THE PARIS OF SOUTH AMERICA
SHOVED off by itself in a corner of Central Park on the top of a wooded hill, where only the people who live in the high apartment-houses at Eighty-first Street can see it, is an equestrian statue. It is odd, bizarre, and inartistic, and suggests in size and pose that equestrian statue to General Jackson which mounts guard before the White House in Washington. It shows a chocolate-cream soldier mastering with one hand a rearing rocking-horse, and with the other pointing his sword towards an imaginary enemy.
Sometimes a “sparrow” policeman saunters up the hill and looks at the statue with unenlightened eyes, and sometimes a nurse-maid seeks its secluded site, and sits on the pedestal below it while the children of this free republic play unconcernedly in its shadow. On the base of this big statue is carved the name of Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of Venezuela.
Down on the northeastern coast of South America, in Caracas, the capital of the United States of Venezuela, there is a pretty little plaza, called the Plaza Washington. It is not at all an important plaza; it is not floored for hundreds of yards with rare mosaics like the Plaza de Bolivar, nor lit by swinging electric lights, and the president’s band never plays there. But it has a fresh prettiness and restfulness all its own, and the narrow gravel paths are clean and trim, and the grass grows rich and high, and the branches of the trees touch and interlace and form a green roof over all, except in the very centre, where there stands open to the blue sky a statue of Washington, calm, dignified, beneficent, and paternal. It is Washington the statesman, not the soldier. The sun of the tropics beats down upon his shoulders; the palms rustle and whisper pleasantly above his head. From the barred windows of the yellow and blue and pink houses that line the little plaza dark-eyed, dark-skinned women look out sleepily, but understandingly, at the grave face of the North American Bolivar; and even the policeman, with his red blanket and Winchester carbine, comprehends when the gringos stop and take off their hats and make a low bow to the father of their country in his pleasant place of exile.
STATUE OF SIMON BOLIVAR, CARACAS
Other governments than those of the United States of America and the United States of Venezuela have put up statues to their great men in foreign capitals, but the careers of Washington and Bolivar bear so striking a resemblance, and the histories of the two countries of which they are the respective fathers are so much alike, that they might be written in parallel columns. And so it seems especially appropriate that these monuments to these patriots should stand in each of the two continents on either side of the dividing states of Central America.
It will offend no true Venezuelan to-day if it be said of his country that the most interesting man in it is a dead one, for he will allow no one to go further than himself in his admiration for Bolivar; and he has done so much to keep his memory fresh by circulating portraits of him onevery coin and stamp of the country, by placing his statue at every corner, and by hanging his picture in every house, that he cannot blame the visitor if his strongest impression of Venezuela is of the young man who began at thirty-three to liberate five republics, and who conquered a territory more than one-third as great as the whole of Europe.
In 1811 Venezuela declared her independence of the mother-country of Spain, and her great men put this declaration in writing and signed it, and the room in which it was signed is still kept sacred, as is the room where our declarationwas signed in Independence Hall. But the two men who were to make these declarations worth something more than the parchment upon which they were written were not among the signers. Their work was still to come, and it was much the same kind of work, and carried on in much the same spirit of indomitable energy under the most cruel difficulties, and with a few undrilled troops against an army of veterans. It was marked by brilliant and sudden marches and glorious victories; and where Washington suffered in the snows of Valley Forge, or pushed his way through the floating ice of the Delaware, young Bolivar marched under fierce tropical suns, and cut his path through jungle and swamp-lands, and over the almost impenetrable fastnesses of the Andes.
STATUE OF WASHINGTON DECORATED WITH FLORAL WREATHS BY THE VENEZUELANS
Their difficulties were the same and their aim was the same, but the character of the two men were absolutely and entirely different, for Bolivar was reckless, impatient of advice, and even foolhardy. What Washington was we know.
The South-American came of a distinguished Spanish family, and had been educated as a courtier and as a soldier in the mother-country, though his heart remained always with his own people, and he was among the first to take up arms to set them free. Unless you have seen the country through which he led his men, and have measured the mountains he climbed with his few followers, it is quite impossible to understand the immensity of the task he accomplished. Even to-day a fast steamer cannot reach Callao from Panama under seven days, and yet Bolivar made the same distance and on foot, starting from the South Atlantic, and continuingon across the continent to the Pacific side, and then on down the coast into Peru, living on his way upon roots and berries, sleeping on the ground wrapped in a blanket, riding on muleback or climbing the steep trail on foot, and freeing on his way Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and finally Peru, the home of the Incas.
The history of this campaign is one too glorious and rich in incident and color to be crowded into a few pages, and the character of its chief actor too varied, and his rise and fall too dramatic, to be dismissed, as it must be here, in a few paragraphs. But every American who loves a hero and who loves a lover—and Bolivar was very much of both, and perhaps too much of the latter—should read the life of this young man who freed a country rich in brave men, who made some of these who were much his senior in years his lieutenants, and who, after risking his life upon many battle-fields and escaping several attempts at assassination, died at last deserted except by a few friends, and with a heart broken by the ingratitude of the people he had led out of captivity.
It is difficult to find out, even in his own country, why the Venezuelans, after heaping Bolivar with honors and elevating him to the place of a god, should have turned against him, and driven him into exile at Santa Marta. Some will tell you that he tried to make himself dictator over the countries which he had freed; others say that it was because he had refused to be a dictator that the popular feeling went against him, and that when the people in the madness of their new-found freedom cried, “Thou hast rid us of kings; be thou king,” he showed them their folly, and sought his old home, and died there before the reaction came, which was to sweep him back once more and forever into the place of the popular hero of South America.
DECORATION OF THE STATUE OF BOLIVAR AT CARACAS, VENEZUELA, DECEMBER 18, 1895, BY AMERICAN RESIDENTS
It was sixteen years after his death that a hero-worshipping friend was brave enough to commission an artist to design a statue to his memory. On the neck of this statue the artist hung the representation of a miniature in the shape of a medallion, which had been given to Bolivar by the family of Washington. On the reverse was a lock of Washington’s hair and the inscription, “This portrait of the founder of liberty in North America is presented by his adopted son to him who has acquired equal glory in South America.”
Some one asked why the artist had stripped from the breast of Bolivar all of the othermedals and stars that had been given him by different countries in the hour of his triumph, and the artist answered that he had done as his patron and the friend of Bolivar thought would best please his hero. And ever after that it was decreed that every bust or statue or engraving of the Liberator should show him with this portrait of Washington hanging by a ribbon about his neck; and so you will see in the National Portrait Gallery that while the coats of his lieutenants glitter with orders and crosses, Bolivar’s bears this medal only. It was his greatest pride, and he considered it his chief glory. And the manner of its bestowal was curiously appropriate. In 1824 General Lafayette returned to this country as the guest of the nation, and a banquet was given to him by Congress, at which the memory of Washington and the deeds of his French lieutenant were honored again and again. It was while the enthusiasm and rejoicings of this celebration were at their height that Henry Clay rose in his place and asked the six hundred Americansbefore him to remember that while they were enjoying the benefits of free institutions founded by the bravery and patriotism of their fore-fathers, their cousins and neighbors in the southern continent were struggling to obtain that same independence.
SIMON BOLIVAR
“No nation, no generous Lafayette,” he cried, “has come to their aid; alone and without help they have sustained their glorious cause, trusting to its justice, and with the assistance only of their bravery, their deserts, and their Andes—and one man, Simon Bolivar, the Washington of South America.”
VIEW OF LA GUAYRA
And you can imagine the six hundred Americans jumping to their feet and cheering the name of the young soldier, and the French marquis eagerly asking that he might be the one to send him some token of their sympathy and admiration. Lafayette forwarded the portrait of Washington to Bolivar, who valued it so highly that the people who loved him valued the man he worshipped; and to-day you will see in Caracas streets and squares and houses named after Washington, and portraits of Washington crossing the Delaware, and Washington on horseback, and Washington at Mount Vernon, hanging in almost every shop and café in the capital. And the next time you ride in Central Park you might turn your bicycle, or tell the man on the box to turn the horses, into that little curtain oftrees, and around the hill where the odd-looking statue stands, and see if you cannot feel some sort of sympathy and pay some tribute to this young man who loved like a hero, and who fought like a hero, with the fierceness of the tropical sun above him, and whose inspiration was the calm, grave parent of your own country.
Bolivar’s country is the republic of South America that stands nearest to New York, and when people come to know more concerning it, I am sure they will take to visiting it and its capital, the “Paris of South America,” in the winter months, as they now go to southern Europe or to the Mediterranean.
There are many reasons for their doing so.In the first place, it can be reached in less than six days, and it is the only part of South America to which one can go without first crossing the Isthmus of Panama and then taking a long trip down the western coast, or sailing for nearly a month along the eastern coast; and it is a wonderfully beautiful country, and its cities of Caracas and Valencia are typical of the best South-American cities. When you have seen them you have an intelligent idea of what the others are like; and when you read about revolutions in Rio Janeiro, or Valparaiso, or Buenos Ayres, you will have in your mind’s eye the background for all of these dramatic uprisings, and you will feel superior to other people who do not know that the republic of Venezuela is larger than France, Spain, and Portugal together, and that the inhabitants of this great territory are less in number than those of New York city.
THE RAILROAD UP THE MOUNTAIN
La Guayra is the chief seaport of Venezuela. It lies at the edge of a chain of great mountains, where they come down to wet their feet in the ocean, and Caracas, the capital, is stowed away three thousand feet higher up behind these mountains, and could only be bombarded in time of war by shells that would rise like rockets and drop on the other side of the mountains, and so cover a distance quite nine miles away from the vessel that fired them. Above La Guayra, on the hill, is a little fortress which was once the residence of the Spanish governor when Venezuela was a colony of Spain. It is of interest now chiefly because Charles Kingsley describes it inWestward Ho!as the fortress in which the Rose of Devon was imprisoned. Past this fortress, and up over the mountains to the capital, are a mule-trail and an ancient wagon-road and a modern railway.
It is a very remarkable railroad; its tracks cling to the perpendicular surface of the mountain like the tiny tendrils of a vine on a stone-wall, and the trains creep and crawl along the edge of its precipices, or twist themselves into the shape of a horseshoe magnet, so that the engineer on the locomotive can look directly across a bottomless chasm into the windows of the last car. The view from this train, while it pants and puffs on its way to the capital, is the most beautiful combination of sea and plain and mountain that I have ever seen. There are higher mountains and more beautiful, perhaps, but they run into a brown prairie or into a green plain; and there are as beautiful views of the ocean, only you have to see them from the level of the ocean itself, or from a chalk-cliff with the downs behind you and the white sand at your feet. But nowhere else in the world have I seen such magnificent and noble mountains running into so beautiful and green a plain, and beyond that the great blue stretches of the sea. When you look down fromthe car-platform you see first, stretching three thousand feet below you, the great green ribs of the mountain and its valleys and waterways leading into a plain covered with thousands and thousands of royal palms, set so far apart that you can distinguish every broad leaf and the full length of the white trunk. Among these are the red-roofed and yellow villages, and beyond them again the white line of breakers disappearing and reappearing against the blue as though some one were wiping out a chalk-line and drawing it in again, and then the great ocean weltering in the heat and stretching as far as the eye can see, and touching a sky so like it in color that the two are joined in a curtain of blue on which the ships seem to lie flat, like painted pictures on a wall.
COURT-YARD OF A HOUSE IN CARACAS
You pass through clouds on your way up that leave the trees and rocks along the track damp and shining as after a heavy dew, and at some places you can peer through them from the steps of the car down a straight fall of three thousand feet. When you have climbed to the top of the mountain, you see below you on the other side the beautiful valley in which lies the city of Caracas, cut up evenly by well-kept streets, and diversified by the towers of churches and public buildings and open plazas, with the white houses and gardens of the coffee-planters lying beyond the city at the base of the mountains.
Venezuela, after our experiences of CentralAmerica, was like a return to civilization after months on the alkali plains of Texas. We found Caracas to be a Spanish-American city of the first class, with a suggestion of the boulevards, and Venezuela a country that possessed a history of her own, and an Academy of wise men and artists, and a Pantheon for her heroes. I suppose we should have known that this was so before we visited Venezuela; but as we did not, we felt as though we were discovering a new country for ourselves. It was interesting to find statues of men of whom none of us had ever heard, and who were distinguished for something else than military successes, men who had made discoveries in science and medicine, and who had written learned books; to find the latest devices for comfort of a civilized community, and with them the records of a fierce struggle for independence, a long period of disorganization, where the Church had the master-hand, and then a rapid advance in the habits and customs of enlightened nations. There are the most curious combinations and contrasts, showing on one side a pride of country and an eagerness to emulate the customs of stable governments, and on the other evidences of the Southern hot-blooded temperament and dislike of restraint.
On the corner of the principal plaza stands the cathedral, with a tower. Ten soldiers took refuge in this tower four years ago, during the lastrevolution, and they made so determined a fight from that point of vantage that in order to dislodge them it was found necessary to build a fire in the tower and smoke them out with the fumes of sulphur. These ten soldiers were the last to make a stand within the city, and when they fell, from the top of the tower, smothered to death, the revolution was at an end. This incident of warfare is of value when you contrast the thing done with its environment, and know that next to the cathedral-tower are confectionery-shops such as you find on Regent Street or upper Broadway, that electric lights surround the cathedral, and that tram-cars run past it on rails sunk below the surface of the roadway and over a better street than any to be found in New York city.
THE MARKET OF CARACAS
Even without acquaintances among the people of the capital there are enough public show-places in Caracas to entertain a stranger for a fortnight. It is pleasure enough to walk the long, narrow streets under brilliantly colored awnings, between high one- and two-story houses, painted in blues and pinks and greens, and with overhanging red-tiled roofs and projecting iron balconies and open iron-barred windows, through which you gain glimpses beyond of cool interiors and beautiful courts and gardens filled with odd-looking plants around a splashing fountain.
The ladies of Caracas seem to spend much oftheir time sitting at these windows, and are always there in the late afternoons, when they dress themselves and arrange their hair for the evening, and put a little powder on their faces, and take their places in the cushioned window-seats as though they were in their box at the opera. And though they are within a few inches of the passers-by on the pavement, they can look through them and past them, and are as oblivious of their presence as though they were invisible. In the streets are strings of mules carrying bags of coffee or buried beneath bales of fodder, and jostled by open fiacres, with magnificent coachmen on the box-seat in top-boots and gold trimmings to their hats and coats, and many soldiers, on foot and mounted, hurrying along at a quick step in companies, or strolling leisurely alone. They wear blue uniforms with scarlet trousers and facings, and the president’s body-guard are in white duck and high black boots, and are mounted on magnificent horses.
VIEW OF CARACAS
There are three great buildings in Caracas—the Federal Palace, the Opera-house, and the Pantheon, which was formerly a church, and which has been changed into a receiving-vault and a memorial for the great men of the country. Here, after three journeys, the bones of Bolivar now rest. The most interesting of these buildings is the Federal Palace. It is formed around a great square filled with flowers and fountains, and lit with swinging electric lights. It is the handsomest building in Caracas, and within its four sides are the chambers of the upper and lower branches of the legislature, the offices of the different departments of state, and the reception-hall of the president, in which is the National Portrait Gallery. The palace is light and unsubstantial-looking, like a canvas palace in a theatre, and suggests the casino at a French watering-place. It is painted in imitation of stone, and the statues are either of plaster-of-paris or of wood, painted white to represent marble. But the theatrical effect is in keeping with the colored walls and open fronts of the other buildings of the city, and is not out of place in this city of such dramatic incidents.
PRESIDENT CRESPO, OF VENEZUELA
The portraits in the state-room of the palace immortalize the features of fierce-looking, dark-faced generals, with old-fashioned high-standing collars of gold-braid, and green uniforms. Strange and unfamiliar names are printed beneath these portraits, and appear again painted in gold letters on a roll of honor which hangs from the ceiling, and which faces a list of the famous battles for independence. High on this roll of honor are the names “General O’Leary” and “Colonel Fergurson,” and among the portraits are the faces of two blue-eyed, red-haired young men, with fair skin and broad chests and shoulders, one wearing the close-clipped whiskers of the last of the Georges, and the other the long Dundreary whiskers of the Crimean wars. Whether the Irish general and the English colonel gave their swords for the sake of the cause of independence or fought for the love of fighting, I do not know, but they won the love of the Spanish-Americans by the service they rendered, no matter what their motives may have been for serving. Many people tell you proudly that they are descendedfrom “O’Leari,” and the names of the two foreigners are as conspicuous on pedestals and tablets of honor as are their smiling blue eyes and red cheeks among the thin-visaged, dark-skinned faces of their brothers-in-arms.
LEGISLATIVE BUILDING, CARACAS
At one end of the room is an immense painting of a battle, and the other is blocked by as large a picture showing Bolivar dictating to members of Congress, who have apparently ridden out into the field to meet him, and are holding an impromptu session beneath the palm leaves of an Indian hut. The dome of the chamber, which latter is two hundred feet in length, is covered with an immense panorama, excellently well done, showing the last of the battles of the Venezuelans against the Spaniards, in which the figures are life-size and the action most spirited, and the effect of color distinctly decorative. These paintings in the National Gallery would lead you to suppose that there was nothing but battles in the history of Venezuela, and that her great men were all soldiers, but the talent of the artists who have painted these scenes and the actors in them corrects the idea. Among these artists are Arturo Michelena, who has exhibited at the World’s Fair, and frequently at the French Salon, from which institution he has received a prize, M. Tovar y Tovar, A. Herrea Toro, and Cristobal Rojas.
THE PRESIDENT’S BODY-GUARD OF COWBOYS
It was that “Illustrious American, Guzman Blanco,” one of the numerous presidents of Venezuela, and probably the best known, who was responsible for most of the public buildings of the capital. These were originally either convents or monasteries, which he converted, after his war with the Church, into the Federal Palace, the Opera-house, and a university. Each of these structures covers so much valuable ground, and is situated so advantageously in the very heart of the city, that one gets a very good idea of how powerful the Church element must have been before Guzman overthrew it.
He was a peculiar man, apparently, and possessed of much force and of a progressive spirit, combined with an overmastering vanity. The city was at its gayest under his régime, and he encouraged the arts and sciences by creating various bodies of learned men, by furnishing the nucleus for a national museum, by subsidizing the Opera-house, and by granting concessions to foreign companies which were of quite too generous a nature to hold good, and which now greatly encumber and embarrass his successors. But while he was president, and before he went to live in luxurious exile on the Avenue Kléber, which seems to be the resting-place of all South-American presidents, he did much to make the country prosperous and its capital attractive, and he was determined that the people should know that he was the individual who accomplished these things. With this object he had fifteen statues erected to himself in different parts of the city, and more tablets than one cancount. Each statue bore an inscription telling that it was erected to that “Illustrious American, Guzman Blanco,” and every new bridge and road and public building bore a label to say that it was Guzman Blanco who was responsible for its existence. The idea of a man erecting statues to himself struck the South-American mind as extremely humorous, and one night all the statues were sawed off at the ankles, and to-day there is not one to be seen, and only raw places in the walls to show where the memorial tablets hung. But you cannot wipe out history by pulling down columns or effacing inscriptions, and Guzman Blanco undoubtedly did do much for his country, even though at the same time he was doing a great deal for Guzman Blanco.
BAPTIZING INDIANS AT A VENEZUELAN STATION AT THE CUYUNI RIVER
Guzman was followed in rapid succession by three or four other presidents and dictators, who filled their pockets with millions and then fled the country, only waiting until their money was first safely out of it. Then General Crespo, who had started his revolution with seven men, finally overthrew the government’s forces, and was elected president, and has remained in office ever since. To set forth with seven followers to make yourself president of a country as large as France, Portugal, and Spain together requires a great deal of confidence and courage. General Crespo is a fighter, and possesses both. It was either he or one of his generals—the story is told of both—who, when he wanted arms for his cowboys, bade them take off their shirts and grease their bodies and rush through the camp of the enemy in search of them. He told them to hold their left hands out as they ran, and whenever their fingers slipped on a greased body they were to pass it by, but when they touched a man wearing a shirt they were to cut him down with their machetes. In this fashion three hundred of his plainsmen routed two thousand of the regulartroops, and captured all of their rifles and ammunition. The idea that when you want arms the enemy is the best person from whom to take them is excellent logic, and that charge of the half-naked men, armed only with their knives, through the sleeping camp is Homeric in its magnificence.
Crespo is more at home when fighting in the field than in the council-chamber of the Yellow House, which is the White House of the republic; but that may be because he prefers fighting to governing, and a man generally does best what he likes best to do. He is as simple in his habits to-day as when he was on the march with his seven revolutionists, and goes to bed at eight in the evening, and is deep in public business by four the next morning; many an unhappy minister has been called to an audience at sunrise. The president neither smokes nor drinks; he is grave and dignified, with that dignity which enormoussize gives, and his greatest pleasure is to take a holiday and visit his ranch, where he watches the round-up of his cattle and gallops over his thousands of acres. He is the idol of the cowboys, and has a body-guard composed of some of the men of this class. I suppose they are very much like our own cowboys, but the citizens of the capital look upon them as the Parisians regarded Napoleon’s Mamelukes, and tell you in perfect sincerity that when they charge at night their eyes flash fire in a truly terrifying manner.
A TYPICAL HUNTING-PARTY IN VENEZUELA
I saw the president but once, and then but for a few moments. He was at the Yellow House and holding a public reception, to which every one was admitted with a freedom that betokened absolute democracy. When my turn came he talked awhile through Colonel Bird, our consul, but there was no chance for me to gain any idea of him except that he was very polite, as are all Venezuelans, and very large. They tell a story of him which illustrates his character. He was riding past the university when a group of students hooted and jeered at him, not because of his politics, but because of his origin. A policeman standing by, aroused to indignation by this insult to the president, fired his revolver into the crowd. Crespo at once ordered the man’s arrest for shooting at a citizen with no sufficient provocation, and rode on his way without even giving a glance at his tormentors.The incident seemed to show that he was too big a man to allow the law to be broken even in his own defence, or, at least, big enough not to mind the taunts of ill-bred children.
The boys of the university are taken very seriously by the people of Caracas, as are all boys in that country, where a child is listened to, if he be a male child, with as much grave politeness as though it were a veteran who was speaking. The effect is not good, and the boys, especially of the university, grow to believe that they are very important factors in the affairs of the state, when, as a matter of fact, they are only the cat’s-paws of clever politicians, who use them whenever they want a demonstration and do not wish to appear in it themselves. So these boys are sent forth shouting into the streets, and half the people cheer them on, and the children themselves think they are patriots or liberators, or something equally important.
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 sportsmanit 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 soldierwho 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 RIVERWith 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 theyunderstand 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.
VENEZUELAN STATION ON THE CUYUNI RIVERThe Barracks and House in which the English Police were confined
Admiral Meade’s squadron touched at La Guayra while we were at the capital, the squadron visiting the port at that time in obedience to the schedule already laid out for it in Washington some months previous, just as a theatrical company plays a week’s stand at the time and at the place arranged for it in advance by its agent, but the Venezuelans did not consider this, and believed that the squadron had been sent there to intimidate the British and to frighten the French and German men-of-war which were then expected in port to convey their dismissed ministers back to their own countries. One of the most intelligent men that I met in Caracas, and one closely connected with the Foreign Office, told me he had been to La Guayra to see our squadron, and that the admiral had placed his ships of war in the harbor in such a position that at a word he could blow the French and German boats out of the water. I suggested to one Venezuelan that there were other ways of dismissing foreign ministers than that of telling them to pack up and get out of the country in a week, and that I did not think the Monroe Doctrine meant that South-American republics could affront foreign nations with impunity. He answered me by saying that the United States had aided Mexico when Maximilian tried to found an empire in that country, and he could not see that the cases were not exactly similar.
ENGLISH STATION ON THE CUYUNI RIVERInspector Barnes, Chief of the English Police who were captured by the Venezuelan troops, is seated on the steps
They will, however, probably understand better what the Monroe Doctrine really is before their boundary dispute with Great Britain is settled, and Great Britain will probably know more about it also, for it is possible that there never was a case when the United States needed to watch her English cousins more closely than in this international dispute over the boundary-line between Venezuela and British Guiana. If England succeeds it means a loss to Venezuela of a territory as large as the State of New York, and of gold deposits which are believed to be the richest in South America, and, what is more important, it means the entire control by the English of the mouth and four hundred miles of the Orinoco River. The question is one of historical records and maps, and nothing else. Great Britain fell heir to the rights formerly possessed by Holland. Venezuela obtained by conquest the lands formerly owned by Spain. The problem to be solved is to find what were the possessions of Holland and Spain, and so settle what is to-day the territory of England and Venezuela. Year after year Great Britain has pushed her way westward, until she has advanced her claims over a territory of forty thousand square miles, and has included Barima Point at the entrance to the Orinoco. She has refused positively,through Lord Salisbury, to recede or to arbitrate, and it is impossible for any one at this writing to foretell what the outcome will be. If the Monroe Doctrine does not apply in this case, it has never meant anything in the past, and will not mean much in the future.
DR. PEDRO EZEQUIEL ROJASMinister of Foreign Affairs
MAP EXPLAINING VENEZUELAN BOUNDARY DISPUTE
Personally, although the original Monroe Doctrine distinctly designates “this hemisphere,” and not merely this continent, I cannot think the principle of this doctrine should be applied in this instance. For if it does apply, it could be extended to other disputes much farther south, and we might have every republic in South America calling on us for aid in matters which could in no possible way affect either the honor or the prosperity of our country.
THE CITY OF CARACAS
In any event the Monroe Doctrine is distinctly a selfish one, so far, at least, as all rules for self-preservation must be selfish, and I should prefer to think that we are interfering in behalf of Venezuela, not because we ourselves are threatened by the encroachments of Great Britain, but because we cannot stand by and see a weak power put upon by one of the greatest. It may be true, as the foreign powers have pointed out, that the aggressions of Great Britain are none of our business, but as we have made them our business, it concerns no one except Great Britain and ourselves, and now having failed to avoid the entrance to a quarrel, and being in, we must bear ourselves so that the enemy may beware of us, and see that we issue forth again with honor, and without having stooped to the sin of war.
Caracas was the last city we visited on our tour, and perhaps it is just as well that this was so, for had we gone there in the first place we might have been in Caracas still. It is easy to understand why it is attractive. While you were slipping on icy pavements and drinking in pneumonia and the grippe, and while the air was filled with flying particles of ice and snow, and the fog-bound tugs on the East River were shrieking and screeching to each other all through the night, we were sitting out-of-doors in the Plaza de Bolivar, looking up at the big statue on its black marble pedestal, under the shade of green palms and in the moonlight, with a band of fifty pieces playing Spanish music, and hundreds of officers in gold uniforms, and pretty women with no covering to their heads but a lace mantilla, circling past in an endlesschain of color and laughter and movement. Back of us beyond the trees the cafés sent out through their open fronts the noise of tinkling glasses and the click of the billiard-balls and a flood of colored light, and beyond us on the other side rose the towers and broad façade of the cathedral, white and ghostly in the moonlight, and with a single light swinging in the darkness through the open door.
In the opinion of three foreigners, Caracas deserves her title of the Paris of South America; and there was only one other title that appealed to us more as we saw the shores of La Guayra sink into the ocean behind us and her cloud-wrapped mountains disappear, and that, it is not necessary to explain, was “the Paris of North America,” which stretches from Bowling Green to High Bridge.
THE END