Many other metallic ores occur at various points, notably galena in the Andes, but one of the most common minerals of northern Venezuela is petroleum, known in its desiccated form as “Bermudez asphalt” over half the world. Boring for the original mineral oil has only recently been undertaken. Sulphur is one of the less valuable minerals which occur in considerable quantities, but the so-called salt-mines are not strictly mines at all, and are described in Chapter XVI. Humboldt had heard of the strange mineral lake near Lagunillas, which contains a large proportion of urao or sesqui-carbonate of soda, a mineral not usually found in nature, and here apparently supplied from springs rising in the Segovia rocks. It is used locally for mixture with tobacco juice to make a chewing mixture called chimo, but there have been projects to obtain the salt in large quantities for the manufacture of caustic soda.
In addition to those already mentioned, all the following minerals or ornamental stones have been found in one part or another of Venezuela, viz., marble, kaolin, gypsum, calcium phosphate, opal, onyx, jasper, quartz, felspar, talc, mica, staurolite, asbestos, and ores of antimony, silver, and tin.
The minerals of Venezuela have merely been mentioned casually in this place, an account of the extent to which they have been exploited being deferred to the chapter on the general development of the country. It is evident, however, when one considers their number and the extent of their distribution, that the geological changes which have played their part in the building up of the physical features of the country have left Venezuela in possession of splendid assets in this respect.
CHAPTER III
THE PLANTS AND ANIMALS OF VENEZUELA
The glamour of the South American forests—Hidden treasures—Temples of Nature—“A dim religious light”—Bejucales—Forest giants—Brazil nuts—Tonka-beans—Rubber—Quinine—Arctic and tropic forms—The Llanos—Tierra caliente—Natural hothouses—Colour and coolness—Páramo plants—Monkeys—An old friend—Cannibalism—Vampires and bats—“Tigers” and “lions”—“Handsome is as handsome doesn’t”—Wild horses—Dolphins—Prickly mice—The “water-hog”—Sloths—Birds—Many-coloured varieties—Umbrella-bird—“Cock-of-the-rock”—Toucans—Cuckoos—Humming-birds—“Who are you?”—Oil-birds—Parrots and macaws—Eagles and vultures—A national disgrace—Game-birds—Snakes—Lizards—From the Orinoco to a city dinner—A cup-tie crowd—Ferocious fish—When is a mosquito not a mosquito?—Agricultural ants—Gigantic spiders—Ticks—A pugnacious crustacean—A rich field.
Most of us, if possessed of imaginative faculties, have been impressed in our youth by the thought of those vast virgin forests of South America, inhabited, as we often used to think, only by huge boa-constrictors and anacondas which lived to an immense age and continued to grow throughout their lifetime; and even in later years, when experience at first or second hand has taught us that the supposed silent forest of the tropics is generally noisy with the chattering of monkeys and birds or the perpetual hum and chirp of insects, and is often far from a desirable place on account of these last, the glamour of the vastness and fertility of these great untrodden temples of nature remains with us.
More than half of Venezuela is covered by forest, and, indeed, comes within the forest area of South America; what botanical treasures and zoological curiosities may yet be discovered, when some explorer is found to succeed Humboldt and Schomburgk, are not to be guessed at, and it is not our purpose to give a scientific account of what has been done towards classifying and enumerating the many plants and animals already known to live in Venezuela, but to briefly describe what is most interesting and important to the general reader who may be interested in the country as a whole.
Richest in quantity, and probably in variety, of vegetable life is the little-known land of Guayana, with its vast forests, hot climate, and heavy rainfall. Within it the plants range from the alpine shrubs and reindeer moss of some of the higher plateaux and hills to the bamboos and orchids of the river banks. The simile which compares the tropical forest to those darkened lofty cathedrals of Europe has been often used, and is, perhaps, somewhat trite, but its aptness is incontrovertible. The huge timber-trees grow fairly close together, and their spreading tops, fifty, eighty, or a hundred feet from the ground, with the abundant hanging lianes and flowering creepers, keep all but a feeble light from the ground, whence it comes that the under-growth is usually sparse or absent, and progress on foot is comparatively easy. Sometimes, however, there are stretches of bejucal, full of tangled ground creepers, and it may take a day to cut a path for one mile through such growth as this.
Of all the forest giants of Guayana, Schomburgk considered the mora the most magnificent; the average diameter of the trunk is about three feet, and it seldom branches at less than forty feet from the ground. The dark-red, fine-grained wood is said to be excellent for shipbuilding purposes. Mahogany or caoba, the palo de arco, whose wood is very like mahogany in colour, and a big tree called in Venezuela rosewood, which it resembles, are among the timber trees of the region known to us in Europe. The huge ceibas, with their buttress-like roots, have a soft, easily worked wood, excellent for the dug-out canoes of the Indians, and the equally large mucurutu or cannon-ball tree furnishes a beautiful but hard and fine-grained timber. Unfortunately, the very fertility of the soil becomes a drawback in the exploitation of these timber resources, for all trees grow with equal freedom, and the particular kind for which the lumber-man is searching may only be found at rare intervals; on a large scale, when all the valuable woods are utilised, this difficulty would, to some extent, disappear.