There are two main lines of steamers from the capital, one travelling along the western side of the lake and then up the Catatumbo to Encontrados, the port of Táchira; the other crossing diagonally to La Ceiba, where the railway from Motatán in Trujillo reaches the shore. A smaller boat travels round the southern end of the lake, connecting the mouth of the Catatumbo and La Ceiba with Santa Barbara on the Escalante, where a railway was once built part of the way to Mérida. There is a bar at the mouth of the Catatumbo, and in consequence of this the smaller steamer is always there awaiting the arrival of the large boat from Maracaibo. If there is much cargo, some of it is transhipped outside the bar and reloaded when the lightened vessel has successfully navigated the shallow water. Often a whole day is wasted over this performance, and one cannot help thinking that if the dredging of a channel would be more expensive it would at least be less ludicrous.
Of the railways mentioned in connection with the lines of steamers, that from La Ceiba is wholly in the State of Trujillo, but the others traverse a considerable extent of the forests of Zulia before entering the Andine States. The metre-gauge line from Santa Barbara was originally intended to reach Mérida by way of the Chama Valley, but it only reached El Vigia, on that river, and has now fallen into disrepair. The Encontrados line or Gran Ferrocarril del Táchira, also a Venezuelan concern, has a 1·07-metre track, and is intended ultimately to reach San Cristobal; passing as it does through great stretches of virgin forest on the banks of the Zulia, it has already done much to open up this country to cultivation, and ends at present in the coffee-bearing foothills of the Andes. From Encontrados a line of small steamers carries merchandise on up the Zulia River to the Colombian port of Villamizar.
While the majority of settlements round the lake consist of a few palm-leaf huts, or houses on piles in the ancient fashion of the Indians, there are several towns of more or less importance. Altagracia, immediately opposite Maracaibo on the eastern shore, is the largest of these, and has a considerable importance on account of the agricultural products of its surroundings, with a fleet of fishing-boats, whose catches are sold in the town and thence shipped into the interior. Santa Rita, not far to the south, is in the midst of a fine goat-farming district, and the coco-palms along the lake shores are cultivated with great profit.
At the extreme south-east corner of the lake there is a hamlet which bears a famous name, and has itself been of note in Venezuelan history. This is Gibraltar, founded by Gonzalo Piña Lidueña, afterwards Governor of the province, in 1597. It is said that during the night when he camped at this spot there was a total eclipse of the moon, reminding him of a bivouac at Gibraltar in Spain, where he had last seen the phenomenon; as a result he named the new settlement after the famous rock. The fertile lands around were so excellent for cacao and tobacco that the place soon became important, and substantial buildings were erected to accommodate the increasing population. Before long it was sacked and reduced to ruins by the Motilones Indians, but in 1666 was again so flourishing that the pirate Henry Morgan considered it worth taking, and the town, which had again grown up in 1678, was sacked a third time by Gramont. From one cause and another, chiefly the disturbances during the revolution against Spain, the place became deserted, and now only a few huts amid the ruins of the old stone buildings mark the site of the city, while the cacao and tobacco plantations have, through neglect, lost their prestige or been swallowed up by forest.
San Carlos de Zulia, on the Escalante, is important by virtue of the through traffic from the haciendas in the interior to the shores of the lake, but it is not attractive, being, like the port of Encontrados, an insanitary, unhealthy, riverside village rather than a town.
North of the cultivated lands on the west shore near Maracaibo, opposite the entrance of the lake, we have open, dry lands where the salt-pans are to be found, and on a lagoon in these plains stands Sinamaica, interesting for the Goajiro population, who preserve their primitive customs alongside the civilisation of the town.
In the forests south-west of the capital occurs the peculiar arbol de leche, whose sap can be used in every way like cow’s milk, though it is slightly thicker. Here and elsewhere the woods are full of valuable timber (mahogany, ebony, lignum-vitæ) and of useful creepers and trees like that which furnishes the copaiba-balsam. These represent to a great extent the undeveloped resources of the State, and side by side with them must be considered the many varieties of fishes inhabiting the waters of the gulf and lake, only a few of which are caught at the present time.
No account of the Zulian region could omit a reference to the famous “Maracaibo lights,” or farol de Maracaibo, the flash of which can be seen far out at sea and is used by mariners out of range of any of the lighthouses. This vivid and continuous lightning is to be seen nightly over the south end of the lake, and is generally described as visible over the mouth of the Catatumbo. The flashes seem, however, rather to extend all along the line of the mountains, which rise a few miles from the lake to a height of fourteen or fifteen thousand feet. A possible explanation seems to be the following: As the atmosphere over the bare mountains cools rapidly at sunset the heavily-charged hot air of the basin-like depression of Maracaibo rises, so that masses of air at different potentials meet at a great height and emit huge sparks visible for hundreds of miles. Whether this be so or not, it is a fact that the flashes are visible nightly from sunset until sunrise, with little variation in brilliance.