Originally published in Peoples of All Nations, by Educational Book Company, London 1923.

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The front door of the Republic of Venezuela is the Caribbean port of La Guayra. There are such side doors as Puerto Cabello, from which you can connect by train with the capital, pretty Carácas, in its upland valley, and there are isolated out-buildings, as it were, such as the new and enormously developing Maracaibo region, and there is the huge back door of the Orinoco’s mouth, leading to the up-river town of Ciudad Bolivar and the vast little-known Ilanos (plains) of Apure and the huge southward-bending area of Amazonas.

Above: Pack-donkeys laden with country merchandise passing through a street of Carácas. Carácas, the capital of Venezuela, lies in a beautiful mountain-girt valley watered by the river Guaire and nearly 3,000 feet above sea-level. Sugar and coffee plantations surround the city which, owing to its altitude, enjoys a moderate temperature, and claims to be the most perfectly and salubriously situated of all the South American capitals. The narrow street are paved with cobbles in the outer part of the city, in the centre with cement, and lined by one-storeyed houses which usually turn their blindside to the street, the barred windows and stuccoed walls suggesting little of the comfortable and even luxurious quarters behind them

La Guayra (a “guaira,” by the way, is a beacon fire set upon a hilltop) presents an unchanging face in every season. The steamer manoeuvres close to the wall of dark-red, sweltering rock, upon whose feet the narrow streets of the port run, steep and precarious and dirty. The sea is deep and blue against this mountain barrier, and the sun, all the year round, beats down upon the winding town and is reflected back from the crimson rock. Everybody of consequence wears white clothes, and the poorer folk tread, barefoot, the cobblestones of the tilted ways, jostling the mules.

La Guayra Gay with Flowers

The well-to-do, and certainly all the foreigners engaged in business pursuits, dwell in airy houses, with the living rooms often placed upon the second floor, the first being devoted to offices. These houses are built of wood, with heavy red-tiled roofs; the rooms are enormously large and rendered cool by wide balconies, numbers of unglazed windows, and a series of connecting doors which guarantee the utilisation of every faint breeze. Gay flowers, the pretty pink coralillo vine and the viuda alegre’s delicate mauve, the daring patchwork of the crotons and the scarlet blaze of hibiscus, the long trail of bougainvillea, adorn every balcony.

When Drake Fought the Spanish Don

A mile or so to the eastward, along the slender strip of shore, lies the pretty watering-place, Macuto. A motor-car, driven by a Venezolano with a bush of black hair and the usual Latin-American passion for rapid transit, carries you along the uneven coast road to a cool hotel and a bathing beach; on the way you pass the four-square white house, inside high walls draped with brilliant flowering vines, where in Kingsley’s “Westward Ho!” the Spanish don held the “Rose of Torridge” a prisoner.

From La Guayra runs the railway up to Carácas. There are two other ways; first, the splendid motor road that winds more steeply down the sides of the mountains, skirting precipices and ravines; and, second, the most dizzy route of all, that is nothing but a clambering footpath. According to a very likely tradition, it was up this goat-path that Drake climbed with his band of sailors in Elizabeth’s day; it was a Spaniard of Carácas who acted as guide and betrayed his town into the hands of the English invaders. Drake hanged him for his trouble.

The railroad is a fine piece of mountain engineering, and as the train ascends and the fresher air of the hills is reached, you look out of the window and down upon bare purple-red rocky shoulders, with sparse verdure in clefts, and an emerald strip on the shore where a patch of soil gives foothold to a grove of coconuts.

Above: Dark-eyed daughter of Latin America. The houses of the Spanish of Carácas are usually built in similar fashion to those in their Mother Country. The windows are barred, and a private or court, affords a rendezvous for family gatherings

There is not so much as a village in the hills between the port and the capital, but Carácas itself is placed in a narrow and lovely vale with a delicious perennial-spring climate. The whole strip is a garden of flowers and birds, with white and pink and blue houses set in this blossomy frame, Every afternoon, when the sun is sinking behind the hills, it is the custom for the citizens to drive, ride, or even walk, along the beautiful stretch of gardens that border the valley, the Paraiso, which is covered with great thickets of bamboo, splendid mahogany and ceiba trees hung with a score of tillandsias and lianes, and beds of roses and lilies.

A string of houses edges the slope of the hills, their private gardens running up at a sharp angle. Many are sumptuously adorned, in a land where gay pictures may be painted on the exterior wall and suffer no damage. For one of these, standing a little back from the road behind tropical foliage, the visitor will spare a curious glance, for this is the palacio built for his pleasure by Cipriano Castro, that dictator of Venezuela who once upon a time defied the Powers, and upon another occasion got together an army to march upon the United States by land. All the flooring of this palacio was specially made of fine tiles with the entwined initials “C.C.”

As a result of the modern policy of highway construction, in the dry season the traveller may go right across the huge territory of Venezuela from La Guayra to Ciudad Bolivar by motorcar, in less than four days. From the beginning of the rains, about the middle of May, until December, interior Venezuela is no place for the visitor; water descends in a solid sheet, the plains are blotted out, the roads are roaring cataracts. But in the dry season the fertile country teems with wild life, and the Venezuelan reaps his harvest without the slightest fear of a troubled sky.

No better example of the fine highroads built of late years and their effect upon the enterprising farmer, can be seen than that between Carácas and Maracay. It plunges out into the green, hilly country westward from Carácas, rising to an altitude of 4,000 feet at one breezy spot, Los Teques, frequently skirting the precipitous sides of mountains and dipping to delicious green valleys. All this road is dotted with rich sugar estates, the red-tiled houses nestled among a sea of waving emerald.

It is an all-day run between Carácas and Maracay, and the warm, scented dusk of the little town is illuminated by a blaze of electric lights in the flowery plaza. All the houses are painted with pink or blue or some other delicate colour, the pavements are of stone mosaic, the roads asphalted, and although the residence here of the President is but one storey in height, it is equipped with such modem conveniences as electric fans and telephones.

Above: Street in Caracas showing the prevalent style of architecture. Earthquakes are frequent in Caracas, and a terrible shock practically destroyed the city in 1812. The houses, therefore, are low, with strong adobe walls, and there being littl or no need of fires for warmth, chimneys are seldom seen. Though alike in style, the houses are relieved of monotony by their colouring, and the red-tile roofs are singularly effective against the mountain background.