always rough and the weather always hot. How people can endure such extreme heat all the time is a mystery.