COURT-YARD OF A HOUSE IN CARACAS
You pass through clouds on your way up that leave the trees and rocks along the track damp and shining as after a heavy dew, and at some places you can peer through them from the steps of the car down a straight fall of three thousand feet. When you have climbed to the top of the mountain, you see below you on the other side the beautiful valley in which lies the city of Caracas, cut up evenly by well-kept streets, and diversified by the towers of churches and public buildings and open plazas, with the white houses and gardens of the coffee-planters lying beyond the city at the base of the mountains.
Venezuela, after our experiences of Central America, was like a return to civilization after months on the alkali plains of Texas. We found Caracas to be a Spanish-American city of the first class, with a suggestion of the boulevards, and Venezuela a country that possessed a history of her own, and an Academy of wise men and artists, and a Pantheon for her heroes. I suppose we should have known that this was so before we visited Venezuela; but as we did not, we felt as though we were discovering a new country for ourselves. It was interesting to find statues of men of whom none of us had ever heard, and who were distinguished for something else than military successes, men who had made discoveries in science and medicine, and who had written learned books; to find the latest devices for comfort of a civilized community, and with them the records of a fierce struggle for independence, a long period of disorganization, where the Church had the master-hand, and then a rapid advance in the habits and customs of enlightened nations. There are the most curious combinations and contrasts, showing on one side a pride of country and an eagerness to emulate the customs of stable governments, and on the other evidences of the Southern hot-blooded temperament and dislike of restraint.
On the corner of the principal plaza stands the cathedral, with a tower. Ten soldiers took refuge in this tower four years ago, during the last revolution, and they made so determined a fight from that point of vantage that in order to dislodge them it was found necessary to build a fire in the tower and smoke them out with the fumes of sulphur. These ten soldiers were the last to make a stand within the city, and when they fell, from the top of the tower, smothered to death, the revolution was at an end. This incident of warfare is of value when you contrast the thing done with its environment, and know that next to the cathedral-tower are confectionery-shops such as you find on Regent Street or upper Broadway, that electric lights surround the cathedral, and that tram-cars run past it on rails sunk below the surface of the roadway and over a better street than any to be found in New York city.
THE MARKET OF CARACAS
Even without acquaintances among the people of the capital there are enough public show-places in Caracas to entertain a stranger for a fortnight. It is pleasure enough to walk the long, narrow streets under brilliantly colored awnings, between high one- and two-story houses, painted in blues and pinks and greens, and with overhanging red-tiled roofs and projecting iron balconies and open iron-barred windows, through which you gain glimpses beyond of cool interiors and beautiful courts and gardens filled with odd-looking plants around a splashing fountain.
The ladies of Caracas seem to spend much of their time sitting at these windows, and are always there in the late afternoons, when they dress themselves and arrange their hair for the evening, and put a little powder on their faces, and take their places in the cushioned window-seats as though they were in their box at the opera. And though they are within a few inches of the passers-by on the pavement, they can look through them and past them, and are as oblivious of their presence as though they were invisible. In the streets are strings of mules carrying bags of coffee or buried beneath bales of fodder, and jostled by open fiacres, with magnificent coachmen on the box-seat in top-boots and gold trimmings to their hats and coats, and many soldiers, on foot and mounted, hurrying along at a quick step in companies, or strolling leisurely alone. They wear blue uniforms with scarlet trousers and facings, and the president’s body-guard are in white duck and high black boots, and are mounted on magnificent horses.
