Three gringos in Venezuela and Central America

by Richard Harding Davis

I obtained a rather low opinion of them because they stoned an unfortunate American photographer who was taking pictures in the quadrangles, and because I was so far interested in them as to get a friend of mine to translate for me the sentences and verses they had written over the walls of their college. The verses were of a political character, but so indecent that the interpreter was much embarrassed; the single sentences were attacks, anonymous, of course, on fellow-students. As the students of the University of Venezuela step directly from college life into public life, their training is of some interest and importance. And I am sure that the Venezuelan fathers would do much better by their sons if they would cease to speak of the university in awe-stricken tones as “the hot-bed of liberty,” but would rather take away the boys’ revolvers and teach them football, and thrash them soundly whenever they caught them soiling the walls of their alma mater with nasty verses.

A CLEARING IN THE COUNTRY

There are some beautiful drives around Caracas, out in the country among the coffee plantations, and one to a public garden that overlooks the city, upon which President Crespo has spent much thought and money. But the most beautiful feature of Caracas, and one that no person who has visited that place will ever forget, is the range of mountains above it, which no president can improve. They are smooth and bare of trees and of a light-green color, except in the waterways, where there are lines of darker green, and the clouds change their aspect continually, covering them with shadows or floating over them from valley to valley, and hovering above a high peak like the white smoke of a volcano.

I do not know of a place that will so well repay a visit as Caracas, or a country that is so well worth exploring as Venezuela. To a sportsman it is a paradise. You can shoot deer within six miles of the Opera-house, and in six hours beyond Macuto you can kill panther, and as many wild boars as you wish. No country in South America is richer in such natural products as cocoa, coffee, and sugar-cane. And in the interior there is a vast undiscovered and untouched territory waiting for the mining engineer, the professional hunter, and the breeder of cattle.

The government of Venezuela at the time of our visit to Caracas was greatly troubled on account of her boundary dispute with Great Britain, and her own somewhat hasty action in sending three foreign ministers out of the country for daring to criticise her tardiness in paying foreign debts and her neglect in not holding to the terms of concessions. These difficulties, the latter of which were entirely of her own making, were interesting to us as Americans, because the talk on all sides showed that in the event of a serious trouble with any foreign power Venezuela looked confidently to the United States for aid. Now, since President Cleveland’s so-called “war” message has been written, she is naturally even more liable to go much further than she would dare go if she did not think the United States was back of her. Her belief in the sympathy of our government is also based on many friendly acts in the past: on the facts that General Miranda, the soldier who preceded Bolivar, and who was a friend of Hamilton, Fox, and Lafayette, first learned to hope for the independence of South America during the battle for independence in our own country; that when the revolution began, in 1810, it was from the United States that Venezuela received her first war material; that two years later, when the earthquake of 1812 destroyed twenty thousand people, the United States Congress sent many ship-loads of flour to the survivors of the disaster; and that as late as 1888 our Congress again showed its good feeling by authorizing the secretary of the navy to return to Venezuela on a ship of war the body of General Paez, who died in exile in New York city, and by appointing a committee of congressmen and senators to represent the government at his public funeral.

THE CUYUNI RIVER
With View of the English Station that was sacked by Venezuelan Troops, and from which Inspector Barnes was taken Prisoner

All of these expressions of good-will in the past count for something as signs that the United States may be relied upon in the future, but it is a question whether she will be willing to go as far as Venezuela expects her to go. Venezuela’s hope of aid, and her conviction, which is shared by all the Central-American republics, that the United States is going to help her and them in the hour of need, is based upon what they believe to be the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine as we understand it is a very different thing from the Monroe Doctrine as they understand it; and while their reading of it is not so important as long as we know what it means and enforce it, there is danger nevertheless in their way of looking at it, for, according to their point of view, the Monroe Doctrine is expected to cover a multitude of their sins. President Monroe said that we should “consider any attempt on the part of foreign powers to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety, and that we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing those governments that had declared their independence, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition to the United States.”

He did not say that if a Central-American republic banished a British consul, or if Venezuela told the foreign ministers to leave the country on the next steamer, that the United States would back them up with force of arms.