The meals are in general as follows: Café, coffee, with or without solid food, on first rising; almuerzo, like the déjeuner of Europe, at midday; and comida or dinner, at sunset. As far as order and number of meals are concerned, Carácas is like the rest of the country, but the remarks above made relative to food apply in the main only to the provinces.
As for food, so for clothing, Carácas and the large towns need no special mention, since the imported weaving material here is mainly European or American. The country towns, however, frequently depend, not only for workmanship but also for materials, on the products of the country. The poorer people wear simple white or blue garments, with broad-brimmed straw hats, and generally go barefoot or wear leather sandals (alpargatas). Everywhere, however, both men and women turn out on feast days in their finest and gaudiest apparel.
A country protected as regards great world powers by the Monroe Doctrine and their own international jealousy, and surrounded by States where the density of population is even less than in its own underpeopled lands, has naturally no need of great and expensive establishments for national defence, and the army and navy are merely of a size sufficient for the settlement of possible petty disputes with neighbours. The land force consists of 5,632 officers and men, and the navy employs only 457 combatants. These figures represent men under national control only, though there are also a small number of militiamen and Federal Guards distributed through the States, paid by the Ministry of War and Marine. This department controls also the pilots and lighthouses round the coast, and is responsible for the execution of the surveys for the military maps of Venezuela. The total expenditure in all branches for 1908-9 was Bs. 9,113,534.86, or about £361,000.
The insignia of the republic, as adopted in 1836 and modified by decree of July 29, 1863, consist of a flag and coat of arms. The flag is a tricolour of yellow, blue, and red, in equal bands, one above the other in the order mentioned, and having in the blue seven white stars, representing the seven original provinces of Venezuela, grouped in a circle of six round the seventh. The shield has three quarterings; the right red with a sheaf of corn, as many ears being indicated as there are States; the left yellow, with a group of arms and flags, crowned with a laurel as a token of triumph; the third, occupying the whole of the bottom part of the shield, is blue, and bears a white horse rampant, symbolising independence and liberty. Above the shield there are two horns of plenty, and below an olive-branch and a palm-leaf, tied with blue and yellow ribbons, which are inscribed Dios y Federación in the centre, 5 de julio de 1811 and Independencia on the left; and the date of the Constitution of the United States of Venezuela (13 de Abril 1864) and Libertad on the right.
There is one decoration in Venezuela, given to prominent men in the country and, in its lower classes, to foreigners whom the nation delights to honour. This is the Busto de Bolivar, the medal showing the head of the liberator and the ribbon the national colours.
There are in all 237 periodicals published in the country, including, besides the official gazettes of the capitals, one or more of general interest in every State, and a considerable number devoted to scientific, literary, masonic, and other special subjects. The State of Lara had in 1908, according to the Venezuelan Year-Book, the largest number of periodical publications in the Union.
CHAPTER VII
THE ABORIGINES
The Goajiros—Lake dwellings—Appearance—Territory—Villages—Government—Burial customs—Religion—Medicine-men—The Caribs—A fine race—Cannibalism—Headless man of the Caura—The Amazons—Industries—Religion—Marriage customs—The aborigines of Guayana—Tavera-Acosta on languages—The Warraus—Appearance—Houses—Food—Clothing—Marriage customs—Birth—Death—Religion—Treatment of sick—The Banibas—Appearance—Customs—Religion—Celebration of puberty of girls—Marriage customs—The Arawaks—Religion—Early missions amongst Indians—Wanted, a twentieth-century apostle.
The aboriginal inhabitants of Venezuela preserve their habits and racial customs unchanged only in two regions of the republic, namely, along the north-west frontier and in the vast forests of Guayana. Elsewhere, a few families remain in the less accessible and more barren regions, but the “Indians” have been in general absorbed by intermarriage into the Spanish-speaking Venezuela nation, slowly emerging from the mixture of races which have at various times occupied the territory.