VENEZUELA.
“Caracas is the capital of a country nearly twice as large as Peru, and now little inferior in extent to the kingdom of New Granada. This country, which the Spanish government designates by the name of Capitania-General de Caracas, or the United Provinces of Venezuela, has nearly a million of inhabitants, among whom are sixty thousand slaves. It comprises, along the coasts, New Andalusia, or the province of Cumana (with the island of Margarita), Barcelona, Venezuela, or Caracas, Coro, and Maracaibo: in the interior the Provinces of Barinas and Guiana; the former situated on the rivers of Santo Domingo and the Apure, the latter stretching along the Orinoco, the Casiquiare, the Atabapo, and the Rio Negro. In a general view of the seven United Provinces of Tierra Firme, we perceive that they form three distinct zones, extending from East to West.
“We find, first, cultivated land along the sea-shore, and near the chain of the mountains on the coast; next, savannas or pasturages; and finally, beyond the Orinoco, a third zone, that of the forests, into which we can penetrate only by the rivers which traverse them. If the native inhabitants of the forest lived entirely on the produce of the chase, like those of the Missouri, we might say that the three zones, into which we have divided the territory of Venezuela, picture the three states of human society; the life of the wild hunter, in the woods of the Orinoco; pastoral life in the savannas or llanos, and the agricultural state, in the high valleys, and at the foot of the mountains on the coast.”[7]
And yet this favored region can be reached in from twelve to fifteen days by sailing packets between Philadelphia and La Guaira; or, should your fast habits require it, we can avail ourselves of the Brazilian line of steamships which will leave us at St. Thomas, where we shall meet the little steamer plying regularly between both points, the whole voyage being thus accomplished in eight days. As we are not in a hurry, however, to get through our journey, we will, for the sake of convenience and diversified amusement, follow the example of the above-mentioned traveller, Sullivan, who, in company of a friend, made the trip before us in a commodious yacht by the way of the West India Islands; but having no craft of our own, we may be permitted to borrow from the New York yacht squadron one of their idle cutters, which can thus be better employed than in cruising round well-known fashionable retreats during a few months of summer, and exposed for the rest of the year to the hard knocks of a wintry climate. This is the best season to visit the tropics, as well as the West Indies, when there is no fear of the dreaded vomito or sweeping hurricanes.
Hardly a day passes without coming in sight of some lovely isle of the Caribbean sea, which, like the “Queen of the Antilles,”—Cuba—rises from amidst the placid waves, crowned with perpetual wreaths of fragrant orange-blossoms and stately palms. Cuba, Hayti, Porto Rico, St. Thomas, Sta. Cruz, Antigua, Granada, Barbadoes, Martinique, Guadaloupe, Tobago, and Trinidad, rise one after another in quick succession. When we reach the last named and most lovely of all, on the eastern extremity of Venezuela, we have the choice of either penetrating at once into the field of our adventures by entering one of the numerous outlets of the Orinoco, which here pours out its tribute to the mighty Atlantic through a hundred mouths; or, following the line of coast to the westward, we may reach a point near the fertile valleys of Aragua, where well-trained horses for the sport and hardy llaneros to guide us, await our arrival. We shall thus have an opportunity of contemplating and admiring that stupendous chain of mountains (fit offspring of the mighty Andes further west), which seems as if thrown up by Titanic force as a barrier against the encroachments of the fierce Atlantic.
Endless are the beauties and points of interest presented by this splendid chain of mountains; its varied climes, from the scorching heats of the tierra caliente on the sea level to the frigid blasts of winter at higher elevations; its silvery springs and roaring cataracts; its unrivalled vegetation and glittering veins of precious metals. The trade winds and currents are in our favor, which will enable us to reach La Guaira in a couple of days, passing in quick succession some minor ports, such as Rio Caribe, Carupano, with its silver-bearing mountains in the distance, the island of Margarita, famous for its pearls, as the name implies; its fisheries, and the gallant defence made by the inhabitants against the combined attacks of the Spanish hordes; Cumana, for its delicious grapes and pine-apples, its salubrious climate, and the purity of the sky, which enabled the immortal Humboldt to watch in wonderment the great meteoric shower in 1799, which he compared to a brilliant display of fire-works; Barcelona, noted only for its hides, and the Monagas brotherhood, who were for many years the terror of the country.
The coast, as we approach La Guaira, is lined with plantations of sugar-cane, cacao and cocoa-nuts, two articles often confounded in English spelling, but widely different in themselves. The former grows on a moderately-sized tree, with large, glossy leaves, while the latter is the product of a palm, remarkable for the height it attains, and the prodigious size of its fruit, in bunches that few men can lift from the ground. The cacao nuts, on the contrary, grow in pods, resembling large cucumbers, of a rich chocolate color outside, filled with oblong nuts enveloped in a white, sub-acid pulp, very agreeable to the taste especially of parrots, monkeys, and squirrels, who destroy great quantities of the pods for the sake of the pulp, so that they require constant watching to protect them from these pests.
A cacao plantation is one of the handsomest orchards that can be seen, shaded as they are by another tree of large proportions, the erythrina, a leguminous plant with crimson flowers, which you may have noticed in greenhouses at home, though much reduced in size, as it never attains there more than a few feet above the boxes on which they are raised as an ornament to the garden in summer. The rapidity with which these trees grow in the tropics is astonishing, for in eight or ten years, the time required to reach its maximum growth, they attain the size of the largest denizens of the forest. Observe how their tops glow with the fiery hue of their blossoms, for this is the season when they exchange their leaves for flowers, the only instance of a plant shedding its leaves in these latitudes, with the exception of the ceiba or silk cotton tree, which the author of Amyas Leigh has so admirably described as growing close to where we are journeying just now.
Here the cordillera rises considerably above the connecting mountains, attaining a height of thirteen thousand feet in the peak of Naiguata, which you may perceive peeping through the clouds yonder, and the next one eleven thousand in the Cerro de Avila, both forming what is called the Silla, or Saddle of Caracas, at the foot of which stands La Guaira, the principal port of the republic, but the vilest anchorage in the world. Here ends our yacht excursion; trusting in future to the nimble-footed mule or to the thumping stage coaches for the rest of the journey.
Despite its wretched shipping facilities, La Guaira carries on a very active trade with foreign marts, as is attested by the number of English, French, German, and Italian merchants, with a few Americans, residing here, forming, as it were a truly foreign colony. The heat, as you perceive, is intense, owing to the proximity of the barren mountain-base, which leaves room scarcely for a loaded mule to turn round in the narrow and crowded-up streets. On this account, I presume, La Guaira is very healthy, for not even the Asiatic cholera could obtain a footing here—excuse the pun—when it decimated the capital in 1853. Cases of vomito occur from time to time; but these are more the exception than the rule; so it does not follow that all hot places in the tropics are unhealthy, for Carupano, Margarita, Cumana, La Guaira, and Coro, which are within the isothermal line of greatest heat—owing, doubtless, to the dry, stony, or sandy soil on which they stand—are among the healthiest spots in Venezuela. However, we shall soon be out of this sultry place, and amidst the glories of a temperate climate. For this purpose we will hire mules at one of the posadas or hotels, to ascend the mountains on our way to Caracas, the capital of the republic, giving the preference to the old road, which is much shorter and more picturesque than the new one for carriage travel. Let us hear first the enthusiastic English tourist describe this route, as I may be accused by some of partiality towards my own country.