The Apure is 695 miles long, of which 564 are navigable. The Apure in its turn receives numerous tributaries, some of which are navigable for short distances.

The Arauca, the Meta and the Guaviare, are also navigable.

The Casiquiare Canal unites the upper Orinoco with the Rio Negro branch of the Amazon. It is about 300 miles long, with an average depth of 30 feet, and has a strong current in the direction of the Negro. The list of affluents of the Orinoco and of its tributaries would be a very long one, and would serve no useful purpose here.

Evidently the Orinoco and the Orinoco system, with their innumerable ramifications in all directions, form a basis for the easy exploitation of the vast sources of natural wealth which exist in the immense territory through which their waters flow.

That territory lies within the borders of the Republics of Colombia and Venezuela. Up to the present neither nation has seriously attempted to utilize the valuable elements so bountifully offered by Nature. In the matter of navigation, ocean-going steamers sail frequently as far as Ciudad Bolivar. From this latter point river steamers ply once or twice a month up the Orinoco, turning into the Apure as far as San Fernando de Apure, and during the tonga-bean harvest follow the course of the main river generally as far as the Caura, where the harvesters established their central camps a good many years ago. An effort was made to establish navigation on the Orinoco and its affluents above the rapids, and also to run small steamers in the navigable part between the Atures and Maipures rapids; but the French company, which held a charter practically placing the whole region at its disposal, failed of its object, after spending a considerable amount of money. During our journey, in several places we could see, rotting in the sun, the remnants of broken-down steamers, which appeared uncanny objects in those surroundings. The rapids, acting as a barrier, have deterred traders and explorers. The upper part of the Orinoco is the most abundant in natural wealth. As I have had occasion to note in these pages, india-rubber, piazaba, tonga bean, resinous and medicinal plants, are found in practically unlimited quantities along the shores of all the rivers above the rapids, and the small proportion which is gathered is generally shipped through the Rio Negro by way of the Amazon, as traders prefer that long and tedious journey to the difficulties of the Orinoco Rapids.

Yet to give life to the Orinoco, to establish a stream of natural products down its waters, and to facilitate the opening of the forests and mountains beyond the rapids, it would not be necessary to carry out work of a very stupendous nature, beyond the resources of the peoples and the nations most interested in the work. A cursory glance at the elements of the problem reveals the possibility of carrying out a plan, the general outlines of which might be the following:

A line of steamers should be established plying at least twice a month between Ciudad Bolivar and the highest accessible point for navigation below the Atures Rapids.

The old road along the rapids, which extended from that highest point of navigation to beyond Maipures where the river is again free and open, should be reconstructed. A railway could be built along either shore, the ground being mostly level and hard. It would not be necessary to undertake great engineering works, and the road-bed itself would require neither deep cuttings nor terracing, nor expensive culverts and works of drainage, and the few bridges required, being of short span, would not run into high figures.

Steam navigation should also be established beyond the rapids on the rivers forming the upper basin. This could be done at first by means of small steam-launches such as are used in the affluents of the Amazon River, but the service should be carried out faithfully and periodically, even though at first freight and passengers were lacking. People in Spanish America are generally very sceptical as to these enterprises, but once a feeling of confidence was created, explorers would flock both from Colombia and from Venezuela, as they would know that they would have an outlet for whatever products they might gather.

The Indians on the Vichada, and even those on the Meta, would supply abundant labour, and the exports of natural products would soon furnish all the freight that might be desired to make the whole arrangement of steamers above and below the rapids, and the railway along the same, a paying concern.

A line of steamers should also follow the course of the Meta River as far as La Cruz, a port situated about ninety miles from BogotÁ, thus tapping the import and export trade of the most thickly-populated region of Colombia, the inhabitants of which in the three provinces of Santander, BoyacÁ, and Cundinamarca, are over 1,500,000 in number.

Supposing four steamers to be needed for navigation on the lower river and on the Meta, to be bought at Ciudad Bolivar at a cost of £10,000 each, £40,000 would be required under this head. Taking the length of the railway at 60 kilometres, including the bridges, at a cost of £2,000 per kilometre, £120,000 would be required for the railway; and supposing that ten small steam-launches of twenty to thirty tons burden were started for the rivers on the upper basin, £20,000 would be required—in all, £180,000 for the whole undertaking.

The preceding figures are not imaginative, and might, perhaps, be reduced in actual practice. If it has been possible to raise the capital required for the construction of a railway of upwards of 200 kilometres in length along the shores of the Congo, where climate, distance, and natives combine to establish far more serious obstacles than exist on the Orinoco, should it not be possible to find the capital for the establishment of modern means of transportation in a region which offers far brighter and surer prospects than the Congo? Let it be remembered that from Colombia and from Venezuela civilized white, coloured and Indian labour could be found in abundance, and that Europeans engaged in the undertaking, and provided with steamers, could in two days, if on the Meta, reach the high and healthy plateaus of BogotÁ and find themselves in a civilized community where they would lack none of the luxuries or comforts of their own land; and that in the Lower Orinoco they would have Ciudad Bolivar, to which the same remarks, barring the advantage of climate, may be applied. The two Governments of Colombia and Venezuela, equally interested in the development of the Orinoco basin, might unite their efforts and guarantee in a form satisfactory to European capitalists the paltry yearly amount required to pay the service of interest and sinking fund on the £180,000. Taking the interest at 6, with a sinking fund of 1 per cent., £12,600 yearly would be required—that is to say, £6,300 for each Government. I know that at the present moment such a task would be well-nigh impossible, but I also know that if a sincere effort were made, notwithstanding the universal feeling of distrust, it would be possible to create securities specially applicable to this purpose, which would satisfy the most exacting capitalist.

In the midst of the daily turmoil and agitation and sanguinary struggle which constitutes the life of those democracies, these problems, urgent and vital as they are, pass unheeded; and the more the pity, for in their solution lies the basis of a permanent peace. Prosperity begets abhorrence of internal revolutions. The development of Mexico is a case in point, from which Colombia and Venezuela might take heed. Woe to them if they do not! The world begins to sicken at the very mention of the constant strife which converts into a positive hell those regions where Nature has shown herself prodigal beyond measure in all her gifts. Not only the valley of the Orinoco, with its boundless prairies, its dense forests, and its innumerable affluents, but the uplands of the Andine regions and the plains extending in Venezuela towards the North Atlantic or Caribbean Sea, and in Colombia to the Pacific Ocean, are coveted by nations where humanity is overcrowded by races which would fain establish colonies in those regions. The development of humanity cannot be stayed; the human wave, even as the stream of water contained by a dyke, will sooner or later break through the walls that imprison it and flood the surrounding country. It were well for men animated by real patriotism in Colombia and in Venezuela to ponder over these possibilities, so that the two nations might themselves open the flood-gates for immigration without delay, so that the new-comers would prove a fresh source of strength and power, helping to build up on the basis of the now existing nations free and mighty commonwealths, rather than as conquerors, who (whether they come from the North as wolves in sheep’s clothing under cover of the Monroe doctrine, or from across the ocean, driven by necessity stronger than all political conventionality) would come as masters.