“The ascent is very precipitous, and the road rough and narrow, but the view of the boundless ocean on one hand, and the magnificent range of mountains on the other, was very grand. The road rather reminded me of the Great St. Bernard, though the resemblance would not bear analyzing. The sensation of rising gradually into the cooler strata of air was most delicious; and at length, being suddenly enveloped in a cloud, I felt actually cold (a novel sensation I had not experienced for several months), and was not at all sorry to put on my jacket. There is no mountain in the tropics where you rise as immediately and suddenly from the stifling heat of the Tierra Caliente to the delicious temperature of an European sunrise in spring, as the Silla of Caracas.
“On the road from Vera Cruz to Mexico, when the traveller arrives at the height of four thousand feet, beyond which the fever never spreads, he is upwards of thirty miles from the sea, whereas, on the road up the Silla at that height the ocean lies immediately at his feet, and he looks down upon it as from a tower. So perpendicular is the face of the Silla towards the sea, that any large boulder or mass of rock becoming detached high up the mountain and bounding down its face, would fall clean into the ocean. About half way up the mountain, we crossed a deep cleft in the mountain called the Salto—a jump—on rather a rickety old draw-bridge. The bridge is commanded by a ruinous old town, called Torre Quemada, or the Burnt Tower, a name it derives from its being placed just at the height where the traveller, descending to La Guaira, first encounters the stifling exhalations from the Tierra Caliente. About nine o’clock we stopped to breakfast at La Venta, an inn some five thousand feet above La Guaira. Here, in a perfectly European atmosphere, we lay out in the grass, and gazed down upon the ocean and the town of La Guaira; we could just distinguish the Ariel, looking the size of a walnut-shell, hoisting her white sail, and standing away for Porto Cabello, where we were to meet her, unless we returned to Trinidad via the Rio Apure and the Orinoco.”
Both sides of the road are lined with Maguey plants, or varieties of the Agave genus, improperly called aloes and century-plants, from a mistaken notion that they only blossom once in a hundred years. The most beautiful of these is the cocuy, with thick glossy leaves of a clear emerald color, from six to eight feet, and a flower-stock from twenty-five to thirty feet in length. I believe it is the same species that yields the famous beverage of the Mexicans, called pulque, which some compare to fermented animal juices. A much more agreeable drink is obtained here by distillation from this plant, and its leaves turned to better account by scraping out the fine fibres they contain, from which most beautiful hammocks are made in various parts of the country, besides ropes, coffee-bags, twine, etc., etc. A fortune is in store for some Yankee genius who will invent the proper machine for dressing these leaves and getting the fibres. The other varieties are the cocuiza brava, or common century-plant (Agave Americana), with serrated leaves, on which account it is very useful for making hedges, and the cocuiza dulce, with perfectly smooth leaves, containing the strongest fibres and usually cultivated for that purpose. The pith of the flower-stock is also turned to account in various ways, especially for making the best kind of razor-strops.
Were you as much a lover of plants as I am, I would invite you to descend with me to one of those lovely glens formed by these mountains. There, amid moss-covered rocks and sparkling rivulets, I would point out to you those singular orchidacœous plants usually called air-plants, because they obtain their nourishment from the moist air that surrounds them,—not a bad idea,—those lovely daughters of Flora and Favonius, so rich in perfume as well as color, but whose principal charm consists in their caricaturing most living objects in nature, from the “human form divine,” as in man-orchis (O. mascula) to the bumble-bee, often deceived by a perfect representation of his species (Ophris apifera). Thus we count among our floral treasures “angels,” “swans,” “doves,” “eagles,” “pelicans,” “spiders,” “butterflies,” “bumble-bees,” and even a perfect infant in its cradle, was found by Linden in the mountains of Merida. The celebrated Flor del Espiritu Santo (Peristeria elata) is another of this class. It is there only that are found those two most beautiful species of cattleya (C. Mossiæ and C. Labiata), so highly prized by plant collectors, from all nations, and here called Flor de Mayo, or Mayflower, because it blossoms principally in the month of May. Great favorites are they with us also, and no court-yard is deemed sufficiently ornamented at Caracas without one or more baskets of these lovely plants, the stump of a tree, or any rustic basket filled with bark or moss, being sufficient support for them. In the same manner the curious Butterfly-flower (Oncidium papillio) is raised along with the others, often deceiving persons unacquainted with it, with a perfect representation of the insect whose name it bears; and if you should visit with me some of the cacao plantations in the tierra caliente, I would point out to you two equally exquisite plants of the same family attached to the rough stems and branches of the Erythrina, namely, the Swan-flower (Cycnoches ventricosum) and the Vanilla, both filling the air with the same perfume, but in different form, the former through its swan-like flowers, in clusters of three, five, and even seven, and the latter through its ripened pods—so well known to perfumers and confectioners—as the blossoms of this last, though quite large and handsome, are destitute of perfume.
But to return to our mountain ride, for it is time that we should be prepared to behold a still more glorious view from the summit, than the one just described by Sullivan: “After a regular Spanish breakfast of chocolate and fried eggs, for which, in as regular Spanish custom, we were charged about ten times the proper amount, we continued our ascent, and gained the seat of the Saddle, a hollow between the two peaks, called the Pummel and Croup,[8] about ten o’clock. The summit of the pass called Las Vueltas, is a smooth undulating grass-land, somewhat like the sheep-downs of Sussex. The bold rocky peaks on either hand, stretching in a serrated ridge as far as the eye could reach, were very fine. I could scarcely fancy myself to be only ten degrees north of the equator, and actually on or rather only eight thousand feet above the isothermal line of greatest heat, which passes through Cartagena, La Guaira, and Cumana.
“We had left far below us all the tropical flora, and were amongst English ferns and English blackberries; and I actually discovered one familiar friend, a dandelion. From the summit of Las Vueltas, you first get a magnificent view of the valley of Chacao, lying some four thousand feet below you, with the city of Caracas in the centre of it. I don’t think the view from that height is so fine as some thousand feet lower down, where it certainly beats any view I have ever seen. It is finer in my opinion than the first coup d’œil of the Vega and city of Granada from the Ultimo Suspiro del Moro, where the degenerate Boabdil el Chico, both in mind and body, turned to take one last fond look at the luxurious abode of his chivalric ancestors and wept bitterly, though too late, at his own cowardice and duplicity, which had almost without a blow surrendered to the “curs of Nazareth” the splendid heritage of nearly seven centuries, and which was never but in imagination to return to the true sons of the Prophet. It is also finer than the Valley of Chamouni or Martigny, from the Tête Noire, but I think it bears more resemblance to the Vega of Granada.”
Observe how regularly laid out, at right angles to each other, the streets are; the area of the city is great for the number of inhabitants (sixty thousand), most of the houses being built one story high, and occupying in consequence a large space, on account of the earthquakes, which are of frequent occurrence all along the Andean range. As we approach the suburbs, you may notice some of the ruins still remaining of that dreadful catastrophe, which, in 1812, levelled this beautiful city to the ground, burying beneath the débris twelve thousand of the inhabitants, just as they had assembled in the magnificent churches of that time to render homage to the day, Holy Thursday. Since then the city has been rebuilt, it is to be hoped on more solid basis.
Caracas claims the honor of having given birth to several distinguished individuals, among others to Bolívar and Miranda, two of the greatest champions of South American independence; to Rosio, the Jefferson of Venezuela;
