CHAPTER IV. IN VENEZUELA. CARACAS I.

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THE choice lay between a luncheon on board our vessel down in the hot harbour of La Guayra, with President Cipriano Castro and his suite invited as guests of honour by the German officers, or an added day in Caracas; and then a glimpse of South America on our way by Valencia to Puerto Cabello, where we would again take ship. The question was well-discussed, pro and con, and finally decided in favour of Venezuela, the country versus Castro, its dictator. After all, General Castro was not so very different from the other Venezuelans all about us, except in that great element, his personal success for the time being; and then you know we did see his alpaca coat and the back of his chair, and we heard his voice in the council-chamber,—at least we thought we did,—and that really ought to be enough to satisfy any one.

In a way, we did feel satisfied, and yet there was a lingering inclination toward that luncheon. It might be that, for once, the great man would look, act, appear just a little different from the every-day sort. It was only a remnant of the everlasting hope for a perfect adjustment of mind and body,—that futile phantasmagoria which would make the great man great in all things. And to give up and leave Castro in a common, every-day alpaca coat,—and only the back of it at that,—when we might see him in gold lace and gorgeous uniform, well, it was too bad; but then old common sense comes lumbering along and spoils the whole thing, and tells us it’s no use, no use at all, mourning over the impossible; he’s only a man, and a little man at that, and there are plenty of fine men all over the world, and there’s only one South America; and so and so on, until the balance weighs so heavily against the Castro faction that, when the time came to take the train for La Guayra, we divided the party, sent the little girls back to the ship with our friends, and turned ourselves loose upon the sunny streets of Caracas.

II.

We had no guide-book, no one told us what to do, no one seemed to know what we ought to do; so, freed from all restraint, we had the delightful sensation of unlimited liberty.

It was Ash Wednesday and the church-bells rang incessantly. We took to the left, passing the Cathedral, whose black shades enveloped one after another of the faithful, and kept straight on, to where the women in white frocks and lace mantillas, and the black serving-girls with baskets, and the small boys, and trains of burros were streaming down in the direction of the market. Most naturally we join the procession, now in the street, with the cabs and carriers of all sorts of things, and now jostling in among the people on the narrow sidewalk of the shady side.

We have no intention of telling about the flies and the smells and the dirt. They were all there and can easily be pictured, and we really have no intention of staying but a moment in the market, for we have seen so many before; but once a part of the big throng of buyers and sellers; once fairly free from the South Americans who insist upon speaking English, once free to use our own laboriously acquired Spanish, we stay on and on, buy and eat all sorts of curious fruit, until we fear for the consequences, and are delightfully uncomfortable and happy.

It was a surprise to find in Caracas a market which surpassed in varieties and quantities any other place we had ever seen.

Caracas, with its abortive palms, its dusty, dried-up appearance, gave one the impression of unproductiveness; and the dinner of the night before, with meat, meat, meat,—an exaggerated Trinidadian affair—led us to expect anything but fresh, sweet, delectable fruits; but here they were in masses! We had searched every port for pineapples, and these were the first ones we had found which answered to our ideals formed years ago by the pineapples of Amatlan and Southeastern Mexico. And such dear little thin-skinned refreshing limes! I wonder why they are not exported more freely in place of the big, thick-coated lemons? I suppose the impression prevails that the American wants everything on a big scale, so he gets the big lemon in place of the dainty aromatic lime. There we found in great abundance all the fruits with which we had grown familiar on the islands, but more surprising, the fruits of the temperate regions as well. There were some queer kinds of melons, too. We tried them, of course; we tried everything, buying here a slice of pineapple for dos centavos, and over at another stall a medio’s worth of mangoes; then we take up a piece of a curious fruit and examine it rather suspiciously. Its meat is yellow and covered with little black seeds, just the size and appearance of capers, and when one eats it, the seed is the only element of flavour. It has so exactly the taste of water-cress that one needs to use considerable will-power to believe it is a melon, and not a salad.

Here were grapes, both white and black, and sweet and sour lemons, and all sizes of oranges. There were peaches and apricots, and curious little apples, about the size of a small crab-apple; and delicious little Alpine strawberries from away up in the Andes, and then there were in every stall mangoes, and sapodillas, and granaditas, and pineapples sweet as honey and luscious, and curious aguacotes and zapotas and many unknown fruits—besides the ever-present cocoanut.

And vegetables! I only wish we could tell you the names of all the aromatic herbs and green stuffs spread out to tempt us. But there was one thing we did recognise at first sight: the beans—nine different varieties in one stall and maybe as many more in another—“frijoles de todas clases,” the market-woman announced for our encouragement. A procession of bulging baskets crowds us along out of the market, and we move on to make room for a stream of empty baskets coming from the opposite direction.

III.

We take a straightaway course down toward the ever-beautiful curves of a massive old church, some blocks off, and on the way, with the wanderer’s prerogative, step into the open door of a fine modern building, apparently a bank. The Spanish Student walks up to a grilled window in the court to get an American gold piece changed into Venezuelan bolivars and is at once invited to enter. The president and vice-president of the bank were at conference in a finely appointed, spacious office, and as we appeared, both greeted us most cordially and addressed us in perfect English. The weather started the ball of conversation rolling, and from that we chatted on about the voyage, and the islands, and all sorts of things; and then the men launched into a discussion of the political situation, and from that to the power Germany was acquiring in a mercantile way in their country. And they told us how the Germans came there with their families, and taught their children from babyhood the language and customs of the South Americans, at the same time holding firmly their grasp of the mother tongue and the thrifty business methods of their home concerns. Thus given from infancy this advantage of a thorough knowledge of the language and customs of the country, they acquire a prestige with which no amount of ability in a foreigner can compete should he be less ably equipped. How dangerous to America is becoming this Teutonic power and prestige we do not realise, for who can fathom the ambition and persistency of the Kaiser and his subjects in South America—Germans all, though thousands of miles from Berlin?

I could but admire the facility and ease with which these South American men of affairs expressed themselves in English, and I thought, how few there were of us who could thus readily express ourselves in Spanish. It came to me forcibly that the American who is truly far-sighted, is the one who is acquiring, and having his children acquire, a good speaking knowledge of Spanish; for the time is surely coming when our need of Spanish will be far greater than to-day. The time is coming, if we guard our interests aright, when these South Americans will look to the North for a closer bond than now exists, and when that time does come, the man most potent in the new relation will be he who can, by a knowledge of the language, customs, and habits, place himself in perfect sympathy with his South American brothers. And we must remember, too, that we are dealing with men whose education is based upon the time-honoured culture of an old world, men of attainment, of polish and policy, of strength and power; however much that power may be at times misguided, there is latent great force and adaptability.

The South American is a man of marked and strong mental ability, and is already—and for that matter has for years been—modelling his laws after those of his more fortunate younger brother of the Northern continent. It is not in proper law and forms of government that he lacks, but in their proper enforcement, and back of all in the muzzling of that healthy public interest that would demand their enforcement. However much he fails in government, the time when his country will be dispassionately ruled by fixed and just legislation is hoped for by such men as the officers of this bank. For how can the country’s business go on amid the turmoil of ever-impending revolution?

These West Indian Islands and South America, combined, have been used by all nations who have profited by their marvellous productiveness merely for what can be gotten out of them through one resource and another; even North Americans themselves are not above reproach in their quarrels over the Venezuelan Pitch Lake concessions, which was then a subject of keen interest. But in spite of the fact that some Americans have been feathering their nests from this foreign down, still I believe that our people will eventually lead the world in true philanthropy,—the philanthropy of development and honest business methods, and that ours should be the hand that brings to the South American the solution of his great difficulties; directed not to annexation of these Southern lands, but to helping in the evolution of a stable, self-respecting independent government.

South America is waiting for the great hand, for the great liberator of the land from the faults and follies of its own sons, and when he comes he will find a country rich to overflowing in unrealised possibilities. The curse of these countries seems to be in the love of the Spanish American for political intrigue, which periodically bears fruit in the bogus political “liberator,” throbbing with meretricious and self-seeking ambition which he bombastically labels “Patriotism.”


Cathedral and Plaza Caracas, Venezuela Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.

Cathedral and Plaza
Caracas, Venezuela
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.

If you had stood face to face with two such well-poised types of conservative South Americans as we met that morning, I feel sure that you, too, might hope for a great future for this country, could it but be represented and led by its best men.

IV.

With courteous good wishes, we left the seÑors’ pleasant company, and went on, still in the direction of a church-tower. The shops were far from interesting, much like others down in the islands, with the exception of a chocolate-shop, which we found to be the sales office of a factory where a great deal of prepared chocolate is made, for Caracas is a great chocolate market. After we had filled our pockets with all we could carry, of chocolate blocks and chocolate fishes and chocolate dolls, we started on again, munching the chocolate as we went, until we came at last to the Cathedral, which was in a state of mortar and lime and scaffolding, due to having the cracks from last October’s earthquake doctored up in the same matter-of-fact way that we clean house in the spring.

Well, we were glad at last to have seen the inside of the Cathedral, for even without the suggestion of a guide-book, we had in a sort of way felt that we ought to do so; such a slave of “Ought” does the traveller become, in spite of utmost precaution.

By this time the sun was nearing noon, and we naturally turned in the direction of the Gran Hotel de Venezuela as the only available place in which to rest; that is, I thought it was the only available place, but the Spanish Student knew better. How he knew, or when he had experimented, he would not say, nor could the truth be forced or dragged from him, as he walked on toward the Gran Hotel de Venezuela; but I had a suspicion, from the decided click to his step, and a lurking joy in his eye, that he had forsaken the Gran Hotel de Venezuela; that he had discovered a new Arcadia, and, oh! it was so delightful to feel that it was not the Gran Hotel de Venezuela. Then he stopped at a lattice,—I am sure there wasn’t a door in the house—at the lattice of an enticing Dulceria, and we sat down where it was cool and quiet, and I waited to see what would happen. El propietorio appears. At once, at the sight of the Spanish Student, the seÑor smiles, and disappears. They had met before. The seÑor enters once more,—for we are not to be left to an ordinary waiter,—this time with two tall glasses,—very tall, thin glasses.

If you could only have felt the fatigue of that moment! We had tramped about three hours, under the high, white sun, with the drowsy spell of noon creeping stealthily over the city, and even over the insatiable tourist; if you could have been with us to have seen the two tall glasses, filled to the brim, placed on the table by mine host himself, you, too, would have concluded that it was no small matter to be thus refreshed. It looked like lemonade, and yet it didn’t, and it tasted,—well there’s no other explanation possible; it was bewitched. Mine host had crossed his heart, looked twice over his right shoulder, turned three times on his left toe, and then pronounced the spell.

One taste convinced me that it took a lot of things to make that lemonade,—a lot of things besides limes and water, and whatever that lot of things was, it was the finest combination I had ever known. Mine host pronounced it lemonade; so did the Spanish Student, though I heard him suggest “un poquito de Rom Imperial” to the seÑor. With one taste, all fatigue took wings, everything took wings. The bent-wood table capered off with the bent-wood chair, and the long, fly-specked mirror cavorted from side to side with the parrot-cage. Everything was lovely and undulatory, and life was one long oblivion of the red-headed housekeeper at the Gran Hotel de Venezuela.

He, the one opposite, leaned back and looked amused and satisfied, and said: “There’s more coming.”

“What, more lemonade?”

“No, not more lemonade, but more of something else.”

And then it came. Again two tall glasses of a delicious rose-coloured ice, made of fresh wild strawberries, gathered that morning among the glistening dew of the Andes. In the centre of the ice, like the rakish masts of a fairy’s ship, two richly browned, delicate tubes of sweetened pastry bore the ensign of our feast.

They reminded me of the lamplighters we children used to make at a penny a hundred, on winter evenings by the crackling coal fire.

You remember? Or have you never had the fun?

You take a bit of paper an inch wide and twelve inches long, wet your finger, give a queer kind of twist to one corner and up it rolls, in a long, neat shape. Double it over at the end, and there you are. Sometimes it unwinds, and then it is exactly like the confectioner’s roll in Caracas, only white instead of a rich, luscious brown.

From that moment on, all other attractions of Caracas, the University, the Casa Amarilla, the Pantheon, palled in attraction before that Dulceria. It became to us, and to every one we met, the loadstone of Caracas. To taste of an ice made from berries picked among the valleys of the Andes is no small matter, and to quaff a lemonade which, without suspicion, could still fashion wings at least as lasting as those of Icarus of old, is also no small matter, and may we not be forgiven and no questions asked if we confess to more than one return to the Dulceria shop just across the Plaza in Caracas?

V.

Four o’clock was the hour appointed for the coming together of our diminished party, and until then the Gran Hotel de Venezuela was supposed to hold me in its ancient decrepitude, and it did hold me until about three o’clock; when the bells set up such a clanging, and were so zealous to get me up and out of bed and into their mid-afternoon vespers, that I finally yielded to their summons, and, making a hasty toilet, stole down the creaking stairs and out into the streets.

No Northern city at midnight is more soundly asleep than the tropical town in mid-afternoon. The heavy white blinds are down, the green lattices closed tightly, awnings dropped close before the shop-doors; while the cabby and his horse, on guard near the Plaza, doze in willing slumber. The market is empty, the little donkeys are long since browsing upon the green slopes of the foot-hills; the street criers are still, the whole world seems dead asleep, and, as I slipped along toward the Cathedral, the drowsy chanting of priests’ voices was the only sound which broke the quiescence of that delicious afternoon. For delicious it was, in truth. All of God’s part was in its perfectness. The air was sweetly cool and refreshing, with a flavour of mountain ozone mingled with the sunlight, and, as I came to a cross street, looking up the long narrow, white reach to the foot-hills, it was with a bit of imagining, like a glimpse through the tube of a huge kaleidoscope, with the green and purple and blue and yellow mountains an ever-changing vista of resplendent colour in the vanishing distance.

The priests’ voices called out again, and I entered the high-domed, sweet place of worship. The chancel and altar were being repaired, so it was in the oblong nave that the priests, white-robed, rich with lace and embroidery, sat in ancient carved chairs, saying in responsive chants the words decreed for Ash Wednesday. The priests were old, and some were very feeble, and it seemed at times an effort for them to rise when the service demanded. A number of young men, of lesser dignity, assisted, and two little acolytes in red sat quite at the end of the row of priests. Still the chanting goes on and on, and the voices are monotonously sleepy, and long drifts of mellow, shaded light drop down on the white robes, and one of the priests yawns, and the little acolyte nods, and then goes fast asleep; and up overhead the lofty dome reËchoes the somnolent voices, and I hear the old bells telling me about four o’clock, but they seem very indistinct and sleepy and uninterested. And I feel sleepy and nod, and wonder if it’s the priests’ voices or the bells that put everybody to sleep, and I forget all about four o’clock until a workman way down near the altar, perched on a high ladder, mending more cracks, knocks off a piece of plaster, and I start and look around, then tiptoe out; while the bells tell me that the quarter-hour is gone with the rest of the day.

VI.

Caracas is responsible for a decided turning about from some of my former estimates of the Spanish character. It is not necessary to say just exactly what these preconceived opinions were, but they were there, and as I supposed, a fixture. In the children’s neighbourhood brawls, I have noticed frequently that, whenever vengeance was to be meted upon some offending head, he was called by one and all, “a Spaniard.” That was enough to arouse all the wrath of his youthful spirit into rebellion, and until the word was recalled, war reigned. This of course is largely since our late trouble with Spain. I shall not say that the use of the word exactly represented my state of mind toward the South Americans, but, in spite of the many pleasant experiences of years gone by in Mexico, I shall confess to a somewhat allied feeling with regard to that name, and to all people who are in any way affiliated with the race, and I dare say that something of this same prejudice has existed among our people at large for some time, and not altogether without cause.

To have that impression partially removed was one of the results of an evening spent at the opera in Caracas, where General Cipriano Castro had arranged an especially fine performance to be given in honour of the North Americans then visiting his republic. The opera-house was decorated in our nation’s colours, intertwined with the yellow, red, and blue of Venezuela, and every seat not taken by our party was occupied by the representative citizens of Caracas. The performance—a light, comic opera—was of excellent standard, and passed off with great applause. Much as we enjoyed the music, the Venezuelans themselves were our greatest object of interest.

The house was apportioned in the usual foreign style, with two tiers of boxes circling on either side from the President’s box in the rear centre. The women, as usual, occupied the front seats in the boxes, and were thus in a position to be seen and observed very closely. And never—I make no exception, no exception whatever—have I seen such modest, womanly appearing women as were present at the opera that night. They did not giggle nor stare nor flirt. They were richly, beautifully, becomingly gowned, but, although arrayed with a desire to please, they were as modest and unassuming as a lot of little girls at a doll’s tea-party. Their eyes no sooner met yours than they dropped,—not affectedly, but naturally, naÏvely,—and it was impossible to refrain from forming an opinion of the conditions of society from the faces and actions of these women.

Women make society what it is; they make it right, high, true, and pure; they make it wrong, low, false, and vile, and the general appearance and actions of the women of a country, studied by an observer of human nature, will tell more truthfully the moral condition of a people than any book ever written.

Whatever faults the Spaniard may have bequeathed to his descendants; whatever his failings in government and kindred problems, the women, these beautiful women of Caracas, made us feel that they had set for themselves high standards of morality; that the social life was away beyond the level we had expected; that the family—the wife—is a sacred trust given the man to protect in honour and virtue so long as he lives.

There is, no doubt, much to be said against the rigid life of seclusion led by the Spanish women, but there is this to be said in its favour: it has created a race of men who honour and respect their homes, a race of men whose attitude toward women is universally respectful and deferential. With all our stiff-necked New England self-sufficiency, we have yet much to learn, we women of the North, and let it not be beneath our dignity to remember that the South American women have some lessons learned which we have yet to master; and perhaps there are none who could teach us more gently or more effectively than the modest, womanly women of Caracas.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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