STEAMING out of the Gulf of Paria the day before, away from the muddy water of the Orinoco, we had come again through the Dragon’s Mouth, close to that long, eastward-pointing finger of South America that forms one side of this famous gateway, back into the welcome Caribbean Sea. Thence through the night we skirted the South American coast, passing the celebrated pearl-fishing island of Margarita—“The Pearl”—where it was said that a German gunboat with covetous eye had these many months been making careful surveys and taking elaborate soundings—so forehanded, you know! And now we were at anchor in the roadstead of La Guayra, the seaport of Caracas.

Where the Mountains Meet the Sea La Guayra, Venezuela
Where the Mountains Meet the Sea
La Guayra, Venezuela

Leaning over the rail of the white ship, early in the dawning of that day, it came to me over and over again that we were at last in the presence of the great West Indian Mother, and that her face was in truth an exact realisation of our imaginings.

A strong breeze blew the waves fast and loose, one upon another, to the near-lying shore, where a white line of surf circled about a rounding promontory, and lost itself on the other side of the cliff. Up and beyond, rose the mountains, and some one said: “The Andes!” and we looked again, and longer, and said to ourselves—“The Andes,—South America, we are looking upon them with actual eyes!”

Up, and still up, rose the mountains; great, tender lines of undulating softness, all green and blue and gentle and grand, one sweep upon another of matchless warm tints; one sweep upon another of voluptuous curves in billowy green, and dropping in and about the contour of the great continent’s majestic form, far disappearing valleys swept into the dimness of soft, shadowy depths.

Like a great mother, asleep, spread with a coverlet of the changing tints of malachite and beryl, South America lay before us.

Clambering up her skirts were the little white roofs of La Guayra, spots on her verdant garment,—irregular spots here, there, and everywhere; now in patches, comfortably huddling together at her feet; now stray offshoots away beyond. All very square and very Spanish were these houses, very quaint to look upon; and if this is La Guayra, where is Caracas? Must we, too, clamber and climb away into those mountain heights, and, perchance, awaken the Great Mother, who sleeps so gently under the drowsy lullings of the deep sea?

II.

Things are moving on the shore, and in the distance dots like men and women stir about the tiny houses, and a toy train toots, and toy engines rattle, and toy cars seem filling with toy people; and we think it time to go ashore and see if we can find a seat in one of those cars; so we run up forward, where our impatient fellow voyagers have been hurrying into the launch this long time. It has just puffed away, and we are really glad.

There is something very like the “stray sheep” in our make-up. It is Americanism boiled down,—this love of going alone, and being self-reliant.

A beamy shore-boat is engaged at one bolivar apiece (negotiations having been started on a basis of five bolivars apiece, charged by the boatmen), and we have plenty of room for all, even the Doctor, who is going with us (for he was just too late for the launch—perhaps, with malice aforethought); and so we row to the stone steps of the quay of La Guayra, the port of Caracas, our first landing on the “Spanish Main.”

We have left the land of what we supposed to be our mother tongue, and are come to a country where we can really be understood, or misunderstood, according to our abilities to express ourselves, in a language more constant than English. I take a mental stock, and find four Spanish phrases which did not fail me in Santo Domingo, and shall not fail me here. Besides I have been practising them since then! With these I can fare sumptuously:

¿Cuanto cuesta? (How much does it cost?)

¿QuÉ hora es? (What o’clock is it?)

Mucho bonito! (Very beautiful!)Yo no entiendo. (I do not understand.)

This, with a few nouns sprinkled in, was my vocabulary; but I had no fears,—had we not our own interpreter?

And the big, strong oars brought us to the landing. Then we girls, in charge of the Doctor, were stood up in the shade of a warehouse, where we watched the white uniformed South Americans, struggling with our obdurate men for their landing charges—for here they charge for the right to land. Then the men disappeared with the bags, and we waited what seemed to us a very long time, until, with one consent, we just thought we wouldn’t stay put another minute; so the Doctor takes the lead with his big white Indian helmet jammed over his eyes, and Little Blue Ribbons and Sister raise a fine cloud of dust, running on ahead. But we older ones know what it means to be in La Guayra, so we follow on very leisurely. On the way, we meet an excited messenger already sent to hurry us to the train.

La Guayra is said to be the hottest place about the West Indies, and I could well imagine how the Great Mother would have to fan her little white children, when they once really felt the breath of the unconscionable sun; but, as we walked along, even though the sun had climbed a few steady hours, we found it far from uncomfortable, even carrying our heavy satchels, and the white umbrella, besides.

Along a dusty and sun-stricken water-front, disfigured with railroad tracks, and low warehouses, we came to the station, where the men, triumphant, were impatiently waiting, after sending out their belated relief expedition. Tickets had been bought, gold pieces divided up into fascinating silver pieces, called bolivars (in honour of the great South American liberator—accent on the second syllable, if you please), and all in our lord and master’s own Spanish, of which we were justly proud; and then we find places in the train, and in a few moments after our arrival we jerk out among the white houses.

It was a clever bit of forethought—that move of ours to hunt up the men. Had we not done so, we could never have caught the early morning train, for the messenger was slow, and we would have become merely a part of the hot and dependent crowd on the later “special.” It’s better sometimes not to stay where you’re put.

We move along at a good pace among the gardens of La Guayra,—rather sparse gardens they are,—and then we climb to the balconies, and then a turn and we are hiding about the Great Mother’s green petticoats; and anon we pass up to the roofs of La Guayra,—which reach out like a white sombrero over the little people below.

Then the pull begins. Two powerful, stocky, low-built, narrow-gauge mountain engines haul us along with apparently no effort, up into the mountains, up a grade which seems to grow steeper every minute. Our men say that the average grade is over four per cent. I can’t see how it is that men know all these things about grades and percentages. It seems like such a lot of plunder to lie around in the brain. But—about such trifles—men must know and women must ask, and that’s all there is to it.

It is a continuous twisting and turning and winding, seldom on a level stretch; it’s up, up away from the sea from the very start. Now, we are far above the tree-tops of the town, and our white ship out in the harbour lies motionless, and seems far away. We wonder at the courage of the people who would dare so great a feat of road-building, and grow doubly curious to see the city, hidden beyond in the clouds of the mountain.

La Guayra lies just above sea-level. In two hours, we must climb over the Great Mother’s back, going thirty odd miles to reach Caracas, which lies at an elevation over three thousand feet in a valley, only six miles in an air line from La Guayra.

Up, up into the thin vapours, into regions of other trees still higher, whose tops again we pass amongst. The sun is hazy through a translucent veil of mist, and far away, the white horses of the sea dance up against the shore and out of sight, and the white sombrero drops beneath an emerald cloak, and everything but the sky is shut out.

We jump first to one side of the car and then to the other, for the sea-view and for the mountains. We are whirled around quick curves, and all but lose our feet; and some of us—even men—get dizzy looking at the drop below us; and then we cut through the mountain and hurry on up the steep climb until the plucky little engine decides to stop, and we are told that we have reached the summit; and we hurry from the cars and feel the sweet coolness of the mountains, and the actual presence of the Great Mother.

We stand close together on the brink of a chasm and look tremulously into the depths of her great heart; down, down, a thousand feet and more of living, breathing green, into every hue of purple and blue, deepening into black near the far-off valley, and disappearing into azure among the clouds,—silence, shadow, tenderness, sublimity, overspread by the ineffable loveliness of morning.

We are moving again, and now it is down, gradually, for Caracas lies a thousand feet below the summit. We follow along a white highroad, the mountain trail from Caracas to the sea. Now we are on its level; now we leave it. Long trains of pack-mules make a cloud of gray dust against the green, and here and there a red blanket thrown across a burro’s back brings a delicious bit of life and colour into the passing scene.

Caracas and the Mountains Venezuela
Caracas and the Mountains
Venezuela

Now we seem to be on the level, and scurry along at a great rate; and soon there spring up out of the brown earth adobe houses (the first we have seen since we were in Mexico), and here are more and yet more, and there, ah! that must be Caracas, the great Venezuelan capital, the habitation of over one hundred and fifty thousand people!

But, shall we say it? Must we be honest at the expense of all else? The approach to Caracas is a disappointment. There is scarcely any kind of a habitation which gives a landscape quite such a distressful look as the adobe hut. Built of sun-dried mud blocks, it gives off an atmosphere of dust with every whiff of wind. It comes to our mind always with the thought of dry barrenness, heat, sun, dust, shadeless fields of maguey, prickly nopals, broad sombreros, and leather-clothed rancheros. And to see the suburbs of a great city, the outlying habitations, in gray, crumbling adobe, makes an unpleasant impression, in spite of the fact that, from the distance, we catch a quick glimpse of a peaceful campanile and high, imposing roofs a bit beyond. There’s only time for a suggestion, but that suggestion biassed all our later impressions. We steam into the station and begin to pick up our traps and make for the carriages.

IV.

As we said before, the spirit of independence gained supremacy, when we were once fairly upon the Spanish Main. Out of many, a few of us escaped the tourist agent. A courier had been sent from New York, and at every port we had the privilege of availing ourselves of his guides, carriages, meal tickets, et cetera, if we wished to do so; and for some it was certainly a great advantage, for, unless one knows some French and Spanish, one is at the mercy of every shark that swims, and these waters are full of them, as are all others for that matter.

We found the prices very high everywhere, with few exceptions; equally high for poor accommodations as for the better, the reasons whereof, for the present, must be left unexplained. Suffice it to say, that the American is his own worst enemy. Nine-tenths of our party thought it would be unwise to go through South America from La Guayra to Puerto Cabello on their own responsibility; so our little group were the only ones to experience the joy and excitement of an independent tour through a strange country, where English—good, honest, live English—is a rare commodity.

The Doctor, and Mr. and Mrs. M—— from Boston, and Daddy were keen for the experience. I was afraid we might be left away down in South America, with no train to carry us on from Caracas, for “the personally conducted” were to have a “special,” but my fears were finally allayed by constant assurances of safety; so independence carried the day.

Once inside the Caracas station, Daddy disappears, and, after a bit, we see him beckoning to us from in among a crowd of vehicles, all very comfortable and well-appointed, and we sidle along among the noisy South American cabbies, and jump into the selected carriage.

Now, what was said to the cabby, I’ll never know; but we were no sooner in that carriage than the horses started on a dead run, rattlety-bang, whackety-whack, jigglety-jagglety, over stones and ruts, through the city of Caracas. Up the hill we tore, and all I could see from under the low, buggy-like canopy was the bottom of things sailing by in a cloud of dust. Every now and then we struck a street-car track on the wrong angle, and off we would slew, still on the run, with one wheel in the track and the other anywhere but in the right place, for half a block or so, and then no sooner well under way again, than we would all but smash to pieces some peaceful cab, jogging toward us from the opposite direction. A train of donkeys, coming from the market, on the way home to the mountains with empty baskets, narrowly escapes sudden death at our furious onslaught; and I can yet hear their little feet pattering off and the tinkle of the leader’s bell, as his picturesque little nose just misses our big clumsy wheel. In a jumble we see the small feet of the passers-by, and so we jerk along until all at once we stop with a bump at the Gran Hotel de Caracas.

There we wait in the garden while our recklessly independent men seek lodgings. None to be had! Off we gallop toward another inn, catch glimpses of a square, stop again, wait in the carriage, and find the standing still very delightful. In a few minutes, our bold leaders return with the look we know so well,—jubilant and hopeful. Beautiful rooms, fine air, clean beds, sumptuous parlours, and all that,—you know how it reads.

We enter the Gran Hotel de Venezuela.

V.

May I be forgiven if I leave the path of calm discretion for once, or how would it do to leave out the Gran Hotel de Venezuela altogether, and turn the page to where the mountains begin? But, you see, if we leave out the Gran Hotel de Venezuela, we should have to leave out Caracas, and that would never do at all.

There was one member of our party who never sat down to a meal that he did not declare it was the finest he had ever eaten in his life. This faculty of taking things as they come, conforming gracefully to the customs of a country, is, perhaps,—next to unselfishness,—the most enviable trait in the traveller. Well might it be applied, as we begin the search for our rooms in the Gran Hotel de Venezuela. We climb a wide, winding, dirty stairway, pass through the sumptuously dusty parlour, up another flight of the same kind, only narrower and dustier and darker. An English housekeeper leads the way, and some one exclaims (Oh, the blessed charity of that soul!): “How pleasant to find a neat English woman in charge of the Gran Hotel de Venezuela!”

It has never been clear to me just what state of mind could have inspired that remark; whether it was a momentary blindness, occasioned by the mad drive, or a kind of temporary delirium, from the sudden consciousness of power over perplexing foreign relations; or whether it was merely the natural outburst of an angelic disposition, I could never quite make out. But those are the identical words he used: “How pleasant to find a neat English woman at the head of affairs in the Gran Hotel de Venezuela.”

The “neat English woman” had dull, reddish, grayish hair, stringing in thin, stray locks from a lopsided, dusty knot on the top of her head. She had freckles, and teeth that clicked when she smiled. A time-bedraggled calico gown swung around her lean bones, and at her side she carried a bunch of keys, one of which she slipped up to the top into a wobblety door, and ushered us into our “apartments.”

The “neat English housekeeper” fitted into that room to a dot. It was gray, and red, and wobblety, and she was gray, and red, and wobblety.

If it hadn’t been for the everything outside, away beyond the balcony (for, thank Heaven, no Spanish house is complete without one!), no amount of philosophy could have atoned for that room. It was simply white with the accumulated dust of no one knew how long. Our shoes made tracks on the floor, and our satchels made clean spots on the bureau. Two slab-sided, lumpy beds suggested troubled dreams. Two thin, threadbare little towels lay on the rickety, dusty wash-stand, and an old cracked pitcher held the stuff we must call water. A thin partition of matched boards dividing ours from the next “apartments,” rattled as we deposited our things in various places which looked a little cleaner than the places which were not so clean.

Had it not been for the balcony, we could never have endured it; though we had put up in queer places before. We had not even the satisfaction of leaning on the balcony rail; it was too dusty. But we could stand, and we did stand, looking out over and beyond the picturesque buildings, to the everlasting hills, to the Andes, their lofty summits encircling us like an emerald girdle, with calm La Silla thousands of feet above all.

Below us lay the city and the Square of Bolivar, with the bronze statue of the great Liberator in the centre, in the midst of a phalanx of palms, rising above the dust and the glaring white walk.

VI.

To the left, the Cathedral, one compensation at least for all the rest. What combination of characteristics is it that makes the Spaniard such a marvellous builder, and, at the same time, such a wretched maintainer? He builds a Cathedral to be a joy for all time; its lines fall into beauty as naturally as the bird’s flight toward its nest. Whatever he builds, he builds for posterity; simply, beautifully, gracefully. Even his straight rows of hemmed-in city houses have a touch of beauty about them somewhere; and in the Cathedral, his true artistic sense finds full expression. Close at hand the noble Campanile, swung with ancient bells, watches in serene dignity and beauty the moving, streaming life below. Sweet lines, harmonious to the eye, lift the Cathedral from the hideous dirt and unkempt streets; from the whirling dust and circling buzzards, to a sphere of forgetfulness, where beauty struggles for the supremacy she holds with royal hand so long as we continue to gaze upward.

Equestrian Statue of Bolivar, the Liberator Caracas, Venezuela
Equestrian Statue of Bolivar, the Liberator
Caracas, Venezuela

But once let our eyes leave the mountains and the Tower, and it all changes into that other picture, the other side of the life of that curious compound of traits, the Spaniard. For here, South American as he calls himself, down deep in his heart he is ever the Spaniard, and although he has claimed his independence of the mother country these many years, through the heroic victories of Bolivar and his brave associates, his characteristics are Spanish, his arts are Spanish, his life is Spanish; his glorious Cathedral is Spanish, and his horrible streets are Spanish; his magnificent statue of Bolivar is Spanish, and the dowdy, dusty garden about it is Spanish. Was he ever intended to be a householder? Should not his portion be to beautify the earth by his artistic intuition, and let the rest of us, who do not comprehend the A B C of his art, be the cleaners and the menders? Is not this a people left like children to build up the semblance of a government from the wrong stuff? Will not the world in time come to see that one race cannot be all things; that some must be artists, and some mechanics; that some must be leaders, and others followers; that some will be the builders of beauty, to last for all time, and others must be the guardians of health, the makers of strong, clean men?

VII.

Why is it that the President’s house,—the great yellow house across the square, shown us by the Minister of War himself to-day,—one of the homes of Cipriano Castro, the present Dictator, is nothing more or less than an arsenal, packed to the full with cartridges, muskets, and rapid-firing guns, and alive with armed troops? How is it that Castro is said to have laid by a million dollars out of a twelve thousand dollars a year salary? Why is it that our going into Venezuela was considered by some unsafe? Why did we shake every bone in our bodies over the upturned streets and boulders of Caracas? Because the Venezuelan is trying to do that for which he is not fitted; in which, during all these long years of constant revolution, he has failed. He, past-master in certain of his arts, has taught the world his colours and his lights and shades; he has given to earth notable tokens of his skill in building; but in house-cleaning—municipal or national—he is out of his element, and should no more be expected to excel in that line than a babe in arms should be expected to know the Greek grammar.

Like all Spaniards he is mediÆval in his instincts; he cannot really govern himself as part of a republic.

The city of Caracas exemplifies this statement. It is in a horrible state of dirt and disproportion. Its people are kind and courteous, but its streets are a nightmare; and over all hovers the strong hand of military despotism.

VIII.

After dinner our first expedition was to call upon the United States Minister L—— and his wife, who were occupying the former residence of Count De Toro, some miles out of the city. And what a drive!

To move comfortably in Caracas, you must either take the donkey tramway—which never goes where you want to go—or you must walk. But to walk a half-dozen miles in the hot sun, on a dusty, stony road, is not particularly inviting, so, with our respects to the sun, we decide to drive, and all the way out we wonder why we ever did. And yet, had we walked, I suppose we would have wondered why we hadn’t taken a cab.

As it was, the dust blew about us from the rolling, bumping wheels in great clouds, and the big stones in the road sent us careening about from one side of the carriage to the other. Again we think of Mexico—of the dust, the parched earth, the arroyos, and the saving mountains beyond. We pass a dried-up river-bed, where women are washing in a faint trickle of water, and then we wind about the hill and climb up the rocky way, enter a sort of wood, and come suddenly to the minister’s house.

An Interior Court Caracas, Venezuela
An Interior Court
Caracas, Venezuela

Our nation’s arms on the gateway make us feel at home, and we jingle the bell and send in our cards and wait in the shady court. In a few moments, Minister L—— appears, and with him Mrs. L——, who bids us enter her cool, delicious drawing-room, very clean and sweet and old-fashioned and quiet, though the house is truly Spanish, with wide, airy rooms and curious pictured walls. The men went off up a flight of stone steps through the garden to the office, to talk politics and the “Venezuelan situation,” I suppose; while we sat there with the minister’s wife, who told us much of her life and the customs of the country, and, among other things, how difficult it is for a foreigner—even a diplomat—to gain access to the real home-life of the Spaniard; how the women live shut in, and see but little of the world, only glimpses now and then, never knowing anything of our Northern freedom.

IX.

The drive back to the city was one continuous round of jolt and bump and dust. We rattled down and up the streets which, despite their narrowness and general dilapidation, could not be utterly devoid of interest, if viewed from the eyes of the lover of wrought-iron handiwork and graceful handlings of simple and strong elements in building.

We were told that it was our duty to view the Municipal Palace, and dear Sister, although I knew she was tired, did not want anything seeable omitted; so we most willingly left the cabs at the palace door, with the hope of never having the agony of that ride repeated.

As the Spaniard builds his cathedral, so does he impart to each important structure a fitting grace and dignity of style commensurate with its office. The Municipal Palace is built about a great hollow square or plaza, which is filled with palms and other similarly beautiful vegetation. But, oh, dear! oh, dear! the dust! The great reception-hall, or audience-chamber,—or whatever one might call it,—was lined with stately gilt chairs and sofas, done up in linen dusters. The effort of driving and seeing and jolting and being agreeable had been such a strain that I just thumped down on one of the wide sofas and spent my time looking about me, while the others conscientiously made the grande tour from one end of the great room to the other.

It is a large oval hall ornamented with some very fine historical paintings. The Spanish Student had found an obliging officer—for soldiers are everywhere—and I quietly left the two alone. I thought it too cruel, after our long drive, to expect him to retranslate for my benefit, but then there came a faint suspicion in my mind, from a troubled expression on his face, when the guide launched into the deep waters of Venezuelan history, with Bolivar rampant and the Spaniards fleeing, that, possibly, it was not all clear sailing; that, possibly, this was just the occasion for the last of my phrases. No, I watch the face; it resumes once more its usual expression of serenity, and I sit there and think how beautiful it might all be if it were only clean; if Bolivar could only come back again and teach his children their unlearned lesson of disinterested self-love of country and home.

Bolivar appears to have been the only liberator (and each new “President” who throws out the defeated party and instates himself is called “liberator”) who ever died poor, having spent not only public funds for the betterment of arts and science and education, but nine-tenths of his own personal patrimony as well.

The guide closes the blinds, and our party comes together at the door, leaving nice little clean spots where they have stood in groups on the dusty, once highly polished floor, and we turn down the long, wide balcony to an open door at the end. A brilliantly uniformed, handsome lad bars admission, for Castro the Great is holding a cabinet meeting there, and we can see the collar of a black alpaca coat and the back of a very solemn-looking chair, and hear a low voice speaking,—and that was all we saw of Castro.

Some one proposes a drive; some one else suggests the shops, but we decide to go home. That dear old word sounds lonesome away down here in South America. Does it mean the Gran Hotel de Venezuela? Was this the home; or was it the wide, out-reaching mountains, fading into the deeps of night; or the Cathedral, rising from the dread below in her sweet chastity?

X.

Tired bells jangle out the slowly passing time. An ancient carillon sounds the quarter, an added clang the half, one note more for three quarters. The long black arms reach to the hour, then another and another passes, and night brings rest to the Great Mother. But the soft gentle eyes are no sooner closed than all the children, the white children at her feet, begin to stir and move, just as yours and mine do when mother sleeps.

The old church towers, with sweet grace, wrap about her stately form a mantle of whitest silver, bordered with great lines of black, and away above her head, up in God’s garden, forget-me-nots and heartsease blossom out into twinkling spots of starlit beauty.

The moon rolls languidly on in the gentlest heaven that earth e’er looked upon.

Below, beneath God’s garden, the white children brighten and awaken from the drowsy languor of the long day. Lights flare out, doors open, and streets fill with happy voices, and a white-frocked humanity empties itself into the Plaza to hear yet again the great Military Band of Caracas.

There comes a hush, and then—it must be from the garden away off so far—there drops a veil,—the veil of forgetfulness, in sounds of music so inexpressibly tender and alluring as to catch the soul from earth away up to where white angels gather the forget-me-nots and heartsease. The crumbling city and its disordered sights, the dust and all unpleasantness pass away beyond the veil, and all that remains is covered with the witchery of music.

To make it real, we, too, join the children and press in close, just as our little ones do who fear not the expression of their emotions. We, too, press in where the makers of this wonderful music, sixty of them, stand in a great semicircle at the head of a flight of stone steps, and then we listen to the old, eternally old stories of life and love and joy and tragedy; listen, until our souls are filled to the utmost with the deeps of life!

An intermission comes; we take a deep breath; meanwhile he of the Spanish vocabulary, made bold by enthusiasm, threaded his way to where the leader of the band was nonchalantly smoking a cigarette, wishing to congratulate him on the masterful work done by his musicians, and also to thank him for having just played “The Star Spangled Banner,” in honour of the Americans present.

Shrugging his shoulders, the bandmaster remarked that his men had almost forgotten that American thing, as it was twelve years since last they played it! Thus does the Venezuelan show his love for these United States. But we forget that in the charm of the reawakened melody, for it is the kind of music that speaks real things; that brings the great forgetting of things visible; that brings the great remembering of things eternal. Mellow notes, as from the throat of a blackbird, slip through the liquid night as softly as the splash of feathered warblers in the cool water brooks, and when the strong word is uttered, it comes forth like the voice of a seer, unjarring, made strong through great tenderness.

Closer and closer we press to lose not the slightest note, and we realise that it is the music which comes to our cold Northern senses but once in a lifetime, and our ears plead for more and yet more. No strings could ever have so mellowed themselves into the loveliness of that night as did those liquid oboes, whose sylvan tones filtered through our senses with ineffable sweetness. The wood and brass seemed to have been tempered by long nights of tears and days of smiles, so ripened were they into an expression of the soul of humanity.

At last the Great Mother sleeps, her children are tired and go to rest, and God’s garden blossoms away, away off beyond in the far country.