"It will be different when we reach Bolivar," Ned said, half apologetically. "You know Bolivar is the fourth city of Venezuela, and quite a large place."
At daylight on Monday morning the steamboat lay in front of Bolivar, or, rather, at the feet of Bolivar, for the city is built on a bluff a hundred feet high, and half-way up the hill is a strong stone wharf. But the water was so low that the boat lay fifty feet beneath the wharf, and it was hard to realize that in flood-time the water is almost up to the top of the hill.
"So this is the great City of Bolivar, is it?" Jack exclaimed, after they had climbed the steep hill and passed the city wall, and stood among the yellow-walled, flat-roofed houses. "There's too much grass growing in the streets to suit a New-Yorker."
There were few wheeled vehicles in the streets, but plenty of donkeys carrying burdens. The principal buildings were the cathedral, standing on the summit of a little hill, and the jail, about which some red-capped soldiers were on guard.
"I did want to see one of those great teams of sixty bullocks starting out," Jack said; "but now that we've seen the town, the quicker you can get a canoe and let us be off, the better."
Ned was disappointed too in the appearance of Bolivar, about which he had heard so much, and before the sun was high he had bought a small dug-out canoe for eight dollars, about double its value, and the boys were off for their hundred-mile paddle against the current to Potosi, with canned provisions enough to last them all the way to the mines.
In the forty-eight hours that this journey consumed they saw just three men, all half-breed Indians, out in canoes fishing; but they tired of counting the alligators sunning themselves on mud banks. When at last a turn of the river brought Potosi into view, they shouted with laughter at the appearance of the place, though both were tired and disgusted. The settlement stood on a high bluff, like Bolivar, but it consisted of four houses or huts, all without walls, and roofed with thatch.
"No matter," Ned laughed. "If there was nothing here but a cave I should stop, all the same, and find out where that gold was lost. You see there is hardly any water in the river. We will go up to the settlement and make inquiries, and it's a mighty good thing we have both studied Spanish. Even these half-breeds speak Spanish after a fashion."
"I guess they'll speak it better than we do," Jack replied. "I can read it all right, and I could understand them if they wouldn't talk so fast; they seem to rattle off about two or three hundred words a minute."
When they climbed the hill they found that, poor as the settlement was, it commanded a beautiful view of miles of the Orinoco and a long sweep of the Urubu, a much smaller stream, but more picturesque.